by B. T. Alive
“Could you just relax for five minutes?” I said. “You don’t even have to talk, just sit. Please. I’ve got to figure something out and I just, I hardly ever ask for anything.”
He squirmed, and he stayed by the door. “Summer, whatever it is, I want to help, but—”
“Do you? Are you sure?” I said. “Because it looks like you’re afraid to even sit next to me.”
“What? No!” he said. “Summer, if this is about…” He hesitated.
“About what? Can you not even say it?”
I admit, I was spiking from zero to sixty pretty fast that morning; I guess I hadn’t realized how much I relied on Tina, on her just being there. And now, when I turned to my so-called boyfriend for comfort, he was hovering by the door, poised to flee, like I was some kind of vacuum cleaner salesman he didn’t know how to get rid of. I felt alone, abandoned, and that was something I’d never wanted to feel again.
“Of course I can say it,” he said, with infuriating calm. “I’m a Tuner, you’re a Disruptor. We’re both still fairly untrained, so for now, we’ve got to wait on direct contact–”
“Oh my gosh, are you a PR guy?” I said. “For now? ‘Direct contact’? You make it sound like we’re just, like, waiting to change a cell phone plan. We’re going to be waiting forever.”
“That’s not true,” he said, stoutly. “Your Uncle Enoch’s a Disruptor, and you said yourself he touched your cheek. That’s two Disruptors at once—”
“I don’t care about creepy, murdering Uncle Enoch!” I shouted. “I care about you! I care that you’re the one person on this planet I want most to touch, so much it’s killing me, but you act like you’re totally fine if we grow old as as just good pals who are nervous to sit on the same couch!”
Cade frowned, confused. “I’m not fine with it. I just…I can wait. I’m a guy who plants trees. I’m patient.”
“Great!” I said. “As long as you’re satisfied with the arrangement, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Summer—”
“No, clearly I’m just being selfish and needy. For, you know, wanting my boyfriend to make me feel good.”
“I didn’t say that!” he snapped, finally cracking his cool. “No one’s saying that. This is hard for both of us!”
“You don’t act like it!”
“How would it help to get all ticked off and whine about it all the time?” he demanded. “What is so hurtful about self-control?”
The sudden edge of his anger cut me hard. Partly I hated that cold tone of judgment, that aloof disbelief that dripped with disdain.
But another part of me knew that this man had to struggle every day just to literally keep himself together, to keep being the human he felt at his core despite the constant pull toward… other things.
I felt lanced with shame. What if I was just being selfish?
Then, in the silence, a new sound clicked, down the hall toward the bedrooms. A doorknob. The knob to the hallway bathroom was turning.
Cade rubbed his forehead. “Oh, great,” he muttered.
The door opened, and out stepped a woman, one of the most gorgeous I’d ever seen. Wearing a bathrobe.
I stared, stupefied. She was tall and lean and radiated confidence; even her long, tight curls seemed to crackle with energy, like the chestnut tresses of some Greek goddess. They swarmed her tanned face like a sunburst halo, despite being wet from her shower.
Her shower. Here.
I turned on Cade, and whatever was in my face, he winced and shrank back a step.
“Self… control?” I stammered.
The woman laughed, loud and hard. She laughed like a general, or an archangel, or the White Witch of Narnia. Her voice was so resonant and deep and musical that the throb of it made the room tiny and irrelevant, as if the thin walls fell away and we were borne up into vast skies, soaring over crags toward a rising sun.
At last she stopped, releasing us. She surveyed me with a smirk, her eyebrow cocked.
“So you’re Summer,” she said.
“And who the hell are you?” I gasped.
Her perfect nostrils flared, and she threatened to laugh again. But she managed to control her amusement, and she spoke with an offhand shrug.
“I’m his sister.”
Chapter 7
“You have a sister?” I screeched at Cade.
He sighed. “Summer, meet Fiona.”
We’d been dating for months, and he’d never said a word about any sister, or any brother either. Neither had his dad, Sheriff Jake.
Was she just mocking me? Cade too?
No… I saw in Cade’s face that it was true. And as I looked at this woman Fiona with fresh eyes, the family resemblance leapt into view: the tall, lean body type, the innate confidence, the curls… even the way she’d flared her nostrils had been uncannily reminiscent of her snuffling sheriff father. And yet some utterly other likeness also shone in her fierce face; I wondered what their mother must have been like. Neither Cade nor his father had ever shown me her picture.
I also realized, now that the first shock of her beauty had dulled (or at least blunted), that although Fiona could easily pass for thirty, she was probably closer to forty. That would make her Cade’s older sister… and his expression completely confirmed this. His eyes darted between us, back and forth, his brows knit close in open anxiety.
Sure, he’d never mentioned her, but he clearly cared deeply what she thought. Even though she’d obviously caused him pain.
Despite how frustrated I was that he’d made such an epic fail in preparing me for this encounter, I felt a stab of concern for him. No wonder the poor dope had been hovering at the door, desperate to herd me out to work. He hadn’t been remotely ready for this.
Why? Why did he look so stressed? Had she come home without warning, crashed at her dad’s apartment? So what? Or was it more that if Fiona didn’t like me, it might really… matter.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try to pull myself together and make a good first impression. On this possible future relative.
Great. No pressure.
Fiona snorted. “I can see he’s told you only good things,” she said. She crossed her robed arms, jutted out a hip, and eyed her brother. (Brother? Really?) “Sorry to ruin your image, Cuddly.”
Cade stiffened. “You know I hate that nickname,” he muttered.
She smirked. “You didn’t used to mind it from that Paris girl.”
“Cade likes to surprise me,” I cut in. If Fiona stood there in her bathrobe and started riffing on Cade’s ridiculously attractive childhood friend Paris Graves (who had actually proposed to him a couple months back, in the midst of inheriting both the orchard he loved and millions of dollars), it might create some kind of Black Hole Vortex of Aggressive Sexiness. I still didn’t quite feel like this goddess with wet hair was actually his sister. “I love surprises,” I soldiered on. “It’s fantastic to meet you.”
Fiona trumpeted another laugh, this time mercifully short. “Wow, you’re an awful liar. I thought you used to be in sales?”
In spite of myself, I flicked Cade an irritated glance. Apparently she’d gotten to hear all about me.
But I forced a smile. “I was,” I said, “but you’re right, it’s been awhile.”
“So I heard,” she said. “Now you’re a full-time Disruptor. Trying to date a Tuner.”
I cringed. So that’s what this was about.
“Fiona, geez,” Cade cut in. “Could you at least try to—”
“Try to what?” she snapped. “You know me, bro. Small talk’s not my thing.” Her arms still crossed, she narrowed her eyes at me, and she slowly approached me across the living room, studying me in silence like a lioness fixated on her prey.
I was still perched on the couch. I considered jumping up to meet her, then decided not to since it would seem anxious, and then, as she drew close, I wished I had. She smelled sharp, like roses, not just the petals but the green stem and thorns, and beneath that, almo
st masked, something animal… a predator musk.
“I can see why you’d be concerned,” I chirped, then heard my nervous voice and hated it. I straightened up on the couch, facing her skeptical frown and gleaming eyes. “But I’m seriously training hard on this.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re training.” She was looming over me now, even taller than I’d thought.
“I’m making steady progress,” I said, my voice pretty much normal despite this tall, strange woman in a bathrobe being all up in my space and glaring at me down her perfect nose. “Just this morning, I touched some dude and it was totally fine.”
“What?” Cade said from the doorway. “Who?”
“I don’t know, some guy at the Inn,” I said. “He looked like Cary Grant. But I totally stayed calm.”
Cade frowned.
“I mean, it wasn’t hard to stay calm,” I added. “The guy was old! Way older than he looked.”
Fiona chuckled, a low rumble in her throat. “Oh my gosh,” she muttered. “You’re adorable.”
“And you’re slightly patronizing,” I snapped. “I appreciate your sisterly concern, but I’m telling you, I’m not going to disrupt Cade.”
“That’s a shame,” she said.
“What?” I blurted.
“Sweetheart, are we talking about the same Cade here?” Fiona said. “My brother’s wound tighter than an industrial winch. The one thing he needs is to… relax… let go.”
She bent close toward me, her hair spilling over her shoulders and draping her face in shadow. In the dim light, the details were suddenly uncertain, but I could have sworn that the edges of her hairline shimmered with something darker, shorter, a tiny fringe across her forehead. Her eyes seemed huge and round, and the pupils, though indistinct, weren’t quite right. Was I imagining it, or were they slightly… vertical?
“You don’t understand,” I said, dimly aware that I was shrinking away from her, pressing back into the cushion. “Of course I want to touch him. You were right there in the bathroom; didn’t you hear me asking?”
“If it were my man,” she murmured, “I wouldn’t ask.”
And she reached out and grabbed my wrist.
The jolt was so hard that I slammed back into the couch, grunting with pain. The shock and surprise of it totally disoriented me; it was several seconds before I could collect myself and think to look up at what the Touch had done to Fiona.
She must have staggered back a few feet, but by the time I looked, the daze in her eyes had already nearly cleared. She shook her head, as if shaking off sleep, and darted her gaze around the room—at Cade, then me, and then down at her own hand.
Well. At what had been her hand.
Even as I watched, it was still morphing. Wild fur was sprouting along the backs of her fingers, fire orange and black and white, and swirling down her arm in fractal lines. The front pads of her fingers were thickening into massive feline pads, and her nails were slicing into claws. Her red nail polish split and flaked away like scabs of dried blood.
Her face was frozen with shock.
But then she spread her mouth wide in a grin. With a sudden lunge, she lifted her hands high, both the human and the she-cat, and she whooped like a cowgirl.
She looked… triumphant.
And bizarre as it all was, I found myself wondering where I’d seen that expression before. Because I had, and recently.
“Wow!” she cried. “That was awesome!” She looked exhilarated.
“Really?” I said, eyeing her deformed paw.
“You have no idea,” she said. “Because damn, you’re scared.”
“Scared?” I said.
“Give her space, Fiona,” Cade snapped, finally and belatedly coming over. “That wasn’t cool.”
Fiona ignored him. “No wonder you two are together,” she told me.
“I’m not scared of you,” I snapped.
“You’re scared of everyone,” Fiona said. “Haven’t they taught you that? You shock everyone you touch because you see everyone as a threat.”
Halfway toward us, Cade faltered, mid-stride. He frowned, troubled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said. I fumbled up and finally got off that stupid couch, trying to get face-to-face with cat-paw woman. Turned out, I only came up to her collarbone. “Why would I see Cade as a threat? I want to touch him!”
“Sure, part of you does,” Fiona said. “I can smell that.” She leered.
I cringed. Talk about disturbing.
And the cat pupils did not help.
“But mainly, Little Miss Perfect, you’re terrified,” Fiona said. “Afraid of your own feelings. God forbid that anyone get close enough to see the real you.”
“Let her be, Fiona,” Cade growled. His former uncertainty had cleared. “She’s not fake just because she’s got control of her own feelings.”
“You stuck-up coward,” she hissed, turning on Cade with a sudden fury that made my chest go tight. She clenched both fists at him, open just enough to brandish the claws on her paw-fingers.
Cade stood his ground, but his face twitched at the insult like a slap. Their gazes locked, arcing in the silent clash of some ancient fight.
Cade said nothing. But Fiona said, in a low, menacing challenge, “Feelings are the real you.”
She held his gaze for another moment, daring him to contradict.
When he didn’t speak, she took a deep breath and turned back to me. She seemed calmer, and her eyes were back to normal. Which almost made you forget the paw.
“And if you can’t handle your feelings, your desire,” she said, “then you’re the last thing my brother needs in his life.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “Are you giving me some kind of ultimatum? If we don’t touch soon? With all due respect, which is trending toward zero, what are you going to do about it?”
Fiona grinned. Her teeth flashed with points they shouldn’t have had.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “I admit, I haven’t been the perfect sister, but I do take care of my kid brother. And you are not the first.”
Cade looked miserable.
Chapter 8
I’m not usually in favor of storming off without a word, but every once in awhile, I feel it’s an appropriate response.
For instance, say the secret shifter sister of your boyfriend appears out of nowhere and threatens to pulverize your relationship if you can’t resolve a devastating intimate personal problem to her satisfaction, citing her past successes demolishing previous girlfriends. While said boyfriend looks on in mute agony, then calls after you as you exit but, instead of following you down the outside stairs, gets roped into loud follow-up-argument with said sister.
Yes, leaving was the right call.
I stormed along the cobblestones of Main Street, trying to process what had just happened. Not only had Cade not helped with the Tina crisis, his spectacularly offensive sister had nearly made me forget that I’d only gone to Cade in the first place for help with Tina and this vineyard crime.
I decided that, for now, this craziness with Fiona and Cade would have to wait. Last night, Tina had gone missing and someone had savaged that vineyard.
Now that I’d managed to flub things up and get Glynis the wedding planner and Lee the bride all suspicious of Tina as jealous, it was urgent that I either find Tina, find out who’d really sabotaged the wedding, or both.
Not that Tina had helped her case by flipping out.
But even as I decided all this, I couldn’t stop looping Fiona’s face. Oddly, what kept getting me was her moment of exultation when she’d first surveyed her morphing paw. That maddening triumph… where had I seen it…
Then it hit me.
I halted, right there on Main Street, nearly tripping some billowy lady in a silk scarf as she sallied out of Namaste With Natisha (Yoga and Tea). Her cone, towering with frozen banana scooped like ice cream, tilted precariously, like a pagoda in an earthquake. With a cry, the scarf lady swooped,
diving to save the tottering treat, and managed to rebalance it without losing a single drop.
I realized I’d been holding my breath. But before I could even apologize, she waved her forgiveness. “The thrill of the hunt!” she cried, and she swept off down the street, victorious.
Huh. That was weird. Even for Wonder Springs.
I kind of hoped she wasn’t staying at the Inn. But I hadn’t recognized the woman, and if she wasn’t local, she was staying at the Inn.
Anyway… what had hit me about Fiona’s expression of triumph, I reflected, as I walked up the street with a bit more attention, was that I’d seen the same look earlier that morning. Muted and masked, sure, but that had been the emotion—when Glynis Beverley snuck that look at Lee up at the vineyard.
I hadn’t parsed it first, because Glynis was so reserved and British and all. But now I knew.
Triumph. Over the devastated bride.
Did they have some kind of history? Had Glynis been playing the dutiful proper wedding planner, all the while planning this ghastly revenge?
All this time, I’d been focusing on Dante Radcliff, because of his connection to Tina. But the ruin of the vineyard and wedding was impacting Lee at least as much Dante (if not more). Who might have wanted to hurt her?
I had no idea. She was a complete stranger to Wonder Springs; unlike Dante, she’d never even lived here, as far as I knew.
But Glynis was local, and that strange flash of emotion had to have meant something. Maybe someone would know if she had any history with Lee, or if anyone else around here did. I had to start somewhere.
As for who to ask first… I’d start with Aunt Helen.
Normally, I wouldn’t have talked to Helen this late in the day. She might already be asleep; she was always working all night with her brother, my Uncle Barnaby, up in their workshop in the Inn’s western tower.
But Aunt Helen seemed to know more local gossip than you’d expect. Plus, I couldn’t help hoping that maybe Tina had already come back; if she had, her mom would be the first one to know.