My only comfort in the face of their sneers and smug smiles at having so thoroughly fooled me was that they didn’t have Lark on their side. And they hadn’t beaten me, no matter what they might think.
Immediately I began to feel better—stronger. It was being near Noah that did this. Whatever he’d infected me with, it wasn’t so bad when I was with him. I wished I could say the same about the pain of his betrayal, but that was so much worse when I looked at him.
“You needn’t look at me with such hostility, my love,” he told me. “If it’s any consolation, I was not as guarded with my own feelings as I ought to have been.”
I stared at him. Silent.
He touched my cheek. I forced myself not to jerk away.
“I am rather fond of you,” he murmured. “You are so deliciously frightening when you want to be, with a rather delightful mad bent to you.”
I smiled bitterly. “I’m the crazy one,” I replied.
He arched a brow. “Indeed?” He obviously didn’t catch my reference to the Melinoe. Maybe he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. That could come in handy.
“So, what’s your plan, Noah? You’ll use the concert to tap into the spectral energy of Haven Crest and bring yourself fully into this world, and then what? Will you be human? Ghost? Ghoul?”
He looked so proud of himself. “An immortal being of pure power.”
“What happens when you’ve gotten your revenge? Surely it won’t take you long to tie up whatever loose ends my sister and I represent. How will you amuse yourself once you’ve gotten your revenge?”
Surprise blinked in the depths of his bright eyes and then was hidden. “How I amuse myself will no longer be any concern of yours, my dear. Unless, of course, you’d care to spend eternity with me?”
“It’s tempting,” I replied. “But I doubt it would ever happen. You don’t seem to have much of an attention span.”
He stiffened but didn’t lose that haughty look. “Well, to be fair, you didn’t provide much of a challenge.”
I laughed, even as the words cut me. I had been entirely too easy for him to take advantage of me. “Of course I didn’t! I’m sixteen years old, Noah. And you should be glad of it. Had I any amount of experience with the opposite sex, I wouldn’t have been attracted to you at all. It was only because you looked so much like Kevin that I was drawn to you in the first place.”
Noah smirked. “Such remarks cannot touch me, little one.”
“I’m not trying to insult you—we both know I haven’t the necessary appreciation for depravity it would take to descend to your level.” Let Mr. Fancy Vocabulary think on that one for a moment. “It’s merely the truth. You’ve seen Kevin. You’ve been Kevin! I’m sure you’ve noticed the resemblance.”
“Well, we are related.”
“Oh, and it’s so easy to tell. It’s embarrassing, but there were times when I forgot that you weren’t him.” I let myself smile then—a little dreamy, faraway look. No man, no matter how young or how old, dead or alive, liked to be told that a woman had been thinking of someone else while she was with him. And Noah had hurt me deeply enough that I wanted to hurt him back.
His eyes turned cold, but that biting smile remained. “Yes, well, I suppose I should be grateful you don’t have white hair, or I might have confused you with Emily.”
“No,” I corrected. “You wouldn’t have made that mistake. It’s obvious to me now that you’re in love with her. Or rather, that you’re obsessed with her. Have you always been? Because that must have been very painful for you when she dusted your sister. Oh, I’m sorry—when she sent your sister on to the next stage of her journey.”
Suddenly, Noah was right there in front of me—his face just inches from my own. “Don’t you ever talk about my sister. And the next time you insinuate that I feel anything but hate for Emily Murray, I’ll make you sorry.”
I grinned. “No, I don’t think you will. You could try, but I’ll still be right, and you’ll still be in denial.”
He hit me. Knocked me a few feet across the room. It didn’t hurt like it had when Lark had tossed me into the side of the house, but it still smarted. And it gave me such satisfaction it wasn’t even funny. I laughed all the same. I’d gotten to him, made him break that gentlemanly act of his.
“What are you laughing at?” he demanded.
“You,” I chirped. “My sister hits harder than you.”
“You want to be hit harder?” He clenched his fists. “I’ll be glad to oblige.”
I held my arms out to my sides. “Be my guest.”
He scowled. “You actually want me to hit you?”
“You can hit me all you want. It’s not like you can beat me to death, is it? You think you can hurt me that way because you used to be alive, but I don’t have that reference. You can beat me all you want, if it makes you feel like a man. It won’t make me afraid of you.”