Echo (The Soul Seekers #2)(90)

Already seeking purchase with the slick, wet road, before moving to the center of the street where I turn my face skyward, allowing fat drops of snow to fall onto my cheeks.

“What are you doing? What is she doing?” Lita cries, throwing open her door and racing to catch up with me. Her tone instantly switching from reproach to delight when she says, “No. Freaking. Way!” She runs up beside me, as Auden joins me on my other side. “Time to pay up, Auden!” she cries, voice jubilant as she wraps her arms around me and does a little dance as she carefully spins me. “Looks like Xotichl was right—it really is the season of miracles!” She returns me to Auden, freeing herself to skip up and down the street. Or at least I think that’s what she’s doing judging by the surge in her energy, the swish of her feet.

“Hey, flower, looks like you got your Christmas wish after all. I promise I’ll never doubt you again.” Auden’s lips find mine, his kiss reverent and sweet. Breaking away when he says, “So, why are you crying?”

I burrow deep into his arms, bury my head in the hollow of his neck. Seeking comfort in his strength, his scent—unwilling to speak the words aloud, make them any more real than they are in my head.

Unwilling to speak the horrible truth that lives deep inside me.

This is no ordinary snow flurry.

This is no meteorological inevitability.

Not when it sings like the wind—yet warms like the sun.

Falling from the sky in a rainbow of hues—accompanied by the most pure and glorious swell of symphony I’ve ever heard.

It’s the sound of angels.

It’s the sound of Daire saying good-bye.

Leaving us this one final gift—the snow as her elegy.





Dace

“Where is she?”

I cast about wildly. The words hardly more than a wet gurgled rasp, but I know that he heard me. Know he understood exactly what I asked.

I can feel him beside me.

Inside me.

All around me.

The boundaries between us now blurred.

We’re connected like never before.

I gaze upon my freak of a twin, now returned to human form, bearing not a single mark—unlike me and the fountain of blood that continuously sprays from my neck.

Pressing a hand to my wound, hoping to stanch the flow, I gather the strength to say, “What the hell have you done with her?”

While the question doesn’t sound quite like it did in my head, the smile that greets me is nothing shy of hideous, telling me he understood every word.

“Little glowing man took her,” he says. “My guess is they’re headed for the Upperworld. A world you’ll never be able to crack. Or at least not now, anyway. They’re a snooty, elitist group. The ultimate country club. They don’t welcome our kind. Still, it’s not like that stops us from trying. I’m desperate to breach it, and I’ve no doubt I will. I hear everything sparkles and glows in those parts—that they have a perfect view of everyone else. I’d really love to see that. Maybe someday, we can.” He shoots me a sardonic look.

I hate his use of we.

Hate that it’s true.

Hate that I was led by my hate.

Hate is the reason I’m here.

The reason I willfully blackened my soul in an effort to save her—only to watch the whole thing backfire—unable to do anything but watch as the dream played out before me.

And just like the dream—I was too late to save her.

“I love a good irony, don’t you?” Cade cocks his head, leans down to pet his ghastly coyote. “Did you see the way she looked at you? Did you see that delicious mixture of shock, revulsion, and grief when she realized what you’d done, what you allowed yourself to become, in an effort to defeat me?”

I stagger forward, my head growing increasingly dizzy, my vision fuzzy and blurry. Fighting like hell to steady myself—to erase the scene he paints in my mind, refusing to remember Daire in that way.

“Not to be rude, but I’m pretty sure it’s quick to become my most favorite memory reel. Such tragedy! Such folly!” He throws his head back and laughs, emitting a sound as sick and monstrous as he is. Encouraging Coyote to point his snout in the air and let loose a long, plaintive howl, the racket they make an unwelcome disruption in a land returning to peace. He quiets himself, returning to me when he says, “To watch you purposely become the very thing that you hate, in an utterly foolish, and completely misguided effort to kill me—only to have that same transformation serve as the very thing that keeps you from her … It’s priceless. Made to order. Too good to be true. I couldn’t have dreamed it any better!” He indulges himself in a fit of amusement, before he turns to me and says, “Don’t you know—you don’t attract what you want, brother? You attract what you are. Figured someone like you would’ve known that.”

I press my hand to my neck, my fingers coming away slick and red. “You’ll pay for this!” I gasp. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Doubtful,” Cade says. “After all, you’re the one bleeding, not me. You’re the one who lost his fated one. Time to face reality, brother. Even if she was alive when she left here, she’s most likely dropped her robe by now. Isn’t that how your pal Leftfoot would describe it—a disrobing of the body?” He pauses long enough to smirk and roll his eyes. “Anyway, bro, I’ve no doubt she’s dead on arrival. Next time we’ll see her is on the Day of the Dead, when she’s forced to pay her respects to the Bone Keeper. And I think we both know Leandro will forgive me well before then. He’s always favored me. Has plenty to learn from me, whether he wants to admit it or not. In the end, this is no more than a speed bump—my life remains right on course. While yours, on the other hand, is anything but.” He gestures toward my bleeding, wounded neck. “You know that’s going to leave a scar, right? Yet another way they’ll be able to tell us apart. When you think about it, it’s really quite funny—the more you tried to become like me, the more you set yourself apart. If anyone failed tonight, brother, it’s you.”