Darkness Fair (The Dark Cycle Book 2) (23 page)

“Connor,” I whisper, “I—”

But he turns to me and moves closer, so close, sticking the words in my throat.

He lifts his fingers and brushes my cheek. “I know you care about Aidan. Maybe it’ll always be Aidan, I don’t know—with this fate shit, no one knows. But I won’t pretend I don’t care if that’s going to push you away and hurt you. I thought it was the right thing to do, but I can’t, I just can’t let you believe I don’t care.” His eyes settle on my lips. “Because I do. So much, it feels like a punishment.”

I stare at him in stunned silence, unable to formulate a response. His touch slides down to my jaw, and his thumb and finger take my chin, tipping my head.

“I want to kiss you again,” he says quietly. “This time I won’t pretend to regret it.”

I wait, holding my breath, until he closes the distance between us and my eyes shut, a sigh of relief leaving my chest. His lips brush mine, so gently it’s like a whisper, but it sends a rush of heat over my skin. His hand moves to my shoulder, gripping me, like he’s straining to hold back. With each touch my heart beats faster, and as the kiss deepens I feel myself getting lost in the moment of breathless tension.

And then he pulls away, and I open my heavy eyelids. His features are pinched like he’s in pain, and I’m not sure what he’s feeling.

“Don’t,” I whisper. “Whatever you’re thinking, just stop. It was perfect.”

“I’m not a good guy, Rebecca.”

“You are to me,” I say.

He shakes his head but he doesn’t say anything else. He just breathes deep, in and out, and then squeezes my hand before letting go, like he’s trying to reassure me. I can only sit back in the seat and watch him pull onto the road again. I try to hold in a sigh, as the feeling of this moment soaks in, deeper and deeper, into my skin, my heart, to a place inside where whatever happens after right now, that perfect memory won’t ever be stolen from me.

THIRTY-NINE

Rebecca

Kara peeks her head into Holly’s room around eight o’clock. “Do you still want to come?” she asks me. Her voice is tight, but there’s vulnerability in her eyes.

I have no idea where she’s taking me or what we’re going to be doing, but I feel like it’s important that I at least try to be her friend. Even though I’m pretty sure that’s never going to happen. I mean, she’s Kara. She hates me.

The weird thing is, I don’t hate her anymore. If I ever did. I just don’t trust her. Aidan trusts her, though, and I trust Aidan, so I’m going to see where this open door leads.

“I’ve just gotta get my boots on,” I say, grabbing them off the closet floor.

Holly looks up from her book. “Where are you
amigas
going?” She’s sitting in bed, trying to get through
The Jungle,
by Upton Sinclair, for some English class she’s taking. She has to keep setting her alarm for thirty-minute intervals to stay awake. I already told her that Kara’s taking me on some mystery adventure tonight, and hinted that maybe she could come along, but Holly was pretty adamant that she’s staying out of all adventures for a while, since the ones she took with Ava got Lester killed.

Kara opens the door a little wider when she answers. “I just need to check something.”

Holly glances over to me, looking like she’s trying to send me a message:
Don’t go
, maybe?

I zip up my second boot and stand, straightening my sundress. “Well, I’m ready for whatever.” I grab my pink cardigan off the foot of the bed.

Holly snorts. “Don’t say that. A dead lady came to me last night in my dream. She’d kicked the proverbial bucket while bungee jumping. Those were probably her last words before the bungee snapped.”

“God,” I say.

“Yeah, she wants me to find her fiancé and hit him in the balls with a socket wrench—apparently he was some sort of car mechanic, I don’t know . . . but he cheated on her with her sister. Yikes.” She sighs, like she’s gossiping about an actual friend. “Anyway, I told her she should just AMF and move on.”

“Are we seriously talking about this right now?” Kara asks.

I slide on my cardigan. “What’s AMF?”

Kara groans. “Does it matter?”

“Adios, mother effer—but, like, with an
ucker
at the end.” Holly winks.

Kara throws her head back. “So lame. I’m leaving. Good-bye.” And she turns, heading for the stairs.

“You better consider this,” Holly says as I’m rushing to follow.

I pause and give her a questioning look.

“Kara’s in a bad place right now, friend. You want to be careful. Her claws sting when they come out.”

“I know.” I’ve felt them dig in. “But I need to try and make this right.”

Holly frowns. “Why?”

I shake my head, not knowing the answer myself. It just feels important. “Please don’t tell Connor, okay?” I don’t need him chasing after me again. If that demon, Hunger, and its minions really are out there looking for me, they’ll find me eventually. And I can’t hide in this house forever. Time to take my freedom back a little—from boys, from fear.

When I hurry out the back door, Kara’s sitting on the porch step, waiting for me. “You finally ready?” She stands and starts walking through the yard, to the garage. I follow, deciding silence is my best bet for now.

We climb into the Camaro. She starts the engine then pushes something, making music fill the cab. It’s a man singing, and the thing she pushed—which looks like a smaller version of a VHS tape from the ’80s or something—says
Simon & Garfunkel
on the side. It sounds nice, melodic and relaxing. I wouldn’t have expected Kara to like something like this, though.

“What kind of music player is that?” I ask in fascination. I can hear a whirring sound just underneath the notes.

She laughs. “Haven’t you ever seen an eight-track?”

Uh, that would be no. “Does it play video, too?” Didn’t VHS play video? I look around for a screen but I don’t see one.

She laughs harder. “Oh my God, you are hilarious. Wow.”

Okay, I’m going back to being quiet.

After a good half hour we’re pulling off the freeway, into what appears to be a not-so-nice neighborhood. I stare at the people walking down the street, the graffiti and dilapidated buildings, wondering if we should really be in an area like this at night. “Where are we?”

“I think this is Lynwood or Watts. Around there.” She looks sideways at me when we stop at a light. “You scared?”

My heart speeds up. “I’m just not sure we should be out here at night.”

“Where we’re going isn’t that bad,” she says. “Better than the place in Chinatown where I grew up. Some of the walls in our building were made of cardboard and pieces of furniture. The old lady who ran the complex was crazy as shit. Tossed a kid’s dog off the roof when it peed in the hall.”

I don’t even know how to comment on that.

“Just don’t look anyone in the eye,” she says, turning down a residential street.

I grip the edge of my cardigan.

She smirks. “I’m kidding. Relax.”

“We’re in the projects. At night.”

“People actually live here, you know. They don’t just shoot each other and steal each other’s cars. There’s, like, kids and grandmas and stuff.”

“I know.” She’s making me feel like a prissy rich girl from
The Hills
or something. God, I better not come off as prissy.

She parks under a streetlight, in front of several rows of apartment buildings. We get out of the car and I move to walk close beside her, trying not to think about all the movies and TV shows I’ve seen where there were stabbings and shootings in places that looked just like this.

Kara points the key fob at the Camaro and clicks the alarm on as we make our way down the path between the two buildings.

“She’s right up here,” Kara says, pointing to the second building down on our right.

“
She
, who?”

“The witch.”

Not liking the sound of that. I try not to look at the group of six huge guys standing by an apartment door on our left. “Why’re we here?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer.

A whistle comes from the group of young men and someone catcalls, “Don’t go, Ginger. You’re breakin’ my heart.”

We finally stop in front of a door and Kara knocks. There’s a strange symbol above the peephole. A few seconds pass when all I can hear is the clinking of chains and sliding of locks, then the door opens.

“Kara, child,” the woman says, with a warm smile on her face. “You surprise me, I thought you’d be done with all this.”

Not a super good reader of the future, then.

She’s pretty, in a safe, grandmotherly sort of way. She’s a round African-American woman with silver-grey hair, tied with a scarf. Her dark eyes seem to carry a lot of mischief in them. Her grin shows her teeth, and several are covered in gold. Her clothes are colorful and flowy, and about a dozen necklaces clatter at her chest; several dozen bracelets clack as she moves in for a hug.

She squeezes Kara—who pats the woman’s back awkwardly—then turns to me and grabs me for a hug. I don’t have time to respond before she’s holding me out in front of her by the shoulders, looking me over. “Oh, girl, you’re goin’ down a rough road.” And she makes a sound in her throat like an underline of the statement. “Poor thing.”

“This is Rebecca, Miss Mae.”

“Lovely.” She squeezes my upper arms. “She’s just lovely. Look at that hair! Pretty as a sunset.”

I give her a stiff smile. “Thanks?”

Miss Mae laughs heartily and waves us in.

“Who’s coming to visit, Aunt Mae?” Someone asks from behind me.

We all stop and turn. A young African-American man stands outside on the porch with a group of guys—the ones that hooted at us when we walked by.

“You reading people’s futures again?” he asks. “Inviting the riff-raff back into the hood?”

“Don’t be nosy, now, Tray.” She waves her hands like she’s shooing a stray dog.

He looks the same age as Connor, maybe a year or so younger, but there’s a hard edge to his eyes that makes me think he’s seen too much pain. He’s dressed in baggy jeans and a large white T-shirt, and he has gauges in his ears and an intricate tattoo on his neck. He smiles and his gaze skims over me, then Kara. He seems to recognize her. “Back again? How’s my brother?”

“Jax is fine,” Kara says. “Better now that he’s not living with his dad.”

Tray nods and then looks over to me again. “You a new recruit to the house of crazies?”

I shake my head.

“She’s a friend of the new guy, Aidan,” Kara says.

He smirks at her. “I thought you were that Aidan guy’s
friend
.”

I expect her to be annoyed, but she just smirks back and punches him in the shoulder. “I’ll tell Jax you said hey. But you should come by one of these days. Things have been tough since Lester.”

Tray nods. “I’ll find time.” Then he reaches out, touching her cheek in this very endearing way that makes me wonder. “You taking care of yourself?”

“Always.”

“You let us work, now,” Miss Mae says to them. She takes me gently by the arm. “Come on now, sweetheart. Let’s get that lily skin inside before the wolves pounce. Those boys’re crafty. They’ll have your doe eyes full’a stars before you know it.”

A couple of the guys laugh and Tray smiles at me, and I see what she means. He’s got the same smile as Jax, slick and handsome, but he seems much more dangerous. Mostly because he’s being a gentleman.

“Nice to meet you, friend of Aidan’s,” he says.

“Rebecca,” I say, as Miss Mae pulls me farther into the apartment, shutting the door.

The place is small but tidy. I can see she’s tried to cover the water stains on the walls with paintings and quilts, and the stained carpet with rugs. The kitchen, living room, and eating area are all in one room and there’s a door beside the kitchen—probably leading to a bedroom and bathroom. The space is dimly lit, with only one lamp. I expected to see a lot of black, with skulls and pentagrams everywhere, but instead everything is full of color, with images of animals and nature settings in paintings, photos, and fabrics.

“So things still aren’t ironed out, then?” Miss Mae asks Kara as she settles at the yellow kitchen table. She motions for me to sit in a chair across from her.

Kara sits on the sheet-covered couch a few feet away. “No, it’s gotten a little more complicated.”

“But this is the one?” Miss Mae points at me.

I look between the two of them. Why are they talking about me like I’m not here? “
The one
, what?” I ask.

Miss Mae doesn’t answer, she just picks up a large deck of cards and sets it in front of me. “Shuffle these, child.”

I stare at the deck. Tarot cards, I’m fairly sure. “I’m here so you can read my tarot?”

“I asked if you wanted to help,” Kara says. “This is how you can help.”

I feel tricked. She didn’t want to tell me where we were going because she needed me to be here. I’m the reason we came in the first place.

“How’s this supposed to help?” I ask.

“Our Kara here is very sick,” Miss Mae says. “That’s due to how she stole your destiny. If you could see your way to let me read you more closely, maybe answers can be found.”

I turn to Kara. “Aidan said that you’re sick because his power is hurting you.”

“Because magic was used to change me, and make me link with his powers. I wasn’t born to be the one,” she says. “That was you.”

Kara stole my destiny, as Aidan’s father said. But the how or why don’t matter anymore. We’ve come to the
what now?

I take the cards and shuffle as the two of them watch.

“Think about the boy, Aidan,” Miss Mae says. “Think about what he feels like, how he smells, think all the things you can’t say out loud about him. First, I’ll read the cards, which will be our foundation for the soul map.”

I’m not sure I want to know what a soul map is. I feel Kara staring at me but I close my eyes and do what Miss Mae told me to. As the cards sift through my hands, I let myself think of Aidan, how he makes me feel safe, how lovely he is, his amazing body, his eyes so full of depth, how my heart ached when I felt him wanting Kara and not me, and how much I wanted him to be mine. And then I open my eyes and place the newly shuffled deck on the table.

Miss Mae begins laying out the cards in a pattern, face down, and when she’s done she looks them over, like she’s considering. She turns the first one face up. “The Lovers, reversed. Yes, I expected this.” The card looks hand painted: a man and a woman who could be Adam and Eve, standing together under a bright sun. It’s numbered with a
VI
and says
The Lovers
at the bottom. It’s upside down.

“Lovers imbalanced,” she says. “You love him but he doesn’t love you.” She turns the next card. “The Emperor. You see Aidan as your authority.” She turns the card underneath and sets it on top. “The Knight, reversed. But he’s disappointed you.”

My chest stings. Is this just going to be a rehashing of all the old wounds?

She moves to the two next cards and flips the first. “Death, reversed, hmm.”

Death?

“You’re resisting a change that’s attempting to make itself known.” She turns the next. “High Priestess. You’re very intuitive. Listen to your heart. This is where the answers lie.”

Well, that’s a little helpful, I guess.

“Now . . .” She takes a rolled-up square of white velvet from beside her and hands it to me. “This is where we begin the mapping. Lay this out in front of you and place your hands on it, palms up.”

My heart beats a little faster as I take the soft fabric and unroll it on the table. It’s embroidered with a golden circle around a double star with six points. I set my hands on it, palms up, and wait.

She places a clear crystal between my hands and then takes a small bottle and sprinkles the contents on my palms; it smells like a forest. She mutters something and suddenly I begin to feel tingling in my fingertips, a slight buzzing, like my hands are falling asleep. I can’t tell what she’s saying; it sounds like another language.