Love Charms (77 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

After Party

It had been a good thing my
mother performed a cloaking spell to protect me, because after The Watchers
safely exited the Great Hall, chaos ensued. Many of the creatures traveled far
and wide for the trial and wouldn’t see it as worth it unless someone, anyone,
bled.

Jack stuck to me like glue,
snarling if any creature, especially Riley, looked our way.

When we made our way back to
the parking lot, I gave Riley a reluctant smile. In spite of everything, Riley
supported me when it counted. I could at least tell him goodbye.

Jack got my wavelength and
shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I’ll be right back.” I
insisted. To remind Riley that I was his, he pulled me in for a heart-stopping
kiss that made the world spin. It went straight to my groin and I felt my core
flutter at his nearness.

When I stepped back, I shook
my head at him with a laugh. “Wanna brand me while you’re at it?”

“Just don’t take too long,”
he smirked. “Sia’s having a little victory get together and they’re all waiting
for the guest of honor.”

“Just a sec,” I repeated,
untangling myself from him.

Riley stood near the
sidewalk, picking at a broken piece of glass. I could feel the heat coming off
him in waves.

“I know you have a party to
get to.” Riley said acidly, avoiding my gaze. “You should go.”

I reached over and touched
his sleeve. “I have questions. About you and Ana. About Arrissa. About us-”

“But you have a boyfriend.”

“I have a boyfriend,” I
repeated. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

He shot me a look that
mirrored the one the leaving creatures wore. It was a look of disappointment.
Of frustration.

“What?” I said peevishly. “We
can’t start over?”

He moved in close, making the
hair on my arm stand at attention when he brushed my skin. “I don’t know if I
can be your friend, Jade. I can’t be within five feet of you and not want to
devour you. Every last inch.”

My cheeks blushed scarlet as
I took a step back, painfully aware of the daggers Jack was shooting our way.

“Well,” I said, jutting out a
hand. “It was mostly nice seeing you, Riley.”

He accepted it, gripping my
hand tightly. “Give me a call when you pass the vampire phase.”

Before I could lay some snark
on him, he pulled away, disappearing in the mad scramble. Mad scramble didn’t
do it justice, really. I could feel the electric, hungry pulse in the air. I
pitied the fool that crossed a supernatural tonight.

I turned back to Jack’s Mustang.
“Where’s Mom?”

“She said she had a bit of a
headache. And fairy shindigs really aren’t her thing.”

I slid closer to him,
wrapping my arms around his neck. “You know, I’m not really in a partying mood
myself. We could always celebrate more…privately.”

His fangs glistened as his
lips curled into a grin. “Now that’s a party I can get behind.”

Just as our lips met, my
phone screeched to life.

“Hold that though,” I said,
pecking him on the cheek. I glanced at my cell screen. It was Sia.

“So Sia is pulling out the
big guns, warning there will be a Guilt Trip to Rule All Guilt Trips if I skip
out on her party.”

Jack’s emerald eyes scanned
me with desire as he bit his lip. “If she knew how beautiful you looked-”

I playfully shoved him toward
the driver’s door. “One of the beautiful things about being acquitted is that
we have a lifetime of nights to celebrate.”

He let out a disappointed
sigh that made butterflies dance in my stomach. An hour ago, I was certain that
I’d never kiss him, never be with him again. I was convinced my last minutes on
earth wouldn’t be with the ones I loved and loved me, but championed by
creatures that paid money to watch me die.

I gave my head a hard shake
as I buckled my seatbelt. I refused to sully my victory by focusing on how bad
this evening could have been. It was a new day, ripe and full of possibilities.

I rolled my window down as we
pulled onto Hillsborough Street, the road peppered with students shuffling home
after a night out. There was one girl, petite, her eyes on her cellphone that
caught my glance.

“Not very smart of her to be
traipsing around Hills at 2 AM. Especially with the things in the shadows.” My
mind went through a short list of possible outcomes. A vampire could drag her
into the alley or-

“Don’t,” Jack said firmly.
“She’s an adult and she’s not your concern. Not tonight.”

“Right,” I said, forcing a
smile as we pulled into the InK parking lot. “You’re right.”

We sashayed out of the car,
our feet crunching on the gravel. I shot a bewildered glance at Jack. I’d been
to one of Sia’s soirees before and it was a rip roaring time…as in
you-can-hear-it-for-miles good time.

But the night air was quiet
except for the whooshes and sounds of cars zipping by. Dead silent.

I rolled my eyes. “If this is
going to be one of those ‘surprise!’ kind of things…” Jack laughed, pulling me
toward the building.

“You’re the one that insisted
we stop by. And considering I could be carrying you up the stairs, minutes from
making sweet, passionate love to you, we’re staying for at least fifteen
minutes.”

“Fine,” I pouted. “Fifteen
minutes, tops.”

We walked to the front door
and pushed it open.

InK was bathed in darkness.

“Okay,” I said in a singsong
voice. “I’m here, Sia. And I’m absolutely surprised.”

Silence.

“Sia?” I took a step forward and
froze as my shoe stepped on something warm and wet.

“Jack?” I whispered.

I felt his hand gripping me
as he swung me behind him. “Something’s wrong. Very wrong.”

I shielded my eyes as a
series of switches were flicked on and the room was flooded with light.

“Oh my god,” I whispered
hoarsely.

Body parts were strewn all
over the room. Arms, legs, torso, hands, severed heads.

I gagged as I looked down and
saw that the warm wetness I felt was someone’s intestines, lying in a circle
like a serpent.

I felt dizzy, faint, but Jack
steadied me. In the middle of the carnage I saw a petite, frail figure. It was
Sia. She was clad in white – or a dress that used to be white. Now it
looked more reddish brown than anything else, splotched with blood and guts smeared
from the spaghetti straps to her long morbid train.

A chuckle erupted from Sia’s
mouth, a familiar tune.

I stepped forward. “Sia?!”

She whirled around and I
screamed, falling back into Jack’s arms.

Her true face, the one she
hid so well behind beauty and innocence, festered and slithered. Her violet
eyes took up half her face and were wide and bloodshot. There were only two
slits where her button nose used to be. When she let out another laugh, her
mouth was cavernous, filled with row after row of razor sharp teeth.

Chapter Thirty

The Truth

She had her talons wrapped
around what was left of some guy’s head. She chucked it away like garbage and
stretched out her tar black wings, shuddering as they extended to the ceiling.
She inhaled deep and I could see the auras, the energy from the dozens she’d
massacred, flowing to her like magnetism. When she exhaled, her glamour
returned. She picked up a scrap of a shirt from the floor and wiped her mouth.

“I hope you guys haven’t
eaten.” She gestured at the carnage. “I’ve left a feast for you.”

She held out her hands and
invisible binds locked my hands and feet together. I looked over at Jack and
saw he was similarly bound. I fought against her spell, but it was no use. She
walked towards the back, dragging us toward the basement.

I’d never ventured downstairs
to InK’s BDSM-themed dungeon, but I’d always imagined it as a place with
imitation treats. A rack with furry handcuffs. A pink paddle. An exotic cage
more luxurious than terrifying.

But the dungeon was like something
straight out of medieval Europe. There was a triangular shaped seat where some
unlucky person could be slowly, painstakingly impaled. There was another pear
shaped instrument that I swear had dried blood and hair in the cracks of wood.
I saw a rack with alarming straps and metal glittering in the corner.

I squeezed my eyes shut, not
wanting my imagination to think up anything more. Reality was terrifying
enough. I let out a sob as Jack let out another moan.

Sia had him strapped to a
rack and was binding him with silver. I could hear his skin sizzle and boil
like bacon on a hot skillet. Each of his cries cut me to the bone.

“What do you want, Sia?” I
sobbed, yanking at my shackles.

She applied the last strand
of silver then turned to face me, pure hatred written all over her face. It
must have been so hard for her, all these months pretending she cared about me.
Pretending we were friends.

“I’d think it was pretty
obvious at this point,” she said, tucking a blood-soaked strand behind an ear.
“I want you dead.”

I looked at her strangely.
“You’ve had hundreds of opportunities to off me.”

“True,” she nodded. “But he-”
she tightened a chain, soliciting a growl of pain from Jack. “-would have just
found a way to bring you back. If The Watchers had condemned you, no
supernatural could free you from death’s cold clutches.”

“You killed them,” I said
hoarsely. “Kenny and Amy. You murdered them just to frame me.”

“Mmhm.”

“You crazy bitch!” I said,
fighting with renewed vigor. “You’re insane!”

“No,” she snapped, holding up
her hand. I felt my voice catch in my throat. I moved my lips but no words came
out.

“I’m not crazy, Jade,” she
continued. She turned back to Jack, stroking his cheek with her stained hand.
“I’m in love.”

Jack squirmed away from her
touch, but it was like the more he fought, the more enamored she became.

“You don’t remember me, do
you, Jacques?”

Jack stopped moving, looking
at her with new eyes. “I’ve never met you before, fairy.”

“I’m almost offended,” she
pouted, her face almost youthful and innocent.

“My hair was golden back
then. I wore it in thick, long curls. I was the most eligible lady in the
queen’s court.” She let out a chuckle. “I did have a penchant for scandal in
the old days. Trysts with the King, the Bishop, even the queen and a couple of
her handmaidens.”

Jack’s face went pale. “My
gods. Mademoiselle Symonne. Symonne d’Albret!”

Sia grinned.

I leaned forward, looking
between the two of them. “You knew her?”

Jack nodded slowly. “When I
gave up my status, the King saw it as a personal affront. He wanted my head on
a silver platter. “

“But I spoke for him,” Sia
said softly, tucking a tuft of gold behind his ear.

“She saved my life,” Jack
said hoarsely. “She convinced the King to send me to the Americas.”

“And I tried to forget him,”
Sia mused, her feet leaving bloody footprints in her wake as she paced back and
forth. “But I couldn’t. The one man who refused my advances out of some
misguided sense of decency. Jacques was good.” She paused, her fluorescent eyes
glimmering. “Smart, dashing. Oh, and handsome. A beautiful man.

So I followed him to the
Americas. All the way to gloomy old Massachusetts.” She stopped, her face going
ice cold. “I had a different name then as well. Mary Goode.”

The sound that erupted from
Jack’s mouth made my heart stop. It was a cry full of hatred, anguish, and
loss. It tore into me and rang into my ears over and over. I felt his pain. It
made tears fill my eyes.

“Who are you?” I screeched.
“What did you do to Jack?”

“I didn’t do anything to him.
I merely had my pulse on current affairs. The Puritans were going ape shit over
witchcraft. Your Romeo just happened to be married to the town witch. Isabel
Cuartes.”

My heart ached as I watched
blood red tears course down Jack’s face. “She was a good person. She used the
craft to heal the sick and help those who’d lost loved ones find peace!”

“She was a necromancer?” I
said, my eyes going wide.

“And she was beautiful,” Sia
said, her mouth twisted with disgust. “A Spanish father and a white mother, so
her skin was the color of caramel. Long, beautiful ebony hair. Wide brown
eyes.”

I swallowed, my lips
trembling as I glanced at Jack. I dyed my hair since I was old enough to pay
for Manic Panic, but my natural hair was jet black like my mother’s. My skin
was a caramel brown, unless I was beneath the moon. Right down to being a
practitioner of the craft, Isabel sounded like me in another life.

Jack gnashed his teeth, his
skin making sickening sounds as he tried to free himself from his silver
chains. “She trusted you! You said you’d help her!”

“Like you said you’d help
me,” I spat at her, my voice rising.

“Like you, she was so goddamn
gullible.” Sia turned her violet eyes back to Jack, a wild, insane look on her
face. “I let her give you one last kiss, Jacques. I am kind.”

“Before she was ripped from
my arms,” he sobbed. He finally stopped moving, succumbing to the silver. I
could smell his skin bubbling and cooking and it made my stomach roll.

“When they burned her alive,”
Sia said, recounting her horrible tale. “I thought maybe I could bring him
comfort. But in the bowels of darkness after he took vengeance on the town,
killing men, women, and children, it was Athanasia who held him to her bosom
and gave him the eternal kiss.” She crossed her arms. “And then I found him
again, hundreds of years later, in love with another witch. It’d be funny if it
wasn’t so fucking tragic.”

I raised my eyes to her.
“What are you going to do now?”

Her face crumbled and I
cringed as sobs rocked her body. She was truly insane, going from cool and
calculating to inconsolable in the blink of an eye. “A fairy loves for a
lifetime. I’ll love Jacques until one of our hearts stops beating. And since I
have no intention of dying…” Her voice trailed off as she made a decapitating
sign with her finger. “He’ll meet the sun, and I’ll burn you alive. Easy
peasy.”

She advanced toward me, her
petite fingers outstretched. I let out a gasp of terror as white-hot pain
echoed through my body. I felt her influence sink into my bones. I needed no
medieval torture device. Every fiber of my being called out in agony.

There was a sad irony in all
of this. The irony of my life. Sure, I’d become a full time necromancer. I’d
seen and done amazing and terrible things. I wondered what my life would have
been like if I’d chosen a different path. Hell, befriending Sia came from my
need for a friend, some kind of normalcy and a confidante. And it was my human
conscience that pushed me to seek out Kenny and Amy. Their deaths and my trial
proved the fragility of humanity and life. Because Jack loved a woman, it had
cost her life and started a chain reaction that led us to this moment.

I blinked through the pain
and saw Sia, her true colors rippling beneath her flesh like stones dancing on
water.

I was literally staring into
a loaded gun just a few hours ago. But if The Watchers decided on my guilt and
I had been beheaded, I would have gone to the All knowing that I’d tried to
help people. I’d used magic, the supernatural, to bring closure. Dying for the
truth was honorable, noble even.

But dying because some
psychotic fairy was spurned? Hell no.

As the pain became a dull,
white sting, I melted and remembered what my mother said about the dress and
magic. I let myself feel the fabrics. I could almost see Grandma Proctor
running her fingers over the fabric, imagining the feel of it on her skin. But
instead of wearing it for pleasure, she’d worn it on the night that her friends
and the man she loved turned their backs on her. I let her anger and raw power
wash over me in waves. I let myself get lost in it, drown in it. I could feel
the iron shackles turn into molten metal as I focused my power on Sia.

Her face registered surprise.
“H-how-”

“Ego mos ust vos sentio poena
vas paciscor,” I said, feeling the energy in my bones. As the last word fell from
my lips, Sia’s face changed. She was the one who was afraid.

“The fire!” she screeched,
her eyes bulging from her head. She let out a screech as she sank to her knees.
“I’m on FIRE!”

I watched as no fire licked
her flesh, but the dark, charred fingers of my spell crept across her body.

When it reached her face, I
turned away.

The room was quiet.

When I turned back, the spot
where she stood was just a charred pile of ash.