Ethereal Knights (26 page)

I push up on my elbows, and my insides rip with pain. “She okay?”

“She’s fine. She texted twice saying she was heading to Nat’s tonight. You up for it?”

“Where’s my phone?”

He flips it onto the mattress, and I see that all of his info came from reading my texts.

“You left it downstairs.” He bears into me with a slightly ticked-off expression. “You want me to wait for you?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

***

Natalie Coleman’s parents live on beachfront property in one of the more exclusive areas of Paragon. For the last two years, Nat has hosted what’s become the end of summer bonfire, open to both East and West.

Gage and I park at the public beach because the parking is non-existent up by Nat’s house. It looks like most of the party is migrating in this direction, anyway.

A couple of guys from the team call out to us, and I pat Gage on the shoulder, shoving him in their direction. 

“I’ll be back in a minute. I need to take a walk, straighten out my stomach—get my bearings after pulling an all-nighter.” That’s the truth, in partial. My head is a mess just thinking of all the danger that lies ahead for Skyla—the idiots in the car that tried to ram us, the morons that stole her blood sample. It’s becoming clear that the Counts have given the green light for every creature of wickedness to wreak havoc in her life.

I drift away from the crowd. The fog and smoke intermingle and create a layer of confusion over the shoreline, making Paragon look like the most polluted island on the planet.

“Logan.” A male voice booms from the forest that hedges along the beach.

I take a few cautious steps in that direction.

Can’t see shit. It’s too dark in the thicket to make anyone out.

It’s probably Ellis with a few spare girls he’s looking to unload. Or maybe he needs me to do a condom run. Wouldn’t be the first time. 

A man with broad shoulders presses against the cedars like a shadow. His eyes glint in this dim light a strange, glowing yellow. His features look more than familiar—the hair, the clothes—crap—I know them all.

It’s me.

“Don’t freak out.” The stranger with my face steps out of the woods. “I’m pretty sure you expected this on some level.” He gives an apprehensive grin. “I should know—I’m you.”

“I was sort of hoping for my—
our
—father,” I whisper in the event that it’s a Fem who’s decided to don my face like a Halloween mask. It’s an older version of me, leaner, more refined. “Are you my supervising spirit?”

“No.” He glances back and makes a face. “The spirit chooses to remain anonymous,” he says with slight annoyance. “I’m you, Logan, from the not-too-distant future.” He steps in and scrutinizes me. “You have to help Skyla. She’ll be coming to you in a Treble tonight—the Treble is a gift. You’ll have less than five minutes when she arrives.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll have to push through to help her.”

“Push through what?”

“You’ll figure it out. Just don’t let go of her until you get there.” He takes a careful step back into the woods. “Don’t you ever stop fighting for her.” He delivers the words like a threat before evaporating to nothing.

Gage

I don’t hang out with the guys any longer than I have to. I start in on a walk of my own, only Logan is the last person I want to bump into—it’s Skyla I’m hoping for.

A series of small bonfires burn up and down the beach. Some idiot from East loaded one up with paper, causing a white tornado of smoke to rise in the sky like a pillar.

I spot Michelle, Lexy, and Emily huddled with a bunch of people from East. Nat and Pierce are in a serious liplock. It looks painful, like a war is taking place in their mouths. That’s not at all what it was like with Skyla. Her kisses were pure and sweet with just the right amount of hunger and passion. I wonder how long it’ll be until we experience that again, how many Long Logan days I’ll have to wait until she blesses me with those honeyed lips, those sugared kisses.

“Wait up!” A voice calls from behind. It’s Logan.

“You find her?” I’m pretty sure the only thing Logan was bellyaching for was Skyla.

“Not yet. She’s probably on her way.” He leans over his knees like he might be sick.

“You okay, man?” I pat him on the back as we take a seat in the sand.

“Not really.” He winces in pain. “I just had the strangest run-in.”

“Michelle after you again?”

“No, it wasn’t a girl.” He stares off into the ocean, distracted by whatever just happened. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.” He rubs his eyes with fatigue. “You know—a thought came to me tonight.” Logan looks out at the waterline as it wafts in and out of the fog. “Skyla and me, we’re not going to be safe. I’m putting her in more danger than she’s already in.”

A surge of hope spears through me, and I feel horrible for wanting it—for wanting Skyla on a silver platter. Then a stone settles in my chest, hot as a coal. The only way I could truly have her is if she wanted me on her own. Logan could never gift her to me even if he tried.

“Two Celestra.” I nod into his line of thinking. “But she’s got the protective hedge, so it’ll all work out.” It always does for Logan.

“She doesn’t have it. She hasn’t admitted it, but she’s not wearing it, and I’m pretty sure there was no way she could have taken it from the past, anyway.”

Shit.

“So what are you saying?” I examine him under the frail moonlight. Logan looks battered, beaten, and this rattles me.

“I’m saying”—he lets out a heavy breath and his chest struggles to expand as if the weight of the world were resting on his shoulders—“I can’t be with Skyla anymore. Not publicly anyway.”

Crap—all of this drama because he needs to carry out a relationship with her in private. I shake my head. Not what I thought he would say by a long shot. In my twisted version, he shoves her in my direction for safekeeping, and she accidently—and most genuinely—falls in love with me. The end.

“I’d die protecting her,” I whisper. “You know that, right?”

“I know.” He taps his fist over my shoulder. “But I’m not asking you to die. I’m asking you to date her.”

Every muscle in my body seizes. Did he say date her? Maybe he said
hate
her?

“Take her out.” His brows pitch. “Spend time with her at West. I need people—demons, things that are not of this world—to think that you’re a couple. Do whatever the hell you have to, just make it look genuine.” He turns his face to the wind. “Make it known that you’re together—that I’m the last person she’s interested in.”

“Did she agree to this?” My mind races a million miles an hour, not sure of what to make of his convenient matchmaking.

“She will. I’ll bring it up at some point tonight.” His features harden to steel. Logan takes a breath and looks over at me as if the fate of the universe rode on this single endeavor. “This needs to be real.”

“Trust me.” A dull laugh gets buried in my chest. “Everything about it will be believable.”

I let out a lungful of air that’s been pent up in my body for years and stare off at the black horizon with the mystery this night unfolded still fresh in my mind.

One thing is for sure. Every ounce of affection I pour out for Skyla will be a genuine token straight from my heart.

This is it.

This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. 

***

The dark sky is heavily masked with a layer of haze that paints the island a perennial shade of grey. Logan makes his way back to the crowd in search of Skyla.

My heart breaks for him. I know this hurts like hell. He’s a hero, even if she doesn’t see it that way at first. Logan is willing to sacrifice everything to protect her from the Counts, including any future they might have had together.

A fake relationship. I shake my head. What if that’s what the visions were trying to tell me all along? That I’m nothing more than a stand-in for Logan while he and Skyla have some closet bond that brings them even closer. And what about the wedding? I swear she loved me in those visions—especially that one. It guts me to think I was just an understudy meant to deceive the world. No real love for Gage Oliver. I’m just someone to help pull the wool over everyone’s eyes while she steals kisses with Logan in the dark.

An unholy scream rips from the sky. It saws from above, and I stand to meet it.

Nev lands hard on my shoulder.

“It’s Skyla, isn’t it?” I touch my hand to his feathers. “You did good, buddy. Take me to her.”

The sky, the sand, and the waves warble in and out of existence as I dematerialize. A stale, cold room forms around me with white glossy walls. Stainless tubs like those at the morgue line the center.

“Can you let my friends go?” A frightened girl shouts from the other side of the room.

A body moves in the large stainless bathtub. This is no morgue, and that’s no corpse—its Skyla.

“Shut up!” a woman—a thing—shouts back. She look curious, like a troll or a thousand-year-old hag with wild, flaming hair, her body bent and disfigured as she slumps over a series of beakers. “I hate the sound of your voice.”

“What’s wrong with my voice?” Skyla sounds indignant at the slight.

That’s my girl—nice and feisty.

I hurdle a cart of medical equipment, stealth like a ninja.

“Silence!” The old woman howls, her voice crashes through the room like a cymbal, reverberating for far too long for it to ever be natural. “You’re going to love it here.”

The hag opens a door in the back and shoves Skyla inside. A man, clad in black, enters the room. I disintegrate long before he could ever hope to see me and appear in the tiny holding cell where they’ve trapped Skyla.

I offer a forlorn smile as she huddles on the floor. From the tiny window, I can see them pouring a dark crimson solution into a metal tub that I can only guess is Betadine.

“They’re sanitizing it.” I meant to think it but it flew from my lips in lieu of hello.

“Gage!” She spikes up and locks her limbs around me in a death grip. I run my lips over her temple and close my eyes for a moment, wishing us both into my bedroom, but the scenery doesn’t change. Binding spirit. Skyla’s not going anywhere tonight unless they release her.

“Logan is on his way,” I whisper. I have no doubt that Nevermore went back to get him.

“Can’t you just zap me out of here?” Her forehead wrinkles as she pants into me. “I’ll believe it and everything.” She nods furtively, as if all it took was a little faith and determination. 

I offer an apologetic smile. “It doesn’t work like that.” I pull out my keychain with the nine-way tools and use the pliers to cut her plastic cuffs off.

“So you can never be contained? No one can ever trap a Levatio?” Skyla is as desperate for answers as she is to get out of this hellhole. That’s what I want to be for her, an answer, a savior, something far more intimate if she’ll let me. 

“Not true,” I say it softly, trying not to exacerbate her panic. “All they have to do is touch me—think of me—and I can be bound.”

Skyla touches my cheek as she struggles for words.

The door rattles to life. A plume of auburn hair rises above the window.

I need to go
.
If they see me, I can’t help you.
I promise I’ll be right back
.

She tightens her arms around me in defeat as I settle a kiss over the top of her head.

The room loses all color as the grayscale world of disorganized molecules takes over and the night sky appears up above.

I’ve landed right back on the beach, smack in front of a very naked Spencer Jameson.

21

Logan

Pushing Through

The long string of bonfires glow against the grey night like a series of miniature suns—too wonderful for the sky above Paragon to ever comprehend.

Pushing through
—I don’t know what the hell the “me from the future” was talking about.

I shake my head, confused by the concept. Whatever it was seemed important, especially that last line about fighting for her—like I would ever stop. Why would I even bother to say those words? It unnerved me, pissed me off, to hear it like a threat. Skyla is mine, and Gage is just a front. I have to believe it, or I’ll going fucking insane.

A pair of long, golden legs run in this direction and a swell of relief washes over me once I realize they’re attached to the most beautiful girl in the world—Skyla.

“Hey!” I call out as I head over to meet her.

Skyla dive-bombs me, and I pull her in by the cheeks, kissing her mouth, drinking her down as if she were wine from the Garden of Eden. She curves her body into mine, and darts her tongue in and out of my mouth in a display of desolate passion. The people, the fire, the sound of the crashing waves—they melt away to another realm, one far less important than the one our love resides in. 

I pull back and take her in—Skyla, in all her inordinate beauty.

She gasps for air as the panic returns to her face.

“You are not going to believe what just happened.” Her lips tremble with fear—a hum rails through her as if it were coming from her bones.

“Skyla, I know.” I hold on to her shoulders as she writhes with fear. “What you’re experiencing is called a Treble. It means this reality is temporary, and things will be changed back to the way they were before you left.”

“No!” Her body enters into a mean shiver. “Drake and Brielle are there, and I don’t know where they are.” Her teeth begin to chatter. Her entire person quivers with an intense vibration.

“Tell me something about where you are so I can find it.” I’m as panicked as she is but don’t want to show it.

“I’m underground. It’s…we drove along a bumpy road, and there was a forest.”
I’ve just described all of Paragon.
“Don’t you have some underground detection kit or something? It’s a facility. It has a steel table like the one in the morgue. Do something!” Skyla’s torso starts in on a slow gyration, and I secure my arms over her. “Call the police,” she cries as her flesh begins to evaporate. “Don’t let me go, Logan. I don’t want to die.”