Shadow Sworn (Copper Falls Book 2)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “Did she find another job yet?”

  Calder shook his head.

  “She may as well wait out the winter now. Once tourist season hits, other resorts’ll be hiring.” Silence reigned after that. They both knew the likelihood of Sophie being sane enough to work by spring was slim. And Calder wasn’t much better. Every day, he lost more time, more focus. Every day, he had less time when he knew he was human. If he didn’t focus completely on holding it together, he lost it.

  He’d been okay that day. He hadn’t told Jon about the day before, when he’d spent most of it as a bear, and only remembered he was a man when he saw Sophie feeding her creepy goats.

  At night, he roamed the woods. He knew he did. It was easier than spending night after night in his bed alone. He hunted the warlock, but he hadn’t been lucky enough yet to come across him. He knew he smelled him sometimes, always in Sophie’s woods, always as if he’d just been there. Sometimes, he thought he heard a laugh. He wasn’t sure, anymore, if it was real or his own insanity closing in.

  He was about to say something when something made him raise his nose, scenting the air.

  Jon glanced at him. “What’s up?”

  Calder didn’t answer, scenting the air again. Faint, but he’d know her scent anywhere.

  “Is Sophie here?”

  “I kinda doubt that, man. She’s not exactly the bar type,” Jon said, taking a gulp of beer. “Wishful thinking, maybe.”

  Calder glanced around. Maybe it was wishful thinking. He missed her more than he’d ever missed anyone. Not just the time they spent in bed, though he could have done with some of Sophie’s loving as well, but the times when she just sat with him. When she listened to him ramble on about old cars, or when she wasn’t looking, and he could just watch her.

  There it was again.

  Calder got up, as if he was heading toward the men’s room. He kept sniffing, scenting the air.

  Her scent was stronger at the back of the bar. The restrooms were there, as was the storeroom and Jack’s office.

  He furrowed his brow. One of the barmaids came out of the ladies room.

  “Is anyone else in there?” he asked her.

  “Nope,” she said, looking confused. “You looking for someone?”

  Calder shook his head. He stood near the storeroom, then stepped toward Jack’s office.

  And he thought he heard something. Her voice. Her scent was strong there.

  He looked at Jack’s office door. Maybe she was talking to him about convincing his cousin to take money for towing her car. It had bothered her that they wouldn’t let her pay for the tow.

  Calder pushed the door open, and her scent enveloped him. Her scent, the unmistakeable, addictive scent of her desire.

  Jack’s scent.

  It took a moment before he realized what he was looking at, before he realized that Sophie was bent over Jack’s desk, moaning softly, Jack behind her, grunting and thrusting, eyes closed, cursing about how good she was.

  “More,” she said, her voice a plea, desperate, choked with desire.

  His entire world came crashing down around him. He stood frozen for a moment, then turned and walked out. He heard a final cry from the office as he walked away.

  He was on automatic.

  Calder walked through the bar without seeing any of it. Past Jon, out the front door.

  Fuck, it hurt. He wanted to claw his chest, anything to relieve the ache there, the heaviness. He could barely breathe.

  Jon ran out after him, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Calder. Calder!” he said louder. “What the hell, man?”

  “She was there.”

  Jon looked at him, confused.

  “With Jack,” Calder said.

  “I’ll kill him,” Jon growled, and Calder was numb. Instead of the emptiness that had gnawed at him for most of his life, he felt too full. Heavy. He felt everything, and it suffocated him.

  Jon seemed to sense it.

  “Come on man. Stay with me for a while. You don’t need to go home, not where you’re gonna see her all the time.”

  Calder didn’t answer, but he didn’t argue when Jon pushed him into the front seat of his truck.

  “She doesn’t even like Jack,” he said when they were almost to the house they’d grown up in, and even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. She’d accepted that ride from him. Been aroused by him.

  That was the curse, he tried to tell himself. It was what he’d told himself that day, when he’d watched Jack help Sophie out of his truck.

  It was a lie.

  “He’s gone,” Jack said in her ear. “Remember that you promised to shield me if he comes in here to kill me.”

  He backed away, and Sophie sat on one of the chairs near the scarred wooden desk. They were both still fully clothed. The appearance of Jack humping her had been all they’d needed.

  Sophie buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook silently, and she bit her lip so hard it bled to prevent herself from keening. The silent way he’d walked away, the way his breath had caught when he’d opened the door.

  “Do you think that did what you hoped it would?” Jack asked, sitting behind his desk.

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel any different,” Sophie said. She swiped at her nose, and Jack handed her a tissue. She accepted it silently.

  “It’s a good thing he never really liked me. Even if this worked, that bastard’s going to hate me forever.”

  “Not as much as he’ll hate me, though,” Sophie said quietly. “Sorry for getting you mixed up in this.”

  Jack shook his head. “Like I said, I knew his dad. I know what this shit does. If this little ploy managed somehow to end what happens to the Turcotte men, then it was well worth it.”

  “And if it didn’t?” Sophie asked after a moment of silence.

  “Then I just made a pretty deadly enemy. I knew that when I said I’d help you,” he said with a note of finality, as if he didn’t want to discuss it anymore.

  Just when Sophie thought she had herself pulled together, she’d start crying again. Jack sat in silence, and she was thankful that he didn’t try to comfort her.

  “I’ll drive you home, okay?” Jack asked, and Sophie was about to respond when her phone rang. With more than a little trepidation, she took it out of her purse and looked at the screen.

  Bryce.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. She could hear sirens, chaos in the background.

  “Christ, Sophie,” Bryce said, and the first thing she thought was that something had happened with Calder.

  “What is it?” she asked, standing up.

  “Some guy came in and shot up Layla’s family’s diner.”

  “What?” she repeated, running toward the back door, where her car was parked.

  “Sophie.”

  “What?” she asked, her stomach twisting at his tone.

  “Their dad’s gone.”

  “Wha… what do you mean, gone? Missing?” It became hard to breathe, and even before the words were out of his mouth, she knew what Bryce would say.

  “He’s gone, Soph. They’d just gotten in from their time at the hospital with Lay. Christ, she won’t even get to say goodbye to him,” he said, and she knew he was crying.

  She fell to her knees, unable to support her own weight anymore. Memories flooded her, the twins’ father giving her car a tune-up, before she knew Calder, before she had money to afford such things. The first winter she’d lived in Copper Falls, when he’d brought firewood and canned goods, figuring the city girl had no idea what she was in for. And he’d been right. Cara and Layla as little girls, being swung around by their father, happy shrieks filling the backyard.

  “No,” she whispered. “I’ll be there soon. Cara?”

  “She’s talking to the police now. At the diner.”

  Sophie hung up.

  I’m getting tired of you and your games, kitten. We were so close last night. A man can only be expected to take so much.


  In her mind, surrounding her.

  Marshall.

  You had a chance to be a good girl. Now, you’ll see what happens when you piss me off.

  When she pulled up to the diner, it looked like a scene out of a TV crime drama. Yellow police tape surrounded the building and its small parking lot, and police lights flashed blue and red against the normally cheery-looking front of the diner. Crowds had gathered, and, through them, she saw Cara and Bryce standing with two police officers. She went to them, and Cara fell into her arms, sobbing.

  “Did they catch the shooter?” Sophie asked Bryce over Cara’s head as the two officers looked on.

  “No. We saw him though. Creepy-ass guy. Dark hair, nearly black eyes, wearing a dark trench coat.

  Sophie froze. She had to close her eyes to fight back the dizziness. She knew it was Marshall, of course, but she’d expected his usual manipulative methods. He’d come in person to mow down the people she had come to see as the closest thing she had to family, other than Calder.

  He’d made it personal.

  “I’m so sorry, Cara,” Sophie whispered, holding her friend closer as Cara wept. She stood and listened to Bryce talking to the officer, and she held Cara and wished, as she had never wished in her life, that she had it in herself to end Marshall. Rage nearly swallowed her whole, her empty, shattered heart over what she’d forced Calder to see, the fact that she knew, because she knew Calder, that whether their ploy had worked or not, he wouldn’t be back. The sight of so many mourners around her.

  Cara’s Grandma Faye made her way through the crowd. Tears made her eyes bright, but the set of her chin and her entire posture spoke of her anger. She reached them, and Sophie put a hand on her shoulder, not knowing what else to say or do. The woman had just lost a son.

  Faye patted her hand, and fixed the officer with a steely look. “You catch the bastard who did this to my family. You catch the one who took my boy from me.” Her voice shook, but her posture remained tall, proud.

  “We will, ma’am,” the officer said. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  Faye looked at Cara. “Come on, girl. I finally convinced your mama to come to my house for the night. You’re coming, too.”

  Cara nodded and went with her grandmother. Sophie and Bryce watched them walk through the thinning crowds.

  “It feels like it never ends,” Sophie murmured.

  “Yeah,” Bryce said. “You should go home. Calder’s probably heard about all this by now.”

  That was all it took. The sound of his name, the assumption that he was still hers. She couldn’t do this.

  She also couldn’t go home. Couldn’t sleep in the bed she knew she wouldn’t be sharing with him again. And the real kicker was that she felt no different. The same madness, the same hunger, the same crazed energy that she knew so well still flowed through her. The curse still lived, which meant it had all been for nothing.

  She got into her car, made her way to the highway, and she drove. She didn’t drive anywhere in particular, just followed the highway along Rockway, then hugging the coast. She stopped once at a gas station to get some much-needed caffeine, and then she drove more.

  It reminded her of running, she realized. It reminded her of driving all night when she’d finally managed to slip away from Marshall. She’d stupidly believed at the time that he didn’t know where she was going, that she would be free of him, because what were the odds of him finding her in a tiny town in the middle of the wilderness?

  She laughed, and she knew it was a brittle, icy sound. Like an utter fool, she’d run to the one place he would eventually logically trail her to. He’d bided his time, letting her build a life, giving her a taste of all the things she had to lose if he decided to take it away. And he was doing just that, bit by bit, piece by piece.

  It would all end so easily. Just give in. It sounded so simple. But she also knew that it wouldn’t really end. He’d continue to use them against her, except maybe next time, he’d make it so that she was the one wielding the power that hurt them.

  She could move again. Sneak away. It would take a little while before he found her again, and in the meantime, he’d probably hurt them out of sheer spite and vileness.

  She drove, and she thought, her mind twisting and spinning. She tried her hardest not to let herself focus too long on Calder. She’d have an eternity of empty nights to cry over what she’d lost with him.

  When the sun began to rise, she started making her way toward home. She’d go to Cara’s later, and maybe to the hospital. She knew the family would be busy now making funeral arrangements. She drove along Rockway, along the road that wound over the cliffs that Luc had supposedly jumped from all those years ago in an effort to free himself.

  “Luc and Migisi, I wish you’d never goddamn laid eyes on one another,” Sophie murmured, and she turned back on the highway that would take her to her house.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Calder lay, looking up at the cracked ceiling of his childhood bedroom. It was all too familiar, him laying in the narrow twin bed after a sleepless night, pining for Sophie Turner.

  It felt like he was fourteen all over again.

  He’d passed a mostly sleepless night, but when he glanced at the clock on the nightstand, he realized he must have dozed off finally. It was almost three in the afternoon.

  He felt numb. Other than the ache that had lodged itself somewhere in the vicinity of his heart when he’d seen her and Jack, he didn’t feel a thing. Nothing.

  He guessed he could consider that a small blessing. He’d sure the hell felt it all last night. Loss, sadness, rage, embarrassment. Embarrassment, that she’d been harboring feelings like that and he’d never known. Shock and disbelief was part of it, too, because despite what he’d seen, despite those memories of Jack helping Sophie from his truck and the way she’d smelled afterward… he still couldn’t believe it. And part of him wanted to put the blame solely on her curse, that she’d felt a need and given into it and Jack, being Jack, had been more than ready to take advantage of the situation.

  But he knew, too, that he’d spent plenty of time with the same curse and had managed to stay loyal to Sophie once they were back in one another’s life. It hadn’t even been all that hard, because they were all over one another.

  Clearly, it hadn’t been enough for her, he thought bitterly as he lay there. And after her whole speech about needing space. He’d stupidly believed that she wanted space just because of feeling overwhelmed by the curse and everything else. He never, ever would have imagined that she’d take the opportunity to be with someone else.

  And like a fool, he’d given her everything she asked for.

  The scene from when he opened Jack’s office door kept flooding his mind, and he had to shove it away.

  “Calder, you up?” Jon called. It sounded like he was calling from downstairs.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come and eat something. You gotta be starving.”

  He wasn’t. The idea of eating was the furthest thing from his mind, but he knew his brother was worried, so he pulled himself out of bed, went to the bathroom and cleaned up, then went back downstairs.

  Well, he had plenty of time to restore the Barracuda now. He’d have it towed here, he though.

  He walked into the kitchen. There was a plate of bacon and eggs in his spot, and Jon was digging into his own late breakfast, which Calder guessed was actually dinner. Calder poured a cup of coffee from the percolator on the stovetop, then sat at the old Formica table with his brother.

  “Thanks,” Calder said, and Jon nodded.

  After a few minutes of eating in silence, Jon took a gulp of coffee, then pushed his plate away. “Uh. Bryce called,” he said.

  Calder looked up from the food he was pushing around on his plate. “Yeah? Is Layla okay?”

  “Yeah. Apparently something went down at the diner last night. Lay and Cara’s dad is dead.”

  “What?”

  “Shooter. They did
n’t catch him. Messed up the diner pretty bad. Cara got grazed by a bullet, I guess, but their dad didn’t survive it.”

  Calder shook his head. “Shit.”

  “Probably related to Sophie and Marshall, huh?” Jon said quietly. Her name was like a stab to Calder’s heart.

  “Probably.”

  Jon nodded slowly. Wisely, he didn’t say anything else about Sophie. “Bryce says the funeral is the day after tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be there. He was a good guy,” Calder said quietly.

  “I can go, if you want to stay here… you know she’ll be there.”

  “It’s a small town, man. I’m probably going to run into her a lot until one or the other of us moves.”

  “You’re not moving anywhere,” Jon said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Other than here, if you want, because the only reason you moved to that house was to keep an eye on her when we came up with that dumbass plan to force her to break the curse. Move back here. There’s room for both of us.”

  Calder nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  Jon sighed, and Calder knew he wanted to say something, but was trying to be mindful of Calder’s mood. “Spit it out, whatever it is,” Calder said, taking another bite of bacon. It was like cardboard in his mouth.

  “I think it’s safe to say that there’s a pattern to you two, you know? You’re drawn to one another, you love each other madly, and then she does something to completely destroy you.”

  “She can hardly be blamed for her dad deciding to move them away when she was a kid,” Calder said, though he felt all twisted inside.

  “No. But it happens anyway. She’s no good for you.”

  “A few weeks ago, you were telling me she was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Well, clearly, the situation has changed,” Jon said. “I didn’t know then that she was the type to cheat.”

  Calder didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

  “And if you didn’t already have a mess thanks to the curse, I could maybe even let that shit go. That’s between the two of you. But to cheat on you when she knows how you are about her… we both know this is only gonna get worse,” Jon said, and the loss in his voice was clear. He was already picturing having to lock Calder up, and expected it to be sooner rather than later.