by Blake, Kasi
She lowered her head. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
Matt turned his back on her, and she reluctantly walked away. After a few seconds they heard the door slam shut. Trick put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, knowing he was in pain over losing the vampire girl.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, you aren’t.” Matt glared at him. “You didn’t want me with her in the first place.”
“You’re right. I don’t want you with her. She’s a vampire, and she’s dangerous.”
Trick’s laptop interrupted with a loud ding.
He sat on the edge of the recliner and checked his email. There was a note from Jersey. He opened it and eagerly read the contents. A smile slowly spread across his face. It was what he wanted to hear, at least in part. The werewolf still refused to tell him how to kill the Shadow Faerie, but he did let him know where to find it.
Gazing up at Matt, he said, “I think I have a way to get rid of my powers before they kill me.”
Matt folded his arms. “Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like it?”
“Cause you’re my pain in the butt brother, and you know me too well.”
Trick decided to keep the details to himself. Matt would think he’d lost his mind if he told him he wanted to allow the Shadow Faerie to drain him of his powers. It was a risky move, sure, but it’s not like he had a lot of other choices. Matt would stop him if he knew the plan, so he kept his mouth shut.
♫
Summer slammed the terrace door on their borrowed mansion. In a panic, she raced upstairs to pack her belongings. She hoped Cowboy was home. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t know she had left town. She had to put some serious distance between herself and the Donovan boys. It didn’t matter to her that Cowboy wouldn’t get a fourth—or even a third—for their group. At the moment she didn’t even care if Cowboy joined her. She was leaving with or without him.
She packed a suitcase in record time, not bothering to fold her favorite blouses. Her hands shook as she closed the case. She had a bad feeling if she didn’t leave she would die in this town.
When Cowboy entered a few minutes later, she was ready to go.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “We aren’t blowing town without Trick.”
“Forget him!” she yelled. “I hate him and his stupid face and his stupid house and his stupid brother!”
Cowboy leaned back against the closed door and grinned. “This is about the other one, isn’t it? What’s his name? Mike?”
“Matt.”
“Are you falling for that boy?”
“No!” She glared at him. “Shut up!”
“You are.” He shook his head and chuckled to himself. “I don’t believe it. Little Summer is in love... with a nerd.”
“Am not!” She sank down on the edge of the bed and pouted. “He reminds me of someone I was in love with a long, long time ago.”
“Who?”
“My high school beau, if you must know.”
“Hard to picture you with someone like that.”
“I didn’t have fangs back then. I was a different person. Okay? My high school boyfriend was sweet, kind of naive, and he always protected me. I felt safe with him.”
Cowboy scoffed. “He didn’t do a very good job protecting you from vampires, seeing that you got turned.”
She thought back to her wedding day. The morning had started with hope and ended in a bloodbath. Her father had sold her to a vampire. The man who was supposed to protect her had destroyed her happiness.
“There wasn’t anything he could do,” she said. “It was my father’s fault. Anyway, Matt reminds me of him.”
Cowboy stared at her for a moment as if trying to read her mind. For an idiot he was extremely intuitive at times. He slowly shook his head, his dark eyes piercing through to her soul. “Nah. I think you have a serious thing for the little nerd. Wow. Trick’s brother.” Cowboy’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, don’t screw up what we’ve got going here. If you mess around with his brother, Trick might never join us.”
“Matt hates me. He won’t even talk to me.”
“Good.”
“Jerk!” She shoved Cowboy and dragged her huge suitcase off the bed. “I hate you.”
“Sucks when someone you love doesn’t love you back. You’ll get over it. I did.”
“Oh really? Is that why you’re sulking all the time, cause you got over Isobel?”
“I do not sulk, and don’t say her stupid name again. She’s dead to me.” He tried to take the suitcase away from her. They both tugged on it, both determined to win. In the end, he wound up with it. “My advice to you? Get over the nerd.”
Summer gave his words some thought. From experience she knew love was not an easy thing to obtain. She hadn’t felt this way about anyone in decades, not even Jackpot.
Confusion and anger spurred her to turn on Cowboy. The jerk had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe he had loved Isobel. Maybe. But he hadn’t experienced a selfless love where he would give up anything and everything just to make the other person happy.
“First, you don’t want me going after Trick. Now, you don’t want me with his brother. You just want me to be as miserable as you are. Well, forget it. I am not willing to give up.” It was possible she was falling in love for the first time in decades. She couldn’t let Matt go without a fight. No way was she walking away. “Matt made me remember what it’s like to have real feelings for someone special, and I’m not losing him.”
She jerked the handle on her suitcase out of his hand.
Cowboy stared at her, dumbfounded. “You have got it bad. Not good. Not good at all.”
She spun around and threw the suitcase on the bed. If she was going to give into her feelings for Matt, she needed to convince him they were real. But how? How could she undo what she’d already done? How could she make him understand her jealous rage hadn’t had anything to do with Trick?
chapter twenty-three
Let Me Go
Later that evening as it was getting dark outside Trick watched a documentary with Sean and Matt; although they seemed to be enjoying it a great deal more than him. How much did a person need to know about penguins anyway?
Laura crossed the room to his chair and said, “Dr. Baxter called. She wants to see you at her house.”
“Now?” He frowned. “What for?”
Why couldn’t that woman leave him alone?
“She has some new obligations that might interfere with your therapy sessions, so she wants to discuss a new schedule with you.”
He took a last glance at the television. A baby penguin had lost its mother and was wandering aimlessly in a snowstorm. The disembodied voice insisted the bad weather would kill the helpless thing if he couldn’t find his mother soon. What was wrong with those people? Instead of giving the little guy a hand, they were content to watch from behind a camera.
One reason he loathed documentaries on animals was because the people filming didn’t seem to care if their subjects lived or died. The sickos just wanted to watch. They gave the star of their show a name and set the audience up, manipulating their viewers to care. Then they let something kill their star. If the animal lived, it was no thanks to them. Sooner or later Trick found himself on his feet, shouting at the idiot behind the camera to do something instead of watching like a moron.
He had no respect for people who refused to take action.
“Want us to pause until you get back,” Sean asked.
Trick scoffed. “That’s okay. I can see where this is going.”
He grabbed his jacket and hurried to the Foster’s front door. It opened as he reached it. He expected to see Baxter waiting for him, but it was Dani. She shrieked in surprise as she almost ran straight into him. The shocked expression eased into a smile.
“Sorry,” she said, breathless. “I’m late.”
She raced across the lawn and got into a strange car. When she opened the passenger sid
e door, the interior light illuminated the driver’s face. The boy inside wore a huge, dopey grin as if he couldn’t believe he was on a date with the prettiest girl in school. Lucky jerk.
Trick’s heart dropped to his stomach.
Dani was going on a date.
He glared at the car as it pulled away from the curb.
“Are you coming in?” Baxter asked from behind him. “Or are you trying to heat the neighborhood using our furnace?”
He apologized for standing there with the door open, but she waved it off.
They went to her office, and she motioned for him to take his usual seat on the couch.
“Do you really need to talk to me about scheduling?” he asked.
“Sit,” she said.
He dropped onto the corner cushion, and she began to pace.
“A few members of John’s hunting group are in town.” Baxter’s lips compressed into a tight line. “Tell me something, Patrick. Why didn’t you kill the vampire girl in the alley?”
He blinked as his heart began to race.
“I didn’t get the chance,” he said. “Someone killed her before I could. Guess that arrow came from one of your hunter friends, huh?”
“They claim you were getting cozy with the vampire girl. In fact, they don’t believe you had any intention of staking her. I told them they must have misconstrued things, because the Trick Donovan I know hates vampires almost as much as his father did. Isn’t that right?”
She waited for an answer.
Trick gave it some thought. What sort of lie would the doctor believe? Better yet, what story could she sell to her hunter friends so they wouldn’t want to kill him?
“I was trying to get information. Sometimes they have buddies, you know? They can travel in packs just like werewolves. Why have your hunters been watching me?”
“The group is interested in you. They’ve heard stories, rumors about a young hunter in Reno. Guess you’ve killed enough vampires to get their attention. Naturally, they wanted to see for themselves if the truth lived up to the hype.”
“And?” Trick asked. “Did it?”
Baxter sat in her chair next to the couch. She spread her hands in the way she did before launching into long explanations. Her expression was sober, more so than usual.
“Can I be honest with you, Patrick?”
“I wish you would.”
“And it goes no further than this room?”
He shrugged. “We have doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“That only works from my side, and you know it. I want you to swear on Dani’s life that you won’t reveal what I am about to tell you to anyone.”
The woman didn’t play around. Whatever she wanted to say had to be big. He slowly nodded.
She retrieved a small square box from her desk and sat next to him on the couch, a move that had him totally freaked. Baxter rarely sat during their discussions, and she never used the couch.
“One of the hunters visited me this afternoon, and he asked me to give you this along with a message.”
Instead of handing him the box, she lifted the lid. Inside was what appeared to be an extra large marble. Cotton candy pink swirled onto a vanilla background. He felt oddly drawn to it as though the marble wanted him to touch it.
He reached with his finger.
She snapped the lid in place, almost catching the tip of his index finger. “Did I say to touch it?” She glared at him. “It might look like a sweet piece of candy to you, but this is no Jawbreaker.”
He swallowed. “What happens if I touch it?”
“It’s a Sugar Bomb.” Baxter made a face and sent her eyes north. “They didn’t consult me when they named it.”
“What does it do?”
“The first supernatural creature that touches this will die instantly. The Sugar Bomb amps up power times a thousand. It works on humans too. That means even if you have a thimble’s worth of magic inside your body, it will kill you.”
Baxter lifted the lid again. This time she took the Sugar Bomb out and held it in the palm of her hand. She offered it to him. When he didn’t take it, she asked, “Is this going to be a problem for you, Patrick? Do you have power even though you’ve insisted time and time again that you do not?”
Trick stared deep into her eyes, searching for the truth. She could be trying to trick him into a confession. But if it was true, if the marble could kill him, she might touch him with it on purpose. Either way, she had him cornered.
He stood and moved to the other side of the room.
“If the Sugar Bomb should happen to touch you, will you die, Patrick?”
He released a long sigh before admitting, “Yes.”
A triumphant gleam entered her eyes, and she dropped the marble back into the box. “That’s what I thought.”
“What are you going to do now? Tell the hunters they were right about me? Touch me with that thing? What’s the plan?”
“You’ve never been the most perceptive of people.” They traded places, but he wasn’t sure who initiated it. She handed him the box as they passed each other. He sat on the couch while she paced the room. “Use that to kill the Shadow Faerie. I will tell the hunters I gave it to you and nothing happened. It’s true enough. I’ll simply leave out the part where it was safely in a box.”
“Will these protect me from it?”
He lifted the chain from beneath his shirt. The two silver hearts Dani had given him dangled at the end. Would they dampen his power enough to keep him alive?
Baxter frowned. “Not even if you had a hundred of those.”
“Then what?” He leaped to his feet. “What do I do?”
She placed a hand on his shoulder and sort of smiled. It was the first time he could remember the doctor touching him on purpose. The seemingly compassionate gesture worried him more than her words. If she was concerned for him, he was a dead man.
“First, don’t panic,” she said. “You need to keep a cool head.”
He took a deep breath.
She added, “You aren’t going to like the second part, but these are desperate times.”
“What?”
“You have to use the Sugar Bomb. Kill the Shadow Faerie without dying, and our hunter friends will be convinced you are a normal boy.” She made a sour face. “Well, as normal as someone in our line of work can be.”
“If I kill the Shadow Faerie, will they go away?”
She settled back in her seat. “I think they’ll offer you a place in the organization.”
“After I graduate?”
“They’ll probably try to get you to leave with them right away.”
He hoped she was for real. If he could use the Shadow Faerie to drain the magical power from his body, he could join the hunting group without fear of them killing him down the road. He could finally achieve his life-long goal of becoming a great hunter.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked. “If they want me to join them right away, I mean.”
“Finish high school,” Baxter said with a slight shrug. “You have your whole life to make bad choices. Why rush it?”
Changing the subject, he asked, “The guy Dani went out with tonight, has she seen him before?”
Baxter’s eyes closed in a slow blink, and she sighed. “Forget her. It is my professional opinion that Dani is not capable of dealing with your lifestyle. As her stepmother, I forbid you to see her. I would hate for you to get killed.”
He shook his head, confused. “Killed?”
“My husband has a massive gun collection, knows how to dispose of bodies, and he doesn’t like you. Are we clear?”
“Why doesn’t John like me? Just curious.”
Baxter sighed. “He is the father of a teenage girl with a crush on you, and you are always in trouble. You seem to thrive on it. Then there’s the hunting aspect. John wants a better life for her than you can provide, and he thinks you are an arrogant little jerk on top of everything else.”
“Is that it?”
Baxter’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Do you need the whole list? I think he keeps it upstairs in the nightstand.”
Trick found himself standing outside without realizing she had manipulated him in that direction. The door swung shut in his surprised face. He stood there for a moment staring at the house with his mouth open. That woman really needed to see a shrink herself.
♫
After going home to hide the box under his bed, Trick sat on Dani’s swing set in her backyard. He waited patiently for her to return from her date. A mixture of cold air and frustration kept him glued to the seat. He pushed at the ground with the toe of one shoe while letting the other drag.
The hours slid by.
And just when he started to think they would find his frozen corpse in the morning, Dani came into view.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you waiting for me?”
“How was your date?”
“It was... fine.”
His face relaxed, and he smiled. “Wow. Don’t bust a blood vessel with all that excitement. Guess you won’t be seeing him again.”
“Yeah, so?” She stood with legs a bit more than hip distance apart. “One-Date Foster strikes again. Want to make a big deal of it?”
“You know, you can keep going out on mediocre dates with guys you don’t give a crap about, or you can take a chance on me. I bet you wouldn’t call our first date fine.”
She made a face. “Well, no, because monsters would probably interrupt us at some point. A date with you might end up in the ER or the police station or somewhere worse.”
“What if I promise nothing bad will happen?”
“How can you possibly keep that promise?”
He took a step her way. “If we go on a date during the day, vampires won’t bother us. We can have lunch somewhere public with lots of people around. I’ve never heard of a monster attack in a restaurant during the day.”
“Monsters aren’t the only reason I don’t think we should date.” She stared at the grass beneath her feet and pursed her lips together. “It’s just...”
“Is this about the ten-year plan? I’m not asking you to marry me here. One date is not going to screw up your entire life.”