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I shook my head. “No.” Turning to him so we stood only inches apart in the small hallway, I stared into his pale blue eyes. “Some skeletons are left in the closet for a reason, you know?”
Sig smiled and took one of my hands, pressing my fingers to his lips as if he meant to kiss them. His soft mouth grazed the sensitive whorls of my fingerprints, but it was too late for me to pull back when he bit into me.
“Ouch,” I exclaimed, trying to jerk my hand away when sharp pain exploded in my pointer finger. “What the hell?”
“Touch the door,” he instructed, releasing me. “Touch it and you may keep your skeleton locked up as long as you like.”
I did as he told me, pressing my bloodied digit against the rough wood. The blu
e light engulfed the brown surface with a gasping whoosh, and the silver lock re-materialized.
“Wow.” Staggering back as the tingle of magic crawled over my skin, I inched as far from the door as I could without seeming to be afraid of it.
Sig came to stand beside me and placed an arm around my shoulder, giving me a friendly squeeze, only he was compressing my gunshot injury. Involuntarily, I yelped.
“What on Earth?” He gave me a quizzical look then his gaze trailed down to the small shiny circle of skin beside my clavicle. Eventually the scar would mostly disappear, leaving only a white mark instead of the current pink, but I couldn’t hide it from him now. He knew all too well what would leave a mark like that. “Silver?”
“You bet.”
“Who?”
A sad smile crept across my face. “I guess Peyton isn’t the only one who wants me dead.”
Chapter Eleven
A howl shredded the peaceful silence of the night, jarring my already rattled nerves. The full moon glimmered between the fingers of the forest trees whose spring foliage had begun to fill in. Instead of leaves, the limbs were covered with kelly-green buds, eager to open. Beyond the tree edge, the wide, sprawling field of Central Park’s Great Lawn invited me to step out of the woods and into the free expanse before me.
I inched forward, then stumbled. My feet had become entangled in the heavy skirt of the white wedding dress I was wearing. Layers of white tulle clasped at me like expensive shackles, and only sheer luck kept me from falling to the ground.
Deja vu.
Another howl, and another. A chorus of wolves sang into the night, and their song drew ever closer. They didn’t sound like they were coming to say hello, either. They sounded hungry.
I hiked up my dress and ran, further challenged by the spindly stiletto sandals I was wearing. I loved sky-high heels as much as any good New York City girl, but I was cursing the name of Manolo Blahnik as I tried to jump over low-lying branches while wearing them.
By the time I was out of the woods my hair was a tangled mess hanging in my face. I brushed the wayward strands back and felt something on my head I hadn’t noticed before. Wrenching the metallic object free of my curls, I pulled it from my hair and got a look at what it was.
A crown. Not a bridal tiara, but an actual crown made of gold branches that looked so realistic I wondered if someone hadn’t dipped willow in gold leaf to make it. In the knots of the branches were emeralds the size of my thumbnail and so many diamonds the damn thing lit up like the Fourth of July even in the bare light of the moon.
The moon.
The howling began anew, and I remembered what had set me running in the first place. I held my crown tight to my chest and began to sprint. Now that I was in the open I could see I wasn’t alone in the field. A few hundred meters away was a man wearing a beautifully tailored tuxedo. His hands were in his pockets and his smile was apparent even this far away.
Lucas.
You know this. This isn’t new. You know this, my mind told me. But all I could think about was escaping the hungry pack that was hot on my heels. The only thing on my mind was getting to Lucas before they got to me.
I held my dress up the best I could without losing the crown and hauled ass across the field. I ran on the balls of my feet so the heels wouldn’t trip me up, but when I was a few feet from him, something brought me crashing to the ground anyway.
“Fuck,” I cried. The proximity of the howls was much closer now. In my fevered imagination I could hear the click of sharp canine teeth and almost feel the panting mouths of the wolves looming over me.
I tugged my dress free of whatever had brought me down, and the white fabric came away a deep crimson red. The more layers I pulled back of the endless gown, the bloodier they became, glistening wetly in the moonlight. A memory I couldn’t quite grasp made me check my hands, assuming the blood must be my own.
My hands were stained with the blood from my wedding dress, but they were uninjured.
“Lucas…I…” Looking over my bare shoulder to seek out the aid of my fiancé, I found him standing behind me staring at the bloody mess covering my lower body. Revulsion was evident in his expression.
“What have you done?” he asked.
