“Your fiancé visited.”
I shook my head. Kajika knew Cruz wasn’t my fiancé, so I wasn’t sure why he was tossing this at me. I leaned away from him. A police siren blared. Kajika didn’t stop for a while, as though he thought it amusing to have the police chase after us. When he finally hit the brakes, he did it so hard the seatbelt snapped like a rubber band across my chest, almost cleaving me in half. The cop drew out his gun as he approached our vehicle.
Kajika lowered his window and waited, drumming his fingers on the sill.
“License and registration.” The cop had a thick voice and an even thicker moustache.
“I do not possess either,” Kajika responded calmly.
The cop’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Put your hands in the air and get out of the vehicle.”
Kajika tipped his head to the side. “You will holster your gun and get into your car, and then you will drive away and forget about this encounter.”
Of course, the hunter resolved his problem with influence.
As the cop blinked, Kajika muttered, “You had a better solution?”
Not driving as fast.
Once the cop was gone, the hunter pivoted toward me, the smooth leather seat squeaking underneath his black jeans. “It is a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Copper Harbor, and then we must search the area. Have you even considered how we will go about locating Daneelies?”
Yes. It was a lie, and of course Kajika guessed it—actually, there was no guessing involved.
“Exactly. So unless you want to be prowling around in the darkness and sleeping in another foreign bed, it is best we get there fast.”
He merged back onto the road and pushed down so hard on the accelerator that I felt like I was in a runa, soaring over Neverra instead of inside a car, rolling over ribbons of asphalt.
Two hours and one more cop encounter later, we arrived on a peninsula of land that jutted into Lake Superior.
Take the lake road. If there are Daneelies, they’d live by the lake.
Kajika finally slowed his pace. We passed tiny town after tiny town. Some of them looked inhabited by ghosts, judging by the eerily quiet streets. We stopped several times along the way to ask about the best swimming spots—which won us many eyebrow raises, considering the season—and whether there were any tight-knit communities of people who kept to themselves.
“You mean hippies?” A woman sporting a skull-and-bones clip in bottle-black hair asked as she handed us bagels topped with lox and cream cheese.
While I bit into mine, Kajika said, “Perhaps.”
She cocked a light brown eyebrow that contrasted strangely with the severe tint of her hair. I wondered if the combination of my dark brown eyebrows and wheat-blonde hair appeared as odd.
“There’s this hippie community in Eagle River,” she said. “A religious sect of sorts. I heard they make their money by selling drugs out of a bookstore.”
I froze midbite and stared at Kajika, who stared right back. Finally, I got my jaw to work and swallowed the half-chewed piece of bread and fish.
“I never bought none or nothing. I don’t do drugs. I just heard.” Her speech had turned so choppy that I speculated she’d not only bought some but used it.
Ask her if they made her want to have sex.
A hint of color darkened Kajika’s bronze skin. “I cannot ask her that.”
“Excuse me?” the woman asked, thinking Kajika was talking to her.
Please?
Kajika glowered. “Ask her yourself.”
You know I can’t do that.
“Type it.” He grabbed his sandwich from the countertop and headed back out to the car.
Coward. I fished my phone out of my jacket pocket and typed, Do those drugs have any aphrodisiac effect?
My question made her frown. I couldn’t tell if it was the form or the content that puzzled her.
The door jingled, and I thought that maybe Kajika had returned, but it was a new customer. A man with a red baseball cap. He removed his cap and scrubbed a tanned hand through a mop of copper hair.
“Did the fish bite, Jack?” the woman asked.
“Caught a couple nice-sized splakes.” His gaze slid over me as he approached the counter. “Can I get a BLT, Birdie?”
“Sure thing.”
I touched the woman’s bony wrist, because it seemed like she’d forgotten all about me in the wake of the fisherman’s entrance. She startled. I tapped my phone’s screen with a fingernail.
“I told you, I’ve never done them,” she huffed.
Jack leaned an elbow on the countertop. “What haven’t you done, Birdie?”
“Nothing.” Birdie was slicing through a bread roll so animatedly that crumbs flew left and right.
Jack smiled at me conspiratorially. “Maybe I’ve done it… What are you interested in knowing?” Although he smelled like fish guts, he was handsome, in a rugged sort of way.
I bit my lip.
“You can ask me anything.”
I gave him a grateful nod and then typed: The hippie community out in Eagle River apparently sells drugs out of a bookstore. I was just asking Birdie if they were aphrodisiacs.
Jack’s eyes seemed to become bluer as they raced over my words. When he raised them back to what he could see of my face behind the sunglasses and baseball cap, they shone with an intrigued glint.
“I’m sure with the right person, they have that effect. I believe my roommate’s got some. If you want—”
The door banged open, the glass quivering in its wooden frame. “Lily,” Kajika growled my name so vociferously I jumped.
Jack straightened up. “A friend of yours?”
Was Kajika a friend? He hadn’t been very friendly recently.
“I am her boyfriend, so back off.”
That made me turn pink.
Jack studied my body language. He must’ve sensed it was a lie, because he didn’t back off. “She doesn’t seem too excited to see you, man.”
Kajika’s fingers rolled into such tight fists that I lunged toward him and gripped his throbbing bicep.
Stop looking at him like you’re going to murder him.
“Perhaps I am,” he said, through gritted teeth.
Jack’s eyebrows hopped around on his forehead. “Perhaps you’re what?”
“Get into the car, Lily.”
Ask nicely.
“Get. Into. The. Car.”
I sighed annoyedly. Fine, but, for your information, that wasn’t much nicer.
Before walking away, I typed one last thing on my phone and propped it toward Jack.
Reluctantly, he answered my query. “Forest Bookstore. Ask to see their Marvel collection. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Nodding, I pitched a smile onto my face, then mouthed thank you.
Once I’d walked out the door, Kajika spun and strode back to the Porsche.
You really have to work on your people skills.
“What do I need people skills for?” He threw the car into reverse and then swerved back onto the lakeside road.
Well, firstly, you’d make some friends. And secondly, you’d most probably land that girl you like.
“I need neither friends nor a girl to complicate my life.”
The right girl won’t complicate it; she’ll make it better.
“I had the right girl, and she did not make anything better. I cannot go through that again.”
So you’d rather be alone? That’s a pretty miserable way of thinking. I took a large bite of my bagel, watching the deep blue-gray surf foam against the shore. We’ve all had our hearts broken, Kajika, but hearts heal. I would give anything to have my heart broken again because it would mean I got to love again.
12
The Compound
A half hour later, we reached Eagle River. We stopped to refuel the car and then headed to Forest Bookstore. For some reason the name sounded familiar. Then again it wasn’t highly original, which was probably why it sounded familiar.
The store was small and cluttered with shelves bowed beneath the weight of books. All of the ones in the window display were sun-bleached and lined with dust. Clearly, the person running the shop was not in the business of selling books.
A bald, middle-aged man with a sharp jaw set down the John Grisham book he was reading and stepped out from behind his register. “Can I help you?”
Ask them about their Marvel collection.
The hunter’s gaze tightened on the man. Was he trying to tell if he was Daneelie? I wondered if he could. I certainly had no way of telling. They didn’t have a distinctive smell like hunters, or a distinctive glow like faeries.
“We are interested in your Marvel collection,” Kajika finally said.
The man’s eyebrows slanted. “Any specific comic you’re looking for? X-men? Thor? Spiderman?”
Kajika glanced down at me.
Tell him we want to see the entire collection.
Kajika gave voice to my silent demand.
The man tilted his head, the naked bulb over the register glinting off his smooth skull. “How did you hear about our collection?”
“From a fisherman back in Bete Grise.”
The seller absent-mindedly thumbed the spine of the book he’d been reading before returning behind the register. Something beeped and then clanked. A safe.
“Where you two from?” the man asked, his attention on whatever was inside the safe. Only his shoulders shifted as he leafed through his stash. They were impressively wide.
Swimmer shoulders…
Daneelie shoulders?
“Rowan,” Kajika said.
The man glanced up, hazel eyes flaring. “You don’t say. Small world.”
“You know Rowan?” Kajika asked.
He flicked his attention back to his safe. “I know of it.” A soft clunk echoed in the small bookstore. He sighed, then placed both his palms on the counter, as if to show us he wasn’t wielding a weapon. “I’m all out of Marvels, but I’ll receive a shipment this afternoon. Why don’t you two come back then?”
He’s suspicious of us.
Kajika took a couple steps forward. I caught his arm, knowing that if he acted all tough and spooky, it wouldn’t help our case.
The man didn’t move, didn’t cower. He simply locked his gaze on the hunter’s.
“We cannot come back. Direct us to the hippies, and we will leave.”
The man snorted. “They don’t allow visitors.”
Kajika’s eyes took on that inhuman gleam. “Forget we are from Rowan and take us there now.”
The man frowned, fine wrinkles scrunching his tanned skin. He nodded deeply as though an anchor hung around his neck, and then he walked toward the bookstore’s door. He flipped the sign to Closed, then held the door for us. As we passed by him, I caught him studying the whorls of captive dust that peeked through the open collar of Kajika’s black t-shirt.
“Nice tattoo.” He unhooked his keys from his belt buckle and locked up. “Does it symbolize anything?”
“That I am strong.”
I cocked up an eyebrow. Really? You couldn’t have thought of another meaning? That’s just going to freak the man out.
Kajika didn’t even spare me a passing glance. “We will follow you in our car.”
The man zipped up his sleeveless vest. “No unfamiliar vehicles are allowed onto the compound.”
Sensing Kajika was about to influence him again, I placed my hand on the hunter’s arm. Let him take us there. If we drive, it’ll arouse suspicion. If anything happens, you’ll run us back.
“How far is your home?” Kajika asked.
“’Bout a mile.” The man placed a hand on the hood of a rusted red Camaro, and then walked over to the driver’s side and unlocked the vehicle.
Kajika folded the front passenger seat. After I settled in the back, he snapped the seat straight and got in.
“I’m Quinn, by the way. Quinn Thompson,” he said, a couple minutes into the drive. “And you are?”
Don’t give our real names.
“I am Tom, and she is Alice.”
I wrinkled my nose. Had he really needed to use the deceased huntress’s name for me? Granted, he’d used another deceased hunter’s name for himself. Stellar imagination.
He turned his head a quarter inch, enough for me to see his pinched expression.
“Where are you kids from?”
“Boston,” Kajika deadpanned. “Have you been living on the compound long, Quinn?”
“I moved there a couple months ago.”
I gripped Kajika’s headrest to scoot in closer.
“And the others?” Kajika asked.
“What about the others?”
“Are they from here?”
“You are a very curious person.”
“Tell me about the others.” Kajika’s voice had turned tinny and rigid. He was influencing Quinn again.
“Most were born and raised in Eagle River.”
“Why Eagle River?”
The man frowned. “Because it’s their home.”
“Why did they allow you into the compound?”
“’Cause I’m related to them.”
He hung a left, then drove down a dusty path that ended in a corroded, gaping gate. He got out of the car and shoved the gate wide, then he got back behind the wheel and drove down a sinuous road lined with old campers. A group of small children, dressed in scraps of clothes topped with down jackets that had been mended more than once, stopped playing ball to watch the Camaro.
“Uncle Quinn,” one of them squealed, running behind the car.
Quinn lowered his window and waved. “Don’t come too close now, Joshua.” He slowed just in case.
The kid, a small, pale-haired boy that looked like he’d showered in freckles, gave the car a wider berth before stopping. “Uncle Quinn’s got people in the car,” I heard him say before we sped down the road.
After another couple minutes, Quinn turned right and slowed before coming to a complete stop in front of the only building that wasn’t on wheels. It was made from a hodgepodge of shipping crates. Yellow, red, and green boxes had been parked next to each other. Over them stretched a flat roof made of sheet metal and plastic tarp tied down with what looked like fishing wire.
The sound of our car doors shutting had a tall, skinny woman exiting through the opening of a red crate.
“Charlotte, I’ve got two customers who’d like to purchase a Marvel comic.”
She stared unblinkingly in the direction of Quinn. “You brought strangers here?”
“I—I…” He glanced at us, seemingly confounded by our presence. “Seems like I did.”
“You know the rules,” she said.
Quinn rubbed the back of his bald head.
Tell her we insisted.
“Why does our presence unsettle you so?” Kajika asked instead.
I sucked in a breath. She’ll toss us out now!
The little kids, who’d been playing ball, careened toward us, gray dust puffing around their rubber Crocs. All of them panted hard. Some doubled over, palms against thighs.
Charlotte angled her face toward the hunter. “Because visitors aren’t allowed on our property.” Instead of his face, her gaze set on his chest. She was probably taking in his breadth and bulk, weighing the outcome of turning him away.
Quinn scrubbed his neck. “Excuse my cousin. We don’t have many visitors.”
Her hands skidded off her hips. “We have no visitors. Quinn knows this, which makes me wonder why he brought you here. Did you threaten him?”
“Threaten him?” Kajika’s arms pulsed. I caught ahold of one of his hands and pinned it down. “We are not ill-intentioned.”
The hunter’s muscle jostled underneath my clenched fingers. I had to compress his arm so hard my fingernails surely imprinted tiny crescents into his skin, in spite of his thick thermal top.
Just ask her for the drugs and tell her we’ll be on our way.
“We c
ame for your Marvel collection.” He shrugged his arm out of my grip and took out a bundle of cash, peeling bills from the batch. “How much does it cost?”
“We’re all out,” Charlotte said.
Quinn gaped at his cousin.
She’s lying.
As Kajika returned the cash to his pocket, he leveled his gaze on hers, or at least he tried to. It was as though she didn’t dare look into his eyes, because she knew what he could do.
He approached her. Finally her gaze landed on his.
“You will give us some of the drugs you make,” he said with that magical authority of his.
Her tapered nostrils pulsed with annoyed breaths. “I told you…we are all out.”
Kajika frowned, but I didn’t, because I suddenly understood why his influence hadn’t worked.
She’s blind.
“Now, Quinn, please escort them off the compound,” Charlotte said.
Quinn, who was ruffling the little blond boy’s hair, froze. “Um. Okay.”
“Could I get a glass of water before we leave?” Kajika asked. “My throat is parched.”
I hitched up an eyebrow that got lost in my baseball cap.
“Josh, can you get them a glass of water, please?” Quinn asked.
“Sure thing.” He traipsed toward Charlotte, then past her. “Watch out, Mom.”
Charlotte instinctually placed her hand on the top of his head as he came back out, carrying a plastic cup filled to the brim with water. “Slowly, Josh. Don’t spill.”
The little boy moved at a snail’s pace after that. It was sort of funny actually, even though I could sense the hunter was growing exasperated.
Are you really thirsty?
“No,” Kajika murmured.
Once Joshua reached Kajika, he proffered the cup. “You’re really tall.”
“And you are very short.”
I elbowed Kajika.
“What? I was short once too. And then I grew.” He took the glass from the little boy. “And so will you, Joshua.”
“You speak funny,” the little boy continued.
“So I have been told.”
“Why doesn’t your lady-friend talk?”
“She cannot.”
Josh’s little forehead furrowed as he swayed his head toward me. “Why not?”
“Same reason your mother cannot see.”
Raging Rival Hearts Page 7