Page 48 of Hallowed Bones

No matter how much I want to ignore her, I can’t. Tonight proved that. She’s out of control, and if she stays like this for much longer, she’ll hurt someone.

Maybe even herself.

Haven’s burning stare sears into the side of my face, but I refuse to look back at her as I complete the drive. She remains silent, but no less angered and confused. I can practically feel the emotions rolling off her in waves.

The twin beams of my SUV’s headlights wash over the front of Bishop Manor. For the first time ever, I look up at the face of my home and wonder what an outsider must think of it. Will she hate it? Love it? Be drawn to it as the rest of us are?

Ivy clings to its stone façade like veins, weaving through cracked mortar and curling over tall, arched windows. A single light flickers in the window of a third-floor bedroom, staining the window with the colors of old blood and rain. Uncle Dimitri’s room. He must still be awake. No doubt he’s frustrated by my lack of communication lately. I haven’t even bothered to tell him about her.

I swing the SUV around the curved driveway, gravel crunching under the tires as we come to a stop. Without looking to the side, I cut the engine and then get out, circling the front of the vehicle. When I reach the other side and she still hasn’t opened her door, I do it for her. Her eyes don’t swing to me, though. Instead, they’re focused on the fountain in the center of the drive. I follow her gaze.

The stone cups of the fountain are choked with moss and moonflowers. I can’t remember the last time I’d seen it full of actual water. After a moment, Haven pulls her attention away and looks at me. I don’t say a word as she unbuckles her seat belt and gets out.

The pressure of her focus lingers on the nape of my neck, a prickle that won’t ease. I clench my hands into fists as I stomp up the cracked and creaking porch stairs before risking a second glance. A mistake.

Haven’s eyes are wide like a child’s, glimmering with an unspoken thirst for knowledge, for answers. Damn it. Even though I was the one who had sent that damn specter away, her power is practically cloying with how thick it is in the air. It clings to her skin like static. Raw and untamed.

It’s the kind of dangerous power that my father would have worshiped. Proof, as if we needed any more, that she has been chosen. I turn the handle and let myself into the foyer, holding the door as she steps in past me and looks up, her eyes moving over everything from the curving staircase to the wide floors and the chandelier.

“Ezra, is that you?” Cameron calls from the open doorway of the study a little ways up and to the left of the front entrance. Standing behind her as I am, I see it when Haven recognizes his voice. Her shoulders come up, and the muscles of her back flex beneath her thin shirt. My eyes continue their wayward path down until they stop on the rounded curve of her ass.

“Ezra?” Cameron calls again, and the sound of a book being put down jerks me back and makes me realize I’ve yet to respond.

With a grunt, I shrug out of my coat. “It’s me,” I say, dropping it onto one of the hooks along the wall next to the front doors. I stride forward, putting a hand against the small of Haven’s back and guiding her to the doorway. She resists initially, digging her heels in, but inevitably, she ends up exactly where I want her, in plain view of the others.

Reyes sits up from where he’d been reclining on one of the lounges, and Cameron’s eyes widen as he takes in Haven’s stricken face and me, standing next to her. His eyes flick from her to me, and his brow furrows. The answers he seeks, though, need to come from the woman between us.

“You can sit,” I say, moving past her and over to the glass cabinets in the back of the room. “Or not. Whatever feels better.”

Her gaze continues to bore into the side of my profile again. I don’t look back as I stride right for the alcohol. Opening the glass case, I close my fingers around the long neck of a bottle filled with amber liquid and yank it out.

I wish there’d been any other choice but bringing her here.

Cameron’s the first to speak. “What happened?”

Two thick fingers’ worth of alcohol pours into the glass on the counter, and I chance a look up. If I thought catching her reflection in the glass of the nearest cabinet would ease the power she has over me, I was wrong. The image of her, even mirrored, where she hesitates at the threshold, twists my guts.

The couch creaks as Reyes gets to his feet. “Haven? Are you all right?”

I turn to face the room, bringing the glass to my lips and taking the first sip of the fiery liquid. It burns a path down my throat as both Reyes and Cameron rush forward to crowd the girl. She stares straight ahead, not seeming to hear them. Straight at me.

I frown. Straighten. “Give her some room,” I bark. “She needs a moment.”

How I know that, I’m not sure, but it’s as if those eyes of hers are pleading with me, begging me to save her—to pull her out of herself. Fuck. That’s what the Goddess had told us. We are meant to save her.

Slamming the glass back down on the counter, I push away from the cabinet and stomp toward her. Reyes scowls at me. “She doesn’t need you to be a dick right now,” he snaps.

I brush him out of the way without a thought, the invisible power causing him to stumble to the side a step. His responding snarl of irritation reaches me a moment later. Cameron is more diplomatic with his approach.

“Maybe we can get her over to the couch and I can make her a hot chocolate?” He phrases the suggestion as a question.

I don’t respond, simply bend and pick her up, swinging her into my arms the same way that I’d had to carry her to my car after the ordeal. She finally seems to respond to that, her hands landing on my shoulders as she stares at me and her lips twist in a scowl. At least that reaction seems genuine and alive.

“What are you doing?” she asks, not angry but kind of curious, as if she’s more confused than mad when before, she appeared ready to rip my balls off my body. I wrinkle my nose; fucker still hurts.

“Getting you comfortable so you stop losing your shit,” I say.

“I’m not losing my shit.” Her denial might be more believable if she didn’t immediately curl into the couch as soon as I set her down and reach for one of the blankets thrown over the back, tugging it into her lap.