Page 66 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

She told herself not to panic.

But she was still reeling from the merging of her past and her present. She couldn’t just remember Apollo stealing her memories, she could feel it. Now she understood why her heart had beat outdanger, danger, danger,that first night with Apollo on that rooftop. But she hadn’t listened to her heart; instead she had kissed him.

Was this why Jacks had left her? Did he think she was in love with Apollo?

The idea made her so sick, it was difficult to push herself out of the bed. But Evangeline needed to find Jacks. She needed toexplain that she had remembered. And she had to tell him that she loved him.

When she looked at Jacks’s actions, most of them seemed to say he loved her, too. He kept coming back, kept protecting her. But he also kept leaving her.

Nervously, she reached for her discarded dress. That was when she saw it on her arm.

There was a wide glass cuff encircling her right wrist. It was cool to the touch and crystal clear, and when Evangeline tugged, it wouldn’t come off.

There didn’t appear to be any type of clasp, and it was too narrow for her to slip over her hand. Someone must have welded it on somehow.

What had Jacks done?

Because she knew it was Jacks. It had to be Jacks. He’d planned to bring her here and put her to sleep with the gold dust. It must have been so that he could put this cuff on her. But why?

Evangeline studied the uncanny glass object. It had appeared at first glance to be plain, but now she could see that it was etched with delicate cherry blossoms that curled around the cuff as if they were flowers stretching out from a tree.

She tried to remember if she’d ever heard a story about a bracelet like this, but she couldn’t recall anything. And cuff or no cuff, she needed to leave. She had to find Jacks before Apollo found her.

By now Apollo no doubt knew she was missing and had probably sent half the army to search for her.

Evangeline wriggled into her dress. Then she grabbed her cloak, threw it around her shoulders, covered her hair with her hood, and started for the door. She hadn’t really paid much attention to it upon entry, as she’d been more wrapped up in the fact that she’d been wrapped up in Jacks’s arms.

Now she noticed that it was a prettyish door. Instead of a simple rectangle, the door came to a dramatic point at its top. It was a slightly faded green with a lovely gold patina. The doorknob might have been a little bit lovely as well, but Evangeline couldn’t properly see the handle beyond the splashes of blood. Deep red blood sparkling with flecks of gold covered the entire doorknob.

She flashed back to the night she’d opened the Valory Arch, when she’d found Jacks’s blood all over the stones.

“No, no, no… this can’t be happening again.”

It was almost worse that Evangeline could remember everything so clearly now. That she knew this had happened before. That Jacks had chosen to push her away, and then he’d disappeared and she had never managed to tell him that she loved him, and love had lost instead of won.

Evangeline’s hands shook as they turned the bloody knob. And then they shook even harder. There was more blood outside the room, staining the floor in the hall.

“Jacks!” she cried desperately. “Jacks—”

She broke off as she remembered that Jacks was a fugitive. She wanted to find him urgently, but she didn’t want to alert anyone else that he might be near.

Without another word, she raced down the stairs. Now that she’d stopped shouting, she could hear rain pounding on the walls outside, but everything else was eerily quiet for an inn with a tavern. Wrong quiet. Too quiet.

Her final step down the stairs sounded like a clap of thunder. She knew something had happened even before she found the bodies.

There were three of them. Three lifeless, unmoving forms. Evangeline saw that much before her vision tunneled, going black around the edges and filling with dancing spots in the center.

She grabbed the banister for support, legs buckling. Something inaudible escaped from her throat. A scream—a curse. She didn’t know what words came out of her mouth or how long she stood there.

Numbly Evangeline forced herself to check for any life. The barkeeper, whom Evangeline approached first, was lying so close to the door, it looked as if she’d been trying to flee before her throat had been ripped out. The other two bodies were by the fire, and Evangeline imagined they’d been caught unawares.

It looked as if a wild animal had attacked them, but Evangeline knew better now that she had her memories all back.

A vampire had done this.

She must have been spared because of Jacks—but then,where was he? Why was his blood in her room? His body wasn’t among the others, but her mind spun with a million questions as she stumbled out of the tavern. Was he injured? Dead? Had he been bitten?

Evangeline vowed she’d return to cover the bodies with sheets and cloths, but first she desperately needed to find Jacks.

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