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I stared at her and blinked.
Fuck.
My best friend was tossing me out on my ass. And judging by the look in her eyes, I better hightail it out of here before I suffered her considerable wrath.
I wrapped the discarded silk scarf around my hand and reached under the sofa until my hand hit the heart and drew it out. Then I carefully twisted the scarf around the stone so it couldn’t touch my skin.
Chas watched me incredulously as I stuffed the wrapped heart in my boot.
“Another one?” she said disdainfully.
I threw one of the twenties she gave me on the coffee table. “Use that to buy some more smudge sticks. You’ll need them.” I couldn’t believe the bitterness in my voice, but it was born of suffering yet another rejection by someone I loved.
I grabbed the obsidian knife Thorn had given me and stuck it in my boot. She stepped backward as I walked past her. My feet rattled on the wooden steps on my way down. My head and body hurt, but worst yet, my heart hurt.
I pulled out my phone and tried to find Thorn’s number, but it wasn’t on my call list. Damn. The last time he called me, the number was blocked.
Thorn! I need to talk to you.
But for all the talk of our connection, right now, it failed, and I have no reason why. Maybe the connection only worked when Thorn wanted it to? It did seem Thorn opened the communication between us, and that was only when we stood close to each other. And he did insinuate that communication would be unreliable.
Well, hell. I can’t reach him. It’s useless to go to the abandoned church now, but I had no idea where he was.
But I knew where he would be.
I sighed and called an Uber from my phone.
The driver didn’t believe the address I gave him, but I graced his palm with an extra twenty-dollar bill to ask no questions. Mary of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church was a solemn and eerie sight, with the broken remains of the once-grand structure a testament to the passage of time rising against the sunset.
When I stepped from the vehicle, the driver shook his head.
“You sure you want me to leave you here?”
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Okay,” he said in disbelief. The driver gunned his engine and peeled away from the church.
I gazed over the landscape but saw no sign of Thorn. I looked to the sinking orange sun and wondered when he’d get here. As I approached the ruins of the abandoned Catholic church, my footsteps echoed against the cracked pavement, the only sound in an otherwise still and silent environment. The church, once a grand and imposing structure, now stood in ruins, its stone walls cracked and covered in ivy, its roof collapsed, and its stained-glass windows shattered.
As I walked closer, I found the church grounds overgrown with weeds and vines, making it difficult to navigate. The trees around the church were bare, their branches reaching out like gnarled fingers, casting long shadows on the ruins.
As I approached the entrance, I found the wooden doors were long gone, replaced by a gaping hole that led into the darkness within.
A branch’s snap caused me to whirl, expecting to see Thorn, but instead, I came face to face with Kye. He glared at me with undisguised malice.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I heard you’d be here. Looks like that part of the intel was good. Let’s see if the rest of the info was good. Where is it?”
I cocked my head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“That power stone you have.”
One stone. Not the other two.
Moira! That bitch. She always seemed to know what the hell I was doing. When I get a chance, that woman and I will have a serious chat. With deadly implications.
“I don’t have it,” I said, lifting my chin in defiance.
