Jane’s long white hair swished as she turned her head slowly and took in each person in her audience. “This one is a part of our ancient heritage, and it was told to me by my grandmother, whose grandmother told it to her. She begged me not to ever let it die. She promised me that if I told this tale at our gatherings, the magic of it would live forever. So here I stand.” She paused to sip her beer, then raised her cup. “And here’s to Granny Vetrov!”
Several people raised their cups and drank with her. I drained my own cup and set it in my lap.
“The tale is this,” Jane continued. “Centuries ago, in Scotland, the devil came to call in the village of Dunkeld. The moon hid its face from him, and so did the sun, and the whole town fell into the deepest kind of darkness. No lantern or torch could stand against it. No one in the village could see, and they stumbled about, crying out in fear. None of them could feel him creeping closer—until it was too late. And when he put his arms around one of them, they clung to him, so glad they weren’t alone anymore. They thought he was a hero, come to save them.” Her eyes met mine, and a chill slid right down my spine.
The corner of Jane’s mouth twitched, maybe with amusement. “So he took each of his victims in his red embrace, and none of them could escape his hold once he had them. No matter what power they had on this earth, he knew how to turn it against them. One by one, they fell. And that devil, he loved every minute of it. He wanted to devour the world.”
I rubbed my arms, trying to smooth sudden goose bumps even though the air was warm.
“Is she always this freaky?” Hardy whispered.
“Shut up,” I whispered back.
“But there was one villager who wasn’t caught in the darkness,” Jane continued, now lost in her story. So lost, in fact, that she wasn’t holding her cup upright anymore. It hung from her fingers, dripping beer onto her scuffed motorcycle boots, but everyone was too rapt to call her attention to it. “Her name was Nora, and she had been banished from this village by the sea for stealing crabs from the fishermen’s nets. The people of Dunkeld wouldn’t stand for such thievery, and they’d cut off her hands and sent her into the forest to starve.”
Old Lady Jane was wearing a big smile now, and it was straight out of a freaking horror movie. “But Nora did not starve. She was a willful girl who refused to relinquish her life, and she lured little beasts with her singing and then caught them in her teeth.”
“The fuck?” muttered Hardy.
“Shhh.” I glared at him over my shoulder.
Jane’s teeth were bared, yellowed by years of chain-smoking. “As the sun rose, she saw that a strange darkness had fallen over the little town that the light couldn’t pierce, but instead of staying put or running away, she walked right toward it. And there was the devil, sitting in the village square with his victims laid out in a circle.”
“How could she see him, if it was so dark in the village?” asked one of the Curse King girls with a smirk, clearly thinking she was poking holes in Jane’s story.
“She could see through that dark,” Jane answered. “Nora was aware of the murk around her, but her eyes were especially keen. Too keen. She saw the devil for what he was. She saw the trails of love and hate and lust and power dangling from his mouth, and she knew she’d caught him at his breakfast.” Her eyes met mine again. “He was eating their souls, you see.”
My stomach turned.
“Nora had been horribly mistreated by these villagers, and the devil knew it. He invited her to join him at his feast. And because she had no hands, he even offered to feed her.”
Now the silence around Jane was complete, and her cup was empty. It fell from her knobby fingers and landed on the grass next to her boot. “Nora was tempted. These were the people who turned her out to die. These were the people who had cut off her hands. They had hurt her. But she knew the devil was no hero. She could see him eyeing her dreams and her will and her bravery and her rage like a starving man. She could see that he would eat her soul, too. She could also see there was no escape, for he was well fed and fast on his feet. So she did the only thing that was left to her.”
Here, Jane paused, and as she turned I caught the glittering silver wisps of her magic, slowly swirling around her head. I could smell it, too—the scent of iron fresh from the forge. I shuddered. Jane seemed to catch the movement and tilted her head, her gaze on me once again. “Do you know what she did, Jemmie Carmichael?”
Heads turned toward me. “No,” I said, shrinking from the sudden attention.
“She gathered up the strands of those souls in her arms, and she used them to bind herself to that devil. She had no fingers to tie knots, so she twisted and turned and wound them tight around her body and his. Then she hurled herself into the sea and dragged him with her.”
“Did she survive?” I asked.
“What a question,” said Jane. “Of course she didn’t.”
For some reason, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“And that’s the story. There’s magic in it, my grandmother told me. It lives as long as the story does.”
After a few moments of hush, someone started clapping, and then a few others did. The elderly guy scooped Jane’s beer cup from the grass and shouted to the bartender to fetch her another. My ears were ringing as I pushed myself off the ground and headed for the exit.
“I need some fresh air,” I managed to tell Hardy as I stumbled forward without waiting for him. It felt a little like being underwater, breathless, and clawing desperately for the surface. Just as I could see my escape through the crack between the tent flaps, they were pulled aside, and I found myself face-to-face with Killian Delacroix, president of the Deathstalkers.
His eyes searched my face, and then he smiled. “Speak of the devil,” he said quietly. “And she shall appear.”
EIGHT
“WHAT—” I BEGAN, LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER TO THE open air outside. A few hulking Deathstalkers stood just beyond the tent flaps.
“Someone told me you were here,” Killian said blandly.
“Who?” I asked. Was it Darek? And if so, how much had he said? My cheeks flared with heat.
Killian said nothing, thereby amplifying my curiosity and my fear. If he said something about me and Darek in front of Hardy—
“Excuse me, Killian.” I started to edge past him, wanting to escape, but he put a hand on my arm.
“Wait.”
“Get your fucking hands off her,” snapped Hardy, who’d caught up with me. His eyes narrowed with promised violence.
Fingers still circled around the crook of my elbow, Killian said, “I mean no harm,” in his sweet, honeyed Louisiana drawl. My nose filled with the scent of copper and salt as crimson ribbons of magic unfurled around him and licked at Hardy’s cheeks.
“Okay,” said Hardy. “Fine.” He didn’t sound happy, but he no longer looked like he was ready to throw Killian into orbit.
The worst thing about Killian, if you asked me, was that he didn’t look formidable on the outside. He was wearing his vest that marked him as a Deathstalker, but he seemed small and meek and forgettable. Close-fitting jeans underscored how skinny he was. Round, tortoiseshell glasses sat on the bridge of a nose that seemed just a tad too small to hold them. His dark brown hair was combed over to the side, tamed by hair product with a slight sheen. More nerd than badass—except he’d just stopped Hardy in his tracks with a mere thought.
“I was just about to go greet your father,” Killian said to me. “Would you like to join us?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father on his feet, watching us. The room had gone silent. The air, stagnant. Outside, I could hear kids playing, screeching and laughing, unaware of the tension growing in the tent. What I wouldn’t give to be a child again, oblivious to this world we lived in. Instead, I was stuck between Hardy and Killian, watching Killian’s power slide toward me, knowing I was about to accept an invitation I was desperate to reject.
There was a brief scuffling sound outside, and then someone entered the tent on my left. The tent flaps fell shut, blocking out the noise and diffused light of the night.
I could smell Crowe’s magic before I could see him.