Reaper

by Lena North

  “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  “You were there when Olly told me he wasn’t interested, Wilder. I can’t very well move in with his da.”

  “He was pissed, so I'm not sure he meant what he said,“ she said. “Give him some time away from everything, and he’ll calm down, Annie.”

  “I’m not so sure I ever want to talk to him again,” I stated, and added lamely “Maybe this was for the best.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and then she sighed.

  “You’re so full of shit, Annie.”

  I swallowed and had no clue what to say because I was. I missed him so much, and there was no way his stupid way of dealing with things was for the best.

  “Right. This is not the time or the place. I’ll get the girls night organized, and we'll dissect it all to death,” she said calmly. “And, Annie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise you’ll let me know before you leave.”

  “Okay,” I answered even though she hadn’t put it as a question.

  “No sneaking out. No stupid note with an inane goodbye and a cheery request that we’ll stay in touch,” she said, quoting the note I’d left at Double H. “I know you didn't trust me before, but I hope you know by now that you can. I have a small house here, and Da has a ginormous one. You’re welcome to stay in either anytime you need it.”

  “Okay,” I repeated and tried to hide how her blunt kindness made my eyes sting.

  “Oh, no,” she said with very fake horror. “No tears, please. Go home and cry in front of Sven instead, I’m sure that’ll make him uncomfortable enough to pat your shoulder awkwardly at least five times.”

  I burst out laughing, which I guessed was exactly what she’d intended, and she grinned as she shooed me away. When the road turned slightly, I turned to look at the village one last time and saw Wilder talking on the phone. She was gesturing impatiently with her hand, but when she caught me watching, she smiled and waved happily. I raised my hand, but didn’t wave back. I'd miss her.

  I strolled back to the farmhouse and came to a full stop just inside the door where there was a pile of very familiar bags.

  “Sven?” I wheezed out when he came down the stairs. “What’s that?”

  “Your grandfather was here,” he replied calmly. “Asked a favor.”

  “Asked a favor?” I echoed.

  I knew the men hadn’t met, so why my cantankerous grandfather would suddenly show up in Norton, drop a lot of my stuff off and ask Sven for favors was beyond me.

  “There are some issues with your place. He asked if you could stay here for a while. You know, just while they fumigate the place.”

  “Fumigate?”

  What on earth was going on?

  “Use chemicals to dis –”

  “I know what the hell fumigate is,” I snapped.

  “Of course,” he said soothingly, and repeated, “There are issues with your place.”

  “What issues?”

  “He wasn't entirely clear, and he's not the kind of man you push for details, Annie. Suspect it's lice, though.”

  “Lice?”

  Yuck. That was disgusting but hardly surprising since my studio was really just an upgraded old outhouse. I tried to remember if woodlice would be a problem this close to winter.

  “Or, I don’t know. He wasn’t clear, but they’re fumigating,” Sven murmured.

  “But I can’t stay here,” I said weakly.

  I only had to pack a few things, and I’d be ready to go. Perhaps he could store my –

  “Why?” he asked, cutting into my thoughts.

  “But, Olly?” I asked, wondering if I’d downplayed too much how bad I felt about the break up with his son.

  “He’s still away on something.”

  “But –”

  “I’m allowed to have guests in my own house,” he muttered. “Olly knows that.”

  “But –”

  “It helps keep the loneliness away, Annie,” he said, suddenly speaking quietly. He’d turned away so all I could see was his back and how he was looking down on the floor in front of him. Then he sighed quietly, and said, “It’s okay, sweetie. If you don’t want to stay, I’m sure –”

  Oh, God. I’d deal with my emotions, and with Olly, if he showed up and was upset about my presence, but I couldn't handle the sadness in Sven's voice, so I walked over to lean my forehead on his broad back.

  “I’ll stay,” I said. “Promise me one thing, though?”

  “What,” he asked warily.

  “If Olly comes, and if he’s angry… Don’t fight with him.”

  “He was an –”

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think and yeah, he was unpleasant, but he was also right.” Sven made a small sound, so I added quickly, “He was. I didn't lie, but I wasn't telling him the truth either, and I should have. When we… I should have told him.”

  He didn't turn around, and like his son, he quietly mulled things over at his own pace.

  “Annie?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He turned and smiled crookedly. “Then you won’t mind that we put all your equipment in the guest room. You’ll have to sleep in Olly’s room.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Gotta eat some shit

  I’d been in Norton almost two weeks when Olly came to visit his father.

  I was in the huge bed in his room, where I'd slept since Sven and my grandfather filled the guest room with my computers and screens. They must have had help because they'd also brought my desk and even one of the smaller book-shelves, so I assumed my brothers had been there too. They'd set it up nicely, though, and I'd only had to adjust a few minor things to have a near perfect working space. Sven protested when I suggested part of the office downstairs would work, saying he'd shared it with his wife, and it was where he felt the closest to her, so he didn't want it changed. That was hard to argue against, and when he added that it was safer for me to be on the second floor, I gave in. I liked the view of the lower part of the mountains from the windows, and he was right; I was safer on the second floor.

  Walking into Olly’s room with my bags had been weird. It felt like I breached his trust somehow, moving into a room which had been his all his life.

  There were a lot of books lining one wall, and I knew he read a lot, but I hadn’t known how diverse his taste in literature was. I’d never have guessed he liked fantasy books, and when I spotted a romance novel with a familiar pink cover, I grinned. My brothers had read that book too as teenagers, and they'd said it was for the action but I knew just what kind of action it was they'd enjoyed reading about. I'd read it myself, and blushed as I did. On the wall above the bed, there were a couple of posters showing various motorcycles, although they seemed to have been there for a long time.

  It was another reminder of how silly I'd been, thinking that I knew Olly. I'd been hiding on my grandfather's land for years, and it hadn’t been a prison, but it had kept me away from interacting freely with people. Even when I’d been somewhere else, I’d been looking over my shoulder, and stayed in safe places, with my family guarding me. I'd thought I had friends on the net, but as I kept looking around in Olly's room, I knew the pieces of them they’d shown me were only part of who they were. I also knew I couldn’t go back to hiding in the mountains again. I’d have to find a way to help capture the devil that was Cam Strachlan, to keep Olly and the others safe but most of all to let me be free.

  Making that vow felt good, and I laughed quietly when I saw the long line of small cups on a shelf. They were apparently prices in competitions ranging from the strongest man in Norton, which he’d won the last four years straight, to best pig catcher and second fastest pie-eater. I wondered who’d won. The laughter caught in my throat when I saw the last one. It was a piece of paper folded into a tube and taped together. On it, someone had drawn a set
of yellow stars in an arch, and written neatly, “Best son in the world.” His mother would have made it for him, and it stood there proudly together with the other ones.

  I swallowed a few times and tried not to think about them together, but the memory of that last night and the gentle caress she'd given him played in my mind. I looked away from the small token of love Bee Harper had made for her son and wished he was there with me.

  There was space in a couple of the drawers, and I started unpacking, but the weirdness of putting my tees next to his made me stop and push my bags into a corner instead. The bed was made, and I should perhaps have changed the sheets, but I wanted him to be there so much. I'd thought I was calm, and in control, but laying down where the scent of him still lingered faintly was enough to make me curl up in a ball and wrap the covers tightly around me. Then I pushed my face into the pillow and cried, cursing my cowardice and stupidity for the umpteenth time. Why hadn't I just told him about me? Perhaps I could have explained in a way that hadn't made him feel so betrayed. Or maybe I had only been someone he found comfort with for a short time and hadn't actually liked very much. That thought hurt and I cried myself to sleep.

  In the days that followed, I spent a lot of time searching the net for anything that could be the key to figure out where to find Cameron, adding every small snippet to my database. I wanted to find him so badly, and it was frustrating that I couldn't get a lock on him. Everyone left traces on the net, and our country was small, so I just couldn't get where the hell he could be hiding. I talked to Jinx, who was just as frustrated. She was working on the energy swirling around the crystal, and at the same time on a model of how the ancient cups from the swords would work. She wasn’t getting anywhere on either task, so we decided to keep pushing for a few more days and then get together to see if we could figure out where the heck we were going wrong.

  Sven made me come downstairs to have dinner each night, grumbled about me being too pale and started to leave poor Toby at the house instead of bringing him to school, which forced me to venture outside to walk the dog.

  I wasn’t allowed to walk away from Norton, though, so I walked around the small town, and wherever I went, people greeted me like I'd lived there for years. I chit-chatted with more people than I'd ever done in my life, but everyone was friendly, and I enjoyed it. Snow and Nicky visited, and I heard how Snow tried to apologize to Sven for leaving him alone with his grief. I also giggled quietly when I heard him ask her if she thought he was four years old and tell her to, “Get a goddamned grip.”

  I spent time with Mary and Miller, was firmly ordered to visit Hawker’s father Gilmore and enjoyed a long discussion about the Norton history with Hawk’s wife Sloane who still worked part-time as a professor at the University in Prosper.

  The slow pace of life on the farm was like a sweet blanket on my hurt feelings, and I told myself repeatedly that I was moving on, but I knew I was lying to myself. Staying with Olly’s father in Norton wasn’t moving on at all. It was holding on to the memory of the Olly I’d had at Double H and the one I’d spent hours chatting with on the net. I’d told him I’d make sure I was happy without him, but I wasn’t happy at all.

  I was in bed when Olly came, but I heard his bike roar down the lane. They had been to the house by the sea I'd told them about, but I hadn't sent the dragonflies out to watch. Wilder had texted me that Cameron had been gone, and Kit had sent images from the house as well as scanned copies of a couple of receipts they’d found, but they had been from the local grocery store and had told us nothing.

  When I heard their heavy steps on the porch outside my window, I got out of bed, wondering if I should go downstairs or if that would just make Olly even angrier. I decided to let his father handle the first part. Feeling like a coward, I opened the window so I could hear what was said, telling myself it was so I’d know what to expect.

  “The man is like a damned ghost,” Olly muttered.

  Sven mumbled something I couldn't hear, and they both chuckled quietly.

  “Are you okay, Olly?” Sven asked. “You look tired.”

  There was a long silence, and I heard how one of them started pacing back and forth on the porch. I guessed it was Olly because Sven was decidedly not a pacing kind of man.

  “I can’t find out where Annie is, Da,” he said.

  “Why are you looking for her?” Sven asked calmly. “I thought –”

  “I know,” Olly cut him off. “It's just…” he was silent for a while, but I heard his footsteps. “I wasn't –”

  He was silent again for so long I wanted to scream at him to continue talking.

  “I messed up,” he muttered finally. “I wasn't very nice, and I worry about her. Don't know if she's safe.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Sven said calmly.

  Well, that wasn’t a lie, I thought.

  “But I don’t know,” Olly protested. “She’s turned off her user id on the net, Jinx just glares at me, and Wilder refuses to talk about it. Says I was a jackass and should go fuck myself.”

  “The way I heard it, son – she’s not entirely wrong.”

  “Yeah,” Olly said. “But –”

  “Have you checked with her family?”

  “I tried, but they wouldn't let me past the gates.”

  I blinked. He’d been to my grandfather’s place?

  “And you let that stop you?” Sven asked.

  “What could I do? It’s not like I could climb the fence and –” There was another long silence, and then he murmured, “I could, couldn't I?”

  They were interrupted by the beep from a phone, and Olly sighed loudly.

  “Crap. Something crawled up Hawk’s ass. He’s ordered us all to meet for some damned de-brief. Says we’re all spending the night at his place, so I can’t stay, Da.”

  “It’s okay,” Sven said. “I’ll be here when you come back.”

  “You’re doing okay?”

  “Yeah,” Sven said. “The way things are going, I think I might be okay after all.”

  “I guess getting the dog helps.”

  There was another ping from the phone and Olly muttered a string of foul words.

  “Go on now, Olly. Hawk can be an ass, but he's not an idiot. If he wants you to be at his place, then there's probably a good reason for it.”

  They moved away from the porch, and after a while, Olly's bike roared again. I hadn't even seen him, but I ran down the stairs and caught a glimpse of his taillight just before the road turned.

  “Why didn’t you tell him I was here?” I asked Sven.

  “No need for it,” he said and walked away.

  No need for it? What the heck did that mean? Before I could ask him, he murmured a quiet goodnight and closed the door to his bedroom.

  I went back to bed and spent long hours analyzing the short conversation. Olly was worried about my safety, which could mean that he worried about me, or that he felt bad about the things he'd said and wanted to end things on a better note. Would he really climb the fence to my grandfather's property? Surely he understood they'd know he was there well before he got off his bike? There were all kinds of animals on the lookout, and they would tell my family about anything that happened.

  I fell asleep trying to figure out what it all meant, hoping that we'd find a way to at least be friends again. Trying hard not to hope for more.

  The next day Sven was downstairs when I stumbled into the kitchen, and he waved a hand toward the coffee. Before I got a word out, I heard vehicles approaching. A quick glance told me Wilder was in the first car and her father in the other. They walked in without knocking, but Sven calmly waved his hand toward the coffee again, so this was apparently not uncommon. Hawker muttered something about kids and old and sleeping. He sprinkled his words liberally with the f-bomb, and I interpreted his litany to mean his son had had a restless night.

  “Annie!” Wilder called out cheerily. “Boz stopped by yesterday to give me these.�
� She held up two clothes bags and waved them cheekily. “For you. Girls' night.”

  I blinked.

  “Dresses. You are to pick the one you like, but he said that if it weren't the green one he'd strangle you.”

  I laughed weakly, but my phone buzzed, and I glanced down reflexively. Then I laughed out loud.

  “What?” she asked curiously.

  “I just got a text which I suspect is from Bo,” I smirked. “Someone says to tell you the blue bag is for you, and if you don't pick the black one, he will whip you.” I grinned, and shared, “He felt the need to add that it wouldn't be in a pleasurable way.”

  Hawker choked on the mouthful of coffee he’d just taken, and started coughing. Wilder just stared at me.

  “He –” she stopped speaking and cleared her throat. “He knows I don’t wear dresses.”

  “Neither do I,” I said. “I will if you do, though.”

  Our gazes held for a long time and then she grinned.

  “The sneaky bastard,” she said. “He knew what would happen.”

  “You’re gonna wear a dress?” Hawker asked curiously.

  “Apparently,” Wilder said coolly and moved toward the stairs. “I'll just pop upstairs and put your bag in the guestroom, Annie.”

  She was halfway up the stairs when I realized what she'd said.

  “Um, Wilder,” I said. “I use the guest room as my office.”

  She froze and turned slowly.

  “Where are you sleeping?” she asked, but her eyes had started to twinkle, so I suspected she knew.

  I told her anyway.

  “Olly’s room.”

  Wilder started laughing, but Hawker choked on another swig of coffee and swore as he coughed. When he'd cleared his throat, he turned to Sven.

  “Outside,” he grunted.

  Then he walked through the house, and I heard the back door slam. Sven got up and gave my cheek a soft caress.

  “It’s all good,” he said and followed his friend outside.

  It’s all good? What the heck did that mean?

  “Oh, my God. He’s so going to flip,” Wilder said and walked back into the kitchen.