When I’d finally come to at Ronan’s place after weeks of unconsciousness, he’d asked me my name. My mouth was so cracked and dry, he’d thought I’d said Grayanne instead of Rayanne.
He’d shortened it to Gray right then, and though I eventually told him my real name, by then I’d already gotten attached to the new one. So had Ronan.
“Rayanne died a long time ago,” I said. “My name is Gray.”
“Your name is ultimately unimportant. Your destiny, however, is quite another matter.”
“Destiny? What happened to choices?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive. But there are things about your path you must learn, must accept, no matter how difficult.”
His ominous tone did nothing to inspire confidence. I didn’t want to learn how to bring people back from the dead, and I certainly didn’t want to encourage whatever dark terror was going on inside me.
“But I’mnotevil,” I said. It felt necessary to point that out, but Death was unfazed.
“Evil has nothing to do with it. You have a gift, and you weren’t taught how to use it. You’ve abandoned this place, let it become overrun. And if you don’t reclaim it, someone else might do it for you.”
A cold finger of dread slithered up my spine, but I ignored it. So what if someone else reclaimed this place? I’d loved it as a child, as a teenager, but just like me, my magic place had changed.
“It doesn’t even feel like mine anymore.”
“You can’t fight this, Gray.” Death sighed. We’d reached the clearing near the stone pedestal, and I sensed it was time to go. For both of us. Turning to me, he said, “When you’re ready to accept yourself, call me.”
He vanished in a puff of thick, oily smoke, and a single black feather swirled before me.
“Hey! I don’t even have your number!”
But of course he didn’t come back. Didn’t respond. Just left me alone at the pedestal, the eyes of the forest looking on.
I reached up and snatched his stupid feather out of the air, crushing it with my fingers.
Everything went black.
Thirty-Two
Gray
The barista had served me a sand cookie and a venti sand mocha, topped with extra sand. Right?
It was the only explanation for the crunchy grit coating my tongue. My head wasn’t doing much better; a sharp pain lanced my skull with every beat of my heart.
Where am I?
I cracked an eyelid. The room spun so fast I couldn’t even tell what color the walls were.
Squeezing my eyes shut again, I focused instead on the voices coming from another room—tense, masculine voices quickly escalating into an argument. Darius and… sounded like Emilio?
“—should’ve brought me in on this earlier,” Darius snapped. “I don’t give a damn about protocol.”
“I noticed,” Emilio said. It had to be him, though I’d never heard him so angry. His accent was stronger than usual. “Hence all the evidence you and Gray contaminated tonight.”
I cringed inside. So he knew about that, then. So much for Darius’s associates cleaning up without a trace.
I did a quick mental check on my body, scanning myself for any injuries. Other than a bad case of beach-mouth and a throbbing head, all systems checked out.
“…rogue vamp operating in my territory,” Darius was saying. “You don’t think it’s relevant? For fuck’s sake, Alvarez. It could’ve been her.”
“It wasn’t,” Emilio said.
