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“You have no idea what you just started,” he said, turning off the shower and carrying her to her bed.
Evelyn squealed, anticipation hot and heavy around her, more than certain she’d enjoy whatever plans Kade had in store for her.
Chapter Fifty-One
Evelyn
The next morning, Evelyn felt spent. Kade had somehow managed to unravel her senses and send her over the edge four times. She’d pleasured him as well, but it seemed he’d never allow her to outmatch his fingers and tongue. A few times, Evelyn had been tempted to straddle him and take him, craving him inside her, but Evelyn still didn’t want to rush it, and Kade didn’t seem inclined to do so either.
The storm had passed in the night and the screaming wind with it, and Evelyn was recovered from the demon attack. With the sun out, birds singing, and the streets filling with townsfolk again, she and Kade decided it was time to refocus on the murders.
Down the steps from her apartment, Kade parted from Evelyn with a kiss, heading in the direction of the Runaway Radish. He’d promised to return after collecting more of his things. In the meantime, Evelyn planned to find Aster and do more research. With one body part left from the witches’ creed, time wasn’t on their side.
Callum had only begun to stir. Shopkeepers turned their signs to “open,” children sprinted off to school, and merchants dragged their carts to the harbor market. Wind carried the scent of winter and the sea. It funneled into the street, twirling Evelyn’s dark, silky hair.
The Pages and Leaves’ open sign was already flipped, and Evelyn found the front door unlocked. It was a few hours earlier than usual for Aster to have opened up, and the shop bells chimed into a deafening silence.
Evelyn froze. Her magic sensed something off. Wrong. Aster’s magic—
Evelyn sucked in a breath. Death and decay had overtaken the shop. Flowers had wilted, green had gone gray, an ashen color drowning the shop in the presence of darkness. Not a single petaled butterfly flapped its wings. Evelyn tried to step over their lifeless bodies scattered on the ground as she moved farther into the shop.
Then she stopped, searing dread coursing through her like a bolt of lightning. She knew. Her heart ached, her chest tightened.
Aster.
“Aster!” Evelyn called out, but she already felt her friend’s lack of magic, her missing light, and knew deep down her friend would not answer.
Her magic sensed only death.
“Aster!”
Evelyn ran to the back of the shop. Skidding and halting at the sight of the body—
A wretched scream rang deep from Evelyn’s belly, powered by the pain of her soul and magic. She collapsed and shook, crawling to Aster’s dead and lifeless form. Evelyn brought her poor, petite frame into her arms, wetness soaking into her trousers, slicking her hands, soaking her hair. Aster’s red curls. The horrible angle of her neck. Red blood on her lips. There was so much blood.
Red. Red. Red.
On the ground. On her body. On her arms.
She tried to unsee it, tried to make it not real and—
Evelyn’s heart fractured, and her magic flared alive with another cry of anguish. Aster’s hands. Her small freckled fingers. The hands she potted plants with, grew life with, cast magic with, laughed into.
Gone.
Evelyn screamed again, the sound so inhuman she wasn’t sure it belonged to her. Between the ringing in her ears and the pain coursing through her, her magic threw out a wall of flame, shielding her from the outside world. Her sweet and innocent friend was dead. She kept muttering to herself that it wasn’t true, wishing she’d wake up from this nightmare.
Someone called her name behind the barricade of her magic, yelled out for her over the ringing of heartache.
She’d been upstairs with Kade in their cocoon of exploration and bliss, and her friend was dead. She’d set aside her duty for a moment—
“Evelyn,” the voice said. Evelyn slumped at the familiar tenderness, noted the sheer worry in Kade’s tone as he reached her. Her barrier of flame dropped, and he rushed toward her.
When his sights fell on Aster, he sank to the floor.
“She’s dead,” Evelyn said. “She’s . . .”
Evelyn sobbed, and Kade pulled her into his chest, Aster’s body draped over her lap. So small, so fragile, so lifeless.
