Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) (17 page)

Chapter Seventeen

T
he rest of dinner was
a horrifically silent affair. Luka kept stuffing his face as if my life weren’t going to be over in a few short weeks. Jordan kept shooting me sympathetic looks that I ignored and David looked everywhere but at me.

I knew they were waiting for me to say something but what could I say? My choices were between being murdered or suicide.

“Are you sure that’s what happens to the girls?” David finally asked Luka. “That they are killed?”

Luka casually brushed some crumbs from his lap. Good looking? Yes. Attractive? No. I wanted to choke him for being so blasé about my upcoming demise. “I can’t be sure but I assume so. Emma always comes back alone and the girl is never seen again.”

“Well didn’t you think to ever follow them maybe?” I snapped. How he could be so uncaring was mind blowing.

He shifted his hard eyes to mine. They were storm colored again. “I did follow them, countless times. And the harder I ran they outpaced me even though they were walking. I couldn’t run from the castle to the edge of the forest in the time they walked it and disappeared. And please keep in mind they are only human while I am jinn.”

“So you couldn’t—”

“And when I tried to follow from the door of the girl’s bedroom I couldn’t get down the hall.”

“What, you like, froze?” I asked, confused and angry.

“No. Reality and spaced shifted, stretched. What is a short walk down the hall for them becomes miles for me if I try to follow. And no matter how hard I run, or how hard I drive my horse—yes, I have tried everything—I can’t catch up, I cannot follow.” He pressed his lips together and for a second I thought I saw a tiny flash of pain, of remorse.

“So that’s just it then?” I finally said, my head dropping into my hands.

“No. That’s not it,” David said, pushing a cup of coffee towards me. I ignored it. “We don’t know the girls are killed. Perhaps there is something I can do to help—after.”

I stared at him blankly. “If I don’t get murdered then I’m going to be left to wander around the woods never to be seen again. So if by help you mean locate my corpse and bury it, that would be great, thanks.”

His face was gentle and kind, as if he knew something I didn’t. Which was probably the case—it always was.

“Bixby,” Jordan said, interrupting my thoughts. “There is one thing you haven’t thought of, one way we could find you after.”

“Find my corpse, you mean,” I said bitterly.

“We don’t know you’ll be killed,” David gently reminded me.

Jordan looked from me to his uncle, his bottom lip caught in his perfect white teeth. “You may not like this option, but it may be the only one.”

I rolled my shoulders. “Well, I guess I’m up for anything at this point.”

He nodded and his hesitancy stretched my already frayed nerves to a snapping point. “The bracelets I put on you before, they would have led me to you no matter where you went in this world or yours. If you let me put them on you again, I could follow you anywhere you went.”

Shock and anger warred in my skull and of course anger won. “You want to put your shackles on me again?” I exploded. “That’s your brilliant idea? Are you kidding me? Do you do anything else but plot ways to make me your prisoner?”

He held his hands up and shrunk back in his chair. “No, I only want to be able to find you—”

“No,” I thundered. “Absolutely not. You and your evil bracelets are how I got in the mess in the first place. I will
never
let
anyone
put another bracelet on me again. Ever.”

He opened his mouth to dissuade me and I threw my cup of coffee at him. It shattered on the wall next to his head and he flinched. David chuckled.

“Never,” I repeated grimly.

He gave a little nod. “I understand,” he said quietly.

I had no energy for a response, no energy left for anything, not even tears. With a tiny sigh, I dropped my head in my hands.

A loud crash shattered the brittle air and I jerked my head back up. “What was—”

A guttural cry echoed from the front hall. “Bixby! Bixby!”

My blood froze in my veins as I listened to my name called over and over again. Even the jinn at the table with me sat frozen in surprise.

“Bixby,” the cry came again, this time a little more ragged, a little more human.

“Oh my God,” I wheezed out, my chest tightening in on itself.

My chair crashed backwards to the ground as I jumped up from the table. I didn’t move, didn’t even dare to breathe, just stood there gripping the edge of the table until my nails bent back.

The cry came again, bouncing off the cold, stone lined halls. My fear was dissolving under a creeping realization—I knew that voice.

“Bixby!”

My heart leapt painfully in my chest and I shoved away from the table, running for the doorway.

“Wait,” Jordan commanded, holding his hand out and getting up from his chair.

I ignored him and changed directions to run around Luka’s end of the table. His face was still infuriatingly blank, as if he couldn’t care who had broken into his home looking for his newest prisoner. But he let me run by, only getting up to follow until I was out of arm’s reach. Jordan had jumped out of his chair the second I started running for the doorway and I could see his determination to beat me to it, to stop me from getting to the hallway.

“Wait!” Jordan yelled again. “He may not be himself!”

Anger burst in my veins and I shot just out of reach and down the hall.

I burst into the front entrance and my world was bright again.

“Lincoln!” I shrieked, running for him.

He was bigger than I had last seen him. I had been so worried he had spent the last month hiding out that his appearance was a shock. Instead of being thin and broken as I had imagined, he was taller and more muscular. But it wasn’t just that he was larger, something subtler had changed. As I charged for him, I took in his skin, darker skin, and the thick stubble lining his jaw. His hair had grown out to perfectly frame the new hardness in his eyes. They were alarmingly angry but melted just a few degrees when he saw me.

My face cracked into a smile and I covered the last few feet in an instant, launching myself at him. I had never so desperately needed a bear hug from my most favorite person in the world.

So when he grabbed my wrist so tight it ground the bones together it was more than a physical pain. He used my own momentum to swing me behind him, painfully twisting my arm behind my back.

“Lincoln,” I cried out in pain and shock.

“Shut up,” he growled, moving himself between me and a furious Jordan.

The jinn’s anger made him swell in size and his eyes had taken on an evil, orange glow. His shaking body seemed to fill the whole doorway. He advanced on my brother and I panicked.

“Stop,” I cried.

Jordan ignored me and I tried to shove around Lincoln to get between them. Lincoln pushed me back and I stumbled to the floor. Something in my already injured wrist snapped and white hot pain shot up my arm. All the air my chest huffed out in an anguished squeak.

Jordan roared in anger and Lincoln didn’t respond to my pain at all, just moved so he was between me and Jordan again.

“Lincoln, stop,” I said from between gritted teeth, trying to pull myself up.

He didn’t even turn to look at me, to see if I was okay. “Bixby, I said shut up. Run out the front door, I’ll hold these demons off.”

David and Luka were watching from the door dispassionately.

“Well, this is a first,” Luka mused. “Lover come to save the day.”

“Brother, actually,” David corrected, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “Lincoln, I can see you’re not quite yourself. You need to calm down.”

“Seriously? How about a little help?” I snapped.

“Bixby, I said run!” Lincoln shouted over his shoulder.

“I can’t,” I said evenly. “Listen to me—”

“Listen to me,” he growled and turned on me. “Run!” He grabbed my arm and flung me at the open front door. I tried to shove him off but he was bigger and propelled me forward. My feet tangled in my skirt and before I could fully catch myself I crashed face first into the door frame. Heat and electric pain bloomed over my right eye.

Waves of agony rode into my brain, cresting in time with my pulse.

There was one large crash behind me, muffled by the blood rushing through my ears and then warm, gentle hands on my face. “Lincoln,” I mumbled, trying to get my right eye to open. But it wasn’t Lincoln, it was Jordan. And my brother was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Linc?” I demanded, lashing out at him. “What did you do with him?”

“Nothing,” he said, ignoring my flailing limbs and keeping my head trapped and perfectly still in his hands. He pressed his thumb to the bony ridge over my eye. I hissed with pain and jerked back.

“Where is he?” I insisted.

“My uncle took him to cool down,” he said, gathering me up into his arms.

“Put me down,” I said as coldly as I could. “I want my brother.”

“Your
brother
just beat the shit out of you,” he said with a sharp edge of anger. “He needs to calm down.”

I twisted and jerked out of his arms and managed to land on my feet. Another wave of pain crashed through my head from front to back and I staggered. Jordan reached a hand out and I swatted it away, determined to catch my balance on my own. When I could see straight again I looked him in the eye and met his fiery gaze with my freezing one. “He was worried. Who knows what he thinks has been going on, what happened to me. I bet he saw me come screaming down that hallway for him and thought something terrible had happened to me.”

“Bixby,” Jordan said, slowly coming towards me with arms held out. “Your eye is swollen shut and your wrist is broken. Let me heal you and then you can talk to your brother.”

“No,” I snarled. Pain tore through my body and heart and I unleashed it all on Jordan. “You’re just trying to trick me again. You fix my wrist and I’m going to get it back with a bracelet on. Now where is my brother? If you hurt him again—”

“I didn’t hurt him, even though he
did
hurt you. I had no idea he was like this, if I had known I would have—”

“What?” I taunted, cradling my aching arm to my chest. “Kidnapped him and locked him in some forest prison? Oh wait, you
did
do that.”

I watched anger fight for control of his emotions but he wouldn’t let it win out. “At least let me fix your eye,” he said evenly.

“No.” I spun around to stalk out of the room but wobbled on my feet again. A warm arm came across my shoulders and steadied me. Furious, I tried to push it off.

“It’s me,” Luka breathed in my ear, giving my shoulders a comforting squeeze. “Your boyfriend went to do a little cooling off of his own.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I mumbled, stumbling along with him. In one swift motion he swept me up. My head spun viciously. “Put me down,” I begged. Or I’m going to throw up on you, I added silently.

“Not a chance,” he said pleasantly. “You knocked your head pretty hard, I’m going to guess you have a concussion in addition to that stunning black eye. And I don’t think you’re supposed to have such a big bump on the side of your wrist there.”

I glanced down at it saw he was right; a purple goose egg was growing just above the hateful bracelet. The sight of it reminded my brain just how much it hurt and a groan of pain escaped my chest.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you fixed up quick.”

Chapter Eighteen

H
e set me down in
a room I hadn’t seen before. Silken green drapes covered the cold walls and a thick brown carpet stretched from wall to wall. One wall banked a set of windows overlooking Lake Michigan. It was an angry, foaming grey under the dull sky. Perfect.

Compared to the rest of what I had seen of the place, this room was the warmest and most inviting. I settled back on soft couch he had set me on and I tenderly patted my face.

“Crap,” I muttered.

Luka pulled an ottoman up to sit right in front of me, an apologetic look on his face. “I can get you fixed up but it’s—”

“Going to hurt, I know.”

He lifted an eyebrow a fraction of an inch. It was the most surprised I had seen him look. “You’ve had this done before?” he asked, gently taking my arm in his hands.

“Yes. Unfortunately.” I tensed up as he slid his hand down my arm closer to my wrist.

He glanced up and his eyes were the color of the big lake on a warm summer day. “You need to try to relax.”

I gave him a pointed stare so he tried a different tactic.

“Why did you have to have this done before? Who did it?”

“Jordan. I got cornered by some pervert at juvie.” I looked everywhere but at my wrist.

“What’s that?” It was amazing to me the things jinn didn’t know.

“Like prison, for kids.”

“Now why doesn’t it surprise me you got sent to a place like that,” he joked.

“What? That was not my fault! David scared my grandma and she thought some cops were you guys and … oh never mind. It was Jordan’s fault. Everything is Jordan’s fault,” I said darkly.

A sharp pain lanced through my wrist and I jerked. Luka held my hand steady and said, “You might as well start at the beginning, this is going to take a while. There are all these tiny little bones in here.”

I didn’t really want to explain the train wreck my life had become but anything was better than watching him magically fish around in my arm. “Well, I’m a Gatekeeper—obviously—and Jordan came across me while I was dreaming one night and then stalked me for I don’t know how long—”

“Because you were a Gatekeeper?” Luka asked, still concentrating on my wrist.

“No, he didn’t know, I guess.”

“So why was he stalking you?”

My cheeks were beginning to warm. I blew my hair off my face. “I guess he liked me.” Luka nodded so I rushed on to the next part. “So anyway, instead of doing the normal things guys do, like introduce himself and ask me on a date or whatever the equivalent of that is in your world, he foresaw my brother dying in a car accident and saved him so he could give him back later in exchange for letting him put his manacles on me.”