Rose Petal Graves (The Lost Clan #1) (7 page)

An arm wrapped around me. Blake’s. I rested my cheek against his shoulder.

“You were the love of my life, Nova,” Dad continued. “You gave me twenty-four years of uninterrupted happiness. And you gave me the most wonderful daughter—with one hell of a personality, I might add. But even for that, I am grateful.”

I flicked the tears off my cheeks with my fingertips.

“The day we married, I carried you across the threshold of our house. You laughed and ordered me to put you down right away, and I did, because I could never say no to you. No one could ever say no to you.”

Dad’s remark elicited smiles from the crowd. It was true. Mom always got her way. Except with me. I could be so tough with her.

“I hadn’t wanted to put you down that day, Nova. Today, I carry you across a new threshold, and again, I don’t want to put you down, but again, I have no choice.” He squeezed his mouth shut for a long, terrible second. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye,” he murmured, contemplating his reflection in the varnished wood. Then he looked up and held out his hands, and I stepped out of Blake’s embrace and into my father’s.

As Mom’s shaman took over, wishing her a safe journey to the Great Spirit’s side, Aylen put her arms around us. Her acrylic nails dug into my neck. When I couldn’t take the pinching sensation anymore, I wiggled out from the group hug.

Dad collapsed onto his knees in the snow, raked handfuls of dirt mixed with snow from the mound next to the hole, and cast it over Mom’s coffin. His face was streaked with tears and his light eyes were barely slits. He seized more and more dirt and flung it over Mom. I tried laying my hand on his shoulder but he slung it off. Perplexed, I looked around. The music stopped. His friend laid down his instrument and pushed through the crowd. Others followed him. Together, they heaved him up and away, whispering soothing words in his ear.

Bending at the waist, I cupped my hands and scooped cold dirt that I threw in turn. It glimmered as it drifted through the air, but the sparkle blunted when it landed in the dark pit.

Without music, the graveyard was silent, so very silent.

I’ll find you, Gwenelda, and I will make you pay,
I thought. Maybe she was here. As I looked around, I spotted a familiar face near the property’s gate. Cruz was leaning against his fancy car like the first time he’d appeared in my life. I walked toward him. No one was paying attention to me anymore. The attendees were busy taking turns lobbing handfuls of dirt on top of the coffin. Instead of heading inside to shoulder my father, I broke into a slow jog toward Cruz.

“Did you find her?” I asked once I’d reached him.

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To pay my respects.”

I snorted.

“And to see how you were holding up,” he said.

“How kind of you,” I said, a tad frostily.

“Will you take a ride with me?” When I made no move toward the passenger door, he said, “There’s more I’d like to discuss, and what I have to tell you has to stay private.”

Before I could come to my senses, I got in. “Don’t lock the doors,” I warned him.

“They lock automatically when the car starts, but by all means, keep your fingers on the handle. If you pump it twice, it releases the latch.”

“And don’t drive too fast.”

“Anything else, Miss Price?” he asked, giving me a sidelong glance as he drove away, down the cobbled path that turned into a dirt road.

In the rearview mirror, I spotted Blake watching the car slip away. At least one person knew where I was—in case something happened. My phone vibrated in my coat pocket. Probably Blake. I let it go to voicemail.

Everything was whitewashed around us, as though Rowan had been soaked in bleach, from the rooftops to the tree branches to the fields.

“What is it you want to talk about?” I asked.

“That ancestor of yours, Gwenelda. If we’re going to hunt her down together, you need to know a few things about her.”

“I’m listening.”

“She’s powerful.”

“I’m guessing you mean more than just having the sight.”

He nodded. “She can make people do things. We call it having the influence. It won’t work on you, though.”

“Why? Because I have the sight?”

“Yes.”

“Can she influence faeries?”

“Only the weak-blooded ones.”

“Weak-blooded?”

“The ones who have mixed with humans for too many generations. The purer our blood, the more magic we have.”

I snorted. “That must be healthy.”

Cruz shot me a half-smile.

“What else can she do?” I asked.

“She can control things with her mind.”

“Like telekinesis?”

“Yes. But I don’t think she’s strong enough to do that yet.”

“Can I do those things too?”

“No, but I think you might have the influence. Those straight As you got during high school, your perfect SAT score, your freshman year 4.0 GPA…maybe you’re smart, but no one is
that
smart.”

“How do you know about my grades?”

“I was briefed before coming.”

“Faeries have a whole file on me?”

“They keep track of…potential hunters.”

I mentally ran over every exam I’d ever taken. My driving test popped up. During the exam, I’d been so nervous that I’d forgotten to turn on my windshield wipers. I had driven with my nose glued to the windshield to see through the torrential downpour. It had only occurred to me to turn them on after I’d bumped into the rear fender of Mr. Hamilton’s car. He’d been incensed, slamming his car door and trampling through the mud to pound on my window. I’d apologized profusely, after which he’d told me not to worry. Had I sent him brainwaves to make him forgive me or had he calmed down because of my apology? Considering what a grouch Mr. Hamilton was—still is—I suspected I’d made him forgive me. Just like I suspected I’d made the DMV instructor award me a driving license I hadn’t merited.

I squinted at a snow-lined hedge, attempting to shift its branches. Nothing happened. “I can’t move things with my mind,” I said after some time.

“It’s a tough skill to master.”

“Can you do it?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it’s tough?”

“Don’t you want to know what your ancestors’ greatest power was?”

I suspected Cruz didn’t want to talk about his shortcomings. “Of course I do.”

“They could kill us,” Cruz said.

“Um…are you, like, immortal?”

“No.”

“Then why is that such a feat?”

“Because only old age can kill faeries.”

“What? You can’t die of cancer? Or in a plane crash?”

He shook his head. “We don’t get cancer. And when planes crash, and one of us happens to be on it, we fly out.”

“Even if it blows up?”

“We’re made of fire, so that doesn’t bother us.”

“And you can’t kill each other?”

“We can, but we try not to.”

“How can faehunters kill you?”

“I’d rather not tell you. I wouldn’t want to give you any ideas.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Anyway, Gwenelda can’t fatally harm faeries yet. She’s not strong enough, even though she’s a hell of a lot stronger than what she should be. Linus thinks—”

“Linus? As in Linus Wood? You told him about—” I didn’t bother finishing my question. “He’s a faerie, isn’t he?”

Cruz glanced at me, then fixed his gaze back on the road. He didn’t have to say yes.

“What does Linus Wood think?” I asked.

“He thinks it’s because she’s been hibernating. Faehunters believed hibernation increased their power. That’s why they buried themselves alive underneath rose petals. To grow their power.”

I was about to tell him I knew, but clamped my mouth shut. I didn’t want to share my mother’s book until I’d read every page. In case there were interesting tidbits on faeries—like how to kill them. I kept my gaze fastened to the pale landscape outside, which was becoming brighter now that some sun was leaking through the thick clouds. “What do
you
think?”

“I believe she’s strong because she absorbed your mother’s life. A relative is like pure heroin versus street heroin.”

My gut twisted at the comparison. “So her next move will be to dig up another grave and influence someone to open it. And preferably another relative.” Abruptly, I spun toward him. “Shit, Cruz. She’s going to go after Aylen, or one of her daughters.”

“Shiloh can’t be influenced.”

“But Satyana and Aylen can. What the hell are we doing driving around? Turn back.”

“Gwenelda’s not going to do it with that many people around. She’ll wait until they leave.”

“Which is only a few hours away,” I said, taking out my cell phone and scrolling through my contacts for Aylen’s number. She needed to leave Rowan immediately.

Cruz seized the phone from my fingers and stuffed it inside his jacket pocket.

“I need to warn them!”

“How exactly were you going to phrase it? Our long-lost ancestor woke up, killed Mom, and is coming after one of us?”

I leaned across the elbow rest and tried to grab my phone from his pocket, but Cruz swerved the car, which pinned me against the door. “Give it back.”

“I will once you calm down.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Give it back, right away.”

He smiled. “You’re trying to influence me.”

“No, I’m—I am?”

“Yes.”

“How do you even know that?”

“I can feel it inside my brain. It tingles.”

My forehead unfurrowed. “You can feel it, yet you can’t be influenced?”

He nodded.

I was getting sidetracked. “Can I get my phone back?” I asked, my tone cooler but still crisp.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, he fished it out and tossed it on my lap. “No impulsive actions, deal?”

I didn’t say deal, but I also didn’t try calling my aunt. For now. Instead, I toyed with the small apparatus. “Tell me about the
gassen
.”

“I haven’t heard that word in nearly a century,” he said.

“A century?” I squeaked. “How old are you?”

“Two decades over one hundred. The equivalent of twenty-four human years. Five human years represents one year for us.”

“You’re a hundred and twenty!”

“Yes.”

“You were born before cars,” I mused.

“Just before.” A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “What do you want to know about our
dust
?”

“How does it work?”

He glanced at me. “We cloak things and it creates whatever illusion we have in our mind. I’m sure you’ve heard those old tales in which faeries played tricks on people, giving them gold coins that turned out to be chicken eggs. Or the mirages of an oasis that certain men saw after days of walking in a desert. Also faerie work. The illusions only last until we need our dust again. One illusion fades to make place for another.”

“So now that Mom is underground, you got your
dust
back?”

He dipped his chin into his neck, which I took as a nod.

“Are there others like me and Shiloh?”

“Your tribe was the last one.”

“But there were others?”

“Ages ago, yes.”

“What happened to them?”

“They died,” he said.

“They died, or they were killed?”

His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel. “We trick people; we don’t kill them.”

“Not even the ones who can end your lives?”

His silence was answer enough.

“So Negongwa’s tribe was the only one that…in a way…made it out alive?”

“The Lost Clan.”

“What?”

“That’s how we refer to them since we never thought they’d wake up.”

“Why didn’t you set fire to their graves? You know, to make sure they didn’t rise?” I asked.

His eyes flashed. “They built their caskets from rowan wood. Faerie fire can’t penetrate it.”

“Why didn’t you ask humans to get rid of the graves?”

“Because only a family member can dig them up, and no family member would ever have betrayed their own to aid us.”

“Until now,” I said, my voice low.

“You’re avenging your mother, Catori. You’re not doing this to help me…or any other faerie.”

“It still makes me a traitor.”

Cruz rested his hand on top of mine. It felt like the fire from underneath his skin was penetrating mine. But there were no sparks this time. Curious, I raised my fingers to his jaw and touched it to see if it was unnaturally hot too.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice husky.

“The fire inside, is that what makes your skin so hot?” I glided my hand down to his neck. Goose bumps rose over his skin. “I thought you’d actually burned me the other night. I saw sparks.”

He swallowed, the tendons in his neck more taut than the string of a bow.

“How come there are no sparks now?” I asked.

He turned toward me, his eyes the most intense shade of green I’d ever seen. “The other night, I—”

A siren wailed right behind the car.

“Fuck,” he growled.

I turned around. A police cruiser was on our tail. “Were you speeding?” I asked, as Cruz slowed down.

“I don’t know. I was distracted,” he muttered.

“Cat!” Blake yelled, slamming the cruiser door and racing toward me, along with our hefty sheriff.

Blake yanked on my door handle. When it didn’t open, he started banging on the window like a maniac. Stunned, I didn’t pump the handle. I didn’t move. But the doors must have unlocked, because Blake unhooked my seat belt, plucked me from the car seat, and shoved me behind his back.

“He’s a murderer, Cat,” Blake yelled. “A fucking murderer!”

I blanched. “Y-you got it wrong, Blake,” I croaked. “He didn’t kill Mom.”

Blake frowned so deeply that his eyebrows, which had been tattooed to replace the ones that would never grow back, met on his forehead. “What are you talking about?”

“Cruz Vega, you’re under arrest for the murder of Henry Mason,” the cop said.

I pushed past Blake just as Sheriff Jones snapped a pair of handcuffs on Cruz’s wrists. Where the metal touched his skin, it became orange and smoke curled up. He was melting the metal.

“Vega?” I croaked. “I thought—I thought your last name was Mason.”