The Serpentine Butterfly

by Addison Moore

  Misty yanks her hand free and turns her attention to my shirt. She plucks and plucks—looking for a spare boob, I’m sure. My mother will probably nurse her until she’s thirteen. She keeps threatening to stop and then remembers last one out!

  “No, no,” I softly reprimand, but Misty lands her sharp fingernails over my bare stomach. Her entire face lights up as if I were Santa or a giant purple dinosaur or whatever it is that gets almost one-year-olds overly excited these days.

  My mind fills with her baby gibberish. Her feet dance and kick as she coos and giggles with the best of them. Her hand warms over my belly, oven hot, and Misty shoots her gaze to mine and gasps as though she just had a stark realization.

  “Would you look at that?” Mom plays with Misty’s hand. “I’ve never seen her so excited! It looks like Misty-Pie is glad Gage is home, too.”

  “What the hell is all that racket?” Tad comes staggering down the stairs in an unfortunate pair of flesh-toned pants—his knees picketing in opposing directions with every step he takes. Oh, wait—oh my shit! Those aren’t flesh-colored pants—that’s actual flesh he’s exposing. In fact, he’s in nothing but his boxers, black knee-high socks and—good God—is that a garter belt? What the hell? I don’t even want to know.

  “Gage is back!” my mother cries. “Girls!” Her high-pitched wail startles the baby, and now they’re both screaming. “Gage is back, everyone!”

  Mia and Melissa run down as if this were a fire drill.

  “Oh, it’s just you,” Melissa snarks before making an abrupt U-turn, and Mia gives her the finger on the way down.

  “Nice to see they’re getting along.” He forces a smile to come and go.

  “Never mind that,” Tad barks, like spitting out nails. “Where’s the dough Althorpe promised? I knew I shouldn’t have left the goods in your hands. You failed to deliver!”

  Gage shoots me a questioning look, and I give a little shrug.

  “It’s been a long day for him,” I say, handing a wailing Misty back to my star-struck mother. “He just came by to change before we head over to the Olivers.’”

  I give Gage a pat toward the stairs, and he gives a noticeable limp on the way up. He steadies himself on his cane, and it breaks my heart to see it. “I’ll be right up!” I call after him.

  “I can give his boss a message if you like.” I blink into Tad, trying to look unassuming, but all I really want is to shake the crap out of Taddy Dearest for treating Gage like dirt on his first night back. Who at Althorpe thought it was a good idea to put Tad Landon in charge of anything? A couple of morons. Arson and Morley, that’s who. I cringe as I recall them offering him a promotion. So that’s how the Counts plan on keeping their noses clean—relying on dolts to do their dirty work.

  “Tell ’em I brought those two hoity-toity government officials to Paragon myself, and your idiot of a husband took all the credit. And poof! There went my ribeye dinner! There was another bonus involved if I took them to the Paragon Palms Hotel, too, and I blew it because Greg here promised he had the whole thing handled. It’s no coincidence that Jock Strap of yours and my cash bonus both disappeared around the same time. I bet he went to Vegas on my dime! And now he’s ready to limp around the lap of Landon until he can figure out how to steal my next paycheck!”

  I want to laugh at the thought of Tad calling Gage by his Marshall-inspired nickname, but I also want to smack him for making fun of Gage’s new limp.

  “Tad!” Mom yanks him toward the kitchen by his ear.

  Good riddance.

  Hold on—government officials? A mean shudder runs through me. What the hell is he babbling about? Why would Althorpe drag government officials to Paragon? Wait… Tad’s “Greg” just might be Wes! No wonder it feels as if we’re in another dimension when he’s spouting off things regarding paychecks and hand-offs of government officials. Crap. Wes has gone too far. I’d make it a note to talk to Wes when I get a chance, but I’m afraid I already know what the government is here to inspect.

  Those “Interlopers,” as Nev dubbed them, run through my mind. Nev and Ezrina thought there was something strange about those two. I’m betting the Interlopers and Tad’s guests are one in the same. Thank God the Nephilim are impossible to detect, despite our genetic markers. Wes has his work cut out for himself if he wants to screw us—or at least I hope he has his work cut out for himself.

  “Guess what?” Mia blocks my path, as I’m about to head upstairs. She’s exactly my height. Same face, same body—for now.

  “What’s up?”

  She sizzles a pendant across her chain and taunts me with the tiny silver ring, hardly big enough to fit Misty.

  “I have a new boyfriend.”

  “Rev gave you that?” I’m not impressed. Revelyn is Dr. Booth’s son. He’s a student at Host, and as much as I dislike their ginormous age difference, Rev seems to be a decent guy.

  “What? No.” Her face contorts in horror. “It’s from Gabe. I stole Gabriel Armistead right from underneath that little slut’s nose.”

  “Oh my God.” I glance up the stairs, hoping Melissa is nowhere near this toxic conversation. Mia and Melissa have been warring over Gabriel Armistead for years now. “Are you nuts? First of all, she stole him from you. He’s disgusting. You can both do better. And what happened to Rev?” Mia and Rev were sharing a dog named Bullet and everything.

  “Relax. We’re still co-parenting D-O-G.” That’s right. The dog has two names, two homes, the best of both worlds, blah, blah, blah. Still, anything is an improvement from an Armistead. His sister, Carson, is a certified asshole. I can’t stand her high-pitched squeaky voice—or was that her annoying friend Carly? My mind is so fogged up these days that my entire high school experience is strung out like one long nightmare. Nevertheless if they both hadn’t abandoned me in the woods ever so long ago, Ezrina wouldn’t have hacked my arm off. I wince. It was actually per Marshall’s orders—the Ezrina hacking part, not the Carson run-in. Why haven’t I made Marshall pay for that yet? Turns out, he’s not big on stealing, and I did snag a few treasures from him once—against my better judgment. A thought comes to me. Chloe stole that antique bed warmer from Ezrina right in front of Marshall’s face, and he promised she would pay for that. I hope he chops her head off. Oh, what poetic justice that would be. Wes could raise their spawn. I can’t believe they teamed up and are actually going to pollute this world with their seed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she gave birth to a giant cockroach.

  “Hello?” Mia waves a hand over my face before glaring at me with her discontent. “Figures. It’s like I’m invisible to you. Nobody cares about me around here. I hate it. As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m out of here.”

  “I’m sorry! I’m just—my head is everywhere these days. I just zoned out for a second. So, you’re seeing Gabe? Is this really what your heart wants, or is this some sort of revenge-based relationship?”

  She gives an indifferent shrug. “A little of both.”

  At least she’s honest. “How long does this need to last? I mean, is it worth ruining things with Rev over?”

  I cannot believe I’m advocating that leather jacket bad boy to my sweet little sister. A few months ago, I was threatening him with stat rape charges if he even had a wet dream regarding my sister, and now I’ve all but put on my old West Paragon cheer uniform and spelled out his name while doing high kicks.

  “Oh, Rev is cool with it.” She waves it off. “He totally doesn’t mind. Plus, I want him to sow his wild oats while he can. Once we’re official, there’s only going to be me rocking his bed, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean. You’re a kid. The only bed you should be rocking is your own while jumping on it. Get your head out of the gutter and cut both of those clowns loose. You need a good boy. Someone who will love you and only you with every fiber of his being.”

  Her eyes flit to the ceiling as she considers this. “Maybe so, but it sure does feel good to know I’m the reason Me
lissa’s eyes are red as apples—poison apples. That girl is a witch. She laughed in my face when I cried over Gabe, and I plan on doing the very same thing.” She speeds up the stairs as I shout her name, but the door to her room slams with defiance before I can get another word in.

  “This isn’t over!”

  Gage ambles down as quickly as he can with his cane supporting him every step of the way. His hair is freshly slicked back. He holds the scent of mint and subtle spiced cologne.

  “What isn’t over?” He pulls me into a tight embrace, his lips covering mine, moist and heated. God, he feels, smells, and tastes like heaven.

  “Us.” I close my eyes a moment and just soak in the feel of my husband in my arms. “We are not over by a long shot, Gage Oliver.”

  It occurs to me as Gage gives a firm knock over his parents’ front door that Emma very much wishes we were over.

  “Hey.” I pull his scruffy cheeks down toward me and bury a kiss into one of his dimples, my tongue dipping in deep for no other reason than I love the feel of that happy divot. “There’s a preview for later.”

  “Love it.” He dives in with a quick kiss of his own. “You want to mention anything about our big surprise?” His fingers graze over my stomach.

  I shake my head. “Let tonight be about you. Plus, that gives us some time to get creative.”

  The door swings wide, and Barron stands there, stunned. Before we know it, Gage is mobbed by both of his parents as they huddle to him, raining their tears over their son for an eternal hour. There are happy tears, and then there are grievously happy tears, and these just so happen to fall in the second category. There is no greater separation than death and no greater relief than to hold your loved one in your arms once again after thinking you’ve lost them forever. A ripe sadness comes over me because that’s not something true humans can experience. It’s a gift that seems to come sparingly in Nephilim circles as well. I’m glad for the times I’ve seen my father. Seeing him in Ahava—here on Earth postmortem takes the edge off, but I still miss him. I still wish he were here on a day-to-day basis. And I’m eternally grateful for Logan’s Treble. I grit my teeth because I’m sure Chloe is, too. Wench.

  “Come.” Emma pulls him into the living room, and Barron and I follow. “Skyla, call Giselle.” She doesn’t take her eyes off Gage.

  I’m quick to oblige and shoot a text off to Liam and Ellis as well. I send a separate text to Logan.

  At the Olivers’. Missing a very important Oliver. YOU. Come quick!

  After what Chloe pulled, I plan on being extra careful around Logan. I’m sure he’s torn up about what happened—what he thought for sure had happened. My face fills with heat at the things he thought he was doing to comfort me. I hope this doesn’t widen the rift between Logan and Gage. Those dreams I had while Gage was away come back to me, and I blush ten times deeper. Crap. I find it awfully coincidental that I had porn-grade dreams about Logan while he believed he was making love to me. I shake all thoughts of porn and Logan out of my head.

  “My God, son! Please tell us everything,” Barron implores.

  “How are you alive?” Emma wails. “How is any of this possible? Is this a Treble? Are you visiting from the great beyond?” Her voice rails against the walls before boomeranging back to us in an echo, and I smirk over at her for not giving Gage the chance to get a word in edgewise. I can’t believe Emma is getting under my skin for merely shedding some concern over her son. Honestly, it’s as if I can’t get ahold of my emotions when I’m around her.

  “Slow down.” Gage gives a dull laugh. “You sound a lot like Skyla.”

  Emma and I exchange glances. It’s clear we both take umbrage to that.

  “I didn’t think I was gone for that long,” he continues. “I hurt my back. Demetri flew in specialists from around the world.”

  More like he flew Gage to them. I bet that’s why the house is gone. The ridiculous Fem was using it as a transportation unit. It’s bad enough Wes is shaking up the world with his bogus moving lights in the sky attraction. We don’t need Demetri trying to one-up him by freaking out the masses with his pop-up mansion.

  “You were gone for six weeks, Gage.” Emma shakes her head, disappointed in her son’s ability to keep track of the calendar in light of his spectacular fall. “Your heart stopped.”

  Barron nods. “I examined you myself. I called it. However, Demetri has done the impossible. He’s brought you back.” He jumps up and pulls his medical bag from the hall closet. “I’ll check your vitals.” He proceeds to poke and prod, sticking his stethoscope under Gage’s shirt, and I get my first mouthwatering glance at those hard as sheetrock muscles, and my panties drench in an instant. To say that my hormones are on overdrive is putting it mildly. Ever since this afternoon, my mind has been compiling a pornographic bucket list, and I plan on checking off every single item later tonight. It’s safe to say Gage won’t get a whole lot of sleeping done his first night back.

  “Everything is as it should be.” Barron shrugs into this wonderful news. “It might not hurt to ask how you came to have breath in your lungs once again. I’ll be curious to know how the resurrection was performed.”

  “So will I.” My thigh presses to his, and an erotic rush pulses over me, stronger than anything—stronger than death, and if this sexual appetite of mine keeps increasing, I’ll soon harness the power to resurrect a few corpses myself. I’ve never felt so solidly aroused.

  Giselle and Ellis burst into the room along with Liam and Logan holding up the rear. They all attack Gage while Logan takes a seat on the ottoman.

  “Dude.” Ellis pulls Gage into a long, strong man-hug. I must admit, it warms my heart. They’ve been friends forever. We can trust Ellis with just about anything. “Heard about the kid! I can’t believe it! You and—”

  “Yeah—that kid,” Logan booms from across the room. “He pointed out the fact Demetri’s house was back on its evil perch.”

  Nice save.

  I glare at Harrison. My God, you just can’t trust Ellis with a damn thing, can you? And who the hell told Ellis in the first place?

  My eyes bug out as I transfer my stare to Logan. Oh, never mind. I bet the entire topic came up because of that bitch, Chloe. A boiling anger courses through my veins. It’s like I’m running hot and cold, one emotion to the next. I’m like a nuclear bomb just waiting to go off, and Chloe knows exactly how to light my fuse.

  “Yeah”—Gage gives my hand a hard squeeze as everyone falls into a seat—“lucky he was there.” That was close.

  “Wasn’t it?” I whisper.

  The joy drips from Emma’s face. “Wasn’t it what, Skyla?” I guess the fact I brought Gage over like a trophy is small potatoes while there’s still fresh hate to be had. Face it, we are never going to get along.

  “Just a private word I was sharing with my husband.”

  Emma squints at Gage before whispering something into Barron’s ear, and now they’re both eyeing my poor husband as if he were a thief who came to steal the silverware.

  “What?” Gage doesn’t have the patience, and, for one, I’m glad. I’m so over Emma and her head games. Maybe he’ll give her the finger, and we can all go home.

  I touch my hand to my lips. I can’t believe I said that, even if it wasn’t out loud.

  Emma clears her throat and nods in my direction. “How can we be sure this is your husband?”

  “I’m not Wes.” Gage is the first to contest this theory.

  Oh shit. What if Emma is onto something? I mean, we did see Wes tonight, but what’s to stop Demetri from pulling more Gage doppelgangers out of his ass for the next thirty years? He’s about as obsessed with Gage as Chloe is—as I am. My hormones purr once again, and I push the thought, the horrid theory, to the far reaches of my mind. Leave it to Emma to throw a wrench of doubt into my fuck-Gage-until-my-ears-bleed plan. As soon as I land him in that bed, I’ll know for damn sure.

  My eyes flit to Logan for a moment. Again, how could he not know? But t
hen, I suppose three days wasn’t enough to memorize my every nuance. Plus, I’m more than positive Chloe brought her dark vaginal magic to the table. I shudder just thinking about that Bermuda Triangle-shaped bear trap of hers.

  “Look”—Gage takes a deep breath, his eyes hood with fatigue (but I can work with that because it looks like lust to me)—“I hurt my back in the fall. A wave came and softened the blow, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was some spinal damage. Demetri had me injected with some stem cell treatment not approved yet in this country. And I knew Skyla and Logan would come as soon as they could.”

  Logan winces when Gage says that last part. Dirty, dirty, boy. My hormones rev up again, and those dreams replay in my mind as I force my eyes back to my husband.

  “And we did.” Logan furrows his brows as if thrown that the words actually came from his mouth, but we know what he meant. Mostly.

  Liam looks to Logan with a serious look of discontent. “Should we let them in on what happened?”

  “Oh God, no!” I straighten in my seat, gripping Gage hard by the shoulder. I don’t care if it was Chloe who lured Logan into bed, Emma’s hatred for me will proliferate if she finds out that Logan slept with me—in theory. Plus, hello? It’s just a touch embarrassing for Logan. I’m stomping this topic out like an oven fire for both of our sakes.

  “It’s okay.” Logan lifts a finger.

  I’m hating the finger lift.

  “Shouldn’t you consult with me first?” I make large, concerned-as-hell eyes at him, and he holds back a smile. Not liking the withheld smile either.

  “This concerns Lexy.”

  “Did you sleep with her, too?” My hand clamps over my mouth, and I can feel Gage’s chest buck with a laugh.

  “No, Skyla.” He glances to Liam because I do believe it’s Liam who’s tapping both that well and Michelle’s. Hey, I wonder if when it’s Michelle’s turn he says, It’s Miller time!

  “Lexy came over to Dudley’s and told us about some recruitment project Wes is undertaking.” Logan gives me a curt nod as if to say, See? You can trust me. “He selected a few willing members of the Barricade to form a special ops team, if you will.” He shrugs as if not really. “She didn’t say much, just that they’re in the process of learning new powers.”