Dark Flame (Immortals 4)

I tilt back in my seat and shake my head. “Great, that’s just great. So you’re saying my attraction to Roman is for real? Nice, Ava, thanks for that.” I sigh, loudly, audibly, and grant her a nice, dramatic eye roll to go with it.

“Told you it never goes over so well.” She shrugs, proving she’s pretty much immune to my insolent reactions by this point. “But you must admit that, superficially speaking anyway, he is stunning, quite gorgeous really—” She smiles, practically begging me to agree. But when it goes unmet, she just shrugs again and says, “But that’s not what I meant. You know about the yin yang symbol, right?”

I nod. “The outer circle represents everything, while the black and white parts represent the two energies that cause everything to happen.” I shrug. “Oh, and they each contain a small seed of each other . . .” I squirm in my seat, suddenly sensing where this is headed and not sure if I’m ready to tag along.

“Exactly.” She nods. “And believe me, people are no different. For example, let’s say you have a girl, she’s made a few mistakes”—her eyes meet mine—“and she’s so down on herself, feeling so undeserving of all the love and support that’s being offered, so sure she has to go it alone, make amends on her terms, her way, and ultimately becoming so obsessed with her tormentor, she ends up cutting off all those around her, so she has more time to concentrate on the one person she despises the most, channeling all of her attention on him, until, well, obviously I’m referring to you and you know how it ends . . . my point is, each of us has a shadow of darkness, every single one of us, no exceptions. But when you focus so heavily on the dark side, well, we’re back to the Law of Attraction again—like attracts like—hence your monstrous attraction to Roman.”

“A shadow of darkness?” I look at her, having heard something similar, just a few hours before. “You mean like—a shadow self?”

“So now you’re quoting Jung?” She laughs.

I squint, having no idea who that is.

“Dr. Carl Jung.” She laughs. “He wrote all about the shadow self, basically saying it’s the part of us that is unconscious and repressed, the parts we work hard to deny. Where’d you hear it?”

“Roman.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “He’s always ten steps ahead of me, and he basically said the same thing you did, that the monster was me. It was pretty much his final taunt before I fled the scene.”

She nods, holding up her finger and closing her eyes. “Let me see if I can—”

And the next thing I know she’s balancing an old leather book in her hands.

“How’d you . . . ?” I look at her, eyes wide, jaw dropped.

But she just smiles. “Everything you can do in Summerland you can do here too, you know? Aren’t you the one who told me that? But it wasn’t instant manifestation like you think, it was merely telekinesis—I summoned it from my bookshelf in the other room.”

“Yeah, but still . . .” I gape at the book, amazed by how quickly she was able to retrieve it. Amazed by how she’s mastered so many things, and yet she still chooses to live like this—nice, comfortable, but still pretty simple by the usual, opulent, coastal Orange County standards. Narrowing my gaze as I look her over again, seeing how she’s stuck with the chunk of raw citrine on the simple silver chain over the elaborate gold and jewels she always wore in Summerland, despite the fact that she can now have whatever she wants. And I can’t help but wonder if she really has changed. If maybe she’s not that same old Ava I once knew.

She shifts in her seat, setting the book down before her and skipping to just the right page, her finger tracing the line as she reads, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is . . . The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate . . . forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions . . . and so on.” She snaps it shut and looks at me when she adds, “Or so says Dr. Carl G. Jung, and who are we to refute him?” She smiles. “Ever, whether or not we reach our full potential and fulfill our true destinies is up to us. It’s completely of our own making. Remember what I said earlier—as within, so without? What we think about, what we concentrate on, will always, always, be reflected on the outside. So I ask you, what do you want to concentrate on? Who do you want to become from this point forward? How do you want your destiny to unfold? You’ve got a path, a purpose, and though I’ve no idea what that is, I’ve got this uncanny feeling it’s something powerful and big. And though you’ve wandered a bit off course, if you’ll let me, I can lead you back to the trail, all you have to do is say the word.”

I gaze down at my teacup, the broken pieces of cookie, knowing that everything I’ve done so far, every ingloriously ill-advised move, has led me back here. Back to Ava’s kitchen. The last place I ever thought I’d return to.

Tracing my finger around and around the rim of the saucer, weighing my choices, which are admittedly few, and lifting my gaze to meet hers as I smile and say, “Word.”

twenty-nine

Before I can knock, Damen is there. But then, he’s always been there. And I mean that both literally and figuratively. He’s been there the last four hundred years just as he’s there now, feet bare, robe hanging open, hair tousled in an insanely appealing way, peering at me from a heavily lidded, sleepy gaze.

“Hey,” he says, his voice thick, rough, new to the day.

“Hey yourself.” I smile, moving right past him and starting for his stairs, grasping his hand in mine as I pull him along. “You really weren’t kidding about always being able to sense me when I’m near, were you?”

He tightens his fingers around mine, using the ones on his free hand to push through his glossy tangle of hair, trying to tame it, make sense of it, but I just smile and urge him to keep it that way. It’s so rare I see him like that, drowsy, scruffy, a little disheveled, and I have to say, I kind of like it.

“So what gives?” He follows me into his special room, scratching his chin as he watches me fawn over his collection of very old things.

“Well, for starters, I’m better.” I turn my back on the very serious Picasso version of him in favor of the much cuter, way sexier, real version of him. My gaze meeting his when I add, “I mean, I may not be totally and completely there yet, but I’m definitely headed in the right direction. If I stick with the program, it shouldn’t take long.”

“Program?” He leans against the old velvet settee as his gaze sails over me, studying me so closely, I can’t help but run my hands over my dress, quickly, self-consciously, thinking I should’ve at least taken the time to manifest something less rumpled, something new and cute, before rushing over like I did.

But I was so pumped f

rom my talk with Ava, and the series of healing and cleansing meditations she put me through, well, I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to tell him—to be with him again.

“Ava’s got me on a sort of—cleansing fast.” I laugh. “Only it’s the mental kind, not the green tea and twigs kind. She says it’ll make me—well—” I shrug. “Better, whole again, new and improved.”

“But—I thought you were better yesterday? Or at least that’s what you told me in Summerland.” He cocks his head.

I nod, determined to focus on my earlier trip with him, and not the one that followed that horrible scene with Roman when I ran into Jude. “Yeah, but—now I feel even better—stronger—just like my old self.” I look at him, knowing I have to admit this next part, it’s part of the cleansing ritual—coming clean, making amends, not so different from your typical twelve-step program, but then, I wasn’t so different from any other addict struggling with a horrible addiction.