Heat burned through Ridley’s body at the sight of him—the feel of him. She could sense his power. It tugged at her like a magnet, the cold heat returning to her.
We’re the same.
Dark. Irresistible. Strong.
Power meeting power.
Electricity.
Ridley walked to the door of her own cell, her fingers curling around the bars between her and Nox. She could hear his heartbeat from across his cell—thudding softly. Calling out to her.
We’re the same.
Nox moaned and rolled over, his eyelids fluttering.
Open your eyes. Look at me.
He blinked as if he wasn’t sure she was standing there staring at him.
“Rid?”
The sound of his voice made her blood burn. Something about it.
Something about him.
There was so much power inside her now, and it seemed drawn to only one thing.
More power.
“Looks like they gave you a serious beating,” she said, her tone more flirtatious than concerned.
Nox pushed himself to his feet. “You’re okay. Before … you were—”
“I was having a hard time adjusting.” She waved off his shock. “But I’m good as new, now. Better, actually.” It was true. She was doing better by the hour. She remembered her old life now, and her old friends.
Even though it felt like that life had happened to someone else.
Nox rested his forehead against the bars. “I thought …” He stopped himself.
Ridley bit her bottom lip, her eyes cast toward the floor. She didn’t want to look at him, not with all these feelings swirling around inside her. Not when the sound of his voice made her pulse race.
“What were you going to say?” she asked. Part of her just wanted to hear his voice.
“I thought I lost you,” he said softly. “Not that you’re mine.”
“I don’t belong to anyone, Nox.”
“I just meant that I know the way we left things. You’re with Link, and I have to live with that.”
Link.
She’d almost forgotten about him. Not him exactly, but the reason she’d cared about a former Mortal like him in the first place. There had to have been something.
But not this. Nothing that felt like this.
We never felt like this. We were never the same.
Powerless, she thought. The quarter Incubus. That’s all he is, isn’t he?
As much as the idea of being with someone so limited baffled her now, the possibility of being with someone powerful attracted her even more.
Nox was brimming with it—whether or not he’d stolen or won or borrowed it, he had access to the abilities of dozens of different Casters.
Now that she could sense the power within him, she realized he was capable of so much more than he’d ever let on.
“You’re really ready to accept me being with someone else?” she asked.
He didn’t look at her.
“What if I don’t want you to have to live with it?” she asked, feeling Nox’s eyes on her. Heat and a sweetness she could almost taste.
“Don’t play games, Rid. Not about this.” Nox sighed. “I can’t take it.”
Another snake emerged from the shadows and she watched it slither across the floor.
It’s an illusion, she told herself. Try to control it.
Ridley focused on the black serpent, willing it to disappear. Instead, it wound itself around the bars below Nox’s hands. She closed her eyes, listening to his breathing—ragged and uneven, like someone who had been running for too long.
Stop running, Nox.
“There’s something between us, Nox. I know you can feel it, too.” She breathed the words, her head swimming with the sound of his heart hammering in his chest. “We’re the same.”
Nox was silent for a moment. “You know how I feel about you, Rid.”
“Maybe I want to hear it again.” It wasn’t a question.
“Ridley, look at me,” he whispered, and the distance between them seemed to disappear.
She finally raised her eyes to meet his, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Your eyes. They aren’t gold anymore, Rid.”
“What color are they?”
He stared at her as if he was hypnotized. “Violet.” An eye color that doesn’t exist in the Caster world.
Until now.
CHAPTER 20: LINK
Tornado of Souls
So we’re really gonna break in?” Necro asked, her electric blue Doc Martens shining in the darkness.
“Did you think the tour company was going to leave us a key?” Angelique asked in a condescending tone.
It was the middle of the night, and Link, Sampson, John, Liv, Floyd, Necro, and Angelique stood on the sidewalk staring up at the Gardette-LePretre House, in the French Quarter. The streetlights near 716 Dauphine Street bathed the Greek Revival house in soft light.
“So that’s the Sultan’s Palace?” John asked. “It’s pink.”
Sampson nodded. “And then some.”
Link realized he and John were probably thinking the same thing. With its green shuttered windows and delicate black lattice balconies wrapping around the third floor and the roof, it was hard to imagine the pink house as the scene of a mass murder. Still, knowing this place was on the top ten list of the “Most Haunted Houses in America” (a fact he’d looked up on his phone) and the location of what lots of people considered the grisliest murders in New Orleans history (a fact Liv knew without looking it up) gave him the creeps.
He sighed and folded up the scrap of paper he’d been writing on. The songs kept coming to him, driving him sort of crazy until he wrote them down.
Liv scribbled something in her journal before tucking it back in her pocket. “Let’s take a moment and think this through—”
Floyd sighed. “Let me guess? Breaking and entering is too lowbrow for your fancy Oxford sensibilities.”
John raised an eyebrow and looked away like he didn’t want to witness the verbal beatdown Floyd had coming her way, as Liv tucked her pencil behind her ear.
“What I was about to say, before I was so rudely interrupted,” Liv said, stepping closer to Floyd, “was that if we’re going to break into one of the most infamous houses in a city that never sleeps, we should use the back door. And you don’t need to be worried about my Oxford sensibilities. In the last year, I’ve faced Vexes; a pack of Blood Incubuses; Sarafine Duchannes, the most powerful Cataclyst in recorded history; the End of Days; a corrupt Council from the Far Keep; and the wrath of Abraham Ravenwood. If you think I’m worried about getting in trouble, think again.”
Angelique nodded at Liv. “Sarafine Duchannes? I’m impressed.”
“We killed her twice,” Link said proudly. “Once here and once in the Otherworld.”
“We?” John looked at Link pointedly.
“Well, our boy Ethan handled it the second time. But that’s a long story, seein’ as he had sorta kicked the bucket, too.”
“You done?” Floyd tugged on the bottom of her Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt, shifting uncomfortably. “We know you’ve seen your share of action, and you’re a real badass, Oxford. But the Sultan’s Palace isn’t just any house. It’s haunted, and we all know how brave you Mortals are when it comes to Sheers.”
Goose bumps pricked Link’s arms at the mention of the Caster term for what he considered plain old ghosts. But he wasn’t about to act like a big chicken in front of his friends. “Let’s not go throwin’ names around. I’m still half Mortal. Or is it three-quarters?” He tried to do the math in his head. “If John was half, and I got half a his half—”
John grinned. “Some days you really make me proud I bit you.”
“I try.” Link held his fist up in front of John. “Pound it.”
Sampson was still watching the house. Even in his leather lead-singer pants, ripped T-shirt, and bike-chain collar, he reminded Link of a wolf watching the woods. It wa
s almost as if Sampson knew there was something in there. It wouldn’t have spooked Link half as much if Lucille wasn’t standing right next to him with her ears perked up and her tail waving back and forth like a snake about to strike.
“What’s the deal, Sammy Boy? Do those Darkborn eyes a yours see somethin’ we don’t?” Link asked. “Somethin’ we probably don’t wanna know about?”
Sam kept his gaze fixed on the house. “It’s not what I can see. It’s what I can sense.”
Link should’ve taken the hint and stopped asking questions, but Rid’s life was on the line. If there was anything inside the Sultan’s Palace that might keep them from getting to the door in the basement that led to the labs, he needed to know. Plus, all that talk about Sarafine reminded him that no matter what was goin’ on in this Sheer Shack, he’d seen worse. “What’s your Darkborn radar pickin’ up? Lay it on us.” He sucked in a breath, ready for anything.
“Something bad happened in there, that’s for sure,” Sampson said.
Necro walked up beside Sampson. “I feel it, too. It’s like one big after-party for the dead in there.”
“A graveyard rave? Great.” Floyd shook her head.
“Yeah. I never really wanted to party in a graveyard.” Link was less excited.