by Holley Trent
Without waiting for the response, she dialed Clarissa’s number and put her phone to her ear.
Two rings.
Four.
At six, she didn’t think Clarissa would answer, but then came the former queen’s breathy, “I don’t know whose number this is, but tell me you’re someone I know.”
Lola materialized in front of Noelle, solemn and calm as always and standing with her hands in her skirt pockets. She tilted her head in query.
Noelle mouthed, “One moment.” Then, into the phone, she said, “It’s me. Noelle.”
“Ah, good. I can’t always trust my psychic nigglings.”
“In my experience, they were always spot on, but listen. I’m ashamed to call to say this, but … I fucked up.” Again.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I found Tamatsu’s voice.”
Lola’s neutral mask actually cracked then. Her dark eyes went round as saucers.
“Well, that’s good news!” Clarissa said. “Why do you sound so hopeless?”
“Because when I say I found it,” Noelle said haltingly, and carefully choosing her next words, “what I mean is, I have it.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
Noelle pulled in a deep breath and then forced it out.
Lola offered her arm.
Noelle took it. In a moment, they were in Lola’s salon.
Tarik paced in front of the dark television, wings out, arms crossed.
“Hello?” Clarissa said.
Only mildly dizzy, Noelle plopped onto the settee and set her tote on the floor. “Sorry. Lola teleported me. I … What was I saying?”
“You said that you have his voice.”
Noelle gave her head a hard shake to clear it. “Yes, well, he spoke, and we quickly figured out that he can talk as long as he’s touching me. His voice is in me, Clarissa.”
Clarissa muttered something scandalously vulgar in Gaelic, then said, “It backfired. Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t come to that conclusion before now, but perfectly obvious, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?” Whatever Clarissa was getting at was certainly not perfectly obvious to Noelle.
“Your magic. I didn’t think of the possibility before, because these scenarios don’t happen every day.”
“Gods, I would hope not.”
Lola, who must have excused herself to the kitchen at some point, had returned and thrust a steaming teacup at Noelle.
Noelle nodded gratefully, accepted the cup, and took a long sip. Strong black tea, lightly sweetened. Exactly what she needed.
“You can’t use your magic on the person you’re tethered to,” Noelle said. “The results, to say the least, will be unpredictable and, in some cases, the magic gets reflected back. Why do you think I couldn’t defend myself better against Lorcan? I couldn’t use my magic on him.”
Noelle sucked some air through her teeth. “That actually makes too much sense. After I took his voice, I felt like I’d swallowed an elephant for a while, but I thought that was just my anger and anxiety clawing their way down. I was so upset.”
“Given the circumstances, I understand why.”
“So, how do I get it out?”
“I don’t know, but don’t be discouraged yet. Let me do some research. I’ll get Bill’s son Claude to help. He has a knack for these sorts of things.”
Groaning, Noelle pinched the bridge of his nose. “He’s going to think I’m an idiot.”
“Do you care?”
“Yes, I—” Noelle cut the words all off, because of course she had an ego. She was a trained warrior and ego sometimes helped her be bold. She was ashamed that as a much younger woman she’d done something rash and cruel in a fit of baseless jealousy. They’d all done unforgivably impetuous things, people like them … because they weren’t people. Not in the ways that mattered.
“No,” Noelle said softly after allowing herself a minute to think. “I don’t care if he thinks I’m an idiot. I behaved like one. I suppose I should take my licks with some dignity.”
“That’s quite mature.”
“I could never tell when you were joking, and I still can’t.”
Clarissa chuckled. “Should we come to you or will you come to us?”
Noelle looked up at Tarik, who stared at her openly as if he were waiting for information. He likely was. Naturally, he’d be concerned about his friend and what Noelle planned to do to help him. “I’ll come to you. I have an introduction to make for a new friend first. There’s Coyote drama in Maria.”
“I see. We get Wolf drama here. Mostly, it’s all fun and games, but when those Wolves feud, they really go at it, and we end up having to harbor a bunch of them at the farm here until tensions cool.”
“You’ve gone from being a queen to being in charge of a soup kitchen for supernatural vagrants.”
“Basically the same thing, if you think about it. I’ll be on the lookout for a message from you.”
“Right. Until then.” Noelle ended the call and turned her phone over and over in her hand.
She didn’t want to look up. Didn’t want to meet the gazes of the ancient creatures before her and read the judgment in their stares, but she probably deserved them, too.
So, she did.
She looked to Lola first and smiled grimly. “People write songs about women like me.”
Tutting, Lola twined her fingers in front of her belly and turned her gaze to the ceiling. “People will forget. They always forget.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“I know what passion can do to people. I know what regrets feel like, too. Fortunately, the worst of what I’ve done has been lost to history. There is no oral record of my exploits, of when I was new in this world and so eager to experience things. I had no regard to how my actions would affect the people around me.” She looked down, but not at Noelle.
At Tarik.
His gaze on her was steady and unblinking, his jaw tight and posture rigid as a soldier’s.
She turned slowly to Noelle. “You were practically a baby.”
She’d been a very young elf, but so had Clarissa. Clarissa hadn’t made those kinds of mistakes. Clarissa had selflessly sacrificed time and time again for the good of elf-kind, and they were the same age, give or take a few months.
Noelle had no excuse.
“You’ll have to forgive yourself at some point,” Lola said.
“Maybe, but when? Obviously, I owe karma some more suffering. And when all is said and done and I’ve finally repented, then what? Do I still get him, or will I have to let him go because I needed too long to fix myself?”
“I don’t have an answer to that.”
“No.” Noelle turned her phone over and stared at the text message bubble on the screen. “I don’t expect you to.” Grabbing her tote by the straps, she stood. “I need to meet a Coyote. I’d better get walking.”
“Would you like me to carry you?”
“No, I need the fresh air.” Noelle tried to smile for her, but her cheeks twitched at the effort. Her face wasn’t going to let her lie about how she felt, although she was used to telling lies. She told little ones every day to placate egos and to make unimportant transactions pass more smoothly, but some took more out of her. For instance, the lie that she was just fine.
She wasn’t, and hadn’t been for a very long time.
“You know where I am if you need me,” Lola said softly.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Noelle was outside and halfway down the block, heading toward the motel, when she realized she had an extra shadow, and that the shadow had wings.
Her glance over her shoulder revealed that Tarik followed at a respectful distance.
“Making sure I don’t abscond with Tamatsu’s voice?” she asked. “Well, you don’t need to.” She continued her trek, eyes forward so she didn’t have to see the wings and feel the damned guilt. “I’ll find some way to give it back to him, even if
I have to cut it out.”
“For some reason, I believe you are speaking in literal terms.”
“You’d be right.”
“You think he’d want that? You think he’d want you to destroy yourself?”
“I don’t know, but I’d deserve it.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“Yes.” She nodded and stepped off the curb and into the street.
“Does your tethering magic make you so morbidly practical, or is that simply your personality?”
She laughed drily. “Probably a little of both. I was bred to be the woman I am, and warriors of my rank are almost always solo. No one was supposed to be with me. I’m impossible to be with.” As she stepped up onto the opposite curb, she glanced over her shoulder again. “Do you know where he is? Do you know what he’s doing?”
“He is my friend. I could always find him if I needed to,” Tarik said.
“Would you find him if I asked you to?”
“That depends on what you will do when you see him.”
“You’re wonderful to care about him so much.”
“Not only him.”
Bewildered at his statement, she stopped.
Tarik caught her arm and paused her movement. “Should people not care about you as well?”
She had no answer right away, and she didn’t know what it meant that she didn’t.
“You made one error, Noelle.”
“A massive one.”
“A mistake you likely wouldn’t have made if you’d known each other better or longer. The same holds true for him. Do you think he would have touched anyone else if he’d truly thought you’d indulge him?”
“I would hope he wouldn’t have, because I would have helped. I would have done everything in my power to keep him from losing control in ways that weren’t productive.”
“Or in ways that could harm you?”
“There’s only one way he could harm me, really.”
“And how is that?”
So obvious.
Feeling pathetic, she shrugged. “By rejecting me.”
Tarik’s brow furrowed.
“I mean, the other shit’s not ideal.” She shook her head hard and started walking again. “I don’t want him to touch anyone else, and I don’t ever want to be in a position where he has to do desperate things to keep his hungers from hurting him. I don’t want to be that bitch who has to tell him no when it’s my fault he’s hurting in the first place.”
“Do you not hurt?”
She stopped moving again. Thinking had become too difficult.
“Does your pain mean nothing?” he asked. “Does your pain have less worth than his?”
The silence between them felt heavy. Mocking, even, but she didn’t have any words to speak to fill it.
Tarik placed one large hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “At some point, and hopefully soon, you’ll both have to decide that you’ve suffered enough. You have to so you can move on.”
“Together?”
He rubbed her shoulder and got her moving.
His lack of response didn’t do much for her blue mood, but silence was better than an outright ‘No.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was a countless number of small caves in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. Most were inaccessible to all but creatures with the ability to slither or else teleport or fly. Tamatsu was the latter.
Unfortunately, so was Tarik.
The cave Tamatsu sulked in wasn’t large enough for Tarik to safely teleport into. He hovered in front of the entrance, wings flapping, and not bothering to disguise the pain contorting his face. “You do this on purpose,” he said in a breathless pant, “but you will not deter me.”
Rolling his eyes, Tamatsu grabbed his katana from the cave floor and teleported to the base of the mountain.
Tarik joined him on the ground soon after. He extended his weaker wing and worked the joint several ways before pulling the appendage in. His golden gaze fell to the katana blade, or perhaps the blood that dripped from it into the arid soil. “You didn’t clean your blade. You always clean your blade.”
True. For once, Tamatsu hadn’t cared to. The blade was honed in an angel’s forge and wouldn’t rust, and besides, he liked seeing the blood. The reminder of a fresh kill could stave off another urgent craving.
He knew that would only work for so long, though. All three of his hungers nagged at the back of his mind. He couldn’t guess which would be next to provoke his desire to self-destruct, but knew which one he couldn’t feed.
Which one he wouldn’t feed.
Noelle had been right that he shouldn’t have touched her.
“What did you kill?” Tarik asked. “Or who?”
Tamatsu fixed his gaze on the sky and then down to Tarik again.
“Your fish heads, then? All done?”
Tamatsu nodded.
Tarik folded his arms over his chest. “So, you’ve been passing through realms and destroying creatures that multiply like a hydra’s heads. How weak are you right now?”
Too weak to defend himself from an equal’s attack, probably, but Tarik needn’t have worried. He’d need several large meals first, but he expected to be at full capacity when he went to work the river. If he couldn’t have his voice to force the water down, he’d bang on doors and scare the people who lived too close to the river out of their homes if he had to. His momentary lack of energy was hardly worth concern.
Tarik stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slacks and turned toward the moonrise. “Perhaps we should have dinner. I believe I have an appetite tonight.”
Tamatsu shook his head. He knew the game—knew what Tarik was trying to get him to do and to forget, but he wanted to be left to his solitude.
“No.” Tarik grabbed his arm. “Not this time. I will not give you the leeway to destroy the equanimity you’ve earned in recent centuries. I won’t let you become what so many others like us do. You want to wallow? Fine. But you will do so with the person who unbalanced you, and you will fix each other, do you understand me?” He yanked Tamatsu closer, projecting energy suggestive of a preparation to teleport. Tamatsu couldn’t recall a time he’d relied on another to move him. Unnecessary, usually, but he wasn’t going to use his last bit of energy to seek solitude elsewhere.
“You steer, I’ll take you,” Tarik said, speaking truth to Tamatsu’s thoughts. He shook him by the arm.
Closing his eyes, Tamatsu nodded.
Tarik yanked him away.
If Tamatsu hadn’t recognized the smells of Maria, he would have recognized the sounds. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know Tarik had taken him to Jiminez’s home. The nearby deli was still open and the soft chatter of people in the square was familiar.
He recognized the place. It’d become as close to a home as he’d ever had since Falling.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” came a frantic voice from behind them.
Tamatsu opened his eyes and turned.
Tarik growled quietly.
There was a man pointing at them, his eyes wide, his jaw gaping. “You … Out of nowhere.”
Shit.
As luck would have it, that particular Maria resident had seen Tamatsu vanish once before. Angels tried not to materialize or vanish in front of humans, but they did have some built-in glamour to confuse people about what they were seeing. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of people were immune to the glamour—one in ten thousand or fewer. Maria’s population was around five thousand.
Tarik took a step toward the man, but the guy took off at a clip, repeating, “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Don’t worry about him right now,” Tarik said. “The people in the know won’t verify his suspicions, and the ones who don’t know about us will think he’s demented. We’ll be more careful in the future about where we land.” He gestured toward the house’s front door.
Tamatsu drew in a breath, shifted his katana to his other hand, and nodded.
; He counted voices as they walked.
Willa. Blue. His assistant Kenny. Tito.
Noelle.
“Keep moving,” Tarik whispered.
Grimacing, Tamatsu walked through the open door and didn’t stop moving until he stepped into the dining room.
His body seized at the sight of Noelle leaning against the table beside Mr. Shapely. They were too close. Too familiar with each other.
He didn’t notice Tarik taking his katana from him, only that in a moment, he was across the room and striding into the kitchen with it, and all eyes were on Tamatsu.
Noelle straightened up and opened her mouth as if to say something, but he took a preemptive step toward the other side of the table, silencing her. He’d spent hours mulling over the revelation of Noelle having all but consumed a part of him. He’d very nearly gotten over what had happened in Japan, but the wound reopened.
For all he knew, that was what their future would be. The same insult again and again. In spite of Tarik’s encouragement, Tamatsu didn’t know if he could bear that.
He wasn’t ready for a conversation—not yet.
“Hey … So, we’ve got food,” Willa said with a nervous titter. “In the kitchen. Some of the Coyotes brought stuff over earlier. They’re helping me clean up the place. We’re hoping to be able to turn this into the Coyote hangout. We don’t currently have one, and I guess we’re a bit overdue to have a place to gather that isn’t a bar.” She added in a mutter, “Or a rock in the desert.”
Nodding curtly at her, he moved to the kitchen before he could spare another glance at the newcomer Coyotes or at the woman standing far too close to them.
Tarik handed him a plate. “Eat before you try to do any thinking and before you jump to any unnecessary conclusions.” He left Tamatsu to the kitchen and the food laid out on the counter.
Tamatsu begrudgingly filled a plate, sat, and ate.
He was listening while he chewed, his unease flaring each time he heard her voice, and how he’d never have his own unless they were touching. She’d hobbled him. He’d never be able to speak independently of her except with his hands, his expressions, his writing. So much of his power had been in his voice.
“There’s no need to be so rash,” she said over the spiking of voices in the dining room. “It wouldn’t be a takeover, Willa. No one wants that, but you said yourself that you don’t have enough dominant Coyotes in the group. What about him gives you pause? Let’s talk this out.”