“Julian, race me to the top?” Zeph was looking up at the large wheel we were standing under.
I couldn’t look up without a sudden sickness pulling in my stomach. The thought of being that high up caused my mind to shut down, body to shake, and vision to weaken. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, bitch?”
A callous grin appeared in Zeph’s eyes.
“I’d seen it in here last night,” Phoenix mumbled, scouring the pages of the Book of Wildes. “A passage written by Kyden Wildes over a hundred years ago. Yeah, here it is,”—he cleared his throat— “It was past midnight and long after the gathering of the Order when I heard the forbidden girl in the caverns. She sang, her voice flowed in a thick melody, swelling and dying away, calling out to me, or leading me, I could not be sure. But her song took me to the celestial waters where it was there I witnessed a sight I could never have imagined. The wife of Foster Danvers, Clarice, shuddered beneath Matteo Cantini with the whisperings of the Norse Woods in his ear. She made promises of pleasure in return for help to break the curse of the Hollow Heathens. Yet, what would make the Danver wife believe a Cantini would have the answers? We were told the curse could not be broken! I kept this from my fellow brothers, from my dear friend, Foster. For this news of his beloved indulging in sexual acts with a foe would be the very news that could destroy him. A risk I wasn’t willing to take.”
A silence passed between us as the four of us exchanged glances.
Phoenix broke the silence first. “So, what the hell does that mean?”
“It means that your ancestor walked in on a Danver’s wife and a Cantini bangin’ it out in the tunnels,” Beck concluded before taking a swig of the bottle.
Zeph pushed off the Ferris wheel cabin and dropped both palms over his blond head, perhaps needing air, space to think. Phoenix swayed in the faded car, watching him as he said, “You’re telling me the answers we need to break the curse rests in the hands of a Danver’s wife who hasn’t been around since … oh, I don’t know, a century? Then, of course, let’s not forget a Cantini!”
“I had a feeling Sacred Sea was behind this,” Zeph gritted out.
It didn’t make sense. Cantini’s were good people, the keepers of secrets. They’d always been the one family from the Eastside to uphold the laws of balance and respect our coven. Sure, I’d expect this from a Pruitt, but not Cyrus’s family.
“This isn’t making any sense, Phoenix. Go back and read it again.” There had to be more of the story.
Phoenix read again, and afterward, he paused and looked up at me, his gold eyes blazing. “That’s it. That’s the end of it. Do you think that’s why the Danvers line is gone? Someone else found out about the infidelity between covens and her attempt to break the curse?”
Danvers. The fifth founding family of the Norse Woods Coven. The element of Earth. Was Phoenix correct? Had Sacred Sea murdered them? Was that why the Danvers line was severed? “It doesn’t make sense that a Cantini would be involved in this,” I said, my head already throbbing.
Phoenix reached over, grabbing the bottle from Beck. “Well, tonight, we could either call upon this backstabbing wife, Clarice Danvers, or Matteo Cantini.” He closed the book and sat upright.
Zeph’s eyes snapped to Phoenix. “If this woman betrayed her husband, what makes you think she would be honest with us?”
“Well, we sure as shit can’t call on Cantinifuck.” Beck shook his head. “What if he goes back to Sacred Sea? Samhain is right around the corner. He could drop hints that we’re digging into this.”
“You’re right.” I pushed my hand up my forehead, through my hair, and gripped the back of my neck. Looking around at the Heathens, I figured it out. “We need to call on the Danvers girl, see what she knows. We need to find out if she ever got the answers on how to break the curse. Matteo Cantini won’t help us.” Not after hearing he was sleeping around with one of our own. I was beginning to believe the Order was as corrupt as my soul.
Zeph rubbed his palms together, dragging his hawkish gaze over to the girls. “Now, choose a body.”
“Tabitha,” I quickly stated.
“You going solo?” Phoenix gripped my shoulder.
I felt Beck’s knowing glare strum through my veins. “Something like that.”
“It will still take all of us,” he pointed out as if I didn’t know it already.
Tabitha stood naked in the middle of the circle that Beck finished off drawing in the dirt with a stick, blindfolded and shivering from both the cold and what I’m sure she’d expected to come here for.
But I wasn’t having sex with her. Not this time.
The rest of us spread out, and I retreated to the Ferris wheel house, where it was empty and secluded, selfishly focusing on Fallon with my cock in my hand. I dropped my head back against the wall, drowning out the orchestra of moans and slaps all around me. It didn’t take much for my shaft to thicken, heavy and stretched in my fist. All it took was the mere thought of her smile. The one that haunted me when she didn’t even know she was doing it. The one she’d do twenty feet away, lost in thought, eyes distant, the small curve around her turned-up lips, the top lip a little plumper than the bottom on her diamond-shaped face with the moons in her eyes.
I thought about the way my hand felt between her legs, the way she tasted, the way her body shuddered in the dark as I pulled the orgasm right out of her, coming undone so lightly and private like a whisper as she melted in my arms. She hadn’t put on a show for me. She was so quiet, so honest in the way she let go.
And the way she kissed me …
Memories of that night caused the wind to rise with great violence from the circle in restless waves, slapping at my buzzing skin. My abs tightened, my muscles jerked, remembering the way her soft skin felt under the tips of my fingers. My eyes sprang open to see the moon had reached her summit in the sky behind thick gray clouds, and a thunderous clap broke apart the sky.
“Shit,” I gritted out, slamming my eyes closed once more as my cock jerked in my hand.
I wasted away in the color of her.
White hair. Milky skin. Dusty pink lips. The winter season in her eyes.
Utterly wasted, I’d almost forgotten the reason why we were here—the reason why we were doing this.
I tucked myself back inside my pants and jumped to my feet, zipping up.
Chants grew louder around me. I walked toward Tabitha, hazy, dazed, and selfishly high on a certain moon girl, the others joining in as they finished.
Three times, we chanted the same verse around the circle, summoning Clarice Danvers. A bolt of lightning lit above, blue neon ripping across the black sky. A dry storm circled overhead, a lazy dirt cyclone below.
Then the sky went calm, the clouds dispersed, and I dropped my gaze to Tabitha.
“What’s your name?” I demanded.
Tabitha smiled. “Kyden Wildes.” She snapped her head in Phoenix’s direction, and Phoenix crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re a son of fire, are you not? This time, tread through water. Your heart is entering dangerous territory.”
Phoenix narrowed his eyes. “We summoned Clarice Danvers, why are you here? Where is she?”