B00AO57VOY EBOK (26 page)

Then, I realized that I had
been missing something very important as I put everything together.  Something
that should have been so glaringly obvious that I felt like smacking myself in
the forehead for not seeing it before. 

“Nathan, did Emily have a
boyfriend?” I asked, ready for the anger this time.  Nathan is kind of
possessive. 

“Yes, you turned away a
young man who had been courting you for some time the day I kissed you,” he
growled, lost in the memory.  “He took it badly, threatened you.  It was only
my love for you that saved his miserable life.”

And there it was; the last
piece of the puzzle.  A jilted fiancée.  An ignored admirer.  A discarded
boyfriend.

And Jack—who, if he was to
be believed, had been crushing on me since the day we met.

“The answer was right in
front of our faces the whole time,” I whispered, putting it all together at
last. 

“What?” Nathan asked.

“Don’t you see?” I demanded,
jumping out of his lap.

“See what?” he asked,
confused.

“You said we have to look
for patterns, right?” I asked, practically sprinting back to the house with
Nathan right on my heels. 

“Yeah…” he said hesitantly. 

“
We’re
the pattern,
Nathan,” I told him, pointing from him to me and back again.  “Nathan, it’s
lust!  This guy’s trigger is lust!”  

Six hours, four coffees,
three boxes of research documents, and a severe migraine later, we had our
demon.  Turns out, I
had
been right.  We were definitely dealing with a
lust demon.  Demons of lust had a long and illustrious history of stalking
their prey and killing anyone who got in their way.  And their favorite hosts
were the bodies of people who already had lustful feelings for their intended
target.

Like someone with an
unrequited crush on a girl maybe…

The first recorded account
Charles’ mom had been able to find of a lust demon was from the Book of Tobit
in the Greek Old Testament.  The story goes that a demon by the name of
Asmodeus became infatuated with a young woman by the name of Sarah.  Each time
she would wed, he would kill the groom on their wedding night.  He vowed no
other would possess Sarah and he kept that vow until she wed Tobias, who was
aided in getting rid of him by the angel Raphael.

Though I refused to touch
anything that looked even remotely like a personal item, I read every single
thing collected on my various murders and the men who had been used to commit
them.  Every guy he possessed was someone who had been close to me in one way
or another except for the guy in Montana, who, it appeared, had just been a
convenient skin suit. 

My fiancé, Jean Luc, had
been the son of the Marquis who owned the estate that bordered the one my
father owned.  We had grown up as playmates and were often seen together at
society functions, dancing and laughing like the friends we were. 

People who had been
interviewed stated they had been shocked by how inappropriate his pursuit of my
hand in marriage had been.  He had done everything but offer my father the
shirt on his back to gain his permission to marry me.  And it had all been for
nothing because, in the end, I ran away and fell in love with Nathan.

They found him two days
after my murder, wandering the streets of Paris in filthy clothes and stinking
like he’d fallen into a vat of wine.  He was barely coherent, mumbling about
the man in the shadows and his beautiful Eva.  The only thing he’d had on him
at the time was a bottle of Port and a lock of long, raven-black hair.  My
hair.

He was beheaded in a public
execution two days after that.

Alexei—which, ironically,
means defender—my admirer in Russia, had actually been one of the set painters
for the ballet troupe I danced for.  His crush on me had been common knowledge
even before he became possessed by Bastian.  Testimony given by my fellow
dancers stated that it had been a quiet infatuation and that we had actually
gotten along really well.

That poor sap was found
wandering around outside St. Petersburg the day after they dragged my body from
the ashes of the theater.  He was carrying my locket and telling everyone he
came across that he had done something terrible and couldn’t remember what.  He
couldn’t remember anything, actually, since he had gotten out of bed one
morning and decided to take a walk…six months before.

He ended up in a mental
hospital where he committed suicide by slitting his wrists.  The mystery was,
nobody knew how he had done it, seeing as he was in a cell with nothing sharp
anywhere in sight.

Cal Angstrom, my wanna-be
boyfriend in Montana, on the other hand, swore he had only met me once when he
had been to my father’s ranch to look at a horse.  Which, apparently, was the
last thing he remembered
doing
.  It had been snowing at the time, he
told the judge who presided over his trial, but when he had woken up the
morning after I died, it was summer. 

When they found him,
however, he was in possession of a very unique cameo my father had commissioned
especially for his little princess.  The actual cameo wasn’t in the box, but
there was a drawing of it in the file.  I smiled sadly as I traced the design
of Nathan’s mark someone had crudely sketched.  He might not have bitten me in
my previous incarnations, but he had left his mark on each of my personalities
nonetheless.

Like Jean Luc, Cal said the
only other thing he could remember was seeing something strange in the shadows,
something that looked like it was watching him.  Then…nothing. 

They hung him three days
later.

And then there was poor
Jack, the next member of the Kill Ember club.  Jack and I had been friends our
whole lives, too.  I think that’s what had really shocked me the first time he
had asked me out.  Jack and I had never had any interest in each other.  I
should have known something was seriously wrong when he started declaring his
undying love when I refused to go out with him anymore.  Jack wasn’t an undying
love kind of guy.  The boy had spent our entire high school career redefining
the term man-whore, in fact.

When I finally pulled myself
out of the past and back to the present, I found Kim asleep on the couch, her
head in Blake’s lap.  Blake had his head back and his eyes closed, but I didn’t
think he was sleeping.  Perhaps sensing me watching, he cracked open one eye
and gave me a tired smile I couldn’t seem to return.  Instead, I let my eyes
drift around the room until they fell on Tyler.

Tyler had taken over an
entire corner of the living room and had neatly organized piles of research
stacked around him.  He had been given the task of discovering anything
Charles’ mother had come up with to lead us to a way to get rid of Bastian for
good.  Looking up to get another sheet to go over, he caught me watching him
and waved me over with a gentle smile.

“How you holding up,
beautiful?”  he asked when I slid down the wall next to him with a groan.  “You
look half dead.  Ashley should take better care of you.”

“Nathan takes very good care
of me, thank you very much,” I muttered, reaching up to rub my throbbing head. 
“Have you found anything?”

“Not yet, but I will.  If I
don’t find anything here, I’ll just keep looking somewhere else.  Don’t worry,
Em.  I won’t let you down.”

“Baby, Shea wants us in the
kitchen,” Nathan said, suddenly popping up next to me like he had teleported
himself there.  Tyler smirked at him and I saw Nathan shoot him an extremely
unpleasant look.

Telling Tyler to let me know
if he found anything that might be useful, I let Nathan pull me to my feet.  I
held on to his arm for a second, feeling my head spin from another round of
sleep deprivation and hunger.  I had been up since seven for school and it was
almost dawn again.  And the last food I remembered consuming was the carrot
sticks I called lunch.

“Come on, let’s get you
something to eat, then I’m putting you to bed,” Nathan said, giving me a
worried look.

“Good idea,” I sighed,
letting him practically carry me to the kitchen.

Grams was sitting in the
same chair I had found her in earlier.  She looked as tired as I felt, and her
eyes still held a shadow of the horror I had seen in them when I had come out
of my trance to find that I had just watched myself die for the second time in
less than a week, once in the past and once in the future.  Nathan pushed me
into the chair next to hers and then headed directly to the fridge to find me
something to eat.

Grams put aside the papers
she had been going through and turned to study me instead.  She traced over
every inch of my face, taking in my glassy eyes and the shadows I was pretty
sure were forming under them.  I saw her eyes flicker to the neck of my fleece
just before Nathan set a plate with a sandwich and some chips in front of me
with a can of diet soda. 

“We have to make some
decisions,” she said as Nathan took the seat across from me.  “We only have seven
days left.  We’re running out of time.  Unless we can find a way to stop Bastian
in the next twenty-four hours, I won’t have enough time to get you ready to
face him.  That said I have come up with a new plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

“A dear friend of mine runs
a safe house for cases like this,” Grams said, distractedly, her eyes focusing
on my neck.  “I think it would be better if you and Nate left town for a while,
just until we can form a sound plan of action.”

“And what good do you really
think it will do me to run?” I asked, tiredly, popping the top on my soda. 
“He’ll just follow me, Grams.”

“Yes, once he discovers your
location I’m sure he will,” she agreed as I took a drink.    

The cold soda felt good to
my sore, dry throat.  It was my third can of the night.  Along with the coffee
and soda, I had also guzzled about six bottles of water and still I felt like I
was walking through the Sahara at noon. 

“Then what’s the point?”  I
asked, lowering my soda and arching an eyebrow at her.  “If he’s only going to
follow me, what good will it do me to run?

“I have to agree with her
this time, Shea,” Nathan said quietly, reaching for my hand at the same time as
I reached for his.  “If he’s going to come after her anyway, it might be best
to face him right here, on ground that’s familiar to her.”

He shrugged and I felt my
shoulders twitching to copy the action.  I frowned, trying to figure out what
the hell was wrong with me.  Seriously, it was like every time Nathan moved I
wanted to move.  If he blinked, I blinked.  If he twitched, I twitched.  Crazy
didn’t even begin to cover it.  It was just plain
weird
and I had no
idea why I was doing it.

Pushing my plate away, I
clasped my hands together in front of me and locked my feet around the legs of
my chair in an effort to keep from moving.  I saw Nathan’s eyes flicker from
Grams to the neck of my fleece and had to force myself not to reach up and rub my
mark.  When I saw his face turn a whiter shade of pale, I started preparing
myself for the worst.

Try to stay still,
Nathan
whispered to me silently, a note of panic in his thoughts. 
It’s a spell. 
She suspects that I marked you and she’s trying to prove it.  Just don’t move,
baby.

Yeah, that was a whole lot
easier said than done.  I tried my best, though, not really wanting to witness
Grams turning Nathan into a crispy critter.  When I continued to fidget each
time he moved so much as a finger, I jumped out of my chair and went to put my
plate in the sink, dropping my half-eaten sandwich and chips in the trash as I
passed.  Avoiding looking at Grams, I went to the fridge and got another soda
out of the door.  When I turned back around, she was standing right behind me. 
Before I could stop her, she reached out and yanked the zipper of my fleece
down before pulling it back and staring at my neck for a long moment. 

“Yes, that’s what I
thought,” Grams said, softly, gently touching the mark on my neck.  “The
scarves were a dead giveaway, idiot children.”

Damn,
I thought,
scowling.  Grams just kept looking at the mark on my neck.  She didn’t look
angry.  She didn’t even look upset.  If I had had to describe the expression on
her face right that second, I would have said she looked…confused.

“Why this time, Nate?” Grams
asked, her eyes looking misty.  “You’ve never marked her before, so why do it
now?”

For a long time, he didn’t
answer.  Grams didn’t seem to be in any big hurry, though.  She just turned
around and looked at him, forcing me to do the same thing.  There was an odd
look on his face and I could tell he wished she hadn’t asked him that.  I found
myself holding my breath, waiting to hear what he would say.

“It’s different this time,”
he finally said, softly.  “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, more than
three centuries, in fact, and I realize now that I should have marked her each
and every time.  When something is yours—not your possession but part of who
you are and who you want to be—you do whatever you have to do to claim it and
keep it with you always.  Even if it’s something you never thought you’d do. ”