by Cate Dean
4
“—wake up, Alex. I know you can hear me—open your eyes.”
Jake’s insistent voice pulled me out of my stupor. I pried my lids open, and I found myself staring at my own legs. “What . . . oh, God.”
My head pounded like I’d had too much to drink—without the drinking part. Not that I’d know, but I’ve been a witness to Mom’s New Year’s Eve champagne fest. She always looks like she dragged herself along ten miles of ugly the next morning.
Jake spoke again, quietly, like he knew my head felt like a badly used rubber ball.
“I’m going to lift your head—slowly. I’ve got some water here for you.” Warm fingers curled around my chin and tilted my head up, slowly, like he promised, but still too fast for my unfocused brain. “Can you take a sip?”
I swallowed, started to shake my head. Every instinct screamed at me to stop, so I listened. “No,” I whispered. “What did you do to me?”
He looked apologetic. “Chloroform. I’m sorry, Alex, but I didn’t want to fight you.”
“All you had to do was ask nice. Where did you . . .” My voice faded as I looked past him, and recognized the living room, and the furniture, some of it still hidden by protective covers. We were in Sam’s house. My heart started pounding so hard I expected it to burst through my ribs. The last time I was here, Sam and I kissed for the first time. I could almost smell him—that fresh scent of grass I always associated with him. “What are we doing here?”
“I needed a private place to talk to you.”
“Jake.” I started to lift my hand to grab him—and discovered I couldn’t. Looking down, I saw the rope, tying me to a chair. Then I noticed I had been stripped down to my jeans and camisole. Not remembering that—or being brought here, or being tied to a chair—flamed my temper. “Where are the rest of my clothes?”
For the first time since dragging me into the alley, Jake looked uncomfortable. “You—we got splashed by an ultra mega super sipper size orange soda.” I couldn’t help myself—that mouthful had me laughing, even though it hurt. Jake shrugged, a smile flashing across his face. “The kid couldn’t see us.”
“Can you untie me? I promise I won’t retaliate.” At least, not right now. Like Shakespeare famously wrote, revenge is a dish best served cold. Yeah, I like Shakespeare. The man was a genius with a pen. “Please, Jake. It’s getting cold in here.”
Freezing would be a more accurate word. All of a sudden my skin woke up, and I started to shiver.
“Damn—I’m sorry, Alex.” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. I saw he was careful to avoid touching the leather cord of the pendant still hanging around my neck. And he was not untying me.
“Jake—”
“I want your promise to help me.”
“And if I say hell no?”
He scrubbed at his face, obviously annoyed with me. I was more than annoyed. Now that I was warmer, and my brain had started a somewhat normal function again, I worked my way up to furious.
I’d started to trust him, after spilling my deepest secrets to him after Halloween. Now he repaid that trust by trussing me up like a—
“The Devil was set up.”
Those five words sucked every thought out of my brain. “What?”
“Whoever took those kids made it look like she was on a rampage, attacking—”
“It did attack you.” Yeah, the brain was starting to function—and panic was the second emotion to come roaring in. Right after the guilt that I hurt the monster. “I saw it, at the public garden—we all did—”
“She thought I was behind what was happening.”
“How do you know that?”
Jake took in a deep breath, crossed his arms. “She told me.”
My heart stopped. Literally stopped beating—until my brain got back online and forced me to suck in a breath. I took it in too fast and started coughing.
“Hey.” Jake started pounding me on the back. “You okay?”
I blinked my eyes clear, and stared at him. “Am I okay? You knocked me out, tied me up, and just told me you talked to a monster. I am so far from okay I don’t know where I am right now. How did you—”
“Talk to her? With a laptop. She understands us, Alex. She was one of the first to come to the haven when it was created.”
“But that was—over a hundred years ago.”
“Yeah. Blew my mind, too.”
“What—how—” I calmed myself down, pushed back the hundred questions screaming through my headache. “Tell me what happened.”
He leaned against the back of the sofa. “I went back to Hyattown, to see if whoever took the kids left anything behind that would tell us who they were. And she jumped me.”
I shivered, the memories still too new. “Oh, God.”
“Only this time, I changed. When she saw what I became, she backed off. I’m still trying to figure out why.”
I already knew. The guide hidden in my bedroom said a Devil and a Fenris balanced each other out. I guess Sam’s dad wasn’t lying when he wrote that.
“What happened next?”
“When we were fighting, my laptop fell out of my backpack. She picked it up—I seriously thought she was going to use it as a weapon. Instead, she opened it and started typing.”
If I hadn’t been sitting, I would have been on the floor. “Typing?”
“Two fingered typing, but yeah. We went back and forth until my battery died. She can understand us when we talk, but she’s better with writing. It gives her more time to process.”
I needed time to process. Then Jake distracted me from the impossible by dropping to his knees. He gripped the area rug, the heavy wool bunching under his fingers. I’d seen this before—with both Jake and Sam. Right before they changed.
Oh, sweet God in heaven. Not now.
“Jake—” My voice shook. I cleared my throat. “Are you—”
“I need Sam back.”
“What?” The mention of Sam distracted me, squeezed my heart. I tried, hundreds of times a day, not to think about him. Or how much I missed him.
“This is a bad time of year for me. I’m usually isolated, but Candace wants me here for blood samples, and—” He lowered his head. “I feel like I’m losing control.”
The last time I met his seven foot, hairy alter ego, he was ready to tear me into tiny edible bits.
“Jake.” I forced myself to sound as calm as I possibly could. “Please untie me.”
He jerked his gaze back to me, and his eyes were glassy. But still human. I prayed for them to stay that way.
“I need you to help me get Sam back. Will you—”
“Yes! Now get me out of this chair.” I heard the panic leaking through. Alone, with an unstable Jake, tied to a chair—it was like my worst nightmare.
His hands shook against my wrist as he fumbled with the knot. Finally, my arm was free.
“Back off,” I said. I planned to get the other arm free, then get out as fast as—
“What the hell are you doing?” Candace stood in the doorway, the glare that could cower even a mafia hit man directed at Jake. “Alex—are you all right?” She stalked toward me, pushing Jake out of the way, and whipped out a folding pocket knife that made mine look like a sharpened toothpick. “Hold still—I’ll have you out of this in a second.”
If I didn’t know she was a med student, and used to waving around sharp objects on her surgical rotation, I’d be really nervous. Instead I was just merely nervous.
She sliced through the rope, and started rubbing my wrist. “You’re freezing.” In one graceful move she pushed Jake’s jacket off my shoulders and replaced it with her gorgeous jacket. “Can you get your arms in? Good. Now stay here. I want you out of swinging range.”
Candace went after Jake, had him cornered before he knew what was happening. He raised his hands, staring at the knife still in her hand. “I was just—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I saw you shoot past me in your car, and Alex l
ooked like an unwilling passenger. I know why you dragged her here, and I don’t want to hear your sorry excuses. She’s not bait, wolf boy. Do this again, and I’m done.”
All the color drained out of his face. “Candace—”
“She saved your pathetic life after that devil attacked you—and this is how you repay her?” Candace snapped the knife into its sheath and headed back to me. “Come on, Alex. I’ll take you home—what is that?”
Her gaze dropped to the pendant.
Jake moved forward. “It’s—”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” She looked at me, eyebrows raised. I nodded, and she touched the pendant. “This is the rune, isn’t it? The one carved all over Hyattown.”
I nodded. “The Devil left it on my front door—I took it as a warning, though I’m not sure anymore that’s what it meant. I was, um, testing it out. It has a kind of ‘don’t look at me’ thing going on. But it doesn’t seem to work on anyone who’s been in Hyattown.”
I took it off and handed it to her. Candace examined it, like she would an unusual specimen. “My guess? It allowed someone from the haven to track them if necessary, and the creatures who wore it couldn’t get away with anything.” She handed it back to me, and I tucked it in the pocket of my jeans. “They did wear them to walk around up here, I take it.”
You couldn’t get anything past Candace. I wondered how Jake managed to sneak the chloroform out from under her nose.
“Candace.” Jake took a step forward.
“Still not talking to you.” She helped me stand, and held on to me until my legs decided to function. “Are your parents home?”
“Not until tonight.”
“Good. You’ll have time to rest. Let’s get you out of here.”
“No.” Jake moved in front of the doorway. Candace pushed me behind her, and faced off with him. “I need her to talk to Sam—” He grabbed for the door frame, his face whiter than before.
“Jake.” Candace cradled his face, and I saw the concern as she studied him. “You don’t have to stay. Not if it hurts you like this. Bringing Sam back won’t help you.”
“He—understands.”
Pain flashed in her eyes before she could cover it. She dropped her hands. “Do what you want. Just leave Alex out of it.” By the time she turned to me anything she may have been feeling was carefully hidden. “Let’s get you home.”
“I want to help.” I couldn’t believe I just said that. But I saw Jake’s pain, and I knew it. Worse, I understood it. Because of Sam. Maybe it was transference, but I couldn’t walk away. And I had my own selfish reasons. I wanted Sam back. So much it made my throat ache just to think about it. “It’s okay, Candace. This is my choice. I think Sam should be here anyway, if we’re going after the accomplice.”
Jake’s head snapped up. “Alex—”
“This is not because of you.” I got in his face before Candace could. Not an easy task, since he was almost a foot taller than short me. “I want to know who would go that far, and what they’re really hiding. Do you know where Sam is?”
He pulled out his cell phone. “He’s in England. Probably going stir crazy.”
Before I had time to prepare myself, he tapped out the number and handed me the phone. I could feel myself shaking, my heart on overdrive. When I heard Sam’s quiet, deep voice answer, I almost dropped the phone.
“Sam? Hi—it’s Alex.” I swallowed, wanting to reach in through the phone and touch him, and at the same time, run far far away. Being in love could really twist a person up. Before I could turn chicken, I blurted the words out. “I need you to come home.”
5
Sam’s next words almost dropped me to the floor.
“I’m already here, Alex.”
“You’re—here?” I could barely squeeze my voice out of my throat.
“About a block away from your house.”
I stared at Jake. “I’m not there.”
“Where are you?”
“Um, with Jake. Wait for me there—I’m on my way.” I ended the call before he could say anything else and shoved the phone at Jake. “He’s on his way to my house. Did you know?”
“I swear to you, I thought he was at our estate, talking to the trees. Told you it was isolated.” He glanced past me, flashed a pale version of his usual smile at Candace. “Coming with us?”
“I have class,” she said. I should have been scraping ice off my skin. “Alex, tell Sam I said hi. And to come in and see me. I’d like some more current data for his file. If you don’t get rid of the headache soon, I want you to call me.”
“Okay.” I watched her stalk across the living room and through the doorway.
Jake pushed hair off his face, and let out a breath. “That went well.”
“I don’t know what your definition is, but she was beyond pissed.”
“I still have my head.”
“Got it.”
He held out his hand. “Give you a lift home?”
I walked past him. “Yes. But this doesn’t mean I’m not still mad. Because I am.” I heard him follow me out to the porch, locking the door behind him. “And the headache you gave me isn’t helping.”
“How long am I going to have to apologize?” That sounded like something he’d said more than once recently.
I bit back a smile, looked up at him. “We’ll take it day by day.”
“Hell.”
I wanted to laugh, but I held back. I was still mad at him, for treating me like an enemy who couldn’t be trusted, but I planned to give him a break. In a few days.
Jake held the passenger door of his black MG open for me. “Can we at least have a civil conversation on the way? Put aside your ‘pissed at me because I drugged you’ feelings?”
“I think I can manage it.”
I slid into the car, and immediately started thinking about Sam.
What will he do when he sees me? Am I supposed to run into his arms? Kiss him? I couldn’t face him—I didn’t have enough time to prepare, to figure out how I was going to react, what I was going to say, what I—
“Stop obsessing, Finch.” I jumped at Jake’s voice. I had been so buried in my phobias I nearly forgot where I was. “You could be wearing a burlap sack, with a bag over your head, and he’d still be happy to see you.”
I stared at Jake, surprised by his—okay, not super helpful boost, but I got his point. Sam wanted to see me. Not my wardrobe, not my witty conversation. Just me. I’m pretty sure that scared me more. Yep—definitely just went higher on the nerves scale.
I still fidgeted all the way there, much to Jake’s amusement. And then I froze up when I saw Sam’s scarred SUV in the driveway. With Sam standing next to it. My heart started beating so hard it felt like it was in my throat.
Jake pulled in behind him, jumped out of the car, and grabbed him in a bear hug. I could hear Sam’s laughter. Oh, how I’ve missed the sound of it, the low, quiet rumble of his voice, the flashing smile that made my heart want to leap out of my chest—
“Are you going to sit there all day, Alex?”
I obviously blacked out, because Sam was right there, next to the open door. Smiling down at me. And my heart did threaten to leap out of my chest when I saw the scar on his right cheekbone. New, raw, and still healing.
“Sam,” I whispered. Pushing myself out of the car, I touched his cheek, refusing to back away when he flinched. “How?”
“A long story. Can we go inside?”
“Yeah—of course.”
I wanted to smack myself, to snap myself out of the fog, to be the confident Alex who kissed him without reservation. Limping, my head still pounding from the chloroform, I led the way up the porch steps and to the front door.
Jake headed straight for the kitchen. “I’m going to get something to drink.”
“Sure,” I said. “Just—make yourself at home.” The last part was only heard by the front hallway. And Sam. Swallowing, I turned to him—and let out a choked gasp when he yanked me forward.
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He kissed me, like it had been years since he left. It felt like years. I wrapped my arms around his waist and just held on.
When we came up for air, he leaned his forehead against mine. “Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi.” I closed my eyes, taking in the scent of grass. The scent of Sam. I missed that as much as I missed him. I leaned back, and reaching up, I cradled his scarred cheek. He closed his eyes. “Tell me.”
With a sigh, he pulled away, and led me to the sofa. I was disappointed when he put space between us after sitting down. “I’m not sure you’ll want to hear this.” Well, that explains the space. “I had a misunderstanding with a water demon—”
“A what?” I knew very well what—it was listed in the haven guide I had hidden in my bedroom. But Sam didn’t know that. “Where did you meet a water demon?”
“In the Craster haven. It’s behind the castle ruins, on the coast. The haven has a kind of—shield, like what we walked through in Hyattown.”
“The wall of heat.” I always wondered about that.
“Right. It hides the haven, and the occupants, in plain sight. And it’s close to a major city for supplies, while being far enough out that people won’t wander into it accidentally.”
“Sounds like you’ve been—busy.”
Something close to jealousy gripped me. I had known every aspect of Sam’s life since I was six. Now there was a huge span of time that I knew nothing about, and I felt—left out. Which was stupid. For heaven’s sake—he was in England all that time. And he had the right to keep secrets. We weren’t a couple or anything . . .
Okay—that last thought hurt. Because that was exactly what I wanted.
“Alex?” I snapped my head up at Sam’s voice. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Why do you think anything is wrong?”
He smiled, and pointed at the sofa. I lowered my gaze—and realized my hands were clutching the edge of the cushion. “I missed you, too.”
“Sam—” I didn’t get to finish whatever I planned to say. Sam kissing me again blanked out my mind.
“You kids done saying hello?” Jake leaned against the doorway to the dining room, a bag of chips in his hand. My salt and vinegar chips. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”