No one says a word, not even Carrick, who has been against this from the start. The tone of my voice is clear I’m not budging on this.
“But,” I add in a somewhat embarrassed voice, “I’m also not sure I’m ready to take on Kymaris just yet. I need more practice.”
Carrick smiles at me in understanding, hand going to the back of my neck as he leans toward me. “We’ll figure a way to protect the humans from Kymaris,” he promises, and I believe him. “And we’ll continue to practice and get you ready to take Kymaris down. I have total faith in you.”
That I don’t believe quite as readily, but I’m willing to accept the possibility he might be right.
“She’s still in the same place, right?” Maddox asks of Boral.
“Yup. Settled into the neighborhood nicely,” he confirms.
“Does she hold humans there?”
“No,” Boral replies. “She has a few extravagant parties a week, and by parties, I mean drugs, orgies, sacrifices. She usually sends one of her fallen out to get a human. Says it’s how they prove their loyalty to her. But they don’t need much of a carrot to do it. It seems all have bought into the dream she’s feeding them.”
My stomach turns and I push my plate away, my brain unable to stop the mental images of what Kymaris is doing. Family fajita night is officially over.
CHAPTER 21
Finley
To contact Zora, I’m going to use a different technique than I did the last time. Our first meeting of the minds, so to speak, was done down in the library. I was able to connect by imagining the maze of caves in the Underworld to somehow project myself there. I called out to her and, thankfully, she heard and responded.
Granted… she didn’t want anything to do with me after a few moments of conversation, and gave me a painful zap that sent me spinning away from our connection, so it wasn’t all that successful.
She made it clear she’s not interested in me, so I don’t expect her to be receptive.
As such, I’m not going in subtly like I did the last time. Instead, I want to try to project right into her body, sort of like I did when I first saw her in a dream. Except it really wasn’t a dream. I was asleep but I believe I was actually inside her and experiencing the Underworld through her eyes.
Yup… going to try to just jump right into her.
Now, there are downfalls to doing away with subtlety.
First, it’s going to be considered pretty damn rude to just show up inside of her rather than asking permission to communicate. She might hold it against me and increase her distrust.
Second, and this is Carrick’s concern, not mine… I might get trapped there somehow. He’s afraid my psyche might get stuck or even held there intentionally. But I seriously doubt Zora wants to share body space with me for the duration of our lives.
Ultimately, I’m still going to do it because I don’t have the time to be subtle or cautious. Within a few weeks, this is all going to be over. In that time frame, I have to figure out how to get Zora out of the Underworld. I know Maddox and Carrick are sort of feeling we have nothing to do but wait for the October new moon and the only priority is protecting the Blood Stone and increasing my skills, but, conversely… I have my biggest and most important mission still ahead of me.
Rescuing my sister.
After our fajita dinner—which most of us just picked at after Boral’s call, except Maddox who can eat anything at any time—Rainey and Myles headed home and Maddox went into the man cave to play video games. He had officially set up residence in the condo in the other guest suite for the foreseeable future, which I love, but it also makes me feel the absence of Lucien all the more.
Zaid and I cleaned up the kitchen, and he left to go to his home. I had learned during Carrick’s time away with Rune that Zaid actually has a small apartment here in the city. He had told me that while he was always welcome to live in Carrick’s home like he had in their early days, he’d been living by himself for the last several hundred years.
“What happened to cause you to move out of Carrick’s home?” I had asked as I dried the pan he’d just rinsed.
Zaid gave me a grim look, but I was touched he trusted me with the information. “It was at the time I’d stopped having impulses to go crucify myself back to a tree. Figured I was independent enough to live away from him.”
And God help him—not me—I was moved to hug the daemon. It was totally awkward, and he sort of patted me on the back before not so subtly shoving me away.
But we had a moment.
When everything was done, the condo settled quietly, and we were ready to let me contact Zora, Carrick said, “Let’s do this in our room.”
Our.
It shouldn’t have touched me as much as it did that he referenced it as “our” room. At Carrick’s insistence, I’d moved all my clothes and toiletries into it after he returned from his jaunt with Rune. We’d even gone to my house and retrieved the remainder of all my personal effects. I wasn’t ever going back there to live because I was never leaving Carrick’s side, so it only made sense for me to fully move into the condo.
As for the house, I don’t know what to do with it just now. The thought of selling it is abhorrent and there’s no rush to decide, despite my impending doom either from the prophecy or Rune’s curse. What I did do this week, however, with the assistance of Carrick’s attorney, was finalize the creation of an estate plan that put the house along with One Bean into a trust. When I die, both will go to Rainey and Myles to do with what they want. I felt so much better after signing those papers.
We walk into “our” room, and it’s fitting because we are an “our” in every sense of that inclusive word. Carrick called it “our” room in such a natural and easygoing manner, it sounded as if I’d been living with him in it for years. In a way, I suppose that’s true since he’s had so many variations of me throughout his long life and our relationship is more natural to him. He’s spent far more time with me than I with him, which is weird and confusing. Granted, each of my reincarnations had differences, or so he’s said, but Carrick told me once that—at my core—I’ve been the same person throughout time.
Since this is still somewhat new to me, although I feel a very transcendental type of connection to him, hearing him say “our room” out loud so casually and as if it’s always been that way produced all the feels.
“Where do you want to do it?” I ask as Carrick closes the door behind us. He looks over his shoulder, eyebrow cocked due to my choice of words before turning to me.
“Bed will be fine,” he replies, a slight smirk on his face.
My eyes narrow slightly as I drawl. “Are we talking about Zora or sex?”
Carrick’s expression sobers a little. “If it’s my choice, I would choose sex.”
“Of course you would,” I reply, snickering. “Not just because you love sex, but because you don’t want me to contact Zora.”
“Both true statements,” he says with a shrug, then nods at the two chairs that sit in the corner with a table in between. “But let’s do it—contact Zora, that is—with you sitting up. I don’t want you too comfortable.”