Darkness Possessed (Order of the Blade) Read Online Free PDF

powers. She had played it straight, hiding who she was, knowing it was her only chance to survive. One night, one mistake, and the safe crevices she'd managed to crawl into had been exposed.
    "Vines?" she echoed blankly, keeping her voice neutral. "What do you mean?" Even as she spoke, she eased her finger to the delete key. Flashing on the screen was her personnel file, the only remaining information on the computer that related to her. Once she deleted it, all evidence that she'd ever existed here would be gone. How many times had she erased her footprints in the last five years? She didn't want to be erased anymore...but she wanted to be found even less.
    "I mean," Jordyn said evenly, "that the police got a 911 call from that woman's house tonight. She had put me on the notification list in case her husband became abusive, so I showed up, thinking she was being attacked. But the police got a very strange story from her husband."
    Rhiannon swallowed as a frisson of fear shivered down her back. Had he really told someone the truth? Why would he have risked it? Everyone would deem him insane. Women like her didn't exist. Yes, sure, most humans accepted that Calydons existed, but that was about it as far as supernatural beliefs went, other than the standard woo woo about vampires and werewolves. Certainly no one would believe that someone like her existed, someone who could manipulate vegetation and the earth itself. He would never have told anyone that vines attacked him...would he? "Really?" She kept her voice neutral. "What was the story?"
    Jordyn waved her hand dismissively. "It was all very unusual. He was babbling about a witch who showed up with a ruby dagger. Weirdly, he said that she was able to make the plants in his yard attack him. He had red lines all over his body, which he said were from the vines wrapping around him like ropes and dragging him underwater." She was watching Rhiannon with a steady gaze.
    Rhiannon forced herself to meet Jordyn's stare, taking comfort in Jordyn's dismissive wave. "Doing drugs, was he?"
    "That was the general consensus, until…"
    She didn't want to ask, but she knew she had to know. "Until what?"
    "Until we watched the security video."
    Oh, shit. Rhiannon felt her stomach drop. She hadn't even thought of that.
    Jordyn leaned forward. "I think," she said softly, "you may not want to wear that amulet in public for a little while."
    Rhiannon's hand instinctively went to the glittering jewel strapped around her neck. Without it, she would probably not be alive, and if she were alive, she would wish she were dead.
    "Your makeup was very dramatic and obscured your identity quite well, but the amulet was very visible on the security video. Every last detail of it." Jordyn raised her brows. "I always thought it was quite striking, so I noticed it right away." She winked. "Of course, not everyone has my incredible powers of observation, so it's possible you could staple it to your forehead and march into the police station, and no one would notice. Then again, it's possible that maybe I'm not the only one with an eye for unusual, ancient artifacts worn around a woman's neck. We don't really know, do we?"
    Rhiannon felt the blood drain from her face as she instinctively covered the necklace in a gesture that was meaningless now. She tried to come up with some sort of plausible explanation for the moving vines, but the fear hammering at her obliterated all strategic thought. She'd been compromised, truly compromised. She'd been caught on video, and the police would be sharing the information with other agencies to try to identify her. It would not take long until José's minions found her, and if José were still alive...
    No. She couldn't let him find her. She couldn't go back.
    Jordyn leaned back in her chair, apparently oblivious to Rhiannon's rising panic. "The police have named the mysterious woman Poison Ivy. She's considered dangerous. They're looking for her. They're investigating