Reaper: A raven paranormal romance (Crookshollow ravens Book 2) (19 page)

I remembered what Belinda had told me about the Morchard dosing the birds with some highly infectious virus. I could guess at what he planned. I thought of all those people who would be at the wedding; Ryan and Alex, Libby, Elinor, Bianca … and Belinda … my precious Belinda. I couldn’t let this happen.

“Why are you telling us this?”

“I thought it was obvious. I want to you stop it.”

Pax lifted his wing. The ring that encircled it glowed faintly, a harsh line of stripped feathers around it revealing red, wounded skin beneath. He must have been in almost as much pain as Byron. But that meant—

“The pain is quite something else,” Pax said sheepishly. “I don’t know how you two live with it.”

“You went rogue?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Don’t get any funny ideas. I still hate your fucking guts, both of you. You were always the favourites, always the ones given the best jobs, while Poe and I were stuck on endless looping guard duties. But you’re right Cole, it’s fucking ridiculous that we’re doomed to remain slaves to that man for the rest of our lives. I don’t want four hundred fucking deaths on my conscience. If Morchard wants to murder people, he can do it himself. Or at least pay me for my trouble.”

“What are you going to do?” Byron eyed Pax suspiciously. I bet he was wondering if Pax had some clever plan to relieve him of his ring that we could somehow make use of.

“I’m sure as hell not going to sit around a forest all day trying to perfect my bird yoga, like you two pussies. I’ve heard on the grapevine there’s a rogue wolf up in Scotland who has a witch imprisoned. Apparently he’s freeing birds left, right and centre. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

And with that, he took off again.

Byron turned to me, his eyes gleaming. “Can you believe it? Pax, of all the birds, has gone rogue.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t thinking about Pax. I was thinking about all my friends, and all those people at Libby and Sir Thomas’s wedding. I had to do something. I had to warn them somehow, stop the wedding, destroy the birds. I had to go back.

I didn’t want to go back. I was breaking the solemn promise I’d made myself. If I saw Belinda again, I would barely be able to control myself. I would want to go to her, to stay with her, even though I was not yet free. Going back would mean resigning to a life of slavery. But I didn’t have a choice, not really. Every person who had ever been kind to me was going to be at that room – including the woman I loved so much it hurt – and even though I’d done nothing to deserve their kindness, there was no fucking way I’d let them die just so Victor Morchard could have his revenge on me.

It was time Victor Morchard paid for his crimes.

T
he rest
of the week passed in a blur of tiredness and caffeine. My new catering business and preparations for Libby and Sir Thomas’s wedding kept me busy every hour of the day, and Cole’s spectral presence in my bed kept me awake most of the night. Not that I had any complaints about Cole’s visits, I just wished he could inject coffee into my veins the way he injected lust.

Every morning, I got up at 3:30am and baked several loaves of bread. Chairman Meow delivered them door-to-door around the village on a vintage bike. Apparently he was quite the charmer. Once the ladies in the knit ’n’ bitch got word of this service, we started getting phone orders. I had their calls diverted to Resurrection Ink, and Elinor and Bianca took down orders in between inking butterfly tramp stamps on gullible teenage girls. In the evening they came home with the order sheet and I started baking again. All this I had to fit in between prepping four courses for the wedding.

Every day the order sheet grew a little longer. Bewitching Bites may have had a setback, but we were still soldiering on.

And then, two nights before the wedding, Cole didn’t come. I lay awake, staring at the hallway, knowing I should try to sleep, but my body unable to rest. I ached all over, from weariness, and from want of him.

Had something happened to him? Or had he left me again, for real this time? Had these strange visitations just been dreams after all?

Sometime after 1am, I fell into sleep. I know it happened, because I awoke from some unremembered, terrifying dream. I threw my arms across the bed to search for Cole’s warm body, only to find it empty.

I hoped in time the pain would deaden, that Cole would eventually be just another bug on the windshield of my life. Another horror story like Ethan that I’d be able to laugh about in a few years’ time when I’d dug myself out of my debt hole. I hoped one day the very mention of his name wouldn’t fill my eyes with tears or my stomach with butterflies.

The only way to start again was one step at a time.

* * *

“
H
ey Libby
,” Bianca called out. “Have you had a hen night?”

We were sitting around the living room, enjoying a glass of wine while helping Libby stuff Jordan almonds into tiny gauze bags. The entire day had been a frenzy of last-minute wedding planning, with a flurry of wedding planners, makeup artists, dress designers, lighting consultants, and professional dance instructors sprinting back and forth from Libby’s rooms. I’d only left the kitchen at 7pm after working on the cake and the desserts all day, leaving behind stacks of white catering boxes and a mess of monumental proportions that Simon was now dutifully cleaning up. Ah, the wonders of having a butler.

Libby glanced up from the ribbon she was cutting. “No, I guess I haven’t.” She said. “All my bridesmaids are the daughters of earls or other important people Thomas chose to keep the noble families happy. They’re not exactly bosom buddies. And I never had many girlfriends. People tend to think I’m strange.”

“You
are
strange,” Alex grinned as she tied off a ribbon and added another bag to our growing stack. “You’re marrying a vampire.”

“You’re engaged to a vulpine. And she—” Libby gestured to Elinor with her elbow, “is going to marry a rock star who used to be dead.”

“I know,” Alex grinned. “Welcome to the club.”

“Right,” Bianca clambered off the couch and grabbed her coat. “Fuck this. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Elinor demanded, tossing another bag onto the pile and grabbing her next handful of almonds.

“Out. We are going to have a raucous adventure, as deserving of a hen night.”

“In
Crookshollow?”

“Why not?” Bianca grinned.

“We’ve got a mountain of Jordan almonds still to bag up,” Elinor, ever the sensible one, scolded. “We can’t be going out on the town.”

Libby waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, who cares about the almonds? They were my mother’s idea. I don’t even like almonds. Let’s go get trashed and have shenanigans!”

“I’m in.” Alex grabbed her purse. “Let’s go. Elinor? Belinda?”

“I’m certainly not going to sit here tying ribbons all night while you guys have all the fun.” Elinor grinned. “Count me in.”

I stared over my shoulder at the kitchen. I hadn’t taken any orders for tomorrow so I could focus on the wedding. Most of the prep would have been done. I should get an early night’s sleep, but it wasn’t as if I was sleeping anyway ...

“Sure,” I shrugged. “But only for a little while—”

“Great!” Elinor dragged me towards the door. “Let’s go get trashed and paint the village red.”

While we went back to our rooms to change into party clothes, Alex commandeered Simon from the kitchen (the place was nearly spotless. I was impressed. I wondered how much he charged to work outside the hall …). All us girls piled into the back of the limo Libby had rented to ferry her to the ceremony tomorrow. Elinor handed around a makeup compact so we could get dolled up, while Bianca found a bottle of bubbly in the limo’s fridge and popped the cork.

“Hey!” Libby cried. “That’s meant to be for after the wedding tomorrow.”

“We’ll replace it in the morning,” Bianca pushed Libby’s head back and tipped the bottle into her mouth. “Now drink. Tonight is your last night of freedom.”

By the time the limo dropped us off at Tir Na Nog, The bottle was already empty, and we were halfway through the second one. Libby was already tipsy. While Elinor and I helped her inside and found a booth near the bar, Bianca whipped across the street to the mini-mart.

“Make way for shots!” Elinor cried, dumping a tray of multi-coloured thimbles of doom down on the table.

“We’re going to die horribly,” I moaned, as she shoved one into my hand. I drank so rarely that I was going to be passed out in a matter of minutes.

“I know. It will be brilliant. Now, drink up.” Elinor clinked glasses with mine, and we all threw our heads back and downed our first shot. The alcohol burned my throat, and a warmth spread across my stomach. I shouldn’t have been doing this. I should have been in bed, trying to sleep before the wedding. If I messed up the food, my catering business would be over before it even began …

Oh, stop being such a worrywart,
a voice inside my head scolded me.
You hardly ever get to enjoy yourself. Take this opportunity while you have it. You never know when your next heartbreak is going to hit you.

“Look what I found.” Bianca cried triumphantly as she dumped a bag down on the table. “No hen night is complete without dirty games!”

“Let’s do more shots!” Alex reached for her purse.

“Not for me. I can’t afford—” I started to say, but Alex waved a black card in my face.

“Don’t worry, Belinda. Ryan gave me his black card. Tonight is on him.”

We sculpted penises out of the Play-Doh and downed shots at a speed that would have made Lemmy Kilmster baulk. I was so busy laughing at Alex’s ridiculously oversized cock (“Is that why Ryan always looks so smug?” Bianca hooted in her typically crass style) that I didn’t even realise how drunk I was until I got up to go to the toilet and fell over.

“Ooops,” I tried to get up, but my arms were made out of jelly. I flopped back down on the seat.

“Come on, you.” Alex slurred. “We’d better get you to the bathroom.” She tried to pull me up by my shoulders, but only succeeded in pitching forward and toppling over on to the floor herself. We lay there together, giggling uncontrollably, until Elinor and Bianca helped us up. Grabbing each other around the neck, we stumbled through the bar and managed to find the ladies’ loo.

“I love you, you wacky bitch,” Alex cried as she fell through the door of the stall.

“I love you, too.” I slurred back, suddenly desperate to spill all my feelings to her. “This is the best night ever. I haven’t had a night out in such a long time. I probably will never have one again.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty head about it,” Alex yelled back over the stall door. “Everything will work out for you, Belinda. Cole will come back, and you’ll find some money, and the shop will be fine. You’ll get everything you want because you’re awesome and you … hic … deserve it.”

“Awww, thanks.” While I waited for Alex in the stall, I leaned against the wall and looked at myself in the mirror. I was smiling. Looking at my smile made me smile more broadly, and that made me laugh. I was standing in the ladies’ loo cackling like a harpy.

And all the while, thoughts of Cole tugged at the back of my mind. I was wearing the tight black dress I’d worn the first time I came to the pub with Cole. That seemed like such a long time ago, now. Before I’d been kidnapped. Before Cole had left me. Before he started to appear in my dreams and then randomly stopped. Where was he right now? What was he doing? Did he think about me at all?

No, mustn’t think about Cole. Bad Belinda. Must obliterate all thoughts of him. It’s over. The sooner you recognise it’s over, the better off you’ll be.

Alex slammed open her stall door. “I have peeed!” She pumped her fist in triumph. “Now let us drink!”

I don’t remember arriving back at the table, and I don’t remember what was shoved into my hands, but I drank it, and the fog over my mind moved lower, shouting down more of my thoughts. I laughed as loud as I could, and gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling over. I threw something, smashed my fist into something squishy … Play-Doh, I think. The room spun.

“Let’s get her home,” someone said, their voice far away. Hands gripped me under my arms, and soft voices called encouraging statements at me, although all their words faded into a blur. I moved along with them, loudly protesting that they were kidnapping me, but actually secretly glad they were preventing me from falling over.

“I fucking love you guys,” I yelled, trying to make the faraway voices hear me.

“We know, sweetie.” someone replied. “Hurry, Elinor. Call Simon.”

I was on the street. A man was walking towards me. His eyes looked up, and met mine. I pitched backward, shock rocketing through my body.

“Go away!” I screamed. The last thing I needed to see was Ethan. Not here, not now.
No no no no no—

“Belinda!” The figure lurched towards me, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me hard. His face was inches from mine. He looked awful – pale, emaciated, as though he’d given far too much blood and hadn’t got his lollipop. The skin on his cheeks hung in tatters, and vicious cuts crisscrossed his neck, forehead, and arms. His eyes bugged out from his head, wild and crazy. In the three years we’d dated, I never saw Ethan look so crazy.

“Belinda. You have to help me.”

I laughed. His whole face fell. He reached out a bleeding hand to me, his eyes pleading.

“Please. You’re the only one who can save me. He’s going to—”

“You are
serious?”
I screeched. “You want me to
help
you? You took everything from me. You cleaned out my bank accounts, you took all my stuff, you left me with nothing but a broken heart and a mountain of debt.”

“I already apologised for that. I need—”

“You
apologised?
” I clutched the wall behind me as my vision swam. “Oh, that’s rich. I don’t recall ever receiving this heartfelt, sincere apology. Perhaps it was lost in the post? Maybe you wrote it down on the pad by the phone before you packed that up and took it away. By all means, Ethan, carry on with your story of woe, then. I’ll just listen.” Tears pricked at my eyes. I blinked them away, furious at myself of crying. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to yell, to scream, to pummel his stupid face in with my fists.

“Thank you. That man, Morchard, he’s going to—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. I’m not listening, Ethan. I have no desire to hear another word out of your mouth ever again. Did you get a new cat to play on Chairman Meow’s scratching post? Do you put your feet up on my coffee table at the end of a hard day scamming people out of their money? Are you enjoying wearing my favourite jumper, or did you sell it to the Salvation Army to pay for your crack? Don’t answer that, I can’t stand the sight of your lips moving.” The tears won their battle with my rage, and spilled over, pouring down my face. I wiped them away angrily, and laughed.

He shook my shoulders harder, his mouth hanging open, trying to speak to me. But all my rage tumbled out of me, my words like weapons I lobbed at him, beating him back with their venom. “I can’t believe I wasted three years of my life on you. You think so little of me that you would dare to come back here after what you did and try to appeal to my sense of kindness? I have nothing left to give you, Ethan. You took it all from me.” Tears streamed down my face. All the alcohol inside me boiled in my veins, becoming white hot rage.

“Belinda, you don’t understand—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry over you anymore. I’ve cried enough tears over what you did. But do you know what? This is my gift to you, Ethan. The final piece of me that I give to you freely. Look into my eyes.” Ethan turned his face away. I grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly. “I said,
look at me.
This is what you did. This is your legacy. This is the man you are, Ethan, rotten inside and out.”