Priceless

by Shannon Mayer

  “Eat your veggies, Alex,” I said.

  “No, Yucky, poopy,” he grumbled, poking at them with the tip of one claw.

  Milly leaned over. “You can have some dessert if you eat them.”

  Two bites later, and he was waiting patiently beside the fridge for ice cream.

  I stood and scooped out some of the Tiger-flavoured dessert, the black and orange stripes visible even through the thick plastic tub.

  “I’ll stay the night. But then I have to go,” Milly said, finally breaking the silence.

  “You won’t get kicked out of your new club? Your new friends will let you come back?” I couldn’t stop the words; maybe I didn’t want to. She’d hurt me and I was not good at taking hurt, unless it was of the physical kind.

  She glared at me. “And what would you do if your parents came back, if they said you could be a part of their family, but you’d have to give me and Giselle and Alex up? You’d do it.”

  A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “No, I wouldn’t. They proved they don’t give a shit about me. Why would I choose them over people who I love and care about, and who I thought felt the same?” I stood up, grabbed the plates from the table and stomped over to the sink. “One thing I do want to know, how long before you told your new friends I was looking for India?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I never told anyone.”

  “Not even your new boy toy, whoever the hell that is?”

  Her tears turned into a flush. Bingo. “What does it matter?”

  I couldn’t stop the anger bursting out. “Because someone left a nasty message for me only hours after I spoke with you, and because whoever has India knows I’m coming. And the only person I told about the case was you.”

  Milly stood, her white pantsuit splattered with flecks of spaghetti sauce. “He would not have shared it. I trust him.”

  “Just like you trusted the last one? And the one before that?”

  Alex decided to chime in. “Before that?”

  Milly’s tears dried up. “You can be such a bitch, Rylee.”

  “At least I’m not a whore.”

  The world stilled around us. Never in all our time together had we let it go this far.

  She spun and stomped upstairs, the guest bedroom door slamming behind her. I let out a sigh and slumped into my kitchen chair. I needed to apologize.

  “Milly stay?” Alex asked, his tongue stained by the black colouring from the ice cream.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Slowly, I made my way up the stairs and tapped on the door to the guest room. “Milly, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  No answer.

  Trotting back down the stairs, I made my way into the kitchen, glanced at the dirty dishes, and then decided to leave them.

  My bed called to me and I still had to practice. Here at home I had a large punching bag, weights, medicine balls, and a climbing rope, all set up in my bedroom, what had previously been three bedrooms until I knocked the walls out. The rope was one of the things I hated most. When I’d bought the house, what was currently my bedroom was open through both floors, which meant I had a ceiling about twenty-five feet high.

  I had two ropes hanging about five feet apart. I climbed the first one all the way to the top, reached across and slid down the second one. Then repeated the routine three times until my breath hitched in my chest. After that, came the punching bag, where I slid through my Muay Thai training. Then onto weights, then the medicine ball, and finally back to the ropes.

  The final climb burned my hands, the rope fibers stinging, the cut in my forearm aching, sweat dripping into my eyes. But I couldn’t stop, not until I’d done the whole routine.

  Finally, I slid to the floor, body exhausted, heart tired, mind nearly numb enough for sleep.

  Outside, the police still moved around. Every once in a while, I heard them over their walkie talkies, heard the rev of an engine start up.

  Leaning back against my bedroom wall, I closed my eyes, letting the sweat dry on my skin. A cold nose pushed into my face and woke me up as the sun climbed the eastern horizon.

  “Alex hungry.”

  I stood, stiff from the position I’d slept in, and headed to the bathroom. A quick shower and change of clothes left me feeling more optimistic. I’d apologize to Milly again, then things would be okay.

  Within an hour of me waking up, the last of the forensics team, police included, had gone, leaving a smoldering wheat field, some yellow tape and a slew of tire tracks.

  Milly came out to the back porch, a cup of coffee in her hand. Her eyes were cool, and wouldn’t meet mine.

  “Look, Milly, I’m sorry about last night. Really, I don’t think of you that way.” I meant the words. Sure she got around, but she always believed she was in love.

  “I still think you can be a bitch,” she said, but a smile was at the edge of her lips.

  “Well, we both know that’s the truth.” I leaned back against the porch railing. “Are we okay then?”

  She nodded. Neither of us spoke again until she’d finished her coffee. The obvious question had to be asked.

  “Okay, Milly, time to confess. What’s going on? You said you couldn’t be around me, yet here you are.” We sat on the back porch, staring out at the burnt field.

  She took a deep breath, then laced her fingers together and placed them in her lap. She studied them carefully. “I’m to be your liaison. The people who took India are breakaways from the main Coven.”

  I flicked a piece of imaginary dirt off my jeans, giving myself a moment to think. “Why send you? I mean, no offense, but aren’t you the baby of the group?”

  High colour flooded her cheeks. “Yes.”

  There was only one reason they would send a lesser-experienced witch after a group that broke away from the Coven.

  “So are they trying to get rid of you by sending you after the rogues? Because that’s what I see.” And I didn’t like it, not one bit. I might fight with her, but I would never deliberately try to hurt her; she was the closest thing besides Giselle that I had to family.

  Milly’s fingers tightened and she clenched her hands until the knuckles turned white, then slowly she relaxed. “They think I’m trouble. This would be a good way for them to use me up without just making an arbitrary decision to have me removed.”

  “How many rogues are we dealing with?” Together, we could take this group out, no problem.

  “We aren’t dealing with them. I am. I am to be your liaison while you rescue India, that’s it. I will handle the black members,” she said. We both knew Milly was good—very, very good—at what she did. She had to be to have survived this long without a Coven to back her up. But no matter how good she was, even she couldn’t handle more than a few black witches at a time.

  “Who’d you sleep with that you shouldn’t have?” I leaned back against the porch pillar.

  She stood, her eyes flashing, and stomped her way into the house, yelling over her shoulder through the open door. “Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

  “Do you love him at least?” I yelled back.

  She paused in midstride, turning just her face back toward me, one hand on the kitchen table. “Yes.”

  “Is he worth it?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “Well, then at least we know we won’t both die in vain if it’s for true love.” I was betting it was anything but love. More like a serious case of the lusting hormones; that was Milly. She was a good friend, but I would hate to be one of the men who thought she loved them, and only them.

  “Okay, so it was a fling,” she said with a huff. “But seriously, how was I to know he was engaged to the Coven leader’s daughter? He wasn’t wearing a sign or anything.”

  I groaned. It couldn’t get any worse.

  Nope, wrong again. Alex trembled, and I turned to face where he was looking. There, galloping across the burnt field was the werewolf pack, teeth flashing as they howled their intent.
<
br />   “They come to kill Alex. Stay till Alex is dead,” he whispered.

  16

  “Time to go.” I said, leaping to my feet and running through the house.

  Milly trotted after us. “What’s happening?”

  “Pack, come. Kill,” Alex said.

  No more questions, we piled into the Jeep and spun out as the first of the pack hit the edge of the lawn. Snarling and howling, I knew they could scent not only Alex, but the blood from my stitches too. Not to mention the pool of blood from Martins’ death.

  Alex lay in the back of the Jeep, panting with fear. Milly stared out the window as the front runner hit the side of the vehicle, almost tipping us over.

  “Milly! Do something!” I yelled, battling with the steering wheel to keep up from going over. That would be bad on so many levels I didn’t even want to consider.

  “I can’t. The pack has nothing to do with this case,” she whispered, staring straight out front.

  “And if they attack you?” I snapped, finally gaining some distance from the pack as we sped down the road, the tires squealing as they went from dirt to the tarmac of the paved road leading into town.

  Milly started to cry. “I can’t defend myself unless it’s directly linked to the case or I’ll be removed from the Coven and will be considered a rogue worthy of decapitation.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s just freaking fantastic. So you mean you’re basically just a throwaway?”

  She stiffened in her seat. “What did you call me?” We both knew she’d heard me; we’d been friends too long not to know exactly what was going down.

  I took a left and headed toward Bismark. We needed more than just a motel to keep the pack off our scent, and I needed a place I could get some info. I didn’t have time to pamper Milly, much as she was my friend.

  “You damn well know what a throwaway is. You’re just going to get in the way, and cause more harm than good unless I’m using you for a shield. For them to put that restriction on you WAS a death sentence and you know it. Those bastards don’t care about you, Milly!” I was shouting by the time I finished.

  Alex was whispering in the back seat. “No fighting, no fighting.”

  “Stop this car right now. I am not a throw away,” Milly said, her voice as cold as a chunk of ice pressed against my skin.

  “It’s not a car, it’s a Jeep.” I glanced in the rear-view mirror. No werewolves galloping behind us. That was a plus.

  “PULL THE FUCKING JEEP OVER!”

  Well, that was a first. Both for the “F” bomb, and the screaming. I didn’t pull the Jeep over. “Milly, I don’t think you’re a throwaway, but that’s how they’re treating you.”

  I drove for another fifteen minutes on the main highway doing well over 60mph, checking the mirror for a pack of werewolves galloping behind us before I pulled over, though it was still reluctantly. “If you still want to go, then go. You aren’t a throwaway.”

  She got out, her hands shaking as she held the door open with both hands, almost as if she were holding herself up. “I know that. But they’re everything I’ve fought so hard to have. And I need them. They have training techniques I can’t learn anywhere else. I need to be a part of the Coven. They need to be my family now.”

  “And if they end up killing you? What then?”

  “They won’t let me die,” she said, though her voice wavered. “Goodbye, Rylee.”

  She shut the door and started to walk down the shoulder, her thumb out. I waited until the first farm truck rumbled into view and she hopped in.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Milly.” I couldn’t deal with that loss right now. At the very least, she’d helped me to pinpoint the “who” behind India’s disappearance. A rogue Coven. That only made me feel slightly better about the case. It wasn’t identical to Berget’s, but still . . . .

  Checking my mirrors for cars and rampant werewolves, I pulled back onto the road when all was clear. As I drove, I wracked my brain for everything I knew about the Coven, or Covens in general.

  “Okay, Alex. What do we know about witches?”

  He grunted and slithered up to the front seat. “Milly.”

  “Yes, Milly is a witch.” My heart ached more than a little. “Coven’s have any number of people, but the core of them is always thirteen. Which means we’re dealing with at least thirteen rogue witches. Yay.”

  Alex lifted his head and laughed. “Yay!” My sarcasm was lost on him completely.

  On the open road, fields spilling out around us, I concentrated on what I had. I needed to find a deep mineshaft, needed to be prepared to face down the rogue Coven and, on top of that, avoid the pack that was probably setting up camp at my house, waiting for us to get back. And that’s where all my gear was.

  I stopped at the first hotel we came to, one I’d used a few times in the past. Running in, I booked a room in under three minutes. The fear that the pack would be on us if I left Alex by himself was strong, even though they didn’t appear to be following us anymore, I wasn’t taking any chances. Losing one friend in any given day was enough for me, particularly considering how few I had. Room key card in hand, I drove the Jeep into the underground parking, a large sheeted metal door closing behind us. Now the trick was going to be getting Alex into the room without being seen.

  “Come on, we’ve got some flights to run up.”

  Alex gave a soft woof, his tail wagging as the flight from his rampaging pack mates was already forgotten.

  Using the stairwell, keeping a hand on Alex’s collar, we sprinted up the three flights with no problem. Peeking into the carpeted hotel hallway from the stairwell, I could see our room was at the far end. “Ready?”

  He bobbed his head. “Yup.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and for that alone, he was worth the pain in my ass he caused with all his pack issues. Sprinting again, we ran to our room, the key card in my hand and sliding through the lock before I’d come to a full stop, which meant we slammed through the door in a heap. Alex laughed and tried to start a wrestling match with me.

  “Nope, not right now,” I said, pushing him off me, the scratches on my arms a reminder of how lucky I was to be immune.

  Flicking on the TV, I said, “You stay here, be quiet. I’ll be right back.” Alex ignored me as he leapt onto the king-sized bed and flopped down facing the TV.

  Two trips later, I had brought up my overnight bag as well as a range of weapons from my Jeep. No way was I going anywhere else without them. For that matter, I was going to sleep in my flak jacket.

  Next on the list was finding that mineshaft.

  I dialed in Kyle’s number from memory, hoping my little hacker was still up. A groggy hello answered the phone.

  “Kyle, can you look up mineshafts for me around here?”

  “Hello to you too, Rylee,” he grumbled. A shuffling of papers and then I could hear him typing on the keyboard. “Lots of mineshafts, anything in particular?”

  “Deep ones, two hundred feet or better,” I said, switching the channels to a local news station.

  “Only four that deep that I can find. Mines are deeper, but you just want the shaft?” His voice became clearer the longer we spoke.

  “Yes. Send it here. I gotta go.”

  I gave him the hotel’s fax number and hung up, not wanting to stay on longer than we had to and chance either a tap or a power failure due to my proximity. Plopping the phone back into its cradle, I stared at the TV. It was the main story that caught my eyes.

  “FBI AGENT KILLS PARTNER IN COLD-BLOODED MURDER, THEN ESCAPES.”

  “You’re in deep shit now, O’Shea,” I said.

  “Gun man in trouble?” Alex’s voice picked up in intensity.

  I stroked his head, soothing him. “Maybe.”

  The news reporter came on, her voice pitched all wrong for TV. The gist of it was that on transport, O’Shea (though they didn’t name him) overpowered his guards and stole the unmarked car following the police cruiser he was i
n. The pictures looked like a bomb had gone off, like some high-end movie production chase scene had gone horribly wrong. Cars flipped over, debris everywhere, not to mention the people gawking at the edges of the scene as the helicopter flew overhead.

  “Who do you think you are, O’Shea? Schwarzenegger?”

  I turned the TV off. He was on his own now; I’d offered him help and he’d turned it down, stupid man.

  Leaving Alex in the room, I took the elevator down to the lobby to see if Kyle had faxed me the info yet. The clerk, the same flustered young woman who’d booked me in, went all wide-eyed when I said I had a fax coming in.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, we can’t do that.”

  “Too late, I’ve already given him the number and if you didn’t want people sending in faxes it shouldn’t be on the welcome card.” I flopped down said welcome pamphlet on the high counter that made me feel like a little kid even in heeled boots.

  Tight blond curls bounced as she shook her head. “I’m so sorry, we can’t . . .” a beeping noise interrupted her. Bless Kyle and his timing. My body ached, my arm hurt, and all I wanted was to soak in a tub and sleep for a few hours before seeking out the mineshaft. Sleeping against my bedroom wall hadn’t been the best of ideas. Damn, I needed Milly to keep me on track.

  The doors behind us slid open and a moment later, a large hand pressed into the small of my back. “Did you get us the room . . .honey?”

  My eyes bugged out when I turned to stare at a more than rumpled O’Shea standing at my side. “How did you—”

  “Oh, you know me, I can find you anywhere. Sweetheart.” His voice was all smooth and silky, but his eyes were wild. Not a good combo.

  “Yes, and this lady here was just getting me my paperwork.” No need to make a scene in front of the hotel staff.

  O’Shea buried his face into my hair as the woman lifted her eyes. “She can’t see my face,” he whispered into my ear.