I stared at the tickets. I’d finally get to see my mother. Somehow, Andre had known I’d been missing her like crazy. And he’d even included my friends in the gift.
As soon as the thought of my friends crossed my mind, I wondered if Oliver had already made it back to Peel Academy via ley line. Instantaneous travel was more appealing to him than flying in a private jet.
My thoughts drifted to Caleb. He was probably still tying up loose ends with the Romanian division of the Politia. I should’ve been there too, but I’d allowed Andre to bribe me out of the country early. Between getting kidnapped—twice—gagged, stabbed, shot, and nearly beheaded, I’d reached my physical and emotional limit. And that wasn’t even counting my terrifying visit with the devil. Romania had officially lived up to all the spooky stories I’d read about.
Next to me, Andre’s body froze, drawing my attention back to the present.
“This is a joke, right?” Andre said.
“Not a joke. Check the news.”
Andre cursed. “Will do. Thanks for the heads up.”
I sat up as Andre set the phone back in its cradle. “What’s going on?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.
A muscle in Andre’s jaw feathered. “There’s been a leak.”
“A leak?” I repeated.
In response, Andre got up and grabbed his laptop. Sitting back down next to me, he opened it up and logged onto the supernatural community’s news site.
When the front page loaded, I covered my mouth. On it was a spread, and yours truly was the top story.
Gabrielle Fiori: The Long-Awaited Anti-Christ
Anti-Christ. My eyes wouldn’t stop returning back to that word. Crap, could it actually be true?
Stories like this one had run periodically in the past two months, but they’d been so sensationalized that they were discredited almost immediately. But this … this was a front-page story on the site for supernatural news. That kind of attention only came when the news was credible.
I leaned over Andre’s shoulder and skimmed the story. It went on for pages, citing sources, pointing to evidence the community already had on me and discussing some ancient artifacts that accurately prophesized my fate. Some oracle had foreseen this whole shebang a long time ago. The prophecy had been scribed onto an ostrich egg in Teoian, the lost language of the gods. A month ago, cryptologists finished decoding the dead language, and shortly thereafter, researchers deciphered the ostrich egg prophecy.
How convenient.
Of course other mysterious artifacts had begun showing up over the last couple of months that validated the Teoian inscription. And if that wasn’t enough, seers, psychometrics, and witches had been called in to shed light on the prophecy. Each one independently came to the same conclusion: Gabrielle Fiori was fated to marry the devil and bring hell on earth.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” I drawled out.
At the end of the article were links to some related stories: “Gabrielle Fiori Soulmates with Andre de Leon: How the King of Vampires is Aiding the Devil”; “Gabrielle Fiori Prophesized to Lead the Vampire Genocide”; “Has Gabrielle Already Married the King of the Underworld?”.
Only now did my dream from last night come flooding back. I rubbed my eyes. The devil really had divulged all of my unsavory secrets. And right now Andre and I were only staring at the secrets themselves. Who knew how many enemies were out there right now learning about them and readying to use them against me.
Andre let out a disgusted sound and cast aside the laptop. He stood and began to pace, rubbing his jaw.
I nervously twisted the ring he gave me round and round my finger. “Andre, there’s something you should know.”
He stopped to stare at me, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
“When I visited the devil, I made a deal with him.”
“Gabrielle.”
I winced at Andre’s tone. “I know, I know. But at the time it was either make a deal with him or do the deed.”
Andre’s mouth thinned, reminding me that he still knew very little about what happened to me last night.
“So I made a deal with him, … and then I reneged on it.”
The muscle in Andre’s jaw was ticking like crazy, but he stayed silent.
“One of his conditions was that if I broke my oath, he’d reveal all my secrets to those who’d wished me harm. As you can see, the devil made good on his promise.”
Andre’s face paled. “He revealed all your secrets?”
I nodded.
“And to those who’d use them against you?”
Well, to be honest, it looked like he revealed my secrets to the entire world, but I nodded anyway.
Andre cursed and grabbed the satellite phone once more. “I need to make some calls.”
I bit the inside of my lip and nodded. It was my turn to pace as Andre talked on the phone. I tried to not eavesdrop, but even still, phrases such as “devil’s consort,” “imminent death,” and “wanted for future crimes against humanity” kept drawing my attention back to Andre.
When Andre finally ended the last of his calls, he dragged a hand down his mouth.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The House of Keys, my coven, and several religious groups are all actively hunting you at the moment. They want you—dead or alive. You’ve also been placed on hit lists by the more unsavory groups—Satanists, practitioners of the dark arts, possessed humans—the list goes on and on.”
“More hit lists?” I croaked, my throat dry. Being on one was bad enough. Now I was on several?
Andre ran a hand through his hair. “The good guys want you gone, and the bad guys want to get credited with delivering you to the devil.”
In the supernatural world, good and evil never agreed upon anything. Not until I came along.
That sucked gigantic balls.
“We need to get off the grid,” Andre said.
“You mean … go into hiding?” No school, no Politia, no freedom. The idea that my remaining days might be spent in some heavily fortified safety house frightened me. I’d just gotten a big enough taste of death to know that I wanted to enjoy life while I still had it.