Authors: Becca Andre
“Aren’t pertinent? Your amnesia is a direct result of someone trying to get that formula from you. The reason you kept it secret was because you were embarrassed that your brilliant mind had been compromised.”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s completely true. Even now, after you learned your name, you refuse to use it because you don’t know if you’re living up to the master you were.”
“I’m every bit the master I was. You don’t know shit.”
“Then why are you so defensive,
Amelia
?”
I was going to hit him. I was going to punch him right in that smart mouth. Or maybe knee him in the—
“That’s enough, Rowan,” Cora said. We both turned to stare. Had she defended me?
“You can continue this argument in the morning,” she went on. “Right now you both need to go to your rooms and cool down.”
“I’m as cool as I’ve been in nineteen years!” he answered.
“Rowan. Go.”
The pair stared each other down for another long minute, and then, to my surprise, Rowan turned and walked away. I still hadn’t recovered when Cora turned to face me. “What did you do?”
I saw no reason to sugar coat it. “I designed a formula that cuts him off from his element.”
Cora blinked. “And you used it because…”
“He had just recovered. He may not have intended to incinerate James’s brothers, but he was going to do something.”
Cora sighed. “How long does it last?”
“Couple of hours. Probably less for him.”
She glanced in the direction he’d gone. “Then he’ll be himself soon.”
“How many more times can he wield fire before it kills him?”
Eyes of multi-hued blue returned to mine. “Perhaps dozens. Or maybe only once.” She continued to watch me. “You did the right thing.”
I was fairly certain my jaw rested on the floor.
“And if you admit to him that I said that, I’ll pull every liquid from your body between one breath and the next.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
Her lips curled upward. “Go to bed, Addie. Rowan will be himself come morning.”
“Oh, yea,” I muttered and started for the stairs. It wasn’t until I reached my room that I realized she’d called me Addie.
Chapter
18
I
ran through darkness, trying to
find my way back to the portal. Claws scraped the ground behind me, the rhythm matching my own rapid footfalls. I didn’t turn. I knew what I’d see if I did. Terrified of what followed me, I didn’t see what stood before me until I ran into him.
“Addie?” James caught me by the shoulders and the footfalls behind me vanished. He was the boy I knew and not the werewolf-looking thing from the portal. Laughing, I looked up…and met his red eyes.
I screamed myself awake, bolting upright in the process.
“Addie!” Hands caught me by the shoulders, and I bit back another scream. James sat on the side of my bed, his pale face inches from my own. I jerked back so fast, I slipped his grip and cracked my skull against the headboard.
He immediately rose to his feet holding his palms toward me as he backed away. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the nightmare. I sat on top of my rumpled bed spread, still dressed in my clothes from the night before. I hadn’t wanted to go to sleep without knowing what had happened to…
“James!” I bounced off the bed and ran after him.
He turned, his expression uncertain, but I didn’t give him a chance to question. I threw my arms around his waist and hugged him tight.
“Thank God you’re okay,” I said against his dark T-shirt. “I was so worried. We shouldn’t have left you there, alone with that…thing.”
“My predecessor.”
I pushed back to look up at him. “The grim before you? The one that killed the European Elements?” A new thought occurred to me. “It saw Rowan. What if it comes after him?”
“He
can’t leave that plane,” James emphasized the pronoun. “He has no body to return to. Even if he could, I don’t think he’d hunt Elements. He was under necromantic control.”
I remembered Clarissa saying something about that.
“Like me,” James whispered. He turned his face aside. “I was almost forced to commit the same crime.”
“James.” I fell silent, not sure what to say.
He stood still a moment, perhaps waiting for me to say more. When I didn’t, his shoulders slumped. “I should have told you everything the night we explored the Alchemica, but…”
“It wouldn’t make a difference. I—”
“Wouldn’t make a difference?” He turned his head to look at me. His eyes weren’t glowing, but they were the most intense I’d ever seen them. “I’m dead,” he whispered.
“That makes no sense. Your skin is warm. Your mind is agile. You’re not a zombie.”
“I’m not alive; I’m animated. My soul left my body before my birth. I have no heartbeat.” He caught my hand and pressed it against his chest, left of his sternum. We stood unmoving until my burning lungs reminded me that I wasn’t breathing. Nothing stirred beneath my palm.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered.
“The hellhound blood keeps this body…alive. As long as the blood remains within it, I am bound to it.”
I kept my hand pressed to his chest, emphasizing that I wasn’t repulsed by his explanation.
“Is that why you can shape-shift into the hound?”
He nodded. “The blood’s original form.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I needed to know. “In the portal?”
He lowered his eyes. “My true form: human and hellhound merged into one.”
“Oh.” I let my hand fall to my side.
“Don’t worry,” he said, immediately. “I can’t assume that shape here.”
“I’m not worried.”
“You were terrified.” He reached out as if to touch my shoulder, but let his hand drop instead. “I felt you shaking.”
I rubbed both hands over my face, groaning in frustration. “I couldn’t help it. That place, the other guy, everything—it freaked me out. Something inside me kept screaming that I should run.”
“I understand.”
I gripped his forearms. “Damn it, James. I’m not afraid of you.”
“I believe you.” He wouldn’t make eye contact.
“I don’t think you do.”
He took a deep breath, eyes focused on the far wall. “I should go. I’m a threat here. To you, Rowan, everyone. If another necro—”
“No!” I gripped his arms tighter.
“It’s for the best. If I return to my brothers, they’d have no reason to bother—”
“Oh, hell no. You aren’t going anywhere near those losers.”
He smiled for the first time. A sad smile, but it still reminded me of the boy I knew.
“I’m serious.” I reached up and caught his face between my palms, forcing him to look at me. “You’re not leaving me.”
“Ad.”
A knock sounded on my door, and I gave it a frown before turning back to him. “I love you. I’m not going to let you throw your life away.” I held his eyes, willing him to hear me. To believe in me. “I’ll find a solution, and meanwhile, we’ll avoid necromancers.”
The knock sounded again, louder this time, and I released him.
“A solution?” he whispered. “There’s not—”
“Hey, where’s that unfailing faith you’ve always had in me?” I grinned back over my shoulder as I headed for the door. He ducked his head, but I still caught the blush. I pulled open the door—and almost slammed it closed when I saw who stood on the threshold.
“We have a guest,” Rowan said with no effort at civility. He gave my crumpled clothes a frown. “I expect you to make yourself presentable and—”
“Presentable?” I balked, eying his silver-gray sweater and dark slacks. What the hell did that mean? “Who’s here?”
“Lydia. She delivered the results from the soil analysis.”
Soil analysis? Oh, the sample he’d taken from the Alchemica. I had completely forgotten about that.
“Their analyst is back in town?” James asked, stepping up beside me.
I gave him a frown. Where was I when this information was being shared? For that matter, Rowan didn’t look surprised to see James back. Had James visited him first? Why did that feel like betrayal?
“She got in yesterday,” Rowan answered before his gray eyes drifted back to me. “The sunroom in half an hour.” He turned and walked away.
I resisted the urge to make a gesture at his back.
James slipped past me to step out into the hall. “I’d better let you get ready.”
I caught his arm. “You’re staying, right?”
“You asked me not to leave. I won’t.”
I smiled. “Thanks.” I let go of his arm. “Now I’d better do as His Grace commands.” I caught a glimpse of James’s grin as I closed the door.
Forty-five minutes later, I walked
into the sunroom. Rowan stood with Lydia near the wall of photos. They leaned close, talking in low voices, but fell silent as soon as I walked in. If I were a paranoid person, that might bother me.
“About time you could join us.” Rowan frowned at my bare feet.
I dug my toes into the plush carpet. “You said presentable. I didn’t want to disappoint.”
My shower had been thorough, and then I’d made a point to dry my hair completely. I’d brushed and flossed my teeth, filed my nails, and then got distracted examining the bite in my shoulder, or what was left of it. Only a pair of pink lines marked the skin, the scabs having fallen away during my lengthy shower. Grandma must not have bitten as deeply as I’d thought. Perhaps it was the terror that made it seem worse.
Lydia glanced between us. It was difficult to tell on her uneven features, but she might have been amused. She stepped forward and offered a hand. The gesture surprised me. The last time we’d met, her buddy Gerald had tried to strangle me. Hesitant, I took her hand.
A quick squeeze and she released me. “Good morning.” She gave me a smile, though on her damaged face, it looked more like a grimace. “Forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name.”
I guess Rowan didn’t call me by name to his friends. “I’m the Addled Alchemist, but you can call me Addie.”
She frowned, obviously not certain what to make of that.
I ignored her confusion and moved on. “I didn’t realize you were the one doing the soil analysis.”
“Not me. I’m a geneticist, but I have colleagues who specialize in other areas. One is skilled at picking up residual magic.”
“Residual…” I frowned at Rowan. “I thought you sent the sample off for a chemical analysis. Why check for magic?”
“I wanted to cover every contingency.”
“And we did do a chemical composition on it,” Lydia added. “Though it wasn’t as conclusive as the magical.”
“You found magic where the bomb exploded?” I asked. Rowan and Donovan had been standing close to the scene, but I knew it hadn’t been Rowan. Did it have something to do with the magical defense Donovan had used?
“It appears to be alchemical,” Rowan said.
I scoffed. “In other words, you found evidence of alchemy at the Alchemica. I’m astonished.”
Rowan didn’t look amused.
“Within the matrix of the actual soil,” Lydia explained. “Magic had been done to the soil itself.”
“If a potion had been spilled…”
“Beneath the floor of the auditorium?” Rowan asked.
“It could have seeped through the floor or through the surrounding soil.”
“A possibility,” Lydia cut in, “but the magnitude of the residual left behind suggests otherwise.”
“But how do you know it was alchemical? What if it were from someone magical? Say, His Grace decided to torch the place?”
Rowan’s lips crooked upward.
“It’s dependent on the gift,” Lydia said, “and how said gift alters the environment. With Rowan, there’s nothing left to check.”
I grunted. Wasn’t that convenient?
“Also, through the chemical analysis, we picked up evidence of what we believe is the potion.” She turned to the briefcase sitting open on the table and passed me a sheet of paper. “Granted, it could be contamination or any number of things, but you can see that we found several substances that shouldn’t be there.”
I skimmed down the list, noting the percentages and identifying possible contaminates. Nothing obvious jumped out at me, yet I could see possibilities. If purified and combined in a certain order, several of the ingredients…
“Your conclusion?” Rowan’s voice in the silence startled me.
I lowered the paper. “Lydia’s right; it’s inconclusive.” I continued to go over possible combinations in my mind. One formula in particular. It’d be a good one for this purpose. It could even be detonated remotely or triggered to explode under certain conditions.
It occurred to me that no one was talking. Rowan watched me, a faint frown marring his brow.
“Yes?” I prompted.
He turned to Lydia. “Thank you for bringing this over. I appreciate you sticking around to answer Addie’s questions. I hope we haven’t made you late.”
I gritted my teeth. Sure, blame me.
Lydia glanced at her watch. “I’ve still got time, but I need to leave now.”
“Let me walk you out,” Rowan said.
Lydia nodded and once more offered me her hand. “If you need anything else, let me know? I’d love to have you stop by our institute one day.”
“Institute?”
“For magical research. I could show you my lab.”
“I’d like that, but biochemistry wasn’t my strength, it was…Emil’s.” I fell silent. Where had that knowledge come from? Another memory that meeting my mentor had unlocked? One that hadn’t had reason to surface until now?
Lydia gave me another grimace-smile. “Even so. I think you understand magic in ways we’ve never considered.”
“I’m only human.”
“We all were. Once.” She gave me one last smile and let Rowan lead her from the room.
“I never was,” James said.
I jumped and turned to find him standing just inside the door. “You love doing that, don’t you?” I turned my attention back to the analysis report.
“It’s not intentional. You tend to become oblivious to your surroundings when you’re engrossed in something. Like now.” He stopped beside me. “You see something?”
“Possibilities.”
He walked away, moving to stand before the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the back wall.
I skimmed over the list again. Yes, there was definitely a formula here. Damn it. Lydia was right. The bomb had been alchemical.
“Ad?” James asked.
“Mmm?” A bit disturbing that I knew the formula, but I knew a lot of disturbing formulas.
“Something you said upstairs…”
“Afraid he’s right.”
“What? Who?”
“Rowan. An alchemist blew up the Alchemica.”
“Okay.” He raked a hand back through his dark hair.
The door opened and Donovan stuck his head in. “Here you are.” His hazel eyes settled on James. “You ready to go?”
“Go? Go where?” I asked.
“I need to speak to my brothers,” James said.
“We discussed this. You’re not going back to them.”
“They’ll keep hunting me if I don’t go see them, and I don’t want them ending up here.” He gestured at our surroundings.
“James.”
“We’re only going to talk.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Donovan said.
“You know they only miss if they want to.”
“They won’t get a shot off around me.” His hazel eyes twinkled, and he gave me a wink. I remembered how Lawson’s gun had jammed at the PIA offices. Of course, he’d already shot James by then.
Rowan stepped around Donovan and walked into the room. “You’re leaving now?” he asked Donovan.
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“No need to worry about us, little alchemist.” Donovan gave me a smile and clapped James on the shoulder. My sidekick gave me a final glance and followed Donovan out the door.
“I’m going to hold you to that, dirt boy,” I called after them.
Donovan’s booming laugh carried back to us.
I frowned up at Rowan. “I really don’t like this.”
“He needs to call off his brothers. We have enough to worry about.” He gestured at the soil analysis sheet I still held. “What do you see?”
“What makes you think I saw anything?”
“Your expression.”
I frowned. Was I that easy to read? I returned the sheet to the table.
“By your refusal to answer, I’m going to assume that you’ve come to the same conclusion as Lydia: the bomb was alchemical.”
“Oh, really. That’s my conclusion?”
“If you’d found something to disprove it, I’d hear about it.”