Bloodspell (The Cruentus Curse, #1)(13)

Victoria stared out the window behind the sofa and curled her legs beneath her, her fingers still lingering in Leto's fur. She wrestled with her thoughts.

"But that's not the whole reason. I don't know how but"—she hesitated again, a shiver passing through her—"it happened again. And it's just strange that he didn't react like I thought he would ... like the others."

Leto's head turned toward her and for a second, she felt a strange sensation as if he'd heard her. She could feel a sense of concern that wasn't her own. She frowned dismissing it, and continued her monologue.

"I mean, he's not stupid. It's unnatural to be able to move whole people around without touching them." She studied her hands as if they held the answer, frowning. "It was like invisible hands just reached out of my chest and shoved him backward."

This time there was no mistaking the response. Leto stared at her so hard that every hair on the back of her neck stood at nervous attention.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" she blurted without thinking.

Leto growled, holding her gaze disconcertingly, once again compelling her to grasp at something that was just beyond her reach. Given the last few months, she shouldn't have been surprised by anything, and after the existentialist episode with Christian, it didn't seem that farfetched to have an animal stare at her as if he understood her every word. She could do things, unnatural things. A cognitive cat was hardly a stretch.

Victoria bit her lips as a rush of unexpected hysteria filled her, brought on by Leto's stare. She glared at him.

"If you have something to say, just say it already," she snapped.

Her anger faded as abruptly as it had appeared and without waiting for the response that couldn't possibly come, she slumped back on the couch bursting into laughter at her own absurdity. What was she thinking?

Embrace it.

She almost fell off the sofa. That time, the voice had not been a figment of her imagination—it'd been real. But there was no one else in the apartment apart from Leto. She looked at him warily.

"You're imagining things again, Tori," Victoria muttered, closing her eyes.

You know what you are. You've known all along. Embrace it.

She sealed her lips shut against the hysterical panic bubbling behind them. She'd fallen down the rabbit hole into a crazy world where she could topple people over just by thinking about it and where animals could talk. She could feel Leto's glower as if in response to the tune of her thoughts, and she opened her eyes.

He flattened his ears and hissed, staring directly at her. But that was impossible! Cats didn't understand people and they certainly couldn't talk back, unless ... he was like her, something else ... something not entirely natural, not of this world.

"I don't know what you want me to do," she whispered, feeling like a lunatic.

The music box.

The music box? It was a rhetorical question, and in that instant, somehow she understood immediately that the music box held all the answers; it always had.

Victoria rummaged through the cardboard box marked "junk" and found it. It felt the same as it had the first time she'd held it, warm and welcoming. Hers. She removed the amulet from the box, mesmerized by its light. It was undeniably beautiful.

And undeniably terrifying.

Victoria shook her head. "I can't," she said, her hand trembling.

To embrace who you are, you must.

The words were simple but powerful. Victoria understood that she had to know who or what she was even if it meant "embracing" the mad energy that she'd tried to bury inside her. Not knowing was far worse than knowing. She couldn't risk what had happened with Brett ever happening again, or repeating what she'd done with Christian without understanding her strange power. The voice was right—she needed to embrace who she was, but even more, she needed to learn to control this thing inside of her.

Pulling herself together, she took a deep breath and focused inward, finding the sphere of energy, the strange force that she'd used against Christian. Her grandmother's words echoed in her head as she clicked the clasp into place around her neck. "Don't fear it. You are a Warrick."

Victoria closed her eyes, imagining that she was pulling the energy toward her heart near where the amulet rested. To her disbelief, she sensed it follow her bidding. It felt like she had been doing it all her life. The energy responded fluidly, pliant and receptive to her every thought. It was astonishing, and humbling. Victoria breathed out carefully, knowing what she had to do.

With a long indrawn breath, she pulled it into her center and felt it fill every cell in her body. She'd never felt so tall, so full, so whole. She feared that she would burst with it until her breath rushed past her lips and the energy rippled inward, resonating into blood and bone and tissue.

She opened her eyes.

The diamond burned the color of blood.

Leto's eyes glittered.

Yes.

"I don't know how to—" Victoria faltered for a moment.

You've talked to me your whole life.

She stared at him. "I didn't exactly ... expect a response."

Open yourself. Your power is an extension of you. Push outward, and imagine your mind connecting with mine.

She hesitated, but Leto's eyes compelled her to finish what she had started. Tentatively, Victoria envisioned her mind as a ball of energy and imagined a silver thread linking her mind to his.