Page 96 of Angel of Water & Shadow

In his care it gleamed dull, lifeless, its beauty muffled by his corrupted touch.

“Yes, that old thing. Last I wore it was…” My eyes grew wide, and the realization hit me so fast I almost reunited with the ground. Half Moon Bay, at the fortune teller’s house. I’d had a concussion—or something like it. When I was cradled in his arms or wiped out on the grass, he must have slipped the jewelry off my neck.

“Looks like you’re piecing things together.”

My head snapped up at his voice. “I am. And not only are you an asshole; you’re also a thief.” The hopelessness was a sinking ship dragging me down so deep, it had me gasping for breath. “Why do you want it anyway? It’s just an old family heirloom. It has no value to you.”

He smirked, and it was all bitterness and scorn. “But it has immeasurable value to you.”

I didn’t meet his eyes—I couldn’t. So I focused on the stone lying flat against his palm. “What does that matter?”

Ryder curled his fingers around the pendant, hiding it from sight. “Because it’s a conduit for your powers. Without it, you can’t channel your Source. Well, I guess you could if you knew what you were doing…but it’s not like you do.”

My feet stood on dry land, but I might as well have been underwater. His words weighed a thousand tons, pressing against my skull, the air suffocatingly thick with tension.

Memories replayed before my eyes as if I were literally drowning. Meeting on the bridge after Grad Night. Finding me after work in the alley. Showing up at school just in time to whisk me away from the teratorn—and taking care of me, after. Saving me from a gnarly walk home after running from werewolves. The Big Dipper. The Ferris wheel…Teaching me how to drive. Tears formed behind my lowered lids. Showing me a world with angels and magic and…I swallowed, fighting the knot forming in my throat…Elephant seals.

It hadn’t been because he actually cared. It had all been for this.

“It’s me,” I whispered, the shock constricting my voice. “It’s always been me. I’m the one you’ve been looking for. When did you know?”

Weariness pinched his eyes. It was so brief, it had me second-guessing if I even saw it. “I had a hunch it was you the night we met. That’s why I sent the sprite for surveillance. This necklace was the smoking gun.” His words chilled my blood, numbing my veins like frostbite. “An Empyrean water stone, crafted out of the element itself.” He rubbed his thumb over the surface. “There’re only three others like it. You can guess what those are.”

Earth, wind, and fire. Did he actually think I was crazy at the pub when I told him about the Watchers, or was that just an act to humiliate me? Render me defenseless? Unfortunately for him, it did quite the opposite. I’d spent my entire life trying to dampen the pain. Now I let it fill me, fuel me, forge my path forward.

“You used my ignorance of this world against me.” I lunged for the jewelry. In one fluid motion he loaded his bow and aimed an arrow at me faster than I could blink. I flapped my arms in frustration, striking the sides of my thighs. “Why?”

With his weapon locked, the déjà vu slammed into me. My dream, the dream from the night we met. It had predicted this exact scene. Deep down, I must have always known he’d betray me.

“My, my, my,” a deep voice crooned from the darkness. I jumped and gasped, my palm smacking against my heart. Leif. What the hell was wrong with these guys, always sneaking up on people!? “Was worried you didn’t have it in you, brother.”

Using the distraction, I whirled out of the alcove, and out of Ryder’s reach, onto the main pathway. His brother stepped into the moonlight from behind the tiled wall of the frozen dessert stand. Disdain draped his features as casually as the leather jacket over his shoulders.

I had no problem matching his snarled lips, meeting his wroth eyes. He’d shown nothing less since the moment we’d been introduced. “Why are you here?” I spat.

“I couldn’t miss my little brother’s initiation into the big leagues.” He settled next to Ryder, wrapping a firm arm around his neck, shaking his shoulder.

“Initiation into what?” I emulated Leif’s glare. “Your ridiculous Nephilim Society you were going to tell me all about at the body shop? Isn’t he already branded for that—or is this the official test?”

“Make this easy on yourself, River.” I fumed at the way Ryder drew out my name, and how it still managed to reach some wanting part of me. “Back down. You can’t outrun them.”

I finally looked at him, ignoring the flare of golden green trying to shatter the darkness that wrung his irises. My finger pointed at him. “You don’t get to act like you care.”

“Oh, don’t take it out on Ryder,” Leif drawled. “He’s just following orders.”

“That is the lamest excuse in the history of excuses.” I swore smoke was going to blow out my nostrils, and any minute I’d start exhaling fire. “Can someone explain what orders? And who’s ‘them?’”

A heavy flapping whooshed from the rafters of the bordering bumper cars, rustling the cables. All three of us snapped towards the aerial wires sparking and popping from a focused gust of wind that blew nowhere else but inside the ride. Fallen leaves and trash funneled into mini cyclones, twisting over the floor. The tempest grew fiercer, stronger, cars crashing into each other, until the clang of metal against metal and a searing flash obliterated everything within the oval track.

Shielding my face with my hands, I dropped my chin to my chest, the ringing in my ears drilling into my nerves. I was stuck in a serrated bubble of blinding light and echoes from the blast, a putrid char burning my nostrils and souring my tastebuds.

My efforts to control my breathing were simply lost as the panic pulled me into myself. I wasn’t sure how long had passed, but I knew the effects were dampening when I started to feel my body shaking and I was able to take a conscious inhale.

When the sounds became clearer, I dared a glance between my fingers.

Slowly, my eyeballs dragged over the brothers. They hadn’t moved, aside from parting and getting into a still, wide-legged stance that reminded me of two predators staking out their prey. I flicked my gaze past them to the destroyed carnival ride, the shadows dispersing into smokey forms like phantoms of amusement park goers before they dissipated into the ashy air.

One splintered off towards us, intensifying in color, its translucent tendrils molding into limbs as it evolved into a familiar figure that made my mouth go dry and my hairs stand on end.

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