assuming that earring is in Devina's possession.” The guy disappeared into the hall bath and returned with dripping hands that were held up like a surgeon's. “Jim, go into my coat and take out the leather roll that's in the right pocket.”
Jim fished around and pulled free a ten-inch-long, two-inch-wide bundle that was secured with a white satin ribbon.
“Open it.”
Jim's hands were quick to pull the bow free and then he unrolled the leather, revealing a dagger. Made of glass.
“Don't touch the knife,” Eddie said.
“What the hell are you going to do with that?” Vin demanded.
“We're going to open you up.” The man pointed to the circle of burning candles. “This is spiritual surgery, and before you ask, yup. Gonna hurt like a bitch. But when we're through, you're not going to be scarred or anything. Now lie down, head here at the north.”
Vin looked at the men's faces as the pair of them stared over at him. Grim. Serious. Especially Eddie.
“I've never seen a knife like that before,” Vin murmured as he looked at the thing.
“It's crystal,” Eddie said, as if he knew Vin needed a second before he turned himself over to the ritual. “And yeah, take a deep breath, but we do need to get started.” He glanced at his buddy. “Jim? You stay next to Marie- Terese. Eventually you'll be doing these, but right now you're just on the watch team, and if the shit gets critical, you're in charge of her.”
“Do you read minds?” Vin asked the guy.
“Sometimes. Now can we get down to business? I don't know how long Adrian's going to be able to hold her.”
Vin stared into Marie-Terese's eyes and hoped she read all that he wished he could speak. When she nodded as if she understood perfectly, he stepped over the salt circle and stretched out in the centeft Eddie had gauged the size perfectly: The soles of Vin's feet just touched the far edge when his head was right at the northern candle.
“Close your eyes, Vin.”
Vin took one last look at Marie-Terese and then he lowered his lids and tried to relax his body. The floor was hard against his shoulder blades, his ass, and his heels; and his heart was going at a clip in his rib cage. The real shitter was not being able to see, however—not only did he feel isolated, but the sound of everything got cranked up too high. From his own breathing to the footfalls of Eddie walking around him to the whispering of strange words over his naked body, it was all in nerve-racking HD.
And it didn't take long for him to lose his patience. Here he was, laid out like some kind of meal to be consumed, in front of Marie-Terese, who was no doubt— A subtle vibration came up through the floor.
Vin felt the tuning-fork reverberation first in his palms and feet and then it continued inward, the concentric circles drawing toward the center of him. As he absorbed the rhythmic waves, a subtle breeze tickled across the hair on his arms and his thighs and his chest, and he wondered whether someone had opened a window.
No…things had begun to turn.
Whether he started to spin or the room did, he wasn't sure, but abruptly the waves and the breeze coalesced and became indistinguishable as they swirled around him…or he swirled around. Like water rushing through a drain, speed gathered and his stomach revolted, nausea making that sandwich he'd eaten with Marie-Terese go green and spoiled in his gut.
Just before he threw up, the merry-go-round stopped and he went weightless. No longer spinning, he was suspended in warm air, and thank fuck for it. Inhaling deep, he felt his belly ease up and the tension in his arms and legs release, his muscles going lax.
And then his sight returned. Good God, even though his lids were down, he could see white light: The source was somewhere beneath him, piercing up through the floor he was supposedly on, his body carving out a pattern in the illumination.
Eddie's face appeared above his own.
The guy's mouth moved as if he were talking, and Vin didn't hear the words that were spoken so much as know them in his mind:
Vin tried to nod, but when Eddie shook his head, he just thought the word
The crystal knife rose above Vin's chest, the weapon held steady in Eddie's big hands. As the white light hit it, a brilliant rainbow of color sparkled, everything from pinks and baby blues and pale yellows to bloodred and navy blue and deep amethyst exploding from its length.
Indecipherable words appeared in Vin's head as Eddie spoke faster and faster.
Bracing himself, Vin focused on the razor-sharp blade point.
It was going into his heart. He just knew it.
When the inevitable descent came, it was faster than a blink and slower than a century—and the impact was worse than he'd prepared for. The instant the dagger sank into Vin's flesh, he felt as if every nerve in his body transmitted the pain.
Then Eddie sliced him right open.
Vin screamed into the maelstrom as his body cleaved open at his breastbone, his spine straining as he contorted upward. He was vaguely aware of Eddie speaking words, and then the man's glowing hand reached inside the locus of the agony, making it so much worse.
Probing. Fisting. A great pulling.
Whatever Eddie was grabbing and yanking was holding on tight, and abruptly Vin couldn't breathe for the great pressure on his ribs and lungs. Gasping, he struggled to draw air down in the midst of it all.
He started to scream again. Which made no sense because he had no breath.
As the battle for extraction raged, Vin fought to hold on not for himself, but for Marie-Terese. He would not die in front of her. He would not die tonight in front of her. He would not—
But Eddie didn't let up and the thing didn't loosen and Vin started to fail. His heart went from pounding to tripping to failing to pump, and with the fibrillation came a numbing cold that overtook him. He tried to fight it, tried to will his body back into functioning, but there was no reserve left to call upon. Even as his mind and soul wanted to stay, his flesh was done.
Except then the evil loosened.
At first, there was just the slightest of slips, as if only one of the tendrils that clung to him snapped free. But then another broke, and another, and more in a bunch. And—
With a screeching tear, like metal was being torn apart, a blackness was lifted from him, taken out of him, torn free…and his first thought was that he felt far too light in his body in its absence. His second was that he was still dying—
Vin was saved by the white light.
All at once, as if it knew how little time he had left, he was resuscitated, the illumination's blanketing warmth easing the pain, and then wiping it clean as if the torture had never existed. He soared free, light and transparent, indistinguishable from what surrounded him.
He wept in ecstatic relief and gratitude.
It was the first time in thirty-three years that he'd been alone in his own skin.
Jim's eyes had divided loyalties.
Every time a car rolled slowly down the street, he stared out the window. Any noise around the house? Creak of a tree? Breeze rattling the window? It was the same. He was constantly searching corners, waiting for Devina to come roaring in.
And yet the center of the room consumed him.
He'd never seen anything like it. From the moment the floor dropped free from Vin and that blast of white light shot up from nowhere, to the electric second when Eddie put the knife to use and then started pulling, it was all so incredible.
God, that knife.
