Eternally Yours Read Online Free PDF Page A

destroyed and had no living survivors. The others—in Australia, Brazil, Africa, Italy, and here in America (Hi, Salem, Massachusetts!)—still maintained their ancestral sources of immortal power and inheritance. Ottavio was the oldest member of the Genoa house. The last house, in Iceland, had been completely destroyed by raiders back in 1561. Not many people knew this, but that house had one survivor who recently surfaced. That would be
moi
.
    “He’s come for a surprise visit, and I’m thrilled to see him,” River went on. A glance passed between brother and sister, but I couldn’t read it. I began to hope that maybe he’d just been cranky or jet-lagged or something and hadn’t really meant what he said before. I’m highly skilled at deceiving myself like that. How else could I have remained friends with Incy for a hundred years?
    “Lovely to see you again, Ottavio,” said Anne, putting some winter lettuce on her sandwich.
    I kept my eyes on my plate, working busily with the mustard and mayo.
    “And you, Anne.” Ottavio’s voice was deep and grumbly, like a bear woken too soon from hibernation. He seemed so different from River, though his hair was gray, as hers was. When I’d first met River, I’d been struck by her unusuallooks—the smooth, light olive skin; the wise face that still looked barely thirty; and the not-often-seen-in-immortals silver hair that came a bit past her shoulders. Obviously she was the
nice
one of the family.
    “What brings you to town?” Charles asked politely, just a bit of his Irish accent detectable. Usually by the time an immortal is more than a hundred years old, they tend to lose their original accent and become more neutral, in every language they learn. Like being newscasters. For eternity.
    Wait for it….
I took a bite of my sandwich.
    Ol’ Ottavio didn’t pull punches. He pointed his knife at me (way to go with the symbolism) and said, “I’m here because of her. Because of the danger she represents. She shouldn’t be here; my sister shouldn’t be harboring her. And I’ve come to find out what else she knows.”
    I tried to swallow quickly so I wouldn’t spew crumbs across the table. It felt like a marble going down my esophagus, slowly and painfully.
    Forcing myself to look up instead of crawling under the table, which was my first instinct, I saw irritation on River’s face and saw her try to temper it. Others looked surprised, even shocked. I focused on trying to breathe normally and glanced at Reyn. His obvious anger, the tautness of his shoulders, at first cheered me up because I thought it was aimed at Ottavio for attacking me; then I had the icky thought that he might still be mad at me from this morning.
    On top of that, a fast scan of the rest of the table revealeda couple of people
actually nodding in agreement
—Jess, Charles, and even Solis, who had taught me so much.
    Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I wanted to sink through the floor.
    “I was home, in Italy,” Ottavio went on. His black eyes seemed to bore through my skull as his long fingers ripped apart a piece of bread. “News came to me of big, dangerous magick—Terävä magick—being worked in America. In Boston. Because of its proximity to my sister, I tried to gather more information.”
    I nodded. Yep. Big, dark magick. It sure was. Actually it had truly been so bad that I couldn’t even joke about it. Not after a month. Not after a hundred years. “I didn’t work any dark magick,” I said.
    “No. But you were involved with the person who did.” Ottavio dropped the bread onto his plate, as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing.
    “I’m not anymore,” I said, aware of how incredibly limp that sounded.
    Ottavio made a derisive sound.
    Yes, I had screwed up—not just once but over and over. That’s usually how rehab goes, people. Being involved with Incy when he’d wrought such destructive magick, when he’d killed two of our friends right in front of me—that had been