by Black, Tasha
Weird. It was probably just too much swinging around on a full belly.
She eased herself onto the seat next to him and looked up at the stars as he wrapped an arm around her and nuzzled her hair.
Chapter 10
Grace paced the pink carpet of the hotel room.
She spent about ten minutes this way, worrying about Cressida, before she decided to go out for a walk to clear her head.
She bundled up carefully against the sea breeze and headed out into the little town.
Most of the storefronts were dark, but there were plenty of streetlights. She wandered aimlessly, mentally repeating what she had learned of the moroi so far, hoping to catch something that would put her back on its trail.
She knew moroi were masters of disguise, ingenious at inhabiting the physical forms of their former victims and even exhibiting some traits of their old personalities, just as this one had when it appeared as Ophelia Winter during the battle in Tarker’s Hollow.
They were fast, and they could become ethereal, scattering their physical form to escape - like the way it had turned to tiny snakes and slithered away when Grace had gained the upper hand.
That memory stung, and she began to wonder whether she really had what it took, whether she would be able to defeat the thing for good when they found it, or whether it would slip through her fingers once again.
If they even found it, that was.
“G - 58.”
The mechanical voice brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up and found herself outside an old VFW hall. There were lights on inside and hum of pleasant conversation made its way out to her. The sign outside proclaimed it to be bingo night.
Grace was about to turn away and head back to the hotel when the pendant at her neck began to vibrate.
She slipped it out of her coat and held it away from her body, dangling it on the chain, studying it intensely.
At first, it seemed to pull toward the building, almost imperceptibly.
Then it settled back to its usual position, hanging straight down as if it had never challenged gravity in the first place.
Grace gazed at it a long time, then shook her head. It had probably just been her imagination.
She decided to have a look anyway. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. There was no one on the street, so she climbed into a flowerbed to get high enough to peek in the window.
Inside, a room full of people enjoyed themselves. Folding tables spread out across the tiled floor, covered in bingo cards and Styrofoam coffee cups.
Her eye was drawn to a couple in the corner holding hands. She recognized them as Reginald and Antoinette, the proprietors of the camera shop and the boogie board hut who Cressida had pushed together.
Grace smiled, and tried not to yearn for such happiness for herself.
Her crystal pendant flashed to life, and she gripped it and gazed into the blinding light.
This was new.
Grace found herself sinking to her knees in the flowerbed as the world fell away.
The people, the VFW, the cold soil beneath her, the whole town, receded into a bottomless darkness.
Grace was alone.
She strained her perception, searching, although she didn’t know what she sought.
A sound came to her, a voice in the darkness.
No, that wasn’t right.
It was coming from somewhere inside her head and surrounding her, all at once.
Grace.
She turned to see Julian, standing in the darkness.
This wasn’t Julian from a dream. This was the man himself, it had to be. He looked exhausted, haunted. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that night, soiled by the rusty dirt from the floor of the field house.
She tried to go to him, but something stopped her in place. A wall, like thick glass, separated them.
She placed her hand against its surface, and on the other side, he did the same.
“Julian,” she sighed.
Grace. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold on.
She looked more closely, and realized she could see through him slightly now, as if he were fading.
“What can I do?” she begged. “I don’t know how to find you.”
Don’t let it get away.
He faded further.
Grace drummed her fists against the glass that separated them.
She watched, helpless, as he went nearly transparent, then drifted away on an unseen current.
One moment he was right there before her, his sad eyes searching her soul.
The next he was gone.
“Julian,” she called after him.
Grace.
She blinked back the tears.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself back in the VFW parking lot.
But everything was different somehow.
The lights were off, and no sounds came from the building.
She stood, glancing at her watch.
Almost 3 AM.
Impossible.
She closed her eyes and opened them again.
She was still kneeling in the flowerbed, and the watch still said 2:57.
Could she really have been crouching here for hours? It felt like only a few minutes.
She half-staggered back to the motel in a haze, trying to get her mind around what had just happened.
She was tired to her bones, like she had run a marathon, her feet dragging.
But every step was like walking on air.
She had seen Julian.
The good feeling would wear away soon enough as reality set in, but Grace had to take comfort in her dreams and mirages now.
They were all she had.
Too soon, she was back in view of the Beachfront Motel.
She was still fumbling for her key when Cressida arrived.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who had a fun night,” Cressida teased, elbowing her in the ribs.
What?
Oh. She must look a mess.
“You have no idea,” Grace said, opening the door.
She was on the verge of blurting it all out, telling Cressida everything and grilling her on what they should do next.
But suddenly, in the harsh light of the little pink room it all seemed less real. She didn’t know where to begin, or what any of it really meant anyway.
“How was your date?” she asked instead, deciding to keep the night’s events to herself until she figured it out a little more.
“Pretty excellent,” Cressida replied with a smile. “Linc wanted me to be sure you were coming to the party tomorrow night.”
“As long as it’s not at the VFW,” Grace said, peeling off her coat.
“How did you know?” Cressida asked.
Chapter 11
Cressida watched Grace’s knuckles go white on the wheel as they pulled up outside the VFW for the party.
After what she had shared last night about seeing a vision of Julian, Cressida wasn’t a bit surprised. She was only disappointed that Grace had not been planning to tell her right away.
Good thing Cress’s wolf nose had told her to dig. It had all come out at once. Cress could feel the truth to it even as she smelled Grace’s own disbelief.
They were close enough that Grace was having visions.
Grace should have been over the moon at any bit of progress, but somehow she just seemed… nervous. Like maybe she was afraid she would fuck it up.
And she was seriously worked up right now.
It used to be that Grace’s calm demeanor made it hard for Cress to read her expressions. But they were so close now that Cressida knew each nuance of Grace’s every mood. And fear was written clearly in the tightness of her pinched lips.
“We don’t have to do this,” Cressida ventured.
“No,” Grace said. “I’m fine. We’re not going to find a better way to meet the people around here, and I want a chance to check this place out.”
She parked the car and slid the ke
y out of the ignition.
“Okay,” Cressida said, covering Grace’s hand with her own before the other woman could determinedly launch herself out of the car. “But if you get any bad vibes, just let me know, and we’ll cut out.”
Grace looked over at her and smiled gratefully.
“You’re a good friend,” she said.
“Wait until I embarrass you with my dancing before you decide.” Cressida winked garishly and then hopped out before things got too mushy.
Inside, the black and white checkered floor made Cressida think of Alice in Wonderland. The ceiling was high and there were tables in half the room. People gathered in clumps at the big buffet table along the wall, carrying food and drink around the other tables and mingling in between. There must have been at least a hundred of them.
Cressida tried to breathe through her mouth, but the scents of all of them assaulted her anyway. A hundred dreams, a hundred fears, two hundred sweaty socks. It was one thing to enter a big party back in Tarker’s Hollow when she’d known most of the crowd all her life. But she was inundated with all new data here and it was dizzying.
She looked to the empty dance floor with relief, if no one was dancing yet she could get her groove on and acclimate to the room at the same time.
At the far end of the space there was a small stage with blue velvet curtains. A teenaged boy stood on it, singing karaoke with a self-conscious expression.
Cress made a mental note to make sure and get a few songs in and liven the place up a little.
She was checking out the buffet when the wave of a hand at a long table in the back of the room caught her attention.
It was Linc. He hopped up and headed over to them.
Something about the way he moved through the tables seemed a little off to Cressida, she couldn’t figure out why. Maybe he felt self-conscious in the crowd.
“Hello, Cressida,” he said a little too loudly. “Grace.”
Was he drunk? She tried to catch a whiff of his breath, but couldn’t pick up much over his too liberal cologne application. There was something there, something sickly sweet. But it might have just been some spoiled ham at the buffet.
“Hey, Linc,” Cress returned.
“Hi,” Grace said. “Thanks for inviting us.”
“Wouldn’t want you to miss it,” he smiled, revealing his perfect white teeth. He gestured toward the biggest table. “Come meet the family.”
Cressida shrugged and followed along. It felt a little weird to meet a guy’s family when you’d only had one date and you ended it by shagging him on top of a Ferris wheel in the middle of the night. But hey, if he wanted her to meet his folks, that was fine by her.
“Dad, Uncle Bill, Aunt Zara, Joshua, I want you to meet Cressida and Grace,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you ladies,” his dad said with a little wave. “I’m Harold Monroe.”
Cressida waved back at the bald guy with the tortoise shell glasses and navy blue jacket. She hoped Linc was going to age better than his dad. Not that she planned to be around to see it.
“So nice to meet you dear,” Aunt Zara said in a deep sinuous voice.
“You too,” Cressida told her sincerely. She guessed Aunt Zara was Indian. The woman wore the most beautiful jeweled sari. But it was her large eyes and the dark hair spilling out of a bun down her back that attracted Cressida. Her wolf inhaled the woman’s intoxicating perfume.
“Nice, Linc,” Joshua chimed in, distracting Cress from her fantasy about letting down the rest of Aunt Zara’s hair.
“Manners, Joshua,” Uncle Bill said with a warm smile.
“Sorry. How’s it going?” Joshua asked, straightening up. He was a total hipster, complete with skinny jeans, striped shirt, a little tie, and a big beard. Cressida was only surprised he didn’t have some annoying hat. Clearly she was banging the right brother.
“Happy Birthday,” Grace said politely.
“Thank you,” Joshua replied, inclining his head like a freaking duke in a Shakespeare play. If he called anyone M’lady, Cressida was leaving.
All told though, they seemed pretty nice and normal.
Cressida had sort of expected a family of weird carnies, but they just looked like a regular group of people at a soccer game or something.
“Ladies, why don’t you get some dinner,” Uncle Bill offered with another warm smile. “We’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted over a hot meal.”
“They won’t go hungry, dear,” his wife smiled and ruffled his white hair. “Really though, the food is delicious.” Zara smiled up at Cressida again.
“Sounds good to me,” Cress said, turning to Grace. “You hungry?”
Grace did not look hungry.
“Yes,” Grace said. “Thank you.”
They headed together into the fray. Cress was feeling more herself now. No matter where you went, people’s emotions were basically the same, and this stew was made of the same basic ingredients as the one at home. She tried to tone down her sensitivity and let it all become a blur - like looking at one of those magic eye pictures.
As they were filling their plates with seafood and dinner rolls, Harrison Briggs, the caretaker joined them.
“Hello again.” He smiled, piling mashed potatoes onto his plate as if it were a competition.
“Hi.” Grace smiled back at him.
There were quite a few friendly faces. Cressida recognized Reginald from the camera shop with Antoinette from the boogie board bungalow sitting together at one of the tables. She nodded at them and Reginald winked back. Nice. There was Cressida’s good deed for the year - it made up for all her sins, or at least some of them.
“Cressida, darling,” the nasally voice with the fake accent came from directly behind her right ear.
Cressida spun around, nearly dropping her plate.
So much for tuning down her sensitivity.
“I am Esmerelda Calypso,” the woman behind her said loudly. “I’m dying to give you a reading. You have such an interesting aura.”
Cressida took in the fortuneteller get-up and the woman’s dramatic expression.
“Uh, maybe later.”
“Soon, my dear,” Esmerelda intoned, making taffy-pulling motions as if she were gathering the thoughts out of the top of Cressida’s head. “I can sense that you need me.”
In spite of the over-the-top presentation, there was actually something about the woman that gave Cressida the heebie-jeebies.
She headed back with her food. Other than that incident, the night went on pretty much without a hitch.
Cressida’s only worry was keeping an eye on Grace, who seemed reserved, and kept scoping the place out like she was planning a prison break.
Mostly though, Cressida just had fun. Linc, clearly not the partying type, stayed pretty quiet but seemed to enjoy watching her have a good time. His steady gaze was sort of predatory, and she found it both hot and slightly unsettling.
At one point, she got up and sang some karaoke, a little Katy Perry, followed by some old school Cyndi Lauper earned her a round of applause.
“Grace,” she yelled into the microphone when it was done.
Grace shook her head and tried to blend into the background, but Cressida didn’t let her off the hook. Eventually she half-dragged her up to the stage where they gave a rousing rendition of the dopey duet from Dirty Dancing.
About halfway through, Cressida realized Grace wasn’t even looking at the monitor. She already knew all the lyrics. Classic.
“That wasn’t so bad, right?” Cress asked her on their way back to the table.
“I had the time of my life,” Grace shrugged, deadpan.
Cressida groaned and then laughed.
They arrived back at the table just in time for the whole room to break out into the birthday song as a group of waiters wheeled out a big cake, followed by a smaller one. Cressida figured that was the vegan cake for Joshua.
But before they cut the cake, some of Joshua’s friends began to chant.
“Presents, presents…”
“Hmm,” Joshua chuckled. “I guess I’ll open some presents first.”
They all watched as he opened his gifts. There were some funny gag gifts, a couple of books, a sweater. Then there was only one package left.
“Hey,” he said, “there’s no tag. Who’s this from?”
No one seemed to know.
He shrugged and opened it up anyway, pulling out an ornately carved wooden box.
“Wow,” said Joshua.
“Oh, that’s nice,” his Uncle Bill added over his shoulder.
Joshua lifted the lid on the box.
“Oh, wow,” he said again, and lifted out a small statue.
Cressida leaned in, trying to see it better. It looked almost like one of the Native American animal totems from back in Tarker’s Hollow - like the one she carried with her now. Except this one wasn’t a crow.
It was a snake.
“Neat,” he said, slipping it back inside the box.
“Beware,” said a loud and nasally voice with a fake accent.
They all turned to see Esmerelda pushing her way through the table to reach Joshua.
“This item is cursed,” she said breathlessly, making a weird motion with her hand and then spitting on the floor.
“Ew,” someone muttered.
“Beware, this gift, Joshua Monroe,” Esmerelda moaned. “It will be your doom.”
Joshua looked from side to side as if for assistance in how to handle this bizarre social situation.
His relatives were too busy staring down Esmerelda to see what she would do next. Only Harold Monroe looked truly uncomfortable.
Joshua laughed awkwardly.
The rest of the room began to laugh along with him. Everyone but Esmerelda.
Mercifully, the deejay turned on the music. Informing everyone over the microphone that it was time to hit the dance floor.
A few people got up to heed his call and Esmerelda wandered away, shaking her head in defeat.
Cressida walked over to where Linc sat beside his brother.
“So what’s your deal, then?” she asked Josh. “Are you like, allergic to meat or something?”
“No,” Joshua said immediately, as if he had been waiting for her to ask. “I just feel like it is a more enlightened worldview.”