Eighth Note (Fire Ballad Book 1) Read online

  “Dollhouses, stuffed animals, books, games… looks like every other little girl’s room.”

  “How many other little girl’s rooms have you been in?” I teased him, and he twisted his mouth into a disgusted grimace.

  “Eva.”

  “My room looked nothing like this. I had the best collection of vintage records, and music posters all over my walls. And my sketches.”

  “No stuffed animals? Not even one?”

  “Well, a bunny my Aunt Morgan gave me. That’s it.”

  “Any signed albums?” He asked, rifling through the books on the white shelf. The purple walls reminded me of the inside of the recording booth in the studio, and I cringed.

  “Yeah, of course. My dad spoiled me. But my favorite was Ben E. King. I still haven’t met him. Someday,” I added, waving my hand at the bed.

  The dust ruffle blew upwards, and the mattress tilted slightly. I almost expected a diary to be crammed there, just waiting with all the answers we were looking for, but instead I found nothing but the edge of the fitted sheet.

  “Look,” Cole gestured out the second floor window. “I see her apartment. Come on, let’s go out there. There’s nothing here.”

  Following him down the stairs, I could feel Bradley’s eyes on us as we made our way through the back of the house. He’s watching our every move, probably reporting back to the Fayettes. I made a mental note to check Gerald Fayette’s office.

  The apartment was a refurbished pool house, with two bedrooms and an enormous, vaulted ceiling. I waved the lights on again, and Cole moved to what appeared to be a small studio near the second bedroom.

  Bradley’s voice startled me. “I don’t really know what you’re looking for. The place has been turned upside down by the investigators.”

  “You look like you could use some rest,” I answered the man, turning a slow circle with my finger at my side.

  He shrugged, but yawned at the same time. “I… I’m not really tired…,”

  “You could stretch out on that couch until we’re finished. We’ll only be a few minutes,” I suggested calmly, my words smooth and motherly as I patted the back of the couch. “You’d hear everything we say and do. We won’t be long.”

  Bradley was already lowering himself to the couch. Within seconds, the man was sleeping, his chest rising and falling as he snored lightly in an enchanted sleep.

  “Damn. I forgot you could do that. Must come in handy with a toddler.”

  “I’d never use my magic to put Perry to sleep,” I defended, though admittedly I’d considered it on numerous miserable middle-of-the-night feedings. “I don’t trust it. What if she never woke up?”

  “You’ve learned to control so much of your magic, Eva. You have to trust yourself.”

  His words sounded so much like Will’s, and I reached for my phone, glancing again at the screen.

  No missed calls.

  “Look,” he gestured to the empty table top. “Nothing. Her computer, her music equipment, everything’s gone.”

  “Evidence,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes at my phone. “Obviously Monroe is the only one who believes in us. Everyone else is looking for a terrorist. Some kind of biological warfare.” I wiped my thumb across the CNN marquee on my iPhone, sighing. “Two hundred and ten people, Cole. We have to go back to the cabin. I need you to… restrain me. Somehow. I don’t know what’s about to happen.”

  Coughing, I choked on my own words, and he crossed the studio to me. As much as I knew it wasn’t appropriate, it felt nice- comforting- as he pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me. “I can’t restrain you, kid. You’re an element. A world of power. I don’t know what’s going to happen, either, but I’m going to help you fight this. Or go down trying.”

  I pressed my face to his chest before lifting my eyes to his. I must have looked as sick as I felt, because his expression moved from worried to piteous. He bent to kiss my forehead again, but this time his lips lingered for longer than before. His hands held my face, firmly, as though he fought some internal battle that I would have loved to hear.

  And then, he kissed my lips.

  Dry. Brushing. Nothing at all like the insatiable dreams of his searing kisses that I’d had over the past few days. As though reading my mind, he returned his mouth to mine, this time slower, coaxing me to respond.

  “Knock it off.” I growled, flattening both of my palms over his chest and shoving him backwards.

  He swallowed, shaking his head and exhaling with a strangled groan. “Fuck me. I’m sorry. That was out of line. So fuckin’ out of line. I’m sorry Eva.”

  “Look,” I hurried past him to the bookshelves that lined the wall of the studio, ignoring his tortured apology. “Look at these titles. Binaural Beats and the Human Psyche. Music and Theology. Slaughter and Sacrifice. Holy hell. What is this, the official shelf of clues?”

  “Don’t ignore me. I’m sorry I kissed you. Do you forgive me?”

  I ignored him again, reaching for Slaughter and Sacrifice. “Dark Commerce. Chapter One. Okay, it’s safe to say that Nina Fayette was dabbling in creepy.”

  “Look at me.” I sighed and lifted my eyes from the book. Cole raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, kid.”

  “Listen. I’m already beating myself up for the dreams I’ve been having. What you just did was real, and I had no control over it. So it’s on you, Cole. I like that you want to kiss me. I even like that you want to fuck me, that’s fine too, I like being wanted. But you can’t. Kiss me or fuck me. So I forgive you, and in your own words- get over it.”

  “I have no idea what came over me. I don’t think of you- like that. I can’t believe I fuckin’ did it. I’ll tell Will.” He offered, guilt thick in his voice.

  “Pfft,” I almost laughed, giving him a sarcastic shake of my head. “Don’t tell Will that you kissed me. You’d be safer locked in a cabin with a demon.” He paused, looking between me and the book in my hand. I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

  He froze, and I could see the wheels turning as he made sense of something. “She didn’t make any deals. She’d still be alive.”

  “Nina?”

  “Yeah. Nina. She’s dead. Someone else conjured this demon. Nina was just a means to get him here. A sacrifice.”

  I blinked, looking down at the book. “It didn’t want… Nina. It wants me.”

  “Exactly. Someone brought it here. Someone who’s been studying this shit for years. Someone who wanted something so badly, he’d sacrifice his own daughter to get it.”

  I tried to follow, coughing into my sleeve. “Gerald Fayette? You think he made a deal with a demon?”

  “He’s studied all this music-binaural-beat-bullshit for years. He’s a psychologist.”

  We both turned. The door opened as if on cue, and Gerald Fayette met our anxious stares.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Mr. Mathison. Mrs. Reed. Do we have any answers?”

  I watched him tug at the collar of his Armani shirt. Bradley began to stir on the couch, and Gerald looked down at his head of security in confusion.

  The apartment around me slowed, and I could suddenly see everything with perfect clarity.

  Dropping the books to the empty desk, I tucked my phone into my pocket, crossing the room.

  “But we’re not looking for answers, Mr. Fayette. We’re looking for questions,” I reminded him, turning my palm upward.

  He looked down at the branded symbol on my hand, nearly stumbling backward.

  “What… is that…,”

  “I was the mark all along,” I tipped my head back toward Cole without turning. “You must have known that Cole would bring me here. How?”

  “I don’t know… what you’re talking about…,”

  “How?” I roared, this time setting the four corners of the guest house on fire.

  Fayette turned to make a run for the doorway, but I yanked my hand through the air, slamming the door closed and setting it on fire. “Wait- I’ll tell you, but I can’t
if you burn this place down with us inside,” he whined, covering his face and coughing into his arm.

  The smoke was already thick in the air. Cole covered his own mouth, rushing to my side.

  “Put the fire out, Eva-…,”

  “Did you know it was him?” I shrieked, pointing at Fayette. “Did you bring me here for him?”

  “What? Eva, no, you have to believe me,” he shook his head. “I’d have never hurt you like this.”

  I searched his eyes through the growing smoke, trying to read his expression. The pain in his gaze told me that he was telling the truth. Growling, I extinguished the fire, turning to Fayette and slamming him against the wall. Bound with invisible chains, he groaned, trying to wriggle loose.

  “Believe me!” Cole shouted, and I turned to him, nodding once.

  “I do. I believe you. Get Bradley out of here. I want to talk to Fayette alone.”

  “No! Don’t leave me here with her!” Gerald was screaming by now, and I walked to him slowly, watching Cole help Bradley up from the corner of my eye.

  “You wanted me here. I’m here,” I hissed, the words from my dreams moving through my subconscious and pouring through my lips like venom. Trust in my powers. I lifted my finger, grinning up at Fayette. “We’re going to play a game. I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer me. If you don’t, I’m going to reach into your chest and burn you until you decide to change your mind. Are we clear?”

  “Yes!” He cried. Cole had Bradley slumped over his shoulder, moving toward the door.

  “Just in case you’re wondering, it feels like this.”

  I tapped the man’s chest through his designer shirt, and the painful scream made Cole cringe.

  “Eva!” Cole warned, but I ignored him.

  “It’s a world of suck. So are we ready?” I asked.

  The man nodded, and I smirked as a slow, dark stain appeared on his khaki pants.

  “Yes, piss your pants. Cry. Be afraid of me. You wanted me here. Why,” I demanded, my hand aimed at his chest again.

  “It wanted you from the beginning,” he sobbed, his wrists reddening from the unseen binds. “It watched you. It wanted you.”

  “What did?” I demanded, tightening the chains until blood dripped down his wrists. He moaned, his chin falling to his chest.

  “The demon. He came to me. He had a bird with him, a vulture, and he had all of these… medals… that he wore, some kind of uniform… he offered me success in exchange for you. But I had to give him a sacrifice…,”

  “Success in what?”

  “Binaural Medicine. Accreditation. Recognition. I’d be the pioneer in the field. My use of music as a drug to treat and cure mental illness… I couldn’t get the funding to sponsor my research. Every day men, women, and children are drugged- prisoners in their own minds- and prescribed anti-psychotics to manage mental illness that could easily be cured with binaural treatments-…,”

  “And Nina was helping you?” I asked, chills crawling over my skin like millions of tiny earwigs.

  “Yes. She believed in my research, and in me. But… there had to be a sacrifice. I had to prove to him that I would keep my word… and Nina…,”

  “You fed her to him. You killed your own daughter!”

  “I found you through your blog. He told me about your connection to Mathison, so I hired him…,”

  “Say his name! Murmur, right? Those are the letters on my hands. This is his symbol, his mark,” I coughed, watching Cole burst through the doorway.

  “Yes. He’s been tracking you since you met Nina. Calling to you. Now he’s moving through hundreds of innocent people, those people who listened to my daughter’s song. It opened their subconscious and left them vulnerable to him. But every time he finds that it’s not you, he… moves on.”

  “He kills them!”

  “They have freewill, they kill themselves,” he defended, his head rolling on his shoulders. “When he gets you, finally, then I get my recognition.”

  “The deal.” I thought about Kellan’s words.

  Find this person, and you find your answer. If he breaks his part of the bargain, the demon takes him, instead.

  Cole’s voice startled me. “Your bargain… was to deliver Eva. To him.”

  Fayette nodded weakly.

  “Yes. And for him to take her.”

  “Then it’s done.” I let my arm fall to my side, and at the same time Fayette hit the floor in a sodden heap of tears and urine. “Nina was your sacrifice. And I am your deal.”

  “No one else was meant to die. I’m trying to save people, not hurt them,” he sobbed, curling into a ball on the floor. “Nina was so selfless. She would have done anything for me and my research.”

  “But you didn’t ask her if she wanted to die for it, did you, you fuckin’ asshole?” Cole grabbed Fayette by the neck, slamming him into the wall. “Eva’s baby girl should grow up motherless because you want your name in fuckin’ medical books? On the side of a fuckin’ building?”

  “Cole,” I coughed violently, bent over, trying to catch my breath.

  “And you used me to bring her right to you,” he snarled, slamming the man’s head into the wall and knocking him out.

  “We have to go,” I finally caught my breath, shaking my head. “Back to the cabin. Whatever’s going to happen to me, I want to be as far away from people as possible. Okay? Cole?”

  He stared at Fayette’s limp body on the ground for another long second before lifting his eyes to me. “I’m sorry. If I’d have known…,”

  “You didn’t know. I didn’t know. Demons… angels… they are all a lot older than a couple of baby immortals, Cole. Drive me to the cabin. Please. Hurry,” I begged, my voice barely strong enough to finish my sentence.

  He caught me in his arms, turning to kick the door open with his booted foot before carrying me to his car. The coughing was far worse than before, and I struggled to breathe, my lungs feeling like they were closing in on themselves.

  He buckled me into the passenger’s seat and moved around the car, glancing at his phone. “Two hundred and forty, Eva.”

  I fumbled with my cell phone, trying again for Will. When I got his voicemail, I just turned toward the window and listened to his voice, breaking into terrified tears.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We made it as far as the dirt road when I started heaving.

  Cole nearly tore the door from its hinges, helping me to the edge of the road as I coughed. Gagging for what felt like centuries, I finally vomited.

  The bitter burn of bile in my esophagus was nothing compared to the horrid ache in my chest. Gripping his arm, I gagged again, this time retching so violently that I felt the excruciating pain of my own rib cracking.

  Cole heard the bone snap, cursing as he supported me in his arms.

  In the warm afternoon breaks of light beaming through the treetops, I threw up again, only this time, mounds of wet, crawling bugs landed in the mess at my feet.

  “What the fuck-…,”

  “Oh… God,” I sobbed, heaving again, choking on the last of the earwigs swarming in my throat and mouth. Cole wiped at my face, and only then did I realize that they had come out of my nose, too, crawling along my lips.

  “Jesus,” he held me, unscrewing a water bottle and pouring it over my face. I grabbed it from his hand, swirling and gargling the liquid in my mouth before spitting it into the dirt.

  “They’re gone,” I rasped, more for my own comfort than for his. He helped me back into the car, doubling his speed and sending dust in our wake.

  I guessed that I’d fallen asleep in the few minutes it took to get to the house. Cole was reaching for me, and I let him pick me up, not caring about decency anymore. My rib was already healing, but the trauma of having just vomited live bugs left me broken and speechless. He carried me to the couch, gently laying me on the cushions before moving to the kitchen.

  I peeled my eyes open, realizing the cabin had resumed its dusty, age
d appearance. Waving my hand, I tried to change the room, but broke into another coughing fit.

  “It’s okay,” Cole appeared again, this time with a washcloth wrung with cold water. “Hold on, kid, I’m going to figure something out,” he soothed, wiping my face and mouth as he brushed my hair away from my forehead.

  “Please just… tell Will something for me,” I tried to sit up, but he shook his head.

  “Now, none of that-…,”

  “Please, Cole.”

  He sighed, moving to the couch to lie next to me. I blinked away hot tears, the effort to form words almost too difficult. “Tell Will… that I’ve loved him since I was a little girl. That when I’d play our song,” I coughed again, into his chest, and he comforted me quietly. “I’d imagine that he was dancing with me. Tell him that I love him. I love where he’s come from, and who he’s become. And that I admire him, and that… that he’s my strength. My conscience.”

  “I will.” He promised, his voice rumbling through his chest, against my lips.

  “Promise me you won’t let me hurt him or Perry,” I broke down, gripping his tee-shirt in my fists. “End it. Please, Cole. Kill me. Don’t let it take me over.”

  He nodded against my forehead. “Okay, honey. I know.”

  “Promise me.”

  He sighed. “I promise.”

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that, me crying, him holding me.

  Darkness crept over the house from the bottom up, and I looked toward the walls, confused.

  I was suspended in the air, higher than the windows.

  Turning my eyes, I realized that I was looking down at the couch.

  Cole lay beneath me, staring up at me, frozen in motion. I turned to my hands, realizing that I was crouched in the ceiling beams, suspended by only my own strength.

  “Eva?”

  Cole’s voice drew my attention. I stared down at him and opened my mouth to say yes, but all that came out was a scratch.

  A record scratch.

  I was at least fifteen feet in the air, but my fear of heights was… gone.