by Helena Maeve
Eve balked. “That’s what you got out of my story?”
“So you admit it was a story…”
“Plying me with ice cream and sex so I admit you’re morally superior is a low blow,” Eve countered. It wasn’t a denial, but she had a hard time seeing past the heat in her cunt to be able to manipulate her way out of this particular tight spot. She groaned when Neil kissed her knuckles. “I always hated it when you played hard to get, you know…” She’d had lovers who had accused her of having a male sex drive—which was funny because she’d had broad hips and pretty noticeable breasts since she’d turned thirteen, so it wasn’t as though her femininity wasn’t obvious.
Maybe if she’d gone to bed with more shifters, it wouldn’t have been such a disappointment when a potential partner told her she needed to cool down.
Neil had never turned her down, once their friendship had evolved in that direction. He’d matched her bawdy joke for bawdy joke, until they were both breathless with need and any horizontal surface would do. Then again, ten years was a long time to hold a man to his youthful antics.
“Evey?”
She wished he’d stop using her adolescent nickname—she didn’t feel like an Evey anymore—and tilted toward him with a soft, acquiescing “Hmm?” He smelled so good, so familiar, that she just wanted to wrap herself in his arms and stop worrying about what was coming in two weeks, what would happen if she didn’t leave town—what Felix might’ve done to her if not for Neil coming to get her out of that hellhole.
Probably nothing. For all his hardass nonsense, Felix had always been a stickler for the rules. He’d have freed her eventually and possibly tossed her out, minus the cash that he’d hold on to as compensation for the troubles incurred. Asshole.
But Neil had shown up and there was something evaluating in his eyes as he pulled back to ask, “Evey… What happened at the Briars?”
A cold shower couldn’t have had a more rousing effect. Eve stiffened instantly. She felt the muscles in her face slacken into a mask of disbelief. “Why would you ask me that?” Why now?
It was a low blow. The ache radiated through her sternum and spilled out into her limbs. She pulled away. “You have no right to ask about that.”
“You go away for ten years—”
“I came back earlier than that,” she interjected, but Neil wouldn’t let it go.
“—and then you sell me some story about going into heat? What did they do to you over there?”
“What the fuck does it matter? We’ll both be dead in twelve days. Do you honestly think that what I went through counts for shit anymore?”
“Yes!” Neil said and slammed his hand against the table so loud that the ice cream bowls traveled an inch.
“Why?”
“Because I stayed away so you’d be safe!”
They were shouting at each other for reasons long past mattering until just as abruptly, they weren’t. Eve swallowed in a dry throat. “It was a research facility. They did research… Some of it was to make us stronger, some of it was to figure out what made us tick.” And some of it had hurt—badly—but she was a shifter and she healed from everything but the claws of a fellow shifter. The scars on her belly and thighs were owed to fellow pack members and they would be etched into her skin like marks of Cain until she either had them lasered out or her flesh decomposed, whichever came first.
“You didn’t take advantage of me,” she added, twisting her lips into a sneer. “Do you honestly think I’d let you?”
“I’m not as helpless as you remember…”
“And I’m not as skittish about taking your head off with my teeth,” Eve countered.
Neil’s silence told her that he believed it. Time had coarsened their soft edges, made sharp the rough, jagged points where they didn’t quite match up with the rest of their kind. Outcasts couldn’t survive any other way.
“Your brother’s been out for a long time,” she mused, eying the clock. Nothing else came to mind. It was mortifying to be rejected by a lover and it was worse when Neil did it so they could discuss the myriad ways in which she was broken. It registered as a betrayal and it stung, badly.
“He’ll be back soon.”
“You keep saying that, but I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t all some good cop, bad cop thing.”
Neil snorted and picked up his ice cream. “Wonder all you like. I told you why I’m here, why I’m staying. You’re the one with all the secrets.”
The accusation didn’t come out of nowhere, but Eve still could’ve done without. She rolled her eyes. “Now I remember why we broke it off.”
“Do you? Because I don’t,” said Neil. “I’ve been trying to figure it out and all I can think of is that you chose pack over what we had… Which is fine, you made your bed and all that.”
“So I deserved what I had coming to me? Go to hell.”
“Hard to say, since you won’t tell me what the what is supposed to be—”
“I don’t owe you an explanation!” Eve shouted, just barely resisting the urge to pitch her ice cream bowl into his face. Whatever they did, they couldn’t seem to stop quarrelling. He knew just how to get under her skin, how to poke her where it hurt. He should have gone into medicine, made millions. Instead, for all his talk of bravery and honesty, he was living in the shadow of St. Louis’ biggest crime syndicate. “Do you want me to say that cages make me hyperventilate? That I can barely stand to go underground because I start smelling corpses? Fuck, you’ve got to be a special kind of cruel to make me relive how I murdered my entire pack just so you’ll have all the facts—”
It took her a moment to realize what she’d said. By then it was too late to take back. A growl rumbled from deep in her chest, but it was just frustration without an outlet.
“Rifts have been creeping up all over the city,” Neil said into the ensuing silence. “But poltergeists are rare. They need a host—a magnet, if you will—to draw them out of the underworld.”
“If you’re saying I was the reason…”
Neil shook his head. “I’m saying you’re carrying within you enough grief that forces out there are going haywire trying to latch on and feed off of your pain.” He advanced toward her cautiously, but without hesitation. He had always been too goddamn trusting. “At the very least, you should carry a ward to protect you from these kinds of happenings. I can help with that.”
“Why did I know you’d say that?” Eve asked, smiling without mirth, without the strength to even make a passable effort at comedy. “I don’t like wards. They make me itchy.”
“That’s because you’ve never worn one of mine.”
This time, Eve’s smile was a trifle more genuine. “Why does that sound so kinky to me?”
“Because everything sounds kinky to you,” Neil scoffed. “Come on… I can’t show you into my workroom, but I’m sure I’ve got some that might do in the meantime.”
“You know, you’re being awfully optimistic about the future for a guy who’s living in a town that’s on the list of Top Ten Places Most Likely to be Reduced to Grit and Dust…”
Neil met her gaze, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Just because I’ve made my peace with what’s to come doesn’t mean you should follow my example.”
“Oh, nice one. I almost didn’t notice the passive-aggressive undertones.”
The moment for vitriol seemed to have passed, yet as Neil led them back into the living room and started rummaging through drawers and boxes, occasionally prying out an amulet, rubbing it with his thumb, then grimacing and restoring it to its proper place, Eve couldn’t help but wonder. Had he not heard? Did he not care?
It wasn’t so absurd that he’d feel more interested in what she pulled through the rifts. As far as she understood it—as a layperson with no understanding of the cosmic scales or what the hell use an eye of newt could have in the dark arts—the seam between this world and all the others was frayed and always had been. Only a warlock or a witch could widen the gaps.
She was neither.
Neil made a sound of triumph. “Found it!”
“A poker chip?” It looked ancient, the plastic cracked and a burnt, discolored patch decorating the underside. “Can I still cash it in, do you think?”
“Not since the thirties,” Neil said. “It’s warded against aural reading.”
“Sounds ominous…” Eve had some vague recollection about auras being the thing that Neil’s family used to determine whether they wanted another waitress when they went out to dinner. It reminded her of palm reading, only it was supposed to be a more reliable manifestation of the sight than what the oracle had done for them in that dingy, dank room behind the bar.
Neil dropped to the couch beside her, excitement brimming in his eyes. “Think of it as a cloaking device. It’ll keep you off anyone’s map, whether warlock or specter.”
“So you won’t be able to find me if you scry?”
He shook his head. “Does that make it more or less attractive?”
It was an ugly little bauble and had it not come from Neil’s private collection, she might have been tempted to throw it away without a second thought, but truth be told, his word still carried weight. So did the prospect of having complete anonymity from the likes of Felix Riccard.
“Thanks,” Eve said, and it wasn’t an answer. “I’ll keep it on me.” She eased it into the back pocket of her jeans with an awkward little shimmy, the ice cream slowly melting in the bowl she held in her other hand.
Neil smiled. He seemed pleased, at least, if a trifle subdued. “Where do you plan to go?”
“For A-Day?” The talking heads on TV had taken to calling it that before the networks were all swallowed by white noise and regular emergency broadcasts. Eve shrugged. “I’m thinking the Rockies. High altitude, few people… I can hunt to keep myself fed and it’s supposed to be far enough outside the blast radius to be safe.”
“It should be moderately safe,” Neil agreed.
“You’ve run your own calculations?” It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Just about the only other thing Neil was good at other than messing with forces that scared the shit out of Eve was math. The only reason they’d become friends was that she’d needed a tutor and Neil had volunteered. He had told her only later that he had jumped at the opportunity because he had a crush on her and couldn’t think of any other way to approach her.
He nodded. “I’ve been trying to get Felix to leave St. Louis… And before you say it’s hypocritical, hear me out. I figure we stand a better chance if we’re not both in the same place at the same time. If our duty is to our family, then—”
“You owe it to them that at least one of you survives,” Eve finished for him. It wasn’t absurd at all. It sounded precisely like the kind of logic Neil would trust. Unsurprisingly, it made the thought of leaving him behind that much harder to tolerate.
Chapter Five
St. Louis, twelve days before
She couldn’t say, at first, if it was the scrape of branches against the windowpane that roused her or the incessant knocking, but one of those things wrenched her from a troubled sleep—much to Eve’s gratitude. She sat up on the couch, knuckling the grit from her eyes. She wasn’t supposed to have fallen asleep. Not here and especially not now.
The knock came again, too purposeful to have been a thumping shutter banging against the living room windows, too loud to be a pair of flapping birdwings. With the storm that had assailed the city since the mid-afternoon, it was hard to pinpoint its origin. Eve glanced nervously to the door. She hadn’t asked Neil about ghosts in his parents’ house because she didn’t have to. She expected the walls themselves would sooner see her gone. Fortunately, it wasn’t up to them. She couldn’t leave until Felix showed up with her cash—or she beat him bloody until he made up the difference of however much he’d spent.
“Neil, you fuck—open the goddamn door!” someone shouted from the porch. Eve didn’t know much about sorcery, but she could tell the difference between the wail of the dead and the harmless bark of the living.
She uncoiled her legs from the couch and padded barefoot down the moonlit hallway, wondering if it was her imagination that made it stretch longer with every step or if she’d guessed right as far as the walls resenting her presence. She reached the front door eventually. The walls might have been tricksters, but she was quicker than semi-sentient bricks and mortar.
“Neil—” Felix’s growl died in his throat when he came face to face with Eve. “What are you doing here?” he bit out, mere seconds before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he went down like a block of cement. It was a shame he missed splitting his skull open on the ground, Eve thought bitterly. It would’ve been just punishment.
The thought evaporated as soon as she noticed the blood dripping down his forearm, no longer stoppered by the hand he’d been holding pressed tightly to the wound. As far as punishment, someone must’ve gotten to the self-appointed lawman before she’d had the chance.
“Neil!” It was her turn to shout. She couldn’t run upstairs to get him. Felix’s blood gushed warm under her hands as she gripped his arm and folded it above his head. “This is so not how I was hoping to spend my last days among civilized folk…”
Harsh winds whipped at her hair, spattering her with rainwater. She was soaked through by the time she dragged him into the foyer. For such a skinny kid, Felix was nearly impossible to move without a gurney. Eve strained, biting back the urge to let out her claws for fear of doing him more harm. He deserved pain, but there was no fun in tearing him up if he wasn’t awake to snarl and call her names.
The bigger problem by far was in knowing that she didn’t have the slightest clue about giving first aid to a warlock. “Neil!” Eve shouted again. Already his brother’s wards were acting as a repellent, pushing her back with near-physical force.
“What? What is—?” The sound of Neil’s footsteps on the creaky wooden stairs aborted abruptly.
“Your brother’s— I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, but he doesn’t look so good, right?” Eve flicked a glance up. “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish about blood.” She definitely didn’t think of the museum and Neil touching her carefully but without hesitation, prying out the shards from the soles of her feet as though he routinely walked his fingers through slick, warm blood.
Neil crouched beside her, tugging gently to uncoil her fingers from around Felix’s wrist. “He should be healing himself. Why isn’t he healing himself?”
“Good question. Hey—look at me.” It took a couple of tries and Eve gripping him by the chin to make Neil focus on something other than the slash in his brother’s forearm. “What do you need?”
“Salts. T-top drawer, by the kitchen sink.”
“Okay,” Eve said and dashed away. Had Felix been a shifter, she would have tried to induce a turn—that usually did the trick for their kind—but he wasn’t. Humans had never looked more fragile to her. What good was dabbling in spell-casting and spinning enchantments like yarn if they did nothing to protect the dabbler?
She snagged the six glass bottles she found in the drawer beside the sink without checking their labels. There was no time.
Neil was still bent over his brother, ear to his chest. For a second, Eve thought Felix might have expired in the five seconds she was gone. She banished the thought to the furthest recesses of her mind—not for nothing, but Felix had her ticket out of this hellhole. He couldn’t die.
“Here,” she panted, setting the bottles down on the blood-soaked floor. Now what?
Neil had her grip Felix’s shoulder tightly and press his pale, bony wrist into the floor. “This will hurt,” he warned as he uncorked one of the bottles and drizzled a scant handful of its contents into his palm.
“Just do it.”
A trickle of translucent, pink crystals dripped into the open wound on Felix’s forearm, sizzling as they hit the skin. It was almost pretty. Felix’s eyes snapped open. A shout of pure agony built and built at the back
of his throat, ringing out so loud that the thunder claps outside seemed almost timid by comparison.
Red smoke eddied around the wound, sparking like firecrackers as the flesh resealed itself.
Eve gripped tight to his shoulder while Felix thrashed, snarling and convulsing. “What’s happening to him?”
“Let’s call it a tonic to the brain and leave it at that,” Neil gritted out, pressing Felix into the floor with one hand on his brow and leaning heavily on his squirming legs with the other.
Tempting as it was, Eve thought better of pressing the point. An odor of burnt flesh assailed her senses, too pungent to be imagined, but when she glanced down, there was no sign of scorched skin. The blond hairs on Felix’s arm might have gone a little curly, but that was it. The gash was already closing.
Seconds crawled by at a glacial pace, leaving them to contend with a wide-awake Felix whose mind hadn’t yet caught up with his rapid recovery.
“Get off,” he snarled, spittle flying from his mouth.
“You have to keep still,” Neil insisted. “Just a few moments more—”
“Fuck you! Get her off me!”
And so it sank in that the problem was less the horror of slowly bleeding to death and more the fact that it was Eve saving his life. She flashed him a grin. “What’s the matter, kid? Afraid I’ll take a bite outta you while you’re down?” She bared two sets of canines sharp enough to rend flesh. It was easy to do—she had been on edge since Felix had tossed her into that cell and now she finally had a proper outlet.
“Eve,” Neil ground out and there was genuine fear in his eyes when Eve deigned to meet his gaze.
She retracted her fangs. “Killjoy.” She wasn’t really going to hurt Felix, but giving him a good scare surely couldn’t go amiss.
It was a long moment before Neil gave her the go-ahead to release his brother. If he rushed a little for the sake of Felix’s comfort, that was his prerogative. It didn’t keep Felix from digging his fingers into the fast clotting wound on his arm.
“Fuck, it itches like hell!”