I take her hand and we walk back to my tomb, enter, and find our way to the doors and rings. Pie plucks a ring from the air and slides it onto her pinky finger. She looks at me. “This one’s for the second door. So we don’t have to take them all the way back to the door we come out of.”
“Brilliant, Pie.” I’m so damn proud of her right now.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Tarq says. “Smart thinking, Pie.”
Pie blushes a little from all the praise. But then jolts herself out of it, walks to the next door, plucks another ring from the air, puts it on her ring finger, and starts her spell. “‘A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone. A palace gala, time unknown. The kitchen help is who we need, to help us get the nymphs all free.’”
The door appears and Pie turns to Tarq. “Are we in the right place?”
Tarq squints and moves forward, peering through the doorway and looking around. Then nods. “Yep. There’s Talina and Mikayla.”
We all take one final look at each other, then I grab Pie’s hand and we walk through.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE – TOMAS
It has been quite some time since my heart thumped wildly inside my chest, but it does so now. And I like it. It makes me feel alive again. Unlike all those centuries locked up inside Saint Mark’s dungeon where I was literally withering away in the dark, my only escape a bit of leftover magic I scoured up from discarded eggshells and my human-like apparition of a body.
But since Pie came everything has changed about me.
I am human, I am chimera, I am… in love.
I gaze over at my gagged and handcuffed girlfriend. Her blue eyes are wild, like her tousled strawberry hair. She is panicking. A little. Her breath is coming quick and shallow.
But I send her good vibes. All will be fine, my lovely Madeline. Do not fret.
We’re in the back of the truck with ‘the boys’ and on our way to town. I can hear Russ Roth ranting and raving about Pie and Pell even through the closed window of the truck cab. Big Jim is trying to calm him down, but the sheriff is pretty pissed off about being made a fool of.
We go slow down Main Street. It’s empty—it’s the middle of the night now—and Big Jim pulls into his parking lot where several young men are waiting with baseball bats.
Madeline looks even more panicked when she sees this group of new young men, and then I realize—they look like her. Same strawberry hair. Same blue eyes.
But not the same gentle soul.
Her brothers, I deduce.
Lovely. I get to meet the family.
Strong hands grip Madeline and pull her from the truck. She is shrieking through her gag. Even stronger hands pull me up—I am not bound, they didn’t bother. But there are no fewer than a dozen shotguns pointed at my face.
“Don’t make any stupid moves, monster,” Russ growls. “Or we’ll just get this over with right now and blow you to pieces.”
He’s not a very nice man. In fact, he’s a dick, as Pie would say.
So I decide to start there.
“Sheriff,” I say, my voice light and congenial. “If I’m a monster, then what are you?”
“What?” he snaps.
“What’s he talking about?” one of ‘the boys’ asks.
“Gibberish, that’s what he’s talkin’,” Big Jim says. “Don’t listen to him. Everything that comes out of his mouth is lies.”
I scoff. Loudly. “I assure you, I do not lie. Ever. Ask me anything and I will give you the truth.”
Big Jim narrows his eyes at me. Then he snatches Madeline from another man’s grip and pulls her in front of him. “What’s wrong with my niece? Did one of those monsters seduce her mother? Is that why she’s this way?”
I don’t understand what he’s talking about, but I am decidedly sure that no monster from Saint Mark’s ever got Madeline’s mother pregnant. So I say, “No. That’s not it. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Madeline at all. She’s perfect.”