Page 64

64

The Song

EMILIA

P ale swirls of frankincense smoke danced around me as I stared at myself in the mirror. Clad in the blue velvet mini dress from Stella’s, my skin looked ghostly pale. Not in a bad way, though. It suited me. The dress was figure-hugging and strapless, and it came with a pair of matching elbow-length gloves. The knee-high black boots completed the look, and I couldn’t help but feel quite lovely.

I brushed my hair and conjured a sparkly line of ice to decorate my middle part. Lastly, I applied a fresh coat of midnight blue lipstick.

I had a plan. I was going to attempt to gather both Faye and Venus to go out tonight. I was tired of having to choose between them. I wasn’t going to bother with Destiny—I knew it would be fruitless to even try to make amends with her if Venus was going to be involved. I did want to make up with Destiny, eventually. But not tonight.

First, I’d go to Faye’s room and convince her to come out with me to the party that girl Halo had invited me to. I figured it would be easy enough. Faye was always down for a good time. Then, we would go to Venus’s room—I assumed she was already going, anyway. We would pre-drink and be merry. The girls would get along, I hoped. They seemed to that night in the library when we did the location spell.

I blew out my candles and left my room, going over what I was going to say to Faye in my head.

A cloud of darkness passed through my mind, making me halt. My vision darkened, my spine erupting with a sensation I’d never felt before. I blinked repeatedly, trying to clear my eyes, but the force eclipsed my senses and snagged onto something nameless inside me.

Then, a voice…

The most beautiful, haunting voice. Singing an entrancing, melancholic tune that clawed through my flesh and grasped my heart, yanking me toward it.

I wasn’t heading in the direction of Faye’s room anymore. My legs carried me another way, my brain transfixed with the song that got louder and louder as I made my way toward it.

I needed to get to the source of the song.

Desperately .

My entire body swelled and trembled with the need.

I left the academy, stumbling toward the giant iron gates as the moon beamed down on me. The fireflies that darted past seemed to whisper warnings. The trees shuttering in the cold wind urged me to turn around but I could not. I would not.

The song continued, louder and more urgent.

“I’m coming,” I insisted breathily. “Please wait for me.”

I summoned the iron gates open. They tried to protest, tried to keep me contained within the academy grounds, but my magic triumphed.

I broke free into the street, breathing hard. The song became a siren, blaring inside my skull to the point of pain. The point of agony .

I hissed and winced, my hands flying over my ears. But that did nothing. The song was inside my head and there was no escape.

Dread spilled from my brain like poison.

It burned through the rest of me, shredding my nervous system, and collapsing my legs.

I hit the asphalt hard, my mouth opening and closing—I might have been screaming. Two oncoming lights blinded me. A kerfuffle of footfalls, followed by sharp hands on my ribs and legs. Something cold clasped around my wrists, the clink of metal piercing my brain like a needle. The street disappeared from under me and the world tumbled and blurred before I was tossed inside a tiny space, and then locked inside it.

My body was crunched and cramped, my head still splitting from the terrible siren song.

Momentum sloshed me around like I was damp clothes in a dryer.

Panic took over my senses as the siren song slowly waned. I began to register what was happening and doom pounded through my skull like a war drum. One horrible song replaced by another.

Over my furious heartbeat, the rumble of an engine and the whir of tires speeding over pavement had my stomach turning to lead.

I’m in a trunk.

I’m in a fucking trunk .

The way my limbs started instantly thrashing upon this revelation was purely instinctual. I kicked and tried to punch, only to find that my hands were cuffed together behind my back.

No. No, no, no.

This can’t be happening.

This is a nightmare. I’m going to wake up .

I went still—well, as still as I could while my breath sawed violently in and out of my lungs. I blinked, trying to hone my breathing, trying to calm the fuck down.

I counted to sixty a full twenty-five times. My chest had relaxed, my heart no longer trying to carve a path out of my ribs—but the notion that we’d been driving for nearly a half hour was going to send me over the edge again.

Voices stole my attention. I clipped my jaw shut and held my breath to listen.

“You sure this one won’t put up much of a fight?”

“Nah. She’s barely Emerged. Listen to her back there, quiet as a mouse. Worst case scenario, she’ll piss herself and we’ll have to bleach the carpet in the trunk.”

They laughed.

My kidnappers were laughing at me.

And Goddess damn me , I recognized their voices.

My magic exploded out of me in a shockwave as I roared with fury. Ice coated the trunk, spreading through the rest of the vehicle like frozen crackling flames, clogging its metal arteries and forcing it to come to an abrupt halt. The sudden impact tossed me around, pain rupturing my spine and the back of my head. I couldn’t succumb to the pain or the stars that corrupted my vision. I focused on the cuffs behind my back, willing my ice to coat them.

“Fucking hells!” They tried to restart the vehicle, but it wouldn’t turn over. It sputtered pathetically, my ice having destroyed it from the inside out. I might have laughed.

“I told you we should have knocked her out!”

Two doors slammed.

Angry footfalls approached the trunk.

I angled myself as best as I could, my heart thrashing in anticipation, waiting for the trunk to open.

“Wait. Be careful,” the male voice warned.

“ Be careful ?” the female hissed back. “She’s an infant!”

“An infant who just turned our car into a brick of ice.”

“Didn’t touch us , though, did she?”

The hatch unclipped, night air whooshing in my face.

My ice shattered the cuffs, my hands springing free at the same moment as I locked eyes with the female vampire from the beach house.