B00AO57VOY EBOK (16 page)

“All right, Tinkerbell,
let’s go,” she said, laughing and pulling away from Blake before slipping an
arm around my waist.  When I continued to look at her, my eyes demanding she
tell me what had just happened, she just laughed again.  “Explanations later. 
Food now.  We also need to figure out who’s going to explain what happened here
today to Shea.  I nominate you, Nate.”

“Why me?” Nathan asked,
making me laugh when I saw the appalled look on his handsome face as Kim and I
passed him.  Kim just smiled at him sweetly and batted her eyelashes. 

“Because, you’re the only one
here she can’t kill.”

It was the strangest,
scariest, saddest, happiest, most exhilarating afternoon of my life, starting
with Bastian trying to abduct me and ending with all of us at a table at our
favorite restaurant having the weirdest celebration party in history.

As it turned out, I didn’t
even need Grams to finish removing my bind.  It had come unwound or whatever
all by itself.  That’s what the whole freaky earth-air-water-fire thing had
been about.  I had come fully into my powers.  I was a full-fledged blood
witch.

Which would have been
totally frigging awesome if I’d had the first clue how to actually
be
a
blood witch

“It’ll be easier once we
figure out your element,” Kim said, smiling patiently when I admitted how
worried I was about not knowing how to do…well, anything.  “All bandraoithe
have their own element that helps them focus their power.  For example, my
element is water.”

To demonstrate, she poured
the water from her water glass into a bowl and then caused it to rise in
droplets before letting it rain back down one drop at a time.  Blake’s element
was air.  He created a tiny little tornado right there over the table, and I
watched in awe as it whirled and twisted, sucking up used napkins and ketchup
packets before Blake waved his hand and dispelled it. 

“So what’s mine?” I asked,
excitedly.

“Fire, baby,” Nathan said,
smiling, before Kim could even open her mouth.  “Yours is most definitely
fire.”

Fire?  Oh,
goody
. 

“I was trying to break that
to her gently, Nate,” Kim grumbled when she saw the look on my face.  “You
know, because she’s
terrified
of fire!”

Terrified of fire?  Uh, that
didn’t even begin to cover the way I felt.  For as long as I could remember,
I’d avoided fire in any form.  Candles, fireplaces, bonfires,
matches
. 
If it flamed, I stayed away from it.  So, yeah, finding out that the thing I
feared most was the key to my ‘awesome’ power was a revelation I could have
done without.

“Sugar coating the truth
won’t change it,” Nathan told Kim, putting his arm around my shoulders and
giving me a gentle squeeze.  “She wanted to know what her element was, I told
her.”

I made a mental note to
never ask him anything I didn’t really
want an answer to. 

We went our separate ways
after dinner, Blake to take Kim home and Nathan and I back to the house we were
currently sharing.  He was unusually quiet as he drove, and I took the
opportunity to think over everything that had happened over the afternoon.  I
had been given so much information that I was on overload.

But, of all the mysteries
that had been explained, I was quick to realize one thing had been overlooked. 

Where the hell was Bastian? 

“There’s something I don’t
understand,” I said, quietly, breaking the long, comfortable, silence that had
fallen between me and Nathan as we drove home.  “When Bastian disappeared in a
puff of smoke, where did he go?”

“Off somewhere to lick his
wounds would be my guess,” Nathan said, scowling.  “That puff of smoke was the
demon equivalent of teleportation for a bandraoi, which I’m sure you’ll learn
soon enough.”

“And what about the real
Jack?” I whispered, staring out at the inky night sky.  “What happened to him?”

That thought bothered me
more than anything else.  My friend was trapped inside his body with that
creeper, unable to fight back.  Was he in pain?  Was he dying a slow spiritual
death?  Was that demonic piece of crap sucking the very essence out of him? 
The questions just kept mounting up.

“I don’t know, baby,” Nathan
murmured, reaching for my hand where it rested on the console between us. 
“We’re going to find some way to get rid of the demon controlling him, don’t
worry.”

“But, what will he be like
after that?  After playing human suit to a demon?”

Nathan hesitated a little
too long before he answered.  His silence said more than he wanted it to, I’m
sure.  Jack was never going to be the Jack I had known again.  He would be
different.  Nobody goes through something like demonic possession without some
really messed up issues as souvenirs.

“Is he going to die,
Nathan?” I whispered, blinking back tears.

“I can’t answer that,” he
said, squeezing my hand gently.  “It happens, baby, I won’t lie.  It really all
depends on the host, on how strong their will is.  But, you’re right.  He’ll
have some serious emotional and mental scars.  Nothing we do can change that now.”

I nodded and decided I’d
heard enough.  Suddenly, I felt wiped out.  All I wanted in the world was to go
home and curl up against Nathan’s chest and sleep for a week.  As it turned
out, sleep wasn’t in my future.  The second Nathan pulled into the garage, the
door to the kitchen opened and Grams stood there glaring at both of us.

“Damn,” Nathan muttered, his
eyebrows shooting up.  “I really thought she got it all out of her system when
I called her.”

I giggled at that.  Nathan
had spent the first fifteen minutes of dinner with his phone held at least six
inches from his ear as Grams tore him a new one for screwing up and losing me
long enough for me to almost become a demon snack pack.

“What happened to the wards
I put on this house?” Grams demanded as Nathan helped me from the car. 

Nathan and I glanced at each
other in confusion.  Wards?  I had no idea what a ward even
was
.  Seeing
my confusion, Grams’ glare got even darker.

“Protective wards, Ember!”
Grams snapped.  “They’re meant to keep out negative energy.  I want to know
what happened to them.”

“Well,
I
certainly
don’t know,” I told her, kind of insulted by her accusatory tone. 

“What’s going on here,
Shea?” Nathan asked, calmly.  “You know she doesn’t know anything about wards. 
What happened?”

“Come see for yourself.”

She turned and stormed off
as if we were personally responsible for whatever had happened.  Sharing an
exasperated look, we followed her and came to a quick stop just inside the
door.  The kitchen was a disaster area.  The cabinet doors had been ripped
off.  Broken dishes littered the counters and every single pane had been busted
out of the back door, adding their glittering shards to the rest of the
destruction.  The entire room was flooded due to the fact that the taps had
literally been pulled off of the sink and water was spraying like a geyser. 
The refrigerator was laying on its side, the contents spilling out and the
light blinking eerily.  The stove looked like someone had taken a bat to it and
the oven door was hanging on by one twisted, mangled, hinge.

Nathan and I exchanged
another look and I shivered as I wondered what could have wreaked such
devastation.  I mean, what kind of force would it take to do all of that? 
Someone would have had to be in a blind rage…

Bastian.  So much for
licking his wounds.  The whole thing had his name stamped on it like a neon
sign.

Mumbling curses under my
breath, I grabbed Nathan by the arm and followed Grams into the living room. 
The destruction there made the kitchen look tame by comparison.  The
entertainment center was turned over, the electronics it contained smashed in
the fall.  The sectional looked like someone had gone at it with a hatchet, and
stuffing leaked from it like it was bleeding.  The lamps were all overturned or
busted and the coffee table and end tables looked like a rampaging giant had
stomped on them. 

All of that was bad enough,
but what actually pissed me off were the windows and walls.  There was one word
written on every inch of available plaster and glass:  Mine.  I began to shiver
uncontrollably.  It wasn’t just the anger, either.  The room was as cold as a
deep freeze.  You could have literally hung meat in there.

“Bastian,” I hissed,
white-hot rage thawing my blood and my mouth at the same time.

“I don’t think he would
have…” Nathan began, but I cut him off. 

“Whatever,” I snapped,
irritated with him for doubting me.  “It was him, Nathan.  I know it was.  Look
at the damn windows!”

I gazed around at the
destroyed room around me again.  It was time for this prick to get the message
and I was more than ready to spell it out for him.  I would even use small
words so he was sure to understand.  I was never going to belong to him.  I
belonged to me. 

If it was a war he wanted,
it was a war he was going to get.

“Ember, just calm down,
sweetheart,” Grams said gently, giving me a look that said she was ready to run
for a fire extinguisher any second.  “I know you’re angry, but don’t be rash.”

“
Rash
?  A demon just
destroyed our house after trying to make me his favorite Barbie doll.  Nothing
I do could be considered rash at this point, Grams.  Inevitable, maybe, but
definitely not rash.”

My fingers were literally
twitching with the urge to strangle the vindictive jerk.  I had to find some
way to end this.  Kim had implied that I was powerful enough to do everything I
had seen her do—with a little practice, of course.  Even if it killed me, I was
going to take Bastian’s demonic ass down a notch or two.

“We can’t do anything about
it tonight, baby,” Nathan said softly, massaging my shoulders.  “Let’s do some
damage control and then we’ll call in the others and see what we can come up
with.”

Grams nodded her acceptance
and began trying to right the room around her without another word, giving me
little choice but to go along with Nathan’s plan of action.  It was a useless
effort in my opinion, but Nathan and I walked into the kitchen to begin the
clean-up effort there.  Nathan lifted the fridge with one hand as if it weighed
no more than a sack of flour and smoothly put it back in place.  He turned and
saw me watching in fascination and gave me a roguish wink.

“Show off,” I grumbled,
making him laugh.

I walked over to the sink
and reached under it to turn off the water.  I had accidentally pulled the
faucet off at my parents’ house once, so I knew what to do.  By the time I got
the stupid thing to turn, though, I was soaking wet and shaking like a leaf
again in the still frigid air of the house. 

It was then that I felt
them.  Not one ghost, but multiple entities.  My shock must have kept me from
feeling them before.  Once I started calming down, though, they came through
loud and clear.

“Nathan!” I whimpered,
nearly knocking myself out as I tried to stand up before I was completely clear
of the cabinet.  I rubbed the back of my head, groaning in pain, and winced
when Nathan removed my hand and gently prodded the bump that was already
beginning to form.

“Forget about that,” I
snapped, moving away from him, my eyes darting around wildly.  “Can you feel
that?  They’re
everywhere
!”

Grams came running in from
the living room at my cry and walked over quickly to take my shoulders and look
deep into my eyes.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“
Ghosts
!” I cried,
beginning to tremble harder.  “
Lots
of them!”

Suddenly, a warm presence
surrounded me and I smelled the scent of lilacs in the air again.  I sighed as
the peace I had experienced in the morgue flowed over me and my terror level
went down. 

Do not be afraid,
the
same beautiful, French accented voice that had defended Nathan’s innocence whispered
across my mind. 
They mean you no harm.  They only wish to help you as you
have helped so many of them.

 “They want to help?” I
whispered, feeling like I was almost in a daze as my mind grappled with that. 
“They only want to help.”

“Who wants to help?” Nathan
asked, looking as confused as I felt.

“The ghosts,” I told him, my
eyes so wide that I probably looked comical. 

But,
how
were they
going to help me?  If it had been a ghost, maybe they could have done
something, but we were dealing with a demon.  Bastian didn’t exist on their
plane, but on ours. 

“Well, all they’re doing
right this second is freezing you to death,” Grams said, exchanging a worried
look with Nathan, taking charge again.  “Why don’t you go dry off and change,
sweetheart.  We’ll take care of things in here and then we’ll all sit down and
figure it out together.”