Chapter 34

With that last line that gave me zero comfort at all, Vesuvius disappeared, his image dissolving in a shower of sparkles that rained down on the earth below, absorbed back to wherever he came from, I supposed.

"He's gone," Richart said. "For good, I think."

I squinted and stared at the spot, feeling nothing from him. I gave a slow nod. "I can't sense him anymore. But I can still sense the others. Robert is upstairs and…"

A sharp sensation hit me right through my sternum, like I'd been stabbed. I clutched at my chest. "He's hurt," I gasped. "I have to go get him."

Richart stood between me and the door. "How can he be hurt? He's already dead."

I glared at him. "You can be hurt, dumbass, and you're mostly dead. So yes. He can be hurt too!" I pushed past him, headed for the door, headed for my friend.

A scream lit the air stopping me in my tracks, sending shivers down my spine, and stealing my breath. A woman's scream seemed to come from everywhere around us, echoing through the rock and castle, a scream that was only a name.

"ROBERT!"

Again, that sharp pain in my middle, right through my chest. Whatever was happening to Robert, I was feeling it too. I stumbled and Richart caught me.

"We have to get you out of here." Richart lifted me off the ground so that my feet barely brushed the bare earth, then bodily dragged me to the door. Not hard for him, he was a vampire and I was a mere human.

"Robert needs me," I said as the pain hit again.

"Then call him to you!" Richart snapped. "You are connected to him and the dead, so do what you must. But you aren't going back into that castle. He is not a part of this spell. You need to get to…where? Where was the first ingredient you found?"

Eric was the first ingredient I'd protected, but he hadn't been the first ingredient at all—that much I understood now. The fairy cross. That was where it had started.

"Savannah," I said. "I have to go home."

Only I couldn't leave without Robert. I let Richart drag me along, and I reached out my free hand toward the castle. "Robert. You can't stay here. You belong with me."

Not her. Evangeline didn't really love him. Which meant he needed to be with his friends. With me, with his new family.

My energy was slowing, my connection to the dead fading as Richart helped me across the lawn of the castle. I could feel the stretch between us. Robert wasn't letting go.

He was still rooted in the castle because…because of his ties to Evangeline.

I closed my eyes. I might have spoken out loud, or just in my head, I wasn't really sure. I put all I could into one last push.

Robert. I called you from Hell. This is far simpler. All you have to do is let her go.

There was a momentary pause in the air, like the world held its breath. My power slid away from me, exhaustion hitting me hard. I went limp and Richart barely caught me before I hit the ground.

"What is it?"

"Robert. I don't think…he couldn't let her go."

Sorrow, deep and true, made me close my eyes. Robert couldn't let her go, even now, after all she had done.

"Take me to the water. I have a friend there. She'll get me out."

The waves met our feet, and the cold woke me up as I slid into water.

"I will try to slow her down, Breena."

When I looked back, Richart tipped his head at me. It seemed not that long ago that I'd fled him and his vampires, and we'd parted this way that time too. Over water. With him on land, acknowledging me.

Hopefully this time he wouldn"t be sending insane clown demons after me.

"You do that," I said. "And I will do the rest."

Where the hell had that confidence come from? My legs were already numb, and I was only in the water up to my knees. But the second Suzy took my hand, warmth flooded through me.

"Did you find the ghost?" She swam us out to deeper water, tugging me along.

"Yes."

"Did he tell you what you needed to do?"

I bobbed my head as best I could. "Yes. But we have to go to Savannah. That's where it all started. Where the first spell was cast wrong. Where I came into contact with the first ingredient."

Jaysus, that felt like a hundred lifetimes ago. My heart throbbed and my chest hurt where Robert had taken a blow that…what if it had ended him? What if he'd been killed in truth and that was why he hadn't been able to return to me?

"Robert's gone," I said.

"Oh." Suzy breathed out the word. "Oh no. Not Robert." It was as though the words to define his loss just didn't seem to be there for either of us. "Maybe…maybe it will be like it was for me? Maybe he will come back. He's come back before."

Her hope gave me a small buoy to cling to in the storm of my emotions. "Maybe." But the fact that I couldn't sense him at all was more than a little concerning. It left me believing that he was truly gone. That I'd failed him by not being able to call him away from Evangeline.

Suzy and I swam around the edge of the island, and I did my best not to think about the scream I'd heard in the castle. It had obviously been Evangeline, finding Robert after he was hurt. She might not truly love him, but she had some feelings for him. And yet she hadn't saved him. Those thoughts only added to my fear that he was indeed gone for real.

The water around us changed in color, hard to see in the dark of the early night, where the currents met and stirred the bottom up.

"This is where the river meets the ocean," Suzy said.

My heart beat a little faster as I saw figures approaching the river mouth. "Is that…is that them?"

My fear, sadness, and overwhelming belief that I had to do this alone…all of it swelled and was then washed away at the sight of my people. My family. My friends. The one who had my heart.

Suzy and I swam harder, hitting the shallow water and then stepping into the mouth of the river, lurching from the water as our friends met us.

Crash reached me first. Dressed in armor as I'd seen him in my dreams, vision, whatever. He caught me up in his arms and crushed me to his chest.

I thought maybe he'd be upset that I'd taken off from the tree house. I thought maybe a lot of things. But all he did was whisper my name over and over, breathing me in. I clung to him, the warmth of who he was seeping into me, soothing the ragged ache of fear that had been dodging me ever since I'd woken up in that cage in the dungeon.

"Don't let me go wandering after strange voices in graveyards again, okay? Knock me out if you have to," I whispered.

He laughed and bent his head to kiss me gently. "I'll do what I can, but Bree…if I've learned anything it's that you break the rules. Every time. And it usually works out."

"Much as this reunion is great," Sarge rumbled from behind Crash. "What are we doing?"

I looked at my friends. "Sorry, but we have to go back."

"To the castle?"

"No, all the way to Savannah."