Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan #1) (13 page)

Cruz’s body warmed up, as though the fire had pooled into his skin. I jumped away from him, and stared at my sweater sleeves that had started smoking. I grabbed handfuls of snow and rubbed it against the smoke.

“I’m sorry,” Cruz said, when he realized what he’d done.

Blake’s brow furrowed. There was no more smoke but Cruz had burned a hole through one of the sleeves.

“It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s nothing.”

Cruz curled his fingers into tight fists.

“Did you just set fire to Cat?”

“He just squeezed my arms a bit hard,” I said, hoping Blake would swallow my lie.

“But I saw—”

Blake was interrupted by loud sputtering. Gwenelda writhed on the floor next to us, emerging from the snow. I crouched by her side and caught hold of her arm to ease her up.

She swiped her bloodied fingers against her back, then brought them in front of her face. “I no longer bleed. You healed me, Catori. Thank you.”

“It isn’t me you should be thanking. It’s Cruz. He’s the one who saved you.”

“Cruz?” She let her hand collapse against her waist as she took in the fae standing a few feet away from her. “
You
saved
me
? Isn’t that—”

He cut her off. “Who attacked you, Gwenelda?”

Her breathing was slow, grating. “The
golwinim
.”

“
Golwinim
?” I asked.

Cruz and Gwenelda held each other’s gazes for so long that Blake and I exchanged a look. As though remembering he was angry with me, Blake dropped my gaze.

“I’ll go find them,” Cruz said. “In the meantime, Catori and Blake will take you somewhere safe to rest.”

“Who are the
golwinim
?” I asked, but Cruz had started running. Or perhaps he’d started flying. I’d lost sight of him in the snowstorm.

“The guards,” Gwenelda said.

“What guards?” Blake asked.

“The Woods’s guards.” She dropped her voice. “The fireflies.” Over the blowing wind, I could barely make out her words.

“You call them fireflies?” Blake asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

The fireflies flitting through the graveyard last night weren’t insects; they were faeries.

CHAPTER 16 – FRIENDS AND FOES

Even though Gwenelda was healed, she limped when she walked, so Blake, being the gentleman that he was, picked her up and carried her to his navy Jeep. He set her down on the backseat.

“Thanks for letting us come to your place,” I said, glancing at his profile.

His lips stayed pressed together as he started the car and plowed fast through the snowy field.

“You’re driving too fast,” I said, watching the needle on the speedometer reach seventy. Most of Rowan was limited to forty-five miles an hour. “With the snow—”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he didn’t yell this, but his voice was loud and clipped.

I sucked in a breath. “I know you don’t approve, but don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Well, you’re acting like it.”

“I’m disappointed that you chose him.”

“Why? Because of Lily?”

He kept his eyes on the road beyond the windshield.

“It’s a strategic match, not a love—”

“Are you hearing yourself?” he shouted this time. “You’re making excuses for him, for yourself.”

“I’m not,” I mumbled, peering into the backseat. Gwenelda had her eyes closed as though she were sleeping. I hoped she was.

“Catori, the dude’s creepy. He passed himself off for a medical examiner, for God’s sake. Who does that?”

“It’s the guy’s wife who killed him,” I said, propagating a story which I knew was untrue, but it beat admitting that Cruz might have had a hand in the man’s death.

Blake slapped his steering wheel. “Bull crap!”

A tomblike silence invaded the car.

He had no right to be pissed at me. “I didn’t ask for your blessing
or
your opinion,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, but doing a shit job.

Blake sighed and it rumbled like the warm air blasting out of the car’s heater. “Are you trying to destroy the only part of me that wasn’t damaged in the blast?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he grumbled.

“No. Not nothing. What do you mean?”

“You really need me to spell it out?” he asked. His anger had deflated like the bouncy castle his mom had salvaged when we were kids. We’d jumped on that thing until the hole she’d duct-taped ripped further.

“Oh…Blake.”

“Don’t, Cat. Don’t pity me. Pity’s emasculating, and right now, I don’t need to feel like even less of a man.”

Although I wanted to reach out to touch his arm, I sat on my hands for the rest of the ride and watched the snowflakes drift down against the car window like the single tear that rolled out of Blake’s eye. He didn’t wipe it away. He was probably hoping I hadn’t noticed it.

When we parked in front of his one-story, flat-roofed house, which he’d bought with his disability severance pay, he got out of the car and unlocked his front door. Then he came back for Gwenelda who was apparently not pretending to be asleep.

I traipsed behind them into the dark house. He brought Gwen to his bedroom and closed his door, then he turned on the lights in the tiny living room and pulled a beer from his fridge.

“You want one?” he asked. He had his back to me. His shoulders strained the fabric of his sweater.

“Sure.”

He grabbed another bottle and flipped the cap off with his bare fingers, then handed it to me. “Why couldn’t we go to your place?”

“Because Dad thinks she’s a murderer,” I said. “He doesn’t know she’s related to us.”

“Is she family?”

“Sort of.”

“Is she a murderer?”

“She didn’t murder the medical examiner. She hadn’t…
arrived
yet.”

Either Blake could read me too well, or my hesitation came through. “Did she murder anyone else?” he asked.

I raked my hands through my damp hair. “I don’t know.”

“So what
do
you know?” He took a swig of beer and sat in his dark-green armchair.

I plopped down on the couch facing him. “She is related to me, that I know for sure. I also know that she and the Woods hate each other.”

“Why?”

“Bad blood between them. She claims the Woods had a hand in the death of her friend.” I didn’t make the word plural, although it should have been.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he muttered.

A cell phone rang. I was so surprised by the interruption that it took me a few seconds to realize that the ringing was coming from my jeans. I swiped my finger against the screen when I read my father’s name.

“I have been worried sick. Where are you?” he shouted.

“I’m at Blake’s, Dad. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Still, you could’ve texted me back. I sent you tons of messages! I left you a voicemail.”

“I never check those.”

“That’s not the point, Cat. You can’t do this to me. Not after…not after what happened.”

“I’m sorry. I’m going to come straight home.” But how would I get there? I couldn’t just take Blake’s car. If only I could fly. “Can you pick me up?”

“Yes,” he said, and it sounded as though all of his pent-up stress released in time with the word. “I’m leaving right now.” I could hear his heavy boots pound against the porch steps. “I’ll honk when I’m in front.”

When he disconnected, I stared at my phone’s screen until it went dark, then I lifted my gaze to my friend’s face. “I want you to forgive me, Blake,” I said. “I can’t leave here with you mad at me.”

His jaw tightened.

“Please.” I begged him with my eyes. I loved Blake, just not the way he loved me.

Blake sighed. “As if I could ever refuse you anything.”

I leaped off the couch to hug him, and while I held him and he held me, a tiny part of me wondered if he’d forgiven me because I had the influence. I breathed him in, wishing that I could return his feelings.

Some time later, Dad honked. Blake didn’t walk me to the door. He stayed sitting in the green armchair, rigid. “Call me when she wakes up,” I said. All I could see was the back of his head that dipped in a stiff nod. “I’ll come back.” And like that, I was gone, leaving him alone with a woman I probably should not have left him alone with.

CHAPTER 17 – DECEPTION

The phone rang while I was clearing dinner. Dad had gone to the living room to find us something to watch, so I was alone in the kitchen. The second I saw it was Blake, I picked up.

“She’s awake?” I asked, before he even had time to talk.

“She’s gone,” he said. There was something mechanic in the way he said it, or perhaps it was the blood rushing into my eardrums that made his voice sound funny.

“Where? When?”

“She left a note. Something about meeting you at the old cabin. I can go there now.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll go. It’s right next to the house. You’ve done enough.”

“Okay,” he said, and hung up. He was still angry with me. The old Blake would never have given me a choice. He would have come.

Going out in the middle of the night alone to see Gwenelda worried me, but I couldn’t involve my father, and I had no way of reaching Cruz. After lying to my father about going to Bee’s Place, I took the hearse and drove, not because it was far, but because if I didn’t, Dad would see straight through my lie. It took three minutes to get to the cabin, and five for me to turn off the ignition and dare step out into the freezing woods. The snow had eased up, but it still fell, making everything a bit prettier but also much colder. I shivered with each step. When I stood in front of the cabin, I knocked.

There was no answer.

I knocked again. I even called out, “Hello?” Still nothing. I pressed my fingertip to the old wood and pushed the door open. It creaked, heightening the speed of the blood coursing through my veins. For a second, I saw dots in front of my eyes, as though I were about to pass out. “Gwenelda,” I tried again. The moon brightened the dim interior, but still I used my phone’s flashlight to peer into the corners. They were all empty. Gwen wasn’t here.

A clicking sound made me jump. I whirled around, mouth full with the taste of metal and muscles thrumming with adrenaline. “Gwen?” I repeated hoarsely.

A little rock struck the broken, dusty window.
Click.
Sucking in a lungful of courage, I approached the door and scanned the darkness below. When I saw who was throwing the little rocks, I stayed in the archway of the cabin, just in case it could still repel faeries. 

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked Ace and Lily. I was trying to get my pulse under control, but Cruz wasn’t with them. I trusted him; I didn’t trust them.

“Cruz sent us,” Ace said.

“Why didn’t he come?” I asked.

Lily’s large eyes seem to slant.

“He didn’t come because you got him in trouble with your little plea to save a hunter. That’s punishable by death in our world.”

“What?”

“He’s willingly turned himself in. Hopefully, that will help his case.”

My stomach tightened. “Death?”

“Yeah. Death. Just so we’re clear, if he hangs, you hang, got that?”

I gulped. “Take me to Beaver Island. I’ll tell them it was my fault.”

“Take a faehunter to Beaver Island? I’d be signing my own death sentence.” He snorted. “Now, what’s going on here? What’s got you so flummoxed?”

“Gwenelda said she would meet me here, but she hasn’t shown up.”

Lily was so petite compared to her brother, but she didn’t look like the shy waif of a girl I’d interacted with only hours before. I supposed resentment trumped diffidence.

“Why did Cruz send you?” I asked suddenly. “How did he know where I was?”

“He marked you, so he can track you. He can also track your heartbeats, your moods. It’s a pretty useful trick we faes possess to keep tabs on our enemy. Turns you into an easy prey. In this case, although
we
believe you’re the enemy,” he said, pointing at his sister and himself, “I don’t think
he
sees it. Although, apparently prison changes people, so he’ll come around. Your
influence
on him will go
poof
.” Ace lifted his hands in opposite directions.

“He told me the influence doesn’t work on him,” I said.

Lily snorted.

“And you fell for it,” Ace said.

Four fireflies zipped past the cottony snowflakes, and buzzed around Ace’s face. One of them expanded until it was no longer bug-sized, but nearly as tall as Ace. He glowed brighter than brother and sister, gilt instead of moon-white. Speaking in that language of theirs, he informed Ace of something that made his smirk vanish. He swore, then walked past his guard, toward me.

“They’ve found Gwenelda.”

“Did they hurt her again?” I asked.

“She was too quick for them this time, thanks to that lame boyfriend of yours.”

“What boyfriend?”

“The dude whose face was blasted off.”

“Blake?” Goose bumps scattered over my entire body.

“My guard tells me he drove right up to the rowan tree grove. And guess what they’re doing?”

I started running back home, forgetting I had a car, forgetting there were deadly faeries flying right beside me. A firefly droned around my face. I swiped it away and it burned my hand.

I didn’t yelp; I just kept running. I needed to get to the graveyard before Blake and Gwen could wake up another clan member. Snow slapped my face and cooled the welt that was rising on my hand. The chilling wind howled around me, and a branch slapped my face stinging nearly more than my hand. My eyes watered. My nose ran. My toes became numb. If it weren’t for the crunching of pinecones and fresh snow, I would have thought I was flying.

When I burst out of the woods, I froze. All of me froze. I was still at a distance but I could see a coffin resting on the snow. I could see hands scooping inside, pink rose petals fluttering out, glimmering, and falling. I could smell their cloying aroma. A torso appeared, and then arms and hands that pressed against the side of the wooden box, revealing legs and feet. It was like looking at someone emerging from the lake after a midnight dip.