Ink & Fire: (A Havenwood Falls Novella)

“Ask your aunt.”

I can’t breathe. My eyes fly to Aunt Eloise’s grief-stricken face. Her expression says more than words ever could, and still I ask, “What? How?”

She steps toward me, her hand out, placating. “Harper, we didn’t tell you because we thought it was best. We—”

“Tell me what?”

Her eyes fall shut, the lids squeezing a tear down her cheek. “The man . . . they ruled it a suicide, but they found the message you gave him stuffed inside of his mouth. He—”

“Stop,” I sob. I don’t want to know any more. I can’t breathe. It’s completely impossible to breathe. I am not a coward for not wanting to know. I am not a coward.

I don’t need to know the details. What I need is to keep my sanity. Some secrets are better left with the Court and its members. How many secrets are they hiding for others in the town? How many of us are they protecting? How many of us are they trying to save?

The importance of Havenwood Falls—what this place means to me—is bigger than any word. This town is my mother. This town is the fairy tale my mother couldn’t be. They kept me safe, even when I couldn’t always keep myself or others safe.

My head hangs.

“Harper,” my aunt pleads.

I was a child. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I have to.

A steely determination settles over me, and when I lift my face, I know my eyes are full of fire and hatred. The archdemon and his lackey will be destroyed. I’ll make sure of it.

When I look at Lucas, my gaze locking with his stormy eyes, I think I know what it’s like to live where he does. In the gray area among blurred lines.





Chapter 11





“We have a visitor,” Lucas says.

A few minutes later, a series of knocks sounds on the shop door.

Aunt Eloise rushes upstairs. Voices murmur. Footsteps sound on the stairs.

Saundra Beaumont is the first to appear, Eloise fast on her heels.

Serious brown eyes scope out the room before settling on Lucas. “Our wards were tripped. According to some of the shifters, it’s a demon. A female. I’m guessing yours.” Saundra’s gaze swings my way, her eyes softening when she sees me sitting on the floor, my face swollen from tears. “Oh, Harper.”

Her eyes return to Lucas. “She’s stirring up the shifters, and I’ve had calls from some of the demons in town who’ve sensed her, too. They’re about as happy about this as we are. They’ve found peace here in Havenwood Falls, and I’m not letting an asshole among their kind ruin it. We’re all prepared to stop her. What’s it going to be, angel?”

“She won’t come into town,” Lucas replies confidently, his gaze finding me. “She wants Harper, and I want Levi.” Gesturing at me, he adds, “We’ll take this into the mountains.”

“Don’t be stubborn, angel. Your arrogance gets you nothing when dealing with evil. You’re going to need some help.”

“Only if it gets desperate. This is my fight. And hers.”

She’s obviously not happy with Lucas’s response, but there’s a strange respectful relationship between the witch and the angel, and I don’t know if it’s because they knew each other before this incident or if they’d heard about each other through supernatural channels.

“We’ll be ready to step in,” Saundra warns, turning, her gaze falling on the table. On Desi. She freezes, her eyes widening. “I thought I sensed something. What the hell is that?”

“A weapon,” Lucas answers, grinning.

Sighing, Saundra presses a hand to her chest. “I think it’s better I don’t ask. Especially today. No one has ever accused this town of being dull.” She gives Lucas a firm look. “If that thing does more than stay a bat, you better get it registered with the Court.”

“It’s a mace,” he corrects.

“Hmm.” With one final bewildered look, Saundra rushes up the stairs.

I can’t quit staring at my aunt’s apartment. At the wild walls and strange dolls. I hear things—my aunt talking with Saundra in the shop, Lucas moving around the room upstairs, and the heat blasting from my aunt’s furnace—but my scope of the world has narrowed to me and the pictures on the wall.

I find myself among the painted sketches.

“Harper?”

Lucas is talking to me, but I can’t look at him. My body feels like a ship caught on rough seas, in danger of capsizing.

My portrait—a rendition of me at least ten years younger than I am now—frowns at me on the wall, the eyes blinking. Around it, the other pictures come to life. Some of them reach for me. Others dance.

I am hallucinating.

“Harper.”

My body catches fire.

Voices consume me.

Someone screams, the sound shrill and desperate, the wild wail full of pain and hopelessness. Grief and anguish.

The screams belong to me.

“All right,” I hear Lucas say, “I’m going to need your help after all. The demon is already calling on Levi. We’ve got to move fast.”

Someone looms over me. Saundra, maybe, but she doesn’t look like Saundra. She looks like a watercolor version of herself, all fuzzy and blurred around the edges.

I taste blood in my mouth.

Pain lances through my stomach.

Someone lifts me. “It’s going to be okay,” Lucas whispers against my ear.

I wonder if he can promise me that. I wonder if sacrifices are ever meant to be okay. I wonder if I was ever meant to be okay.

My world slips away into nothingness.





Chapter 12





I am lost to a world of dreams.



“I’ve been waiting a long time for you,” a deep voice says.

Even though I’ve never heard his voice, I know who it is, and I hate him. Levi.

A forked tongue dances in front of my face. “Do you feel it?” Levi asks. “Power.” He inhales. “Ah, it feels good.”

A serpent large enough to be a dragon slithers into view. Straight out of darkness. There is only him and a black backdrop.

“We finally meet, Harper Sinclair.”

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Dreams,” he answers. “The horror of the Infernum without actually being here. Maddeningly dark, isn’t it?”

There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Only blackness.

“Why?”

He laughs, circling me, his tongue hissing. “Because you have the power to pull me free.”

“I don’t,” I protest. “My family . . . we don’t have that kind of power.”

“You do.” He sounds so sure of himself.

Anger wells up inside of me, and I spin, trying my best to keep up with him as he moves. Faster and faster we go.

“You made me do terrible things,” I call out, my voice shaking. I have a bad habit of crying when I’m angry.

“You could be so much more than what you are, Harper,” Levi tells me. He stops so abruptly, I almost fall into him, his large, reptilian eyes glowing red. He has silver scales, and they shine even though there’s no light to make them glow. “You were born from darkness. Just like the demons here. A human born to the underworld. Your soul for power,” he offers. “Give me your humanity, and you’ll never feel pain again. You’ll never know it.”

“Harper.”

Somewhere beyond the darkness, someone calls my name.

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