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May 27 - May 28, 2024
“You can’t be tried again for the same crime after an acquittal.”
She didn’t have an acquittal. She had a pardon. What are the rules on that?
“Mother would never allow a weapon as powerful as a goddess-touched necromancer, whose fledgling magic might prove capable of binding her progeny to her, to fall into the Master’s hands.” Muscle fluttered along his jaw. “She would execute Grier before allowing vampires control of her.”
It’s going to turn out her father is a vampire who therefore has a claim on her. It’s got to be who the unknown Master is given the bedroom, toys, and people that knew her at the kidnap house.
“Linus,” I murmured, giving my eyes permission to close. “What are you?” All the blood had rushed to my head, drumming in my ears. That’s the only reason why I thought he replied yours.
Anger simmered in me, even when I laughed, even when I smiled, and one day it would devour me from the inside. What emerged would be the truth of what was left after Maud, after Atramentous, after Volkov.
Ignoring the twitching skin beneath my tattoo,
Why would she ignore anything at this point? And why would Linus let her go anywhere alone? Cletus didn’t help in the last near fatal incident.
“Real is an abstract concept. Are we ever ourselves, our whole selves, except when we’re alone?”
“Cletus will remain in the area, and I’ll check in before I return home in case you need anything.”
Why do they continue to leave her alone?!?! EVERY TIME there is an attempt on her!
Her absence erased any hope the lights might be a trick. The power had either been cut to the apartment or to the entire building. Not good.
Gee, ya think?
“Cletus,” I hissed. “Where are you?” Viscous darkness whirled on my periphery as he took form on the other side of the window. Fiddlesticks. I had forgotten he was banned from the building.
Why would Linus think leaving Cletus would do any good? He knows he can’t get in the building. Can Linus call the vicious doorman for help?
Linus must have applied obfuscation sigils to disguise his fire escape.
And why wouldn’t he have told her about this? So she’d have an escape route?
“The wards I placed on the door to keep Reardon out of his office sealed the room behind us.” He withdrew, a few inches at least. “There was no cell reception. With the building warded against wraiths, I didn’t know you were in danger until we concluded our latest experiment, and I stepped out to check in with Cletus.”
So he leaves her with a wraith as a protector who can’t get into the building. Then puts himself incommunicado by being in an office where he can’t get cell calls or communicate with Cletus. Seems pretty suspicious. And stupid for a potentate.
“Your charge is here. What harm can come to her by your side?”
How can he even ask that after what happened just few hours ago? When he disappeared…hmmm, suspicious?
a sprawling shop with flickering neon signs announced The Mad Tatter, We’re All Inked Here.
Clever!
Maybe that apparent ease was what made their unions burn so bright from the outside looking in. Maybe that kind of love wasn’t simple. Maybe it was a goal you strove toward every single day for the rest of your lives. A peak you never reached, but that was okay as long as you kept climbing.
He believed you would remember your nursery, filled with all your dollies, but you didn’t. You didn’t even remember your nursemaid. It broke Lena’s heart.”
Duh! This was obvious from the beginning of that situation.
He’d had time to get used to the idea, to make peace with it. “But you worried how I would take the news because of Amelie. You strung me along so I wouldn’t boot her to the curb when I found out.” “You’re all she’s got right now.”
I’ve never liked Boaz and now I’m glad I didn’t so I wouldn’t be heartbroken right now. Now I hope she’ll let Linus in. Unless of course he’s another one who will betray and desert and betray her.
Stupid tears spilled hot and fast over my cheeks. Linus was an auburn blur, his touch the only real thing in this world. This time, I let Boaz watch. Damn if I was going to hide one ounce of the pain he had caused for his sake. Forget pride. Let him see. Let him live with this. Let him fall asleep tonight and dream about my splotchy face, my tears, my misery. The shirt I called Old Grier tore, and I split down the middle with it.
Poor Grier. She just can’t catch a break. Boaz is a self serving dick. Both sides of her family are power hungry, self serving assholes. She’s got a house, a ghost child, an ancient seer and perhaps a friend in Linus. And three dog-lizards.
“She lied to me.” A watery laugh escaped me then, because it shouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did ought to shock me anymore. “This hurts worse than the dybbuk.” How pathetic was it that I would take a near-death experience over heartbreak? “She always said she would choose me. That if Boaz and I happened, and then we didn’t happen, she said she would pick me over him.”
And the hits just keep coming.
The jagged mass twisting in my chest cut worse than Atramentous, worse than Volkov, almost worse than losing Maud. I kept looking down, thinking I ought to be bleeding to death, but the wounds he had inflicted were invisible, and I was only leaking through my eyes.
Brutal.🥺
I didn’t know what to do with myself, how a world without Boaz looked, and I didn’t want to see.
“Ma coccinelle,” Odette sighed. “Today the sea churns with the salt of your tears.”
“I warned him he stood at a crossroads,” she said sadly. “Had he chosen well, he would have had his heart’s desire: freedom to live as his own man, power to enact change, love that transcends centuries. But he chose poorly, and he has lost that which matters most to him: himself.”
“All good partnerships ought to require both people to take turns being the damsel, like a team-building exercise.”
“I can’t do this.” A strain entered my voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “I can’t look at her without seeing him, and I can’t see him right now if I want to pull myself back from this.” I peered up at Linus. “I’m a hot mess.”
“Do you know who has been there for me every single time I needed someone? Not my best friend. Not my almost-boyfriend. Linus.”
“The part of me that believed in happily-ever-afters and true love triumphing against all odds is crushed to learn sometimes you fall in love with a prince who is actually a frog.”
“Hearts are stupid.” I fisted his shirt as my damp lashes kissed my cheeks and stayed there. “Life would have been easier if I had fallen for you.” As blessed darkness swirled away my consciousness, my breaths growing longer and slower, he brushed his cool lips against my temple and whispered, so soft I might have imagined it, “There’s still time.”
