Page 144 of Raise the Blood

And around her finger, she wore his ring: a physical anchor of his love for her. An acrostic ring, he told her it was called. From the Victorian tradition of spelling out the impassioned messages of love that society decreed were too scandalous to be spoken aloud, and were instead worn on the finger like an open secret.

Hers was a worn band of antique gold embedded with stones of malachite, iolite, nuummite, and emerald.

MINE.

He dragged her against him, holding her in place as she obediently covered her lap with the beach blanket.Nothing to see here, she thought.This is all so totally innocent.

She stared at the waves as he freed himself from his swim trunks and slid smoothly inside her, making her let out a quiet gasp. She reached out behind her and cupped him by the jaw, turning his head so she could kiss him from over one shoulder. He made a pleased sound and thrust into her a little harder, before gripping her by the hips and holding her in place so she couldn’t move much at all as he rocked into her with shallow, steady bursts of friction that left her aching for more. When he came inside her with a soft shudder, she nearly let out a sob at the sweet desperate ache of it, and then she felt the hitch of his own satisfied sigh as he rested his chin on her head.

“Mine,” he said, and Nadine closed her eyes in sleepy agreement.

It wasn’t until they had packed up and gotten back into the car that she realized she had forgotten the shells.

???????

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Odessa asked. “It is history, after all.”

“It’s a book of lies,” Cal said. “It shouldn’t be memorialized any longer.”

Shrugging, Odessa tossed the green book on the bonfire, though a brief flicker of regret passed over her features. They had built the fire deep in Passer Woods, out by the shores of the alpine lake—Glass Lake. It reflected like glass now, as the spring moon rose above the snow-capped mountains, which were still vaguely bluish from the deep winter freeze.

All of them leaned back as the flames snapped angrily around the pages, letting out a burst of noxious, arsenic- and gilt-laden fumes. The air abruptly began to reek of burning leather as the vellum blackened and curled, as Caledon Cullraven’s evil words vanished in plumes of smoke.

Nadine felt a hot surge of satisfaction as she watched the book burn. Caledon had gloried in the pain that he had caused others. He’d wanted to build his legacy on that, writing it in the blood of those he’d murdered. What greater pain was there for a man like that, than to have all traces of his living self reduced to cold, black ash? If there was a hell, she hoped he was rolling in it.

She hoped he was burning the way his descendants had burned her sister.

Cal would not let her sit closer to the fire, not with the baby, but as she watched the green cover crumble to nothing, she felt a terrible, savage joy, not unlike the exhilaration she had felt when she’d struck Nathaniel with that bronze casting of the sparrow and watched him stumble backwards, visibly wounded, as her aim struck true.

Such feelings were dangerous in their potency, as far from nice as she was ever likely to get. And yet, Nadine felt quite sure that she would have thrown that sparrow at Nathaniel a thousand times more, just for the pleasure of watching him fall. In the warped, she could see how passions like that could flame high, burning out of control like a forest fire.

But she would never be like that, she thought. And neither would her child.

Odessa pulled out Nathaniel Cullraven’s last bottle of scotch, along with three beveled glasses. Two of them, she filled to the top, and the other, she filled only a quarter of the way. She gave this latter to Nadine, who shifted her baby—Anne Noelle—carefully to one arm to accept it.

“I’ve always wondered what it meant to raise the blood,” Odessa said.

“Pleasure,” Nadine said immediately. “It means pleasure above all else.”

Cal looked at her and in the shadow of the pines, she saw a faint trace of wildness in his smile as he glanced her way.

She knew he would ask for her tonight. Being in this place—it changed him. Blood called to blood, she thought, no matter how dark. Yes, the shadows still ran high in her husband, but never again would he plunge her in total darkness.

Because she had changed him, too.

“What should we toast to?” he asked.

Odessa lifted her glass. “Raise the blood?” she offered.

All three of them clinked.

“Raise the blood.”