Page 52 of Grave Devil
But what if I don’t want him to?That part I don’t say out loud. I can’t until I understand it myself.
DRAVEN
Ilift the lid off the picnic basket and double-check I have everything. Gin, check. Cigarettes, check. Poison, check. The raven’s blade… I finger the transmuted metal, gliding my fingers across the smooth flat of it. It’s cold at first, but then instantly warms from the contact. If I hold it for too long, however, it becomes scalding and almost impossible to grip without wincing.
I suspect the boys of Raven’s Gate fare better when handling it. They’ve had years of practice, whereas it’s been in my possession for mere months. It belongs with them really. With Nocturnus. And knowing they are coming here to retrieve it brings a sense of relief I cannot explain. The darkness that emanates from this knife is suffocating.
But nothing compares to the thick sludge-like shadow that’s been following me around since Mia opened the veil at the Wishing Tree. It’s part of me yet made up of the strangest material. It seems sad at times, angry at others. But it leaves me be, for the most part, no doubt sensing my aversion to it.Him…
My mother never spoke about her nightmare man. Not to me anyway. And why would she? In order to keep up the ruse of me being Noble Blackwell’s son, and not the spawn ofa nightmare man, she had to keep quiet. Especially after she saw how Grandma Penny wasted no time kicking out her own pregnant daughter when it was revealed that she, too, gave in to her nightmare man.
My poor cousin, Maureen, never knew any of us, or where she came from, or even who her real father was, until recently. And once that illusion severs, there’s no coming back. And yet it instantly shed light on why she and I were born with so much darkness. Why it follows us around everywhere.
So, no, my mother, who was lucky enough to marry into the Blackwell family, was never going to give up her wealth and status for anything. She clung to that secret her whole life and took it with her to the grave. My father knew I was not his, everyone did, but they never could prove it was a nightmare man.
Only women born in Ever Graves have nightmare men. And I am the only one who knew that my mother was, in fact, born here, despite having told everyone that she was born in Hemlock Valley. She let it slip once after drinking too much gin. I told her to never repeat it, and she didn’t. We never spoke about it again.
A wispy tendril stirs in my periphery.Him. He gets closer every time I think of my mother. I wonder if she loved him the same way Mia loves Nox. I wonder what she called him. I suppose I could ask. I could pull him into existence instead of continuing to treat him like an apparition. But isn’t that all he is now? When my mother died, he became untethered. Her mind was his prison, and it was disintegrated when she took her last breath. It released him. And yet here he is, stalking me in my own house like a resident ghost. I suppose he has nowhere else to go…
Before the guilt and pity swallow me whole, I grab the basket of essentials and head downstairs. Rodrick is waiting, the engine running. I catch my reflection in the back window, and it startlesme. My seventeenth-century attire stuns as well as it pleases. It’s a far cry from my modern Italian suits. With a silk-ruffled shirt and trousers, both black, the look is complete with a dark-purple velvet coat. I look like a fucking vampire actually.
Rodrick smirks. “You look impeccable, sir. Quit fussing.”
A warmth fills me when he scolds me. It’s fatherly and something I appreciate only him doing. I tip my top hat to him. “The things I do for tradition.”
We swing by the garage first and pick up Bones. He’s decked out in a pale-pink velvet coat with gold tassels. His dark gray shirt is looser than mine with fewer ruffles and is open at the top to reveal the black, inky swirls of his tattoos. His trousers are also pink velvet but less restrictive at the ankle.
“Bro, we look like vampires,” Bones echoes me unknowingly.
Except Bones looks like more of a badass than me. Even in the most formal attire, he still looks lethal and dangerous. You can’t pretty him up that well. And it suits him.
I offer him a cigarette before lighting one up for myself. “Let’s go get our diva now.”
“Aries?” Bones snorts.
“Precisely.”
Bones takes a long drag and exhales out the window. “You nervous about the Wild Hunt? It’s gonna be a bit different for us this year.”
I sigh and blow out a thick cloud of smoke. “You know I don’t get nervous.” But he’s right about everything being different.
All throughout town, there are people in costumes, dancing and laughing in the street. The storefronts hang lanterns and holly in their windows and doorways, symbols to pay respect to Krampus but also to ward him off. These old traditions date back centuries. Some called it Yule, then Christmas. My family still calls it Saturnalia.
The restaurants all open their doors, welcoming people in with birch branches, honey mead, mulled cider, and delicious cakes and tea sandwiches. It’s like a pub crawl, if you will. When we were teenagers, we used to sneak in and terrorize everyone.
One year, the three of us got so drunk that Grandma Penny ordered Rodrick and two other housemen to throw us into the pool to sober us up. She even made us sleep in the boathouse that night. But that was a huge mistake because that’s where we kept our secret stash of booze and poison.
We smoked and drank so much that we thought we were talking to fish. One of my favorite nights… Things were simpler then.
“Areyounervous about seeing Sonny? It might not be him. This Skelker could be fucking with us. He’s taken great pleasure in getting inside Mia’s head.”
Bones’s gaze hardens to steel. His shoulders tense. “If he’s lying, I will fucking kill him. But if that monster is really my baby brother… I’ll kill anyone who tries to keep me from him.”
I shudder because Bones’s admonition is a promise I know he’s good for. He loves me and Aries almost more than anything. I sayalmostbecause his family, his siblings—Felix, Lettie, and Sonny—are his heart and soul. They come first and he will protect all of them with his bare hands.
I squeeze his shoulder. “We’ve got your back. Aries and me. And Nox and Mia. You’re not alone in this. We will always protect you and Lettie. And if the Skelker is your brother, then we will deal with it. We’ll protect him too.”
He grinds his teeth, his jaw flexing. “Appreciate you, Dray. I don’t ask for much. You know I’m as fucking low-maintenance as they come. But no one lays a hand on Sonny. No one. That’s all I ask.”
