Page 193 of Dark Souls

“What the hell do you mean Wesley is missing and Hana is gone?”

Looks like Belladonna didn’t know me better than anyone on the Earth after all. My soulmate did. Because she’d known exactly what I needed her to do.

I died with a smile on my face.

Devil, Devil

“Andyouaresureno one is home?” I whispered behind Lia’s shoulder as my eyes darted around the pristine mansion and sleek, minimalist furniture in neutral tones. The whole place exuded luxury and wealth. Blood money. Money made off the back of my mate’s suffering. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to follow Lia towards her parent’s joint office at the back of the house.

“Positive. My mother said she would be away for a few days working on a spell and dad is always out of the house early.”

“She said she was working on a spell?” I frowned. Those words triggered an acceleration in my heart rate. “What kind of spell?”

“She didn’t say.” Lia paused at the door and pressed the pad of her finger to a scanner at the side. It pricked her finger and a bead of blood soaked into the pad, giving us access. “My mother never tells me anything. She’s always been vague. Cold and distant. I just thought that was the way she was, but obviously, she had other reasons.”

The door opened and Lia peered around it to check the coast was clear before shoving me inside and closing it behind us.

The space was open and airy, with two desks on either side of the room that looked out on the immaculate back gardens through the large bay windows. Lia rushed towards her father’s desk first, her heels clipping against the polished marble floor. She yanked open drawers, ruffling through papers, and I walked over to her mother’s side, scanning the neatly organised contents of potion bottles, files and spell books.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Lia asked, lifting a pile of papers from a file and flicking through them.

“The original Anderson spell that separated their demons. It’s most likely written in Latin or coded, and it will be old,” I replied, opening one of her mother’s desk drawers only to find more books and a few potion recipes. “Your parents must have it. When they bought Luka and Hana at the auction, the Knowltons would’ve had to teach them how to use the spell to summon their demons and use the sigils. It has to be here.”

I didn’t want to entertain the idea that it wasn’t. That Parisa or Mitchell might have been smart enough to keep it somewhere much harder to locate. Leif said he needed it if he had any chance of reversing the spell without any hiccups. My gaze lifted to an antique jewellery box sitting at the back of Parisa’s desk and I narrowed my eyes. Something about it seemed so strange. The entire contemporary design of this house and this office was done with sophistication and class in mind. So having an old, battered eye-sore of a gold box among it all felt odd. I leaned over and opened the lid, seeing the inside was just as dated as the exterior. The black velvet was worn and frayed as I delved my hand inside and pulled out a necklace. The chain was broken but the pendant of a constellation of stars was still intact though it had clearly lost its shine.

“What are you doing?” Lia hissed, peering over at me with irritation as I stood there, frozen in place and staring at the necklace in my hand. Where had I seen this before?

‘It seems familiar,’ Rue agreed in my mind.

“Is this your mum’s?”

Lia tugged off her heels, casting them to the side, and walked over to me to take a look at it. “Yes. Why?”

I licked my lips, an unsettling feeling gnawing at the depths of my soul as I rolled the stars over in my fingers. “I’ve seen this somewhere before.”

Lia shrugged her shoulders. “She probably wore it at a gala or something. Come on, I thought you said we had to find this spell before my father meets with Arius?”

I placed the necklace back in the box and shut the lid. “We do. Keep looking. Is there a safe?”

“Probably. But fuck knows what the combination is.”

After a few more minutes of hopelessly searching every drawer, file and book in the room, I grew increasingly agitated. I peered over my shoulder, my eyes fixed on the jewellery box again, unwilling to let this gut feeling go.

“That box is pretty intrusive for this white and pristine look your parents are going for.”

Lia huffed, placing her hands on her hips. “What?” She followed my gaze to her mother’s desk. “Why are you being so weird about that thing? It’s just an old antique that’s been passed down through my mother’s family for centuries.”

“An heirloom?” I asked, walking back over to it and picking it up.

“I guess. I asked about it once and mother just said it was a memory of her past life or something or other. Like I said, vague as fuck.” I turned it over, picking at the layer of velvet underneath when I saw a faint engraving. “What are you doing? She’ll kill me if it gets broken!”

Ignoring Lia’s protests, I ripped the velvet off completely and ran my finger over the indistinct letters carved into the gold.

Belladonna.

Luka’s memory of her flashed through my mind. Her brown ringlets piled on top of her head, falling elegantly around her striking face. Those blue eyes were haloed by dark brown and the necklace that sat at the top of her cleavage. A star constellation.

“Is your mum related to the Knowltons?” I spun around to face Lia’s perplexed face.