Page 148 of A Bond with the Dark

Pulling me by the hand, we walk back into the house.

Bash is pacing again in the kitchen, and the rest are in the living room around the couches.

As I approach, they all have coveted eyes for me now.

Ollie, who looks worse for wear but is up and sitting on the couch, rises and draws up to me.

“Thank you,” he says sternly, his green eyes strong in their gaze on me. “For bringing me back to life. The place I went to was not somewhere I’d want to stay. Or to ever go back to.”

I nod. “You’re welcome, Ollie.”

He hugs me, and it’s a remarkably expressive hug.

None of them seem the hugging type.

“So what does this make you?” Jasantha says grimly, and her tone is imbued with a dislike for me.

“You’ll have to excuse my sister,” Bash retorts as he joins us in the living room. “She dislikes anyone that can out-power her.”

Jasantha huffs and shoots him a disgruntled glare, her eyes flashing purple.

“Doesn’t work on me, sister. I thought you knew that.”

Her head cocks sideways as though this confuses her.

“I’m not sure,” I say, ignoring their quarrel and sitting on one of the couches. “A phoenix, I believe, but I don’t know what that means.”

“Have you ever heard of anything like this, Mom?” Dom asks.

“No,” Adaline says darkly. “I mean, I’ve heard of a phoenix before, but never what Sayah is here.”

“Are you immortal now?” asks Everett, his gray eyes searching, his face and hair spattered with blood.

“I have no idea what I am,” I answer honestly. “All I know is that Bash was marked to kill me. I burned. Dom’s blood saved me. I rose. There was a power I felt within me; I knew I could overpower the warlock. I knew if I bit her, she’d burn. I could feel the fire in my bones. I feel it in them now. I did not know that my tears would rise Ollie. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“You’re our new secret weapon,” says Bash. The sinister twinkle in his eyes rattle me. “You can get this, this thing off me now.” He pulls at his collar in annoyance to show what he means.

We all knew what he meant.

“But,” Dom says, “how are we going to get the other warlock here for Sayah to kill her and find out how to get Scarlet back before she does?”

“How did it come to be that the other warlock came here the last time?” Hattie asks, sitting next to Ollie and looking pensive.

“Bash and Dom were marked,” I say, fidgeting with my fingernails, “they were fighting, and they were each ordered to kill me and Talora. My voice is what made him snap, what got Dom’s mark to activate and want to kill me. I can only assume it has something to do with me.”

“If we try to activate it now,” Everett offers, cracking his knuckles, “by using Bash’s mark, it may not work to summon the next warlock connected with it because it might call the grimspawns here. Since Dom was marked to kill Sayah, the phoenix, that may work. But Bash doesn’t have any connections with Sayah.”

Looking at Bash at that moment, the look in his eyes tells me now is not the time to bring up the dreams, even if it means linking us and maybe working to summon Bash’s warlock.

“Well, I’ll take his mark from him,” Dom says, sitting on the arm of the chair.

“How will you do that, brother?” Bash asks disbelievingly, the tone somewhere between skepticism and curiosity. He sits down on the edge of the lazy boy.

“Kill you,” he says with a smile and a wink at Bash. “Relax,” he says to his mom, whose mouth has fallen open. “Sayah can bring him back. All we need to do is have me stake him with silver, take the mark, have Sayah bring him back, and then I’ll be marked again.”

“Dom—”

“It’s to get her here so you can kill her.”

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