Chapter 22

22

EVANGELINE

T he hidden spot in the woods was not what I'd expected. It wasn't warded or marked with warning signs and standing stones—none of the signs I'd gotten used to. Lately, every time I was in the woods it was because I was around ley line crossings, and the landscapes there tended to reflect the magic surging through them. So, it was a little odd to be in what was basically just a normal patch of woodlands.

The cottage didn't have the decency to look mystical or dangerous, nor did it look like something out of a storybook. It was just a tiny, shitty house that had been abandoned. A large, fallen branch lay across one corner of the roof, and the paint was off the boards. The windows were dingy but intact.

"This is it?" I meant to make it sound more certain, but the place just seemed so… normal.

Damien shot me a wry glance. "Roland tended to save the flashy shit for when he had an audience," he said. "This is more his individual style."

I checked the door for spells but didn't find anything. When I reached for the knob, Damien put a hand on my arm, stopping me.

"Let me go first," he said, nudging me aside. "There's a lot more than just magic that Roland could've used."

"Suit yourself."

Standing off to the side, Damien opened the door carefully. A crossbow bolt flew out of the darkness with a noise like an enraged hornet and buried itself in a tree across the clearing. If I'd opened the door, the bolt would've hit me in the center of my chest.

"Okay, yeah," I said. "You can definitely go first."

I sent a small ball of light into the cabin ahead of us, and the light reflected back from dozens of surfaces. Mirrors covered the inside of the cottage. They hung from every surface in all shapes and sizes, ranging from full-length and four feet across to tiny flecks of silver the size of my thumbnail. The mirrors were speckled with age, but there was still plenty of surface area left unblemished. It felt like walking into an inside-out disco ball. A cluster of bottles and brushes gathered dust on one table along with a few sheets of thick glass. More sheets of glass were tucked into racks below the table, and the green edges of them caught the light oddly. Not just a cottage, then. A workshop.

I tried to meet Damien's gaze in one of the mirrors, then rolled my eyes. He was invisible in all of them, of course. It was bizarre to see the room reflected from so many directions without the man next to me appearing in any of the mirrors. On every side of me, the mirrors reflected each other, sending images of me arcing away into infinity. I shivered. The infinite repeating reflections put me more on edge than the crossbow bolt had. I was gonna freak the fuck out if one of my reflections moved in the wrong direction.

The crossbow was mounted to the wall across from the door. Damien broke it out of its mechanism, hefted the thing, glanced around, then dropped it to the floor.

"No extra bolts," he said. "Probably not worth looking for them."

"Let's just find the wand as fast as we can and get the fuck out of here," I said. "I'm not someone who freaks out easily, but I can honestly say this place gives me full-blown heebie-jeebies, and I don't say that lightly."

Damien snorted.

There were multiple rooms in the cottage, I discovered, but they were all extensions of the workshop. No doors separated the rooms, only curtains. I pushed one aside, holding my breath as a cloud of dust rolled off it. Even more mirrors covered this room, and a larger rack of glass was set against one wall. There was a small, utilitarian kitchen with a wood stove and a fridge that looked like it was from a time when people still had to get ice delivered. A small bed was tucked against the wall on the other side of the room. It was more of a cot with delusions of adequacy and pushed out of the way like whoever had lived here had considered sleep a necessary inconvenience.

I kept trying to look at Damien in the mirrors, and it kept not working. There could've been another vampire in here with us, and I would be so focused on the mirrors, I wouldn't spot them until it was too late. It wasn't a reassuring thought.

"I don't even know where to start," I muttered.

Damien was exploring the tiny kitchen—the mirror-maker had even hung their work on the cabinet doors. The reflections swooped dizzyingly as he opened the doors.

"Wait," I said. "Close that one again. Slowly."

He did, keeping it in place when I held up a hand. With the mirror on the door angled, I could see something in the one near me that my own reflection had blocked. One of the mirrors, just one, reflected a drawer that wasn't in the room.

I approached that mirror slowly, reaching out to feel for magic. A faint buzz came from the glass, so distant I wouldn't have noticed it unless I already knew what I was looking for. The mirror was an oval one, maybe one foot wide and two feet tall, with a simple black frame. I touched the glass, and it rippled. It was cool to the touch and moved under my fingertips with a texture similar to a water balloon. I pressed forward, and my hand sank into the surface. It was tricky work—I had to watch the reflection of the mirror on the cabinet and then coordinate my hand to fumble toward the handle of the reflected drawer. It was like trying to fix your hair in a non-mirrored webcam turned up to a thousand. Finally, I felt the handle. I grabbed it and pulled, and the door slid open smoothly, gliding out of the surface of the mirror. Inside was a long, narrow, velvet jewelry box, the sort of thing a necklace might be put in. It opened with a satisfying snap, and I sucked in a breath. Inside, resting on a cushion, was a wand.

For a thing that apparently held so much power, it was simple. Really more of a stick, honestly. The birch bark was still around the handle, and the whittling to shape the length of it was rough. A lump of polished jet was set into the back of the handle, making it look like the pupil of a mad, staring eye marked out by the wood rings. Even with how crudely made it was, it was still appealing. It looked like it would be good to hold, nicely balanced, a perfect fit for my hand…

Damien snapped the lid shut, nearly catching the tips of my fingers. I'd been reaching for the wand without even realizing it. I shook myself. With the box closed, the pull of the wand faded. Still, I handed it to Damien.

"I think maybe you should carry this," I said.

When we got back to the safe house, Damien split off to stash the wand somewhere safe, and I went up to my room. When I got up the stairs, I stopped short. The little sitting area on the landing was occupied.

Gabriel, pale-faced and nervous, stood at the window.

"Evangeline," he breathed, wide-eyed. "I was…" He cleared his throat. "I was hoping we could talk."

Nervousness, eagerness, and anger all bubbled up inside me. I fought to keep control of my face. I shrugged and angled my head down the hall, and he fell into step behind me. He stayed silent until I got to my room—the room that, until recently, we had been sharing. The bed still smelled like him.

Gabriel looked so miserable and twitchy, I had to turn away from him or I'd do something stupid like forgive him before he even apologized. I toed off my boots and shrugged out of my jacket with my back to him.

"Well? You're the one who wanted to talk," I said, hoping it came off sounding breezy and confident.

"Yes," Gabriel said, his voice oddly muffled. When I turned around, he was kneeling on the floor, arms stretched out ahead of him, and forehead nearly touching the carpet. My first thought was that it was a weird time to do the child pose, and then I realized that he was literally prostrating himself in front of me.

A surge of affection joined in the tangle of emotions knotting up my insides. What a fucking weird nerd. I liked him so much.

"I'm very sorry," Gabriel said into the carpet. "I shouldn't have tried to make a choice like that for you. I hope you can find it within your heart to forgive me, but I understand if you can't."

I knelt on the floor in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder. He twitched.

"You know better than anyone how much I've been dealing with," he babbled. "But you also know better than anyone that isn't an excuse. It was unfair. I was being unfair and cruel, even though that was the farthest thing from what I intended. I was afraid, and I…"

"Gabriel," I murmured. "Look at me."

He let out a shuddering breath. I ran my hand along his shoulder and cupped the back of his neck. Gabriel rose up into the touch like an eager cat. He lifted out of his prostrating and raised his head, but he didn't meet my eyes. I touched the sharp line of his jaw and turned him to face me.

"You were being really dumb," I said gently, which startled a laugh out of him. I smiled. "And it really fucking sucks that you used our relationship as a stick to beat yourself with."

"I know," he said immediately. "I know, I shouldn't have. You deserve?—"

I put a finger to his lips. "My turn to talk. I know you didn't do it because of me, but that also sucks, you know? Feeling like I wasn't even part of the consideration was shitty. But I know what we're dealing with isn't normal. It's not the stuff we'll deal with every day. I want to make this work, and I think we can if we try. I really like being with you, Gabriel. I like who I am around you. I…" I took a deep breath. Gabriel watched me with desperate, liquid eyes. My stomach swooped and dipped as if I were standing at the edge of a cliff. "I love you," I said. I'd never said it to anyone before, not like this. To friends and family, sure, but never to someone I was in love with. This was completely different.

Gabriel's expression changed slowly, like it took his brain a minute to process what his ears had heard. I watched surprise and guilt and joy move across his face in flickering micro- expressions. Someone who didn't know him wouldn't have spotted it at all. How could I have possibly thought he was expressionless when we'd first met? He was an open book, just one written in another language.

"Marcus told me your magic is going wrong," he said. "That it's hurting you."

I winced and lifted the hem of my shirt so Gabriel could see the cracks, and he sucked in a breath. "They don't hurt most of the time," I reassured him quickly.

"Most of the time," he repeated pointedly.

"When it's bad, it's… pretty bad."

Gabriel's eyes turned dark with concern. He reached out to touch my chest, then hesitated. I took his wrist and moved his hand closer, pressing his cool palm against the branching cracks. He touched them gingerly, prepared to fling himself away from me if I showed even the tiniest bit of discomfort.

"It seems so unfair," he said, barely louder than a whisper. "So much has been put on your shoulders."

I leaned forward and rested my head against his forehead. "On both of us," I said. "When this is over, I want to go out somewhere. A museum or something. Dinner and a movie. A normal date."

His hand ghosted over my jaw, and he angled my head up until we were looking into each other's eyes. The smile he gave me was so full of relief and hope, I almost couldn't bear it. Part of me wanted to look away. Instead, I closed the distance and kissed him.

It was a sweet kiss, gentle and closed-mouthed. Like a first kiss with the combination of nerves and inevitability. It was as if we were touching for the first time. It was as if we'd been in each other's lives for years.

Gabriel pulled me close, cradling my face in his hands like he'd die if he didn't get to touch me. He poured everything he hadn't said into the kiss, and I could feel the very edges of his mind brushing up against mine, a gentle murmur of I'm so sorry—I love you—I was scared, and I love you so much it scares me even more—I was hurting—I'm so glad I get to see you again—I love you, I love you, I love you…

I broke the kiss, not because I wanted to, but because Gabriel sometimes forgot humans needed to breathe when he got excited. I stayed pressed close, resting my forehead against his. The idea of moving away from him was unthinkable.

"We should talk. Like, for real talk about how this is going to work, because I really, really want this to work."

Gabriel nodded, his head rocking against mine. His eyes were closed, his hands still cupping my face. He brushed his thumbs slowly over my cheeks. "We have been a bit distracted," he said.

"We've either been fighting for our lives, trying to stay sane, or fucking," I said indelicately. Gabriel huffed out a quiet laugh, and I pressed forward again. It wasn't really a kiss. I just wanted him to feel my smile against his lips. "There's a lot I should catch you up on. There's kind of a situation with Damien, and the whole thing with my magic, and—" I interrupted myself to kiss him again.

"We should talk about all of it," he agreed, then brushed his lips against mine.

"Definitely," I said, kissing him deeply.

"Definitely going to talk," he said sagely. The kiss landed while my mouth was still open, and he dragged his teeth tenderly over the curve of my lower lip. Love you—I'm sorry—I missed you—I love you—I want you…

"Gonna talk in a little bit," I suggested. Somehow, my hand ended up buried in Gabriel's hair, and I tugged at his curls. He groaned against my mouth.

"In, say, forty-five minutes or so," he agreed. He pressed a hand to the small of my back, easing me a little closer until I was practically in his lap. He ghosted a bite over my jaw, pressed a kiss to my neck.

"Maybe an hour," I said. The buttons on his shirt were tricky to do without looking, but I was very motivated.

"An hour and a half," Gabriel suggested.

I laughed, giddy and breathless.

The bed was close, but the floor was closer. He bore me down onto the carpet and I wrapped a leg around the slim line of his hips, digging my heel into his thigh to keep him close. I love you—I want you—I need you—I'm so sorry I hurt you—you mean the world to me-—I love you…

In the end, it took us two hours.