Unravelled

They’d met once, but only briefly. Her dad didn’t know it, but Riley was older than he was. By, like, a hundred years. As a shape-shifter, Riley aged slowly. Very, very slowly.

“Dr. Gray,” Riley returned, respectful as always.

“Mary Ann,” her dad said, attention returning to her. “You might want to take a jacket.”

It was the first of November and every day was a little colder than the last. But she said, “I’ll be fine.” Riley would keep her warm. “I promise.” Pleasantries done, Mary Ann returned to the door, pushed the screen open with her shoulder, and grabbed Riley’s warm, callused hand. She shivered. She loved touching him. As a human and a wolf.

As they walked, he confiscated her pack with his free hand.

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

Morning was in full swing, though the sun was muted behind clouds and the sky a dark gray. Blackbirds were squawking continuously—they stayed in Crossroads all year round—and the air was cool and crisp. Still hand-in-hand, they bypassed the few houses surrounding hers.

Each house was shaped like a train station of yore, with posts, decks, colored wood and sloped two-story roofs. Once they’d passed the very last one, they approached a brick wall about half a mile ahead, a heavily populated forest directly behind it. The trees there were thick, their leaves now yellow and red.

Her dad assumed she and Riley took the long route to school, staying on well-traveled, paved roads. Not cutting through the forest. Her dad was wrong. Sometimes a girl needed to be alone with her boyfriend, with no prying eyes. Or ears. The walk to Crossroads High was one of those times.

“I can’t believe how much time has passed since I last saw you,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry. Feels like eternity to me, too. I wanted to see you, believe me, but more vampires have been popping into the house in preparation for Vlad’s funeral.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, squeezing his hand. “About his death. I know you respected him.”

“Thank you. We have to wait fourteen days before we can hold the funeral—no, thirteen now, I guess. After that, Aden will be officially crowned king.”

“Why wait fourteen days for the funeral?” She did not want to imagine what the corpse would look like after lying around for two weeks.

Riley shrugged. “He was king. The people want to make sure he’s dead.”

“Wait. He could be alive? “

“No.”

“But you just said—”

“The people want to make sure he’s dead, I know, but they’re in shock, hopeful. Nothing like this has ever happened to them before.”

She could understand that. She’d been a mess after both her moms had died. “Aden will be happy to have a reprieve, at least. He’s not looking forward to being king, I don’t think.”

“Oh, he’s already king, no doubt about that. Not even Vlad could recover from such a severe burning.”

Again she found herself saying, “But you just said—”

“I know, I know. The thing is, alive or dead, Vlad isn’t ruling us and someone needs to rule us or there’ll be chaos, deserters and takeover attempts.”

With a human in charge, there’d probably be chaos, deserters and takeover attempts anyway.

“And everyone is…eager to meet Aden,” Riley went on, “to discover his plans for the clan.”

Eager. Yeah. Right. Sorry, Aden, she thought, suspecting he would balk when he heard. Looks like you’re gonna have to take one for the team.

“Now that the life and death issues are out of the way, you’ve gotta tell me. Are you okay?” Riley cast her a concerned glance. “After everything you witnessed.I’ve been worried.”

“I’m fine, I promise.” And she was. Yes, at the ball she’d seen humans reduced to nothing more than living plates of food by the bloodsuckers. Yes, she’d seen Aden fight and ultimately kill one of those bloodsuckers by burning him as he’d burned Vlad, and then stabbing him where he was most vulnerable: his eyes. And yes, those bloody images might haunt her for the rest of her life.

But she was alive, thanks to Aden and Riley, and everything else kinda stopped mattering when compared to that.

“So, are you okay?” she asked. He was a warrior and she had probably insulted him by even asking, but she needed to hear him say it.

“I am now,” he replied, and they shared a smile. A smile that melted her like ice cream in the sun.

Okay, so. Remind him of the rest of the “life and death issues” so you can concentrate on something else. Like cleaning Riley’s tonsils. “It’s probably a good thing nothing’s going to happen with the vampires for two weeks. We have a meeting with the witches to attend.

Or rather, Aden does.” Ugh. She hated even thinking about those witches. How powerful they were. How uncaring. How she would literally die if Aden didn’t make it to that meeting.

Several days ago, those witches had cast a spell over them. A freaking death spell. If, in the next five days, Aden failed to attend some sort of meeting with them, Mary Ann, Riley and Aden’s girlfriend Victoria would die.

That simple. And that complicated.

No one knew where the meeting was being held or even where the witches were staying. Which made it impossible to meet with them.

Maybe that had been their intention all along.

Stomach churning again…

And yet, the prospect hardly seemed real. They had cursed her with death if Aden failed to attend their meeting, yet Mary Ann felt fine. Healthy, whole, as if she had decades ahead of her rather than days.

Would her heart simply stop working? Or was she fooling herself? Would nothing actually happen, the spell just a joke? A means of terrifying her?

She’d spent all last night researching witches and spells and ways to break those spells. The information differed, depending on the source. The source she most believed, however, was Riley, and he said spells, once uttered, sparked to unbreakable life.

The muscles in Riley’s hand twitched, returning her drifting mind to the present. “Believe me, I haven’t forgotten the meeting.” His voice was toneless now.

Trying not to scare her? Too late. Even though the prospect didn’t seem real, she was still scared out of her mind. He believed in the witches’ power completely. Which meant he honestly believed everyone in their group would soon die.

“Any idea where that meeting will be held?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

So frustrating! Not that she was frustrated with him, of course, but with the entire situation.

“It’ll be okay,” Riley said, as if sensing her growing upset. He probably did. He could read auras, and therefore emotions. “We’ll figure everything out. I promise. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”

She trusted him. She did. More than anyone else in her life. He never lied to her. He gave her the facts, straight up, unvarnished, no matter how harsh they were.

Finally they reached the wall, though they weren’t even close to the gate, and stopped. Without a word, Riley leapt to the top of the seven-foot structure, his graceful movements making the jump look seamless. Grinning, he leaned down and offered her a hand.