B00AO57VOY EBOK (24 page)

Just when I thought I
couldn’t take it another second without being shipped off to the psych ward
myself, the locket was suddenly ripped from my hand.  The awful vision and the
terrible pain that had gone along with it disappeared, but part of me was still
trapped in it, reliving it over and over with such clarity that I started
sobbing in desperation. 

I opened my eyes to find
that, though the pain was gone, the fire had remained.  My survival instincts
had kicked in, calling up my element, and the flames it produced were so high
that Grams had scooted back a good ten feet.  The candle I had been focusing on
was a molten pool of glistening wax near my knee and the entire back yard was
lit up from the golden, flickering, glow I was putting off. 

I immediately tried to put
out the flames, but I was so terrified that it took a lot more focus than it
usually did.  In the end, though, I was finally able to manage it.  It was only
then, shaking and so scared I felt sick to my stomach, that the mayhem around
me started to register.

I heard Kim screaming at
someone to let her go and turned to see her fighting to get out of Blake’s
arms, her face pale and her eyes wild as she looked at me.  Blake looked as
sick as I felt as he restrained her, never taking his eyes from my face.  Next
to them, Tyler was watching me with a heartbroken kind of look.

And standing across from me,
the locket clutched in one badly burned hand, was Nathan.  His chest was
heaving and I had never seen him so furious.  I couldn’t look into his eyes for
long, couldn’t bear the rage I saw there.  Instead, I let my gaze drift back to
his burned hand, swallowing back another wave of nausea as I stared at the
blackened, blistered appendage, the fingers of which were still wrapped around
the chain of the locket he had rescued me from.

“Where did you get this?” he
asked frostily, shaking the locket at Grams, his jaw clenched and his eyes
glowing brightly.

“It was in one of the
boxes,” she whispered, looking horrified by what had happened.  “I had no idea
that would happen.  She didn’t experience anything like that with the first
vision.”

With the deadliest look I
had ever seen, he opened the locket and flung it at Grams.  It fell into her
lap and she reached for it with trembling fingers, staring at the miniatures
inside.  I watched as the blood drained from her face, as her eyes widened and
then filled with horror.

“No, I don’t guess she would
have had the same experience, would she?” Nathan asked, his tone as icy as the
fury still glowing in his eyes.

“Grams?” I whispered as her
hand flew up to cover her mouth and tears started falling down her cheeks. 

When Grams wouldn’t even
look at me, Nathan snatched the locket from her hand and started toward me. 
Kneeling in front of me, he held the locket out to me again.  I threw myself
backwards like it he was offering me a venomous snake rather than an innocent
piece of jewelry. 

There was no way I was
ever
going to touch that thing again.

“You don’t have to touch it,
baby.”  His silky voice was rough with emotion.  When he saw the terror in my
eyes, he flinched.  “I’ll hold it, Em.  I just need you to look.”

Knowing I was going to
regret it—hell,
already
regretting it—I leaned forward and looked at the
miniature portraits the locket had kept safe for God only knows how long.  On
one side was the girl I had seen in my vision, her white-blonde hair done up in
an elaborate twist.  I stared at her for a second, trying to replace the terror
I had seen on her face in my vision, the terror I had felt right along with
her, with the happiness I could see so clearly on her face in her portrait.

When I’d memorized every
single line of her smiling face, I turned my eyes to the other side of the
locket and felt my heart drop into my stomach.  Smiling up at me from beneath
the tiny piece of glass was a face I would have known anywhere.  It was the
face I dreamed of at night and couldn’t wait to open my eyes to see when the
dreams came to an end.

“Is that…?” I choked out,
hoping Nathan would tell me he had a twin somewhere.

“Yes,” he whispered, his
expression tormented.

 “Then who is…?” I started,
wondering why I couldn’t seem to get a whole question out.  My guess was that
it was because I really didn’t want to hear the answer.

“You.”

Chills raced across my skin,
causing me to shiver uncontrollably, at that softly spoken confirmation of my
worst fear.  It had been
me
burning.  I had been consumed by those
flames.  I had lived that fear of watching death coming for me. 

I had just had the dubious
pleasure of watching myself die—again. 

“I’m sorry, Ember,” Nathan,
said, softly.  Why would he be apologizing to me?  That really didn’t bode well. 
“I didn’t know who you were when Shea sent me to check on you.”  

“I know,” I told him, my
voice barely a whisper.  “You told me, remember?”

“But I never told you why I
asked her to find you.  I wanted to know where you were so I could stay away
from you.”

He closed his eyes, shaking
his head in frustration, and I desperately wanted to comfort him.  I wanted to
be that person for him that he was for me, the person he reached for when he
was scared or when things were just too overwhelming to face alone.  I wanted
to, but I couldn’t seem to make myself reach for him at that moment. 

“Seeing you that first time
was like taking a deep breath after being buried alive,” he murmured, staring
down at the locket still lying open in his hand. “The moment I saw you, I knew
you.  The face changes, the hair changes, but the eyes are always the same. But
I swear, Ember, I tried to stay away from you this time.”

This time,
I repeated
to myself, silently.

I suddenly understood a lot
more than I wanted to.  He had given me the only clue I needed to understand
everything perfectly.  My eyes were
always
the same.  Not that they had
been the same
before
, when I had been the girl being burnt at the stake,
but that they were
always
the same.

I had a bad feeling I was
about to be introduced to the amazing Cat Girl.

“How many times?” I asked,
my voice shaking. 

“Three,” he whispered. “It
always ends the same way.”

Don’t ask!
I bit my
lip and closed my eyes, trying to obey that voice in my head that knew I should
leave well enough alone.  I had to know, though, no matter how terrible it
was.  At least I didn’t have to ask out loud.  Nathan knew what I needed to
hear.  Even if he hadn’t been able to read my thoughts, I really think he still
would have known.

“You die, baby,” he said, his
beautiful voice hoarse and broken.  “You never live to see twenty.”

I made him stay right there
in the back yard and tell me everything from beginning to end—after I finished
having a total nervous breakdown.  I pretty much had to force Grams and the
others to give us some privacy, but I was finally able to get them back in the
house.  Somehow, I didn’t think Nathan was going to want an audience for our
trip down Nightmare Lane.  And a sadder story I had never heard.  By the time
he was finished I was completely heartbroken. 

He had fallen in love with
me and watched me die three times.  Four centuries—give or take a few
decades—of searching for and finding fleeting moments of absolute happiness
only to have it snatched away again and again.  No wonder he hadn’t wanted to
be on the same continent with me the fourth time.  Personally, I think I would
have buried myself in a cave to stay away from me. 

The first time we met I was
the daughter of a French nobleman.  I had been promised to someone else, but I
had refused to marry him.  My father hadn’t thought much of that.  He had
threatened me, tried to bribe me, and finally, in a fit of rage, had locked me
away in my room until I agreed to be reasonable.  What my dear old dad hadn’t
counted on was the friendship I had formed with my maid.  She helped me escape
at risk to her own life and her family’s.  I ran away from home and changed my
name, selling my jewelry for the money to keep myself hidden. 

I had never understood how a
parent could bear to do that to their own child.  How do you just promise your
daughter to someone without giving her any say in the matter, without even
caring if she would be happy or not?  And for what?  More money, more land, the
honor of being related to the right people with the best names and the biggest
fortunes?  Yeah,
real
sound reasons for selling off your own flesh and
blood.

I had always wondered why I
felt so irritated when I read about things like that.  As I listened to Nathan,
though, I thought maybe it was because part of my subconscious remembered what
it was like to be the one sold to the highest bidder.

“What was my name?” I asked,
though I was pretty sure I was getting into something I really didn’t want to
get into.  You know that old saying ‘Less is more’?  Well, that saying would
apply to almost everything in my life.

“Evangelique de Benet.”

My nose wrinkled up in
distaste at that.  I hoped that was my given name and not the one I had picked
for myself.  It was…well, not me. 

“No, that wasn’t the name
you chose for yourself,” Nathan said, laughing sadly, his gaze far away.  “I
knew you as Simone Mercier, the name
you
preferred.”

Simone?  Now, where had I
heard that name before…?

“So…” I prompted him,
letting my voice trail off meaningfully. 

I wanted to know what I
looked like, who I’d been, how we had met.  I wanted to know all of it.  But,
Nathan continued to stare off into the distance, his expression growing sadder
by the second. 

“You were beautiful.”  

His voice was an agonized
whisper and I got the impression he wasn’t really talking to me anymore.  He
was somewhere else, somewhere so far away that I didn’t stand a chance of
reaching him.  Just as suddenly, though, he was back with me.  He smiled down
at me, the expression so weary and pained that I wanted to hold him and make it
right, but I couldn’t.  Not yet.

“You’re always beautiful,”
he continued, running a finger down my cheek, “Always so delicate on the
outside and so very strong on the inside.  Your hair was dark then, so black
that it seemed blue in some lights.  Peaches and cream skin.  And that amazing
scent, more potent than any perfume could ever be.”

With his description, I
suddenly remembered where I had heard the name Simone.  He had called me that
in my dream the day he kidnapped me.  Simone had been the girl in the maze. 
She had been the one wearing my necklace, the playful one.

The one who’d burned tied to
a post.

“I think I fell in love with
you the moment I laid eyes on you.”  

Nathan reached over and
twined his fingers with mine and I jumped.  I was glad he wasn’t looking at me,
that his gaze was far away, watching his memories, so he wouldn’t see the fear
I was sure was shining in my eyes. 

“You were dancing down the
street, unmindful of your audience,” he continued, oblivious to what every word
that left his lips was doing to me.  “You were radiant.  And that smile!  It
was like you had reached inside me and stolen my heart.

“I always believed you were
born to the wrong social class.  A life of silence, of always watching what you
said, what you did, would never have been a happy life for you.  You were far
too spirited for such an existence.  You wanted to dance, to laugh, to
argue—heatedly.  More than that, you wanted to fall in love, wanted to marry
someone of your own choosing whom you couldn’t live without.  You were as
passionate then as you are now, quick to anger and almost as quick to forgive. 
You were every dream I had ever had and every dream I hadn’t been creative
enough to conjure.  You were perfection.”  

I blushed scarlet and
trained my eyes on our twined fingers.  Passionate.  Did that mean we had made
love in that life?  I hoped so, because it sure wasn’t looking like we were
going to reach that point in this one.

“I always thought I would
lose you because of what I was,” he said softly, staring down at our hands. 
“It took me almost two months to get up the courage to tell you.  I will never
forget the way you looked at me.  It was like you were seeing something
beautiful and amazing.  And then you asked me to bite you, to give you my
mark.”

“And did you?” I asked,
reaching up to touch my own mark.

“No.”  I turned to look at
him, startled by the harshness of his voice.  Seeing this, he softened his tone
and squeezed my hand.  “I have my own…issues…with my mark, baby.  I have never
marked a human before you and I shouldn’t have done it this time.”