Chapter Eighteen
Nicole
NICOLE COULDN’T STOP STARING.
She tried, she really did. Forced her eyes to where Callum was sprawled on the luxurious couch. Picked at the leftover finger sandwiches and drank the tea. She chewed and swallowed mechanically, even though she hadn’t sat down. She couldn’t with Kyan in the same room.
Some huge protective concern inside her relaxed now he and Callum were here. She hadn’t realised how much both of them had taken up a corner of her mind, and couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that Remi was elsewhere.
Kyan’s tension hadn’t receded though, and he hadn’t taken a seat either. If it weren’t for the way his gaze ran over her skin with a frisson of heat, she would have thought their moment in the Heaven Room had been one of her fevered dreams.
Then the topic of last night’s attack came up.
Kyan’s eyes raked down her arms, searching for any injuries. ‘Your transformation was all right? You healed okay?’
‘Yes. It was – better than last time.’
Last time, when she’d been out cold for hours in his arms. It had been so intense, his presence rewriting her mind and body to feel comforted, safe, and relieved after such pain and fear.
In a few short days, he’d changed her entire perception of what a Wake-bound Empyreal could be.
‘What type of Banshee was it?’ he asked, voice rough as he crossed his bulky arms, spine stiff where he stood in front of the unlit fireplace.
Nicole explained.
‘Sounds like—’ began Callum.
‘It was a Ban-Sìth,’ Dylan interrupted.
There were a few variations of Banshees thanks to centuries of cultural differences.
A Ban-Sìth: who relied more heavily on their scream and often sensed death – hence her foreboding final words to Bells and Nicole.
And the more seductive, blood-drinking ones: the Baobhan Sìth she’d been in Estwood.
Nicole found herself infinitely pleased that the blood-drinking and seductress elements of her transformation weren’t witnessed by anyone but Kyan.
Especially considering she’d woken in the night after it, still transforming slowly back, but craving something she didn’t have a name for.
Not until she’d found Kyan on his way to her, bringing her blood to alleviate the worst of the lingering Baobhan Sìth urges.
How she’d kissed him, licked his mouth, wrapped her legs around his waist—
Heat bloomed in her cheeks when their eyes connected.
She tried to swallow, refocusing on her father’s words. ‘The one that hunted you last night must have been drawn to the scream of her lost cousin, and the scent of supernatural deaths around Estwood. Then they were likely waiting for a moment to get through the wards.’
‘I checked them,’ Verin said, standing by the piano behind her. ‘When Elisabetta came back, she unknowingly let the Ban-Sìth slip onto the grounds.’
‘That’s a relief,’ Bells said. ‘That means the Wake didn’t send her.’
Callum’s head turned towards Kyan, and Nicole wasn’t the only one noticed it.
‘What?’ Dylan asked.
The bleakness in Kyan’s eyes chipped a piece of armour she hadn’t realised was there. Some deep sense of security she’d carried with her since she was a child and her father had taken them from the site of her mother’s death.
His next words, though, ripped it away and left her raw.
‘The Wake know about you. They want me to bring you in.’
A terrible silence filled the library.
A weight began to bear down on her chest.
‘I don’t understand,’ Nicole began softly, heart thundering as a slip of terror dragged her stomach to her feet. ‘We were so careful, we—’
‘What did you tell them?’ her father asked in a voice so low and threatening it drew Nicole from her shock with a prickle of warning.
Kyan explained in a monotone the two missions they’d offered him: a Druid or Nicole.
‘I couldn’t let anyone else take your mission, which would have happened if I’d rejected it. I was going to try and find you and warn you, but – here you are.’
His eyes burned with honesty and determination.
‘What the hell are we going to do about it?’ Dylan demanded, the anxiety emanating off him like the heat from a small fire.
Nicole’s stomach twisted.
‘Nothing,’ Bells said softly.
They all looked at her.
‘He’ll help us get the artefacts and buy us time, won’t you?’
Their gazes collectively swung to Kyan.
‘I’ll do everything in my power to make sure they never get their hands on you.’ His words were as much a vow as the physical one they’d taken in the woods at Lanhydrock. The scar on Nicole’s arm suddenly warmed.
But how were they going to manage this? How much time would they need? How was it possible to keep evading the Wake when they knew, without a doubt, she existed?
‘The Druid,’ Bells said softly. ‘Nicole, the blood. Do you think it could have been the same person? That she’s involved?’
Nicole blinked, trying to get her mind to focus.
Callum leaned forward. ‘What Druid?’
Bells told him briefly, but Nicole had stopped hearing the conversation, stopped feeling the room around her, anything that wasn’t the insistent, growing panic in her chest.
The Wake knew about them.
It was over before it had even begun.
No, something within her said.
No, it isn’t over yet.
A cool, hunting calm spread beneath her skin, stabilising the sharp nausea in her stomach.
The Wake hadn’t located them, that was why they’d sent Kyan.
Her family had her mother’s next clue and one of the goddess-blessed items. They knew where to go.
The thought swept through her like a slow tide, calming the turmoil, the fear.
The confident predator within shutting it down, allowing her to regain clarity.
She could use this part of herself, even if it was dark and hungry. Even if it was dangerous.
They would need it to survive.
Kyan’s eyes slid to her, but she avoided his too-perceptive gaze.
‘Nikki,’ their father said. She jolted at his touch on her arm. ‘Are you all right?’
There was reassurance in his gaze. She knew he would fight through a sea of Empyreals to keep them safe, but—
‘Yes.’
She had to force herself to concentrate on what they could control before they even had the chance to get answers on their first lead.
‘Are we heading to Liverpool today or tomorrow?’ she asked, reorganising her mind and mentally laying out the plan again.
Her father assessed her.
‘Liverpool?’ Kyan interrupted.
Nicole nodded. ‘That’s our clue about the next goddess-blessed item. The Muse there.’
‘The Muse?’ Callum asked with a note of interest and humour.
‘You know about her?’ Dylan asked from his left.
‘We’ve had a run-in with her before, haven’t we, Kyan?’
Kyan grunted his assent, but his eyes hadn’t left Nicole.
‘Couldn’t we send Kyan, then?’ Dylan tried. ‘Stay out of the way and reassess here?’
Callum laughed and Dylan shot him a look. ‘Kyan isn’t on the best terms with her.’
Nicole’s curious gaze skidded to him. ‘What happened?’
‘What didn’t happen?’ Callum answered. ‘She nearly killed dozens of people at the height of the Pre-Raphaelites’ productive years. The 1800s in London and Liverpool were a – how did you put it, Kyan? A fucking nightmare?’
‘I managed.’
‘You complained so much. And you hated the fireworks.’
Questions painted through Nicole’s mind in a spray of colour.
‘Erm—’ began Bells from where she perched near Callum, eyes a stark, worried blue. ‘How did she nearly kill that many people? What is she, exactly?’
‘She’s one of the Lennán Síde,’ Kyan said. ‘The oldest and most powerful I’ve ever met. An Irish Muse that artists and others waste away near, because they become so obsessed. They go without food and sleep to create around her. It can drive them mad and has killed a fair few.’
‘If she’s so dangerous,’ Bells said, ‘why isn’t she …’
‘Dead?’ asked Callum. ‘Because in the supernatural community, when you’re a type of creature that by its very nature induces madness, mania, or violence in humans, you’re not doing it on purpose and therefore out of malice.
Thus, you don’t release a kill hormone or trigger an Empyreal’s transformation.
But you can be put on eternal house arrest. Which means it’s the perfect place to hide information. ’
‘Wait,’ Nicole said. ‘You’re saying she’s been hidden away since the 1800s?’
Kyan shifted on his feet. ‘She’s in her plush apartments and has everything she could need. But, yes. It’s not something we took lightly. But it was either that, or …’
‘Report her to the Wake and have her locked up in some distasteful padded cell, or worse,’ Callum said.
Nicole took in the tight angle of Kyan’s shoulders. He’d been bending some of the Wake’s rules for years. Had her mother known of the grace he’d given the Muse? Was that one of the reasons she’d chosen to leave a clue with her and had tried to stop Kyan taking the Wake’s second binding oath?
‘What information are you hoping she’ll give you?’ Kyan asked. ‘She doesn’t give it out lightly and everything she says is a riddle. She might not even agree to speak to you unless you give her a gift.’
‘What kind of gift?’ queried her father.
‘That depends on her mood. Rare pearls, silk robes. Often an artist who can come and paint her, but that has to be strictly monitored.’
‘A woman with good taste,’ Verin mused.
Nicole mentally scoured their family’s small collection of art.
Anything truly precious had been passed down from her mother and was currently hidden in one of her secret storage facilities.
They could stop and get something before they went, but what would be enough to tempt an immortal Muse?
They couldn’t give away her mother’s portrait.
They still had the semi-burned Dante painting, but Nicole was reluctant to part with any art her mother collected, especially if it might still have hidden secrets.
‘I might have something you can offer her,’ Kyan said. ‘We can go to my place and pick it up, but first I’ll need to get the key for her apartment from my contact.’
Kyan had a place? With art inside?
‘You’re coming?’ she asked.
‘Is that wise?’ Dylan cut in. ‘If the Wake know you’re after Nicole, wouldn’t going with us only lead them straight to her?’
The air strung with tension.
‘I’d make sure not to be seen making contact, but could be close enough that, if they’re watching me – which depends on how much they know – it would look like I was doing my job. Hunting her.’
A ripple of nerves made it through the calm.
‘Besides, I think it’s better that I stay close in case they send more Empyreals, or try something unexpected.’
Her father crossed his arms. He’d been relatively silent, as if every answer to these questions was a test. ‘Aren’t they going to get suspicious if you’re around Nicole, but not bringing her in?’
‘I’m forming a contingency for that,’ Kyan said.
‘But I can buy you the time you need to find the items. Missions can go on for months if the target is smart enough. They know Freya evaded them until the end. They’ll expect you to have picked up some of her skills, so it would be normal for me to track you for a while to consider the best ways to bring you in. ’
‘What about this contact in Liverpool with the key to the Muse’s apartments?’ Dylan added. ‘Can we trust them?’
‘They’re the most powerful supernatural in the city,’ Callum said. ‘Think of them like a secret mayor. They have their own interests. Let’s just say they’ve had a few run-ins with the Wake they haven’t liked.’
Verin sat now, pouring his slim form into an armchair. ‘There are more of us than you might think.’
‘So, the Wake don’t run Liverpool?’ Bells asked, surprised. ‘I thought it was one of their headquarter cities.’
Callum smiled, his teeth a flash of white. ‘It is. They have St George’s Hall as a base, but in terms of the supernatural society? No, they don’t run the city.’
Nicole absorbed everything. ‘So, if we’re in public, I have to act like I don’t know you?’
Kyan nodded. ‘I have to go to the Philharmonic Pub, but it would be safer if you stayed out. Empyreals and creatures often go in, so it’s best if we avoid close calls with any other Empyreals. But I can meet you afterwards and we’ll get what we need and meet her.’
‘Then we go tomorrow,’ her father said. ‘Tonight we rest and plan more if we need to. But there’s one more thread.’ He looked at Kyan. ‘What are you going to do about this Druid?’
Kyan took a breath, his gaze shuttering.
Nicole wanted to reach for him.
The Wake had done this: put him in this impossible situation. The mild fury of it made it through Nicole’s mask of calm like fissures in old paint.
‘Once you’re all set up,’ Kyan said, ‘I’ll go to Anglesey to check on the Druid site and make sure that the Wake aren’t making up rumours of a Druid to test me.
If there is one, there’s a good chance they will have visited some of the sites and it might help me track them.
Thankfully Logan’s an idiot, but I don’t know what else he’s been told.
There’s a strong chance he’s been given information that would lead him there. ’
‘I’m going to pack, then,’ Nicole said smoothly, keeping a tight grasp on her thoughts.
‘I’ll get to work on the samples you brought me,’ Verin said. ‘And continue with your mother’s mystery blood.’
‘This should help,’ Dylan said, offering Elisabetta’s pigment vial.
Verin’s fingers closed around it, his eyes dilating momentarily.
‘You two,’ Verin said to Kyan and Callum, ‘are welcome to stay. I suppose.’
Callum smirked.
Nicole backed up, allowing a reassuring smile to curve her lips. It helped take the edge off the press of dread, helped her begin to recalibrate and retain a sliver of the belief that this wasn’t over.
But she could see from the flicker in her father’s brow that he wasn’t convinced. So she softened the new stiffness in her shoulders.
She just needed a minute alone. Somewhere far away, where the array of immortals couldn’t hear if her breath changed or any of that panic managed to claw itself back up her throat.
Because to break down would make this more real, would fill her with fear instead of logic.
Logic was going to help them here. Information.
But Kyan’s eyes hadn’t left her. Didn’t, even as she turned and walked away as casually as she could.
She could still feel his gaze as she nearly broke into a run, reminding her too much of the first night they’d kissed in Estwood. The world blurred suddenly with tears she hadn’t realised were forming.
She knew they couldn’t stay here, not now there was a ticking clock.
But how long until the Wake got sick of waiting?
How long until they killed them all?