Pickup Styx (20 page)

The ruins of the church that once was my sanctuary were becoming the bane of my existence. If we all made it through this, I was going to have the damn things torn down. The forest seemed cursed. We went past the church, deeper into the forest. I closed my eyes, letting my memory lead me to her unmarked grave. Sebastian caught my shirt.

“I think you found it.”

He stopped me from stepping into the empty grave. There was a pile of dirt to the side with a shovel on top. I lowered myself into the grave, but there was nothing left. She was completely gone.

“I can’t believe he would use his own daughter to do something like this,” I said as I climbed out and wiped off my hands.

“What’s that?” Sebastian pointed to the shovel.

The side of the shovel was caked in blood. “There’s no way her body would have been bleeding. She’s been dead for four hundred years.”

“Well, we don’t really know anything about how elves decompose,” Sebastian said.

No matter whose blood it was, it was a lead. “Take the shovel.”

He picked it up, and there was a glint of silver in the dirt beneath. I stooped to get it. A necklace imbedded with filth hung from my fingers.

“What’s that?”

Underneath what looked like years’ worth of dirt, the piece was in perfect condition. A pale green stone was set in the middle of knotted and swirling bits of silver. “It’s my mother’s.”

He looked at it closer. “Was Bella wearing it?”

I shook my head. “Only one person had this necklace after my mother died. My father.”

We both looked at the shovel. The blood was either from my sister or my father. We took it back to the castle. I let Sy take it to the coven and I headed to Frost. If anyone would know how my sister’s body stayed, if she would decompose, and how to stop an elverpige, it was her.

Lily came out of my room when I got to the hallway, making my stomach drop. “How did you get up here? What are you doing?”

“Chillax. I was bored. Just checking the place out.” She held up her hand innocently. “This house is massive. I bet you could sleep in a different room every night and not repeat.”

Where the hell is the guard?
I moved Lily away from the door and stuck my head in to make sure everyone was okay. Everything looked the same as it had before.

“Who’s the dead chick?”

“She’s not dead. You shouldn’t be here.”

“She looks pretty dead.” Lily wrinkled her tiny, straight nose.

I put my hand on her back and led her gently toward her wing and away from Selene. One of the guards was walking back toward Selene’s room, chewing on something. I waited a few seconds to get a handle on my temper. “You. What’s your name?”

Guilt and horror at being caught crossed his face. “Landion, Erlking.” He bowed.

“Take my guest back to her wing and stay with her. I will find someone else to watch this room.”

Lily stiffened. “Am I a prisoner?”

“No. You don’t want to help though, and I don’t have time to babysit you. You can’t be up here.”

She looked back toward the door. “Is she related to us?”

“Yes.” Technically it wasn’t a lie. She was my wife.

Understanding crossed Lily’s face. “She’s pretty. I always wanted an older sister.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Not a brother so much.”

“Yes, she is pretty and you already told me you didn’t want a brother. If you keep saying it, I’ll get a complex.”

She smiled a little. “Are you going to save her?”

“I will do everything in my power to save her.”

She looked me up and down. “I actually believe you. If you aren’t a serial killer who captures and kills women in his castle, you may be a halfway decent guy.”

“Thank you—I think. Now please go back to your room.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She walked down the hallway with Landion, glancing back over her shoulder occasionally. She looked very young without makeup, wearing a pair of Selene’s pajamas that I’d sent over to her. She probably wasn’t more than eighteen or nineteen years old and she was already running a business and dealing with jinn. What kind of life did she have?

I went into the room and woke Frost. “I need your help.”

“I thought that was what I was doing.” She yawned.

“Do you know what an elverpige is?”

Her ice blue eyes met mine and she blinked. “Yes.”

“How do you stop one?”

“Kill the source.”

“Are there no other options?” If I didn’t have to kill my father, that would be preferable. I wasn’t sure that was something I could live with.

She took a deep breath. “An elverpige is a spirit brought back and fueled by anger. It’s possible that the spirit would retain its memories. You know how it is when you get really angry and you can’t think of anything else but all the reasons you’re so furious? Well, it’s possible that’s what’s happening to the spirit. If you could break through that anger, you might be able to break the spell. But it’s risky. It would be easier and more certain to kill the source.” She sat her book down. “Why do you want to know?”

“One is killing off my bloodline as we speak.”

Stress flashed across her stoic face, and she glanced at Selene. “Kill the source, Erlking. Don’t risk it.”

I glanced back at Selene. “Did something happen? Did you feel something? Is she back?”

Frost shook her head, even paler than she was before. “It’s nothing.”

I struggled with whether I should press her to find out what had spooked her or ask the other two questions I needed answered. “What reasons would an elf body not disappear?”

“Someone like me could be holding onto it. Other than that, none I can think of. A half-elf may leave a body. It’s dicey though.”

“My sister was killed a long time ago by a human man whom she loved, and her body didn’t disappear.”

Frost shook her head. “Are you sure she was dead?”

I gave her an impatient look. “He buried her and I later dug her up. She was still there, still dead.”

She shrugged. “I’m not really an expert on elves. There isn’t much to work with there.”

“So you wouldn’t know how long it would take her to decompose?”

She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “No. Can’t say that I do.”

“Okay. Thanks anyway.” I started for the door.

“Cheney,” she said. “Kill the source. If you only ever listen to one thing I tell you, make it that.”

“Why?”

She looked at Selene then back to me. “Her life may depend on it.”

I blinked. “Selene isn’t a blood relation.”

“No,” she said softly. “But all the same. End this curse now.”

I opened my mouth to question her further, but the door opened and Sebastian popped his head in. “We have something.”

The longer we stood, the hotter it got.

“We have to keep moving,” Corbin said, nodding to my hand where a large blister was forming.

Stop and you burn. Got it.
I trudged forward.

“Selene,” Cheney’s voice came from my right, so soft, so alluring. As if all of this were a dream he was trying to rouse me from. I closed my eyes and let myself believe it was true for a moment, that he was leaning over me, waiting to kiss me awake. However, nothing had changed when I opened my eyes again. I stared in the direction of his voice, even though I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t see him though. He called again, “I need you, Selene. Please.” I veered off to find him, but someone caught my shirt.

“Don’t listen to it,” Corbin said.

“It’s Cheney. What if this isn’t real, Corbin? What if none of this is real and all I have to do is wake up?”

He shook his head. “You know it’s real. You planned the whole trip and talked me into coming with you. It isn’t Cheney.”

“I just want to see him.” I pulled harder against Corbin, a terrible thought entering my mind. What if Cheney had come here looking for me and that was why he needed me? “I need to see him.”

“Then make it back home,” he said, pinching me hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Ow.” I rubbed my bicep. “What the hell?” I punched him on the arm.

“You don’t hear it anymore, do you?”

“Asshole,” I said under my breath, but I didn’t mean it. Corbin was right. I needed to focus and fight. I was letting the location manipulate my emotions and cloud my thoughts. That’s what it wanted, and that was what it was counting on to defeat me.

“How could you?” Jaron’s low, rumbling voice came from my left.

I blew out my breath and ignored him.

“I loved you. You took everything from me,” he said. “But I still love you, Selene. I always have.”

I swallowed back my guilt. He wasn’t real.

“You were never supposed to fall in love with him. That’s wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Shut up,” I whispered. Could Corbin and Simon hear everything he was saying? It was like a knife twisting in my gut.

“We were supposed to be forever. How many times did you say you loved me? Was it all a lie?”

My steps slowed. Tears came to my eyes. “Of course not. I did love you, but you changed.”

Jaron materialized in front of me—tall and scruffy and still oh so tempting.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, bringing my steps to a halt with his gentle tone.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He gave me a sad smile. “But you did. You hurt me long before you finished the job and killed me. I never loved or trusted anyone like I did you.”

I had done what I had to do. He’d been unstable. He’d lied to me. He’d wanted to kill Cheney. What choice did I have? What choice had he left me with? But none of the justifications that had offered me comfort before made me feel better now. With Jaron standing in front of me, no more than an arm’s length away, right and wrong seemed very foggy.

“You betrayed me long before I betrayed you,” I whispered.

“Are we keeping score now?” He raised an eyebrow. “You pursued me, not the other way around. We had an understanding. We were alike, no matter what you tell yourself now. You knew what you were getting into then. You left me for a full breed with more money and more power.”

I shook my head. “I never agreed to kill people. Especially not Cheney.”

“Change is hard.” His eyes flashed. “Sacrifices have to be made.”

“And what sacrifice did you make?” I ignored my sizzling arm.

“You. I let you go to him, though it shredded my very soul to watch you go. I trusted you and you betrayed me. You betrayed us. You turned every word of love you ever spoke to me into a lie.”

I shook my head. He was twisting what had happened. “You tried to kill me.”

“I never would’ve hurt you. I just needed you to come back to me. I needed you to choose me over him, but you didn’t. You killed me instead.”

“You wouldn’t have let Cheney live.”

“You never took the chance to see. I said I would leave with you and I meant it, but you wouldn’t go. You pushed me to what happened. We could have gone away together and been happy. Left it all behind. Like it or not, it was
your
choice. Your actions didn’t speak of desperation when you shoved the blade into my chest and twisted. You didn’t have the noble mission of saving the kingdom in mind. You wanted one thing and one thing only.” He leaned in close. “Revenge.”

The smell of burnt hair filled my nostrils. My choice. Everything was my choice. Someone nagged me and something tugged at my arm, but I shrugged both off, staring into Jaron’s eyes. I reached for his face but stopped my hand before I touched him. “It wasn’t about revenge. I was righting the wrongs we caused. The Erlking was the problem, not Cheney. He has a good heart and wants to make things better for everyone. You didn’t want that, no matter what you say. You would have treated the full elves as they had treated us. I love Cheney for everything he is, was, and will be.”

My legs felt rooted to the ground, but I forced one foot in front of the other in tiny shuffling steps. Little by little, my true surroundings began to register again, but Jaron stayed with me as well. Corbin and Simon were on either side of me, helping and coaxing me along. With awareness, though, also came pain. My skin was tight, like it was scalding from the inside out. I drew in a deep breath, pressing my hands against my thighs, but I kept moving, knowing if I didn’t, the agony would only get worse.