Chapter 31
I WON’T BE THE ONE
As if sensing my stare, Rafe looks at me. His baby blue eyes lock with mine and the corner of his mouth curls into a slow, teasing grin.
My vision tunnels.
I look at Jude, who looks at me.
Then he follows my gaze and sees Rafe.
His face pales.
Both of us start moving at the same time.
Jude is farther away, so I reach Rafe first. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, hello there, sweet Selah. It’s good to see you, too.”
Mayor Ridley chortles and bounces on his toes, thrilled, apparently, with Rafe Vandenberg’s return to Foggy Hollow.
Jude strides toward us, his golden eyes ablaze.
“If you’ll excuse me, Mayor,” Rafe says. “The three of us have some catching up to do.”
Five minutes later, I’m using my key to get inside Evermore. The store is closed, like all the other stores around the square, which will afford us some much needed privacy.
We retreat into the shop.
Rafe leans against the counter.
Poe greets him curiously.
“I’m sorry I didn’t take you up on your offer, Selah.” Rafe scratches the cat behind his ear. “It was an excellent plan.”
“What offer?” Jude asks, looking from me to him.
“Meeting her at St. Fortuna’s last night.”
The hurt on Jude’s face cuts like a knife.
Meanwhile, Rafe’s smile drips with poisonous delight. He is all too happy to reveal this information. “I had every intention of being there, but then, well, you caused quite the scene. It had Dr. Psycho looking left, which allowed me to exit right.”
My eyes narrow. “Dr. Psycho?”
“The raging, unhinged monster man with a pack of devil dogs.”
“Vorat,” I say.
Rafe tilts his head. “Was that a sneeze?”
“Vorat,” I say again, with more pronunciation and force. “The Hollow Walker.”
“Ah, now there’s a story I haven’t heard in a few decades.
” Rafe continues petting Poe. The cat purrs like a traitor.
“It does fit, though. I can’t tell if he’s the actual alchemist from the motherland.
His face is hard to make out. He doesn’t have much of one, if I’m being honest. It’s all smudged, like a burn victim.
But he is a hungry sort of fellow. Souls might be just the thing he’s craving. He’s certainly collecting them.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“There were four in his lair when I had the displeasure of visiting.”
“His lair?”
“He’s taken over the Water Garden, and he seems to have cast some sort of spell.
A human trap, if you will. As soon as Lainey and Ivy were pulled in, they were vaporized into his prison.
After the two of you went all postal on poor Seraphina, my DNA suffered a profound moment of weakness.
So profound, in fact, I was momentarily mistaken as human.
I ended up in his lair, too, with the girls, who were very out of sorts. ”
“You didn’t think to help them?” Jude asks through gritted teeth.
I find myself grinding my own.
Perhaps if he had, Ivy would still be alive.
Perhaps Lainey wouldn’t be opening rifts and pushing innocent classmates inside them.
“I was a tad preoccupied with getting out of dodge. Thankfully, the weakness I experienced was a temporary glitch. I escaped without a problem. But getting out-out became a different story. Dr. Psycho had his demon dogs guarding every rift he opened. I found myself trapped in a much bigger prison.”
“You said there were four,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“In his prison, when you arrived. You said there were four.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Who were the other two?”
Rafe drums his fingers against the counter, as though intentionally making me wait. “I’m afraid I didn’t get a good look,” he finally answers. “It was all very dark and ominous. And as I’ve already pointed out, I wasn’t in a hurry to stick around and investigate.”
“Then how did you know Lainey wasn’t Lainey?”
“Just because I kept a wide berth from Dr. Psycho, doesn’t mean I didn’t do a fair amount of spying. I watched him send her through a rift, and she very obviously wasn’t the Lainey we all love and adore.”
Disgust blisters up my throat.
Rafe neither loved nor adored Lainey.
He was, however, all too willing to use her.
“What about Griffin?” I ask.
“He seems to be in the same condition as Lainey.”
I glare at him. “What does he want?”
Rafe examines his fingernails. “Who dares venture inside the mind of a psychopath.”
“Says the psychopath,” Jude growls.
This earns him a biting smile. “If I had to guess, I’d say he wants power.
To accomplish whatever diabolical plan he has up his sleeve, the details to which I am not privy.
I can simply tell you this. The Overlay, as you call it, is a war zone.
Dr. Psycho is the current warlord in power—an apex predator, if you will—and as such, he has enemies.
They want to stop him, oust him, restore the balance.
Whatever the case, it’s making him seek more power to shore up his dominion.
A nasty cycle that requires a lot of feeding. On souls. On rubies.”
My breath catches. “Rubies?”
Rafe’s eyes glint malevolently. “He has it, you know. Wears it around his neck like a talisman.”
Beside me, Jude seethes while I struggle to breathe.
“I believe the two of you have been looking for this.” Rafe reaches inside his coat and removes something from the inside pocket.
It takes a moment for me to recognize what he’s holding.
The missing page from the codex.
I reach for it, but he pulls it back.
“It was very foolhardy of you, Selah, using something so dangerous to reignite Jude’s heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am appreciative. He is the only family I have left, after all. The problem, you see, is that now Dr. Psycho is treating him like an afternoon snack.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry.
Rafe hands me the page.
The writing is terribly faded and written in a different language.
“Allow me to translate,” he says in my ear while Jude radiates fury.
It oozes from him in palpable waves. “The heart stone has many powers, the greatest being power over life, but the ruby does not give without consequence. You poured your love into that stone when you begged it to save Jude. Upon granting your wish, a tether was formed.” He directs my attention to a drawing that seems to illustrate his point.
“And now, his soul is being siphoned by the very thing that saved him.”
I am dizzy.
Lightheaded.
Weak in the knees.
“I don’t understand,” I breathe.
“Oh, but I think you do,” he croons. “You’re feeding him, Selah. With every touch, every kiss, every physical act of love, you imbue the stone with more of Jude’s soul. And Dr. Psycho is all too pleased to enjoy the meal.”
I look away from the page, to Rafe, who is standing much too close. “How do we stop it?”
He slides his thumb to the bottom of the page where a single phrase has been written.
Lapis dēlendus est.
“Destroy it. Which I guess poses a bit of a problem, as he is wearing it around his neck.” Rafe clucks his tongue. “I suppose the next best option would be creating some distance?”
He slides his arm around my shoulder, his other around Jude’s. “I’ll give you two lovebirds a chance to chat in private. It seems there’s much to discuss.”
The bell jingles as the door closes.
The silence that follow screams.
I can’t feel anything.
Not the pain in my arm.
Not the page in my hand.
All is numb.
“Selah,” Jude says.
But I shake my head, unable to look at him.
Rafe has returned.
And he just confirmed my worst fear.
Jude runs his hand down his face. “He’s lying.”
No, he’s not.
For once, Rafe absolutely isn’t lying.
I recall Lainey’s words at the barn party.
I think the only person with the power to hurt Jude is… you.
Bile rises up my throat. Hot, acidic bile. And beneath the nausea, beneath the wall of shock, a flutter of panic flaps its wings.
“All he does is lie,” Jude says.
My eyes burn. The words and illustrations on the page in my hand blur out of focus. Hastily, I swipe at a tear before it can fall.
“Nothing is wrong with me, Selah. I’m fine.”
“Show me, then.” Finally, I look at him.
And he is tortured.
Desperate.
Trapped.
“If you’re fine, if Rafe is lying, then show me the mark.”
He makes no move to show me anything.
I set the page on the counter and take a step toward him.
His Adam’s apple bobs. He is drawn tight as a bow. But he doesn’t object when I close the distance, when I unfasten the buttons of his coat. He just looks away, his nostrils flared, his profile carved in stone.
I slip the coat off his shoulders.
It falls in a heap.
I reach for his henley, but he catches my wrist.
The silence stretches between us—so thin and fraught I can hardly breathe. Then, like he’s reached the end of an argument he’s been having in his head, he takes the hem of his shirt and pulls it off, mussing his hair.
A gasp tumbles from my lips.
The mark climbs over his collarbone. Black tendrils creep across the broad expanse of his shoulders. They snake over his ribs, every line of muscle impossibly taut as he holds himself still. My fingers whisper down the slope of his abdomen, where the mark bleeds like ink.
His breath catches.
My own refuses to come.
There is an elephant sitting on my chest.
I take a step away.
Jude steps with me. “This isn’t because of you.”
I hold up my hand to maintain some distance.
“Selah, please…”
But there’s nothing he can say to erase what I have seen, what some faint, repressed part of me suspected.
Because didn’t I see it already? In his bathroom, after I went into the well in search of the key.
When we kissed, it grew beneath my palm.
I saw it with my own eyes. But I ignored it.
Dismissed it. A trick of my imagination.
Only it wasn’t a trick. And I have been with him ever since. Kissing him. Hugging him. Loving him.
I swipe at another tear.
“Don’t let Rafe come between us.”
I grab the page off the counter and lift it in the air. “He’s not the one coming between us. You know he’s not.”
Jude glares.
I glare back. “The ruby brought you to life after I poured my love into it. Now it’s using my love to feed on you.”
He yanks the henley over his head.
“You heard what Rafe said—”
“I don’t care what Rafe says!” he shouts, so loud I startle.
And in the wake of it, his chest heaves.
My own feels like it’s being split in two.
I look at the page—the blasted page—and inhale deeply. All the courage and determination I do not feel. “I’m not going to be the reason you slowly die.”
Jude takes my face in his hands. “All of us are slowly dying, Selah. Every day that we’re alive.”
I wrap my fingers around his wrists and for a moment—one selfish moment—I close my eyes and bask in his warmth. The heat of his body. The strength of his presence. Then I look up into his face and peel his hands away. “I won’t be the one to kill you.”
A storm rolls across his expression.
His jaw goes hard as flint.
He snatches his coat off the ground and sweeps from the store. The door slams behind him so hard, the windows rattle.