A Heart of Shame

by Kristen Banet

  There was only herself and the night sky, the thick humidity, and the soft sounds of the woods.

  She pulled out her pack of smokes and lit one as she soaked in the darkness.

  She felt at home in this.

  “Sawyer?”

  She sighed and turned around to see Quinn frowning at her.

  “Good morning, Quinn,” she greeted him, a little disappointed that her quiet, early morning was shattered. She wasn’t disappointed by Quinn’s shirtless state. The amount of eye candy she still had at her disposal was outrageous. This house was her own gorgeous hell.

  “Why are you awake?” he asked, walking closer. She saw Shade and Scout on his heels and looked over him a little more closely. He was in his standard basketball shorts that he wore during workouts.

  “Couldn’t get back to sleep,” she answered him honestly. “Nightmare.”

  “I’m going for a run with the boys,” Quinn told her, looking her over as well. “Stay out of trouble.”

  “Of course,” she sighed. No more words were exchanged. She watched Quinn shift into a massive tan and grey wolf, bigger than even Shade, and making Scout look like a puppy. Then he was off, leading his two real wolves out into the woods.

  She kept smoking as the sun began to creep up. Quinn and his wolves never did come back. She figured they must have decided to stay out in Quinn’s wild garden.

  “We get gorgeous sunrises out here,” Elijah’s thick country accent called out. Sawyer didn’t turn to him, just took another drag on her smoke. Another interruption to her quiet morning. “We normally don’t get to enjoy them because of our workout schedule, but it’s nice to sit back and just watch one every so often.”

  “Yeah.” Sawyer mumbled. She wasn’t enjoying the sunrise. It was just a thing that happened. Another day to end another night of nightmares.

  “Want to help me cook up some breakfast for the hungover ones? They’ll be dragging themselves out of bed sooner than you think.” Elijah didn’t get any closer to her, and for that, she was a little thankful. She was feeling a bit weird and didn’t want people in her space.

  She turned around to see him on the porch and nodded slowly.

  “Yeah, I can do that.” She sighed. She stood and walked back up on the porch, found Vincent’s ashtray, and put her cigarette out. “How early do you think they’ll be up?”

  “Vincent will be up any minute, cranky and pissed off at himself.” Elijah chuckled, holding the back door open for her. “Zander will be another hour, at least. Jasper… I’m not sure. I’ve never seen him get so drunk. He’s normally the one dragging us all home.”

  “Yeah, Jasper got drunk once in high school and never again.” Sawyer chuckled with him. “Cheap moonshine.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about this cheap moonshine.” Elijah laughed. “Please, tell me more.”

  She did. Stories of her and Zander able to scrounge up the twenty dollars needed to get a bottle. Jasper on lookout so they could get drunk. Zander never brought his girlfriends around for those nights. It was always just the three of them.

  Small town Georgia life. She started getting drunk with the guys on her fifteenth birthday. It ended when they left.

  They were nearly done making breakfast when Vincent walked in. Sawyer smiled at him patiently, and he mumbled a curse before walking back out of the kitchen, looking green.

  “Those eggs smell bad,” he groaned, covering his mouth as he left.

  “They smell like eggs,” Elijah called after him. “Maybe you’re still sick!”

  “Did he throw up at all last night?” Sawyer asked, watching Vincent’s retreating form.

  “Twice,” the cowboy informed her with a grin. “Shade is, thankfully, smart enough to know to grab a trash can or bag for someone.”

  “He’s a bonded animal,” Sawyer said with a shrug. “Of course he’s smart enough.”

  “You say that, but a bonded animal is dependent on the knowledge of its Magi,” Vincent groaned, walking back in. Sawyer didn’t like how pale he looked. He had also gotten back quickly. She guessed he must have sublimated to move faster. “Those two were nearly feral when we met Quinn. Their progress is part of his progress.”

  “You feel okay?” Elijah looked over Vincent with concern, who shrugged.

  “Another hangover from hell,” Vincent mumbled, moving toward the dining room.

  Sawyer didn’t say anything. She hadn’t known that about bonded animals, but then she didn’t have her own very long to learn. She never had time with Midnight, never truly got to explore the bond.

  A sudden ache hit her chest, and she rubbed it with her right hand. Elijah gave her a concerned look, and she shook her head.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, going back to the sausage she was cooking. “Why did they go out and get drunk last night?”

  “You can’t guess?” Elijah sighed. He gave her a long look, and she swallowed.

  Her.

  They went out drinking because she was in their house.

  “Now that it’s out of their system, they should be alright.” Elijah chuckled. “Just watch. It’ll be like nothing changed.”

  “Back to our regularly scheduled programming,” Sawyer mumbled to herself. “Sawyer’s Fucked Up Life returns to its daily time slot on Daytime.”

  “What?” Elijah snorted, looking at her like she was mad.

  “Running joke with myself.” She shot him a grin. “Nothing, really.”

  They got the food out onto the dining table and sat down. Sawyer started eating, ignoring the noise coming from Vincent’s stomach. Elijah laughed as Jasper and Zander stumbled into the room with Quinn behind them.

  “We always meet for breakfast on weekdays,” Quinn growled, herding them towards chairs. “It’s the rules.”

  Sawyer snorted.

  “We’re here, fuck. Quinn, please,” Zander groaned, sinking into his seat.

  “I forgot it was Thursday, yesterday,” Jasper mumbled. “Friday is still a work day.”

  “Quinn, we’re taking time off, you didn’t need to drag them down here,” Elijah told Quinn next to him.

  Sawyer just watched. This interaction, like all previous ones, would tell her more about these people if she didn’t interrupt.

  “But we have a new team member. Vincent says a good example needs to be set early,” Quinn whispered back, frowning.

  Vincent dropped his newspaper with a sigh and looked over at her. “Make it to breakfast every day, even on our time off. Don’t lose the schedule we’ve already set or it’ll be harder to get back to it once our small vacation is over.” Vincent then turned to Quinn. “Let me worry about that, Quinn. You have other things to do that we’ll be getting to, now. We postponed school while she was here as a protectee, but it’s time to get back on it.”

  The growl that came from Quinn toward Vincent made Sawyer shrink. Just a millimeter, but a noticeable millimeter. He turned toward her, and she swallowed and straightened her spine. His magic lashed out, a wolf ready to bite anything that tested it.

  The table was silent until Quinn stopped growling and spoke.

  “I hate doing that shit,” he snarled Vincent’s way. Sawyer was honestly impressed everyone was still sitting at the table. Her first instinct was to get up and run or just duck for cover.

  It was easy to forget, but Quinn was the son of a Druid… and considered the most powerful Magi in North America. Sawyer needed to always remember that the feral, strange man was also quite capable of killing everyone in the state. He could probably level cities, if his show at the airport had been anything.

  “You need proof of a formal education, Quinn. In fact, if she’s willing, you might not be doing it alone. We can do your classes together,” Elijah whispered, and Quinn growled at him. Elijah gave Vincent a look.

  “Sawyer,” Vincent groaned. “You don’t have a high school diploma or a GED.”

  “Nope,” Sawyer confirmed, confused.

  “You need one. So does Quinn. We’ve be
en working on getting his for a few years now. You’ll start doing classes with us to get you up to speed on a general education. You can take your test for the GED as soon as you feel ready.” Vincent said it quickly and with a finality that told Sawyer arguing was pointless.

  She looked over to Quinn and thought about it. Everything he did was wolf-like. He had no formal education. His mother was a Druid.

  He was defensive. He was backed into a corner.

  He was embarrassed.

  That was the tiny piece of anger in his eyes. She wondered for a moment if he even knew what he was feeling. It didn’t matter, since she knew how to deal with it.

  “Yeah,” Sawyer whispered. “Yeah, Quinn, I didn’t finish school. I’ll do it with you.”

  Something shifted in the Magi. She watched him go from angry and defensive to confused. He looked over to her again, this time sizing her up. They had established some sort of… something over the three weeks she’d already been here, but she knew she still had a long way to go with the wolf.

  And Sawyer was just starting to figure out that he was more like his wolves than any of the humans at the table. She’d figured he was a bit wild, but looking back, all his responses to situations were… animal. What was once a joke to her, a way to deal with the situation she was in, was now becoming a way of looking at how to deal with Quinn.

  “Good, that’s settled. We do science and math with Jasper’s help. I’m in charge of literature and history.” Vincent gave a nod and went back to his breakfast. She narrowed her eyes on him. He was feeling better already, buttering some toast. He had more color in his cheeks and his complexion looked, overall, better than before.

  Hard to be hungover when a very powerful, very angry Magi was snarling at you, which from Quinn, seemed like a threat against your life.

  “So, is this an IMPO thing or…?” Sawyer looked over to Elijah, then Jasper.

  “They like their agents to have at least a bachelor’s degree, but a few of us slipped by with just high school diplomas. When they found out Quinn didn’t even have that, they got a bit pissy. So we need to get him—and now you—high school diplomas at least.” Jasper shrugged, still looking ill from his drinking the night before. “Vincent has a BA. Elijah as well. I have the most education in the group, something I work on in my free time.”

  “Zander?” Sawyer looked over to him, and he glared at her.

  “You think I went to college?” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she sighed.

  Of course he didn’t.

  “Zander has an Associate degree for general education,” Jasper told her, with a weak smile. “He just needs to choose a major and do a couple more years for a BA of some sort.”

  That left her and Quinn as the two least educated people in the room. Kind of. Quinn probably knew more about the world around them than any of them. And her own knowledge base was morally compromised. She knew a lot about how to kill or hurt people. Funnel money around the world illegally. Break in and out of places.

  Useful knowledge… for a criminal, but nothing that would get her a cute piece of paper.

  “Anything else I’ll be doing on this ‘time off’?” Sawyer used air quotes around ‘time off’ because it didn’t seem like it would be much of a vacation.

  “We’re going to test your skills. You have your magic, time to see just how much you can do with it.” Elijah grinned at her.

  “Kill you,” she told him blandly. She wouldn’t actually kill Elijah, but she needed to make the point. “You were a great sparring partner without my powers, but that’s not something you want to do now.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m not stupid.” Elijah laughed. “You’ll be sparring with Vincent now, since he can also sublimate. It might give him a fighting chance against you. We’re just going to run you through a couple exercises, just a baseline.”

  “That’s it?” She frowned at him, leaning back in her seat.

  “You’ll be learning most of being an agent on the job.” Zander chuckled. “And you don’t have the legal power to do most of the complicated shit, like arrests.”

  “You mean I can’t get women drunk, seduce them, and put handcuffs on them?” Sawyer gave the most fake disappointed sigh she could muster. “I was looking forward to that.”

  Laughter bounced off the walls around her, and she just continued her fake pout. Elijah was falling out of his chair. Vincent was chuckling madly behind his newspaper. Zander howled, leaning into Jasper’s shoulder. Only Quinn wasn’t laughing, he just stared at her.

  “It’s a joke, Quinn,” she offered to him and he nodded.

  “I know. I just didn’t find it funny,” Quinn mumbled, giving her a small smile.

  At that, everyone lost their minds again. Except her. She just narrowed her eyes on Quinn and his small chuckle.

  “You need cold water for that?” Elijah asked her, finally righting himself. “Zander, think you can help her with that burn?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Third degrees are pretty hard to fix.” Zander laughed, unable to control himself. Sawyer wasn’t sure how much worse the jokes could get at that point.

  She sighed and took a bite of her last piece of bacon.

  She signed up for this. Yesterday.

  If this was morning one, she wasn’t sure if the next five years would be the best of her life or a new hell created just for her. She had her magic back… she could run.

  “When do we start?” Sawyer asked Vincent once everyone calmed down. She couldn’t hide the small smirk forming on her face.

  “After lunch,” Vincent sighed, still smiling. “When I’m not suffering from a splitting headache. I’m sure you can find something to do for the rest of the morning.”

  “I think the right question would be… is there anything I can’t do?” Sawyer kept an eye on him as he considered that question.

  “I would recommend not going any further than our town,” Vincent told her after a moment. “I’m not incredibly interested in needing to have someone with you all the time. Which reminds me…”

  She watched him get up and leave. She frowned to Elijah, who shrugged.

  “I have no idea,” he mumbled as they all waited for Vincent to come back.

  It took a moment, but Sawyer saw him coming back and toss something. She grabbed it with a deft movement before it slammed into her face. She looked down at the object that jingled.

  And she nearly gave a girlish squeal. She held back because it was bad for her image.

  “My keys!” Sawyer laughed. “I get to drive my babies again?” They had been locked in the garage for weeks. She purposefully ignored them, since even thinking about them had made her desperate for a ride.

  “Stay close by. Let us know when you’re leaving. Obviously, if you run, this all goes to hell,” Vincent reminded her. “But yes, you can go into town whenever you really want. Keep that phone on you at all times.”

  “Speaking of going into town,” Jasper piped up. “Can we go get the Range Rover we left out there?”

  “I’m not driving you.” Sawyer snorted. No, she wanted to take her car out by herself.

  “I’ll take you,” Elijah groaned in reply. “Let’s go. We’ll give Sawyer the alone time she properly needs with her… babies.” With that, he threw a wink at her and she chuckled, spinning the keys on her right index finger. And noticed something else missing.

  “Where’s my ring?” She hadn’t removed it since the night she met them. She figured they took it off her in the hospital and thought they would give it back to her. They hadn’t yet.

  “In my workshop.” Elijah yawned, standing up from the table. “When I get back from hauling these two around, I’ll get it back to you.”

  “Thanks,” Sawyer called to him as he left. In seconds, she was left with Quinn and Vincent.

  That seemed like the right time for her to get out of the dining room.

  She changed into a sturdy pair of black leather pants, a black tank, and a leather jacket. It was the first tim
e since the hospital that she decided to wear anything other than sweatpants. It was the first time in ages that she wore a pair of her leather pants. When she thought about it, the last time had been the night…

  Well. Sawyer huffed and looked down at what she was wearing. They were the same pair she’d been wearing when she’d met Elijah at the bar. Took him home. And gotten arrested. Caught. Whatever she could call it.

  “Any reason for that outfit?” Vincent asked in her doorway, frowning.

  “I’m going out on my bike,” Sawyer told him, not looking over to acknowledge him further. She grabbed a small bag she kept that looked like a tiny backpack. She dropped her wallet in it and some cash. Then she took a few hundred from that and put it aside. “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Vincent replied, blandly. “Be back by our meeting time after lunch. And you ran from the dining room before anyone could give you this.” He held out a smartphone, and Sawyer took it slowly. “Yes, we can track it. Yes, you need to keep it on you at all times. No, you aren’t responsible for the bill. It’s a work phone. We all have one.”

  “Even Quinn?” She needed to throw a question in there somehow.

  “I have to get him a new one every few months.” Vincent sighed. “Have a nice ride…” He turned to leave and looked back at her after a couple of steps. “You look like a thief in that outfit.”

  “I know.” Sawyer chuckled with a smile. “I figured this can be my work outfit, though.”

  “No,” Vincent bit out and then left.

  Sawyer raised an eyebrow and snorted. She remembered the night before, and her cheeks got a little warm. Well, drunk Vincent found her attractive, which was probably his problem. She also found him attractive, which was her problem.

  What an awful problem. Truthfully.

  She used to fuck his brother. Willingly. Coerced. Fearing for her life. It didn’t matter. The fact was, she slept with Axel.

  She used to kill for his brother. Unwillingly. Coerced. Fearing for her life. None of that mattered. The fact was, she killed for him.

  And with that thought, Sawyer grabbed her bag and hustled out the house. She was going to give Vincent the money for breaking open her lockbox at the bank, but she could do that later. Much later.