Page 21 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

My car screeched to a dead stop in front of All Saints. Within seconds, I had launched myself out of the car and was barreling in through the front doors. My eyes were wild with terror as I searched every nook and cranny for Trace, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t find him dead in some dark corner of the room.

“April!”

I called, seeing the red-haired manager behind the bar, tending to a customer. “Where’s Trace?”

“Oh, hey, Jemma,”

she said with a welcoming smile. “I think he’s in his office doing payroll. Why?”

She hadn’t even finished uttering the sentence before I was already running for the back of house. My heartbeat hammered boisterously between my ears as I weaved my way through the kitchen, ignoring all the staff as they tried to greet me until I finally came in front of the manager’s office.

My heart exploded like a bomb as I sucked in a breath and opened the door.

The room was empty. No sign of Trace anywhere.

The air rushed out of my lungs like a deflated balloon. Running around to the front of his desk, I opened and closed his drawers, searching for his keys or cellphone. Both were missing which probably meant he had already left. But then why hadn’t anyone seen him leave?

Pushing off the desk, I bolted out of the office and made my way to the back doors which led to the back parking lot where Trace usually parked his car. To my surprise, his car was there, but his driver’s side door was hanging wide open.

Unable to see through his tinted window, I carefully approached the car until I spotted him sitting in the front seat with the music playing idly.

“Oh, my god! Thank god you’re okay,”

I said as I rushed to his side and then knelt down beside him before quickly noting that he wasn’t responding to me. “Trace?” I called his name softly and then reached in to turn his head to me. His eyes were closed as though he’d just dozed off in his car. I immediately tried to feel for a pulse, though I wasn’t really sure where to find it. Well, that and that fact that my own blood was pumping so hard, I wasn’t sure if I was feeling his pulse or my own. Panic seized my insides.

“Trace? Wake up!”

I said and shook his shoulder. No response. I pushed forward and brought my ear to his mouth, trying to listen or feel for some sign of breathing.

His breath tickling my ear on an exhale.

My heart sputtered in my chest, and I clamped a hand down over it as I breathed a sigh of relief. He was breathing. He was alive. But then why wasn’t he waking up? Why wasn’t he answering me?

I tried shaking him again to no avail.

He wasn’t dead, but something was very, very wrong here. I needed to call an ambulance. I needed to get him help!

Straightening to my full height, I searched my pockets for my phone but came up empty. In my rush to find him, I must’ve forgotten it in my car. Leaning over Trace, I searched his console and then the passenger seat for his phone, but couldn’t find that either. Then I heard it ringing from somewhere in the car.

Craning my ear closer, I realized it was in his pocket. After an awkward maneuver and strange bend of my hand, I dug his phone out from his front pocket and answered the call.

“He’ll have to call you back,”

I said hurriedly and then tried to end the call.

“Jemma?”

I heard a muffled but familiar voice call out from the speaker.

Pausing, I brought the phone back my ear. “Tessa?”

“Why are you answering Trace’s phone?”

“Why are you calling Trace’s phone?”

I countered and then shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Something’s happened to him. He won’t wake up. I need to call an ambulance!”

“What do you mean he won’t wake up?”

“She broke the talisman that was keeping the wall up around his mind,”

I said, sobbing into the phone now. “She hurt him to get back at me and now he’s just sitting here, completely unresponsive. Look, I’ll explain everything later. I need to call for help.”

“Jemma, wait,”

she said and I all but growled into the phone at her. Was she not understanding the urgency of this? “Don’t call for an ambulance.”

“Excuse me?”

I practically hissed through the phone at her. “Are you mental? He needs help, Tessa!”

“Yes, he does. But not the kind that any doctor or hospital can give him. He needs a healer. Sit tight. I’m on my way now,”

she said and hung up the line.

I stared at the blank screen for long moment, unsure of what to do. A part of me knew that she was right. That this wasn’t something that modern day medicine could fix. He needed magic, or a miracle, or maybe even both.

But it still felt wrong just standing there doing absolutely nothing while I watched my soulmate drift further and further away into the bleak, unknown depths of unconsciousness.

***

Tessa had arrived less than ten minutes later and helped me carry Trace into the back seat of her Cadillac. I’d wanted to ride with him all the way home, but she reminded me that not only did I have my own car here, but that I’d left it with the driver’s side door wide open at the front of the building.

Not that I particularly cared, until she insisted that I was probably going to need my car again at some point in the near future, and that it was best if I drove it home myself since she could barely figure out how to start the thing.

After ensuring me that Trace would be perfectly safe in the backseat of her car, I locked up Trace’s mustang and then rushed to the front of the building just in time to follow her out of the parking lot.

We arrived back at the Blackburn Estate in record time. Unfortunately, since it was still daylight out, we were lacking much needed vampire muscle and had to carry Trace inside ourselves, with Tessa taking his upper body and me carrying his legs.

“Jackie!”

called Tessa as soon as we made it inside and temporarily set Trace down on the marble floor to catch our breath. “We need some help down here!”

My mother appeared at the foyer entrance within seconds, a puzzled look on her face as she tried to make sense out of the scene unfolding before her.

“We need to get him onto the sofa,”

informed Tessa as she placed her hands on her hips and pulled in a few breaths.

“What happened to him?”

asked Jaqueline.

“The protective barrier around his mind crumbled,”

answered Tessa and I all but murdered her with my eyes.

“We don’t know that yet,”

I said, still holding out hope for god knows what. Apparently, I was still in denial. Or shock. Or both. “We don’t know anything!”

“You said she busted the talisman,”

Tessa reminded me, not giving a single damn about preserving my little bubble of hope and denial. “I think it’s safe to say we know a little bit.”

“Just pick up his arms!”

I barked, not wanting to hear anymore of her casual play by play of a moment that would haunt my nightmares for years to come.

Tessa nodded and then grabbed a hold of him under his arms as my mother moved in front of me and picked up his legs before carrying him into the sitting room closest to the entrance and then setting him down on the brown leather sofa. As soon as he was settled, I rushed to his side and moved a strand of hair away from his face.

Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I stared down at him, feeling completely hopeless and out of my element. “What are we going to do? How do we fix this?”

Neither one of them answered me.

I whipped around to face them. “He can’t stay this way! We need to help him. Now. There has to be something we could do. If magic did this, then magic can also undo it, right?”

“I’m afraid not,”

said my mother, and just like that I was weeping like a little, heartbroken child.

“You’re wrong. It has to!” I sobbed.

Tessa tried to reach out to comfort me or hug me, but I shoved her arm away.

She pursed her lips and bathed me in a look of pity. “The spell she cast was tied to his reanimation, Jemma. And we’re not meant to survive that process.”

“But he already did survive it!”

“Only because the barrier spell was protecting his mind from going through the natural process of complete destruction,”

she explained, her voice soft and gentle as though she weren’t hammering my hopes and dreams into a million unfixable pieces. “The minute she broke that talisman, everything it had been protecting came crashing in, bombarded his mind with all the memories of his past. With the memories of the reanimation process. Of his death.” She shook her head despondently. “You cannot use magic to undo that because it was only magic that was preventing it from happening in the first place.”

“No. No! I don’t accept that,”

I said, shaking my head as tears continued to pour out of me like a freaking rain parade. “What about a healing spell? We can heal him! Caleb made one for me and my skin closed up like magic right before my eyes. We can do the same for Trace. I know we can.”

“That’s not the same thing,”

said Tessa, her eyes reflecting with pain as she stared at the broken, fragile mess that was now her little sister. “Healing flesh wounds is not the same as repairing damage to vital organs. And this,” she said, looking at Trace as she shook her head with regret. “This is the most complicated organ of all. There is no Caster that can do what you’re asking.”

“You don’t know that,”

I said and folded down onto the ottoman behind me, my face buried in my hands as I continued to sob uncontrollably. “You can’t know that. You can’t know it for sure.”

“I’m so sorry, Jemma,”

said Tessa as she touched her hand to my shoulder as though she were giving me her condolences. As though we’d already laid him to rest in his casket.

I shucked her hand off my shoulder and glared at her. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me, do you hear me?!”

She exchanged a look with our mother.

“He isn’t dead, and this isn’t over!”

I said, making myself as loud and clear-cut as I could muster. “And if you aren’t here to help me—to find a way to get him back—then don’t fucking be here at all.”

She drew her lips into a line and then nodded, hearing me loud and clear. “I’ll…go get some pillows and blankets,”

she offered and then glanced over at my mother expectantly.

“Yes. And I’ll help.”

The two of them hurried out of the room together, leaving me and Trace alone. With my cheeks soaked in tears, I swiveled on the ottoman until I was sitting directly in front of him. My heart twisted in my chest as I looked down at him, confused at how he could look so beautiful and peaceful, like he was only temporarily sleeping.

Maybe that was exactly what this was. Maybe he was just in a deep, healing sleep, giving his mind enough time and energy to slowly heal itself. What did Tessa and Jaqueline know anyway? For all we knew, Trace was going to wake up in a few days like nothing happened, feeling just like his old, resplendent self again.

Maybe…