And then Mom’s declaration the day before came crashing back. It seemed like a dream now. I’d been so worried about the guy, but in the stark light of morning, I found something new to worry about. Mom.
She’d never done anything like this, but there was no denying that she could sometimes go off the deep end. Once, she’d made us hitchhike into the Ozark Mountains and live in a cave for a month. She kept telling me we were fine, even when we saw crazy things in the woods. But one day she saw a wolf and a raven together at the same time, and she freaked out so bad I thought she’d never recover. Still, she’d never actually hallucinated before. Unless the imaginary villains we were always running from counted.
Did that count?
She’d been manufacturing dangers all my life, hadn’t she? Satellites, government agents, giants, monsters, and God himself were out to get us. But not this rando. He was A-okay.
Maybe there was no man at all. I glanced over at Mom, dread building in my stomach. How would she handle it when she showed up, and there was no such address? How would I handle her?
Chapter Three
Gwen
Turned out, Massachusetts was a long-ass state. But by afternoon, we’d made it across Boston, past a lot of towns with tribal names, and were crossing a large bridge. I rolled down the window using the old-fashioned window crank and took in a breath of salt air. I could smell the ocean.
I allowed myself one selfish minute of enjoyment before rolling up the window and checking on Mom. She didn’t like the ocean. When you were at the beach, your back might as well be up against a wall. Nowhere to run. Mom liked places where you could escape in all four directions.
“Mom?” I asked, looking at the scrap of paper with the address. “Did you miss a turn?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said, pushing an old atlas into my lap. “Check for me, will you? I know it’s not as current as our folded maps, but we don’t have one for Massachusetts. Look for a town called Wellfleet. It’s about halfway down the Cape.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked. I may not have gotten a proper education, but I was probably the country’s number one expert on United States geography. I knew that Cape Cod was bordered by water on not one, but three, sides. We didn’t have a Massachusetts map because Mom didn’t like this state even three hours inland, and she’d sure as hell never crossed a bridge onto a peninsula before.
“No joke, Gwen,” Mom said. She shot me a weak smile and gripped the wheel with both hands.
I watched her for the next sixty seconds. I knew all her tells. She licked her lips three times and adjusted her grip on the steering wheel twice.
Shit.
“Mom?” I placed a gentle hand on her arm. “Are you sure about this? I mean, maybe there’s somewhere we could go to get help.”
“No hospitals,” she said sharply.
“What about some other place,” I said. “Maybe they can help us.”
We’d stayed at homeless shelters before. Maybe they could have someone come there to check on Mom. She hated hospitals, so she’d never consent to that. I’d been to a hospital exactly once in my life—the time I’d been burned in the fire that took Dad’s life. She’d barely let the hospital treat my burns before checking me out and taking off. Since then, she’d never been the same, but she’d taken care of me the best she could. And I took care of her. For ten years, we’d had to keep moving so we’d be harder to track. That’s what she always said. And now this.
“Neil will take care of us,” she said, gripping the wheel. “He promised.”
“Will you please stop being weird and tell me what’s really going on?”
“I know you love the beach,” she offered, shooting me another nervous smile. “I’m sorry we haven’t spent much time there. Better late than never, right?”
“Still being weird, Mom.”
“I’m just a little nervous,” she admitted, darting glances at me as we passed one exit after another. “I’ve never met this guy, either. All I know is that he’s got kids your age.”
“Kids?” I asked, swallowing my own nerves. I’d been so busy thinking about Mom that I’d almost forgotten the guy. He had a family. Kids. Teenagers. Why couldn’t they be under five years old, so they wouldn’t notice that we were complete freaks?
Now Mom had gotten me nervous, too. I barely paid attention to the changing scenery as we got farther onto the Cape and regular houses gave way to empty tourist shops and summer cottages, now boarded up for winter. We stopped for a more detailed map of the Cape, and the salt smell almost knocked me flat. Cold wind whistled across the empty streets and blew sand across the parking lot, plastering my hair against my mouth like a gag.
I found myself unconsciously scanning for ravens, almost praying for one. Maybe Mom would take it as a sign to leave the Cape, like she took it as a sign to run from everywhere else.
A lone seagull swooped by against the white sky overhead. No ravens.
A chill ran up my spine, though, the kind that’s supposed to mean someone is walking on your grave. “This place gives me the creeps,” I told Mom as we climbed back into our car.
She checked the mirrors, and I caught her shivering once, too. But after a single car passed us on the road, she pulled back out, and we headed toward our final destination.
***
“Just a little farther,” I said, craning my neck to read the mailboxes. The car crept along a road that was a mixture of chunky grey gravel and sand. To our right, a flimsy wooden fence held back a tangle of rosehip bushes. To our left, there were more rosehips, then a stretch of sea grass, and then a beach.
The Cape hooked around, with the Atlantic Ocean off to the east. We’d seen it coming in. Now we were on the inside of the hook, seeing the calmer waters of the bay on the Cape’s western shore.
We weren’t exactly enjoying the scenery, though. Mom had licked her lips raw. My cuticles were bleeding. What the hell were we doing? It was obvious we didn’t belong here. It was obvious that no one at all was here. We were driving into an abandoned tourist trap that was ready to snap shut on us. The serial killer theory that had seemed so far-fetched now made my stomach curdle. This place was a ghost town. The guy could murder us and stow our bodies in a cottage, and they wouldn’t be found until next summer.
I’d crumpled the scrap of paper with the address into a ball in my fist. I smoothed it over my thigh with shaking fingers, though I’d already memorized it.
“It looks like the road ends here,” Mom said, pulling the car to a stop and leaning forward. “But I guess the driveway continues on from here.”
“Can we go back now?” I asked. I didn’t know what we’d go back to. Nothing, nowhere. Our nomadic life.
Better than a psycho killing us and tossing our bodies in the ocean for the fish to devour.
“It must be this one,” Mom said, turning up a driveway that was even narrower than the road we’d driven in on. This one sloped gently uphill. The wind gusted, rocking the car and pelting it with sand. At the top of the drive, the road flattened out, and we pulled to a stop in front of…something. I didn’t want to call it a mansion, but it sure as hell wasn’t a regular house or a little cottage like the cute ones we’d passed on the way in.
It had the same grey shingle and white trim as the other houses, but it looked like a Cape Cod style house had taken steroids and grown six times as big as it should be. Its entire front side was glass, which gave the impression that it was watching over the ocean below.
“Mom, I told you—” I started, then broke off. I hadn’t told her. I’d let her drive all night and all day to get us here, to some house she must have seen online. Or hell, maybe she’d just seen it in a magazine somewhere. I’d tried to talk her out of it, but like usual, she couldn’t be swayed once she got something into her head. And now here we were, at a mansion overlooking the ocean, in the middle of October, when not even the rental company would be around. And I was going to have to convince her that there was n
o one here.
“Mom?” I said carefully, waiting for her to start screaming when she realized we were on a tiny strip of land with ocean on three sides. Thank god I knew how to drive, even if I didn’t have a license.
“Well, I guess this is it,” Mom said, shutting off the engine and turning to me. She wasn’t screaming, but I could see the panic welling in her eyes.
“Okay, we saw it,” I said. “We can go now.”
She stroked my hair back with cold fingers. “You’re growing into such a beautiful young woman,” she said, her voice quavering. “I hope I didn’t screw up too badly.”
I had to try twice to swallow as bile rose in my throat. I clutched her fingers, holding onto the only thing I knew to be real, because this couldn’t be. “Why are you talking like that? Are you leaving me here?”
“Of course not,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve been selfish, keeping you to myself all these years. It hasn’t been too bad, though, has it? Just us, on the run, like Thelma and Louise.”
“Thelma and Louise died, Mom.”
She sighed. “Let’s just go in and meet them.”
I closed my eyes and called on the heroine of my favorite book. Scarlet O’Hara would never run away before knowing what she was up against. I took a deep breath and looked Mom square in the eyes. “Okay, let’s do it.”
At this point, the best I could do was to let my mother see for herself. When she got something in her head, no amount of arguing could get it out. Though I had no desire to meet anyone who lived in that house, real or imagined, I’d lost the battle. Resigned, I followed her to the house. It didn’t look like anyone was home, but maybe the car was in the monstrous garage to the right.
We climbed the wooden steps to the house, and Mom knocked while I stood awkwardly, half hoping we’d find it empty and half scared for the same reason. If no one lived there, maybe we could break in and squat there until spring. We’d done plenty of squatting before, a month here or there.
After the second knock, even Mom started to look uncertain. But I knew not to pressure her. She had to work this out herself. While she did that, I turned to the view. It was gorgeous, even on a cloudy day. The water was choppy and grey under the low clouds, and the salt in the air was not just a scent but a palpable texture.
Suddenly, the door swung open. My heart knocked around in my chest as I turned toward the door. A tall, devastatingly gorgeous guy was standing there wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants. He held a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the hand that was wrapped around the doorknob. For a second, no one spoke. He took us in, and we took him in.
He looked a few years older than me, with unkempt black hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to see into my very soul. His strong jaw was shadowed on one side by a nasty bruise, but it didn’t detract from his good looks. His bare shoulders were broad, his skin sun-kissed tan, and just being within arm’s reach of him, I could feel an inferno of animal heat coming off him in waves that nearly knocked me flat.
When my gaze traveled back to his face, I was jolted back to reality. The reality that I’d been rather obviously admiring the view. My face warmed as our eyes met, but his face remained hard and angry.
Apparently, he did not appreciate my admiration.
His eyes held mine, and I caught a defiant edge to the tilt of his chin. Something inside me tightened, coiling in on itself like a snake drawing back to strike. Heat crackled up my arms like static electricity, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
His nostrils flared. “Who the hell are you?” he said, his words sharp as razor blades.
“Leaving,” I blurted. “We’re…just leaving.”
He stared at me like I was short a few brain cells.
“You must be one of Neil’s,” Mom said. “Is it Ezekiel?”
“No,” the guy said, pulling his eyes from mine. Something weird had passed between us. I felt almost dizzy. My heart was throbbing hard in my chest, but I was glad he’d broken the connection. I wasn’t sure I’d liked the feeling.
“I’m Olivia,” Mom said, holding out her hand.
He stared at her hand like it was toxic. Then he took a bite of cereal and stood there in the doorway, just chewing and looking at us like he was deciding whether to shoot us or welcome us in.
I bit at a hangnail.
“Is Neil around?” Mom asked.
“No.”
“Oh, right,” Mom said with a nervous laugh. She licked her lips and looked to me, as if I had answers. When I didn’t, she licked her lips again. “I forgot he’d be at work. Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. What time did he say he’d be home?”
The guy shrugged his broad shoulders, and I watched in fascination as the muscles in his ripped shoulders and taut arms glided under his skin with the movement. He had a black tattoo on his shoulder, but I couldn’t make out what it was. His chiseled abs and lean torso drew my eyes again, despite his hostile attitude. He looked so much more real than the airbrushed covers of the romance novels I read. I’d rarely seen a shirtless male before since Mom didn’t like the beach and where else was I going to see shirtless men? I was disconcerted by my urge to touch him.
“Xander, get out of the way, you oaf,” interrupted a voice. A short, Hispanic woman with salt-and-pepper hair emerged from another room, pushed past the guy, and ushered us inside. Without sparing us a backwards glance, Xander turned and stalked off.
When he did, I caught the full shape of the tattoo on his shoulder. My heart skipped a beat, and I grabbed my mother’s arm again. “He has a raven tattoo,” I whispered.
She looked as anxious as I felt.
Xander had crossed the spacious foyer and entered a sitting room, where he flopped onto a brown leather sofa and resumed eating his cereal in front of the TV. “Would you mind taking them up to one of the guest rooms?” he called. “I’m awfully busy.”
“You must be Mr. Keen’s new daughter,” the woman said to me, smiling warmly. “Which makes you Olivia, yes? I’m Rosa.”
My mother nodded, looking relieved, though I was reeling with confusion. Mr. Keen’s new daughter? What the hell did that mean? After Mom’s weirdness in the car, I couldn’t help but panic. Was she getting rid of me? I’d been scared she’d leave me in one of her freak-outs, not in a premeditated move. My fingers closed around her arm, anchoring myself. I wouldn’t let her go even if she tried.
Every instinct in my body told me to turn and run. All my alarm bells were ringing at once, and red flags were popping up like fleas appearing from the carpet in a cheap hotel. Mom didn’t seem to notice. She’d started across the foyer with Rosa, dragging me along. I couldn’t leave her there alone. I’d have to wait it out, the way I did her weird fugue states and her manic flight-mode fits.
As we climbed the circular staircase after Rosa, I tried not to gape at everything, but it was impossible not to. The entire front of the house was glass, so as we climbed the stairs, we could see more and more of the ocean. I took back my assessment that this wasn’t a mansion—it totally was. The foyer was so big it could have fit a few storage lockers and a car. Vertigo gripped me, and I grabbed at the railing, my head spinning.
I barely knew the names for the things around me—vaulted ceiling, exposed beams, hardwood floors—and I’d never seen them in real life. Yanking my hand back from the railing, I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and rubbed at the place I’d touched before continuing up. With every step, I was keenly aware of my scuffed, second-hand Converse. I was probably leaving dust on the immaculate steps. That, or some kind of used-shoe residue visible only to those who would stick up their noses at a pair of shoes that might contain traces of someone else’s foot sweat.
When Rosa had left us in a bedroom that would have fit at least three of our five-by-ten storage units, I grabbed Mom’s arm. “Why did that woman call me his daughter?” I hissed. “You said you weren’t leaving me here.”
Mom took my shoulders in both hands. “Gwen, I would never leave
you. Never.” She pulled me in and gave me a quick, fierce hug. We weren’t huggers, so it meant a lot when we did. It sealed us together for a moment, like a promise.
“What is this place?” I whispered when she released me. “Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know,” Mom said, licking her lips rapidly. “I think he’s rich.”
“Mega rich,” I said. “Did you know?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide as she took in the light, spacious room. It had hardwood floors with a dusky-blue area rug next to a huge canopy bed that must have been at least king sized. The walls were decorated with paintings of boats bobbing in the water, and I was pretty sure I recognized one of the cottages we’d passed in the background of one painting.
We even had our own bathroom, though I was a little afraid the bathtub might be used to harvest kidneys. What else could a rich guy want from a couple nutcases like us?
Chapter Four
Xander
I tried to get back to my busy day of playing video games, but my brain was short circuiting every two minutes. It was those crazy people upstairs. Finally, I got sick of restarting the level over and over, so I tossed down the controller and headed for the garage to fuck around with my bike.
I debated whether to jet and let Dad deal with this shit when he got home, but I wasn’t sure what the crazies would do if I left them alone in my house. Probably burn it down. Not that a new start would be a bad thing. They’d get thrown in lockup, and we’d get the hell out of the state, go somewhere new, where no one knew us. But as tempting as the thought was, I couldn’t just bail on my brothers and let them walk in on…whatever she was. Not without warning.
Dad had already blindsided us. He’d sprung this on us all of a week before, telling us he met some lady in a grieving spouse support group. Wasn’t that some shit. And now she’d shown up with no warning, and I’d had to deal with Dad’s mistake on my own. Big surprise there. He’d conveniently failed to mention that she had a pretty blonde daughter who looked dangerously doe-eyed and ready for corrupting. Too damn innocent to be sleeping in an unlocked bedroom down the hall from the likes of the Keen brothers, that was for sure.
Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Page 2