“Dunno,” I shot back. “I kind of want to see what they might do to your face.”
“But not my sexy ass?”
I choked. No witty comeback came to mind, so I grudgingly took the bottles. Quiet rustling disturbed the forest, then the vargs appeared. They were normally silent, but two were limping badly. The Ghost briefly inspected their injuries, then started forward. As Nadine and I fell into step behind him, he glanced back.
Green eyes sliding across us, he reached over his shoulder for his hood. As he drew it up and the shadows enclosed his face, he rumbled quietly, “What will I do with you two now?”
I wished I could have seen his eyes when he’d asked the question. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so afraid of the answer.
Chapter Twelve
Ghost Captivity, Day Thirteen.
As I washed my hands, I studied my reflection in the mirror. I’d tamed my wild curls into a ponytail and pinned my bangs off my face. My creamy-pale complexion had warmed after spending so many days out in the sun, but the tan was nothing compared to the explosion of freckles across my nose, cheeks, and shoulders.
I stared into my hazel eyes, the amber and brown flecked with green. My sixteen-year-old self gazed back at me, haunted and hopeless.
Trapped. I was trapped, and all the ugly feelings I’d left behind years ago were creeping back.
Pulling myself together, I dried my hands on a towel and exited the bathroom. In the hallway, I paused as giggling laughter echoed out of the kitchen. My stomach contorted into a tighter knot.
Despite the Ghost’s ominous question about what to do with Nadine and me after our adventure in the forest, he hadn’t done a thing. I’d barely seen him, and if I hadn’t known he kept to himself, I would’ve assumed he was avoiding me. Morgan had assigned me to barn work for the last three days, while Nadine had been relegated to the kitchen, so I’d scarcely exchanged words with her either. We’d talked briefly before falling asleep, but with the other two girls in the room, we hadn’t spoken of the darkfae attack—or our glimpse of the Ghost’s face.
I leaned back against the wall, listening to the post-lunch chatter in the kitchen. What was I doing here? I wanted to save Nadine, but I couldn’t even save myself. I was helpless, and I hated it.
Thirteen days. Aaron, Kai, and Ezra must be out of their minds worrying about me. Who knew what they were doing to find me? And then there was my brother. He wouldn’t have a clue why I’d vanished, and being a cop, he wasn’t the type to sit at home and wait for me to call.
My head thumped against the wall and I closed my eyes. Sick desperation churned through me. Waiting had become impossible to stomach. Escape. I needed to escape. How? How?
“Tori?”
I opened my eyes. Nadine stood at the end of the hall, a wicker basket in her arms.
“You okay?” She hefted her basket. “Want to help me cut up some roots?”
“Sure.” At this point, I’d take any distraction. And, oddly enough, Morgan had failed to assign me any chores for the afternoon.
Nadine grabbed an extra paring knife from the kitchen, and we sat outside on the porch, the basket between us. The stringy roots were dark brown with a fresh, earthy smell.
“What is this stuff?” I muttered.
“I think it’s used in poultices, but don’t eat it. It’s poisonous.”
I wrinkled my nose. Surprise, surprise, another poisonous plant from the Ghost’s garden of death. “Yeah, wasn’t planning to eat it.”
We worked in silence for a few minutes, cutting the large chunks into inch-sized pieces. My hands moved on autopilot and I barely saw the roots or the knife. My mind spun around and around, rehashing everything I’d learned about this place.
“Feeling all right?” Nadine asked eventually.
I gave a small shrug. “Just restless, I guess.”
“I felt that way at first too. I wanted to leave so bad.”
“You did?”
She smiled ruefully as she sawed at a fat root. “I thought I’d made a huge mistake, but it was just the shock. It’s a big transition to go from a regular life—living in the city, going to school, doing homework—to living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. And the people here seem weird at first, right?”
I couldn’t agree more. Though they weren’t quite as weird as the Crow and Hammer mythics.
“It took me three or four weeks to get used to the new routine, but I’ve been here two months now and I love it.” Her eyes lit up with humor and she lowered her voice. “Plus, if I’d known how seriously gorgeous he was, I would never have considered leaving.”
My mouth twisted. I hoped I didn’t get that starry-eyed, super-crush look when I thought about him.
“Seeing him fight was soooo cool,” she whispered. “I asked Morgan—carefully, so she wouldn’t know why I was asking—and I think each rune on his arms is a magical gift from a fae. Like, a power they gave him in exchange for something.”
In exchange for what, though? Poisons and black magic?
“I don’t have a clue about the wings, though. That was insane. Do you think he can fly?” Her eyes went even bigger, her cheeks flushed, and I could see her crush deepening into infatuation as she spoke. “As soon as I get the chance, I want to ask him—”
“He isn’t like that!”
The words burst out in a furious hiss, and I instantly regretted them as wariness replaced her eager excitement.
“What does that mean?” she asked coolly.
Damn it. Well, since I’d already blurted out the wrong thing, might as well run with it. I leaned closer, lowering my voice.
“He isn’t the person you think he is, Nadine. He has a garden full of poison plants, he makes deadly potions in his kitchen, he trades black magic with darkfae. He—” I swallowed hard and plunged on. “Before I came here, I heard some things about him. He’s a wanted criminal. He’s killed people. The kids he picks up are never seen again—ever.”
She contemplated me in silence, then asked, “If that’s what you’d heard about him, why did you take his offer?”
“I was desperate,” I answered truthfully. Desperate to save her.
“I was desperate too.” She tossed a root into the basket. “My parents were never what I’d call loving. I always felt like a project or something—this thing they wanted to improve but could never make perfect. The older I got, the worse they were over everything. Nothing I did was good enough. I was scrawny, I was weak, I was stupid, I was gullible, I was ugly.”
All words of encouragement I’d heard from my father when I was her age. No wonder I’d seen so much of myself in her.
“That wasn’t enough to make me leave,” she continued. “But then, on my sixteenth birthday, I got this big envelope in the mail. No return address, but I thought it was a birthday gift, so I opened it.” She stared at the knife. “And I learned everything I knew about myself was a huge lie.”
“What do you mean?”
She picked up another root. “There was no letter or anything, but inside the envelope were old newspaper clippings and police reports and printouts. The first news article was from a London paper about a couple who died in a car accident, and how their one-year-old daughter survived. There was a police report that talked about suspicious circumstances surrounding the accident.”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say.
“There was a copy of a birth certificate for a Nadine Emrys. She was born in Cheshunt. That’s a town outside London—in England. The couple who died were Stephen and Malinda Emrys.” She dug her knife into the root, more like she wanted to gouge it to death than chop it. “The other things in the envelope were harder to understand. Copies of adoption paperwork with my name on them, but the details were wrong. I think the papers were forged.”
I pulled the knife out of her hands before she hurt herself. She didn’t seem to notice.
“The last few pages,” she whispered, “were the strangest. There was a printout from an obituary. ‘With great sadness, the Bellingham Sorcerers announce the unexpected passing of our honored guild master, Stephen Emrys, and his beloved wife, Malinda. They leave behind their young daughter.’ It went on to talk about Stephen’s and Malinda’s accomplishments … lots of accomplishments. They sounded like important people.”
“They were sorcerers,” I murmured. “That was their guild.”
She clenched her hand around the root and it snapped in half. “The last two papers were from the same guild. An investigation into Stephen’s and Malinda’s murders, and a report about the kidnapping of infant Nadine Emrys from her guardians’ home in London.”
Silence vibrated between us. I hesitated, then touched her shoulder. “Do you think your …” I hesitated to call them parents. “Do you think the couple you grew up with illegally adopted you?”
She looked up, her eyes haunted. “I think they killed my real parents and kidnapped me when I was a baby. Nothing else makes sense. Otherwise, how would I have gotten from England to here?”
“But … why?”
“I don’t know, but when I realized it, I freaked out. They weren’t home—they didn’t care it was my birthday—and I was terrified they would come back and kill me when they realized I knew the truth. I was having a total meltdown, and then the doorbell rang.”