The Mortal Heart(16)

She shook her head. “I won’t do it. I would never condemn you to that.”

It looked as if tears were welling up in Macon’s eyes, even though Jane knew it was impossible. He had no tears to shed, yet she swore she could see them glistening. “If something happened to you, if I hurt you, you would be condemning me to a fate, an eternity, far worse than anything I would find in here.” Macon picked up the Arclight and held it up between them. “If the time comes and you have to use it, you have to promise me you will.”

Lila Jane choked back her tears, her voice shaking. “I don’t know if I—”

Macon rested his forehead against hers. “Promise me, Janie. If you love me, promise me.”

Lila Jane buried her face in his cool neck. She took a deep breath. “I promise.”





It happened within weeks of the last time he spoke to her.

Macon felt it immediately when his shoulder snapped—the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no longer hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs, like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rocks tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground.

The Transformation.

From this moment forth, he would not be able to walk among Mortals in the daylight. The sun would singe the flesh from his body. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the urge to feed on the blood of Mortals. He was one of them now—another Blood Incubus in the long line of killers on the Ravenwood Family Tree.

A predator walking among his prey, waiting to feed.

Jane—





Epilogue


“In the Light there is Dark, and in the Dark there is Light,” Lila Jane Evers translated, for the thousandth time. She was still holding the translucent scrap of parchment, still no thicker than onionskin, between her fingertips. “Licentia in Lux Lucis. Freedom in Light.” She looked up at Marian. “Freedom from what?”

Lila Jane sat back in her hard wooden chair—at her customary table for one (though with Marian’s chair now shoved up against hers)—in the rare documents reading room of the Perkins Library, as she did every night.

Lila Jane was obsessed. At least she was aware of it.

And Marian doesn’t point it out that often.

Lila Jane straightened one curling edge of the parchment with her white-gloved hand.

It’s all I have left of him.

She smoothed the scrap of paper in her hand. “There has to be more to it than words on a page.”

“What’s wrong with words on a page? They’re our specialty, Lila.” Marian smiled. She didn’t call her best friend Janie anymore.

Not even Jane.

Marian couldn’t make this easier or take away the pain; no one could do that. But she could make sure her best friend didn’t have to face it alone.

Lila Jane took off her white gloves. “It’s not just any Cast. There has to be a reason I found it. A reason it brought us together.” She didn’t say his name.

She couldn’t.

“In the Dark there is Light? You think that’s about the two of you?” Marian asked.

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?” Lila Jane asked. “But if we were so different that we could never be together, why didn’t it feel that way? Why did he feel like my kindred spirit? Like a part of my soul?”

Every word was agony.

“A Ravenwood and an Evers? I wonder…” Marian shook her head. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now.”

Don’t you understand? I have to.

Lila Jane looked at her friend. “I want to go back to the library, Mare. I want to know what you know. I can’t explain it, but I feel like I’ve started down a road that has no end, and I can’t stop now. Not even if I wanted to.”

Marian pulled off her gloves. “It’s a dangerous road, Lila.”

“Macon said you were a Keeper. I want to be like you.”

“Lila—”

“It’s my choice. You said it was always my choice,” Lila Jane said, reaching to take Marian’s hand in her own.

“It is.”

“I feel like it’s more than that, Mare. I feel like it’s my destiny.” Lila Jane squeezed her best friend’s hand. “And you know I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”