Gramma stepped in front of Lena, closed her eyes, and touched a single finger to her granddaughter’s cheek. The moment she touched Lena, everything stopped, and I knew Gramma had used her abilities as an Empath to absorb Lena’s powers temporarily. But she couldn’t absorb Lena’s anger. None of us were strong enough to do that.
The wind died down, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. Gramma pulled her hand away from Lena and opened her eyes.
The Succubus, looking unusually disheveled, stared up at the sky. “It’s almost sunrise.” The sun was beginning to burn its way up through the clouds and over the horizon, scattering odd splinters of light and life across the uneven rows of headstones. Nothing else had to be said. The Incubuses started to dematerialize, the sound of suction filling the air. Ripping was how I thought of it, the way they pulled open the sky and disappeared.
I started to walk toward Lena, but Amma yanked my arm. “What? They’re gone.”
“Not all a them. Look —”
She was right. At the edge of the plot, there was only one Incubus remaining, leaning against a weathered headstone adorned with a weeping angel. He looked older than I was, maybe nineteen, with short, black hair and the same pale skin as the rest of his kind. But unlike the other Incubuses, he hadn’t disappeared before the dawn. As I watched him, he moved out from under the shadow of the oak directly into the bright morning light, with his eyes closed and his face tilted toward the sun, as if it was only shining for him.
Amma was wrong. He couldn’t be one of them. He stood there basking in the sunlight, an impossibility for an Incubus.
What was he? And what was he doing here?
He moved closer and caught my eye, as if he could feel me watching him. That’s when I saw his eyes. They weren’t the black eyes of an Incubus.
They were Caster green.
He stopped in front of Lena, jamming his hands in his pockets, tipping his head slightly. Not a bow, but an awkward show of deference, which somehow seemed more honest. He had crossed the invisible aisle, and in a moment of real Southern gentility, he could have been the son of Macon Ravenwood himself. Which made me hate him.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He opened her hand and placed a small silver object in it, like the ones everyone had thrown onto Macon’s casket. Her fingers c
losed around it. Before I could move a muscle, the unmistakable ripping sound tore through the air, and he was gone.
Ethan?
I saw her legs begin to buckle under the weight of the morning—the loss, the storm, even the final rip in the sky. By the time I made it to her side and slid my arm under her, she was gone, too. I carried her down the sloping hill, away from Macon and the cemetery.
She slept curled in my bed, on and off, for a night and a day. She had a few stray twigs matted in her hair, and her face was still flecked with mud, but she wouldn’t go home to Ravenwood, and no one asked her to. I had given her my oldest, softest sweatshirt and wrapped her in our thickest patchwork quilt, but she never stopped shivering, even in her sleep. Boo lay at her feet, and Amma appeared in the doorway every now and then. I sat in the chair by the window, the one I never sat in, and stared out at the sky. I couldn’t open it, because a storm was still brewing.
As Lena was sleeping, her fingers uncurled. In them was a tiny bird made of silver, a sparrow. A gift from the stranger at Macon’s funeral. I tried to take it from her hand just as her fingers tightened around it.
Two months later, and I still couldn’t look at a bird without hearing the sound of the sky ripping open.
Don’t miss the exciting first book in a new series coming in 2014.
Dangerous Creatures
Some loves are cursed.…
Others are dangerous.
A Siren’s Song
There are only two kinds of Mortals in the backwater town of Gatlin, South Carolina—the stupid and the stuck. That’s what they say, anyway.
As if there’s any other kind of Mortal anywhere else.
Please.
On the other hand, there’s only one kind of Siren, no matter where you go in the universe.
Stuck, no. Stuck up? Maybe.
Stupid? Never.