“She’s here,” I whispered, and Haley nodded, knowing exactly who I was talking about.
“She’s always with us, Gray. She always will be.” Haley returned my smile, a tear glittering on her cheek. Then, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she said, “It’s time. Close your eyes, center yourself, and try to call up the ones you seek—images, feelings, emotions, sensations, words, anything that will bring them closer to you.”
I obeyed, letting my thoughts drift to Emilio and Liam. It wasn’t hard; they were always on my mind, always in my heart.
I saw Emilio’s deep, soulful eyes. His warm smile. I tasted the rich, chocolatey brownies we’d shared. I felt the warmth of his kisses, his touch, his love for me. My palms tingled as I remembered stroking his coarse fur the first time I’d seen him shift into wolf form. My shoulders dipped as I recalled the time the wolf had pinned me to the ground at the safe house during our training, and the time he’d pinned me to the bed as a man. I heard the music of his laugh in my ears, and I held him close until his image was as firm and real as if he were standing right beside me.
Liam came to me just as easily, though not as comfortably. With Liam, there was no escaping the bitter taste of betrayal, the pang of something precious lost. But I wouldn’t push it away. Acknowledging and confronting that pain was the only way I’d ever be able to forgive him fully, and I wanted to. More than anything. So I welcomed even that, the hollow ache in my heart, the twist in my gut that accompanied the rush of butterflies and the electric sparks of our first kiss. Goosebumps rose along my arms when I remembered our first meeting the night Sophie had died and he’d come to take her soul. My fingers tingled at the spider-webby touch of his robes, and a shy heat crept to my cheeks as I pictured the first time he’d taken his human form, just to make me more comfortable.
He was with me now, too. Both of them were, side by side in my mind’s eye. Side by side in my heart.
I let out a deep, slow breath, and I felt Haley’s energy shifting before me. In a soft, meditative tone, she reminded me to hold on to whatever images I’d called forth.
She was still holding my hands, and now she gently turned them so that my palms were facing up. I knew what was coming next, but I barely felt the bite of the blade as she sliced it across my hand. Instinctively I curled my fingers into a fist, squeezing my blood into the bowl.
Haley released me, and seconds later I heard the sound of a match being struck. The scent of sulfur filled my nose, and the contents of the blow flared to life in a blaze of light and heat that radiated across my face.
Haley began to chant, and I joined in, speaking the words like a mantra until I’d slipped into a deeply meditative state.
“Earth, air, water, fire. Earth, air, water, fire. Earth, air, water fire…” The words became automatic, and though Haley hadn’t instructed me to do so, I continued the repetition dozens of times, not stopping even as she altered her own chanting to speak the spell:
Your connection runs deep
As blood in the vein
Let it guide you this night
Through distance, through pain
May your souls become one
Across time and space
And bring you together
In his resting place
The blaze of the bowl dimmed, and silence descended. My lips still uttered the chant, but I could no longer hear the sound of my own voice.
A gentle breeze stirred my hair, and I breathed in the scent of lavender and lilac. When the moment felt right, I opened my eyes.
Haley was gone. I was no longer sitting on the floor of Elena’s guest room.
I was, unsurprisingly, back in my own magical realm, the now-familiar black trees glittering with silver threads. Slowly, I got to my feet, trying to get my bearings. The spell had brought me here, which meant that Liam and Emilio were somewhere in my realm, probably near the gate to the Shadowrealm.
The crunch of leaves and branches sounded at my back, and I spun around expecting Liam, my lips already curving into a smile.
But the gaze that greeted me was not the peaceful, ancient blue of Liam Colebrook’s gaze.
The half-human, half-beast creature before me didn’t even have eyes. Just two black pits oozing with foul blood, carved into a bashed-in skull that was covered in a patchwork of tattered flesh and bloody, matted fur. A long, crooked muzzle extended out beneath the pits like a door loose on its hinges.
He snapped his jaw, revealing a series of rotten, infected holes where his pseudo-vampire fangs should’ve been. And though he couldn’t speak, the haunting words of the past slithered into my memory, filling my mouth with the taste of bile.
Leaving the shadows already, Sunshine?
It seemed the twisted monster who’d been hunting me for a decade had caught up with me once again.
Eight
