Dangerous Lovers (58 page)

I reached for his hand. “I don’t understand what war you’re fighting, but I know it has to be important, that you would have never left us if it wasn’t. Fight it. Leave me be…maybe one day we’ll both win.”

His painful stare dove into my soul. “When I left you before, it was not for the war I’m fighting today. When I returned, our home was burning. I could see you in the fire, hear you call my name. When I ran into that fire, you were not there and I became what I am today. The war I fight now was weaved from that point, every spell, every plot, every deal made with the devil had one underlying purpose: for me to find you.” He moved closer to me. “When Skylynn handed me that scarf, I felt alive again—whole. I knew that you were real, not some distant dream that I’d fabricated to give me peace. That moment was shattered when she told me you were in the veil, when I realized I was too late once again.”

“Better late than never,” I said gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to die, and I plan to avoid the aftermath at every cost.”

“You don’t how dangerous that is.”

I swallowed nervously. “I’m scared, Sebastian. I don’t want to die, and fighting Rasure gives me an excuse, a reason to hold on.”

“She’s the only reason you want to hold on?” he asked as anger and jealousy masked his flawless image.

I knew what he was looking for: a declaration of love, for me to tell him that I didn’t want to leave him now that I’d found him, that I couldn’t bear it…but I’d never told anyone I loved them in this life, never begged anyone to stay with me. I didn’t know how, and I was too scared to try.

I clutched the key in my hand and turned to inspect the clock on the mantle, but as I reached for it everything around me shifted and changed.

Chapter Ten

I was standing behind the bookcase that led to my room. My insides fell into a thousand pieces…I’d expected Phoenix to appear in front of me and demand that I tell him what I was too scared to say, demand it the way Mason, Wilder and Gavin had—only this time, I would be able to say such things. This anger—this quick switch in my emotions was scaring me. I’m sure it was scaring Phoenix, too. As he held me, he solidified those memories in the North Wing. I knew in the life we lived together I was the calm one. He was the one that lived on the edge, which was more than likely why he was doubting if all of me was still here. At this point, I even doubted it.

When he didn’t appear, my breath turned to fog. I felt cold and confused. I slid down the wall, holding my legs to my body, and squeezed my eyes closed as layers of ice began to appear around me. I was standing between the life I had as Phoenix’s Genevieve and the Indie I was in this life, and right now I had no idea what I was fighting for. I just knew I didn’t—I couldn’t let go.

I couldn’t figure out how one second I was living a very routine life firmly grounded in reality with nothing more than a few odd flaws and family drama to deal with, and the next I was aware of evil. I was aware of a cosmic war of light and darkness, a past that wasn’t even in this reality. Before my death, I was blind. As I perished on the lakeshore, my eyes were opened only to find myself in the hell of darkness. In the nest of a woman who bore darkness, who in some way, if only by association, had taken Phoenix away so long ago, and in this young life my family.

Rage started to boil in my soul once more. I couldn’t let her get away with this. No matter what it cost me. I could not let her bring this much pain and grief to yet another soul.

I clenched my wrist, the mark Phoenix had put on me of that small falcon in flight. The ice began to vanish, and I found the strength to push my rage away. I stood and shoved the bookcase forward, prepared to go back to the library and find the lock this key went to.

In my room, I found the guys. Gavin was leaning against my bed and had his laptop open and his tablet at his side. Wilder was pacing the floor, and Mason was reading whatever was on Gavin’s screen as he lay across the bed and peered over Gavin’s shoulder. Cadence was nowhere in sight.

I glanced back to the dark passageway. I felt like I was waking up from a dream. My life as Indie was only a few steps away, but my past was calling me home.

“Indie?” Gavin said carefully.

I raked my fingers through my short blonde hair before turning to face him. I had a fear I was going to have to break it to all of them, to Mason for the second time, that we were dead. Phoenix was right. I wasn’t going to be able to handle this cycle.

I turned to see all of them staring at me with wide eyes.

The room began to freeze over. Unconsciously, I reached for the falcon that was now on my wrist. Warmth came then, not only to me, but also to the room.

“Death looks good on you,” Wilder said with an odd disdain as the scent of lilies he always carried seemed to hover over me.

I furrowed my brow. “You know?” I whispered.

He nodded once.

“Why are you guys looking at me like that?” I asked timidly, unable to handle all of their attention at once.

“We’ve never seen you blush…you look more alive in death than you ever did before,” Mason said with a curious smirk. He was the one that could always read me like a book. In truth, he knew me better than all of them combined.

His words made me blush even more as the thought of Phoenix came to mind. “Where’s Cadence?”

They all looked at each other, agreeing not to answer me. “Did…did she move on?” I asked as tears encased my throat. I assumed that Mason had told them what happened to us, that they knew we were barely holding on to life at this moment.

“She’s at school, or at least trying to go,” Gavin answered in a nonchalant way.

“She knows we’re dead, and she went to school?”

“We didn’t tell her,” Gavin said, focusing on what he was reading. By his obvious lack of concern, I could tell he was furious with her.

I glanced at Mason, and he quickly looked away.

“She deserves to know…even if you guys are mad at her,” I mumbled.

Gavin smirked. “We figured it out on our own. Why can’t she?”

“Mason didn’t tell you?” I countered, glancing between Gavin and Wilder.

“I knew at the bar. That’s why I sent Paula away, hoping we wouldn’t crash this time.”

“Is that your girl’s name?” I said with a sneer. “I disapprove. Her diet has me bothered.” I could not get the images of her sucking the energy out of us on that bank out of my head.

That snide remark made Mason and Gavin grin.

“I was well aware of her diet long before that night,” Wilder assured me.

“What? You knew?”

He crossed his arms and let his steel blue eyes fall onto me. “Gavin emailed me. I headed back here, she followed.” Wilder’s eyes echoed a desire that had never been this intense before. “I thought you knew I was seeing her.”

“How would I know? You didn’t say.”

“Cadence set us up, told me this girl had been at a few charity events here and was new in the town I was in.” He let his stare linger for a second before he spoke again. “Cadence even sent a few emails, making sure we were getting along okay.”

If I didn’t know any better, I would swear he was trying to make me mad. But I wasn’t going there with him.

“I’m sure I forgot she told me.”

His eyes slowly raked over me. I couldn’t figure out what emotion was hiding behind them, what he was trying to say without a word. All I knew was that I felt a burning guilt when I stared at him. He was dead because of me. They all were dead because of me.

“I suppose death can mess with your head, make you forget things, even create things. Feels like a dream to me.” Wilder focused his eyes. “We need to hold on to each other and not let illusions convince us that something beyond death is happening here.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t think you going off and hiding behind a locked library door is a wise thing to do alone.”

Coded conversation, which was typical for Wilder and me. He had a way of making random remarks that would call out what my mind was struggling with. Right now, he was telling me that because we were dead my mind had fabricated Skylynn and Phoenix and I needed to steer clear of anything that wasn’t firmly grounded in my reality or mind before I died.

“I’ve never been alone, Wilder. Not once.” I heard the ice cracking as it formed against the walls. “I’m lucid and determined in this dream of death. I’m not hiding from anyone or anything.”

“Lucid enough to make you blush,” Wilder said as he raised his brow. “Your mind is creating a life you wanted but never had. Maybe you should ask yourself what is fueling the illusions you are seeing. Maybe the real deal has been in front of you the whole time and you were just too preoccupied to notice.”

This is what happens when you do not resolve arguments, when you act as if they never happened. I’d always acted like our last fight never happened and let a few text messages hold on to the friendship I thought we could have. I felt a repelling sensation in my gut. I wanted away from him, and I hate to say it, but I regretted letting him get as close to me as I did. I knew it would never work, but I pretended it could for far too long. I suppose it was because I knew he was holding back, too, and I wanted to know for sure what I was throwing away before I did.

After finding Phoenix, after having a rich past consume me to the point where I felt like I lived it yesterday, I knew this almost lover, Wilder, wasn’t even close to what I was looking for. And because of my foolishness, Wilder was now here with me for God knows how long. I’d imprisoned him and was bound to pay the price for that act.

“Back off, Wilder,” Gavin said as he waved me over to him. Thankful for the escape, I collapsed next to him on the floor.

Gavin glanced over me once more. “You good? Too much too fast?”

“If you only knew what was going on in my head, I bet you’d have enough ideas for ten books to back it up.”

“It’s only going to get weirder, Indie. Mason and I are having wicked flashbacks, too.”

I glanced up at Mason, who was lying across the bed looking over our shoulders. He gave me a nod to confirm.

“What kind of flashbacks?”

“Ones that are here, but not here,” Gavin said, catching my gaze again as he kept his voice down.

“Dual reality?” I asked.

Both he and Mason nodded.

“You guys have lost it,” Wilder bit out. “Dual what? We’re dead. Simple as that. Your minds are just on some wicked trip. We need to figure out how to get undead or move on, one or the other. We can’t stay like this.”

Ignoring him, Gavin went on. “I never told you this, but around Halloween these paranormal hunters showed up, wanting to film your house, the grounds around it. Rasure blocked them from even asking you. I only knew about it because I was at the bar and they were asking if anyone heard of any wicked stories about your property. A few people sent them to my table. I figured they were full of B.S. and were just looking for gossip on your family.”

“This house wasn’t haunted until we died,” I said as I rolled my eyes. I remembered seeing a few images when I was younger, but they never made themselves known. I figured it was just the flashes of memories that were producing them.

“Right. Well, anyway,” Gavin said, shaking off the fact that he’d seen his sister’s ghost here one night. “I asked them why they were focused on your house, and it turns out that one of them had a brother or brother-in-law, something, that was on the crew that built Rasure’s wing a few years back. He said every time they went to plow down one of the oak trees in the way, one of the guys would get hurt or sick. They even had machinery break down. They were set to burn it when a court order caused them to redraw their plans and move a hundred feet to the east. They were relieved that they didn’t have to deal with the tree anymore and shrugged it off like it was nothing.”

“That was my court order,” I stated with disdain. If Rasure had gone through with the original plans she’d had, the library, along with the North Wing, would’ve had to have been rebuilt. Not only that, but the grounds around the family’s memorial plot would have been reduced by almost half. It took an act of Congress, but I stopped her from invading my parent’s eternal rest.

“Yeah, I know,” Gavin said under his breath as he reached to squeeze my knee. He was the one that had always kept me calm when Rasure got the best of me, when I was just a girl. “Anyway, the weirdness didn’t stop there. Later, when they were building the foundation, they thought they came across some logs that were buried or something. Turned out they weren’t logs, but roots; roots that came, at least in part, from that oak tree. They had a ton of specialists come out and survey the land, and the entire crew threatened to bail if they were told to cut into that tree. Long story short, they figured out that the roots connected to four other trees as well. They estimated that the trees were well over two hundred years old, which stopped them from taking them down, even if it was from the ground up. They managed to lay the foundation higher than they first planned.”

“They wanted to check out my trees? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That, and other things. They said they picked up on rumors or whatever saying to never go to Falcon Manor if you were an artist, that it would drain you and you would never create again.”