by Karen Lynch
He wore an expression of disbelief as he looked from me to Roland and Peter who smiled and nodded reassuringly. I waited for the truth to sink in and for him to recoil from me, not that I would blame him. I just hoped he would get used to the idea eventually and we could stay friends. That was why I’d wanted to ease him into this slowly. It was a lot for anyone to take in.
His face paled a bit when he realized I was not joking, but he showed none of the abhorrence I’d expected. Encouraged, I continued to tell my story with Roland and Peter’s help. Greg listened quietly when we told him about the events leading up to me leaving New Hastings, and it wasn’t until I got to the part where everyone had believed I was dead, that he finally spoke.
“That was one of the roughest days of my life.”
The emotion in his voice caught me off guard. I swallowed past a lump in my throat, amazed I’d gotten this far without crying. “I’m sorry, Greg.”
“Wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t reply. I wasn’t responsible for the things the vampires had done, but a lot of the other happenings in Maine were consequences of things I’d done. I had a lot of regrets from that time, and my biggest one was hurting Nate and my friends with my lies. That was why I wanted to be completely honest with Greg, even if it meant risking our friendship.
He rubbed the back of his neck and let out a puff of air. “So you’re a demon and a faerie?”
“I’m half faerie. And I’m not half demon; I have one demon inside me. There’s a big difference.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. He looked at Roland and Peter. “And you two are werewolves?”
“Yes,” Roland answered.
“I see.”
“Greg, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.” Maybe he was in shock and he just wasn’t showing it. Or maybe he thought we were all nuts.
His gaze swung back to me. “I admit, it’s not every day you hear your friends aren’t human, but...”
It was something in his eyes and his voice that made me understand his quiet acceptance. “You’ve seen things, haven’t you?”
He hesitated before he nodded.
“What?”
His expression darkened. “Enough to know you’re not messing with me.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I know.” He reached over and took my hand, surprising me again. Greg wasn’t an affectionate person. The last time I’d seen him touch someone was when he’d grabbed another boy by the shirt front for bullying Jeffrey Crumb at school. “If you’re supposed to be hiding from vampires, what the hell are you doing in LA?”
“That’s where the story gets more interesting.” I told him about Westhorne, the vampire attacks, and our journey to LA. I didn’t say a lot about Nikolas because it was hard to talk about him. Greg seemed to understand and didn’t prod me about it, although I could tell he was curious.
“So let me see if I got this right. You have a demon inside you, but you can fry other demons by touching them?”
“I don’t think ‘fry’ is the right word.”
Jordan snorted. “She made a lamprey demon explode once. Totally awesome, but gross.” She went on to describe it in detail. “And she can paralyze vampires long enough to stake them or chop their heads off.”
I made a face. “Thanks for that colorful description, Jordan.”
“Anytime.”
“Does this power work on all demons?”
I nodded. “I started out with small demons and I’ve used it on a few vampires. I did kill one vampire with my power, but he was new. It’s harder the older the vampire is, and I’ve never tried to use it on a large demon.”
“That’s amazing.”
I smiled. “It comes in handy.”
He studied me quietly for a long moment. “And now you are on a mission to find your mother and make her tell you about this Master who’s after you? Did I miss anything?”
“I think that sums it up.”
He leaned forward and waved at the others. “Can I ask why these three have blood on them and you don’t?”
I made a face. “We ran into three vampires, and we had to take them out. They did all the dirty work.”
“Jesus.” He sank back against the cushions. “To think I used to worry about you walking home after school.”
Roland chuckled. “Dude, you should have seen Foley after she kicked his ass.”
Fighting with Scott was not something I was proud of, especially since I’d used my Mori strength against him. If his friend Ryan hadn’t been there, God knows what I might have done to him. “That’s not funny, Roland. I really could have hurt him.”
“Scott is an asshole,” Greg said scornfully.
After all I’d learned, I didn’t think Scott was as bad as they made him out to be. But it would be futile to try to convince Greg otherwise. I was more concerned with how Greg was handling all we’d dumped on him in the last hour. I could only imagine the thoughts that must be going through his mind after everything he’d learned tonight.
I turned to him and found him giving me a pensive look. “What are you thinking about?”
His head tilted, and he gave me a roguish smile. “I’m trying to picture you in that faerie dress.”
I grabbed a small pillow and hit him with it. He laughed as he easily deflected it.
“Greg, be serious. Are you okay with all of this? I know it’s a lot to take in.”
His grin faded. “I’m good, really, though it might take a few days for it all to sink in.”
I sagged in relief. “Now it’s your turn. What have you seen?”
“I’ll tell you later. I want to hear more about those hellhounds. What were their names?”
“Greg!” He was evading my question and I wanted to know why.
Roland laughed. “Dude, when she gets that look on her face, it’s easier to just give in.”
Greg opened his mouth at the same time his cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at the number. “Excuse me, guys. I have to get this.” He disappeared into one of the bedrooms, talking softly. I couldn’t hear the words, but it was easy to detect the strain in his voice. Whatever the call was about, it wasn’t good.
Ten minutes later, he came back. “Sorry about that. My cousin Danny is only ten and he’s having a real hard time with his father’s death. He and his mom live in Dallas.”
“You don’t have to apologize for that.” I realized for the first time how tired he looked. And it was obvious he had a lot of family stuff on his mind. “We should get going anyway. Can I have your number so I can call you tomorrow?”
“Why don’t you guys stay here?”
I really wanted to say yes to have more time catching up with him, especially since we had no idea where we’d be off to next. “Don’t you think this place might get a bit cramped with five of us staying here?”
Greg waved it off. “I’ve got two bedrooms, a couch out here, and another one in the studio. Plus, a fridge full of food and a big screen TV. This has to be a lot nicer than your hotel.”
Roland gave the TV a longing look. “I don’t mind sleeping on the couch.”
“Jordan?” She didn’t know Greg, and she probably didn’t want to be stuck sharing a bathroom with four other people. If she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of staying here, we had to respect that.
She pursed her lips and her eyes lingered on the bathroom door. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to stay for a few days.”
I turned to Greg. “I guess we’re staying. But we have to go get our stuff and check out first. It’s pretty late so we’ll stay there tonight and come back tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you in the morning then.” He walked us to our car and gave me another hug. It was so out of character for him that it worried me. He looked emotionally worn down and in need of a good night’s sleep.
Tomorrow I was going to find out what he was hiding from me. Something was weighing on him and it bothered me to see him this way.
<
br /> “Greg seems different,” Roland said on the way back to the hotel.
I watched the streets go by. “He definitely has something on his mind. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
Jordan jumped in the shower as soon as we got back to our room, and I called David to tell him what I’d learned about Madeline. He said Kelvan and another friend would handle the surveillance. When I asked him if his friends minded doing all this work for us, he laughed and said, “Are you kidding? This is the most fun we’ve had in ages.”
Jordan walked out of the bathroom, toweling her hair. “All right, what’s the deal?”
“Huh?” I said, distracted.
She snapped her towel at me. “Hello, earth to Sara. How the hell did your virginity make it through high school intact with a guy like that around?”
“It’s not like that with Greg and me. We’re friends.” I decided not to mention the short-lived crush I’d had on him a few years ago.
She climbed into her bed. “Uh-huh. Well, I can’t wait to see Nikolas’s face when he gets a load of your high school friend.”
After Jordan settled down, I took a shower and got into my own bed. But my mind and body were too wound up to go to sleep. I rolled over and puffed up my pillows for the fifth time, telling myself that all the excitement tonight was the cause for my sleeplessness. But the truth was I hadn’t slept well since I’d left Westhorne.
There was one thing I knew would help me sleep. I pressed my face into the pillow. No way. I’d given in to that weakness the past two nights. I would not do it again.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I buried my face in the T-shirt that still carried his scent. And when I grabbed my laptop and went into the bathroom. And when I opened the phone app and dialed the number.
“Hello?”
I closed my eyes. How could one word wreak so much havoc on my emotions, and yet fill me with a sense of peace at the same time?
“Sara? Will you talk to me tonight?”
I listened to him breathe, wanting more than anything to talk to him. The longer we were apart, the harder it was to be away from him. But I was afraid once we started talking, he’d convince me to tell him where I was.
“Okay.” He exhaled slowly. “Tristan said you sounded tired when you called him today. I know you’re not sleeping. You know you can call me anytime, even if you’re not ready to talk yet.”
A tear leaked out from beneath my closed lid. I miss you.
“It’s late. You should try to get some sleep. Call me again tomorrow so I know you’re all right. And Sara... I need to hear your voice, too.”
Hearing him say that nearly broke me. “I’m okay,” I said hoarsely before my finger hit the button to end the call.
I sat on the edge of the bathtub, trying not to give in to my tears. All I needed was to have red puffy eyes tomorrow. It took me a few minutes to compose myself, and then I left the bathroom and slipped into bed as quietly as I could.
Jordan’s sleepy voice startled me as I pulled the covers over me. “I give you five days tops before you cave and tell him where you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have it so bad for that guy you call him every night just to hear his voice. You’re like an addict sneaking away for a fix. You even stole his T-shirt.” She rolled over, and her voice was slightly muffled by her pillow. “Forget what I said. I give you three days max.”
“Just because I miss him doesn’t mean I’m going to give up looking for Madeline. This is too important.”
“Maybe you can have both. Nikolas can be a little – okay, a lot – overbearing, but that’s because he just wants you to be safe. I admit he can go overboard with the whole alpha male bit, and I can definitely see how that would bug you. But you’ve both had time to cool down. I bet if you talked to him, he’d be more willing to compromise.”
I stared at the ceiling, blinking away tears. “I wish it was that simple.”
Jordan raised herself up on one elbow. “I know you’re hurting. We all do. You don’t hide it as well as you think you do.”
“I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.” I let out a shaky laugh. “Some warrior I turned out to be, huh?”
“You’re still a bit rough around the edges, but you have potential. Plus, you have excellent taste in friends.”
I wiped my eyes with the sheet. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Jordan.”
She fell back onto her pillow and yawned. “You couldn’t have stopped me if you’d tried.”
* * *
“Do you guys want to order in or go out?” Greg waved some takeout menus. “There’s a great Chinese place a block away and they deliver.”
I looked up from the email I’d just gotten from David. He and Kelvan had already located Adele’s home, and they were watching that and the club while they looked for any sign that Madeline was in the city. I was so lucky to have David on my side. There was no way I could have done this without his help.
“Chinese sounds great.”
“Works for me,” Jordan said, and the boys echoed her.
We decided what to order and Greg called it in. His cell phone rang a few minutes later, and he took it into the studio and shut the door. I watched him go, wishing I knew what was going on with him. We’d gotten here around noon, and I’d spent most of the afternoon catching up with him while the others enjoyed the big TV and stocked fridge. He still hadn’t confided in me about what was bothering him, but I saw worry cross his face a few times when he thought I wasn’t looking. He hadn’t slept well either, judging by the shadows under his eyes. Twice, when I thought he was close to opening up, his cell phone rang and he left the room to talk. Both times he came back looking like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Greg had always been so strong and nothing had ever seemed to get to him. It was hard seeing him like this.
After dinner, Greg grabbed two beers from the fridge and handed me a warm sweater. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
I followed him to a set of stairs I thought led to an attic. But they actually took us to the roof where his uncle had created a pretty little patio area lit by strings of lights. I walked to the edge of the roof and looked up at the Hollywood sign in the distance. “Wow, this is amazing.”
He stood beside me and set his beer on the ledge. “It’s nothing like home, is it?”
“You’re not kidding. Have you seen what women wear to clubs here? They’d get pneumonia if they dressed like that back home.”
He laughed, and it was the first real one I’d heard from him all day. “Sara, don’t ever change.”
“I’ll always be me, but some change is good.”
“True.” He took a long drink from his beer and leaned against the ledge, looking out at the city. “I’ll never forget the day you started at St. Patrick’s. You looked so shy when you walked in with Roland, and then at lunch you ran off two guys who were messing with Jeffrey.”
I thought back to my first day of high school. “I don’t remember seeing you that day.”
He laughed deeply. “No, you didn’t, but I saw you. Everyone saw you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You were just different. All the other girls were trying to get the guys’ attention, but you were doing everything not to be noticed. And you talked only to Roland and Peter, ignoring the rest of us.”
I made a face. “Was I really that stuck up?”
Greg laughed again. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. You just seemed content to do your own thing. What you didn’t know is that a pretty girl ignoring a bunch of high school boys is like waving a red flag at them.”
I was glad the darkness hid my blush. “I think you might be exaggerating a bit.”
“Have you ever known me to exaggerate? I couldn’t figure out what it was about you, but I wanted to get to know you.” He gave me a sideways look. “I didn’t give a shit for anyone in that school, so it shocked the hell out of me. I can still rememb
er your face when me and Mike sat at your table. You were reading some old book and you looked like you wanted to tell us to get lost.”
I smiled at the memory. “Well, Mike was kind of loud.”
“I thought you were going to take off, but you just went back to your book.” He stared at the city. “I wasn’t exactly a nice person back then. Anyone besides you would have run away.”
“I knew there were things out there a lot scarier than you.” I sipped my beer. “And I actually liked you guys.”
“I don’t know why you liked us. We were on the fast track to nowhere back then.” He turned his face toward me. “I know your uncle didn’t think much of me, and he was right. I was bad news, and I don’t blame him for not wanting me around you.”
“Nate and I didn’t agree on a lot of things. And you weren’t that bad. You were always good to me.”
He frowned. “Before I met you I was a total asshole. I had a juvie record, and I was headed down a pretty bad road. Mike and me were all ready to drop out and join up with a bike gang out of Boston. They were hard core. You had to pull an armed robbery in order to get into the gang.”
His revelation stunned me. I knew he’d had a bad rep, but I’d never thought of him as a criminal. “What stopped you?”
“You did.”
“Me?”
“There was something about you that made me want to be a better person.” He blew out his breath. “I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. After I met you, I didn’t want to do that crazy stuff anymore.”
It took me a minute to recover from my shock. “Remember what I told you last night about me being half undine? It can affect humans, especially guys, and they start acting different around me.”
“Maybe that’s true, and it might be what made me sit at your table, but you’re a good person, Sara. You were too good for me and the rest of the guys back home.”
“Is that why you threatened violence on any boy at school who hurt me?” I smiled at his look of surprise. “Roland told me.”
He grinned, not the least bit embarrassed. “I meant it, too.”
“Greg, I –” I started to asked him again about whatever had been worrying him, but I was interrupted by his cell phone.