Page 33 of In the Dark

CHAPTER 10

Morgan knew, without a doubt, this would go down as one of the strangest weeks of his interminably long life. There were many interesting things he’d done and seen to compete for top billing, but this, hands down, was in the running for gold. It sure beat grading papers. At least he had his classes covered for the next week, or until his return. It was one less thing to keep track of at the moment.

He was there in Chicago, chasing after a twenty-something-year-old girl with the embodiment of darkness inside of her and a bad attitude to match. Morgan shook his head, shuffling snow out of his way and tugging his coat tighter as a cold wind blew.

To call it weird would be an understatement.

Karsia stomped ahead and called out to him over her shoulder. “Go inside and sit with them, Morgan. Go sit with them and tell them it will be okay, or whatever it is you have to say to make everyone feel better. Lie to them. I don’t care.” The cold reddened her cheeks. She kept her pace swift to dissuade him from following. “Go back and let me do this.”

Morgan struggled once more to keep up with her. He seemed to be doing that more and more lately. If she was always this fast, he would need to renew his gym membership and get on a treadmill more than once in a blue moon to stay fit.

Maybe he wasn’t doing the best job of watching out for Karsia, like he’d told her family he was, but he was doing the best job he could without tapping into a higher power. He had tension between his shoulders and along his neck to prove it. In that moment, he would have traded his immortal soul for the ability to keep pace with her furious strides. Or to get her alone and away from the drama of her life. Get her to a quiet place where they had time to think instead of just react.

But there he was, braving the snow and fighting off hypothermia for a woman hell-bent on making things as hard as possible.

Even though it wasn’t her fault.

“You’re upset, and I understand,” he ventured. He stumbled down the front walk and shoved his hands deep into his pockets to keep warm.

“Stop placating me and get inside the house. We’ll call it a favor.” Karsia sailed past the car with the crunch of ice under her boots.

“I’m not going— Oh, jeez.” Morgan had stepped in a puddle, breaking the thin ice barrier and instantly soaking half of his left leg. He ran after her, shaking his foot awkwardly. He shivered, and no matter how deep he dug in his pockets, his fingertips felt nothing. “I’m not going back in there without you.”

Why was he following her? He wondered, among other things, what it was about Karsia Cavaldi. What made her interesting to the point where he’d dropped everything to follow her home.

It was because they’d touched hands the first night, and he’d felt it—a tiny quiver of electricity lighting through his body until his senses were fully awake. Morgan knew he’d been coasting on neutral for too long. He’d seen some of the most beautiful women in the world, goddesses and nymphs and fairies, and he’d never experienced a fraction of the electricity he’d felt when Karsia had taken his hand.

She turned, rambling backward so she could face him and talk. “Better yet, Morgan, go home. Be with your family. I came home and look what happened!” She swiveled around, chuckling low in her throat. “Look what happened.”

He could practically see the thoughts circling like sharks in her head. Besides the sorrow and the need for revenge, he saw the guilt. The desire for self-destruction.

“You’re not responsible for your powers vanishing. No one is! It was an accident. Blaming yourself isn’t going to help. The most constructive course of action is finding a way to reverse the, for lack of a better word, possession. Running off to blow someone up isn’t going to fix this.”

“It sure will make me feel better.”

“I can guarantee it won’t.”

“This is a message. And what do you do when someone sends a message? You send a bigger one right back.”

“A message? What do you mean?”

As Karsia marched, her footsteps echoed her heartache back to her. No. Magic. Dying. Mother. Your. Fault. The sadness she’d felt in her brief moment of clarity became a haunting melody, distant and vague. Another, stronger desire rose.

What was the agenda? Why would Orestes go to the trouble of hiring someone to hit Varvara? It seemed a serious move to take, especially considering he still had Zenon in custody. His angle wasn’t clear.

The Harbinger would come and restore balance. Karsia would take her place as the new keeper of the veil. End of story. Right? Which left Orestes and his motives outside the spectrum of logic.

“Will you stop for a second?” Morgan stooped with his hands on his knees and fought to catch his breath. Definitely out of shape, and certainly getting out the treadmill when he returned home. “I’m considerably older than you. Now I sound like my father. Yikes.”

Karsia wasn’t sure what made her slow her steps. She stopped to lean against a nearby tree, the strength of the hickory bubbling beneath the surface. It should have been ready for her use. She would have drawn on it, gladly, absorbing its strength and making it her own.

Weak, she admonished.

“Mom was supposed to be fine, you know.” Karsia spoke conversationally. “She should be sitting at her damn vanity, staring into the mirror with her powder puff in her hand, worrying about her kids and wondering why we aren’t all married off. She should be ordering dinner from a restaurant and complaining when they forget to include extra sauce. Or fighting with Dad and making that annoying little laugh of hers.”

She imitated the sound and regretted it almost immediately. Her mother would like Morgan. Karsia wasn’t sure why that thought popped into her head now. Varvara would appreciate the look of him, his intelligence and wit and dry, biting humor. Not to mention the power in his broad shoulders and strength of mind hidden beneath hair beginning to turn silver. She’d consider the age difference a perk, see the potential in the match, and plan out a future between them. All before learning his name.

“Karsia.” Morgan laid his hand on her shoulder, feeling the cold seeping under her skin. She stared at him with regret so intense he felt it. “I’m not going anywhere. You can trust me to be there for you. We haven’t known each other very long and you have no reason to lean on me, but I’ll be there. It’s okay for you to lean.”

---