Page 68 of Torn Ivy
“You are shaking like a fucking leaf in a gale,” he snaps. “Back up and let me. Stealth is my middle name.”
Tate grimaces, but he backs away.
I grip him by the elbow and lead him outside. “We’ve got this and her.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything.
I’m left with a feeling that this is going to end badly.
For all of us.
31
IVY
Centuries have come and gone.
32
IVY
I’ve seenempires rise and fall.
33
IVY
The faces of my guys,my loves, the ones I miss with whatever is left of my shattered and torn soul, have long been forgotten.
34
TATE
“How long has it been?”I ask quietly as I watch Torin lay Ivy gently in the messed-up garden. It can’t have been that long. An hour? Tops.
Cathy bustles about, the epitome of efficiency and glances at her watch. “Three hours.”
“That long?”
She nods solemnly. “We were in shock for a while before we took her inside.”
“But that’s good,” Bram says. “We are still well within the window to return her whole.”
We hope.
“Optimism sounds all wrong coming out of your mouth,” I grumble.
He gives me the finger, but there are no hard feelings. At least one of us is trying.
I can’t help my gloomy thoughts. I can’t help but think we are doomed. Nothing has ever gone right in my life. Even the things one could point out that worked in my favour were never about it being a good thing that happened. A prime example is I was orphaned as a young teenager and chose Torin to mug one night.Yeah, it worked out; I’m here now instead of some warlock juvie or, worse, a magickal drug den pimping myself out for food and shelter. But if I hadn’t been left alone in this world to begin with, it is a moot point.
“Right, we have to draw blood and make a circle,” Bram says, reading from the book that gives even me the heebies. That thing reeks of old magick and not the good kind. Not even the dark kind. Pretty much, let’s just call it pitch black. I want to ask where he got it, but I guess his family must’ve given it to him.
My hands shake as I slice the athame Cathy produced out of a holster at her hip across my palm. Squeezing tightly and hissing at the unnatural burn, I pass it to Bram and then help him draw the ritual circle in blood. Our blood. The copper scent hangs heavy in the air, mixing with the lingering chaos from Ivy’sincident. I can’t bring myself to call it anything else.
Torin gently lays Ivy’s still form in the centre of the circle. Parts of her keep fading in and out of existence, like a glitching hologram. It makes my stomach churn.
“Are you sure this is going to help and not make things worse?” I ask Bram for the hundredth time as he hands Torin the athame. I watch as the enchanted silver slices through his palm like a hot knife through butter, and he adds his blood to the circle.
