When the trees finally gave way to the house and I saw Crowe’s bike sitting in front, I inhaled and exhaled three measured breaths. I’d read somewhere that doing so helped with anxiety and stress. Turns out it didn’t help me at all.
I parked and climbed out of the car. I entered one of the open garage bays and was greeted by the familiar scent of grease and gasoline. The Medici garage was not used for parking; it was used for wrenching. Several bikes were torn apart, their pieces strewn around in what looked like a nonsensical mess but was actually Crowe’s version of order.
The door to the house squeaked open, and Crowe handed me a bottle of water when I met him on the steps.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the offering.
Crowe passed the staircase and headed for the screened-in porch on the other side of the house. I hesitated in the living room, unsure if I should follow him or leave him be.
A glutton for punishment, I went to the porch, my heart pounding erratically in my chest.
A little over a year ago, I’d crashed with Alex after a night out to celebrate my seventeenth birthday. But when I couldn’t sleep, I’d gone to the kitchen to get a glass of water and noticed someone on the porch.
I’d found Crowe sitting out there alone in the dark, drinking straight from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He’d never told me what propelled him from his own bed that night, and at the time, I hadn’t cared. The sight of him there was too thrilling, too tempting.
The older we got, the less time Crowe spent with Alex and me. By that point, I was starving for his attention, trying to remember what it was like before, when the thing I needed was plentiful, when I took it for granted.
He’d offered me the Jack and smiled a lazy smile. “Wanna join me?”
I did.
We drank and talked. We laughed at the stupid things we did when we were kids. In that late, first hour together, we’d closed the space between us on the couch until I was sitting right next to him, my knee touching his. I wasn’t sure when my feelings toward him had changed, when I’d stopped looking at him like an annoying older brother and started looking at him like something more. It had happened gradually, but by then I had been aware of it for at least a couple of years. And suddenly he was close and the air was warm, and I was drunk on something other than the Jack.
“I miss this,” I’d told him that night. “I miss you.”
He’d glanced at me, his stupidly handsome face painted in the glow of the moon. I ’d recognized that glint in his eyes right away because I felt it, too. I even had a name for it: hunger.
“Oh, Jemmie Carmichael,” he’d said, and then he kissed me, hard and fast, his hands ghosting over my skin.
When he pulled away, just enough to get a breath, lick his already wet lips, I shivered and tangled my fingers in his hair, pulling him back in.
I’m not sure how far it would have gone if we’d been given the chance. But the sun had started to come up and footsteps thudded down the stairs, and Crowe and I lurched away from each other like we were on fire.
Lori had poked her head into the porch and given us the kind of look you give someone when they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t.
As we’d prepared to leave for the festival in New Orleans, I’d floated in a state of near-constant euphoria. Stupidly, I’d wondered whether Crowe would spend time with me there. I’d imagined us walking through the grounds, hand in hand. And then, the first night of the festival, I’d seen him with Katrina Niklos. He saw me, too. Looked me right in the eye. Then he’d pulled Katrina to him and kissed her on the mouth. He’d walked away with his arm around her waist, and I’d ended up drunk in a swamp. If it hadn’t been for Darek, I might have been eaten by a giant reptile.
Now Darek might be doing the same thing Crowe had done to me—only with my best friend, who had no idea Darek was my… actually, I didn’t know what he was. I didn’t know what I wanted from him. All I knew was that the memory of kissing Crowe was like an eclipse, blocking out the light that could have allowed any other feelings to grow.
Now here I was, back at the scene where it had all begun, rain pattering softly against the porch roof, and I couldn’t help but feel an impending sense of déjà vu. I realized, with startling, sickening clarity, that I wanted to kiss him again. For some insane, foolish reason, I wanted his hands on me and his lips on mine and I wanted the darkness crowding in around us, the outside world nothing but a smudge against the night.
I had to get out of there.
“I’m going to Alex’s room,” I said quickly. “You’ll wait here?”
Crowe dropped into a chair in the corner, avoiding the couch, as if he, too, was suffering from memories better left forgotten.
“I’ll be here,” he promised.
I nodded, rushed out the doorway and up the stairs, putting as much distance between us as I could.
Alex’s room reminded me a little of the Medici garage, complete and utter chaos organized in a way that only Alex understood. Clothing was piled in a chair beneath the window and on the end of her bed. Makeup and lotion bottles cluttered the top of her dresser. Shoes peppered the carpeting, not a single match in sight.
With a sigh, I scanned the mess, trying to decide what was best used in a locator spell. And then it hit me: cuts created by Alex that she’d been intending to sell. They’d contain her blood.
Alex’s room was large by my standards, with a lot of places to hide important things, but I knew exactly where she kept her casting kit and her unused cuts.
I went to her top dresser drawer and pulled it open, shoving aside a fair number of bras and tank tops. Finally reaching the bottom, I popped the false plank out and peered into the hiding spot, already able to smell the magic inside. There were a handful of Flynn’s cuts, and a few I knew were made by Crowe’s hand. Even though any person with venemon magic could have made them, as soon as my skin grazed the wood I could detect the subtle, masculine scent of Crowe. In fact, all of the venemon cuts were his. I couldn’t find a single one made by Alex.
I kept digging until my fingers brushed over a little leather notebook. I pulled it out, thinking perhaps it was Alex’s diary, or maybe a spell book.
But when I pushed open the cover, I didn’t immediately recognize the handwriting. It was small and slanted. Alex’s handwriting was big and looping.
I scanned a few pages, not wanting to infringe on anyone’s privacy, but it quickly became apparent that I was reading a dead man’s journal.
The notebook belonged to Michael Medici.
This must have been what Alex was trying to tell me about yesterday.
I dropped onto the corner of the bed and flipped to the last page.
Henry Delacroix had more secrets than we ever knew, and I’m about to expose the biggest. I have to make sure the threat is gone. I’m not going to let anyone get close to that kind of blood power ever again. The cost has been way too high.
Blood power… Alex had mentioned that exact phrase.
The date at the top of the page was from a week before Michael Medici died—and a chill ran down my spine as I realized it was the day before Crowe and I had kissed. I ran my fingers over that page and felt tiny ridges, so I flipped it to look at the back. There, in dark ink, like he’d been pressing the pen deep into the page, it read,
I don’t know if I regret convincing Old Lady Jane to touch me or not. The good news is I know exactly how much time I have left. I can say good-bye without really saying it. I can make sure the succession is planned. And even if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to expose the truth and end the threat before anyone else is hurt.
My heart ached as I read his final words. Suddenly, I wondered if that was what Crowe had been brooding about the night I’d found him. Had his father been somehow trying to tell him good-bye and prepare him to take over?
It was almost too tragic to contemplate, but that wasn’t all—there was this secret that Michael had discovered. Had it led directly to his death?