Page 30 of Blood & Ice

“Knox,” I muttered under my breath. “Stop this, right fucking now.”

The worthless, incorporeal son of a bitch fizzled into existence, striding through Tally’s living room like he had every right to be there. He leaned his elbow on top of the TV, blowing a plume of red smoke from the end of a lit cigarette. He’d leaned into a gangster aesthetic this time. Pinstripes in red, and a bowler hat that looked old enough to be authentic. He tipped it at me with a wink. He looked more solid here than he had been in my dream.

But how was he here right now? And why?

“Sorry, champ, but it isn’t my choice this time around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She wants Taliyah out of the equation. I’d like to avoid that, but I’ll take any avenue back into the world.”

The words settled like a chill into my bones. It felt like I’dsplinter if I made any sudden moves. He’d all but just told me that the culprit behind Vivian’s murder was a Blood Witch. That meant there was another abomination like me roaming around, and whoever that abomination was, she’d struck a deal with the devil to kill my wife.

Fat fucking chance.

“You can have an hour,” I said.

Knox grinned and took another drag of his cigarette. “Oh no, I’m going to need more time than that, dear boy. A day at least.”

“Done.”

I blurted the words before I could think. Tally would probably hate me for them, but Icouldn’tlet her die. If Knox was what he said he was, he could kill her. I wouldn’t let that happen.

“Excellent,” Knox continued. “Let’s perform a sleeping curse, then, not a fatal hex. I have to make it look convincing, you know.”

I wanted to protest. Wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t find my voice. The shadows loomed long, blotting out all the light in the room. I fell, silently screaming into the void, watching the gleam of Knox’s smile until it disappeared from sight.

Chapter Sixteen

Astrid

“I still think we should have taken them to the hospital,” I whispered, clutching one of the doilies on Olga’s end table in one fist.

I wished it was a barf bag. I wanted to puke.

When I’d seen him the first time, I thought he was gone. There was just a profound sense ofdeathhanging around all four of their bodies. It had been most upsetting to see the kids that way, but seeing Mav so still, so blank... well, I thought Tally would forgive me if I found that worse than her death mask. Don’t get me wrong—hers was plenty upsetting, but not as much as I’d thought. She was already pale as a corpse with her winter complexion. Maverick wasn’t.

I’d been standing in the doorway to Olga’s room for a few minutes, just staring at my brother’s prone body. He was so damn tall, his feet dangled off the end of the bed. He was loose-limbed, his eyes glassy. I had a horrible insight into how it must have felt for him to see me as a vampire. It was hard not to think of them as bodies, even though they were technically alive.

Rook gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I wished it made me feel better.

“And tell the nice mundanes what?” Rook asked, shaking his head. “Enchanted sleep is bizarre to us, let alone to them. The four of them are going to star on some medical mystery show and make Haven Hollow famous. You know they wouldn’t want that.”

He was right. I hated that he was right. I wanted the doctors to fawn over my brother and his little family and somehow find a cure where we couldn’t. Every spellcaster in the Hollow had examined them, and we still had no freaking clue who could have done this. Olga made noises about it being evil, but wedidn’t know more than that. A lot of creatures could force you to sleep and not wake. Night hags were a really common example, draining their victims to death on accident (and sometimes on purpose.) Faeries put people into an enchanted sleep for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it was a prank. Other times, it was revenge. But none of them ever put off an aura of non-life so potent, it made my eyes water.

My head knew Mav wasn’t dead. My heart wasn’t so sure.

“I just want some sign that someone is trying to keep them alive,” I whispered. “It feels like they could slip away at any second.”

“If they hit our senses as dead, the mundanes that found them would have buried them, Astrid,” Rook said. “We had to bring them to the coven house. It was the only safe place for them right now.”

He was right about that, too. We’d been forced to scramble for an explanation for Tally and Mav’s sudden absence. We’d been lucky it was Cain and Darla who stumbled on the bodies, not one of Tally’s deputies, because that would have meant a quadruple homicide investigation on top of all the problems we were already facing. As it was, the four of them were hanging in a limbo between life and death that I couldn’t breach.

“I’m going to Blood Rose,” I said, keeping my voice low so none of the witches milling on the floor below would hear me. Lorcan was the only person present with superhuman hearing who might rat me out. Thankfully, Wanda had him getting supper while the rest of them tried to come up with a solution.

Rook’s sigh ruffled the hairs at the back of my neck. Goosebumps rose on my arms, but I smoothed them away with a guilty frown. This was not the time to get excited by my sire.

“I knew you were going to say something like that. Is there any chance I can talk you out of it?”

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