Torn(Demon Kissed Series)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Al completely disagreed with my plan. She let me know it too. “You don’t know what’s on this page,” she said smacking a finger against the old parchment. We were still in the old kitchen. We had been at it for hours. Between spouts of nonstop silent frustration at trying to read the unreadable book, there were stints of rather loud frustration directed at me. Mostly by Al. “What if the page has the information you want on it?” Her silvery eyes were brilliant as she argued. “You’d be giving it straight to him! And the last two times you saw Eric, he bested you! Twice! Ivy, you can’t possibly think this is a good idea, on any level.” We’d been having this conversation for a while, and it was going in circles. Collin was ignoring us, knowing I would do what I thought was best and that the best thing for him to do was to try and decode Eric’s writing before tonight.

“Al, this is the best page to use. We already know what’s on it, what the thing in the drawing is called, and the person who told me that was Eric. It will give us something to gauge his translation against. If we use another page, we don’t know what’s on that either, and we have no idea about anything on it at all—this page, we at least know it’s about my necklace.” She wrinkled her nose at me, ready to shoot off more words when I cut her off, “Al, it’s not totally stupid. Collin and I can trap him. He’ll read the page and we’ll…”

She raised an eyebrow at me, “You’ll what? Let him go? Ivy, Eric’s a Valefar now. He’ll kill you if he has the chance. You can’t trust anything he says. That’s why this whole shindig is ridiculous!” She slammed her hands on the old table, causing it to shake as she stood. “This is an unnecessary risk that don’t need to be taken, not when you know what you know.” Her gaze cut to Collin, and then back to me.

I opened my mouth to argue with her more, but she swished an arm at me and hobbled away irate. She knew about what Lorren said. I’d thought about the angel since then. I wondered why Al didn’t tell Collin that there was an angel we could talk to, but I wasn’t going to bring him up. That would be completely stupid. Looking over at Collin, worried he’d sense my thoughts, I saw he was still busily trying to decode the page. He had several pages of notes, but nothing that was usable. He glanced up at me and smiled before returning to his work. How could I tell him that I needed my soul back? And oh yeah, by the way—I’m taking yours too. Collin fought to get that tiny scrap of himself back. It was astounding that he spilt his tiny piece of rancid soul to save me, but he did. Collin was…I pressed my eyes closed, unable to even consider telling him that remedy. No. There had to be another way. And there was. And this was it. My plan to trap Eric had to work. Period.