“She doesn’t deserve your guilt,” Jacks said. His eyes were flinty, more silver than blue as he gazed at the body. “There are heroes, and there are villains. She made her choice between the two, and she got the ending that came with it.” Jacks said the words through gritted teeth, and Evangeline had the sudden fear that he wasn’t just talking about Petra but himself.
“You should go now,” he said.
For once, Evangeline wanted to do as Jacks told her, but she couldn’t leave just yet. She took a wobbly step toward the body.
Jacks scowled.
“She was another key,” Evangeline said.
“I gathered from the hair.”
“She also had a stone—or she said she had a stone.” Evangeline didn’t look up to see how Jacks responded to this news or how he looked at her as she bent down toward the body. It felt so wrong to search Petra’s corpse for the rock. But both Evangeline’s life and Apollo’s rested on her finding it.
Her fingers felt clumsy as she removed the first glove from Petra’s hand. Evangeline hoped to find a ring or a bracelet, but Petra’s arm was bare of jewels.
“Which stone did she say she had?” Jacks asked.
“The youth stone.” Evangeline pulled off Petra’s other glove, and gooseflesh covered her arm.
A shining golden cuff was hooked around her wrist, and in its center was a glowing stone the perfect blue of Jacks’s unearthly eyes.
Evangeline didn’t want to touch it. She’d thought it was dangerous last night when it had made her half-mad with jealousy. Now she thought again of Jacks’s warning when they’d first arrived: If the stones are here, people are going to die at this party.
Now someone had, but it wasn’t just because of the stones’ power, it was because of this quest to open the arch. Evangeline wondered once again at what it held. What could be so valuable or so dangerous that it would need to be locked with life-altering prophecies and magic stones that would require killing to retrieve?
“Evangeline.” Jacks’s voice was soft but urgent. “We can’t linger here. You need to go pack. I’ll take care of the stone.”
* * *
There was so much blood on Evangeline’s eyelet dress. One of the embroidered foxes was covered in a great smudge of red. She needed to take it off. She needed to change and pack. She’d killed someone, and because of Kristof’s article, Apollo and Tiberius could be on their way here to kill her right now.
But Evangeline was feeling overwhelmed.
What should she do first? Take off her bloody clothes? Wash the blood streaked on her face and the red staining her hands? Or should she pack? And what did one pack when one was fleeing for her life?
She’d brought so many party gowns to LaLa’s, but she wouldn’t use them now.
She needed a cloak and boots and—
Through the wardrobe mirror, she saw her door edge open.
Evangeline went very still, or she tried to, but her limbs were trembling again as she watched a leather boot step in—one that did not belong to Jacks.
“Eva, are you in here?” Luc’s head poked through the door next. “I was worried about—”
He stilled as soon as he saw her, eyes going wide and fangs coming out at the sight of the blood on her dress and face.
Her chest erupted with panic. “Luc, you should go—”
“But you’re bleeding!” He sounded concerned, but his eyes were on fire with hunger. “What happened?”
“It’s not my—” Before Evangeline could finish, pain lashed down her back in horrible streaks. “Argh!” It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. She doubled over, barely able to remain on her feet as she felt the skin on her back split open.
“Eva!” In a flash, Luc had an arm wrapped around her waist to keep her from falling to the floor. But it didn’t stop the pain.
It burned. It ached. It bled.
She glimpsed a lengthening of fangs, but there was nothing she could do to push away from Luc—the pain was all she could think about. At first, she didn’t know what was happening. She thought maybe she was being punished for killing Petra. But then she remembered Apollo and the mirror curse. Someone must have been torturing him, and by default tortur ing her. She could feel blood seeping through her dress as she cried out again. “Ahhh—”
“Oh, gods, Eva—your back.” Luc’s voice was thick with hunger, and the arm around her waist felt almost painfully hot.
“Get away from her!” Jacks roared from the doorway.