Hold Tight (The Embrace Series) (32 page)

I wished he had worn his human glamour. It wasn’t nearly as striking as his true form. The lean muscles in his thighs pressed against his forest-green pants with each lithe step he took. His elegant fingers rubbed the string of a long bow that he had slung over his shoulder.

My jitters came back twofold. I crammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket to steady them and said, “The problem is you don’t leave when you’re asked to.”

“I’d disappear for a lifetime if you accompanied me.”

“Not going to happen.” Unable to ignore the spasms that grew stronger the closer he got, I wanted to tell Brea I had second thoughts and would love that vial of fuchsia stuff.

Reed looked from me to Brea and then to Josh. “I’m here and I’m listening.”

Josh cleared his throat. “We don’t want trouble. You return to your realm, we close the door, and no one gets hurt.”

Except Natalie, whose family would never see her again.

“And what of my sister?” Reed asked stepping closer to her.

Josh turned slowly, keeping his full attention on Reed. “We’ll make sure she gets home.”

“Why would I believe you?” Reed asked.

“You have our word,” I said.

Reed’s incredibly alluring gaze fixed on me. “I find it interesting that this is your next move.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “You left me no choice.”

“Have I not been civil?” Poison dripped from Reed’s words. “Did I not invite you to join me instead of just taking you? That is more than I’ve ever done for a human who thinks she has the right to demand the Fae serve her.”

“I didn’t demand anything,” I protested.

“Brea, I told you she was the same as the others.”

The ground shuddered. I looked at Josh. He shook his head to indicate the sudden tremors weren’t his doing.

I widened my stance to keep from falling and replied in as steady a voice as I could, “You still planned on ripping me away from my life.”

The temperature dropped at least twenty degrees. Frost raced over the ground, covering the grass and weeds behind Reed in a thick white layer of crystallized ice as it made its way toward us.

Josh held his hands in front of him and pushed out a wave of power, slowing the frost’s progression. I closed my eyes and focused on drawing the energy from nature to warm the air within our circle enough to stop my teeth from chattering.

“Isaac didn’t say Reed could control the weather,” Josh said through clenched teeth as he thrust his hands forward again, sending another surge of power outward. The frost continued to creep closer to us.

“And he’s holding back,” Brea gloated. She had taken a seat on the grass. Bright orange and red poppies peppered the ground around her.

I carefully stepped around the meadowsweet, moving closer to Josh. Brea remained safe and warm in her bubble of summer while Reed brought the wrath of winter upon us. With a flick of my fingers, I held a sphere of fire the size of a basketball. It hovered in the air in front of us, providing a source of heat.

“What do we do?” I spun to my left and then my right, looking for a way out of this mess. The shadows hid behind tombstones, unfazed by the change in weather.

“We move to Plan C.” Josh swiveled to follow Reed’s movements, never once letting him out of his sight.

I had told Isaac and Josh that Plan A—trapping Brea—was flawed because Reed would never give in so easily. He was more cunning than they were willing to admit; my previous attempt to deceive him into going home had taught me that. Plan B, on the other hand, let Reed believe he was winning. He’d have no reason to call upon winter’s bitter grip. More importantly, it ensured my family and friends remained safe. The guys disagreed, however, and had said I was the one underestimating Reed. Then, before the guys would agree with me that Josh shouldn’t take on Reed alone, they made me promise not to invoke Plan B without Josh’s consent. They hadn’t told me of any other options, though.

“When did you come up with a Plan C?” I asked.

“Just now,” Josh replied, dropping to a crouch a moment before a crystalline arrow soared over his head. “And I still don’t like Plan B, so no, it’s not okay to go there yet.”

“You’re hard-headed,” I scoffed.

The next arrow pierced the ground at my feet, and I had no doubt it landed exactly where Reed had intended it to. I ran a finger over its shaft, yanking my hand back. “It’s made of ice,” I said in awe.

“Last chance,” Reed snarled. “Release my sister and accompany me to the solstice celebration or, when I’m done here, the next person I visit will be your brother.”

He held out a hand for me to take, a smile playing at the corner of his thin lips. My next breath filled my lungs with the sweet scent of pine and snow, causing my thoughts to swim in my skull. I opened my mouth to reply, but my powers bit back the
Okay, just leave Chase alone
I’d been ready to say.

Josh stepped in front of me, momentarily blocking my view of Reed and giving me the precious second I needed to realize what agreeing would have cost me. I said a silent thank you that Isaac had gotten Dad and Chase out of the house, then put my hands on Josh’s shoulders and peered around him. “Stop messing with my head!”

Reed pulled another arrow from the quiver on his back but didn’t fire it.

“What’s Plan C?” I whispered to Josh.

He replied out of the side of his mouth. “We teleport the hell out of here and take Miss Sunshine with us.”

“That is not better than my idea,” I hissed.

It would have been, if I knew how to travel by telekinesis or if Josh could carry a living object with him, but as it was, he had only managed to transport himself short distances.

“They’re plotting their escape,” Brea so kindly informed her brother.

Thick columns of ice jutted out of the ground like stalagmites, scattering the shadows, pushing up headstones, and uprooting trees. Josh leaped out of the way as a jagged pillar of ice broke through the grass beneath his feet. A large crack tore through the frozen dirt and traveled outward, swallowing one of our candles as it continued to the base of the large stone angel. The next icicle shot up in front of Brea, knocking the meadowsweet aside and freeing her.

“I warned you,” she said and vanished, leaving Josh and me with a very pissed-off faerie.

Chapter 28

Plan B

Josh held his arms in front of him, wrists crossed. He inhaled deeply, swiftly sweeping his hands downward on the exhale. Rain poured down around us in a sheet so thick it appeared as if we stood inside the eye of a hurricane. I gathered the moisture from the air and conjured a storm cloud over the spot where I’d last seen Reed. Lightning struck, but since I didn’t hear him scream in pain, I guessed it had missed its target.

“I can’t see him,” I said, stating the obvious.

“We need a minute to regroup,” Josh replied as he kept the waterworks flowing. He adjusted his hemp bracelet and whispered, “I love you, Kaylee.” If I didn’t know Josh wasn’t the type to give up, that’s exactly what I’d have thought he was doing.

The temperature dropped again. The torrent froze solid from the ground up for as far as I could see, leaving Josh and me trapped in a smooth tube of ice. The grass became slick. I twisted, looking for any sign of Reed, and slipped. The next thing I knew, I was on my butt looking up at Josh.

“Happy now? We’re his hostages.”

“It’s not over yet.” Josh pulled me to my feet.

I brushed frost off my jeans. “We don’t have any other choice, Josh. You know it.”

Fine spider-like veins raced along the wall of our jail, producing thin cracks all around us. Chunks of ice exploded inward from our left. Josh and I ducked, arms over our heads, as debris pummeled our backs. Reed stepped through the hole created by the explosion, bow in hand, arrow drawn and pointed at Josh.

“No!” I jumped up, my boots slipping on the frozen ground, but I managed to stay on my feet. Reed didn’t even flinch. “Arrow!” I screamed, hand held in front of me, praying that adding the word to my desire would make the spell work.

An instant later, I held the arrow in my right hand. I chucked it to the ground behind me. While Reed reached over his shoulder and grabbed another, Josh threw a bolt of energy at him. I pushed out a surge of power and just managed to knock it away.

“What are you doing?” Josh barked.

“We’re not killers!”

“He’s the one with the arrows!”

“Bow!” I yelled. The bow disappeared from Reed’s hand and reappeared in mine. I looked at Josh. “Using your powers to kill will turn your soul black!”

“Then so be it!” Josh’s eyes narrowed, the sky darkened, and lightning cut a jagged line from the heavens toward Earth. Reed jumped backward just before it struck the ground where he had stood.

I dropped the bow and, with my hands raised in front of me, hit Reed with a burst of air, pushing him a few feet away from us. To Josh, I said, “I won’t let you kill him, Josh. He’s not worth an eternity in hell.”

“And I won’t let you risk a lifetime in Neverland!”

“Yes, you will.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Trust me, please.”

“Only if this fails.” Josh attacked Reed with another bolt of energy. Reed shouted a stream of words in a language I couldn’t understand.

Josh held another bolt. He’d just brought his arm back to launch it when a layer of ice slinked over his shoes and up his legs. Dropping the bolt, he tried to move, but before he could free himself, he became encased in a frozen shell.

Reed appeared next to me, and I quickly moved to the other side of Josh.

Reed leaned around him. “You may not have noticed, but Witch Boy can no longer protect you.”

“Release him!”

“So that he may attempt to kill me again? I think not.”

I ran my fingers over Josh’s ice-covered bicep. It was smooth and extremely cold. “If he doesn’t freeze to death, he’ll suffocate!” When Reed only chuckled, I yelled, “I kept him from killing you!”

“You ended our battle. Nothing more.” He held a hand out. “Come with me.”

The afternoon couldn’t have possibly gotten worse. Reed had managed to free his sister without stepping foot in our circle or near the door back to his realm, Josh looked like an ice sculpture, and I was stuck in the creepy section of the cemetery with the faerie I was supposed to avoid and half-dozen shadows that hadn’t been scared away by the supernatural fight. To add to my list of growing problems, now that I wasn’t battling Reed, it was all I could do to keep from trembling with a mix of want and dread.

Reed waited patiently for my answer.

“You’ve proven your magic is stronger than ours. Now, please, defrost him—” I pointed a quivering finger at Josh, then promptly shoved my hand in my pocket “—before it’s too late.”

“Is that a yes?”

I could barely think with Reed staring at me. His entire presence was mesmerizing. From his otherworldly looks to his intoxicating scent, all I wanted to do was give in.

“My family needs me,” I whispered, which was lame. My answer should have been
Get lost.

I tried to warm the air, but Josh remained encased in ice.

Reed dropped his arm to his side. “Tell me this, at what point in your grand scheme to rid your world of me did you decide I was worth protecting?”

“I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to let a friend of mine risk his soul for me.” Yet by sparing Reed, I might have killed Josh, the guy who had been like a big brother to me.

“That right there is your downfall.” Reed paced closer, and I stumbled backward. Seemingly unfazed, he continued, “I will visit everyone you have ever loved, and they will meet the same fate as Witch Boy, starting with your father and brother. Then I will freeze this land, and I will make sure you are there to see it all.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He shrugged. “Isaac once threatened to ruin everything I loved. I’m merely doing to him what he failed to do to me.”

“If all you cared about was ruining his life, why pretend to be human? Why take a job with my father? Why not lure me to your realm before I realized what was happening?”

“I donned this appearance—” his body shimmered and transformed to the honey-blond-haired man whom I’d first met on my front porch “—to prove I could be adorable and gentlemanly, something my sister bet I couldn’t pull off, and the job with your father was to demonstrate how well I could blend in and make myself useful.”

“In the middle of ruining everyone’s lives, you’re playing Handyman’s Assistant to win a bet?”

“I do like to prove Rhoswen wrong, and my winning meant she couldn’t interfere in my business here.”

And I thought humans could be petty.

He held out his hand. “We can do this the easy way or, if you prefer, I can pop over to the movie theater and check in on your father and that spunky little brother of yours.” When my mouth fell open, he added, “Yes, I know where they are.”

I gritted my teeth. “Leave them out of this.”

He looked at his outstretched hand and then at me.