All Things Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

hollow and ghostly. He shook his head harder, wincing as it pulled at the scarred tissue at his jaw.
    He would never get used to that feeling, as if bits of him had been peeled off, rolled like dough and super-glued back onto the rest.
    He wondered what Juliet had thought when she’d seen the scars.
    Then remembered the knife and let his head rest against the chair back in grim humor. He didn’t have to wonder, did he? She wanted him dead.
    Even if she couldn’t do it herself.
    Too damned soft.
    Metal creaked, and he raised his head again as her lips parted on a sigh. Ear-length black hair framed her pale skin like a velvet curtain, hanging awkwardly over her closed eyes. Her mouth curved downward in sleep, fuller top lip slanted in a deep line of sadness that scored a brand through Caleb’s conscience and set it on fire. Great. It matched the excruciating pain in his shoulder where she’d plunged the knife.
    This wasn’t going to be easy. But then, when had it ever been?
    The dark fan of her lashes fluttered open. Her gaze, as light green as the rare jade she’d cut from his wrists, was hazy, shadowed. Uncertain. It glittered in the dim light as she searched the dark corners of the room.
    He watched awareness slowly fill the vacant uncertainty of her expression. Watched her lips twist as those pale, soul-wrenching eyes settled on him.
    He opened his mouth. Hesitated.
    What the hell could he say?
    Nothing.
    Slowly, firmly, he shut his mouth on the words that filled his head. They weren’t his.
    Taking Delia’s life had left him with far too many of her fringe memories. The others he’d killed were in there somewhere, he could sense them sometimes, but Delia was by far the strongest. It surprised him at the time, but there was always a price for power.
    The side effect to the transfer ritual was something he’d damn well learn to live with.
    By himself.
    Juliet stiffened, jerked on her ropes, and bared her teeth as the metal legs of her chair scraped against the cement floor.
    “Son of a bitch!” Her voice shattered the near silence, bounced back in a flurry of sibilant whispers.
    They scraped at his nerves, tightened his already edgy voice to something rougher. “Shut up. We don’t have much time.” He forced himself not to look away as her gaze once more tangled with his. Narrowed.
    “Where the hell are we?” Her shoulders shifted. The open zipper of her coat slid away, baring more of the thin material of her tank top.
    The pale line where her skin met black fabric.
    Caleb’s eyes drifted lower, to the shadowed juncture of her thighs wrapped in black denim. Something uncoiled deep in his veins.
    Something deeply buried hummed in approval.
    Not on his life. Or hers.
    “Cellar in the Seattle ruins,” he said shortly. “Old coven ground.”
    “How long was I out?”
    “An hour and change.” He wrenched a shoulder, growling as tightened loops bit into his flesh. “Jesus Christ, Jules, what the hell were you thinking?”
    Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. Her eyes glittered, and he watched the skin around her mouth go white with strain.
    Suddenly, his head throbbed.
    “Not really sure,” she bit out, every word as precise as if she’d carved it with a razor. “I think it had something to do with seeing you dead.”
    Amusement cut a bloody swath through the buzzing pressure in his skull. “Then you should have killed me yourself.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
    “If you’re lucky.”
    Escape looked downright unlikely. No tools. No excess anything. They’d left him with two chairs, a battery-operated light, and a lot of empty space. He knew this kind of space.
    Sweat trickled down his temple. It was too cool beneath the city foundation for the summer heat to travel far, but it wasn’t heat that caused him to break out in a cold sweat now.
    “Shit,” he muttered.
    Juliet sighed, frustration clear as a candle in the dark. “Don’t you have any rituals stored