Chapter 2

2

GAbrIEL

T he library ceiling arched high above me, painted with afternoon light. I stared up at it listlessly. It would be inaccurate to say that the past few days had gone by in a blur—it was more like a thick sludge I had slowly been drowning in. I hadn't set foot in my personal suite of rooms since Evangeline left, although ‘left' seemed like too gentle a word. At one point Lissa had managed to coax me into a walk through the gardens, and when I looked up at the house I'd seen a collection of tarps covering the jagged hole Evangeline had blasted through my bedroom wall. I'd turned on my heel to go back inside, and Lissa hadn't tried to stop me.

I hadn't heard from Evangeline.

I hadn't heard from my father, either.

I had tried to get in touch with both of them. My texts and calls to Evangeline had all been ignored. Was she safe? Was the curse still twisting her up inside? All I'd wanted to do was help—help her—but I made it all worse for her. She was out there somewhere, and I had no way of finding her. I'd never felt so helpless in the long centuries I'd been alive. After the first two days, I showed up at her apartment, but the door was locked, and the personality of the place, which fed on stray magic until it had formed an identity, had been very clear about not letting me in. Chanel—the name Evangeline had given the apartment—wasn't subtle about sending messages. I was bludgeoned with the welcome mat until I took the hint and fled.

My father had been just as impossible to pin down. He'd ignored my letters, and the messages I sent to his right-hand man Damien's phone went unread. I even reached out to Gwendoline, the vampire woman my parents had deemed a suitable political match for me, to see if she knew anything about my father's whereabouts. She spent much more time at the citadel than I did, and we were allies, working together to delay our clans' plans for us to marry. Her response had been brusque; she was away seeing to a personal matter, and even if she had been in town, she wouldn't have wanted to speak to Roland De Montclair.

I didn't even know what I'd say to my father if I managed to reach him. What did you say to a man who was using his own people as grist for the mill in the hopes of gaining power? What did you say to a man who had spent untold years following a woman he despised in the hopes that he would have a chance to destroy her some day and claim every horror she'd committed for himself?

What did you say to a man who tried to kidnap the love of your life?

I didn't know what the worst part was. My opinion on the matter shifted every few minutes. I knew what I was most ashamed of, however. It was the part of me that insisted there had surely been some mistake. Surely, it clamored, surely there was a reasonable explanation. Surely the centuries I had spent trying to please my father hadn't all been for nothing. Surely it was all a huge, horrible misunderstanding. Surely we'd work it all out, and my mother would come home, and we could have another chance at being the family we had never truly been before.

I did my best to smother that part of myself. I had indulged my childish faith in my father for too long, and it had cost me so much already. It had cost the people unfortunate enough to be in my father's path much, much more.

I liked to think I was self-aware enough to realize that I was, at the moment, an absolute mess. I hadn't been sleeping and had barely been eating. My chest ached, and nothing could ease the pain. One of my friends, most likely Vic or Lissa, had moved some of my clothes into one of the spare rooms, but I was hardly concerned with my appearance. I dressed mechanically, finding no joy in the garments I usually adored. When my friends tried to take care of me I was snappish and brusque, or I simply ignored them.

I had driven Evangeline away. The curse hadn't helped, obviously, but it fed off things that were already bothering her. That the way I'd treated her had apparently been high on the list shook me to my core. How could I have missed it? I had never meant to make her feel patronized or belittled, but she'd made it excruciatingly clear that I had. I was scared for her. I had wanted to worship her, hold her close to keep her safe from the forces that were building against her, and instead, I made her feel like her best option was to run from me.

Now I was in the unenviable position of wishing fervently that the woman I loved simply didn't want anything to do with me. The best-case scenario was that Evangeline was too angry with me to come back. The alternative, that she had been captured or injured or worse, was too much to bear. I couldn't let myself think about it. Besides, she had been overflowing with power when she… left.

Surely she was fine, said that familiar childish part of me.

I couldn't even ask her mentor, Marcus, if he'd seen her. The last time I saw him, his hands were mangled, crushed out of shape by Evangeline. Isabella, Evangeline's best friend, had promised to take him to a healer, and the two had left town together. I hadn't heard from either of them since, although Theo apparently was in regular contact with Isabella.

It was shocking to realize that, for all the intensity of my relationship with Evangeline, I had so few links to her life before me. We had been so caught up in each other and in finding the ascendancy array, we weren't able to do many of the things that generally happened in relationships. Could something be called a date if you wound up fighting a giant statue? It didn't matter now. All I had were scraps of knowledge about Evangeline's regular stomping grounds. I knew a handful of establishments she frequented and two of her friends. She had mentioned her adoptive parents to me a few times, but I didn't know their first names or even which state they lived in. Their daughter could be dead, and I had no way to tell them.

No. No, there was no way. If Evangeline was gone, truly gone, I was certain I would know somehow.

I slumped onto one of the plush sofas in the library and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I would know if she was dead..

Surely.

I closed my eyes.

I was somewhere warm and comfortable. Music played softly in the background, Billie Holiday's crooning distorted and foggy like it was coming from one of the wax-cylinder phonographs I'd so adored when they first came out. I stretched languorously and opened my eyes. I was in a room that I knew was Evangeline's living room, although it didn't look much like the actual place. Half of it was overgrown with plants, and the kitchen was now the entrance to a stable I'd had in the 1850s. Strings of bright, colored feathers hung from the ceiling and the walls.

"I missed you," Evangeline said. I had come to awareness of the dream with my head pillowed in her lap, and she was looking down at me with a smile. Her chestnut hair floated around her, and I could see patterns in the curls.

I wanted to tell her that I'd missed her too, but my tongue was leaden, and I couldn't make myself talk. She smiled down at me as though I'd said something, and I pushed myself up so that I could kiss her. Her laughter vibrated against my lips, and I tangled a hand in her hair, holding her close.

Evangeline let me crowd her, overeager, and she lay back against the arm of the sofa. Everything was hazy, pink, and warm. We were naked. Had we been naked before? It didn't matter. Our bodies moved together, slick, hard, hot, wet, nebulous and overwhelming in the way sex always was for me in dreams. I couldn't put a name to what we were doing, but I knew it felt good, knew I wanted more.

We were in a new space now, a room that was both my bedroom and not. Evangeline was above me. We moved in perfect sync, so connected we might as well have been one being, one fluid entity with no ending and no beginning.

"I need you to promise me something," Evangeline said, her eyes glowing gold.

"Anything," I tried to tell her. The word stuck in my throat, and I thought I might choke on it.

"You have to promise," she said. Gold began to drip from her eyes, falling like gleaming tears. The blurry, pink warmth of her was changing, turning into cold metal. Where her tears hit my skin, they seared icily and stuck there.

I tried to make myself speak again and again. Molten gold started filling the room, creeping up over the edges of the bed, climbing inexorably closer to us with each movement of our bodies. I pulled desperately at Evangeline, trying to make her see the danger around us, but the more I tugged at her, the closer the gold got. It wasn't safe, why couldn't she see that?

"You have to promise," Evangeline said again, coldly. "Why won't you promise?"

The metal was crawling up my body now, flowing up my skin. It poured into my mouth, up my nose. I couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything, couldn't stop it. Evangeline stared down at me, face blank, as the liquid gold closed over my eyes.

I jolted awake with a strangled gasp, drenched in sweat, and I still couldn't breathe. A dense, suffocating weight pressed down on my neck and chest, and in my nightmare-addled state I didn't care that I didn't technically have to breathe, I just wanted the weight off. As I scrabbled at it blindly, my hands met something soft and warm.

"Aah," came a small but extremely emphatic voice from the region of my neck. I flopped against the cushions of the sofa with a groan.

"Hello, Pothos," I said tiredly, dragging a hand over my eyes, which had the lovely side effect of rubbing Pothos's fur directly into my tear ducts. My eyes stung, but at least now I could pretend it was just from that. Silver linings.

"Aah," the cat said again. I was fairly certain he wasn't exactly a cat, since I'd never met a cat that shed grass or grew flowers along its spine when it was happy, but it seemed rude to try to figure out what exactly Pothos was. He seemed content enough to be shaped like a domestic cat most of the time, although he did occasionally cough up mulch onto the carpets.

"You miss Evangeline, too, don't you?" I murmured, brushing my fingers along his fuzzy green cheek. He leaned into the touch briefly, then nipped at my pointer finger with sharp little teeth. A warning shot, making it clear now wasn't the time for petting. Sighing, I pulled my hand away.

"I'm worried about her," I admitted. "She wouldn't have left you behind if she could help it, would she?"

"Aah," Pothos commented, then rearranged himself so he could clean his butt.

I looked down at the small, green creature industriously licking itself on the middle of my chest, then jolted upright, dislodging him. Pothos! Could it really be that simple?

"Sorry, sorry," I said when he huffed at me. "I think you and I might be able to help each other. You see, you clearly miss your owner. So do I, but her apartment won't let me in alone. But Chanel likes you, doesn't she? Because you're a very good, er, cat. So, if I go with you…"

Pothos stared up at me skeptically, one hind leg still in the air and a tiny sliver of his tongue sticking out. It was a horrible thing, having a cat judge you. After a moment, he came to a decision and jumped up onto my shoulders, draping himself across them like a stole.

"I take it you approve of this plan, then," I said, bemused.

"Aah," said Pothos.

I left the library and moved silently through the house, with Pothos still sprawled on my shoulders. It was quiet. Of the four of us who lived there, none of us were in a particularly conversational mood. Even Lissa, who usually chattered in her overwhelming big sister way until one of us was pulled out of our gloom, was exhausted.

"… hard on him," I heard from the drawing room as I walked past. "But it doesn't seem fair to keep him in the dark about this."

"We're not keeping him in the dark." I recognized Theo's brash tone. "If he'd so much as looked outside in the past week, he'd have noticed, but he's been too busy moping."

I winced. So, they were talking about me, then.

"He's dealing with a lot," said the first voice. Lissa.

"We all are," Theo said sharply. "Nathan's still missing. I haven't been able to find a single goddamn trace of the kid, and neither has anybody else I've tasked with finding him. More people are disappearing every day, and it's not just low-ranking ones anymore. Look, if I thought Gabriel could help us right now, I'd ask him, but… I mean, you've seen the guy."

I was rooted to the spot. Very little good ever came from eavesdropping on one's friends, especially when you were the subject being discussed. Still, I was stuck in place, listening to my loved ones discuss my uselessness.

"But surely if he knew how bad things really are—" Lissa started.

"Then he would punish himself for not helping sooner," said a third voice, calm and even. Vic, usually taciturn, had joined in. "You know what he's like. If we told him how many people are going missing, hell, if we told him that it's bad enough that we're only leaving the house together, just in case… he'd just blame himself."

Was that what my friends thought of me? That I was too mired in my own unhappiness to be of any use? A headache began to crawl up to my temples, and I realized I was clenching my jaw. I knew I should leave, that I should keep walking and pretend I'd heard nothing, but I was wracked with the morbid need to know what else they might say.

"We're not keeping it from him, Lissa," Theo said. "It's just… He's too in his head to even ask right now."

"Aah," Pothos meowed loudly from around my neck. The vampires in the room turned toward the doorway, their eyes widening when they saw me.

"Gabe—"

"We were just?—"

I cut Lissa and Theo off with a raised hand. "I'm going out," I said shortly. "I'm taking Pothos back to Evangeline's."

I swept away before any of them could say anything else.

The streets around the manor were usually quiet, but now they were empty. I headed into the city proper, toward Evangeline's place, and where the streets should have been bustling, I only spotted a few people, moving quickly and looking around nervously. The city of Eldoria was a ghost town. How had this happened in a mere week? Posters of missing persons fluttered in the wind, pasted up on light poles and walls. The windows of the buildings around me were dark, and those that had a few glints of light were mostly obscured by heavy curtains. A curtain twitched as I walked past. People were hiding. At the mouth of an alley, I saw a dropped paper bag of groceries. Produce had rolled out of it left on the ground to mold. Under the drooping shapes of blue-fuzzed oranges, blood stained the pavement.

So, this was what I had been missing. No wonder Vic, Lissa, and Theo had taken to moving around the city together. Fresh curls of anger and shame began to unfurl in the pit of my stomach. My father orchestrated this, and I'd allowed it to happen. I had stood by and let all of this?—

Pothos bonked the flat of his solid little head into my cheek, surprising me out of my brooding. I scratched him between the ears in a way I hoped conveyed gratitude, then picked up the pace. We were almost there.

Our destination was a narrow, shabby brick building, tucked between two larger buildings as though it was in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek it was determined to win. The first floor was a restaurant, and I was oddly relieved to see it was still open, although the blinds were drawn. Even in times of crisis and upheaval, people still wanted spicy noodles—perhaps especially then. The smell of chili and ginger wafted from the restaurant. Next to it was a scuffed blue door. Bracing myself, I knocked.

"Me again, Chanel," I said. "I've brought Pothos home. Do you think you could let me in?"

Somehow, the door gave the impression of glaring.

"Aah," Pothos said emphatically.

The door swung open. I couldn't allow myself to get too excited about this. I'd gotten past the front door before, but Chanel had always kept the doors to Evangeline's apartment and office locked tight. In a particularly rough moment, I considered breaking in, but when a woman implies you're overbearing and leaves you, breaking into her home seems like a bad way to recover, curse or no.

I climbed the narrow stairs up past the second floor, glancing at the door of Evangeline's PI office as I went. The frosted glass window was dark. I chewed the inside of my cheek and carried on to the third floor.

"Evangeline?" I called, fervently wishing I would hear her voice even if she told me to go away. It would be proof that she was safe. That she was alive.

There was no reply. However, this time the door to Evangeline's apartment opened before I even touched the doorknob. Apparently, Pothos had been the key I'd needed all along. If only I'd thought of it sooner, I could've checked the apartment for Evangeline's presence and saved my rugs from being fertilized. I stepped inside slowly, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to be cautious.

Nothing had been moved since the last time I was here, but it still felt different. It had the musty feeling of a well-loved space that had been empty for a while and wasn't used to the neglect. A half-drunk mug of coffee had been left in the kitchen and was now growing strange bits of fuzz in a wide range of colors. I followed a raw, earthy smell to the kitchen and covered my nose with my sleeve. Next to the sink, the chestnuts Evangeline and I had gathered were spoiling, the scent of decay leaching into the air. Gingerly, I scraped them into the trash.

Pothos hopped down from my shoulders and began to run around the apartment, pausing occasionally to sniff at something and yowl. He was purring loudly as he ran, and I huffed out a little laugh.

"Well, I'm glad you're happy, at least."

My laugh quickly died in my throat. Evangeline wasn't here. From the state of the place, it was clear she hadn't been back to her apartment for some time—since she'd begun staying with me for her own safety, I would say. A cold press of fear crushed me. If Evangeline hadn't come home, where would she have gone? She wouldn't have gone to Marcus after she had hurt him like that, and I knew there was no way she would've gone to her non-magical adoptive parents with the curse hanging so heavily on her. No, she would have come here.

There was no pretending otherwise now. Something horrible must have happened to her. Evangeline was in trouble.

I had to find her, help her, get her out of the mess I had caused, however inadvertently, by making her feel that I was looking down on her.

"Stay here," I told Pothos, who was scrabbling at a scratching post, ignoring me entirely. "I'm going to go find your owner."

I bolted to the door, but this time it didn't swing open for me. Scowling, I grabbed the doorknob. It refused to twist under my grip no matter how hard I tried.

After a week of locking me out, Chanel had decided to lock me in.