“Oh, my dear, even your presence here has helped me more than you know.”
Heather looked radiant in the face of his compliment, but there was a light in Sebastian’s eyes that gave me the impression that he meant something far more than Heather understood.
Hands pul ing gently at my shoulders brought me back to Sebastian’s living room. Someone was tugging at me, cal ing my name. It was Bo.
“Ridley, that’s enough. He’s getting faint,” he was saying.
With a start, I withdrew my teeth and leaned up to look into Cade’s face. His eyes were closed and he was chalky white beneath his tan. I tapped my fingers lightly on his cheek and softly cal ed his name.
“Cade.” No response. Again, I tapped. “Cade.” Stil no answer, so I slapped my palm lightly against his firm cheek.
“Cade!”
Drunkenly, Cade rol ed his head, turning his face toward the ceiling. He smiled once without opening his eyes and then his head dropped off to the other side.
“He’l be fine,” Bo said. “He just needs to rest.” Wrapping his fingers around my upper arm, Bo urged me to stand.
Once on my feet, I turned toward him and he used the backs of his fingers to wipe my mouth. “What did you see?”
“I saw Sebastian and Heather. They’re holding Devon in some sort of abandoned mine I think. He’s staked to the wal , like you were upstairs.” I couldn’t quel the shudder that racked my body.
“Did you see them leave? Do you know where it is?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Although Bo looked a bit disappointed, he quickly moved past it.
“That’s alright. It just so happens that we have a source who knows the woods like the back of his hand. If there’s a mine shaft out there, Lucius wil know where it is.” One side of Bo’s mouth lifted in a lop-sided grin. “You did good, baby.”
His words ran through me like warm sunshine coursing through my veins. We looked into each other’s eyes for several seconds in one of those great romantic moments before Bo started to frown. Before I could ask what was bothering him, his frown deepened, instantly bringing al my senses to high alert.
Slowly, Bo raised his hand and traced the skin of my cheek with his fingertips then lightly brushed them over my jaw and down my throat. He pushed my hair back over my shoulder and spread the neckline of my shirt, examining my chest. As he did, I could feel my skin tingle a little, almost prickle.
Abruptly and wordlessly, Bo reached down, took my hand and led me from the room. When I saw that he was leading me to our room, I found my tongue.
“Bo what is it? What’s wrong?”
Stil , he said nothing, merely hurried me through the bedroom door and closed it behind us. Final y, he turned to me and spoke.
“I need you to take off your shirt.”
Even though the circumstances were alarming, a twitter of excitement fluttered in my stomach. Without questioning him again, I reached for the hem of my shirt and pul ed it over my head.
Bo stepped toward me and leaned in, his face so close that I could feel his warm breath on my skin, caressing me like the delicate wings of a butterfly. Once again, he raised his hand and dragged his fingertips over my neck and chest.
I looked down to see what had captured his attention so completely, but I saw nothing. At first. It wasn’t until Bo shifted, al owing the low light to play across my skin in a different way that I saw the iridescent sheen.
Even upside down, I could see that the shapes were familiar to me. Cast in pearly, barely-glistening strokes, if Bo hadn’t been looking so pointedly at them, I’d probably never have seen them. They were that faint. But I had caught a glimpse of them. And I recognized them. They looked like the symbols I’d seen in the book in Sebastian’s office.
Relief washed through me, relief of the doubts I’d secretly been harboring about being the one fated for Bo. But as I watched Bo careful y trace each shape with the tip of his finger, those doubts melted away like ice on hot pavement. I was made for Bo, made by God Himself to be his mate. I was the one person on earth who could help him fulfil his destiny and, even though his destiny would likely rip from our grasp an eternity together, I could live forever knowing that we’d had this perfect love for just a little while.
“What does it mean?” I final y asked.
“It must be part of the letter. It’s like a laundry list of people
—The Corrupted Child, born into evil; The Reluctant Vampire, fol owed by death and yet refusing to succumb; The Bereaved Child, grief-stricken and betrayed; The First Fal en One, the only blood given wil ingly; The One Not Chosen, turned bitter with envy; and The Doomed Key.”
“But what does it al mean?”
“Wel , if it is part of the letter, which according to Cade it is, then maybe these are people Sebastian needs in order to be able to kil me. Maybe he needs the blood of these people—or their lives—as a sacrifice. I just don’t know.”
“How are we ever supposed to make sense of anything like this? How are we supposed to know what to do with the information I’m learning?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it wil appear soon.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with Devon since it was him that they took?”
“I think we have to assume that it does.”
“Could he be one of the people listed?”
Bo looked thoughtful y at the things only he could decipher from the beautiful markings on my skin.
“I guess he could be the Reluctant Vampire. He refuses to feed, which means that it should only be a matter of time before he dies. I guess you could say that death fol ows him.”
“How could Sebastian have known that he’d find just such a person here, in this town where both of us live? Isn’t that too much of a coincidence?”
Bo straightened, his eyes burning into mine.
“It’s no coincidence. This is fate,” he said intensely.
“None of this is an accident.”
“So what do we do now?”
Bo took the tee shirt that dangled from my fingers, turned it right-side out and held it out to me.
“After you get dressed, we’l go get Lucius and see if we can find Devon before morning.”
“But what if they come looking for him?”
“There’s no reason for them to go back there again, unless they have to keep another prisoner down there.