B00AO57VOY EBOK (29 page)

“Of course you weren’t,”
Grams said, sounding kind of sad.  “Nate, behave yourself.”

“Yes, your majesty,” he
muttered, arching an eyebrow at her tone. 

“Never mind,” she said,
sighing.  “Kimberly, watch Nate.  You have my permission to smack him if he
gets out of line.”

Kim nodded but didn’t say
anything.  She was too busy trying to figure out what was going on simply by
staring at me.  We were completely silent, the good mood of the room gone,
until we heard the door close behind Grams and then Kim leapt into action.

“Out, Nate,” she ordered.  “Ember
needs to try on these costumes, and I think she and I have a few things to talk
about.”

Nathan glanced down at me to
see if that’s what I wanted and I rolled my eyes and nodded.  I was going to
have to tell her what was going on eventually, seeing as she was going to play
a major part.  Maybe it was better if I told her sooner rather than later.  I
could really use her help considering
I
didn’t have the first clue what
I was doing.

The second Nathan closed the
door behind him, Kim tossed me my hippie costume and commanded me to start
talking.  As I tried on and modeled the costumes for her, I told her everything
Nathan had told me about my past lives and then everything I had learned about Bastian’s
line of possessed assassins.  By the time I was getting into my fairy costume,
I had reached the end of my story and all that was left was to tell her the
plan Grams and Tyler had come up with to get rid of the demon and get my life
back.  I put it off as long as I could, but I knew Kim wouldn’t just let me leave
it at that.

“So, what are we going to
do, Em?” she asked, coming to lace up the hot pink ribbons on my corset.  “I
know you well enough to know you vetoed killing
our
Jack just to get rid
of this creeper, so what’s the plan?”

I made sure my hair covered
the mark on my neck.  We hadn’t gotten around to discussing it yet, and, since
I knew I was about to royally piss her off, I didn’t really think right then
was the time.

“We’re going to trap him in
some kind of demonic net and then turn his possession victims loose on him,” I
said, slowly, choosing my words carefully.

“Who’s
we
?” she
demanded, pulling the ribbons a little too tight in her irritation and nearly
cutting me in half. 

“Huh?” I asked, hedging.

“Who’s going to do the
ritual?”  

“Oh, we all are,” I said,
glad she had picked that question.  “It has to be done by a full coven of
witches with at least one witch present to represent each of the five
elements.  So, you, Blake, me, Grams, and Tyler.”

“And who is going to trap
him?”

Damn.  I had been hoping she
would forget
that
part.

“Um…
me
, actually,” I
told her, already cringing in anticipation of her reaction.

She had been in the process
of attaching my ridiculous blinking wings and instead hit me over the head with
them—repeatedly.

“Are you out of your damned
mind
?”
she shrieked.

“Hear!  Hear!” Nathan called
from down the hall, and I could have cheerfully strangled him to death.  He was
supposed to be
my
boyfriend.  Didn’t that entitle me to a little
loyalty?

“It’s the only way!” I
cried, running from my crazed best friend who proceeded to chase me with my
stupid wings in one hand and my even stupider wand in the other.  “Tyler said
it has to be me.  I’m the one he wants.”

Kim stopped in her tracks
and then threw back her head and screamed in frustration.  That done, she
closed her eyes and took several deep breaths through her nose.  That was about
the point when I noticed the soft blue-white glow she was putting off. 

Oh, hell,
I thought
with a sigh of resignation. 
Here we go.

“You are
not
going to
do this alone,” she said, softly, looking at me finally.  When I opened my
mouth to protest, she gave me such a dark look that the words died in my
throat.  “In fact, you no longer get to do
anything
alone.  You will be
lucky if you are allowed to
pee
unsupervised from here on out.  There
will be someone with you at all times.  If I’m not there, Nate will be.  If
neither of us is available—which, by the way, is unlikely, seeing as I plan to
glue Nate permanently to your
ass
after this—Blake or Tyler will take
over.  Is that understood?”

Grounded by my best friend…how
messed up can you get?  I really hoped she didn’t think I was going to take
that
lying down.  If she did, she didn’t know me as well as I thought she did.

Giving her my most
threatening glare, I propped my hands on my hips and drew myself up to my full
height—an unimpressive display, but still—and raised my chin up at least three
notches.  It was a pose she knew well.  It was my ‘I’m fixing to be a bitch’
look.  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything else.

And then I tossed my hair back
over my shoulder and all hell broke loose—pretty much literally. 

I knew the second she saw my
mark and braced myself for the explosion I could see was coming.  Her eyes
widened and her face paled visibly even as that blue-white glow got even
stronger and sparks of it began to flicker from her fingertips.

“Nathan Ashley, get your
bloodsucking ass in here!” she roared at the top of her lungs, and I winced at
the fury I heard behind the words.

“No!  Don’t!” I screamed,
trying to warn him, but it was already too late. 

Just as the door opened and
Nathan’s head appeared Kim opened fire.  If he hadn’t had vampire reflexes, he
probably would have had a crater in the middle of his perfect forehead. 

“What the hell is
wrong
with you?” He demanded in a roar of his own, confused and angry.  The smell of
singed hair filled the room as he spoke.  Guess Kim hadn’t missed after all. 
“What did
I
do?”

“What did you do?” Kim
screamed.  “What did you
do,
Nathan?  You snacked on my best friend, you
fucking moron!”

She lobbed another blast at
him and I reacted on instinct.  Stepping between them, I held my hands out like
a demented traffic cop and envisioned a protective field around both me and
Nathan.  It formed in front of me just in time for Kim’s last blast to ricochet
off and slam through the window instead of Nathan’s head.

“That’s enough!”  I couldn’t
believe the imperious voice that came out of my mouth was mine.  If anything,
it sounded more like Grams than me.  “I mean it, Kim.  Stop it right now!”

For a second, I thought she
was going to attack again anyway.  Instead, she pulled her phone out of her
pocket and headed for the door.  She glared at Nathan on her way out and he
returned it with a narrow-eyed look of his own as he reached up to feel his
scorched hair. 

I was just thinking that she
was giving up way too easy when she suddenly stopped in her tracks.  She turned
back around to give Nathan such a dangerous look that I almost felt the need to
shield him again.  When she spoke her voice was so soft and deadly that even
Nathan tensed in reaction to it.

“Since Ember loves you, I’m
not going to kill you right now,” she said, her eyes as cold as ice.  “But
listen and listen well, you bloodsucking prick.  If I get even the slightest
inkling
that you’re using that little love bite of yours to control her, there won’t be
a power on earth that can save you from me.  You get me?”

He gave her a terse nod in
answer and she turned that icy stare in my direction.  For a long moment she
just stared at me.  I felt a little ache in my heart when I realized she was
looking at me like I was someone she didn’t know.

“You should have told me,
Em,” she said softly, some of the ice in her gaze melting beneath on onslaught
of hurt and anger.  “What happened to you?  You never used to hide things from
me.”  She paused to give Nathan another scathing glare and then turned hurt
eyes back to me again.  “Then, I guess you have someone else to share your
secrets with now, don’t you?”

“Kim! It’s not—”

Before I could explain myself,
though, she was gone, leaving the memory of the hurt in her eyes and the ache
in my heart to keep me company.

Ever notice how when you want
something to last forever time has a way of going into warp speed, but when
you’re dreading something every second seems to take an eternity?  That was
what the week leading up to the Black and White Ball was like for me.  Each
second seemed to pass like a movie permanently stuck in slow motion.

Kim refused my calls and ignored
my text messages for two solid days.  Hell, she wouldn’t even answer the door
when I finally got Nathan—who was far from Kim’s biggest fan after she scorched
his oh-so-perfect head—to drive me to her house.  If it hadn’t been for her
mom, Mrs. Val, I never would have gotten through the door.  The second it
opened, though, I went flying up to Kim’s room and slammed through the door
with the force of a tornado.

“Take the door off why don’t
you?” Kim muttered, barely glancing up from the fashion magazine she was
flipping through.

“Is your phone broken?” I
snapped back, propping my hands on my hips and giving her a dark look.  “I’m
assuming it is since I’ve been texting you non-stop with no response since you
stormed off like a jealous girlfriend because I didn’t tell you all my deep,
dark secrets.”

Flipping her magazine
closed, she gave me her full attention.  And, suddenly, I wished that she
hadn’t.  The look she gave me was so full of anger and disgust that I actually
recoiled back from it. 

“
That
is not a deep,
dark secret, Ember Leigh,” she said coldly, gesturing to my neck and the mark
hidden beneath my scarf.  “
That
is sick and twisted and you’re lucky I
didn’t kill him for it!  Are you really going to stand there and defend that to
me?  You?  Really?”

I opened my mouth to do just
that and immediately snapped it shut again.  No, I couldn’t defend Nathan for
marking me.  The other versions of me might have been pathetic enough to want
him to rule them that way, but I wasn’t.  I was strong all on my own.  And that
was why she was pissed…because she knew that better than anyone.

“I love him, Kim,” I said
softly, my eyes burning with tears I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to shed. 
“Do I agree with what he did?  You know I don’t.  But I forgive him.  I need
you to trust me, just this once, and do the same thing.”

Crystalline tears dewed up
on her lashes before I even finished speaking.  Tossing her magazine to the
floor, she patted the bed next to her and I ran over and jumped up beside her. 
Before I was even settled, she had me in a bone-breaking hug. 

“Just this once, Em,” she
whispered, sniffling against my shoulder.  “I’ll forgive him just this once. 
But if he ever does anything like this again—”

“He won’t,” I interrupted,
not really wanting to think about the body parts Nathan would lose if he pissed
her off again.  “He won’t hurt me, Kim.  Warped as he is, he loves me.”

“He’d better,” she
muttered.  “I wasn’t kidding, Em.  If I think he’s using that mark to control
you, I’ll fry his ass without thinking twice.”

I shivered and hugged her
tighter.  Because I knew she would do exactly what she said.

If I’d thought my weekend was
bad, though, it was nothing compared to the level of suck Monday morning
reached when we walked into Oakhurst Academy and were met by a silent, leering Bastian,
who was surrounded by Jack’s adoring fans—most of whom looked a little green.    

And who could blame them,
given that he looked like something that had just crawled out of a bad Sci-Fi
movie. 

The arm Kim had hit with her
power blast was black and withered-looking.  He definitely wouldn’t be catching
any footballs in the future with that arm.  One side of his neck looked like
someone had taken a chunk out of it.  The wound left behind was one of the
nastiest things I have ever seen.  The right side of his face still looked red
and swollen and most of the sores the salt had caused still hadn’t healed.  The
part that wasn’t covered in scabs looked kind of like ground hamburger meat
and…

“Is he missing an
ear
?”
Kim whispered as my stomach started rolling.

“Yeah, I think he is,” I
said, flicking a glance at Nathan who looked ready to attack right then and
there.  Given that I had been there for the removal of said ear, I didn’t have
to look to check.  “The question is, what the hell is he
doing
here? 
Didn’t Adam say they were looking for him to question his scary ass about the
murders?”

“He walked into the
Sheriff’s department like that last night,” Blake grumbled.  “He really played
it up, too.  Clothes all ripped up and covered in blood, bruises everywhere. 
Missing body parts.  He told Sheriff Martin that he’d been locked in a cell
somewhere being tortured.  Adam said it was some of the best acting he’d ever
seen.  This creep put on a real show, complete with a lot of tears and shaking
and crap.  I mean, look at him.  Can you really blame the Donut for buying that
story?”