Eighth Note (Fire Ballad Book 1) Read online

  He nodded, tapping his finger against his glass. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  He sighed, long and slow, before leaning forward. I had to bow my head to hear his deep voice over the bustle of the restaurant. “She couldn’t stand the thought of growing older while I stayed young. She hated every wrinkle, every gray hair, the very parts of her that made me love her even more. Vanity, Eva. I fuckin’ hate it more than any other sin. She hung herself.”

  A chill crawled from the back of my neck and down my spine, and I locked my eyes with his. “What?” I paled. “From where?”

  His face bobbed backward, and then he scoffed, shaking his head. “Only you. No condolences, no sympathy. Just logistics.”

  “I’m sorry,” I answered quickly, but he shook his head again, and then shrugged.

  “It’s okay, honey. That’s what I like about you. No bullshit.” He dug his credit card out from his wallet as the waitress brought the leather folder with the check. “From the ceiling rafters.”

  “Of the cabin?” My horrified voice drew the attentions of several customers, and he shot me a silencing look.

  “By the window. In the room you’re stayin’ in.”

  “Fuck you!” I shouted, scraping my chair backward and ignoring the customers openly gawking our way. “You let me sleep in there?”

  “What sense would it make to condemn the room? The past is the past, Eva.”

  “I’m not sleeping there anymore.”

  He pointed to me and then the chair, and I screwed my face up at him in a severe scowl before taking my seat again.

  “I can understand that.”

  We sat quietly for a few minutes, and I resisted the shame that crept over my cheeks in bright, red blotches. Finally, I cleared my throat, lifting my chin and meeting his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being immature, and… tactless. I’m really sorry for your loss.”

  He dropped his hand over my hand, and I watched my fingers disappear in his grasp. “You’re a good girl. I appreciate that.”

  We didn’t talk as we left the restaurant, moving outside to the parking lot. He had a cigarette lit before we could leave the awning outside Chili’s. His attention was drawn across the dark street. I followed his gaze, gripping the strap of my purse.

  “Well?” He suggested.

  A neon sign flashed in the window that read Walton Ink.

  “What? A tattoo? Now?”

  “Why not? You just want a little one. Who cares.”

  “But we were drinking…,”

  “We’re immortal. You’ll heal before you even have a chance to bleed. Come on, let’s go see if this guy’s licensed.”

  I followed him, glancing both ways nervously as I crossed the street. Cole held the door open for me, and I thanked him, my voice far-away and unfamiliar to my own ears. I’m just missing home. It’s been a long, horrifying couple of days, and I’m exhausted.

  The artist ended up being a woman, and she was covered from the neck down in art. She listened to Cole and answered his questions while I looked around, trying to rationalize what I was doing. Will is going to hate this, I already know it.

  “Do you want to pick out a stencil?” She called to me, and I held my hand over my lower, right abdomen, through my shirt.

  “I already have one,” I replied with a smile. Cole narrowed his eyes, confused, and I pulled from my memory the eighth note I’d sketched long ago for when I got my first tattoo. I rolled up my shirt, and sure enough, the sketch had transferred from my mind to my skin.

  “Small,” she commented, nodding with a friendly grin. “Simple. With all that fiery hair, I guess I expected something flashier.” She moved to the back of the shop, and Cole bent his mouth to my cheek.

  “Why the eighth note?” He asked, his breath warm on my ear.

  I lifted my face to his, noticing for the first time that there were flecks of green in his brown gaze. “The prophecy. My parents had seven chances to give me life. Somehow, I was given another chance. An eighth life. And I lived. I’m meant to live.”

  The light buzzed above our heads, dimming slightly. Those eyes of his locked with my own gaze, refusing to let go. His face was far too close to mine. The smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol filled my senses, strange but pleasantly intoxicating. His lips, almost fully covered by his dark stubble, hovered near mine. My eyelids grew heavy, and we both exhaled at the same time.

  He pulled his mouth away and quickly pressed a kiss to my forehead.

  “Of course you were meant to live.”

  He was too close one moment, and so distant the next. I have absolutely no interest in any man but Will.

  My heart thundered in my chest, my pulse racing. I blamed the adrenaline, the alcohol, my nerves, my fear… anything but the confusion of what Cole was making me feel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The tattoo burned like a motherfucker.

  “Hold my hand,” Cole encouraged, and I sent him a death glare.

  “Piss off,” I growled. The tattoo artist grinned, continuing to fill in the eighth note without lifting her eyes from my bared stomach.

  “This’ll look cute with that piercing,” she offered, nodding to my navel.

  “I hope so.”

  Cole watched as I sat uncomfortably in the car on the way back to the cabin, the sting from the small tat not nearly as irritating as the heat coming from my palms. I gave up trying not to scratch, digging into my skin as he pulled up to the cabin.

  “We have to find something to put on your hands. Can’t you use your magic to make it go away?”

  I swung my face in his direction, gawking. “Are you kidding me? You think that if I could, I’d just continue to claw at my skin? Of course I can’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

  “We should have called your dad from town. He’s a doctor, right?”

  “He’d just worry, and then he’d charter a fucking helicopter and come pick me up.”

  I got out and slammed the door behind me. The cabin loomed in the darkness, surrounded by stake-straight birch trees reaching upward toward the moon. The occasional hemlock, pine, and maple cluttered the forest around us, blocking any visibility beyond a few feet from the edge.

  Covering my mouth, I coughed, wincing at the irritation in the back of my throat. Great, a cold, too. Perfect. Marching directly to the kitchen, I retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator, gesturing upstairs. “Please go get my shit. I’m not going back in that room.”

  He closed and locked the front door behind him, running his fingers through his hair. “I will. But check the first aid kit for something to put on your hands. It’s on the counter. Got it?”

  “Yes,” I waved my hand absently, turning on the light over the kitchen sink.

  The single bulb hung from a pendant just over my head. It whizzed and crackled, and I narrowed my eyes, looking up.

  Inside the bulb, something moved.

  “What…?” I stared at it, watching as the outline of an earwig crawled inside the incandescent light bulb, its frantic movement increasing as the bulb began to heat.

  I lifted my hand, making the mistake of touching the glass. Yanking my finger away from the burn, I widened my eyes at my hand.

  Stumbling, I moaned, raising both of my palms upward.

  And I screamed.

  The temperature in the cabin moved from mild to frigid. My voice cut off as I watched my breath puff into the air, and steam rise from both of my palms.

  A symbol branded my hands.

  The circular mark clearly showed an X in the center, and what looked like crescent moons filled the left and right sides of the circle. A candelabra-looking character hovered near the top, and another at the bottom. Letters began at the top of the circle, six in total, marking the edge of the ring in a clockwise manner.

  M-U-R-M-U-R

  “Cole!” I shouted and slammed my hip against the counter to catch myself from falling. The tattoo hurt, and I screamed again, fear scr
aping down my spine and stealing my breath.

  The light bulb and pendant shade smashed over my head.

  “What the fuck…?” Cole was at my side, gathering my wrists into his hands. Thin, paper-like pieces of the bulb coupled with larger shards of lampshade glass covered the symbols on my palms. He narrowed his eyes, brushing at my shoulder. “Eva?”

  “What’s wrong with my hands? What is this?” I was shrieking, I knew it, but the identical symbols on each palm were scaring the logic right out of me. I pulled from my magic and sent real flames to both palms, extinguishing them quickly and breaking into tears as the symbols remained. “Oh my God!”

  “Honey- calm down,” Cole flattened his palm on my back, and the other at my waist, bending me over and brushing at my hair. “Let’s get this glass out of your hair, and then sit down before you lose control. Take it easy, breathe…,”

  “Cole!” I felt him tousling my hair, keeping one firm arm around my waist the entire time so that I wouldn’t fall forward.

  “Hold on,” he soothed, straightening me again and lifting me into his arms. “We’ll get the glass out-…,”

  And he turned.

  Now the cabin was sweltering. I recognized the smell first; rotting, stale, burning my nose. The center of the kitchen floor was the same sharp cliff that I’d seen in my bathroom at home, only this time there were no bathtub wall to block us from the fall.

  Cole was holding me, and I gripped his shoulders as he nearly lost his footing.

  The sepia scene below us was exactly the same as before; death, decomposing bird cadavers and shadowy apparitions moving too fast along the barren ground. Cole swore under his breath, finally balancing and taking a step backwards, his boots crunching into the pile of glass.

  Just as quickly as the floor had opened, the linoleum tile returned.

  “Put me down!” I cried, my fear of heights overruling the glass in my hair and the satanic symbols burned into my palms.

  He gingerly stepped along the counter and around the kitchen table, waiting to lower me to my feet until we were in the living room. “What in the hell was that?”

  At that moment, his phone chimed in his back pocket, and he retrieved it before scanning the text. I coughed, groaning at the sting in my throat. “You have reception?”

  “It’s Monroe. He sent me a link to YouTube. Nina’s song leaked.”

  “No,” I grabbed his phone, lifting my eyes to his. “No!”

  “How many views?” He managed, inspecting my palm. He traced his finger over the circle that spanned the space from my pinky to my thumb.

  “Two hundred and twenty four,” I cried, turning for my bags that he’d retrieved and dropped at the bottom of the stairs. My oversized headphones were on top of my clothes, and I grabbed them, wincing at the pain in my palms as I shoved the jack into Cole’s phone.

  “Eva-…,”

  “Don’t leave me alone,” I begged, brushing away my embarrassing tears with the back of my hands.

  He tried to dive for his phone, but I threw up an electric wall, watching him shout and growl as the current stopped him from racing toward me.

  And then I pressed PLAY.

  “Don’t,” he pleaded through clenched teeth.

  I blinked slowly, turning my face away from his and to the screen on his phone. The only picture on the YouTube video was a press still of Nina. There was a sound delay, and then she was speaking in my ear.

  “Hey everyone, I’m Nina Fayette. I have something special for you,” she coughed, twice, and then cleared her throat. “Sorry,” she laughed softly, and then continued. “I’ve been working on getting this right for a while. Auto-tuning is new to me, but I think this works. I don’t even remember writing this last night, but I can’t get it out of my head. Hope you like it. It’s called Vulture.”

  I recognized the scratch of a record, one of my favorite sounds in the world.

  She began to sing.

  Pressing my palms over the headphones, over my ears, I focused on Cole’s face. Worried, defeated, angry… a myriad of emotions plagued his rugged features as he watched me from across the room. He stood perfectly still, his eyes never leaving mine.

  Her voice reminded me of an old Mazzy Star song, very unlike her usual soulful music. I tried to concentrate on the haunting sway of the beat, the notes, the frequency and the tone, but all I could focus on were the lyrics.

  Sacrifice

  Fly away

  Make me a deal and I’ll stay

  Feel me, hold me

  Hate me

  Fly away, what’s left is dead

  There’s pain in my heart

  And in my bed

  Rotting, wasting, give up tasting

  Anything but the end I’m chasing

  She started to cough.

  The song abruptly ended.

  I slid the headphones off of my head, watching as small pieces of glass sprinkled to the floor at my feet. Separating the jack from his phone, I tossed the headphones to my bag.

  Cole continued to look intently at me, waiting.

  “Well? Whatever. I’m still me, and not to speak ill of the dead, but the violins were a total rip-off of Fiona Apple’s Criminal. I even heard a cello, and the percussion… well, let’s just say that I’m pretty disappointed in Nina.”

  He started to speak, but his phone was ringing. I handed it over, and he answered with speakerphone. “Mathison.”

  Monroe’s voice. “Oh- good- I was afraid I wouldn’t get through to you. Did you get the link? The body count is up to seventy-six, and-…,”

  “What?” Cole interrupted Monroe, and I silenced him with a glare.

  “It’s all over the news. People are killing themselves. It’s gruesome, Cole. Where’ve you been all evening? I called you fifty times!”

  “I didn’t have any missed calls- we were in town, and-…,”

  I heard the signature three-toned sound that indicated that the call was lost.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We stared at each other in the aftermath of the most terrifying fifteen minutes of my life. I sighed, coughing into the back of my arm. Cole moved to the counter to retrieve my water, stopping short as he glanced into the opened bottle.

  “Fuckin’ earwigs. Where did this one come from?” He cringed at the black, floating insect and threw the water bottle at the sink. He retrieved a new, unopened bottle from the refrigerator. “Honey, I can’t believe you just fuckin’ electrocuted me. You shouldn’t have listened.”

  “I’ll bet you anything that the people who have listened are dying in succession. If I could trace all the IP addresses of every view on YouTube, then they’d be dying one at a time.”

  “You’re two twenty-five,” he realized. I coughed again, clearing my throat.

  “It stops at me, Cole. I’m immortal.”

  We both sat on the couch in silence. My head felt full, heavy, and I rested against the back of the cushion, thinking about Perry.

  Her blue eyes laughed when she did, exactly the same shade as Will’s. I could tell when she was smiling by just her eyes. So many times she’d press her face to Will’s shoulder, peeking at me, and I could see her grin in just her clear, sky-blue gaze.

  I missed her.

  I missed her so much, so suddenly, and nausea nearly forced my dinner to make a reappearance on the living room floor. Cole must have sensed my burgeoning breakdown, pulling me into his arms.

  “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out. I won’t let anything happen to you, kid.”

  “I need to see Perry,” I turned into his chest and gave into the tears, pressing my forehead into his shoulder. “I need Will. If anything happens to me, I want to know that I said goodbye. I’m immortal, but I can’t live through decapitation, Cole, I can’t grow another fucking head,” I bawled, ugly crying into his tee-shirt.

  “I won’t let that happen. Come on, play something,” he encouraged, and I sniffed, shaking my head.

  “You play something,” I snapped.


  He gently peeled me away from him, moving to a closet in the living room. I watched him reach inside, retrieving an old, acoustic Fender. I sat upright as he carried it to the couch.

  “It needs to be tuned,” he said, strumming a few off-key chords.

  I waved my hand, coughing as the tuning pegs moved on their own. “That’s an F-series. Vintage seventies?”

  “Hmn-hmn,” he nodded once and strummed a little, his eyebrows raising. “Nice. Sounds good.”

  He began playing, and I sighed, settling back into the couch and scratching at my palms. “I’m covered in glass, and I’ve got demonic symbols on both my hands. Also, I’m about to go crazy and die. Are we just going to sit around and have a jam session?”

  “You need to calm down so we can think. Music does that for you. Since you were little.”

  He strummed again, and I recognized I Am the Highway. He played without singing, which was fine. My eyes grew heavy, even as I constantly coughed at the tickle in the back of my throat.

  “Tell me,” I urged, sliding down the back of the couch to lie on my side. He moved into another song that I recognized but couldn’t place. “About what you regret.”

  He continued to stare at his fingers. “You were four years old. I watched you dancing at that wedding reception. You kept spinning and spinning so your dress would flare out at your sides. I knew it was you. I knew you were the one who would save our world, and end the prophecy that my father had died for. So I took you.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember that night. I was only four, he was right, and the memories were hazy and blurred. It was Logan and Violet’s wedding reception, and he’d kidnapped me, leaving nothing behind but a note telling my parents not to bother coming to find me until Logan was dead.

  “I waited until you ran into the hallway. I drugged you. When you woke up in my car, you were so scared. I hated myself. In the race to try to end the prophecy and save the world, I’d lost a little of my humanity. You just stared at me with those wide eyes, so afraid.”

  “Cole,” I rasped, clearing my throat again. “It’s in the past. My dad forgave you. I forgave you. You didn’t try to hurt me. You aren’t any worse than my own father, going through life after life trying to find my mom and save her life… and failing.”