“You found the good stuff, I take it.”
I startled and almost dropped my glass. “Yep,” I said, pretending the sudden appearance of RJ on the porch in front of me hadn’t scared the shit out of me.
“You’re welcome.” He wore a pair of faded jeans and work boots that were both coated in dirt and mud. His ski cap was pulled low over his ears. Was it that chilly out?
I looked around but the sun had already gone down and the clouds were thick. There was nothing to see beyond the edges of the driveway. I remembered belatedly that you couldn’t see cold.
I wasn’t drunk, exactly. But I intended on rectifying that problem shortly.
Just drink until you can’t picture her face anymore.
RJ held his hand out and I wobbled in my chair trying to pass him the bottle. He took a swig and held on. I narrowed my eyes, wondering if this was the part where he tried to cut me off.
Instead, he surprised me yet again by sitting down cross-legged on the porch in front of me. He leaned back against the house so he faced out toward the empty street and sighed, leaning his head back against the wall.
“Are we commiserating or celebrating?” he asked finally.
“Both,” I said, too drunk to try and come up with a lie. “Did you find your mark?”
RJ shook his head, growling as he kicked his boots off. “Still no sign. It would be a lot easier if he didn’t have a strong trail that led all over this damned town already.”
I nodded and everything spun a little. I’d helped him search for hours last night and we’d found nothing. I’d been in his shoes plenty of times on past missions, so I understood his frustration.
“He’ll turn up,” I said.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Because when they turn rabid like this, they always do. They can’t help it. He’ll want blood eventually.” For the second time in as many days, I thought of my mother and it only made me more determined to drink it all away.
RJ sighed and swigged again from the bottle. “So who wins worst day?” he asked.
I grunted at that because it wasn’t even a question. My cup suddenly felt heavy in my hands. “I’m dying,” I said simply.
RJ’s head whipped up and he stared at me. Rather than look at him, I concentrated on taking a drink. He was quiet for a long time and I had a feeling he was going back over everything I’d said since I’d arrived.
“How?” he asked simply.
“Werewolf bite.”
“Recently?” His eyes bulged and he leaned forward. “We need to call—”
I shook my head and cut him off. “Six months ago. That hostage deal you were praising me for.” I snorted. “Anyway, it’s not the first time so I guess my white blood cells are able to hold their own against the venom a bit more than the average dumbass. It’s a nice, slow process.”
I could have gone on to tell him about my attempt to find a cure. About my crazy trips to jungles and mountaintops. Or about my meeting with Mirabelle today and how she’d told me the craziest story I’d heard yet about what she considered my best and last hope for beating this thing. A theory that involved a human girl whose broken brain I’d helped ruin. But I figured I’d leave that story for another night. Even Edie wasn’t going to believe this one.
Besides, my tongue felt weird. And by weird I meant drunk.
“Well, shit, dude.” Finally, RJ held the bottle up so we could cheers. “I think you win.”
I clinked my glass a bit too hard against his bottle and we both drank.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam
Half Moon Bay was the least creepy town I’d ever seen with its quaint downtown and perfectly manicured sidewalks. Still, walking home from Oracle at night threatened to break me every time. A soft wind that brought the scent of salt and clean grass rustled the low trees on Moss Avenue. I couldn’t even imagine what my friends would say—former friends, I corrected myself mentally as I navigated the dirt trail that led home from the park. If they knew how different I really was from high school, they’d assume I’d joined a cult or been abducted by aliens. There was a time I’d actually considered the latter.
I hadn’t spoken to Tara and Angela in almost a year now. We’d grown up together in Virginia, along with Mason, but since this mystery trauma had taken me over, I’d shied away from all my old friends. Or from making new ones. Slowly, I’d stopped returning their calls and then stopped making any of my own. Now, I couldn’t remember the last thing we’d talked about. Something stupid, probably. Boys or music or clothes…
None of that stuff felt important anymore.
Pointless. All the stuff I used to care about felt pointless. My entire life. My interests and hobbies. Even if it mattered, it’s not like I could get it back again. I was broken. Maybe irreparably so.
I scowled and walked faster.
My mood had been darkening and spiraling for hours. Ever since Alex had left the shop. Or maybe the Tarot reading before that. Mirabelle hadn’t explained the cards’ meanings—or her weird reaction—even after Alex had gone.
“You’re blocked,” she said simply. “Even if I told you, it wouldn’t do any good. You have to find a way through the wall.”
Whatever that meant.
Metaphorically speaking, Alex was the only wall I saw. I couldn’t shake the image of his face as he’d scowled at me. Recognition. He blamed me for something and even though it made no sense, it was like he’d looked at me but he’d seen a memory. I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t imagined it. Or maybe I was projecting this weird familiarity onto him. But for a moment, I thought he’d felt it too. He was pissed at me for something that, according to Mirabelle, had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his own inability to accept complex solutions. A lack of faith, she’d called it. But there had been something else underneath that. Like there was something he blamed me for—something I was missing.
But that was impossible.
Jerk.
I kicked a twig and turned the corner, trying like hell to clear my head of the sexy GI Joe with a stick up his ass.
For some reason, my thoughts kept drifting back to Bernard. I wasn’t even sure why. I hadn’t seen him in days. But something felt off. Something important. I was almost tempted to double back past Oracle and visit Creeper Alley just to check on him.
But no. I wasn’t desperate enough to go there if I didn’t have to.
My phone rang, startling me with its shrill ring tone against the quiet night. I grabbed at it, fumbling to hurry and silence the sound, and when I saw the caller, exhaled. Finally, someone I wanted to hear from.
“Hi, Aunt Kiwi,” I said, smiling for the first time all day. “How’s Guam?”
“It’s gorgeous, as usual,” she said. “The fog rolling through this early is lovely and the energy.” I listened as she inhaled deeply. “There’s nothing like it. Taotaomona is peaceful today,” she added, citing the name for the local island gods I’d heard stories about as a child.
“Isn’t it still night time there?” I asked.
“It’s early morning. The jet lag has me all over the place. Listen, I’ve been worried,” she said. “You haven’t returned my calls.”
I sighed, feeling guilty, although I had been avoiding her ever since these strange fur balls started popping into my palms. “Sorry. Work is really busy right now. Lots of deliveries.” The last thing I needed was Kiwi freaking out from half a world away.
“And your sessions with Mirabelle?”
“I … Like I said, I’ve been busy,” I said, wincing.
“That is no excuse. I set you up with her so she could help. If she’s not—”
“No, it’s my fault,” I assured her quickly. “Between school and work, it’s just a lot. I’ll make more time, though.”
“Hmph. I’ll be having a word with her anyway,” she muttered.
I smiled, wondering if anyone ever “had a word” with Mirabelle.
“At any rate, Mira mentioned your
deliveries …” Her tone changed to a strange high-pitch that made her sound nervous. But Kiwi was never nervous. “Anything new with those?”
“Um, no, I don’t think so. I mean, the clientele is as weird as ever,” I said, hitting that same foggy wall as I tried to recall my last delivery trip on Halloween.
“Are you sure?” she pressed and I frowned.
“I think so. Why? What’s this about?”
Aunt Kiwi said something too low for me to hear. There was some shuffling on the other end and then she spoke. “I have to run to my meditative soaking session. But listen, Sam, please call me if you run into a rough patch, okay? No matter the time difference. I am here for you.”
“I appreciate it,” I told her. “I’ll call again soon.”
She said something in a language I didn’t understand—probably Chamorro—and hung up. Kiwi was still Kiwi.
I tugged my jacket more tightly around me, yanking the zipper as high as it would go and ducked my head as I continued my walk. It was cold tonight. All I wanted was a hot bath and my bed. First, I had to make it home.
The breeze felt full of things. Supernatural creatures. Invisible monsters. Things that went bump in the night. Get it together, Sam.
I rounded the corner onto Grove, keeping up my power walker’s pace. My boots echoed on the empty asphalt but I hummed under my breath, pretending my footsteps weren’t the loudest thing I could imagine right now.
It took me a moment to realize they weren’t the only thing I was hearing, either.
Softly, timed to match mine like an echo, I heard a second set of footsteps. Behind me. Not close enough for me to see their face if I turned, but not far enough to be a coincidence.
Shit.
Every muscle inside me screamed and begged to flee. I squeezed my fists, resisting the itching it caused.
I calculated the distance. I had three more streets between here and home. I couldn’t bring myself to stop walking even if it meant getting a better gauge on the distance between me and my stalker. I couldn’t let him know I was on to him. I forced myself to keep walking at the same pace and listened hard. The footfalls were heavy and almost perfectly timed to mine.
My knees felt liquidy. I forced them to stay firm and kept walking. Breathless with silent panic, I turned the next corner. This street was the only one on my route lined with trees for a full stretch. On my left, houses were dotted sporadically with large empty lots between. On my right, heavy growth of trees and brush that faded into inky darkness. No traffic or even street lights for long stretches. It was too secluded. The perfect place for someone to—
The footfalls behind me increased. I could hear them easily now. Faster, louder, and closing distance, my stalker clearly no longer cared if I heard him or not. The pace sounded erratic.
My breath caught. I forced my fist open and sure enough, a giant ball of fur wisped to the ground and then blew away into the darkness. Shit. Not again.
My legs began making decisions without me.
I walked faster. So did my stalker. I hitched my bag up and around my neck so it was hanging more securely off my shoulder.
Then I ran.
Footsteps sounded behind me, drowning out everything else. My labored breaths, the slap of my boots against asphalt, the ringing in my ears as I wondered if my paranoia wasn’t, on some level, warranted after all.
The Death card in Mirabelle’s office flashed through my mind, stamping itself onto my brain. Fuck. It was the last thing I was going to remember before I died, and that definitely sucked.
Close—way too damn close—something growled.
I glanced back in time to see the figure of a man ripping out of its fleshy form and into a fur-covered beast. Then, I blinked and everything happened at once.
Something large hurtled out of the empty lot and whirred past me in pursuit of my stalker.
I screamed.
Nearby, a cat snarled.
The footsteps of my attacker took off back in the direction we’d come and then disappeared altogether as whoever—or whatever—chasing it managed to scare it off.
The relief that I wasn’t getting eaten was overwhelming. My knees buckled. I stalled, bending at the waist as I sucked in air and tried not to melt into a helpless puddle on the ground.
The hoodie returned, sneakers scuffing against the pavement and even though they’d just chased off the bad guy, the noise alone had me sucking in a deep breath as I readied my lungs for the best horror-flick scream ever.
I looked up as Mason Harding appeared in front of me and the scream dissolved.
His shoulders heaved. “Sam?” he said between breaths at the same time I squeaked, “Mason?”
“Are you okay?” he asked, brows drawn and because I really, really wasn’t okay, I threw my arms around him and held on tight to keep from falling over.
He hugged me back and I leaned in, fully aware that my panic must have been through the roof if it was allowing me to hug. Especially to hug a guy. Even a guy that was Mason.
I squeezed hard and let go quickly—before it got weird.
Mason looked relieved and slowly, his breathing returned to normal. Mine took longer as mild anxiety replaced abject terror.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just realized someone—or something—was following me and…” I couldn’t bring myself to speculate on the rest. I must have imagined it. Or just be completely insane. “Thanks for chasing away whatever it was,” I finished.
He nodded and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his hoodie. I finally noticed his running shoes and shorts and things made more sense. “You chose the wrong running path,” I joked.
“I’d say I chose the right one. You could’ve—” He cleared his throat and stared off into the darkness behind me. His jaw tensed and for a moment he looked seriously worried, but then it cleared as he turned back to me. Forced calm. He took my hand and I let him, still shaken. “I’m glad I was here. Can I walk you somewhere?”
“Yeah, I’m going home. That would be… thanks,” I said and we fell into step together.
This time, there were obviously two sets of footfalls and it made me feel better. My mind began slowly making sense of the last few minutes. “Is there a running path through that lot?” I asked, remembering how I’d seen him coming from the thicket of trees and brush at the back of the empty lot.
“Huh?” Mason’s brows knotted and he glanced back. “Oh. Yeah, it’s pretty thick in there. I was just doing some cross-country stuff.”
I opened my mouth to point out the lot he’d come from backed into an even more heavily wooded area that led to the state park forest. I’d never seen a trail or anyone trying to forge one through the thicket back there. But I let it pass.
Mason was here. Which meant whoever had been chasing me was gone. The time for poking holes in logic was not now.
“You work a lot,” Mason said, snagging my attention away from his running patterns.
Now, I was thinking of another kind of discomfort: the eight missed calls from him on my cell. “Yeah,” I said slowly.
“And when you’re not working you… study?”
I nodded.
He was quiet and I could practically hear him gathering courage. I braced myself—I’d avoided it too long already. “Would you want to study with me sometime?”
“Mason, I—”
“As friends,” he put in quickly. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I echoed, eyeing him.
He tossed out a half-smile that didn’t fool me. But at the sight of it, my chest ached. How long had it been since I’d let someone—a friend—smile at me like that without literally running in the other direction? Six months? A year? Other than sharing a bowl of popcorn with Brittany when her dates cancelled, I didn’t have friends, let alone any that would smile.
Brittany’s words rang in my ear. The “hetero hope” comment was asinine. I was straight, not a question. But the sentiment rang true and
suddenly I wanted it. I wanted hope. I wanted normal. And I wanted to start with being Mason’s friend. Maybe, just maybe, it would lead me back to a place of safety. Personal security. Or at least somewhere better than here.
“Okay,” I told him as we neared my apartment. “We should study together sometime.”
“Yeah?” He tried and failed to hide his excitement. “That would be cool. We could catch up. I want to hear what you’ve been up to since you moved away.”
He bumped my shoulder and I bit my lip. “Yeah, definitely. Same,” I said vaguely. My story would be way too short for his satisfaction. There was nothing to tell. Work, school, and trying to not be crazy about summed it up for me. I stalled at my front steps, suddenly all nerves and wobbly knees. “Well. This is me so… I’ll see you later?”
Mason hesitated and I winced. He was going to ask to come in. And I was going to refuse and there went progress. But in the end, he rubbed at his neck, and ducked his head, stepping back into the street.
“Good night, Sam. See you around,” he said, the outline of his hoodie and shorts awash in the orange glow of the street lamp.
Something dark and confusing twisted inside me. He is not what he seems.
The thought was so foreign—the voice it came in didn’t even feel like my own. I shook myself hard and turned away from Mason’s retreating back. I didn’t want him to catch me watching him leave anyway. At the front door, I paused, thinking again about Mason hurtling out of that empty lot.
Someone—or something—had clearly been chasing me. And Mason hadn’t seemed even slightly interested in going after it or reporting it. Or even speculating on what it might have been. In fact, the whole thing struck me as odd.
Then again, isn’t that exactly what my life had already become? Odd.
I shoved inside and went to find Brittany. Maybe she’d let me bum a drink. For the first time since my personality reversal, I wasn’t above boxed wine.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex
Remembrance: (New Adult Paranormal Romance) (Heart Lines Series Book 1) Page 8