“Caleb will be on his way shortly,” Azul answered.
Without so much as a head nod, I turned and walked down the long hallway to the room I’d slept in. I hadn’t been here a day and I was already on my way out. Good thing I hadn’t unpacked my purse. That suited me just fine. The faster I got to Shawna, the better. At least now, I wouldn’t have to face the harpies alone. More than anything, I wanted to go straight to the Hunters’ complex and start a shit storm. If only it were that easy. They were the most formidable force my kind had known for ages, so as much as I hated it, I gripped what little patience I had left like my weapon of choice. If all went well, I’d have an army of Wilds at my back. If it didn’t, Shawna might not be the only one who needed saving.
Sixteen
“Why do you have handcuffs in here?” Gabrielle asked. She sat, fully clothed for the first time since I’d met her, in the front passenger seat of my car. White zip-tie cuffs dangled from her pointer finger.
I’d driven to the Oxnard airport—only about fifteen minutes from the harbor. The whole drive had been silent, and now, right before I parked my car in long term parking, she’d chosen to rifle through the glove box and door compartment.
I turned into the parking area and searched for a spot. “What, you don’t?” I asked, evading the question.
She arched a dark eyebrow. “We both know I don’t have a car,” she said. “Oh.” She nodded as though she’d cracked the code.
“What?” I asked, my curiosity piqued as to what she no doubt wrongly assumed I had cuffs for. I found a parking stall and pulled in.
“It makes sense,” she said, putting the cuffs where she’d found them. “Huldra. You guys like it rough, don’t you? Like dominatrix rough.”
I tilted my head and stared at her. Seriously?
“No judgment,” she promised. “Thanks to current media, it’s a respected form of sexual pleasure.”
I shook my head. “I’m a bounty hunter. I don’t need to cuff my lovers for pleasure.” I laughed a little to myself. “Or rough them up.”
“The bounty hunter thing makes sense, too.” Gabrielle opened the car door, grabbed the straps of her bag from the backseat, and struggled to get it unstuck from between the two front seats. I considered reminding her that my car had four doors, not two—she could open the back door to get her bag. But her battle against the seats was half over and she was winning.
When she’d ducked away to throw on “traveling clothes” as the mermaids had called it, I half expected to see her come out of her room in ripped jeans and a fitted t-shirt like a succubus. I don’t know why. And now, as I hid a laugh and watched her overcome the evil backseat, I realized how wrong my assumption had been. Her black slacks hung from her waist and stopped where black high heels started. A black jean blazer covered a pastel green, fitted silk shirt and she wore her hair up in a twist to cover the shells woven into her roots along the part in her hair.
We walked into the airport looking like we did not belong together—me with my dirty jeans and her with her…classy mermaid style. We checked in at a kiosk, went through security, and headed to our gate where we found three empty seats, leaving one between us to set our bags.
“What did you mean when you said that it makes sense I’m a bounty hunter?” I asked. None of my coterie members had jobs similar to mine, so her whole huldra-equals-bounty-hunter thing didn’t make sense.
My phone rang before she could answer. I had updated my aunts as I left the mermaid’s island the moment my phone screen donned the blessed symbol of cell connection—within sight of the mainland. I hadn’t cared that Caleb and Gabrielle heard every word from my mouth.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and answered, expecting Olivia to give me the details of the area I was headed. “Hey, what do you got for me?” I asked.
“Where are you at, Faline?”
“Marcus?” I pulled the phone from my face to check the screen. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back after you sent the email, which was a big help by the way. I’ve been incredibly busy.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“Good thing we’re on the phone then,” I said. “What’s up?”
“No. In person. We need to talk in person.” Marcus’s tight, serious voice cut through my playfulness.
I had no idea what terms Marcus and I were currently on, but now wasn’t the time to figure it out.
Gabrielle had been pretending not to listen to our phone conversation, but now she stared openly. A large plane taxied past the floor-to-ceiling windows my seat pointed toward.
“Where can I meet you?” Marcus asked.
“Why can’t you wait till I’m back in town?”
I paused to listen to the woman over the speaker near our gate announcing that our flight from Oxnard, California to Ashville Regional Airport, North Carolina would be boarding in ten minutes.
“North Carolina?” Marcus’s tone rose like he’d been caught off guard. “Why? What’s going on, Faline?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions and answering none,” I said. “That’s what’s going on.”
Gabrielle let out a snort. I’d probably never again see a Wild as regal as a mermaid, snort.
“Fine.” Marcus exhaled into the phone. “I’m taking a few days off to meet you in North Carolina. I haven’t been one hundred percent open with you about…a lot of things. I haven’t lied, but I’ve left out some important truths.”
I perked up. Yeah, I could have waited to hear them when I returned to Washington, but my curiosity got the better of me. “What truths?”
“Like where I really went that night at the hotel—” He sighed and I pictured him shaking his head or scratching his face stubble. “I can’t explain over the phone. I shouldn’t even be telling you.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you need to fly across the country to come clean now, though? I’m in the middle of trying to get my sister.”
Marcus’s breathing filled the silence on the other end.
“How about I call you when I’m done?” I said.
“In the last six months, uh…women…all in the same age range, without spouses, living with female family members, have gone missing. Most from fairly remote areas.” Marcus cleared his throat again.
From what the mermaids had told me, none of the missing Wilds had been reported. I turned to Gabrielle with wide eyes and spoke to Marcus. My words were direct and crisp. “We’ll be heading to Mount Mitchell, but you can probably get a room in the nearest town, Burnsville. Call me as soon as you land.”
Marcus ended the call.
Gabrielle’s chestnut brown eyes lit with fire. “Who was that?”
“A man I work with on occasion,” I said.
“Your body language would suggest he means more than a coworker to you.”
“We went on one and a half dates. The half date was on the night I was attacked, the day before my sister was abducted.”
She pulled a cell phone from her purse and stood. “Excuse me. I need to make a phone call,” she said before she walked toward a book store and around the corner.
So she was all ears during my phone calls, but hers deserved privacy?
When the airline desk attendant announced that our flight was now boarding, Gabrielle rushed to grab her over-priced bag. I held back an eye roll and walked to stand in line.
“What?” she said, catching her breath as she took her place behind me and searched through her designer purse for her boarding pass. “I wasn’t being secretive, I promise. I just prefer privacy. I had to call and warn them.”
I turned to look at her. “Your shoal?” But Azul already knew the Hunters were up to something. What else was there to warn them about? “Warn them about what?”
“Yes. And Caleb’s family,” was all she said in reply.
I found the seat letter and number matching my boarding pass. Gabrielle sat beside me, positioning her purse under the chair in front of her and snappin
g her seatbelt shut. Thank the goddess, Gabrielle was accompanying me because after what she and Azul had said concerning the harpies dislike for huldra, I figured meeting the harpies on their turf without my gun or my boot daggers would be the opposite of my first meeting with the mermaids. Replaying the Wilds-hate-huldra conversation in my head brought another question to the surface. Everything had happened so quickly, my rational mind was still trying to catch up.
Four Wild groups, not including huldra, live within the United States. I’d met with two already, so there were two left. “So why the harpies first? If we’re going to the east coast, why not visit the rusalki first?” I asked.
Gabrielle paused from preparing her items for takeoff. “North Carolina is closer than Maine.” Another top-layer answer in the form of a statement.
I wanted the deeper reason. Distance seemed too simple. “Yeah, I guess, but not by a ton. They’re both east coast,” I pointed out.
Gabrielle sighed and peered around before lowering her voice. “The harpies and mermaids share a connection that is not present with the rusalki. Whether or not they’ll honor our connected histories is another matter. It was long ago and time has a way of tainting the past.” She grabbed a magazine from the seat pocket of the chair in front of her and leafed through the pages.
I eyed her for a quick second. She looked prim and proper, not ready to fight her distant cousins. Though, she had held her own against the Hunters…and then watched me do most of the fighting.
Trusting anyone other than a huldra sister would be a mistake. I clicked my own buckle in place and positioned a mini version of a pillow behind my head for the long flight. As I closed my eyes I made a decision; I would pick up a weapon or two before heading up the mountain. Before meeting with the winged, sharped-talon harpies.
My knees ached from my stationary day of sitting in cars, airports, and planes, so I massaged them with my free hand as I drove. At night the little town of Burnsville, North Carolina looked like a ghost town, with shops closed and its inhabitants at home either sitting down to a late supper or already in bed.
We’d left the airport in a little red rental car. Gabrielle had begged for something flashier and offered to foot the bill herself. While I would have gone for something sportier to get this over and done with faster, other than full size models and minivans they were out of anything else. She’d conceded with the compromise that our hotel must be at least four stars. From her repeated groans as we drove through the small town, it was obvious she now realized that she’d lose that one too.
Her complaining grated on my nerves. If I had my way we’d show up, talk to the harpies, and then catch the next flight out. Agreeing to stay in a hotel kept me from Shawna for another night, kept her away from her coterie for another sunrise. Nothing about that sat well with me. But harpies were delicate Wilds, easily spooked. Gabrielle insisted that by staying in town for the night, it would look as though we were making an effort to connect to them rather than use them for information. If they felt a connection, they were more likely to help us. And I had a better chance at saving Shawna if I had the harpies’ help. Plus, I’d told Marcus to meet me in town. Imagining what was so important that he had to tell me in person made my stomach fold in on itself more than it already was.
I pulled off the road into the gravel parking area of a one-story brick building lined with white doors.
“It says ‘Motel’ in red lettering,” Gabrielle groaned.
I shot Marcus a quick text with the motel’s name before eying Gabrielle’s phone. “Have they called you back yet?” I asked, more concerned about getting this over with and finding my sister than Gabrielle’s opinions about motels. Gabrielle had called the harpies’ contact the moment we passed city lines, as instructed, and left a message. She checked her phone and shook her head.
“According to the Google gods it’s the motel in town that’s not a bed and breakfast.” I answered her earlier comment, resigned to the fact that I was spending the night in harpy country. “B&B’s are too quaint, the owners and guests want to know everything about the other guests,” I said. “Too personal.”
“Maybe I’ll just stay with the harpies,” she said with a sigh. “They’ll have a cliffside mansion, I assume.”
Okay, I’d just about had it. “When did you become a snob?” I asked with a noticeable tension in my voice. “When I first met you, you were naked with seaweed in your hair. Roughing it.”
“Doing what I was born to do isn’t roughing it—it’s called living in my bliss. And just because I can rough it, doesn’t mean I want to.” Gabrielle’s cell rang and she paused to answer it.
“Okay.” Gabrielle tossed her phone into her purse and let down her dark hair, revealing tiny pink and brown shells. “They’ll meet us in an hour at some golf club restaurant. Good, I’m starving.”
After grudgingly checking into the motel and viewing our two adjoining rooms, I drove us to the restaurant. The building sat on a golf course, near the mountain range, across the street from a wooded area. Eating was the furthest thing from my mind, but on our way into the restaurant I held a longing gaze at the woods.
“It’s weird knowing there’s no ocean near us,” Gabrielle said after she finished her last bite of trout and pushed her plate away from her. “I don’t like it.” She finished the wine from her glass as though we were two friends out for a relaxing night. We weren’t. My barely touched meal proved it.
The restaurant wasn’t large, but the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lit golf course made it appear to be more spacious than it was. The dim lighting and candlelit tables helped too.
“Yeah, your island was rough for me,” I said with a casual air I did not currently possess. A Wild entered the building and was probably listening to every word we spoke. “The trees weren’t climbable.”
I leaned in toward Gabrielle who sat opposite me. “Someone here isn’t human,” I whispered. I trailed my fingers along the closed switch blade in my pocket. I’d picked it up at a little gift shop in town.
“I know,” she whispered and then flashed a smile. She pulled a one hundred -dollar bill from her wallet and left it on the table under the stem of her empty wine glass. We hadn’t received the tab yet, but the amount Gabrielle set out would more than cover our meals and tip. “Remember what we talked about. Ask about them, sure, but don’t push for information. You don’t want to risk spooking them.”
My lowered eyes shifted toward the Wild. A woman wearing all white with long blonde hair sat at the bar. She had a cocktail in one hand and the bartender’s hand in the other. She laughed at a joke he’d told and tossed her head back. As she tucked her golden hair behind her right ear, she tilted her head toward Gabrielle and me. Her eyes found us and, with a smirk, her focus shifted to the man behind the bar.
“You are too sweet,” the harpy said before downing her cocktail and standing from the stool. “I look forward to next time.” She eased her hand from his and set the empty glass onto the bar.
Her eagle eyes locked onto Gabrielle and me, and we quickly stood from the table. She left the restaurant, knowing full well that we were following her.
Seventeen
We turned the corner toward the side of the building. The tall harpy stood in the shadow, waiting.
“We’re up there,” she said in a monotone voice.
“My name is Gabrielle, and this is Faline,” my mermaid accomplice said, reaching out to shake the harpy’s hand.
The harpy only looked at her. “None of us here are human, let’s not pretend that we are.”
Gabrielle scoffed and pulled her hand away. “I was trying to be polite, civil. Humans aren’t the sole beings with those attributes.”
The harpy looked toward the mountains and quickly returned her sharp gaze to us. “Ready?”
“Wait,” I interjected. “So where are we going? Your home? To talk…about what we came to talk about?”
Her long neck turned and her head snapped toward me. “Y
ou’re the huldra,” she said.
“And you’re the harpy,” I said. Now that we got that bit of apparent confusion out of the way…
She inhaled and then exhaled loudly. “Are you going to help us or not, huldra?”
I took a step back. “It depends what you’re referring to.” I knew they were missing a sister and the mermaids had recently reached out to the Wild groups, but maybe there was a door number three I wasn’t privy to yet.
“My kind do not enjoy the company of humans, especially males,” the female said.
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what her statement had to do with my earlier question, but I played along. “But you were just talking it up with the bartender,” I reminded her.
“We rarely procreate, so our numbers are low. We see the error of this now. I am currently trying to right this error. I don’t care with whom.” The female bent down to remove her flats. She stuffed them into a backpack that had been sitting along the wall where we stood. She put the bag over her chest and pulled the straps around her upper arms. She reached behind her hair and unclasped the back of her shirt at the neck. The back portion of the white top fell from her shoulders and draped down, revealing the lean muscles outlining her spine.
“Okay?” I said, still waiting to hear her point but shocked to learn that a group of Wilds refrained from sexual escapades.
“My mother is missing. There was a leak at one of the rentals. She went out to check on it and never came home.” To earn an income, they operated a few nearby rental mountain vacation homes.
“How many of you are left, then?” I asked.
“Three of us.”
“Oh,” Gabrielle said, shaking her head.
“Azul’s contact assured us you’d be able to help.” The harpy closed her eyes and let out a hard breath. Talons busted from her toes and huge golden wings unfurled from her shoulder blades.
Gabrielle and I both jumped back.
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