The Better Part of Darkness (24 page)

“It’s all connected somehow.
Ash
is made from a Charbydon flower called a Bleeding Soul.”

“
Sangurne N’ashu
. It’s a—”

“A myth, I know. But it is real and the extract is being used to make the drug.”

He paused at the bottom of the staircase, and I realized I’d actually stumped him. “They’re two separate myths, calling the darkness and the myth of the Bleeding Souls.” He shoved his hands in his pocket and let out a quizzical huff. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

We went silently up the stairs, back to the room we had appeared in earlier.

“So how much, exactly, do you like my sister?” I asked as we stepped inside the pentagram.

A curtain fell over his features. His green eyes became hooded and unreadable, and his mouth stretched into a grim line. Sore subject obviously, but what I’d seen earlier in his aura didn’t lie. “Enough,” he finally said in a flat, even voice, giving nothing away.

I frowned. “Does that mean
enough
you don’t want to talk about it, or
enough
as in you like her
enough,
as in you
like
her, like her?”

Apparently, I wasn’t getting anything out of him because he chose that moment to grab my hand. “Wait!” I needed a second to prepare, just to take a deep breath. Then a thought occurred to me. “Can I do this, too?”

“You want to try?”

“Hell, no,” I blurted. He broke into a wide grin, something that would have devastated a weaker woman, and I laughed. “I’d end up in the middle of the Atlantic or the top of Mount Everest. I’ll leave the traveling up to you.”

“For now,” he said, closing his eyes, and then
whoosh
.

We were dispersed into thin air, reappearing on the landing at Bryn’s flat.

The door opened and there was Will, standing there looking down at me. Same handsome face, same stormy blue eyes, same sun-kissed brown hair … Except, I realized, as my eyes soaked him in, that Will’s crooked smile always came out of affection and happiness, not the crooked smile of the eternally sarcastic.

Rex.

Disappointment blew through me like a desert wind.

“Lesson one,” Aaron softly reminded me from behind.

Control your emotions. I squared my shoulders and walked by Rex, my heart firmly back in check.

Bryn sat at the kitchen table, one foot tucked under her rear, leaning over a map and biting her lip in concentration. Her hair was pulled back into a messy twist, and the long bangs were tucked behind her ear. She glanced over and gave me a hopeful smile that laid me wide open. Her aura sprang forth, so beautiful it stole my breath. Lush, vibrant green shot with ribbons of Caribbean blue.

Then I noticed the gray; a thin blanket, stifling all that was good. She loved Emma so much. She loved me. Her worry was suffocating her spirit, yet she was feeding it, allowing it to grow into anger and vengeance.

Aaron tensed beside me, and one look told me he saw the same thing. But he didn’t approach her, and I knew whatever was going on or had gone on with them stretched like a canyon between them.

“We keep coming back to the same place.” She tapped her pen on the map. I went closer to see she had circled it many times. Her scrying crystal lay on a green velvet pouch next to the map.

Rex grabbed a can of ginger ale from the fridge and then slid into the chair opposite Bryn as though he owned the place. “Like I said for the millionth time, it’s the right place. With my power and yours, and that pink chicken, there’s no way we could be wrong.”

My breath caught, his words like a sucker punch to the belly.

I spun around to find Emma’s pink chicken sitting on the counter.
Chickie
. I’d always loved the fluffy stuffed chick with its pastel plaid ribbon and wide, innocent eyes. It chirped when you squeezed it. I swiped it off the counter, hugging it hard against my chest. It chirped. And I ran into the spare bedroom.

It smells like her.

I fell onto the bed, my face squished into her pillow, releasing her Cherry Blast shampoo and baby powder scent. She felt so close, and yet a million miles away. Tears wet the pillow, and I didn’t care anymore. I let them come. My nose grew stuffy and my head hot from the pressure. I pulled her pillow closer and curled into a ball, hugging Chickie and tuning out the rest of the world, feeling my heart breaking and not knowing how to stop it.

I woke with a hot, puffy face and dry eyes, which cracked open to see Bryn standing by the bed. I sat up in a panic, the fog of sleep cluttering my mind and speech. “What? Why did you let me fall asleep?”

How could I have fallen asleep at a time like this! I flung my legs over the side of the mattress, cursing my own stupidity. My daughter was out there, needing me, and here I was sleeping like a baby. I was sick, a horrible, horrible mother.

“Charlie.” Bryn stepped in front of me, preventing me from standing. “It’s okay. You’ll do her more good by clearing your head and having had a chance to rest. You were only sleeping for an hour.”

An hour. I rubbed my eyes. It felt like days.

My shoulders slumped, and I knew she was right. There wasn’t anything I could do until Hank and Zara came through, hopefully with a location that fit within Bryn and Rex’s scrying area.

Bryn must’ve sensed the direction of my thoughts. “Hank and Zara are on their way back now.” Then she moved aside and motioned over her shoulder. “This one showed up about twenty minutes ago.”

Filling the open doorway, Carreg gazed down at me, his dark features unmoving and blank. The soft light of the bedside lamp caught a glint in his unfathomable eyes.

A thought raced across my mind, shoving aside any lingering traces of sleep. If I wanted, I could see his aura. And I wanted. My strong, inquisitive nature needed to crack the mystery of this quiet Charbydon noble. So I remembered the same cleansing openness I had discovered in the League’s library and used it to see Carreg’s true self. Auras couldn’t lie.

Mesmerizing midnight blue shot with silver threads. Just like the color of his eyes. It was like staring up at a clear, starry sky on a cold winter’s night. It took my breath away.

“Charlie.” My name came through his lips like the purr of a giant cat. His intensity, an air of strength and power and magnetism, reminded me of those beautiful predators of our world; the wolves and big cats, those that could transfix another by the beauty of their stare and the stillness of their being.

“Carreg,” I greeted him neutrally as Bryn gave me a quick nod before leaving us alone. “A little risky to be here. Aren’t you afraid Mynogan will find out?”

That made him stiffen a fraction. “Mynogan does not inspire fear in me.” He moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside with the back of his hand, glancing out calmly. His suit jacket was gone, and he wore a clean white dress shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The white made his olive skin glow and his hair look like black satin. He turned back to me, tucking both hands into the front pockets of his black slacks, and leaned against the dresser. Such a casual, easy gesture, one that seemed at odds with the powerful being in front of me. “He is, however, a cause for concern.”

I braced both hands on either side of my thighs and gripped the edge of the mattress tightly, remembering the images that filled my head when he’d grabbed my hand at the lab. He’d saved Hank, like he said, but was it a ruse? Something to gain my trust, perhaps? “Do you know where my daughter is?”

“No. I didn’t realize he’d taken her until I arrived here. Your sister told me.” A rueful smile tugged on his mouth. “She also had me sit down and write out every address known to Mynogan and the CPP.”

“That proves nothing.” I stood, preferring to be on even ground with him as I attempted to gather my power and search beneath the beauty of his aura. What I found was a massive roadblock. “What are you hiding?”

A raven black eyebrow lifted. “I am a private person. I have much to hide.” He pushed away from the dresser and took two steps closer. “How are you feeling, Charlie? Any sudden urges for blood?”

What?
God, I’d never understand off-worlders. “Only Mynogan’s and those who aid him.”

A silky chuckle escaped him. “I’m going to let you in on a little-known fact, Detective Madigan. After all, you’re now one of us. The noble Houses are cursed. Abaddon must take blood to survive. It stands to reason; the curse also extends to you.”

“Blood,” I repeated bluntly. “Are you trying to tell me Abaddons are vampires?”

“Not in your sense of the word, no. They abhor Elysian blood, and while humans are a step up, most nobles wouldn’t stoop so low unless starved to the brink of death. No, they take it mostly from Charbydons.”

Was this what Mynogan had referred to in the limo? The powers he spoke of. The threat to take my blood there and then if he wanted.

I cocked my head, refusing to be daunted by Carreg’s words. It might be true, but I had no desire whatsoever for anyone’s blood, so he could shove his words up his ass for all I cared. “And you? You said
our
Houses, so what is your House cursed with?”

“Life,” he joked softly, dipping his head closer so that the warmth of his breath brushed my ear and neck. Shivers danced along my spine as subtle notes of sage and cedar enveloped me. I couldn’t move. “That spark inside every spirit, that light that feeds and energizes, makes a being
want
to live. A fulfilled spirit, an excited spirit”—he drew in my scent and then lifted his head to pierce me with a challenging gaze—“has enough life force in it to share with those of us unfortunate enough not to have any at all. And, unlike Abaddon, we have no problem with humans.”

Breathe, Charlie.

Whatever the hell he was doing to me, he needed to stop. Now.

Refusing to step back, I ducked around him, dragging in a deep breath of air and composing myself before facing him again. Damned if I’d be drawn into his innuendo and talk of blood and excited spirits. I’d kill myself before taking another’s blood to feed some curse.

“Mynogan has defied the agreement made between my House and his,” Carreg said easily, as though he hadn’t just come on to me. “For the first time in ages, we stopped bickering and made a pact to work together to save Charbydon. What he has planned now will leave our world to ruin and cause greater destruction here in yours.”

“And why do you care?”

“Because I know our moon can be saved. Charbydon is my home. It has been home to my family for untold millennia. To give up our history, to let the blackness consume all of it without trying is the highest grievance there is.” He took another step closer, staring down at me with hard, penetrating eyes. “Would you let your world go? Walk away from it without trying? Would you take another that is not yours to take?”

“Of course not.” Perhaps we weren’t so different after all.

“You are right to be wary of me, Detective.” His voice dropped an octave to an intimate tone usually reserved for conspirators or lovers. My mouth went bone dry. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I forced myself to keep his gaze and not back down. “But in this, your war against Mynogan, I am on your side. I take great risk in aiding you. He must believe I’m with him in his endeavor. Make no mistake. I’m not doing it for you. I help you to help myself, nothing more.”

I cocked my head. “We’ll see.” He wanted me to trust him, yet he was warning me not to misinterpret his motives. Fine, then I’d warn him right back. “Turn against me and it’ll be the last thing you do in this world or the next.” I gave him a pointed stare and then walked away, just catching the hint of approval in his expression before I opened the door and stepped into the cool air of the living room.

Being close to Carreg was like standing in front of my Uncle Walter’s pizza oven during Friday night rush. I headed for the fridge for cold water.

A few seconds later, Carreg entered the living room.

“How long until Hank and Zara get back?” I asked Bryn, sliding onto an empty counter stool as she set down a mug of coffee for Aaron at the kitchen table. She offered me one, but I shook my head, lifting the water.

“Not long. Twenty minutes maybe.”

I downed several refreshing gulps of my water, noticing Rex and Aaron eyeballing me from the kitchen table. Something was up. “What?”

Carreg stood at the end of the counter. It was as though they were all waiting for something.

Bryn drew in a breath. “We were talking while you were asleep. And, we thought it might be good for you and Emma if we tried.”

Instantly, I tensed. My grip on the water bottle tightened until the plastic dented with a loud crack. “Tried what?”

“Come sit down at the table,” she said, coming around to grab the empty counter chair. I followed, pulling my chair along so we’d all have a place to sit. I shoved it under the table, holding on to the back of it as Bryn took her place beside me, leaving the empty chair she’d brought over for Carreg on my other side.

“We’re gonna call your kid,” Rex said, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

“It’s a bridge, from us to your daughter,” Aaron explained as Carreg sat down beside me. “It won’t help us locate her, unless, of course, she can tell us herself, but with all our powers pooled and concentrating on her, we should be able to connect mind to mind. That might be a ward Mynogan hadn’t considered placing on her. And we all agree you need it.”

“Sit down,” Bryn said with all the kindness and gentleness of a mother deer nudging her fawn out into the snow for the first time. “We’ll join hands and combine our power.” I sat down. Bryn squeezed my hand and smiled. “Carreg says that with enough people it could work.”

Not hiding my surprise, I turned and met Carreg’s stony gaze. “You?” He inclined his head lightly and then leaned back in the chair, completely enigmatic.

“All right, kids,” Rex said impatiently. “Let’s get this party started.”

The reality of what we were about to try hit me, and a wave of apprehension swept away my confidence and hope. Emma. What would I say to her? If she heard me, it could make her upset, or worse, totally freak her out. She’d want to be out of there so badly and hearing me might make it even more difficult for her. Was it selfish of me to contact her just for my own peace of mind? Would it do more harm than good?

Carreg slid his hand on the table in front of me and turned it palm up.

His calm voice swept into my mind.
A child always needs its mother no matter what, Charlie. Or are you just afraid to touch me now that you know what I am? Afraid I might take a nibble of your life force?

Honestly, I didn’t know what to make of the Astarot noble. His motives were his own; he’d made that clear, so why did he comfort me? Why even suggest what we were about to do? I stared at his hand, deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and then slid mine into his. It was just a hand. No biggie.

Warmth enveloped me. He gave a subtle squeeze. I refused to look at him and instead drew in an audible breath and said, “Okay, I’m ready.”