Ember nodded, overwhelmed by all of this. She broke off a piece of muffin and blew on it before stuffing it in her mouth. “Oh muh gaw.” Swallowing, she said, “These are amazing.”
Isa smiled, “Thank you.” She placed her hand over Ember’s. Ember snatched it back without thinking. Isa’s eyes went wide. Ember felt her face flush, “Sorry,” she said, “I’m just not used to all the touching.”
Isa’s eyes softened, “I’m sorry,” she shrugged, “I grew up surrounded by shifters. We scent everything. We want everything to smell like us. We are worse than actual wolves.”
That explained all the touchy feely stuff. Ember felt like she had a lot to learn. Her knowledge of wolves consisted of information gleaned from Animal Planet documentaries and her knowledge of werewolves came from old black and white movies.
“It takes a little getting used to.” Ember admitted.
Isa looked at her, eyes going serious. “Nobody here has the right to touch you without your permission. Our…habits aren’t your problem. If Donovan or anybody else is touching you-”
“I don’t think-” Ember started.
“No, Ember,” she told her, “This isn’t up for debate. You are new to the pack so they are going to do anything they can to make you smell like them; to make you smell like home. If you are uncomfortable, you tell them no. Even me.”
Ember nodded earnestly. “Okay.”
“Your acceptance isn’t conditional. I agreed to take you in. Allister agreed that you should be here.”
They ate in silence for a while before Ember asked, “Isa, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why do I have the same last name as Kai and Tristin? Our moms were sisters. Weren’t my parents married?”
“In our world, you take the last name of the person whose family is more prominent.” She shrugged, “Not sure if it’s a matter of safety or bragging rights but it’s always been that way. Your father came from a powerful witch family and the twin’s father was a human born to a large leopard pack out of Thailand; but in the case of the Lonergans, few names carried more weight. At least before the witches took over.”
People respected her family. She thought of her life in New Orleans. Her dad had been a joke. A punchline his students used to amuse each other in the dining hall. She’d had no friends and barely showed up for school. Her heart squeezed. Her mother would’ve found her a huge disappointment.
Isa frowned, sensing Ember’s shift in mood. She moved closer, hand hovering over Ember’s before she caught herself. She looked bewildered on how to comfort her. Ember took a deep breath and grasped the other girls hand; she needed to embrace her new life. If the pack were touchy-feely, she would do her best to try.
“Allister is going to look into what’s happening to you. He thinks it would be best if you try to get back to a normal routine. Tomorrow, I’ll take you shopping for some supplies. You can take the weekend to get settled and we will get you registered for school on Monday.”
Ember tried to take in all this information, her hand spasming around Isa’s as the door between the kitchen and the dining room banged open; Kai and Rhys barreling through. Kai rushed towards the muffins but Rhys’ swept a massive arm around his shoulders jerking him backwards, swinging him away. He held him hostage with one arm, snagging a muffin with his free hand.
“Rhys,” Kai whined making grabby hands towards the muffins just out of reach. Rhys snickered, taking a bite of the muffin, paper and all, making exaggerated moaning noises. “So good,” he told Kai around a mouthful. Kai’s eyes bulged, staring at Rhys’s lips, watching his tongue flick the crumbs from his lower lip.
Ember looked away, feeling like she was intruding on…something. Quinn came in and saw his captive friend. He whooped a war cry and hurled himself at Rhys’ back but slipped on his shoelace, toppling forward. A pained look flashed across Rhys’ face as he tried to decide; let Quinn fall or sacrifice the muffin he’d pilfered. He dropped the muffin and spun to catch Quinn’s arm, saving him before he hit the ground.
“I’m going to put you in bubble wrap,” he grumbled.
Ember noted that he’d dropped the muffin but not her cousin. Kai was not letting that stop him now that the muffins were within reach. He stuffed one in his mouth and another in his pocket. He didn’t take the paper off either. She pulled a face; she didn’t get boys at all.
Kai tossed a muffin towards Quinn but Rhys intercepted it, flashing green eyes at Quinn, daring him to challenge him. Quinn made a sad noise.
Isa smiled at Ember, her back to the boys and growled low. Rhys stiffened, huffing and giving the muffin to Quinn. Ember couldn’t help but smile. Rhys couldn’t even see his sister’s face and he’d obeyed. She wondered what it would be like, to have that kind of quiet control. Quinn groaned as he took a bite. Rhys consoled himself with another muffin still in the tin, eating it one handed out of the wrapper.
Isa smiled fondly at the chaos, “Welcome to the circus, Ember.”
“They must be the clowns.”
Three males glowered at her around their muffins.
“Uh, we on a date here, dude?” Kai asked, eyeing the arm that kept him snug across Rhys’ chest.
The wolf snorted and shoved him away.
15
TRISTIN
Tristin slipped left and hit the bag with a hard right cross. She grunted as she threw two jabs before circling left. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. Sweat drenched her clothing and burned her eyes but she threw punch after punch. Now that she was home and the adrenaline had worn off, reality was creeping in.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. Instead, she hit the bag with her left knee hard enough to rattle the chain from which it hung. She was just as responsible for this mess, maybe more. She never should have let her brother intervene. They should have told the pack. They should have told Isa.
She kept moving, kept circling the bag. Every time she stopped moving, dread crept up her spine, creating a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She hated uncertainty. She liked facts. She liked orders. Everybody was so preoccupied with keeping Ember’s mysterious powers under control that the real danger hadn’t occurred to them yet. They couldn’t see that the real danger wasn’t the girl puking up black goo but something far more sinister.
Footsteps approached but she didn’t stop, instead throwing a left roundhouse at the bag before faking left and coming in hard with a right elbow. She knew it was Quinn. She knew his walk, the way he breathed. She ignored how the knot in her stomach loosened at the sight of his shadow against the wall.
He set something down and came around the other side of the bag, holding it in place as she pounded away until her muscles screamed for relief. He made sure he stayed out of the way of her fists and feet and said nothing, just watched her with those endlessly curious eyes.
“I brought you a muffin.”
She didn’t acknowledge he spoke. She couldn’t. Not yet. When she just couldn’t bring herself to throw one more punch, she let her arms fall.
He clung to the bag, “What’s eating you, Dagger?”
She set her jaw, trying to decide whether she wanted to talk it out or not. Quinn always wanted to talk. He wanted to know all of her thoughts and her feelings. He’d never met a thought he didn’t think needed expressing. That is why he and her brother were such good friends. Every thought flew out of their mouths without worrying about consequences.
She just wasn’t like that.
She sighed, almost wishing Rhys had come to find her. He understood not wanting to talk about feelings. They could just sit in a room and be, without having to fill the silence. He understood what privacy meant. However, Rhys wasn’t there and Quinn’s whiskey gold eyes were so earnest how could she not tell him?
“Everybody is so preoccupied with Princess Power Surge upstairs they seem to be
forgetting we have a bigger, more pressing problem.” She put her hands on her hips, just sucking in air and catching her breath. He handed her the water bottle on the table. She poured it over her head.
She didn’t miss the way his eyes followed the drops of water as they rolled down her throat.
“She was supposed to die, Quinn.”
“Okay,” he told her, voice hoarse, distracted.
“She was supposed to die but is, instead, upstairs eating pumpkin muffins and bonding with the pack.”
Quinn’s eyes scanned her face, looking for a clue.
“Kai didn’t complete his assignment.”
Quinn’s eyes widened. He stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and licked his lower lip. “Well, yes, but…there have been cases of reapers who failed to collect the souls they were assigned.”
“Those reapers left the soul in a dead body. They still died. They go back and finish the job, collect the soul and that’s it. Crossed over, no problem. That’s a slap on the wrist; a rookie nerves mistake. This is different. This is much worse. You know I’m right.”
She took a deep breath, trying to stave off the panic building in her chest. “He didn’t just keep her from crossing over. He actively prevented her death. She is not supposed to be alive. Her name disappeared from his arm. That’s never happened, Quinn. That’s never happened.”
Quinn pulled her into his arms. “Have you ever met another reaper? We don’t know if it’s ever happened before or not. Let’s not worry until there is something to worry about, okay?”
She didn’t answer him. It was true, they hadn’t met other reapers. Allister told her they existed. He talked Kai through his first collection. That was the thing about this stupid town, nobody came in, and nobody went out. The same people had been here for as long as she could remember.
“Don’t, I’m all sweaty.” she squirmed against him but she wasn’t really trying to get away.
He rolled his eyes, loosening his grip, giving her the chance to move away. She pretended not to notice.
Quinn was lame. He had terrible taste in movies and he was the most uncoordinated person she’d ever met. He wore stupid beanie hats pretty much every day and those stupid black framed glasses he didn’t even need because he thought he looked like Clarke Kent. She inhaled deeply; but he smelled like home and his arms always felt really good and he was just tall enough for her to put her head on his shoulder.
“Do you know what they could do to him, Quinn? Do you know what they might do to all of us?”
She chewed on her bottom lip, rubbing her cheek against his flannel shirt. Quinn didn’t say anything for a long time. He just stood there, holding her. She knew his mind was working over a hundred different scenarios, mentally rereading every word he’d ever scanned in any human book.
She didn’t need extra-special senses to know he was afraid. He looked to the door, dropping his voice to almost a whisper. “What if she died now? What if the next time she spikes a fever we do nothing?”
He sounded sick at the idea but it wasn’t as if they hadn’t done some horrible things to protect this town and the people they loved. His hands fidgeted idly with her hair, combing through the wet strands.
She smiled weakly, shaking her head. “Are you just going to sit there and watch her die? Do you think Isa and the others will do the same? Just sit and watch her self-destruct?”
“If it comes down to her or Kai, yeah, I think we will do what we have to do.”
“You’re wrong. Kai would happily die for somebody else, even a stranger. The damage is done. Besides, Isa and the others are already in love. You like her too, I can tell. Isa loves an orphan and that girl just screams love-me-I’m-tortured.”
Quinn snickered, “Maybe they won’t find out. Maybe her name disappeared for a different reason. Maybe he was supposed to stop it?” Quinn was grasping at straws and they both knew it.
“The Grove will never allow that to go unpunished. He literally just altered the fabric of the universe. We must maintain the balance. How long do you think before they find out? How long before they figure out what he’s done and come for him?”
“Tristin. You are freaking out over nothing. We don’t even know anything will happen. If something happens, I’ll figure something out. I always do. I promise. There has to be a way to keep Ember alive and the tree worshippers off our backs. We just need more information.”
She smiled into his throat. He believed that you could solve any problem in the world with an internet connection and the right password. She shivered as she felt his lips graze across her forehead, letting her eyes flutter closed for just a second.
“Dagger,” her eyes fluttered open.
“Huh?”
“I love you, but you should probably take a shower.”
She hid a slight smile against his shoulder, “Are you saying I stink?”
“Yeah, but in like a super sexy I’m-a-badass kind of way.”
She snorted, “It’s no wonder you’re single.”
“I’m single because my future wife refuses to acknowledge that we are fated to be together.”
She burrowed closer to him, “Wow, she sounds like a real bitch. Maybe you dodged a bullet. She doesn’t really sound like wife material.”
He stepped back, smiling that dopey smile as he rubbed his thumb across her cheek, “Oh, I don’t know, underneath that knife-wielding ass-kicking exterior, she’s gotta really soft heart.”
She shifted her eyes to the ground, “That scar on your thigh would beg to differ.”
“So she stabbed me. Think of the story it will make at our wedding reception.”
“You are impossible and annoying so I’m going to go shower before I stab you again.”
His smile split into a grin and he wiggled his brows, “Good, I’m going to bed with the images of you showering fresh in my mind.”
She snickered at the grunt he made when her water bottle connected with his shoulder, snagging the muffin as she walked past. Despite Quinn’s reassurance she couldn’t shake the awful feeling things were going to get worse. She couldn’t lose her brother. She wouldn’t lose her brother. It didn’t matter what she had to do. She hoped Quinn was right and she was just overreacting.
16
EMBER
Ember sat in the window seat of her new room, steadfastly ignoring the noise below. She sat knees to chest staring out at the moon. She’d been in the house for two days and she still couldn’t believe this was real life. She ate pancakes with werewolves. She went grocery shopping with a reaper and a faery.
Florida was weird. So like Louisiana in some ways and different in others. She was used to the noise of the city. She craved it. Screaming drunkards, jazz music and police sirens normally sang her to sleep but here the noise was different, wrong. There were feet pounding up and down the stairs, music playing in the kitchen, Kai and Quinn clutching controllers and screaming at people through headsets while playing imaginary black ops soldiers.
It wasn’t like she hated it here. Isa was great. She didn’t give Ember a hard time for escaping to her room when everything got to be too much. She even pretended not to notice she was still awake long after she told them she was going to sleep. Everybody was nice.
Well, except Tristin. She hated Ember but Ember wasn’t about to send her any cookie baskets either after what she did to her cell phone. Isa had replaced her phone with something much nicer; she’d replaced her holy sweaters and beat up boots. She’d given her an allowance that was far more generous than anything her father could have given.
Isa was like her werewolf Godmother, always trying to make Ember comfortable. Everybody tried so hard but it was so much. It was too much. Ember didn’t want to be ungrateful; she just didn’t know what to do with all of the attention.
Besides, something just felt…off. Her cell phone came with all kinds of
fancy features but she’d been unable to sync her contacts. When she’d asked Isa about it, she’d told her she didn’t really understand the technology stuff and said Quinn could look at it. She had access to the internet but her email password suddenly didn’t work. She was probably just being paranoid.
As promised, her room sat at the end of the hall giving her as much privacy as a house could holding this many people. It overlooked the woods to the south side of the property so she didn’t even have to worry about passing cars. She was completely isolated.
It was kind of spooky at night, the way the moonlight cut through the trees, making even mundane things look more ominous. Leaves shook on swaying branches, sounding like a pit of angry rattlesnakes. From inside, it gave this strange illusion of it being cold and breezy like it would be anywhere else in November. It was just a trick though.
The humidity in Florida was a thousand percent, maybe higher. It sucked the breath from her lungs and made her already unmanageable hair impossible.
There was a light knock on her door.
“Yeah?”
Kai poked his head in. “Can I come in?”
She smiled at him, “Sure.”
It was weird to look at somebody and see her own strange eyes looking back. On her, they looked eerie but on her cousin, they were attractive. Kai flopped down on her bed and made himself comfortable. She glanced at the vacant twin bed sitting opposite her own and sighed. It seemed even reapers wanted things to smell like them.
“So, just checking in. Are we driving you crazy? Is that why you hide up here?”
She smirked at him. “No, that’s not it. I just don’t know how to deal with so many people. I’m like a Martian. I don’t understand your ways.”
Kai laughed. He grabbed one of the small ornate throw pillows from her bed, tossing it in the air and catching it. “I’m sure we can be annoying. We annoy each other and most of us have lived together forever.”
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Dead Things Series Book 1) Page 10