Secret Worlds (52 page)

His body shifted between my knees, his interest pressing the inside of my thigh as his lips returned to mine and his hand caressed over my hips, up toward my navel. His fingers played along the waistline of my jeans, skimming the skin beneath the top of my underwear, and I sighed. He paused, kissed me once more gently, then flopped back on the bed to stare at the ceiling.

Moonlight shone through the window and gleamed off his fangs. My heart sped, but desire replaced my usual fear. I didn’t care about his fangs. I only wanted to give in to the steady pool of warmth in my stomach.

I sat up and cupped my hands around his face, strands of his hair feathering against the pillow. “We can’t stop every time.”

He pointed toward the movie. “Look. Your favorite part.”

“Your fangs bother you that much?” When he didn’t answer, I straddled over him, blocking his view of the television. I leaned forward, my hair spilling over my shoulder onto the pillow beside him, and pressed a kiss against his neck and another along his jaw. I ran my hands over his shoulders and whispered in his ear, “They don’t bother me.”

Charles grabbed my wrists, and, in one swift movement, pinned me to the mattress. He didn’t need his strength to hold me there—the suddenness of his actions were enough to leave me frozen. Heat radiated from his body, warming against my thighs, stomach, and breasts. His scent of vanilla and sandalwood and his close proximity sent my body into a state of arousal, and my nipples hardened beneath my bra. I peered up at him, unsure what to make of the situation. His body suggested passion, but his eyes were cold and hard.

“You are the most aggravating woman I’ve ever met,” he said. The muscle in his jaw twitched. “You expect far more self-control from me than any man could have.”

“I’m not asking for your self-control,” I said firmly.

He released my wrists and climbed off me. “You’re not ready for this.”

“I am.”

“You’ve never done it before,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking to the wall across the room.

I swallowed past the tight lump in my throat. “You don’t know that.”

He turned, raising an eyebrow. “Tell me otherwise.”

I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze, and I pressed my lips together, for once unable to conjure a lie.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “There may be many things I cannot give you, Sophia, but I can give you the time to learn yourself. To be certain—”

“I
am
certain.”

“—of our future,” he finished.

How could either of us be certain of
that
? “I’m not asking for any promises. I understand why you can’t—won’t—change, and I’ve decided to accept that.”

“You decide a lot of things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You allow your mind to silence your heart.”

“
What do you want
?” I asked, both defeated and determined to figure him out. “You don’t want to be with me, but you don’t want me to leave. You don’t want to grow old with me, but you don’t want me to be with you so long as you’re immortal. Tell me, what is it I’m missing here?”

“You should expect more.”

“You don’t want me to!”

“I
do
want you to. I may not be able to give you these things, but they are things you should want. They are things
I
want, too,” he said, his voice tight and his words strained. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You can’t. Your fangs…well, only a pure Cruor can turn a human, right?”

Charles climbed off the bed. “It’s not about that.” He walked over to the bedroom window before turning back, his face a marble effigy of contempt. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice with a raw edge. “We’re going to get through this. But I don’t know if I can promise you what you want.”

He returned his gaze to whatever was outside the window, and I watched him in silence from the bed, wondering how the world looked through his eyes.

***

LATER THAT NIGHT, the spirit lady watched me through the kitchen window while Charles cooked dinner. Her eyes were bleeding.

I never panicked when I saw her anymore. She was as constant as the rising sun—with me wherever I went for the past few months, her figure drawing ever nearer.

“It’s not terrible I’m immortal,” Charles said, glancing away from the grilled cheese he was making on the stove. “For you, I mean.”

I froze. His sentiment came out of nowhere, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“No?” I asked.

He stared stonily back. “I can protect you. If you understood the potential dangers—”

“I understand fine,” I said. “And I can protect myself once I figure out how to tap into my ancestor’s powers.”

“You’re still upset I won’t seek out the Ankou,” he said.

“You have your reasons,” I said, even though he was right.

“The Ankou should be focused on why they are here,” Charles said, engaging in the argument I was trying not to have on the surface. “It’s beyond me how they find time to do these things when they are supposed to be moving the spirits of deceased immortals to the afterlife.”

Moving spirits?
That’s
what the Ankou did? The revelation panged through my chest, and lungs constricted. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

Of all things, this revelation was the one that would shatter my resolve. It meant I wasn’t safe from Charles’ world, not if the spirit following me had anything to do with elementals.

Charles dropped the spatula for the grilled cheese and turned to hold me against his chest. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.

I shook my head. “Charles, there is a spirit following me.”

“A SPIRIT IS FOLLOWING YOU?” he repeated, the lines across his brow deepening. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

I gave an insignificant shake of my head. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

He arched his eyebrows. Yeah, I sounded crazy.

“Look, where I come from, they exorcise people, so seeing things that other people can’t isn’t exactly something I want to broadcast. I didn’t think it had anything to do with elementals.”

“We still can’t go to the Ankou,” he said firmly.

“Why not?”

“First of all, the most helpful of them are in Brazil, and secondly, I don’t think it’s wise to approach them. There’s no telling how they might respond.”

Defeat settled heavily on my shoulders. “So there’s nothing we can do?”

“Sophia, there is something you must always remember about my world. You cannot count on running or hiding forever. Whatever you do, fight. Always, always fight, until your dying breath. That is your only chance at survival.”

“Until I
die
? Stop being so morbid!”

“You can’t be passive about this. Morts don’t follow people for the fun of it.”

“Morts?”

“Mortuss Phasmatis. Spirits of elementals who have met their final death but are stuck between this world and the afterlife. The Universe tasked the Ankou with moving these spirits—either to new lives or to the afterlife—but if the spirits remain too long, they sometimes possess humans.”

“Seriously?
Seriously
, Charles? Why the heck does it want me?”

“Likely because you don’t have an aura. That makes your ability to resist possession stronger, but if they succeed, they can take you over completely—not only to use your body but to bind with your spirit as well.”

“How can you be so calm about this? What am I supposed to do? Could it really possess me?”

Charles placed his hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. Let’s talk about this. When did you first see it?”

“It’s a her, and I first saw her when I woke up in Ivory’s room after I was attacked at Club Flesh.” My eyes widened with realization, and I covered my mouth. “Oh shit. She followed me here, didn’t she?”

“How close is she now?”

I peered over the ridge of his shoulder, through the window of the kitchen door that led out to my backyard. The young woman with the dark hair now had her face pressed to the windowpanes.

I shuddered. Her face was pressed to the windowpanes, the blood from her eyes smeared across the glass. A shudder ripped through me and threatened to empty the contents of my stomach. I hadn’t been so afraid of her before. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

“She’s right at the kitchen door, literally pressed against it,” I said, my words leaving me breathlessly.

“I’ll call Adrian,” Charles said. “He’ll advise us on what to do. In the meantime, stay away from the windows and don’t look the mort in her eyes.”

Thank my lucky stars that Charles knew how to keep calm when I did freak out, though I much preferred my usual state of numbness over such events.

The only room in the house with no windows was the bathroom. I settled down in there and had Charles bring me every magical references book I owned.

“Would smudging help?” I called out into the hallway.

Charles popped his head into the bathroom. “Smudging?”

“Burning pine needles and sage.”

He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Why would that help?”

“We could use mint or salt,” I offered next.

Charles just laughed. “I thought you went to school for history.”

“I did.”

“Think about it, Sophia.”

Ah. Right. Mint and salt kills bacteria and germs. That would have helped keep people from getting sick, which would have made them less likely to hallucinate. That might help if I were sick, but not in dealing with actual Morts.

Adrian arrived shortly before midnight. “She’ll need to do this under nightfall,” he said to Charles. “If you try moving her to another location at night, you’re more likely to draw attention from the Cruor than if you just attract the Ankou to come here.”

“This is less than ideal,” Charles replied. There was a weight to his voice that unnerved me. “This could risk our location entirely.”

Adrian frowned in a way that seemed almost apologetic. I could marvel for hours at how that man’s expressions could be so nuanced, how something as simple as a frown could evoke so many different things.

“There’s no other way.”

Charles raked his hand through his hair. “Then we better get started.”

Their genius plan was to use me for bait for all the Morts in the area. Then call the Ankou to come exterminate the problem. My anxiety over the whole ordeal was mounting more and more by the second.

I kept mostly to the bathroom, but I did peek occasionally to see what was going on. The backdoor kept wrenching open and slamming shut, and I couldn’t help but cave to my curiosity. The thought reminded me of what Marcus had said, that it was my dad’s curiosity that got him killed.

Had he been somehow involved in this other world?

Adrian went outside ahead of us and set up a circle of wooden poles in the yard. He returned inside to retrieve a chair from the kitchen, which he placed in the center of his circle.

I leaned into Charles. “Why did he paint the poles blue?”

“It’s lime, milk, and pigments that make a blue paint. It’s supposed to look like water.”

“Ghosts don’t like water?”

Charles didn’t answer me. Increasingly, the stress in the pit of my stomach could be more readily attributed to Charles’ demeanor, rather than any knowledge that would lead me to feel afraid.

The spirit of the young woman wandered over to Adrian’s structure, concern etched into her features. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Within moments, two more spirits joined her: a young boy with blond hair and, with him, a tall, thin woman with short, dark-red hair.

“There’s more than one,” I said nervously.

Charles wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed.

A few moments later, Adrian had attached wind chimes to each blue pole. He came inside and wordlessly ushered me out. I opened my mouth to ask what would happen next, but he whispered harshly, “Don’t speak.”

He seated me in the chair surrounded by the poles and started walking in circles around me, dragging a stick along the wind chimes. He was chanting something in a language I hadn’t heard before. My heart rate picked up, and I couldn’t decide if I was too afraid to close my eyes or too afraid to leave them open.

Then something blurred the spirits and they burst into black particles that flurried to our feet. Their remains coated the ground in ash that quickly dissolved to smoke and floated off on the breeze.

Was that it?

I started to stand up but Adrian shook his head at me as though the simple movement were a reprimand for my actions. I froze, then inched back into my seat. He handed me a chalice full of rose water and I took the hint to drink it.

“Now we wait,” he said, and he walked inside, leaving me there. He and Charles watched me through window, unmoving. I wondered if my face revealed my fear as much as Charles’ revealed his concern.

How had my life turned to
this
?

Perhaps I’d always had one foot in the supernatural world, but over the last few months, things had been shifting. Now here I was, being thrust further into the darkness, my fingernails gripping helplessly to hang onto these last threads of the world as I’d known it.

All I could think was how much I wanted to leave the supernatural world behind.

All of it.

***

WHAT FELT LIKE AGES LATER, but what my watch revealed had only been one hour, my time sitting alone in the dark was over. Adrian came outside, grinning the full effect of his pride.

“They won’t be bothering you again for quite some time. We will take you inside now and you will rest.”

Once I was inside, lying down in the bedroom and completely unable to fall asleep, my heart still pounding in my chest, Adrian left. I was too frazzled to care that no one had explained to me what had just happened.

Charles came and sat on the edge of the bed. “You all right?”

“I think one of them killed my mom,” I said.

“How so?”

I recapped for him how my mother had died. “Mrs. Franklin thought it was witchcraft, because right after my mom fell to the floor, there was smoke rising from her body. It was just like the smoke outside.”

Charles’ expression was grave. “It may have tried to take you instead.”