The Mortal Heart

“I know.” He drew her into him and kissed her, one last time.

Macon took something out of a small box in the back of his closet. He put the object in Lila Jane’s hand, closing her fingers around it. It was round and smooth, a perfect sphere. He closed his hand around hers, his voice grave. “I can’t protect you after the Transformation, not when the one thing that poses the greatest threat to your safety is me.” Macon looked down at their hands, gently cradling the object he had hidden so carefully. “If something happens, and you’re in danger… use this.”

Lila Jane opened her hand. The sphere was black and opalescent, like a pearl. But as she watched, the sphere began to change and glow. She could feel the buzz of tiny vibrations emanating from it. “What is it?”

Macon stepped back, as if he didn’t want to touch the orb now that it had come to life. “It’s an Arclight.”

“What is it for?”

“If the time comes when I become a danger to you, you’ll be defenseless. There’s no way you will be able to kill me or hurt me. Only another Incubus can do that.”

Lila Jane’s eyes clouded over. Her voice was a whisper. “I could never hurt you.”

Macon reached out and touched her face tenderly. “I know, but even if you wanted to, it would be impossible. A Mortal cannot kill an Incubus. That’s why you need the Arclight. It’s the only thing that can contain my kind. The only way you would be able to stop me if—”

“What do you mean, contain?”

Macon turned away. “It’s like a cage, Jane. The only cage that can hold us.”

Lila Jane looked down at the dark orb glowing in her palm. Now that she knew what it was, it felt like it was burning a hole in her hand and her heart. She dropped it on his desk, and it rolled across the tabletop, its glow fading to black. “You think I’m going to imprison you in that thing like an animal?”

“I’ll be worse than an animal.”

Tears ran down Lila Jane’s face and over her lips. She grabbed Macon’s arm, forcing him to face her. “How long would you be in there?”

“Most likely, forever.”

She shook her head. “I won’t do it. I would never condemn you to that.”

It looked as if tears were welling up in Macon’s eyes, even though Jane knew it was impossible. He had no tears to shed, yet she swore she could see them glistening. “If something happened to you, if I hurt you, you would be condemning me to a fate, an eternity, far worse than anything I would find in here.” Macon picked up the Arclight and held it up between them. “If the time comes and you have to use it, you have to promise me you will.”

Lila Jane choked back her tears, her voice shaking. “I don’t know if I—”

Macon rested his forehead against hers. “Promise me, Janie. If you love me, promise me.”

Lila Jane buried her face in his cool neck. She took a deep breath. “I promise.”





It happened within weeks of the last time he spoke to her.

Macon felt it immediately when his shoulder snapped—the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no longer hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs, like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rocks tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground.

The Transformation.

From this moment forth, he would not be able to walk among Mortals in the daylight. The sun would singe the flesh from his body. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the urge to feed on the blood of Mortals. He was one of them now—another Blood Incubus in the long line of killers on the Ravenwood Family Tree.

A predator walking among his prey, waiting to feed.

Jane—





Epilogue


“In the Light there is Dark, and in the Dark there is Light,” Lila Jane Evers translated, for the thousandth time. She was still holding the translucent scrap of parchment, still no thicker than onionskin, between her fingertips. “Licentia in Lux Lucis. Freedom in Light.” She looked up at Marian. “Freedom from what?”

Lila Jane sat back in her hard wooden chair—at her customary table for one (though with Marian’s chair now shoved up against hers)—in the rare documents reading room of the Perkins Library, as she did every night.

Lila Jane was obsessed. At least she was aware of it.

And Marian doesn’t point it out that often.

Lila Jane straightened one curling edge of the parchment with her white-gloved hand.

It’s all I have left of him.

She smoothed the scrap of paper in her hand. “There has to be more to it than words on a page.”

“What’s wrong with words on a page? They’re our specialty, Lila.” Marian smiled. She didn’t call her best friend Janie anymore.

Not even Jane.

Marian couldn’t make this easier or take away the pain; no one could do that. But she could make sure her best friend didn’t have to face it alone.

Lila Jane took off her white gloves. “It’s not just any Cast. There has to be a reason I found it. A reason it brought us together.” She didn’t say his name.