ANNABELLA was bent on keeping her equilibrium around Custo, but some things were easier said than done. Balance took practice. Her motivation: Self-preservation and, well, she was still angry, hurt, and humiliated. Good thing all three emotions, especially combined, were very useful.
She scanned the city street as soon as they hit pavement, not relying on the big protective men with her to spot Wolf first. Though she couldn’t see him, the small hairs on her neck told her he was near. Watching. Waiting. Following. Anger strangled her fear long enough to get her across the sidewalk to the street. Custo tried to take her arm, murmuring, “We’ll talk,” but she neatly avoided his grasp. There was nothing to say, and she could stay close enough for safety without his hands on her.
She opened her own door and sat in the front passenger seat of the car, relegating Custo to the back. The fact that the vehicle was still waiting in traffic had to be divine intervention. At least the tower was good for something.
As soon as the car was moving, Custo reported the gist of his discussion with Luca. Basically, the divine intervention stopped with the car. They were on their own.
“That’s not good enough!” Adam’s knuckles were white from his grip on the car’s steering wheel. It was the first time Annabella heard Adam raise his voice. The first time Mr. Control had come unglued in her presence. That vein on the side of his head looked about ready to burst.
Not that she wasn’t a little ticked herself. Seemed Custo’s cronies weren’t keen on helping her either. But the performance season was ramping up. Another chance to get her life back was days away. The next time she danced, she’d keep her head on straight and use that Shadow magic to push the wolf out of the world. Things would never be normal again, but she’d be off this roller-coaster ride and back to reclaiming her life. Custo could go do whatever angels did when they were done with their work—fly away?
Whatever. She just wanted this over.
“They won’t assist at all?” Adam pursued, though Custo had answered this question twice already.
“Luca says they have other, more pressing concerns,” Custo answered. “Shuttling the dead across the Shadowlands, active breaches in the barrier between the worlds, and the dangerous creatures that have crossed. Says you’re doing a bang-up job with the wraiths on your own.”
“So quit,” Annabella concluded on Adam’s behalf. “If you quit fighting, then they will have to deal with the wraiths themselves.”
“Talia can’t quit,” Custo said quietly behind her. “She straddles this world and the Shadowlands. And even if she could, she will always be a target because she destroyed the wraiths’ maker. Adam is in the war to the very end…and so am I.”
Annabella’s gaze darted between them, but Custo was looking at Adam, who took a deep breath and seemed to exhale a lot of his fury.
“I know,” Adam said, “and I appreciate everything you’ve already done. It’s just that Talia has been through a lot, and it pisses me off that help was available but not rendered.”
“So what now?” Annabella asked.
Silence.
Well, damn it, somebody had to make a plan. “Common sense says that we try again for Wolf with my next performance, and in the meantime, Adam stays close enough to Talia to protect her from the wraiths until she delivers.”
There. Done. She turned around and sat back in the seat, making a mental note to call her mother when they got back to Segue, too. Her mom would be freaking out over missing her at the theater after last night’s performance.
From the rear, Custo said, “Quit calling him Wolf. It’s driving me crazy. Names have power. Don’t give him any more.”
Fine. The wolf. What about the plan?
“Your strategy would work if both the wolf and the wraiths act predictably, but I don’t think they will. It isn’t in their best interests. The wolf will try another way to gain access to you. And the wraiths are now aware that there are others capable of killing them. Because they are aggressive by nature, they won’t run and hide. They’ll attack first. And hard. We need to change things up if we are going to stay ahead of them.”
Well, crap. Annabella looked over her shoulder to ask, “Then how…?” and whipped around to grip the dashboard when Adam made a sudden U-turn.
“Abigail,” Adam said. “She can’t help Talia, but she might be able to see Annabella.”
“See me?” Annabella asked. Adam made no sense.
“She’s…” Adam began, “I don’t know what she is. A visionary? A psychic? An oracle? Someone touched by the magic of Shadow, like you, but different. Abigail seethes with Shadow internally; you can see the darkness in her eyes, like there’s a storm in her mind. It’s sped her aging, taking decades off her life. She can foretell futures, what she calls possible futures because every choice changes the course of things.” He fell silent, then added, “I don’t know if she can help. The last time she saw a future for me, I wasn’t able to change a damn thing.”
Annabella wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had happened, not by the tone Adam used or the misery that pulled at his eyes.
“That was two years ago,” Adam said, his voice rough.
When Custo died.
Well, Custo was fine now, and Annabella had had enough of him and the doom and gloom. Any more drama and she was going to lose it. Any more fear and she was going to start screaming. Any more Custo and she was going to fall apart.
A little food wouldn’t hurt either. She could feel her blood sugar plunging. On an ordinary day, she was bound to get a little cranky. With all this insanity going on, the big men better look out.
“Maybe,” she said perversely, “this Abigail will see my name in bright lights suspended over a theater, you know, bigger than the actual name of the ballet I am performing in. Maybe with the word incomparable in pretty cursive nearby. Or maybe magnificent?” Now she was just talking to herself. “Anyway, that’s what I see when I look into my future.”
Adam slanted a humorless glance her way.
“Really big lights,” she added for Mr. Buzzkill.
She refused to peek over her shoulder at Custo again, though she felt him behind her like a warm sun on her skin. The sensation was impossible to block so she kept her gaze on the road, on the white license plates with their blue anagramlike letters and numbers. GKM rearranged could be gimmick, and SFR could be surfer, and AGL could be agile, but not angel. No matter how hard she tried, heat and comfort wrapped around her, embraced her. And she knew it was just as dangerous as the Shadow creature that stalked her.
The contradiction of Custo was pulling her apart and called for an exception in her once-a-year cheesecake rule. Just as soon as possible. And with whipped cream. She needed a binge and bad, the kind ballet rarely permitted her.
The building Adam stopped at was three stories high, one in a series of several similar buildings, on a seriously crap street that made her nervous in broad daylight. The brick was dulled to gray, except for the door, which was painted a clashing, crackling reddish pink. Litter clogged the gutter, and a couple of beer cans were lined up neatly against the building. Remnants of the night. A small sign was above the door, black lettering on a black background, so she couldn’t read it until she was standing in front of it. AMARANTH.
Wasn’t that a flower?
Adam pounded on the door while Custo stood to her side. He didn’t try to hold her, for which she was grateful, though he kept shooting her sorry, troubled looks.
Yeah, well, deal with it.
“I don’t want you to worry about whatever she sees,” Custo murmured. “Adam said ‘possible’ futures. Just because he wasn’t able to change mine, doesn’t mean we can’t change yours.”
Her stomach had started to knot in spite of her determination not to worry. She lifted her chin an extra notch. “I’m not nervous.”
“Liar,” he whispered into her ear.
Adam pounded on the door again. “Zoe!” he shouted. “Open up!”
“I thought we were seeing Abigail,” Annabella said.
“Zoe’s her sister,” Custo answered.
Adam turned, a questioning look on his face.
Yeah, Annabella wondered, how did Custo know Abigail had a sister?
“Angel,” Custo answered them both.
Still didn’t answer the how part of the question, but before she could press, the red door was wrenched open from the inside.
A cartoon character of a girl stood in the entrance. She was part Japanese anime, part Goth, with inky black hair, a blunt fringe of bangs at her forehead, the rest parted severely down the middle and woven in lots of thin, long braids. Her black makeup, heavy enough for the stage, exaggerated her eyes, while the rest of her face was ultrapale. A tight black crop top bared her midriff to show her belly button, and she wore low-riding black skinny jeans that fit like tights.
“I won’t let you in,” she said, snapping her gum.
“Tell Abigail I’m here,” Adam said.
Zoe sneered and snapped her gum again. “She knows who’s here, duh. Been up since dawn waiting with her visions. Got herself all dressed up and everything.”
Adam planted a hand on the door to push it open; Zoe countered with her combat boot to the floor to keep the gap just so.
“But I’m not letting you in,” Zoe finished in singsong. “She told me you’d pound and pound until someone answered, so I came down personally to tell you all to fuck off.”
“Listen,” Adam grated, “what Talia did to you was necessary at the time. You are alive and well, so get over it and let us—”
“Abigail is ill,” Custo said, thoughtfully. “Dying.”
Zoe’s pale pout trembled. Her black eyes trained on Custo, wicked arched brows winging. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but forcing my sister to look into Shadow makes her even sicker.”
Annabella blanched. She didn’t want anyone made sick on her behalf.
Zoe’s gaze hit her, too, her sneer turning her eyes into twin crescents. “That’s right, you’d be killing her.” She looked up, as if thinking really hard. “Hmmmm…Now, should I let my sister’s killers in the door, or should I tell them to screw themselves? Hmmm. Gosh, it’s just so damn hard to decide.”
“Let me help,” Adam said. “Let me bring you both to Segue. I have resources that might be able to…”
Zoe’s sarcasm thickened. “Oh, I think you’ve helped quite enough, thank you.”
Annabella lifted a hand to placate the girl. “They’re here for me, and I am totally cool not bothering your sister about my future. I like to think that I make my own choices about my life, so I wouldn’t really want to hear my fortune anyway. It would kinda destroy my illusions, you know?”
Zoe’s black-kohled lids lowered halfway in an expression of acute boredom. Lovely girl.
“Okay, then,” Annabella said. She leaned her weight into a step back to get Custo moving. No way was she going to kill some dying psychic today. Time to go back to Segue and work on Plan B. Or, uh, C.
Zoe rolled her eyes again. “Okay, fine. She might have said something about going to the party tonight. There. We’re done.”
“What party?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” Zoe returned petulantly. “The party. You figure it out.”
Party, party, party…Oh, crap. Annabella had completely forgotten. “The reception for the company. It’s tonight. I’ll get out of it, say I’m sick or something.” If Venroy wasn’t already pissed at her, he was going to be livid about this. The new principal missing the start-of-the-season bash. Freaking fantastic.
At her back, Custo suddenly stiffened. Annabella felt his arm around her waist. It tightened as he lurched forward, then stopped himself. “Abigail is—” He halted for a second, his chest suspended midbreath. “—Adam, Abigail!”
“Move,” Adam said, as he slapped the door to the side and pushed Zoe out of his way.
“Stop!” Zoe shouted. “What the fu—?”
A scream from above cut the air, then strangled into silence.
“Abby!” Zoe screamed back. All bitchiness dropped from Zoe’s tone, leaving only gut-wrenching, frantic worry. She disappeared into the darkness after Adam.
Annabella tried to follow, but Custo held her back. “No, I think it’s the wolf.”
She bucked against the hard bar of his arm across her middle. “Then you’re the only one that can help. We have to go.” She tried to drop her weight to escape him. “You can’t let him hurt her.”
His hold tightened further, but Annabella could sense a hesitation, a moment of deep, conflicted thought.
“Damn it,” Custo said. “You stay with me. Touching me.”
“Yes! Fine!” Her head flushed with the return of circulation as he released her, only to take her hand and drag her through the underbelly of the building.
They burst into a large, windowless room. Its walls and floor were painted drippy black, and a bar took up the far wall, lit with eerie red light. They hurried up a scarlet runner that led to a slightly raised dais. Behind the stage was a short hall, papered with cheap, neon flyers announcing disturbing rocker bands.
Not her kind of club.
Up a narrow flight of steps and down a horror-movie hallway, they found Zoe and Adam crowding another doorway. Zoe was half in, half out, her face fearful, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to go to her sister or run from whatever was in the room. Adam’s jaw was set with grim resolution.
Their expressions sent a vicious, electric shiver up Anna-bella’s spine that spread across the cold sweat dampening her body.
“Let her go,” Adam said to whoever or whatever was in the room.
“So,” a female voice trembled, as if in the throes of deep pleasure, “this is what it is like to be made flesh.”
“Leave her alone!” Zoe shouted with a painful warble, her love for her sister stripping her naked.
The fear in her voice resonated painfully within Annabella. Her throat grew tight in sympathy, even as her belly quailed against discovering what was in the room.
Adam glanced over his shoulder, spotted Custo, and stepped back. Annabella stumbled after Custo as he slowly moved forward to take Adam’s place at the door. She wrapped an arm around Custo’s middle so the wall of his strength was between her and Wolf; then she stole a quick glance over his shoulder.
A woman sat in a rocking chair, gnarled hands clutching the armrests, aged beyond any believable sibling relationship to Zoe. Her thin white wisps of hair floated off sallow skin, colorless lips working into a parody of a smile. Her eyes were blackened with pulsing Shadow.
Annabella’s blood ran cold.
The smile reached its grotesque apogee. “You can’t hurt me,” she taunted.
“Wanna bet?” Custo started forward.
From behind, Zoe yelled, “That’s my sister!”
Custo halted again. “Release Abigail. She’s not worth it. Her body is wasted, near death.”
Annabella shuddered with a sudden realization, her fear turning sharp and cutting within her. Where before Wolf had simply assumed whatever form he wanted, the soldier and Jasper, now he possessed, sharing the old woman’s body. The how was more than obvious: Adam had said that Abigail was so full of Shadow that her eyes were stormy with it. Now Abigail was full of Shadow wolf, the blackness of her gaze hungry, predatory, and…unnatural.
The union was wrong, but there was nothing they could do about it. Any harm Wolf took, the woman would as well, and by Zoe’s account, Abigail was already weak and ill. Zoe had blamed them for killing her sister; it seemed her accusation was dead-on.
Annabella fought a tide of nausea. She thought of her mom and brother, safe at home. If Custo and Adam had come knocking, she would have barred the door, too. And then some.
“Yes, a joining of fae and mortal, less satisfying than I’d hoped”—the old woman’s head cocked sharply; her nose twitched as she sniffed the air—“but nevertheless…potent.”
One of her knobby hands uncurled, splaying its fingers, palm up in front of her. A condensation of light appeared above, while her eyes grew blacker still.
The magic pulsed, thrumming over Annabella’s skin, loosening her joints and muscles, sending languid ease over her limbs, her core contracting with pleasure. The sensation was wrong, too. She didn’t want to feel this, not here, not now. Not from him.
The magic within her responded anyway: It was pure possibility. Pure potential. The same kind she used to weave a story with her body and mind. Annabella couldn’t draw her gaze from the shimmer above the woman’s palm.
By nature Wolf could change his form, but he couldn’t do more than that. He couldn’t cross back and forth between the worlds, couldn’t make or see or create like people in the mortal world, like she and Abigail. But now Wolf had discovered access to mortal power; they’d led him right here to Abigail’s doorstep.
The wolf, Annabella corrected herself. Not Wolf. He already had enough power over her.
Annabella rose on tiptoe to whisper in Custo’s ear. “Can we push him back into Shadow?”
Custo gave a short shake of his head. “He’s anchored in her body. It’s a refuge until she dies.”
Annabella regarded the old woman’s twisted expression, then had to look away from what she found there. “It’s not a refuge. It’s a rape.”
She had let this dark creature touch her, dance with her, tap into her fantasies. The memory was both revolting and humiliating in the extreme, enough to really tick her off.
Annabella stepped out from behind Custo, channeling her fear and anger into action. “You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”
“You said you would join me,” the old woman whined. The light in her hand evaporated into the air. Her arm dropped like a stone into her lap, her palm spotted with blisters.
“Get that monster out of my sister!” Zoe was hysterical.
“I’ll go if Annabella comes, too,” the wolf offered, lips peeling back into a toothy smile.
Annabella shivered, recoiling.
“You can’t have her,” Custo cut in. “I won’t let you.”
“It’s your choice, Annabella,” the wolf said, “not his. Come with me and end this. I know how to make you happy in ways no one here can conceive. You have a body made for weaving magic; I am made of magic. Join with me.”
Annabella’s heart flooded her body with an oh, yes! wave of blood. She considered the offer for a split second, but the oily black throb of the woman’s eyes decided it.
“I can’t,” she said, though Zoe’s sobs turned her stomach with pity and guilt.
A hand roughly shoved Annabella away from Custo, as Zoe burst through. “Take me. Just leave my sister alone. She’s been through enough. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Adam caught Zoe and dragged her back. Tears smeared black makeup down her cheeks.
“You can’t manipulate Shadow,” Custo said, “so that creature doesn’t want you.”
The talent was inborn, though Annabella understood that it took many forms—anything with vision, she imagined—but then the talent had to be nurtured and honed over years of sacrifice. Just look at Abigail. Her ongoing intercourse with Shadow had brought her prematurely to the brink of death.
“Annabella, please,” the woman crooned, “you must come with me. Bide with me. You may not have set any traps for a wolf, but you have caught me just the same.”
“Yeah, well, I’m setting you free now,” Annabella returned bitterly. “Go away. Git.”
Abigail cocked her head again, and with a little knowing smile made a gesture with her wounded hand. Shadow roiled into the room behind her, opening a moonlit vista of dusky purples and blues, of portent trees under a whirling cosmos possible only in story, myth, or magic. It was the landscape of Annabella’s imagination, and she knew with one sinuous stretch of her body she could blow through the darkened forest and lick the topaz sky. The longing and want that filled her was excruciating. No amount of faking indifference could cover it.
The wolf belonged there, prowling beneath the darkened boughs, but the old woman’s body did, indeed, anchor him in the mortal world. A single bloody tear snaked down the wrinkled cheek.
“Is she in pain? Is she suffering?” Zoe asked as she wept from Adam’s arms.
Next to Annabella, Custo tensed.
“She’s still with the wolf,” he answered. “She’s…”
Annabella looked sharply at Custo when he didn’t finish. His jaw was clenched, nostrils flaring, his forehead drawing taut. Whatever he perceived was bad, real bad.
Zoe wrenched a sob. Her sister suffered. Shame made Annabella feel large and awkward and conspicuous. This was her fault, her problem. Maybe she should give herself up. Anything was better than the ache bleeding out of Zoe.
“Oh, just end it.” Zoe begged. “Get that thing out of her.” She hid her face against Adam’s chest, her body visibly trembling as she clung to him.
“You don’t have it in you,” the wolf said to Custo, lifting the old woman’s upper lip to bare her teeth.
Annabella went very cold and still. She knew that Custo did. He’d killed for love before.
He stepped forward into the room, putting her firmly behind him again. “This is your last chance,” Custo said to the old woman. “Leave her now.”
“You bluff,” the wolf countered. “Are you going to break this weak neck with your bright hands?”
Custo’s fingers twitched, but he said, “No.”
Instead, he touched the old woman’s brow. A slender hiss of smoke trailed upward from the point of contact.
Abigail reared back and thrashed her head to the side, but was trapped in the rocker. The wolf might be strong, but Abigail’s human body was frail. Beyond, the view of the Shadowlands shredded, darkness fraying into ragged whips of magic, the incomparable tapestry of the fairyland dissolving. The wolf snarled and snapped her teeth near Custo’s wrist, but with a backward whoop of black dust that had them all cringing, was expelled from the woman’s body.
Annabella’s terror seized her muscles, locking her in place. Was Wolf gone for good, gone for now, or not gone at all?
The cloud of black dust condensed, the grains whispering as they roiled, churning above the now-slack body of Abigail. The rocker pitched back and forth, creaking. Wolfish black specks melted and coalesced into an amorphous blotch of potent darkness, a shadow without a source.
Heart in her throat, Annabella caught Custo’s wrist, her gaze tracking the wolf’s movement. For a moment, the wolf blended with the deeper shades of Abigail’s bedroom.
Her heart’s wild pounding muted her hearing, which, in turn, seemed to confuse her sense of sight. Panic abused her reason. The wolf huddled in the shadows by the bedside table, then—where? Under the bed? Along the wall? Behind the door?
She couldn’t see, damn it. Shadows were freaking everywhere.
Annabella’s fear solidified into a stone in her gut, a chill prickling her scalp. With effort, she brought her gaze up to the ceiling, to the shadowy splay of the ceiling fan. Sure enough, the wolf crouched there, like a misshapen spider, once stomped but still living, its legs double bent under a nubby body.
Annabella stumbled as Custo hauled her to his side. With a tripping step, they fled to the far side of the room, opposite the door. Breath catching, broken into stuttering gasps, she backed to the wall.
The old woman stirred, whimpering. But oh, thank God, alive.
A flicker of movement brought Annabella’s gaze briefly back to Zoe, as the sister wrenched free. Zoe twisted out of Adam’s reach, driving forward to shield Abigail with her body from the predator above.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Zoe said. “I’m here. Shhh.”
Annabella gulped to clear her throat and squeezed Custo’s hand. She hated spiders. Hated hated spiders.
“If you had angel wings, you could fly up there and squash him,” she said, voice shaking, eyes tearing.
“I’d need a really big shoe to kill one that size,” he answered. He was way more calm than she was, his attention focused on the ceiling. “Adam, add Big Shoe to Segue’s weapon list.”
Adam grunted.
Custo shifted beside her, and in one fluid movement brought a gun up and hammered the ceiling with a violent pop, pop. Adam was one second behind him with his own, pop, pop.
Annabella startled painfully with each report, as Zoe squealed and clutched closer to Abigail, hands protecting her head.
They had guns?
The shadow fell in a dark rain and landed on four paws on the other side of the rocking chair. A bristling wolf, the breadth and hulk of his shoulders too familiar. His ears were pinned, teeth bared, intelligent eyes glaring. Glaring, oh shit, at her.
Custo’s shot was blocked by the huddled sisters. “Adam!”
Adam fired again, and the wolf dropped.
Annabella sucked in a shaky, hopeful breath, though she knew, knew, that the wolf could not be killed. She reached a hand to clutch the back of Custo’s shirt.
Her high tanked as she spotted the sinewy twist of shadow easing toward her through the rungs under the sisters in the rocking chair.
Annabella tried to squeeze behind Custo, pressing herself against the wall. Wolf was never going to stop. Never never, until he had her. Never never nev—
Custo fired repeatedly at the floor—her body clenched sharply at the noise again—but he hit the thing, tight, smoky impact holes biting the snakelike body, but not slowing it.
The nearer it got to Custo and her, the more the dark Shadow of the creature hissed, foul steam rising as if Wolf, no, the wolf, were on fire. Yet it slithered closer.
Annabella kicked with her foot when it was inches away, but the Shadow branched, one tendril twining coolly around her ankle. When it hit bare skin she started to shake uncontrollably.
Custo dropped to his knees, grasping the dark body, and ripped it off her. The Shadow evaporated like smoke in his hands, and he redoubled his efforts as the snake reformed before Annabella’s eyes.
A low moan, her own, reached her ears as rank terror gripped her. Custo couldn’t stop it. Why couldn’t Custo stop it?
The serpent insinuated itself beneath the hem of her pant leg in a sizzling caress, climbed her calf, and twisted around her thigh.
She screamed, near mindless, beating at her clothes in futility as the snake crossed her crotch, lined her like a fat G-string—oh, please, no—then tightened around her waist as he approached the cleft between her breasts. Her body quivered with its touch.
Custo was already at her pants, ripping the seams as he tore the thing off her. The wolf’s burn on her skin was hot, blistering, her body responding to his dark magic with a violent, unwilling orgasm. She throbbed with it, flesh, blood, bone. Her senses were subsumed with want and revulsion, Shadow and magic torturing and promising at once. Her scream gave way to choked weeping, and when Custo tore away the last of the wolf, she was certain her soul had been ripped away as well.
Her life, the world, was both wild and ravaged, reason and meaning torn ragged.
At last her legs gave, and Custo took her weight at his shoulder. Dimly she was aware of a subtle retraction of darkness, the retreat of the wolf. Part of her yearned to follow, to be satiated, obliterated by Shadow, even in an ecstasy of pain. But she was anchored in her body, too.
“Where is he?” Custo shouted. His chest felt solid, his arm around her secure. Which was good because she’d finally lost it. Custo would hold on to her. Custo wouldn’t let her go.
“I can’t see him!” Adam returned, but from a great distance.
Annabella’s body went slack against Custo’s, her head to the side on his shoulder, dumb to anything but the pump of his heart and the receding promise of magic. Her eyes burned and tears scorched her cheeks as they fell unchecked. The room grayed to static, the fuzz filling her ears.
Then nothingness swallowed her.