Eighth Note (Fire Ballad Book 1) Read online

  “Morning. Mmm, pancakes for breakfast, Pea?”

  She stuck her thumb in her mouth and clung to me, nestling her face in my neck.

  “She knows that you are thinking about leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving forever, just for a few days. No more than a week.”

  “Ah, Eva. Once you’ve made up your mind, no force in any world can stop you.”

  “You can,” I argued softly. He wrapped his arms around both of us, kissing the crown of scarlet curls on my head.

  “Do you want me to stop you?” He asked, his grip tightening on my back.

  Part of me wanted to say yes. The memory of that video from last night was enough to make me cling tighter to him, and Perry, and our little house on the ocean shore.

  My family.

  The burning curiosity that nagged the back of my mind forced me to think about Cole’s words. Nina’s song was making people go crazy. I knew from our interview that she’d been experimenting with something new in auto-tuning, and I needed to do some research.

  “Go, then. School is over for the summer. Pea and I have much to do,” he assured me half-heartedly, gathering Perry as she reached for him. He carried her to the Pack-n-Play in our bedroom, assembling toys around her as we spoke.

  “One week, okay? It’s already all over the news. I’m sure it’s drug related.” I wasn’t sure at all. I was sure that she stabbed herself in the brain with her Manolo Blahnik’s, and it was scary-as-fuck.

  I needed to find answers.

  “I require steady communication. For my peace of mind, Eva. Understood?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, reaching for my iPhone and wagging it in the air. “I’ll text and call you constantly. I’ll keep it with me at all times.”

  “And weapons?”

  “I already know exactly what I’m taking. At least the Glock, my knife, and my magic, of course.”

  “Of course.” He tipped my chin upward, focusing on my eyes. When I was calm, and not using magic, they were emerald green. When my powers would surface, they were amber, glowing brighter in the darkness. “Promise me that you will not listen to the song.”

  Fuck. I knew that was coming. I cringed. “Will, I-…,”

  “Promise me, Eva.”

  Puffing a lone curl from my line of vision, I sighed. “Okay. I promise.”

  He considered me for a moment, finally conceding. “Be safe, my love. I will worry.”

  “Will.” Exasperated, I moved my lips over the corner of his mouth, teasing. He centered my face, parting my lips with his tongue.

  I moaned softly, gripping his neck, sliding my palms over his jaw. He caught me as I jumped into his arms, supporting my thighs as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “If you are in danger, you will call to me,” he ordered. “I love you,” he added, and I came apart a little, almost doubting myself.

  Go. You have to go. Straightening, I gave him a confident smile. “I love you, too. You’re my king. Who else would I call?”

  He sighed deeply, kissing me once again before setting me to my feet. “And you are certain that you can trust Cole?”

  “He’s looking out for the greater good. A philosopher.”

  “Philanthropist,” he corrected, giving my ass a quick slap as I grinned and shrugged.

  “Whatever.”

  I threw together a bag and grabbed my iPad before saying goodbye to Will and Perry in the driveway one more time. Cole waited patiently in the car, and when I climbed into the passenger seat, he gestured to the radio. “Twelve hour drive. Music is all yours.”

  I raised my eyebrows, flashing him my pointer finger. “Um, I don’t need a radio.”

  He pulled away from my house, nodding. “Right. Almost forgot.”

  We weren’t on the highway yet before I’d started Track 1 of Nina Fayette’s first album, Indicative. Going to work on my iPad, I answered a few quick messages, posted the blog I’d prepared last night for today, and then went to Google.

  “Auto tuning. Is that the new robot voice machine?” Cole glanced down as I typed, and I elbowed him without lifting my eyes from the screen.

  “Drive. Eyes on road.”

  “What’s that one… rapper… Willy-am?”

  “Will.i.am. And it’s not new. It was introduced as early as 1998 by Cher for Believe. Now it’s used all the time to… save pitch. Salvage a song.”

  “That’s some bullshit right there. Look at… Bob Dylan. He was off key way before auto tuning, and he’s fuckin’ mint.”

  “What?” I finally lifted my eyes from my lap, turning to him. “Bob Dylan is not off key. His voice is deliberate. A stamp. It’s his copyright. Auto-tuning Bob Dylan would be like removing the falsetto from Michael Jackson. Or taking the G7 from Mariah Carey.”

  “You look like you want to kick my ass, lady.”

  “And you have too many opinions about shit you don’t know,” I clipped, returning to the iPad. “Nina wasn’t a fan of auto-tune. She wanted to be known for her a jazzy, lounge voice, like Ella Fitzgerald.”

  “Really? Mariah can hit a G7?”

  “What do you know about music?” I finally asked, calling upon Buddha and Ghandi and butterflies and rainbows and the Dhalai Lama to find my lady-like manners.

  “I play the guitar. I’ve listened to music for decades. That’s it.”

  I stared at him, trying to figure him out. He was different from Will, not in a bad way. Honest, maybe a little too sincere, and… amused. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me, which kept raising my guard and forcing me to act like a raging bitch.

  “You any good?”

  “I’m better than Dylan.”

  The challenge in his voice forced a grin to poke at the corners of my mouth, and I quickly lowered my face to my lap. “That’s cocky, Mathison.”

  And then, I winced.

  Now, before Will, I’d dated a few guys, one in particular named Liam. We did everything under the sun except fuck, and I was glad, because I only counted Will as my official first. Will wasn’t the jealous type, just protective.

  I instantly felt guilty saying the word cock- in any sense- to Cole. It felt prickly, like blurred lines or bad intentions, and I wanted to make it very clear that I had no interest in anything but Nina Fayette’s murder.

  “I’ll prove it to you later.” He answered, gesturing to the road ahead. “You hungry? We left before you had breakfast.”

  “I’m always hungry.”

  We passed up a Bojangles and settled on breakfast at Chick-fil-A. He insisted on paying, which opened up an entire conversation that I realized I hadn’t had yet, not with Cole or Will.

  “Where are we staying?”

  “I have a cabin in the Catskills.”

  “Is it a secluded, off the map, quaint little piece of heaven perfect for a rape-and-murder-filled getaway?”

  His sideways glance was speculative. “You’re immortal. And I’m very sure you would set all my shit on fire. Are you making a joke or do you really not trust me?”

  “I’m joking,” I bunched up my egg biscuit paper, shoving it into the fast food bag. “God. Yes, I’d set all your shit on fire. Except that guitar. Let me guess. Fender?” I poked my thumb at the back seat.

  “Jackson.”

  My eyebrows popped up to my hairline. “Yeah?”

  “Custom.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I won’t. Got a collection at home.”

  His twang rolled off his tongue with a smirk, and I pursed my lips, settling back in the seat.

  “Where is home?”

  He sighed, reaching for the radio in an attempt to turn the music down. Nina was scatting about love, and I reminded him that I was in control with a wave of my hand. He watched me lower the volume.

  “North Carolina. The cabin in New York belonged to me… and a friend of mine.”

  “A girl friend?” I teased, logging into my email.

  “She was. Then she was my wife.”

  It occurred to me
then. Though both Will and I were immortal, the woman who married Cole would have had nothing to do with the prophecy.

  She would have been mortal.

  “Did she die?” I asked quietly. He shifted in the seat, changing lanes to pass a slow-moving tractor trailer.

  “You have a way of getting right to the point,” he answered, and I could sense the subject was closed. I was dying to ask more. How old was she? Was it hard to be married to someone, looking and feeling young, while they continued to grow older?

  “Tell me more about what you’ve seen. Over the years. How you’ve helped people.”

  He seemed to welcome the subject change. “Like I said, I knew about the paranormal world clear back in the ‘50’s. When I was sixteen, my mama decided she was going to hunt for this “other world” that my dad rambled on and on about. She was convinced that- even though we buried his body- she could still find him in this other realm. She loved him too much.”

  It was strange hearing him talk about his parents, knowing that his father was Logan from another life. If you believe in reincarnation and immortality, you understand the tragedy of loving someone mortal when you’re destined to live forever.

  I had no choice but to believe. My family was living proof.

  “But… only I… can open the door to Icepond.” I reminded him.

  He nodded once. “She never found anything. Instead, she found some guy named Smash and rode off on the back of his motorcycle when I was seventeen. Never saw her again.”

  “And you turned to a life on the streets? Did you rumble with gangs? Join a turf war?”

  His lips curled in amusement. “Turf war?”

  “Wasn’t there… some kind of war in the ‘50’s? World War II?”

  “How are your parents both history professors and their own kid doesn’t know when World War II went down?”

  “Bor-ing.” I turned the music back up, listening to Nina’s soulful voice.

  “That war was over before I was born, honey. I served in the Gulf in 1991.”

  He didn’t make fun of me as he corrected me, which won him a smile. “When did you first come across something… paranormal?”

  “I returned from Kuwait, and settled into my family home in North Carolina. I’d left in the ‘60’s and moved around, waited for a couple decades to return, and then made sure there were no neighbors or locals who would recognize me. I met Rebecca then, married her, and told her what I was.”

  I listened patiently, pretending to read through my emails.

  “Our life together was peaceful. When she grew to be in her thirties, we moved to a secluded cabin in the Catskills. A place where she could continue to age without drawing attention to our relationship. She… died.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and I found the decency not to push him.

  “No children?”

  He continued to stare ahead. “No. I’m immortal, because of my father. I didn’t want to chance my kid being immortal, too.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking about Perry’s future, and her immortal life. Turning to stare out the window, I watched the trees on I-95. “I’m sorry, Cole.”

  “We had a good life together. Don’t be.”

  He was fumbling for a cigarette, holding it up as if asking permission to smoke in the car. I shrugged, and he rolled down the window.

  “Anyway. Rebecca appeared to me one night after she’d died. Told me there was someone who needed my help.” He took a long drag before holding the cigarette at the cracked window. “The next day, I got a phone call from a woman just outside of Chicago. She said that an angel had given her my number, and that I might be able to help her.”

  “An angel?” I asked. “Rebecca?”

  “I think so. The woman was terrified. Every time she left her home, a child would approach her- wherever she was- and she would immediately feel extreme panic. Fear. The woman became a recluse, and claimed the child continued knocking on her door or ringing her doorbell.”

  “What, like all the time? Neighbor kids?” I suggested, but he shook his head.

  “The child had no eyes. Well, he had eyes, but they were completely black, no pupils.”

  I thought about the video of Nina, trying to suppress a wave of nausea. “Was she telling the truth?”

  “Let me finish, honey,” he urged, and I snapped my jaws shut, narrowing my eyes. I was about to mouth off at him, but he continued before I could speak. “I went to the woman’s house. She asked me to spend the night, because the child usually knocked around three AM. I stayed on her couch. Right at three, I heard the knock.”

  I’d been gripping my iPad so hard that I left half moon nail marks in the soft cover. “Did you answer the door?”

  “Course I did.” He flicked the cigarette out the window. Silent for a long moment, he continued staring straight ahead. “I was never so scared in my life. Not even when I watched my own father kill two people in cold blood, and then get gunned down himself. “

  He cleared his throat, and the music stopped.

  “The child… the thing… brought on fear. Panic. Reached down in your gut and just… twisted. He was no more than nine or ten years old, eyes black, no fuckin’ soul. I told it to go away,” he added. “But it didn’t. It came back every night for three nights. I wasn’t a ghost-buster or demon fighter, I had no fuckin’ clue what I was dealing with. So I told the lady to just move. Just get the hell outta there.”

  His language took a sharp turn for the worst, and I realized that he cursed when he was upset. We had that in common, at least. “And did she?”

  “She did. I helped her pack up her shit and moved her out of there that day. She never saw the things again.”

  “What were they?”

  “Some kind of alien-monster hybrid? Fuck if I know.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He sent me an uneasy glance. “Later that year, I got a call from some guy who said he had a poltergeist on his hands. Some old farm house. The woman I’d helped with the black-eyed kids gave him my number. The whole “helping people” thing just… started. Like that.”

  “Was it a real ghost?”

  He turned to me for a long moment, watching my expression, amused. “Your eyes are huge. I hardly ever seen them green like that. Looks like grass right after a thunderstorm.”

  Processing his words slowly, I blinked. An unfamiliar heat burned my cheeks before I looked back down at my lap. “Was it a real ghost, Cole?”

  “It was real as you and me.”

  I thought back to when my brother and I were kids. We sneaked downstairs and stayed up all night to watch a scary movie marathon. Christopher was only six and hid his eyes, but I’d forced myself to watch every gory, horrifying scene.

  And I ended up wedged between my mom and dad in their bed before the night was over. My dad just kissed my hair, tugging me close and hugging me until I fell asleep.

  I exhaled slowly, fumbling for my cell phone. Will had already texted twice, once with a picture of Perry and once with just three simple words.

  You are safe?

  Moving my thumbs over the screen, I answered him quickly.

  And sound. Love you.

  “How’s married life treating you?” He changed the subject, nodding at my hand. I immediately twisted my diamond ring, shrugging.

  “It’s boring without a kingdom bowing down to me.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t take you for the barefooted, knocked-up kind of gal.”

  “I’m not pregnant,” I snapped, immediately taking offense. Yes, I’d gained a few pounds, and no, I didn’t do the aforementioned squats I’d pledged to do the night before. My stomach was nowhere near paunchy.

  “Expression. Easy, honey.”

  “I work hard on my blog, and I bring in some good money. I’m a writer.”

  “Listen, I’m just an asshole.”

  We were uncomfortably silent for long minutes. Finally, I cleared my throat. “You’re not an asshole. I’m just overly sensitiv
e. Will and I argued about me ‘doing something with my life’ last night. It’s not your fault. Let’s just focus on Nina, okay?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  I grinned politely, liking the sound of that.

  Chapter Six

  Somewhere between North Carolina and I have no idea I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up again until after noon. Sprawled ungainly in the passenger seat, my cheek smashed against the cool glass, I realized that my Converse were missing from my feet.

  “You talk in your sleep. And you kicked your shoes off about twenty minutes ago. That was a treat.”

  “What? My feet don’t stink,” I protested, grabbing my heel and jerking my bare foot to my nose.

  Cole slowed off the exit, his smile widening as he stared at me in my awkward pretzel-fold. “No, but that was damned amusing to watch.”

  “Where are we?” I managed, ignoring him to check my phone. No texts from Will, but a missed call from my mom.

  “Jersey.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Depends on traffic.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I know. You talk. In your sleep,” he repeated, easing the Chevelle into a diner just off the turnpike.

  I stared at the dated building, drawing my brows together. “This place looks shitty.”

  “Food’s damned good. Let’s go.”

  I shot him a don’t-tell-me-what-to-do look while slipping my feet into my Chucks. “If we get food poisoning, I’m only healing me.”

  He only grinned, holding the creaky screen door for me. “After you, little lady.”

  “Well, look at this. Barry!” The waitress’s shrill voice grated my nerves, and she dropped her notepad to her apron, completely ignoring the customer sitting at the booth in front of her. “Cole motherfuckin’ Mathison.”

  “Maggie!” Barry barked, gesturing to the man waiting for her to take his lunch order.

  Maggie only grinned wider. “That you, Cole?”

  I plunked my hands on my hips, arching one eyebrow. “Yes, that’s Cole. Motherfuckin’ Mathison. I’m Eva Reed. And we’re hungry. I take it you all know each other?”

  Barry appeared from the kitchen, his once-white apron splattered with bacon grease and ketchup. “You robbed the cradle with this one,” he eyed me up and down, and Cole shook his head once, touching my elbow to lead me to an empty booth.