Collision Course

by Helena Maeve

  If it’s just physical, Eve told herself, then you need to let it go. The problem was that at the end of the world, there was no ‘just’ anything. Neil wasn’t slaving away in the kitchen just because he wanted to go out with a bang. She wasn’t up here, trying on peep-toe sandals and kitten heels just because she wanted to look the part.

  She tried to stand on a pair of gold and silver six-inch pumps and nearly face-planted onto the carpet. This wasn’t her area of expertise. She was putting on a front, trying to step—literally—into someone else’s shoes.

  It didn’t help that the first and last time she had met Mrs Riccard, Neil’s mother had summarily expressed her disappointment in his choice of friends. How could she ever think this house was anything less than a cesspool of bad memories? She needed to get out of here. And now that Neil had seen what was coming, how could he hold it against her if she chose to leave the city?

  Temptation goaded her like a chanting crowd. Leave now, never come back. It was an enticing prospect. Wasn’t it independence she’d always wanted? She could have freedom and the peace of mind to know she’d embraced it in the nick of time. Let Neil die with his potions and amulets if he wanted. There was nothing for her here. Only disappointment.

  Only death.

  A shiver ran up her spine like someone’s French manicure.

  “Mrs Riccard?” Eve asked, freezing in place on the edge of the mattress. “I-I was wondering when you’d show up.” There was no answer and when she turned around, it was to discover that the room was empty, not a specter anywhere in sight.

  She thought dimly of her amulet—the poker chip trinket Neil had gifted her by way of protection—and felt foolish for abandoning it in his room instead of taking it with her as she traipsed through his topsy-turvy deathtrap of a home.

  The bathroom window had crept open, the curtains wafting in the gentle evening breeze, but that was normal in a house so old. Hinges and latches were first to give. The mobile parts fell apart first, then the walls would crumble and, finally, the roof would collapse, taking with it the last of the Riccard bloodline.

  Eve saw it clearly, like a movie playing out right before her eyes. It vanished when she saw the door creak open.

  “Are you decent?” Felix asked, stepping in with a hand over his eyes.

  Her heart hammering, Eve stopped just short of lobbing a glass-heeled shoe at his head. “You ever heard of knocking?”

  “It’s my house!”

  “And that offer to make Christmas lights out of your insides still stands,” Eve snarled. “What do you want?”

  “Is it me or are you bitchier than usual?” Felix smirked. “Neil sent me to ask if you’d like red or white.”

  “Red or white what?” Eve asked, scavenging under the bed for the sibling of the only sensible shoe she’d been able to find in Mrs Riccard’s collection.

  “Wine, what else? You have to get drunk tonight or it’s not really a party.”

  Eve hooked the tips of her fingers into the shoe and reeled it out. How it had ever crawled so far, she didn’t want to know. “Red, white, what difference does it make?” We’re all dead anyway. As dearly as she’d hoped that a dismissive answer would earn her Felix’s departure, he only lingered, canting his head with a glower.

  “What’s gotten into you two? Lovers’ spat?”

  “Since when do you care?”

  “I don’t,” he scoffed, “but we’ve just invited two dozen people who routinely give me shit for having no sense of humor and I want to make sure you keep this up. It’ll do wonders for my image.”

  “You know the world’s about to end, right?” Eve scoffed. “I don’t know why you even bother playing cop anymore. Local PD stopped arresting folks six months ago…” Their resignation had been the final nail in the coffin for the city’s law-abiding citizens. Stores were ransacked, pharmacies and hospitals plundered for morphine and other narcotics. Those who remained had invested in hefty latches for their doors and extra ammo for the shotgun they kept by their bed.

  Unless they were part Other, in which case they went on as before, boozing and arresting people for imagined crimes.

  “That’s something people like you will never understand,” Felix said haughtily.

  Eve bit back a laugh. It would’ve been a sound of despair, not mirth. “And why’s that? I’m too dumb to grasp your commitment to justice?”

  “No… But you have no idea what loyalty means. There’s a reason you don’t have a pack—”

  “Yeah, your brother massacred them. Thanks for reminding me.” That was a blow below the belt and it wasn’t what she’d meant to say. She could read confusion in Felix’s blue eyes. That was one conversation she didn’t want to have with him—ever. “Look—”

  “I don’t know if that’s true, but assuming you’re not just throwing blame left and right, I doubt he did it yesterday or the week before. There are shifters in this town who would kill to have someone lead them. Instead, you’ve decided to play lone wolf and ignore your sacred duty to your own kind.” Felix shifted his weight, folding his arms across his skinny chest. “Do you want to know why I don’t like you, Eve? It’s because I see you for what you are… You don’t give a damn about anyone other than yourself. I don’t have to run you out. You’ll leave on your own. You always do.”

  “Since you’re feeling so considerate, can you do me a favor?” Eve asked and folded her hands in mock prayer. “Can you take your sanctimonious bullshit elsewhere? I’m not interested.”

  Felix sneered. “My pleasure.”

  The door slammed in his wake, rattling the mirror that hung beside it. Any other day of the year and the nail on which it balanced might have held it upright. Not today.

  Eve jerked back a pace as the mirror collapsed from its moorings, shattering across the carpet in a sea of jagged shards. It was an impressive, desolate sight, but Eve wasn’t frightened.

  What danger was there in seven years of bad luck when they barely had twenty-four hours to go?

  * * * *

  Glass crunched under her soles long after she had left the master bedroom. No doubt she was tracking it through the house as she went, like the parasite Felix had claimed she was. Not in so many words, true, but the general sentiment was there. With one brother hating her guts and the other more interested in keeping up appearances than actually talking to her, the last thing Eve felt like suffering through was a party.

  She had toyed with the prospect of grabbing her clothes and backpack and making a run for it via Neil’s much-used bedroom window, but that was precisely what Felix expected. So she stayed and told herself it was to spite him.

  She heard voices as she started carefully down the stairs. She didn’t recognize any, but she didn’t expect to. She hadn’t made a point of forging new friendships since she had returned to St. Louis. Bouncing from job to job had made that easy—she had never worked with the same people for more than a handful of months, her managers had never gotten comfortable enough to ask if she was married, if she had kids, and she hadn’t volunteered the information. Most of her neighbors were either dead or gone by now. She felt both stranger and host as she descended to the ground floor.

  It took her a moment to realize that a hush had fallen over the strangers crowded into the foyer as she climbed down the last step, and another to notice that they were all looking at her.

  “What? Is there a spider in my hair?” Eve asked, putting hostility forward as her defense. She didn’t know how else to handle the shiver of discomfort that crept through her as she was scrutinized—admiration was not a word in her vocabulary. She had struggled into the dress all by herself, even if it meant nearly dislocating a shoulder to pull the zipper up all the way. It had come easier than asking Neil for help—or, gods forbid, Felix.

  She saw the younger brother before she saw the older.

  “If you keep staring at me open-mouthed, you’ll end up choking on a fly,” Eve chided as Neil came into view. “This isn’t some Rebecca thi
ng, right? Because if you yell at me to get changed, you won’t like my reaction.” It was needless to worry. Neil had been given plenty of warning. The only surprise was in the shoes and maybe the mini-buns that had taken half an hour to pin in place with so many bobby pins that Eve felt as though she’d turned her skull into a pin cushion.

  She’d worried it might all be too much, but then again Neil had also dressed up for the occasion, exchanging his jeans and short-sleeved tee for a three-piece with a pocket square. Even his shoes were shiny. “You’re looking very dapper…”

  “You look like a vision.”

  Eve tried to play it off. “So all that effort with the hair curlers was worth it, huh?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “You’re staring,” she pointed out after a few moments. Scrutiny was definitely easier to suffer when it came from Neil, but that didn’t make it any less awkward. They were standing in a foyer full of people she only vaguely recalled from her last unfortunate brush with the law, with the adjacent sitting room housing the overflow. There must have been over two dozen people—and Eve was by far the most elegant. And also the most overdressed.

  “Sorry,” Neil apologized, ducking his head. “And not sorry. You’re breathtaking.”

  Eve rolled her eyes, but flattery went a long way toward easing the last stubborn tendrils of aggravation. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  It didn’t take much more prompting for Neil to offer his arm, though Eve did linger in sliding hers around it. Being shown off like a prize cow was a novel experience, but not, as it turned out, an unpleasant one.

  She recognized Neil’s barkeep friend among the guests. He was decked in an olive-green suit with a yellow cravat, and when he held out his hand, Eve noticed some six watches around his wrist, none of which was showing the correct time.

  “Barnabas.”

  “Eve.” Now I know who to ask for if my wallet vanishes, she thought uncharitably. “About the last time—”

  “Water under the bridge.”

  “More like shifter under the cabbage patch,” Eve said, “but who’s keeping count, right? Good to see you again.” The late Mrs Riccard wasn’t the only one blessed with a forked tongue.

  Neil gave her arm a gentle press, a ’blink and you’ll miss it’ squeeze that Eve couldn’t decipher before it was over.

  She met three more fae, two witches who gushed openly about her dress, and a handful of other creatures whose origins were as murky as their ancestry seemed to be. “For a purist,” she murmured, for Neil’s ears only, “you’ve got a weird menagerie of friends…”

  “Who said I’m a purist?” Neil asked, flashing a smile. “Try the wine…”

  “Said the wicked stepmother to Snow White.”

  “If I wanted to poison you, I would’ve laced the mini muffins with arsenic,” he pointed out. It was macabre, but it was also the truth.

  Eve took the proffered glass and clinked it against his. Conversation had resumed in the living room as Neil’s guests circulated. No one was paying them any mind. She could afford to turn to Neil and say, in confidence, “I’m sorry. About before. I was—”

  “You were right.”

  “What?”

  Neil met her gaze. “St. Louis is going to burn.”

  “Oh.” Eve thought of her vision, of the slow collapse of bricks and mortar, far beyond what she or Neil could survive. A message from Neil’s frantic ancestors? She couldn’t rule it out. If there was any place for that to happen, it would be in this house, surrounded by the ghosts of those who’d once called him son and nephew. “Guess that makes tonight all the more final…”

  Neil took a sip of his wine, as though trying to rally his courage. “I was thinking we could leave.”

  “We?”

  “All of us,” he explained. “Those who want to, anyway… We’d have a better chance with a larger group. We could carry more supplies. And I have enough money to get us past the border outpost without any hassle—”

  “You’ve thought this through,” Eve observed, temporizing. Her mind reeled.

  Neil had the grace to nod, albeit a little sheepishly. “Cooking is very therapeutic. You should try it sometime.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll only burn your house down… Neil, are you serious about this? All these people—what if they don’t want to leave the city? I know a little about what it’s like to be promised the sun and stars.”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” Neil insisted.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m asking them to join us, I’m not telling them to. They all get to choose.” He pinned a stray curl behind Eve’s ear. “And so do you.”

  The roles had been reversed and it was throwing Eve for a loop, but not to the extent that she didn’t know what her answer would be. “Don’t make the announcement just yet. Give them some time to enjoy themselves… Felix mentioned he knew some shifters. You didn’t happen to invite them, did you?”

  Neil nodded. “Let me introduce you.”

  She knew them by scent alone, from ten feet away. Their wary glowers gave them away. They were nowhere near as bold as the vast majority of Neil’s other friends. They hovered at the far back of the assembly, speaking to no one. Eve recognized lone wolves when she saw them. Like called to like.

  “This is August,” said Neil, “Merrick, and Trish. And that by the window is Sebastian.”

  They were all looking at her warily, aware of what she was just as with a single look at the ring of scarring around his neck, Eve knew that blond, blue-eyed August had been collared at some point. She knew that Sebastian was wary of her because he could sense her wolf—feline-only shifters often had a knee-jerk reaction to their canine counterparts.

  Trish alone stood from her perch on the couch and met Eve as an equal. “I’ve heard of you,” she said.

  “Good things, I hope.”

  Trish didn’t return her smile. She was a short, mousy little thing with short-cropped raven hair and a heart-shaped mouth. “They say you’re different. That you can part shift.”

  Eve could hear the challenge in her voice. She relinquished her hold on Neil’s arm and let her fingernails elongate and harden into a hawk’s powerful claws. “Whoever they are, they’re right.”

  The demonstration had the desired effect, in the sense that Trish gaped and Merrick, too, climbed to his feet. Eve couldn’t place his animal, at first, but then she realized—raven. Greedy beasts, in her experience, but more loyal than any other among shifter-kind. It was all the stranger, then, that he should be alone.

  No wonder they’re anxious.

  Eve glanced over her shoulder as her right hand shifted back to more human proportions. “Neil, can you give us a moment?”

  “Sure.” He must’ve thought he was doing a good job hiding his unease, but Eve could sense it rolling off him in waves. And if she could feel it, then so could the other shifters.

  Eve watched him retreat for a long moment, then turned back to her own kind. “Have a seat.” She could all but hear Mrs Riccard’s ghost howling at the indignity of having a shifter hold court in her home. It made her want to play up the part of hostess all the more.

  The shifters heeded her, but with some hesitation. She didn’t blame them. If they had spent a great deal of time living outside pack hierarchy, they would be suspicious of anyone trying to befriend them. It was encouraging that, outsiders or not, they still navigated naturally toward one another. She recognized the instinct—she had silenced it in herself often enough to know what a powerful temptation it presented.

  “Neil will be making an announcement soon,” Eve said, choosing to offer her trust rather than ask for theirs. “He and I are leaving St. Louis before tomorrow morning.”

  “We’re in the blast radius,” Trish surmised, needing no further prompting.

  “Yes—”

  “I told you we should’ve left,” August hissed, tugging a restless hand through his sandy hair. “We’re all goi
ng to burn.”

  “Please, keep your voice down,” Eve scolded lightly. “You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like. Neil is confident he can get everyone out of the city.”

  “And you believe him?” August, again, but he had lowered his voice as he’d been asked.

  “He is a warlock,” Trish pointed out with a sharp little cant of the head. Whatever good Felix’s efforts might’ve done to ensure their safety, some prejudice was too deeply engrained to be washed away in a rain of fire and moon dust.

  Eve nodded her acquiescence. “Precisely, so when he tells me something is within his power to achieve, I believe it… However extraordinary the feat.” She wondered what August and Trish might’ve said if they’d known that Neil had transported her out of the country and back on the strength of his powerful other psyche alone. Perhaps there would be a time to sing his praises, but it was not today. If she brought up the rifts, she would have to bring up the man who had opened them in the first place and talk about what he had done to her last pack.

  No, tonight was definitely not the time.

  “Is this a conditional offer?” Sebastian asked, still keeping his distance. He seemed to be the same age as Eve’s former pack master. Had he lived, this peaceful tête-à-tête would never have taken place. He would’ve ordered and everyone would’ve fallen into line, including Eve.

  “You mean, if you come with us, do I expect you to regard me as your pack master?” Eve asked. None of them answered, but it was easy to read acquiescence into their silence. “No. There is no catch. I thought you might appreciate the news—or at the very least, the head start. I’ve heard it said the military is using all kinds of drone equipment to keep us penned in, but twenty-four hours from impact, I bet you’ll find some pockets of wilderness where soldiers have deserted their post. You may get lucky.”

  August and Trish shared a look, the kind that was enough to stand for a whole back and forth of conversation. Eve recognized the signs. She’d kept herself cloistered away from fellow shifters, but it was like learning to swim or ride a bicycle—once in a pack, there was no losing the habit of favoring non-verbal communication among her own kind.