B00AO57VOY EBOK (27 page)

Good answer, baby,
I
thought, my eyes filling with tears. 

Grams looked at him for
another long second and nodded her head like she thought so too.  Then,
announcing that she was going to bed, she turned and headed for the hallway.  I
was so busy staring at Nathan that I didn’t even notice her footsteps slow then
stop.  It wasn’t until Nathan frowned and pulled his gaze from mine to turn to
look at the doorway that I realized something was wrong.  I looked to see what
had everyone so enthralled and felt my heart pick up speed when I saw the expression
on Tyler’s handsome face.

“We have a serious problem,”
he said, locking his eyes on mine. 

“You found something,” I
whispered.

“Yeah.  I found out we can’t
kill your demon…unless we want to kill his host.”

For five painful heartbeats,
nobody moved, nobody breathed, and nobody in the room spoke.  I waited for
Grams to tell him he was wrong, or for Nathan to tell him, but neither one of
them seemed inclined to do it.  Instead, they stared at him with twin looks of
devastation.

“You’re sure?” I asked since
no one else seemed to be interested in the job.

“Yeah, beautiful, I’m sure,”
he said, ignoring Grams and Nathan and heading straight for me where I was
still standing beside the island.  “Bastian is a demon of lust.  Lust is about
the body.  That means the flesh becomes his power.  When he possesses a body,
he literally becomes that person while he inhabits it.  His essence and the
owner of the body’s essence meld together.  To kill him, you will have to kill
your friend.”

“I…I can’t,” I whispered. 
“I can’t kill Jack.”

I tried to picture it, but
my mind immediately rebelled.  If I couldn’t even
imagine
it, there was
no way I would ever be able to
do
it.  And I couldn’t let anyone else do
it.  Jack was as innocent in all of this as I was.  He hadn’t asked to be a
meat suit—at least, I hoped he hadn’t.  No, there had to be some other way, a
way that wouldn’t kill someone I had been friends with half my life.

“You’re sure that’s the only
way?” I asked again, hoping the answer would change. 

“To kill him, yes,” Tyler
said somberly.  Seeing my eyes start to fill with tears, he said, “But don’t
start panicking just yet.  I think I know how we can put him on lockdown
without hurting a single hair on your friend’s head.  And, as a bonus, we can
get him exorcised at the same time.”

“Whoever this woman was, she
was amazing at researching every single aspect of each demon she studied,”
Tyler continued, starting to spread the papers in his hands out on the island
in front of me before pointing to the page directly under my nose.  “That, my
little super-witch, is a binding spell called the Rituali Cinis, or the Ritual
of Ashes for those of you who are Latin impaired.  There’s only one problem.”

“Just one?” Nathan growled,
his jaw tight.

“Yeah, but it’s a pretty big
one,” Tyler said, still looking at me.  “The person he’s obsessed with has to
do most of the work.  You will have to summon him on your own, Em. 
You
will have to activate the trap that will hold him.  Only then will we be able
to help you.  If he senses any of the rest of us, and he will, we lose our
shot.”

“Are you
insane
?”
Nathan roared loud enough to shake the glass in the window behind me.  He shot
to his feet and started to pace, pausing only long enough to give Tyler a
filthy look every few seconds.  “You want to use her as
bait
?  No! 
Hell
no!”

“It’s the only way,” Tyler
said, looking at me rather than the crazed vampire that was stalking back and
forth across the kitchen.  “The binding ritual might be able to get rid of him
once and for all.  Think of it as putting the genie back in the
bottle…permanently.”

“How does that work?” I
flinched when Nathan turned his furious glare on me. 

“It works very much like
good old Karma,” Grams explained, studying the incantation over my shoulder and
rolling her eyes when Nathan growled again.  “We will use the remains of the
people he has destroyed to imprison him.  Done correctly, we could bind him
indefinitely to the lost plane.”

“Which he’s already been
summoned back from once,” I reminded her, feeling the little flame of hope that
had flared to life in my chest die, leaving me feeling completely defeated. 

“Yeah, well, they won’t be
summoning him back
this
time,” Tyler said, sounding so confident that I
almost believed him.  “When you banished him before, you banished not only his
essence, but his form.  The Rituali Cinis separates the two.  Without a form,
he will be pure energy.  Trust me, as hungry as some of the creatures on the
lost plane are for energy, he won’t be coming back.”

I shuddered at that,
wondering exactly what kind of creatures were on the lost plane.  Then, why
should I care?  It wasn’t like
I
was going to vacation there.  And I
sure as
hell
wasn’t going to mourn for Bastian.  Ever.

“We need a full coven of
seven for this to work, though,” Grams said, her eyebrows drawing down in a
concentrated frown.  “I can take care of the extra witches without any
problems.  I will speak to my old friend, Aria, about joining us in the morning
and I’m sure Constance and Amelia will be happy to help.  They are very fond of
Ember, after all.”

Dragon Lady Cantrell was
fond
of me?  That was definitely news to me.  As far as I knew, the old bat had
never been fond of anyone.

“And all five elements have
to be represented,” Tyler said, glancing up to frown at my now snarling mate. 

“Five?” I repeated,
confused.  I started counting on my fingers as I listed the elements I had been
taught.  Earth, air, fire, and water.  Yep, definitely only four.

“Spirit,” Tyler murmured,
finally looking away from me.  “The fifth element is spirit, Em.” 

“You’re right,” Grams said,
softly, “That will definitely be a problem.”

“But it doesn’t have to be a
witch,” Tyler said quickly, shaking his head at Nathan as he continued to pace
the kitchen.  “I can do it.”

Every eye in the room was
suddenly trained on him and I saw him flush slightly.  Nathan looked furious
with him, Grams looked interested, and I was practically salivating at the idea
of solving another mystery in my life. 

 “I’m sure we can find
another witch, Tyler,” Grams said sweetly, her expression so shrewd that Tyler
immediately bristled.

“Whose element is spirit?”
Tyler asked with a hard laugh.  “Tell me Shea, how many witches have you ever
known who draw their power solely from spirit?  Two, maybe?”

“One, actually,” Grams mumbled,
uncomfortably. 

“And where is she?” Tyler
asked.

“Dead,” Grams admitted in a
grumble, pretty much proving Tyler’s point that he was the best we were going
to get. 

“Then it’s settled and I’m
your man,” Tyler said, winking at me.  “That also means we will only need two
more witches, not three, seeing as I will be standing in as an element.”

 “What are we waiting for
then?” The words had barely left my lips when Nathan descended on me like a
tornado. 

“I said
no
!” he
snarled, his face no more than an inch from mine, his lips pulled back from his
teeth to expose his fangs.  I was surprised he wasn’t foaming at the mouth. 
“It’s too dangerous!”

Who did he think he was?  I
didn’t take orders from him or anyone else.  I loved him, yeah, but that didn’t
mean I wanted him to take over running my life.  And that was exactly what was
at stake here. 
My
life.  Bastian wasn’t after him.  He was after
me
. 

“Look, cave boy, I wasn’t
asking your permission,” I hissed back, jabbing him in the chest.  I knew he
was scared, that he loved me and my death would mean more suffering for him,
but I was really tired of being treated like I was helpless.  “If I
don’t
do something he’s going to kill me anyway.  I would rather go down fighting, if
it’s all the same to you, Nathan.”

He glared at me for another
minute and then made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat and turned
and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him with enough force to
crack the plaster in web-like lines that radiated from the doorframe in every
direction. 

We were really going to have
to work on that temper of his. 

I gazed at the door for a
second, all the anger draining from me as quickly as it had come, then took a
deep breath and turned back to face Grams and Tyler.  I thought I saw a flash
of sympathy in Tyler’s eyes—though whether it was for me or for Nathan I really
couldn’t say—before he looked away and began shuffling through his papers
again. 

“We’ll get started on this
tomorrow,” Grams said, reading over the papers Tyler was passing her way like
nothing had happened.  “I need to get everything we will need and plan the best
way to teach you the ritual before Friday night.  While I’m doing that, someone
will have to retrieve the remains.”

“I’ll take care of that,”
Tyler said, raising his hand in case we didn’t get the point that he had just
volunteered for yet another mission to rescue me.  When he saw how we were both
smiling at him, he actually blushed.  “Well, not on my own.  I’m going to need
the cave boy’s help.  I think I’ll wait until he calms down to bring that up,
though.”

I sat there and listened to
Grams and Tyler talk about ritual stuff for the next fifteen minutes, unable to
make sense of anything they were saying, and realized just how far into the
deep end I had just swum.  I was barely a witch, and I was going to have to not
only summon a demon, but figure out a way to get him to walk into some kind of
trap. 

What I wouldn’t have given
to have just been going to the Black and White Ball to, oh, I don’t know…
dance,
maybe.

“If we know what to do now,
why do we need to wait until the dance?” I asked, breaking into the
conversation going on between Grams and Tyler.  “Seriously, why wait?  It would
be nice to use the dance as some kind of celebration instead, don’t you think?”

“Because it has to be done
during a Blue Moon,” Tyler explained with a sad smile.  “Blue Moons only occur
every three or four years.  And the next one will be—”

“Friday night,” I grumbled,
shaking my head.  “Do you think I’m
ever
going to catch a break?”

Grams looked at me, her eyes
softening at the completely desolate expression on my face, and reached over to
pat my hand. 

“It won’t always be so hard,
sweetheart,” she murmured, her eyes looking suspiciously moist.  “You’ve just
had a run of really bad luck, that’s all.  It will balance itself out once this
whole thing blows over.”

Yeah, sure.  I believed that
about as much as I believed in Santa Claus.

Blake teleported Kim—who had
miraculously slept through Nathan’s award-winning temper tantrum—back to her
house around five, and I had to promise to call and let him know exactly what
we were going to do…and why…and how…and when…before he would leave.  I waited
for Nathan until the sun was peeking up over the horizon, listening as Grams
and Tyler planned out my every move for the next week.  When my eyelids finally
slid shut and stayed that way, Tyler swept me up, carrying me to Nathan’s room
and tucking me into the big, empty bed alone.

When I woke up and realized
I was
still
alone, I didn’t know whether to be furious or worried.  What
if something had happened to him?  What if Bastian had decided to start slicing
and dicing a little earlier than scheduled?  That thought was enough to launch
me out of the bed like a cannonball.  Still in the shorts I always wore to bed,
I grabbed one of Nathan’s old, faded sweatshirts off the shelf in the closet
and let myself quietly out of the room.

I peeked into Grams’ room to
see her sleeping peacefully.  Closing the door behind me, I made my way down
the hall.  The living room was as empty as Nathan’s side of the bed had been,
but the drugging scent of coffee was wafting from the kitchen, drawing me in
and making my mouth water.

“Good morning, beautiful,”
Tyler greeted me with a smile as I made my way toward the coffee pot.  “Sleep
well?”

“Sleep at all?” I countered,
pouring myself a cup of coffee and lacing it liberally with sugar and creamer.

“Nah, it’s overrated.”

Standing up and stretching
like a cat, he grabbed his cup and walked over to join me for another cup of liquid
energy.  Once his cup was full to the brim with straight black coffee, he
turned and leaned against the counter, studying me.

“You don’t sleep?” I asked,
shifting my weight from one foot to the other as the cold ceramic tile made me
wish I had thought to put on some socks.