Still staring at the dead man, I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself—
A shadow fell over me, and I slowly looked up. My mom towered above me, the blue-white flames of her Ice magic still crackling on her hand. She stared at the man, making sure that he was dead, then dropped to her knees in front of me. She was still holding on to her magic, and the cold chill of it sank into my body, just as the Ice daggers had punched into the intruder’s chest. I shrank away from her, trying to press myself up against the wall, into the wall, through the wall, and out the other side to some place far, far away. Where there were no gunmen creeping around. Where it was safe. Where I was safe.
Anywhere but here, where I had just seen my mom kill a man.
“Genevieve! Are you okay?” Mom’s voice was as loud as thunder in the absolute quiet of her office.
All I could do was just stare at her. I felt cold and numb, inside and out, as though she’d frozen me with her Ice magic, instead of the gunman.
Mom released her hold on her Ice magic and leaned forward, as if she were going to run her hands over my body and make sure that I was okay, but I shrank back from her again. For a second, confusion filled her blue eyes, along with more than a little hurt. But that hurt quickly melted into grim understanding.
She slowly dropped her hands to her sides and rocked back on her knees, putting a little distance between us. She stayed like that for the better part of a minute, just letting me stare at her, even as my mind churned and churned, trying to understand everything that had just happened.
“You’re bleeding,” Mom finally said, pointing to the ugly wound in my palm. “Mind if I take a look at that?”
I glanced down and realized that I was cradling my injured hand up against my chest, smearing blood all over my blue snowflake pajamas. I’d forgotten all about the snow-globe glass cutting into my palm, but now that I was looking at it, I could feel the deep, throbbing wound.
“Genevieve?” Mom’s voice was almost a whisper. “Can I look at your hand? Please?”
That soft please finally penetrated my shock, horror, and disbelief. Because my mom always said please and thank you, and she’d drilled those words into me and my sisters as well. It made her seem like, well, Mom again, and not the powerful Ice elemental who’d just killed a man.
I nodded and held out my hand to her.
Mom leaned forward again, her fingers cool against my skin as they gently probed the wound. I tried not to think about the Ice magic lurking just beneath the surface of her own skin. I’d always known that she was a strong elemental, but to actually watch her unleash that power against another person . . . to actually feel all her cold strength . . . to actually see how easily she’d killed the gunman with her magic . . .
I didn’t know what to think about that—or her—right now.
“It doesn’t look too deep,” Mom said, trying to inject some false lightness into her voice. “We’ll get you cleaned right up. I’ll put some Air elemental healing ointment on it, and you’ll be as good as new in the morning.”
“And how are you going to clean that up?” I whispered, pointing a shaking finger at the dead man.
She didn’t look at him, but her mouth flattened into a tight, thin line. “Don’t worry about him, Genevieve. He broke into our home and threatened you. He got exactly what he deserved.”
The cold venom in her voice shocked me, and I stared at this strange person that I’d never seen before. “But you always say that we shouldn’t use our powers to hurt other people. That that isn’t what our elemental magic is for.”
Mom leaned forward again and gently cupped my face in her hand. Perhaps it was my imagination, but her fingers seemed colder than before, and I almost thought that I could see the Ice magic running through the blue vein at her temple. I pressed my lips together and held back a shudder.
“That’s right. We don’t use our magic to hurt others, unless it’s absolutely necessary to defend ourselves and the people we love. Just like it was for me tonight. Do you understand?”
I nodded, pretending to understand and trying to ignore how scared and horrified I still was deep down inside. Right now, all I could think about was the black eye of that gun, lining up with my forehead, and how much I didn’t want to die. I held back another shudder.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Mom’s blue eyes were still on my gray ones. “How did you know that man was in the house?”
My gaze darted past her to the dead man and all the blood still oozing down his chest, but I forced myself to focus on her again. “I fell asleep under the Christmas tree during the party. I’d just woken up when I heard someone coming up the stairs. I thought that it was you coming to check on us, but then I saw his boots. So I stayed quiet until he went past me. I thought that he might go into one of the bedrooms and hurt Bria or Annabella, but he came here instead. So I crept out from behind the tree and followed him.”
Mom’s face hardened into a blank, remote mask. “The man came straight back here to my office? Instead of searching the house?”
I nodded.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “So Tucker sent him as a warning, then,” she murmured, talking more to herself than to me. “Probably just to scare me. Maybe rough me up a little. I bet Tucker didn’t think that I’d actually kill him instead.”
Every word she said made more and more worry ball up in the pit of my stomach. “A warning?” I whispered. “A warning about what?”
“About what will happen to you and your sisters if I don’t do something for him and his friends,” she replied, still distracted by her thoughts.
“What? What do you have to do?”
Instead of answering me, Mom kept staring at the gunman, her expression getting angrier and angrier by the second, until her eyes were glowing an arctic blue with her Ice magic. She snapped up her hand, and another blast of power rolled off her and shot across the room. I winced and looked away from the bright flash of magic. After several seconds, she dropped her hand and released her grip on her power, although the air was still bitterly cold. I looked over at the gunman and gasped.
She’d frozen him solid.
The man was now encased in elemental Ice from head to toe, looking more like a Popsicle than an actual person. And still my mom eyed him, like she wanted to blast him over and over with her power, even though he was already dead. I’d never seen her so angry before, not even the time a couple of months ago when she’d caught Annabella sneaking into the house after her ten o’clock curfew.
“Don’t worry, Genevieve.” Mom turned back to me. “Everything’s fine now.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to scream and shout and yell that everything was most certainly not fine. That there was a dead man in her office that had almost killed both of us.
She gave me a stern look. “You will not say anything about this to Annabella or especially Bria. Not one word. Do you understand me?”
“But—”
“Do you understand me?” she snapped, cutting me off.
Anger spurted through me, that she was ordering me around like this. That she was telling me to keep quiet. That she was lying right to my face and saying that everything was okay when it was so obviously not okay. But then I looked at her again, and I noticed her tight lips, trembling fingers, and the faint shudder that shook her entire body before she could hide it.
And I realized that she was afraid.
I thought of the man in her office earlier. Hugh, the vampire. And somehow, I knew that he was behind everything that had happened tonight.
“Do you understand me?” Mom’s voice came out softer this time, more of a desperate plea than a direct order.
“I understand,” I whispered, even though I didn’t.
But I would have done anything in that moment to take away her fear.
She smiled at me, but it was a w
obbly expression. “Good. That’s good. Don’t worry, Genevieve. I’ll take care of this. Everything will be the same as it’s always been. You’ll see. No one will ever come in here and hurt you again, not as long as I have breath and magic left in my body.”
I just nodded, not sure what she expected me to say. Not sure what I could say that wouldn’t be an outright lie.
Mom stared at me, then her shoulders shook again, and a choked sob escaped her lips before she was able to swallow it. She reached over and pulled me into her lap, her arms going tight around me, hugging me close and rocking me back and forth, back and forth. Trying to comfort me—and herself.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “You’ll see.”
Mom kept repeating those two phrases over and over, as if she was trying to convince herself, even more than me. . . .
“Gin?” a soft voice asked. “Gin, are you awake?”
For a moment, I could still feel my mother’s arms around me, still feel her warm breath in my hair, still feel her Ice magic coiled in her body, ready to strike out with it at anyone who dared to hurt me. In an instant, the feelings faded, and she was gone, lost to the dark corners of my mind. Although fresh pain, loss, and longing kept knifing through my heart.
“Gin?” that same voice asked again.
I opened my eyes to find Silvio standing beside me. “Yeah,” I said, my voice thick with heartache, sleep, and memories. “What’s up?”
“Ira says that the park is closing in thirty minutes. It’s time.”
23
We all checked and made sure that we had our weapons and other supplies at the ready. Then we all gathered in front of the fireplace, me in my black clothes, my friends still in their trucker garb, and Ira in his Christmas sweater, although he’d turned off the lights on it.
“No matter what happens to me, get Finn, Bria, and Owen to safety,” I said.
Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei nodded back at me. Ira patted his shotgun.
“Be careful,” Silvio said, worry filling his gray eyes.
I flashed the vampire a confident smile and winked at him. “Always.”
I opened the door and left the cabin. My friends did the same, although they stepped onto the path heading up to the hotel, while I took the one that wound past the lake and back over to the theme park.
According to Ira, Bullet Pointe closed at eight o’clock sharp, and it was just after seven thirty now. Darkness had already cloaked the landscape, blacker than coal in some places, but since it was the holiday season, strands of small white lights had been wrapped around many of the trees, lighting my way. Still, I kept to the shadows as much as possible, walking just inside the tree line instead of out on the path itself.
I reached the staging area and slid behind the stagecoach, crouching down and peering out from behind one of the back wheels. The area was deserted, but I knew that would soon change.
“Attention, y’all,” a voice boomed through the park’s loudspeaker system. “The theme park will be closing in fifteen minutes. Attention, the park will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please gather your belongings and head for the nearest exit or the hotel. Thank you.”
Over the next fifteen minutes, more than two hundred folks streamed into the staging area, everyone from the costumed characters to the people who manned the food carts to the ticket takers at the front gates. The workers moved through the pavilions, opening their footlockers and exchanging their cowboy boots, chaps, and hats for regular old sneakers, jeans, and toboggans to ward off the winter chill. They all looked like snakes shedding their skins for something far more comfortable.
I looked out over the crowd, but I didn’t see Roxy, Brody, or any of their giants. They’d be here soon enough, though.
And I’d be ready for them.
I held my position behind the stagecoach and waited for the workers to clear out. It didn’t take long. Ten minutes later, everyone was bundled up, their phones in one hand and their car keys in the other, ready to go home to their families after a long day of dealing with everyone else’s. They left the pavilions, headed down the alleys, stepped out onto Main Street, and vanished. Five minutes later, I was all alone, and I didn’t even hear the faint murmurs of their conversations anymore.
Good.
I got to my feet, stepped out from behind the stagecoach, and moved through the pavilion, gathering up the supplies I’d scoped out earlier and stuffing them into the empty black duffel bag that I’d brought along for this purpose. I wasn’t supposed to meet Tucker until midnight, but the vamp would send Roxy, Brody, and their giants into the park after me as soon as the last of the tourists and workers cleared out. I had maybe half an hour, tops, to prepare for them.
So I slung my duffel bag of supplies over my shoulder, walked down the alley, and stepped out onto Main Street. As in the rest of the park, white lights were wrapped around practically everything, from the iron benches to the hitching posts to the signs overhead. On a normal night, I was guessing that the lights would have been turned off by now, but Tucker wouldn’t want his men stumbling around in the dark after me. But I didn’t mind the lights because they would give my enemies false confidence—and there were still plenty of shadows to hide in.
I glanced up and down the street, surveying all the shops and storefronts, thinking about the items that each one sold, and how I could potentially use them to my advantage. Some of the shops had absolutely nothing that would help me, like the Silver Spur, with its fancy designer clothes and oversize belt buckles, or the Gold Mine, with its display cases full of jewelry. My gaze went past those two shops down the rest of the street to the barbecue restaurant, the candy store, the saloon . . .
The saloon.
I focused on the Good Tyme Saloon, a grin spreading across my face. Now that could be interesting. So I walked over to it. The swinging doors were shut, and two normal doors were closed and locked behind them. But I’d grabbed a gold miner’s pickax from the pavilions earlier, and a couple of swings from that were more than enough to break the locks on the doors.
I pushed through the busted doors and stepped into the saloon. More white lights glimmered in here, casting plenty of illumination. I stuffed my pickax back into my duffel bag and dropped the whole thing on the floor before going around behind the bar and staring at the old-fashioned bottles of liquor on the mirrored glass shelves. I picked out a couple, pulled out the stoppers, and sniffed the contents inside. Every time, the caustic whiff of alcohol wafted up to me. Not just for show then. Excellent.
I spread several bottles around the saloon, slapping them down on the tables in the corners like they were centerpieces. I also lined up four bottles on the bar itself, then reached into my duffel bag and came up with a crisp white cowboy shirt that I’d grabbed from one of the clothing racks. A couple of passes with my knife reduced the shirt to long strips, which I stuffed into the tops of those bottles. I also plucked a stolen cigarette lighter out of my bag and put it on the bar next to the bottles.
Once that was done, I grabbed my duffel bag and left the saloon. My next stop was the water tower at the entrance to Main Street. I peered up at the tower, which was also decked out with holiday lights. The sturdy structure sat on four legs of thick, solid wood—at least until I gave the two legs facing the street a couple of swipes with a battery-powered electric saw from my supplies. I didn’t cut all the way through the wood, and the tower remained standing, but I’d weakened those two supports enough for my purposes. I also grabbed a nearby water hose and opened the nozzle wide, letting water cascade out all over the walkway in front of the tower.
I checked my phone. Twenty minutes had passed since the park had closed. I probably had ten more minutes before it was open season on Gin Blanco, so I headed into the alley across from the water tower. This time, I pulled several long lassos out of my duffel bag and uncoiled them one by one. I was no cowboy, but I cou
ld tie a decent enough knot, and I’d made plenty of traps over the years. Once I had the lassos arranged, it was time for me to get into position.
I hid my duffel bag behind one of the water troughs, then jogged down the path that would take me to the main theme-park entrance, since that was the most logical place for my enemies to gather. Right before I reached the entrance, I stepped off the path and into the woods, slipping from one pool of shadows to the next, until I was within spitting distance of the main gate. It was locked up tight for the night, just like I expected, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t want to get out.
I wanted people to come in.
I moved through the woods until I found a tall tree—one that was not wrapped in white lights or close to any others that were illuminated. I climbed up it twenty feet until I found a sturdy branch that I could sit on without being easily seen from below. I didn’t want to be down on the ground when Roxy, Brody, and the giants first entered the park, and my perch would let me see them coming. Besides, they would assume that I was hiding somewhere deeper in the park, not right here at the entrance.
My roost also let me look out beyond the gate, which opened up into a concessions area, with a series of empty parking lots beyond that. All the workers had gone home, and the tourists had done the same or trudged up the hill to the hotel if that’s where they were staying. Even the giants who’d been guarding the entrance to keep me from sneaking out had vanished, now that Tucker knew that I wasn’t leaving without my friends. So I was all alone.
But it didn’t stay that way for long.
I’d only been in position for about five minutes when several giants rounded the corner of the concessions stands and approached the main gate. That area was lit up with holiday lights, just like the rest of the park, so I could see Brody leading the pack of them. He was dressed in his usual cowboy outfit, all in black, just like me.
Unraveled Page 24