CHAPTER 16
A shovel does, in fact, come in handy.
BY THE TIME MY eyes drifted open, the sharp ache in my skull was an intense pounding that had every nerve in my body burning with pain. It felt like my skull was in a vice, seconds from cracking to pieces under the immense pressure.
I didn’t even recall losing consciousness. But I had. Just after something solid slammed into the side of my head.
Warm wetness now coated my temple as my blurry vision cleared slightly.
Reaching up to swipe the uncomfortable stickiness away, I met resistance; my hands were bound.
The hardness beneath me was one of my rickety kitchen chairs, and my arms were tied painfully tight behind me, secured through the wooden posts of its back.
Somehow my glasses had managed to miraculously remain on my face and looking around, I noticed my living room, but it was empty.
The lights were dimmed and the window blinds shut, but it was still bright enough that I could distinguish my surroundings.
Then it hit me.
Panic sent my mind reeling as my gaze darted to the doorway where Cam had fallen. No, not fallen. Been knocked out. But his body was no longer there. And the man...
My eyes settled on something out of place, the worn, brown leather draped carelessly over the back of the sofa. It was as unfamiliar in my home as it was recognizable.
Dread pooled like lead in my gut as the bile rose up my throat. No, no... It couldn’t be.
Steady footsteps sounded on old, creaky stairs. My heart rate spiked and my breaths quickened. Despite knowing it was useless, I pulled at my bound wrists, but all that managed was to send sharp stabs of pain up my arms and shoulders.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been so distracted by Cam’s kisses and roaming hands, I would have seen it coming.
I would have noticed that fucking leather jacket on the damn sofa. I would have spotted the light turned on in my spell room despite having been gone for days. I would have realized the mage-locks had been disabled. I would have taken the ghost’s warning for what it was.
She had tried to get our attention.
But we’d been too damn distracted.
I’d let my guard down. And now...
“Cam?” My voice came out a weak, tremulous thing swallowed by the emptiness of the room.
But it wasn’t Cam’s familiar steps that I had grown so accustomed to that echoed up from the basement.
They were another set of steps, ones I had learned to associate with harsh words and brittle, false affection.
Steps that instilled fear in my very bones and left me trembling in terror.
Their cadence brought in a fresh wave of memories. Of the terrible pain of having been beaten to near death. And the years of psychological abuse that had been that physical pain’s precursor.
“Fuck,” I hissed in a whisper, heart pounding, mind struggling to fight off the shutdown. Stay calm, stay calm. Think.
Just as the footsteps neared the top, I thought the incantation to summon Jinx. My head ached at the amount of focus required, but when a flash of black appeared before my face and Jinx’s membranous wings flapped cheerfully, I nearly wept with relief.
Thankfully, he didn’t squeak his normal greeting, seeming to sense that something was very wrong.
“Buddy, I need your help,” I whispered to him as he hovered. “Hide. And when he’s distracted, find Cam. Please, find Cam.”
Jinx flew off and out of sight just as the basement door opened. When his face came into view, it was almost as if I was seeing a ghost. One that had haunted me for years. The figure that lingered in my nightmares.
He looked exactly as he had that day. And that was somehow even scarier than if time had changed him.
His dirty blond hair was a little longer but still cropped short.
His sharp features were smug, an expression that took nothing away from his outward attractiveness.
He had always been handsome; it was what had drawn me to him from the beginning.
But that chiseled jaw, tanned skin, and those hazel eyes had all been nothing but a ruse to draw me in.
It masked the shit-stink of his rotten soul.
“Byron, you fucker,” I bit out venomously. “What are you doing here?”
He shut the door behind him with terrifying calmness, and I flinched as he approached my spot.
I fought the urge to squirm under his intense, piercing gaze.
It was the look of a man who had been hunting for something for years and at last had it within his grasp.
It was hungry and filled with arrogant satisfaction.
It terrified me to my core.
“That’s what you say to me after all this time?”
He stopped only once he was looming over me, his sneer trained on my trembling shoulders.
“I tirelessly search for years only to find you holed up with one of your,” his lips curled derisively, “experiments. I always knew you were a sick pervert but shit, you actually did it? You brought a corpse back to life just to fuck you? If you were truly that desperate for a dick up your ass you should have come back to me.”
I couldn’t even think about how he figured it out, how he realized just who and what Cam was. I was blinded by fury while simultaneously terrified for Cam. And myself.
“Don’t talk about him that way,” I growled, my quavering voice betraying me. “As if I would ever go back to you, you cowardly piece of shit.”
There was no time to prepare myself before my head viciously snapped to the side and fierce, stinging pain lashed my cheek. Blood pooled in my mouth from the fresh cut on my inner cheek, but I spat it out, casting defiant eyes up at Ron's scowling face.
“You and that fucking mouth of yours.” He gripped my cheeks so hard tears welled in my eyes. “You did always know just what to say to piss me off. But,” his eyes focused on my mouth, “it was also more than willing to do other things. When my cock was involved, it grew very obedient.”
The way his voice deepened made my stomach churn with revulsion. I ripped my face free of his grip.
“Where’s Cam?” I hissed.
“What, that thing you were making out with?” he scoffed, the sound oozing disgust. “I saw your books, your journals, the mess of satanic magic shit in your basement. Are you some sort of cultist now, is that it?”
I spat again, this time aiming my bloody saliva for Ron’s designer loafers.
Hatred burned hot in my chest. “Afraid I’ll curse you?”
The laugh he gave me was hollow with not a shadow of humor to it.
Ron used to have such a nice laugh. Nothing like Cam’s which nearly brought me to my knees every time I heard it, but still.
It had been one of his traits that had charmed me.
That man was long gone, had been for years.
Perhaps he’d never existed in the first place.
A mere facade, a mask. I was more inclined to believe that.
“If you could curse me, you would have done so by now.” His smile was poisonous as he leaned back in, the bitter smell of cigarettes on his breath making me cringe.
“Anyway, curses or not, it won’t matter.
I’ve gotten my hands on something that’ll interest you, Vic.
Took me pulling a lot of stings to get my hands on it.
It’s a little concoction that will, hmm, how do I put this?
” He tapped my chin. “Wipe our slate clean.”
Horror sluiced through me, turning my blood to ice in my veins.
“It’ll make you forget all about this pathetic little life you’ve built for yourself here. Your job. Your friends. Your students. That fucker Cam.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.
When he threw it to the ground in front of my feet, it opened enough for me to notice it was the photo of Cam and I at the pumpkin patch.
The one where we were smiling at each other so blearily, innocently happy. The photo from my office.
My gut had been right; someone had been in there. And… he’d had to have lingered and gone back after we left to steal the picture. The fucking creep.
“You should be more careful of the people you surround yourself with, Vic,” he commented as he loomed over me, stepping directly on the photo.
He knelt so that we were eye level. “That supervisor of yours basically led me right to your office. And your students were so open when I asked about you. How was the music festival? It was really helpful to know you were going to be gone for days so that I could prepare all of this for you, baby.”
“Don’t call me that!” I screamed in his face, realizing far too late that I had revealed too much.
Every reaction I gave him, every response was ammunition he could use against me. Against Cam.
But I couldn't bear to hear that endearing term aimed at me in his voice. Not when it belonged to Cam. When every part of me belonged to Cam.
Despite my outburst, Ron remained calm. He didn’t hit me again, didn’t make a smart retort, didn’t outwardly react at all.
But the eerie smile on the face I once saw as charming and handsome now became the stuff of living nightmares.
Those eyes I had once fallen in love with were dull and vacant, devoid of emotion and darkened with possessive greed.
He stood in a rush and I flinched back. But the strike never came. I watched as Ron turned and strode for a small black backpack resting along the furthest wall.
As he rifled through it, I fought against the pain of the ropes binding my wrists. I had never felt so powerless, so vulnerable in all my life.
But Jinx would find Cam. He had to. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but dark orange light was bleeding through the cracks in the drawn blinds, so night hadn’t fallen yet. He couldn’t have taken Cam very far.
I should know; Cam was heavy.
Likely the basement, if that was why he’d been down there. If that was the case, I had no idea how Jinx would get to him.
I couldn’t focus on my worry for long before Ron was striding back over to me, a bottle of some clear liquid in his fist.