“No.” Aden shook his head. “Absolutely not. Tucker’s out there. I don’t want you—”
“I’ll be fine. If not, well, I’ll text you. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m getting good at using modern technology,” she said and bent down to kiss his cheek. “Besides, you can’t go. You have a lot to tell Mary Ann.”
“You could tell her.”
“Impossible. I’ve already forgotten half of what you wanted her to know.”
“No way,” he said. “You and Riley did that joining hands and exchanging of memories thing. You know more than all of us.”
“True. Which means you’ve got some catching up to do, too.”
She didn’t wait for his reply, and shockingly, neither Aden nor Riley tried to stop her as they once would have done. The door shut with a soft snick behind her, sunlight pouring in for a moment, then vanishing like vapor.
“Stubborn,” Aden muttered.
“Typical,” Riley groused.
Chauvinists.
“What do you have to tell me?” Mary Ann asked, dread blending with her hunger and leaving a thick coat of acid on her sternum.
“Brace yourself.” For the next half hour, Aden told her so many gruesome things, she wanted to scrub her ears with sandpaper.
A coven of witches, slaughtered. The D and M ranch, burned to the ground. Vlad the Impaler, possessing humans and forcing them to do despicable things. Tucker’s little brother, potential kidnap and murder victim.
Shannon, stabbed to death. Currently a zombie.
Aden’s voice wobbled a few times, as if he was fighting tears, but he battled them back and continued. When he finished, she kinda wished he hadn’t.
“So much death,” she whispered. Poor, sweet Shannon, who would die all over again if something wasn’t done. Could anything be done, though? She wanted to sob for him, for what he’d lost. She wanted to bring him back as he’d been. Wanted to hug him. Wanted to punish Vlad in the most terrible way.
She wanted Riley to put his arm around her, to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be okay.
Big shocker, she didn’t get any of that. Even worse, the silence that followed her horrified whisper acted like a thick cloud of oppression. No one knew where to look or how to respond.
Hinges squeaked, and light once again flooded the room. Victoria stepped inside, shut the door and chased that light away. She held a paper bag, the scent of bread, meat and greasy fries wafting from it. Mary Ann’s mouth watered, and she was ashamed of herself. After everything she’d just heard, she should have lost her appetite. For, like, ever.
But when Victoria handed her that oil-spotted bag, she was unable to help herself and dove in, devouring every crumb in record time. After swallowing the last nibble, she realized the hush hadn’t lifted from the room. In fact, everyone was staring at her. Great. She probably had food in her teeth and mustard smeared on her chin.
She wiped at her face with the back of her wrist, her shame intensifying.
“Do you feel sick?” Victoria asked. She’d reclaimed her perch on Aden’s lap. She wasn’t quite as pale as before, and was that a ketchup stain on her robe?
“No?” Mary Ann replied, her amazement making the word more of a question than a statement. Her stomach actually felt grateful. Before, when she’d even thought about eating, she had battled nausea. “What does this mean?”
Pensive, Victoria tugged at her earlobe. “You were shot with a witch’s arrow and lost a lot of blood.”
She nodded.
“And you were given a transfusion at the hospital.”
“Yes. At least, I think so.”
The princess started chewing on her bottom lip again. A nervous habit? “Maybe the new blood, the human blood, has made you human again. At least for a little while. Or maybe it has something to do with Riley? He’s always interfered with your ability to mute. Maybe he’s now interfering with your ability to drain.”
“So, at the moment, I can’t, won’t drain anyone?”
“If you keep the food down, and it seems like you will, magic and energy probably aren’t on your menu selection.”
“You won’t have to run anymore,” Aden said.
“Not if there’s a way to stay this way,” Mary Ann replied, trying not to leap off the bed and dance like a fool. There had to be.
“I don’t know. We could ward you against the draining of energy, but if, say, your hunger for it returns, you would then die.” Victoria studied Riley before returning her attention to Mary Ann. “I mean, we’ve warded drainers before. Not when they were without their ability, because, to my knowledge, that’s never happened before, but always they starved to death.”
If there was a worse way to die, she suddenly couldn’t think of it. Did that stop her from plowing ahead? No. “I don’t care. I want to try. I want a ward.” If there was a chance, well, she’d take it. Anything to return to her dad.
Anything to be with Riley.
She’d rather die than hurt her boys, so, she had no qualms about risking her life. “Do we have the equipment?”
“Yes. Nathan noticed your new wards, and the scabs forming on one of them, and thought Riley might want to correct the damage, so he commandeered what was needed before he took off.”
“We’ll think this through before we do it,” Aden said.
Mary Ann was shaking her head before he finished. “No. We’ll do it. Here, now. Before we leave this place.”
Aden, too, glanced at Riley, his expression more what’s-going-on than help-me-make-her-see-reason. “What happened to our sweet Mary Ann who rarely argues?”
Riley shrugged, offering nothing else, and for some reason, that upset her as much as when he’d pulled away from her. “You told us what you learned this past week. Now it’s our turn to tell you what we learned.”
A pause. A shuddering breath. “All right.” Aden braced himself for impact. “Go.”
Another half hour ticked by as Riley explained Mary Ann’s search for the identity of the souls, her success, her search for Aden’s parents, and what they assumed was her success.
Aden listened, paling, stiffening. His eyes were changing colors so rapidly they were like a spinning kaleidoscope. Blue, gold, green, black. Violet. Such a glittering violet. The souls must be going crazy inside his head.
By the time Riley finished, the oppressive silence had made another appearance.
Aden propped his head on the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know how to react to this. I need time. Like a year, maybe. Or two.” He rubbed his temples, as if battling a persistent ache. “But you know what I hate most of all? That we’ve been running around reacting to everything, but not causing anything.”
“I don’t understand,” Victoria said.
“Yeah,” Mary Ann said. “What?”
“We’ve been letting Vlad pull our strings. He hides in the shadows, forcing people to hurt us, and we do nothing to stop him. We wait, we take it, we react, bumbling around without any planning, without delivering any retribution. He has no fear of us because we never strike first. Why haven’t we struck first?”
“What do you have in mind?” Riley asked, hard tone laced with the kind of eagerness you might hear from a prisoner on death row who had nothing to lose.
“I’ll talk to Tonya Smart myself. I’ll visit…my parents, if that’s who they are. I’ll find out as much as I can about myself and the souls. Because in the end, I need to be at my best if I’m to have any hope of defeating Vlad. And I can’t be at my best if I’m pulled in a thousand different directions.”
He paused, eyeing everyone to make sure they were listening. When no one offered a reply, he went on, “You two aren’t ready to leave yet, you’re both still pretty weak, and to be honest, so am I. So rest up. When the sun sets, we’re rolling out and cutting some of those strings.”
TWENTY-FOUR
MARY ANN COULDN’T REST. Shock and medication were wearing off, and emotions were slogging through her with the force of a battering ram. Aden and Victoria had left over an hour ago, staying in the room next door, but she couldn’t even close her eyes. Riley was still beside her, quiet, motionless. So quiet her ears were ringing. So motionless he could have been dead.