Devil's Frost, Spellspinners Series #3 (The Spellspinners of Melas County) (12 page)

“Jacob disappeared from the mourning site. I’m worried he might be talking to Congression about”—I wasn’t sure how to put it—“the incident.”

Her mother, looking worried, stepped between us. “I know we have a lot to discuss, but first I wanted to formally introduce myself.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Sweet Logan,” she said, her eyes inexplicably misty, “it’s so nice to see you. I’m Iris.”

“Logan.”

She wrapped my hands in hers and gave them a warm squeeze. “Lovely to see you,” she repeated.

“Likewise.” Then she put her arms around my neck in the most nurturing of gestures. I stiffened, surprised, as she squished me into a tight, loving hug. I swallowed. This moment of maternal warmth was so foreign, so oddly painful, it was like digging up a box of memories that’d been buried for so long all that remained were shattered pieces.

A flash and I was with my own mother. Wrapping my arms around her. It wasn’t just a memory; it was an image—a gift maybe, from Lily’s mother, who was soft as about-to-be-baked dough. I finally melted in to her embrace, unable to fight it. A stubborn tear pooling in my eye threatened to slip.

When she pulled back, this witch, Lily’s mother, looked into my eyes knowingly. Hers were like Lily’s before the Stones—kind, loving. I had to swallow back the emotion. It was overwhelming. Sometimes you don’t know how much you miss something until you’ve had a glimpse of it. When she pulled away, she placed her hand on my cheek and whispered into my ear, “Your mother would be very proud of you.”

My lips parted in surprise, and I was about to ask if she’d known her and beg her to tell me everything, but she raised her voice and said louder, “It’s nice to meet you, Logan. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Likewise,” I said, blinking, a little confused as to why she didn’t want Lily to know what she’d said to me but still so overwhelmed by the gesture and the memory and the kind words that I just stood there.

It took me a moment to regain my composure, but soon my gaze went back to Lily. Her hand shook, and she visibly tipped to the right. I reached out and grabbed her arm. My skin ignited at the feel of her, and our eyes glued on to each other; I wanted to carry her into the woods, tell her with my mouth and my body just how sorry I was, how much I was suffering with her.

Iris looked from Lily back to me. She wouldn’t have been happy if she knew what I wanted to do to Lily, what I wanted to do with her
.

But then Iris excused herself, and I grinned, appreciating that she understood Lily and I needed to be alone. Once we were, I closed the space between us, bringing her, finally, into my arms. She crushed her body in to mine, again setting my skin on fire. She buried her face in my shirt, her warm breath on my shoulder, her chest heaving against mine, melting in to me. I wanted her so bad it hurt. I tried to compose myself. We had things that had to be said.

Lily turned her body away from me, facing the sea. Instinctively, my hands slipped around her slender waist. Resting her fingers on my arms, she gently stroked my skin with her fingertips. My ink rose to the surface. She knew exactly how to drive me wild.

Leaning back in to my chest, she whispered in a sultry voice full of emotional meaning, “What I wanted to tell you in the forest was that my coven always suspected you carried the mark. This mark…like mine.” Inching a bit away from me, she folded down her waistband, exposing the beautiful curved bone of her bare hip.

I sucked in a breath. My heart pounded in my chest. “May I?”

She nodded, goose bumps rising on her skin as I outlined the natural moon mark on her hip bone with the pad of my thumb. She squirmed at my touch, wriggling in to me. I bit my lip—her mother could be back at any moment.

But she twisted her beautiful neck and looked up at me with wide, expectant eyes. Guilt spread through my chest. She was trying to tell me something important. I needed to focus on that instead of the fact that I could see down her dress and that what I saw was dazzling. “You have the same markings,” I whispered into her ear, my voice low and husky with emotion.

I sucked in a breath as Lily turned and gently tickled her fingers down my stomach to my waistband and then folded the edge of my pants down around my hip. I tensed under her touch, and was reminded of being in the clearing with her. Well, with the doppelganger I thought was Lily. I watched her fingers on my hip, willing myself to focus on what she was trying to show me. Sure enough, something was there. First a rising shadow, then a clean palliate, which eventually gave way to the full pastel color of Rose Moon’s magic.

Just like Lily’s.

“What does this mean?” I asked, now fully focused on what she was talking about.

She beamed, leaning her cheek against my chest, looking happy and innocent again. Such a contrast with those new fiery eyes of hers. “It means we both wear the mark of—”

Then who showed up but Jacob, the king of excellent timing. I adjusted my pants, making sure he couldn’t see the mark.

That wasn’t all he knew. What happened next was so confusing. Essentially, Jacob went from combative and threatening to moony-eyed over Iris while finding a way to confess to killing my parents. By the time things had begun to settle down, I was completely taken aback, Iris had nearly died, and then who rounds the corner but Carriag.

Suddenly, I was face-to-face with the guy we lovingly refer to as Red Death, aka, the famous Spellspinner executioner who flies in from Ireland when things need to be—how can I put it delicately?—taken care of in a specific way. Essentially, you see him? You know shit is bad and getting worse.

He stood in the middle of a band of hooded Congressional backup, and they had Orchid tied up with ropes. Orchid. Who pretended to be Lily, tricked me into kissing her (among other things), and then tried to kill me in the Gleaning tonight. It was any other girl tied up like that, I’d feel terrible and try to help her escape, but Orchid? She pretty much had it coming.

“Jacob, we’ve got company,” I called over my shoulder, not wanting Iris or Lily to be discovered by the Congression and Carriag.

Jacob sauntered over, all confidence, like nothing had just happened. Like he hadn’t just used black magic to save Lily’s mom—one of the elder witches and our ancient enemy.

Leave it to Jacob to push the swarm on demand. “Ah, Carriag. I’m happy to see you, as always. How lucky that you happened to be here during the Gleaning. I see you’ve met my son, Logan. We were having a little chat by the edge of the cliff.”

“You probably had much to discuss, Jacob,” Carriag said.

Carriag, who was built like a linebacker, standing at an unusually tall height of at least seven feet, oozed aggression.

“Yes, we have,” Jacob said, without acknowledging me.

Carriag looked at me, and I bowed my head in respectful reverence. One wrong move and I’d be dead in seconds.

Though I wasn’t sure of Jacob’s end goal here, I had no choice but to play along. I wasn’t about to mess with Red Death, especially with Lily only a hundred yards away, hovering over her mother, who was in who-knows-what condition. I had to get out of this latest tangle, get Lily, and hit the road. I just hoped Lily had heard the urgency in my voice when I alerted Jacob and that she had the good sense to stay hidden with her mother.

“Excellent. And you have the stone in your possession?”

Jacob nodded confidently. “We do.”

We
do? I gritted my teeth and nodded. It was back with Lily. What if he asked for it now?

“Wonderful. Then we have to bury only one wayward youngster today.”

Bury her?
I guess things didn’t go well during Orchid’s questioning with the Congression. Cackling into the moist air, he held on to Orchid’s arm tightly. I almost felt bad for her.

I felt Lily rounding the corner, and when our eyes met, I made a small gesture to tell her to be still. Once she figured out what was happening to her best friend, she wouldn’t stay still for long.

As the Congression got ready to execute Orchid, Lily and Jacob seemed to be communicating. She kept looking at him, and it was clear to me they were forming a plan. Was it because he saved Iris and now she felt a loyalty toward him? Whatever the reason, it was disconcerting. She just heard him confess he’d had my parents murdered and had kidnapped me. Just because he did one slightly decent thing didn’t mean he had a decent bone in his decrepit body. If we were able to get out of here unscathed, I needed to fill her in on the First Rule of Jacob, which is: Never Trust Jacob.

Finally, the old bastard clued me in to whatever it was they were silently agreeing to:
They are waiting for the syzygy to occur, and then they’ll toss Orchid over the cliff. You get Lily and jump in after her. I’ll take care of things up here so you’ll have a decent head start. Good luck, son.

What the hell? He sounded almost human. Whatever his relationship was or is with Iris, it was not minor.

It all happened so fast. When the planets were about to align, Carriag and his cronies lifted the struggling witch in the air, and while she screamed and squirmed, they tossed her over like she was an old sandwich. It was incredibly upsetting. I mean, she was a bad person, but you don’t want to see anyone, especially a young girl, tossed into the raging sea like this. I winced, imagining the rocks underneath. Broken limbs and a floating body.

But what could I do?

Lily looked at me and shot me a little nod. I nodded back. When the eclipse happened, shadowing the cliff with night, I grabbed her hand and leapt.

I knew something was wrong right away. The air was freezing. Looking down, I saw why. The ocean was frozen with falling snow. Carriag or Jacob—who knew? But we were soaring toward it and fast. Lily saw it, too, and quickly mumbled a chant, and I joined her. We hit the surface together, busting through a solid inch or so of ice.

Time was passing slowly but quickly. We couldn’t breathe. And then I started to see things. In the blurred light water, I thought I saw
them.

Two images. Glowing. A woman with emerald eyes and flowing red hair drifting in the water like luminescent seaweed and a man, tall, with kind eyes and a welcoming smile. They looked better than in my memory. I’ve heard that. That in the next life Spellspinners returned to their ideal selves. The time in their life when they were the happiest. Not necessarily the most beautiful or successful, but the most content. That is the state in which they pass eternity, if they were kind and loving and good while living.

It was them. I knew it.

My dead mother and father reaching out to me, welcoming me to the next world. To the world where they’d lived since Jacob burned them alive.

We moved toward these bright ghostly images in the cold water.

They looked so warm. So comforting.

Just a little bit farther and I’ll be with them again.

Lily pressed her cheek into my back, warming me with her body.

We’re going to make it, Logan. I can feel it.

With her words, my parents’ images faded into the water along with my mother’s sirenlike voice, “Not yet, my beautiful boy. Not yet.”

We washed up on a secluded beach. It was dark. We had to be past Melas; there were no houses around, just some twinkling in the distance. “Lily! Lily!”

I slapped her face, not hard enough to hurt her, but hopefully enough to wake her.

“Lily!”

I shook her and pressed my hands on her chest and pushed. And pushed. Called her name. Finally, a stream of water dribbled from her lips. Her last breath had been water; she had run out of air.

She was drowning.

I pressed again. Hard. “Lily. Come on, baby, wake up. We’re here. We’re out of the ice.”

Her eyes flickered open, and I collapsed onto the sand next to her when she breathed my name. “Logan?”

She tried to sit up.

“I’m here, Lily. I’m right here.” I sat back up as she clawed at the air, like she was trapped in a nightmare. I wondered what she was seeing.

I covered her cold hands with mine.

Warm skin. Warm hands.

“Look at me, Lily. I’m here.”

Her body began to still. She breathed deeply, bringing air to where water had been. “Are we okay?”

“I think so.” I blinked away the image of my parents calling to me from the next life. I wanted to tell her, but it seemed so sad now. We had come so close to dying, but the thought that I would’ve been with them, with the parents who loved me and missed me and sacrificed their lives to save me, made me feel a lump of regret that I hadn’t crossed over. And that was not something I wanted to share.

It’s not your time,
they’d told me.

I needed to trust that.

We found Orchid and did some spells to clear her, to bring her back. Lily was obviously upset over it and wanted to sit with her, so I left the two of them alone and walked back to the beach. I built a fire and leaned back in the sand, felt the delicious coolness of fresh, night air in my lungs as the burning sticks warmed my whole body. I began to try to process the events that took place that day.

What I knew for sure:

Chance was counting on us for survival. Period. We didn’t find the cure, he died for real. For good.

Orchid was an escaped prisoner and we were now accomplices. Chased by a man who was ten times the devil Jacob was. Carriag was a merciless, violent killing machine—I wasn’t even convinced he was human. He’d find us quickly; we needed to get out of here by dawn and on the road to the Isle. Somehow.

Jacob…he had changed. Inexplicably. I didn’t know what happened in the aftermath of him saving Iris, but it had to have had something to do with her. Jacob, after confessing to arranging the murder of my parents and the kidnapping of me, aided in Lily’s and my escape. Why would he do this?

Lily. I’d brought up this very question under the water, but it was clear she didn’t want to discuss it. She was hiding something, but I knew Lily, and if I pressed her, she would only bury her secret deeper. I had no choice but to wait and hope eventually she would share it with me.