Page 55 of Cast in Shadow
He made it sound so easy.
“Aren’t you at all curious what she’s up to?” I asked. “The penumbra is one thing, but her eyes? That’s a whole different level of dark. And think about the kind of power she’s been collecting.”
Understanding rearranged his expression into something more calculating. “You think she’s planning to reach out to the veil?”
I tipped my head to one side and gave him a little shrug. “She wouldn’t be the first. There were twelve dead at that campsite, including a child. What would motivate a power hungry witch to slaughter that many people?”
“Twelve. Just like the first coven.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Show me the video again.”
I pulled it up and let him watch it again. And again. When he hit play for the third time, studying the grayscale gore intently, I couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Am I missing something?”
He paused when he got to Megan’s creepy wink and expanded the video so her face took up the entire screen. I’d already seen it all on the much larger screen back at HQ, and I hadn’t noticed anything helpful aside from the ebony eyes and the shadow.
Emerson tipped the tablet toward me. “Her humanity is nearly gone.”
“I kind of figured the pile of bodies gave that away.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mean she’s just given in to her darker side. The woman herself might still be in there, but she’s opened herself up to the darkness.” He cast me a wary look. “You’re tapped into the ribbon, right? That’s where some of your newfound power comes from?”
My heart sank. I knew the conversation would end up here eventually, but I was hoping it wouldn’t happen quite so soon. Of course, I didn’t necessarily have to give him the whole truth.
A quick search of his eyes had me backtracking on that last thought. If he wanted to know, who was I to keep him in the dark? Maybe then he would at least start to understand.
“Not just the ribbon.” I licked my lips, bracing against the rest of the confession. “I crossed through the veil.”
His face hardened in a way I’d never seen before, and it was a little bit terrifying. He pulled the tablet gently from my grip and tossed it on the driver’s seat before pinning me against the Jeep with one big hand splayed across my middle. “Are you telling me you traveledintothe Alius?”
A hundred and thirty years ago, it would have taken everything in me not to shrink under that furious glare. Today? All it did was piss me off.
I shoved him back, putting a healthy dose of power behind it. “Yes, and you don’t get to be angry about it.”
He shook his head, but the gears in there were clearly turning. He let out a heavy breath and raked his hand through his unruly hair. “How? How did you get there? How did you get back? How did you survive?”
“When it came to surviving, part of it was luck.” I paused for a beat, fighting an internal battle about sharing the rest. “And part of it was you.”
Skepticism blanketed the look he shot me.
“When you said I’ve put a lot of work into keeping you out of my head, you were right. More than you will ever know. But I didn’t reach out to the veil looking for more power. When I touched it…” The memory of how miserable I’d been swam through my mind.
Back then, there were too many days when dragging myself out of bed was all I could manage, and those were the good days. Never mind bathing. Or eating. I was too numb, too wrapped up in mourning what I’d lost. I didn’t have it in me to care about anything, including myself.
I met his gaze. “I wasn’t planning on living through it.”
So many emotions flickered across Emerson’s face that I couldn’t keep up with them all. In my next breath, he had me pressed to the Jeep again. Only this time, his hands came up to cup my cheeks.
“No,” he whispered through a tight jaw. “You don’t get to quit. Ever.” Fury sparked in his ocean eyes. “Do you hear me?”
If it hadn’t been for the way he was holding me, I never would have felt the tremor in his careful grip. “I hear you, but your lecture is over a century late.”
His eyebrows shot up.
I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and eased his hands away from my face. “My power isn’t new to me. My trip through the veil wasn’t last week or last year. It was three years after I left you.” Three miserable, self-pitying years. “When I felt like I had nothing left to lose.”
Hurt pinched Emerson’s features, but his eyes were what drove a stake deep into my heart. The blue seemed to drain from them, leaving a stormy gray in its place.
“I’m not that person anymore,” I went on. “Just like I’m not the woman you knew back then. And as much as I appreciate your fighting spirit, believe me, I found my own.”
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