The tension tightened, and I began to wonder if I was the only one at the table not privy to the real conversation.
“My family is from England,” Katie continued. “My mother was actually born in Wales, but she was raised in England.” She took a sip of coffee and looked back up at Leda. “Is that what you want to know?”
Leda maintained her flat expression without saying a word.
“I haven’t been to Crusades, but I’ve heard of it,” Katie said, picking up my hanging question. “Crusades is yours, Greer?”
“It is. You’re welcome there anytime…as my guest.”
“No, dear,” Leda said, hijacking the conversation back to the original thread. “I mean your real parents. Russian?”
Katie put her cup down and glanced at her half eaten slice of cake. Leda struck a nerve, and I was both embarrassed by the treatment of my friend, and curious as to how Leda knew such a personal detail about Katie’s life. The look on Katie’s face confirmed that Leda was right.
In a panic to fill the awkward silence, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Russia? How interesting.”
“How did you know?” Katie asked Leda.
“Know what?” Leda replied, acting like all was normal and she hadn’t just called my friend a liar.
“That I was adopted.”
FIVE
After apologizing to Katie for the interrogation at dinner, I said good night and shut the door to her cab.
Obviously a bee had flown up Leda’s ass, compelling my friend to defend herself unnecessarily. Katie never mentioned that she was adopted, and until she felt the need to share that information, it was no one else’s business to do it for her. Thank God Greer finally censured the inquisition before it reached the point of bullying, and we were able to salvage the rest of the evening.
I never did get to pick Katie’s brain about Constantine’s visit to the shop. Had it been eventful, I’m sure she would have said something before she left. It probably didn’t matter anyway. I’d be lucky if I ever saw Katie again after what Leda just did.
As the cab pulled away from the curb, I just stood there under the streetlight, dismantling my plan to calmly walk back inside and murder Leda. It was getting late, but the clear sky gave off a soft light that made it appear earlier than it was. I considered the stupid idea of heading toward the park and walking until my legs gave out. Anything to avoid going back in there to face the Gestapo imposter in Leda’s clothing.
A drop of rain hit my nose, reminding me that spring was here and the days were getting longer. It wouldn’t be long now until it was still light at this time.
I turned to walk back to the house when I saw a shadow appear halfway between Greer’s steps and the neighbor’s. It seemed to mirror my movements, stopping when I did and continuing each time I took a step toward the stairs. Maybe if I ran I’d make it to the steps first. Maybe I was overreacting and it was just the neighbor taking out his garbage.
I took my chances and ran for it. As my foot hit the bottom step, an arm wrapped around my waist and a hand covered my mouth before I could scream.
“You’re a difficult girl to find. Now that I have, we have things to discuss.”
His voice was familiar, but I couldn’t see his face.
I focused on the front door and considered how I could keep him from dragging me off the steps long enough for Greer to get suspicious and come looking for me.
He must have had the same thought, because he pulled me into the shaded corner behind the stairs, the glare of the streetlight revealing his face. It was Daemon, the man I met at Arthur Richmond’s party last December. I was at the bar that night, and he mistook me for his missing date. He seemed perfectly harmless at the time, until I naively followed him to a room one floor up from the party and nearly found out just how wrong that first impression was. If it hadn’t been for Constantine showing up and scaring him off, God knows what he would have done to me.
“It’s nice to see you again, Alex.” His face came closer, and the scent coming off his skin stirred an unpleasant memory. It was one of those scattered images that kept teasing me with fragments of a bigger picture.
I breathed his scent in again, and those scattered pieces began to come together, forming a face I vaguely remembered from the night I was held to the ground and nearly raped in Central Park. I was drugged that night—poisoned according to Greer—and barely made out the set of eyes staring down at me. But it was that faint scent of charred cedar coming off his skin that I’ll never forget. The combination of that smell and those gripping brown eyes pulled all the pieces together. At Arthur Richmond’s party the following month, his eyes had triggered something familiar, but the only thing I remembered smelling was his strong cologne.
That man was hunting, Constantine had warned. I thought he was overreacting, or just trying to block the competition.
Daemon must have been following me since that night in the park. All these months, he’d been watching me, patiently waiting for the right opportunity to finish what he started.
I closed my eyes and fought the sickness roiling up from my stomach. His hand was too tight on my mouth. I clawed at it frantically as my ability to breathe lessened and sent me into a panic.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. “I just needed to see you for myself. I knew there was something different about you.” He looked up at Greer’s front door and then released my mouth with a visual warning not to scream.
“Is that why you attacked me in the park?” I choked out between gasps for air. “Because I’m so different?”
His expression sobered. “No. That’s why I stopped.”
I dug my fingers into his skin as he tightened his grip around my waist. “Get off of me, you sick bastard!”
“This isn’t personal, Alex.”
Right. There was nothing personal about it. In that moment, I realized he wasn’t just one of the predators Greer had described to me the night he told me about the Rogues—he was delusional.
“I guess the amulet takes priority over that.” I could feel the cool surface of the silver pressed against my bare skin under my shirt, and I wondered if he could, too.
He smiled as if reading my mind and ran his hand over my blouse. His fingers found it under the fabric but continued lower until they reached my chest. “The prophecy will give us control of the earth. But you, Alex,” he cupped my breast and squeezed, “will make us kings.”
We both looked up at the front door as it opened. Greer burst through it and took the steps four at a time. Daemon was gone the moment the light from the living room hit the outside threshold, and I was left standing alone on the sidewalk.
“Alex? What’s taking so long?”
Greer was already smothering me, and telling him that a Rogue had been standing on his steps just before he came barreling through the door would set us back to lockdown status. I was surprised he even let me walk Katie to her cab without an escort.
“Easy, tiger. I’m just getting a little fresh air.” I walked past him and prayed he wouldn’t notice my hand trembling on the rail, or smell the adrenaline racing through my bloodstream. He studied me carefully as I ascended the steps, but said nothing. I guess the past few days warranted a little spike in my juices.
When I walked into the living room, Leda was sitting on the sofa with her head leaned back against the cushion. Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Someone to Watch Over Me.” She hummed along, seemingly indifferent to the fact that she’d humiliated my friend at dinner.
“What was that all about?” I demanded.
She lifted her head and the volume instantly muted. “What? You mean our search for the truth?”
“Call it whatever you like, but it was wrong.” Leda was a class act, but today I’d seen the mean girl who lived within. “That was just plain rude, Leda. I’ll be surprised if Katie ever speaks to me again.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Alex. If she’s half the girl you say she is, she won’
t let a bitch like me break up a friendship.” She stood up and walked over to me, fiddling with the collar of my blouse like an old mother hen. “But there’s something I think you should know.”
I swatted at her hands. “Would you stop.”
“That girl is not who she says she is.” She dropped her hands and took a step back.
I glared at Greer and then back at Leda. “Then who is she?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet, but one thing I’m absolutely certain of—that girl is not English.”
“Oh, well. There you go. I’m so glad you spared me from the big lie.” I looked around the room at all the faces staring back at me. “God forbid someone around here is less than truthful about who they really are.”
“Alex,” Greer warned, playing arbiter.
“And you,” I snapped at him. “You let it go on forever until you finally did something about it. You just sat there and let her humiliate my friend—in your own house.”
Leda headed for the bar. She poured a drink and came back toward me.
“I don’t want a damn drink, Leda.”
“It’s not for you, dear.” She handed the glass to Greer. “He needs it more than you do.”
“Leda’s right,” he agreed. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s definitely something not right about Katie. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she knows she’s lying.”
“Which means technically she isn’t lying,” Leda added. “Very strong Slavic vibe.”
“For God’s sake, who cares where she’s from!”
“We don’t,” Greer said. “We’re more concerned about what she is.”
It took a half hour of arguing, but I finally convinced Greer that his life would be immensely more peaceful if he allowed me to go to Shakespeare’s Library long enough to try to patch my friendship with Katie. Allowing it would also eliminate my need to sneak out unchaperoned—an act he knew I was capable of. He agreed to give me an hour accompanied by Rhom.
Rhom was decent enough to wait outside the shop. When I walked inside, Katie was sitting at the library table with a man wearing chinos and a blazer in desperate need of ironing. She raised her index finger to let me know she’d be with me in a minute.
It was just past noon, and Katie was manning the shop alone, probably so Apollo could grab some lunch. I poked around the shelves while I waited and noticed a resume in her hand. The man sitting across the table from her seemed a bit nervous, shifting in his chair and playing with the ends of his tie. She was interviewing my replacement.
“Thanks for coming in, Kevin. Apollo will give you a call this afternoon.” She closed the door as he left the shop and then turned to look at me.
“So…Kevin?”
“Looks like it,” she sighed. “Nice guy, but it won’t be the same around here.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how embarrassed I am about how Leda treated you at dinner. She usually isn’t like that.”
Katie laid the resume on the counter and crooked her finger, instructing me to follow her. We walked halfway down the sci-fi aisle before she stopped. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I was so blasé about everything the night you asked me to comb through your hair? Why I never asked what that mark on the back of your head was all about?”
It was in this very room that we found the mark and I discovered that I was the Oracle.
“Well, I just figured you were being…you. You’re not exactly mainstream, Katie.”
“Come on, Alex. Who the hell would let something like that go and never bring it up again?” She turned her back to me and began lifting the bottom of her shirt. “Take a look.”
I’d never actually seen her entire tattoo. Even when she allowed Leda to unzip her dress at dinner, her back was away from me.
She pulled her tank top over her shoulders. “Undo my bra so you can get a better look.”
I popped the clasp and the bra fell away from the canvas of her back. “Wow, that’s some piece of art.” I couldn’t stop my finger from tracing the lines. “It must have taken months or years to complete.” I’d always imagined some sort of serpent under her clothes, but now that it was right in front of me, it looked more like a dragon. “Did it hurt?” I asked as I refastened her bra.
“I don’t know.” She dropped her shirt and the ink disappeared back under the tank top. “I was born with it.”
Either she was fucking with me as payback for our little fiasco at dinner, or she was a bigger freak than I was.
“You mean you don’t remember getting it done?” I’d heard of people tattooing their children. They usually ended up in jail.
“No, I really don’t. A woman came to visit me when I was a kid. She just showed up at my school and said she was my aunt. Made me show it to her, and then she showed me hers.” She smirked nervously. “Looks like you’re not the weirdest one in the room, after all.”
“So…are you saying Leda was right?”
Her blue eyes sparkled as the morning light amplified through the window, the same color as the eyes of the creature on her back. “She was right about one thing—I’m adopted. I guess I should have mentioned that.”
“It’s none of my business, Katie.”
“I just hate the way people look at me when I tell them I’m adopted. It’s like I have some incurable disease.”
“Then I guess we have more in common than we thought.” I’d seen that same look a hundred times while I went from one foster home to the next. “Does this mean we’re still friends?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” She looked genuinely surprised by the question. “What? You thought I’d dump you because of someone else’s bad manners? Look, I don’t know anything about Leda, but I bet she’d rip my throat out if I hurt you.”
She was right about that. Leda was just trying to protect me from the conniving girl with the dragon tattoo.
“Can I ask you something, Alex?”
“Shoot.”
“All that shit you told me the other day, the stuff about your eyes and this prophecy, is that everything?”
Here we go. I’d told her the meat of it but left out some of the worst parts, like my homicidal nature. Seeing how she probably had a few more secrets of her own, it seemed safe to share. “I left out a few things.”
“I want all of it, Alex. I’m just dying to know more about those friends of yours.”
“Me, too,” I muttered.
“Thomas is hot.” She bit her brightly painted lower lip. “And Greer! I don’t know how you keep your hands off of him. Which one is Leda fucking?”
“Neither. Well, not anymore. She used to have a thing for Greer, but it’s been over for a long time.”
“So he’s fair game?” she asked with an arched brow.
The question put me off balance. I guess he was fair game. I know I certainly had no claim.
She saw the look on my face and quickly clarified. “For you. Jesus, Alex. What kind of friend do you think I am?”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes, waving my hand dismissively through the air.
“Come on. No more man talk.” She motioned me over to the library table. “Let’s start with why you really quit.”
This wasn’t going to be as tough as I thought. If Katie was actually born with that tattoo on her back, my lineage would seem tame in comparison.
The bell on the door chimed. We both looked up as an elderly woman walked into the shop. She had a pronounced hump on her upper back, forcing her to walk in a hunched manner. For a woman of her advanced age, she had a surprisingly dark head of hair. No gray, just a mane of jet black hair pulled back into a neat bun at the crown of her head. She went straight for the section on health and wellness but stopped at the end cap and looked back at the front door. Her right hand went up, and her finger began to tap against her thin lips.
“Can I help you find something?” Katie asked.
“No, dear. You go right back to what you were doing,” she answered.
“You let us kn
ow if we can help you find something.”
The woman disappeared down the aisle, and Katie turned back to our conversation. “You were saying?”
I was about to confess more sordid details about my messed up heritage. She already knew the highlights, so I was really just filling in the gaps.
Our conversation was interrupted by a thump coming from one of the aisles. It sounded like a heavy book hitting the floor. We both glanced in the direction of the noise, but when we heard nothing else I continued with my story.
“Remember when I told you about—”
Another sound came from the aisle, only this one sounded like a pile of books cascading from the shelf to the floor. Katie’s eyes turned first. I hesitated before looking in the same direction.
“Everything all right in there?” she said loudly so the woman could hear. “Are you sure we can’t help you find something?”
“No, dear. You go right back to what you were doing.”
The woman was beginning to sound like a broken record. I could tell by the look on Katie’s face that the same thought was going through her mind.
“Is the sky blue?” I said to the woman while looking at Katie.
“No, dear. You go right back to what you were doing.”
The ruckus coming from inside the aisle got louder. I couldn’t see the books flying off the shelves, but I could hear them hitting the floor in an avalanche of pulp and ink.
Katie got up and ran toward the aisle. I started to follow but stopped as a large shadow spread across the ceiling over the health and wellness section. It expanded and covered the entire side of the room as a long pole-shaped limb curled around the side of the shelf. Like giant pipe cleaners gripping the top, more appeared until there were four legs on each side. And then a pair of hooked fangs protruded over the end cap, followed by two rows of shiny black eyes.
“Katie!” I screamed as she disappeared into the stacks.
A loud hiss filled the room. The sound amplified, vibrating in my head until it felt like a knife slicing through my eardrum.
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 5