by Alyssa Day
As far as I knew, my visions had never been wrong.
I hated that part the most.
Since then, I tried not to touch people. It didn’t always work. I was getting better at managing the pain when I saw someone’s brutal death, but luckily that rarely happened. Mostly I only saw normal things. Old age. Heart attacks.
Sometimes the visions were even kind of lovely. My ex-boyfriend Owen was going to die when he was very old, surrounded by people who loved him. Seeing that had been one of the few times I hadn’t minded this curse so much.
Jack made the turn into Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike’s driveway, and I shook off my melancholy. My aunt and uncle lived in a beautiful old farmhouse about five miles from my little house. They had animals, too—chickens, goats, and Bonnie Jo, their ancient but very sweet horse. The vet came out once in a while to file Bonnie Jo’s teeth down, but she was definitely just an old horse, and not a horse vampire, as I’d briefly thought when I was a kid. We’d known about supernatural beings in Dead End long before the rest of the world figured it out, so the violent firestorm over vampires coming out of the coffin, so to speak, hadn’t bothered us much. We’d already known about most of the supernatural creatures in the world, and we’d suspected about many of the others. Not much surprised me, anymore.
Aunt Ruby’s reaction to Leona had, though.
“So what’s behind the fight between you and Aunt Ruby?” I turned to face Leona, who was sitting silently in the back seat. “It has to be about more than one incident when I was little. Where were you between then and now, by the way? You couldn’t visit? Call? Send a postcard?”
Her eyes widened, and Jack turned off the truck and put a hand on my arm. “Tess. Maybe it would be better if we talked about this in the house, and get it all out at once.”
I glared at him. “What? You’re suddenly the reasonable one here? I don’t think so, Mr. Tall, Bronze, and Furry. Anyway, this is a family thing, like you said. Last time I checked, you told me you’re not my family.”
If I hadn’t known it was impossible, I’d swear that a trace of hurt crossed his face, but it was gone so fast I dismissed it as a trick of the light.
“Sure. Fine. I’ll just be on my way as soon as you get out of my truck,” he said quietly, and I felt like a jerk.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sighing. “I’m just off balance from all this. Come in, please. You can be the neutral referee.”
“Knowing Ruby, we’re going to need one,” Leona muttered, and then she opened the door and climbed out.
“We could just lock the doors and drive somewhere far, far away,” I said wistfully.
“Why not?” Jack looked at me and shrugged. “I’ve spent my whole life running head-first into trouble, and look what it got me. I’m willing to try it the other way.”
We stared at each other for a minute, but then Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike drove up and the moment was lost.
“Next time one of my crazy long-lost relatives shows up, we’re definitely running away,” I promised.
Jack laughed. “It’s a date.”
And then Aunt Ruby got out of her car and punched Leona in the face.
Chapter 4
“You can’t go around punching people in the front yard,” I yelled, practically tripping over my own feet to get to them.
Jack got there before me, with that spooky tiger speed of his, and jumped in between the two of them, but I could tell he was having to fight the urge to laugh. “Would it be better in the backyard?”
“Not what I meant, and you know it,” I hissed at him, grabbing Aunt Ruby’s arm before she could do any more damage. “Uncle Mike! A little help here?”
My poor uncle was still standing by the car, utterly flabbergasted, to use one of his own words against him.
My aunt was still struggling with me, and I was completely out of patience. “Ruby Callahan! Do you want Shelley to see you acting like a lunatic…redneck?”
That stopped her cold. She tossed her head and yanked her arm away from me.
“Shelley is still at school, and then she has a play date at her friend’s house,” she said haughtily. “And I owed Leona that. We can go inside and eat lunch now.”
Leona rubbed her jaw ruefully, and to my complete shock, nodded. “Yeah, she kind of did. Long story. Can we go inside now? I could really use some coffee.”
“Still no sugar, heavy on the cream?” Ruby asked her.
“I try to use a lighter hand on the cream these days. Cholesterol,” Leona told her, and then both of them headed toward the porch of the beautiful old farmhouse, chatting about coffee.
Like old friends.
Or at least like two women who didn’t want to kill each other.
Mike walked up to me and folded his arms while the three of us watched the two women in varying degrees of surprise.
“Will wonders—”
“If you say ‘never cease’, I’m going to ask Aunt Ruby to punch you next,” I warned my uncle. “Now start talking. What the heck was that about?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not getting in the middle of that one. How about we get something to eat? Full bellies make for calmer minds.”
“I’d appreciate a little more information and a little less ‘sayings from the embroidered pillows’,” I muttered, but I followed him into the house, because, of course, he was right.
Jack perked right up, as if my life wasn’t turning into a bad joke right there in front of him. “Do you think there will be pie?”
Now I wanted to punch him. Aunt Ruby was rubbing off on me.
By the time I dragged my unwilling butt into the house, the coffee was brewing and Aunt Ruby was setting out sandwich fixings and slicing homemade bread. And there was pie—which Jack had already managed to sit next to—fresh blueberry and apple, from the looks of it.
“I won’t lie and offer any false condolences for that rat bast—Tess. You’re finally here. Wash your hands and offer your grandmother something to drink,” my aunt, the boxing champ instructed me.
“I’m not five. You don’t have to tell me to wash my hands,” I said with exaggerated patience.
“Tess, don’t be smart with your aunt,” Leona said.
My mouth fell open and I looked from one to the other. “You…she…I…”
I gave up and washed my hands. Jack snickered at me until Uncle Mike pointed a finger at Jack and then the sink, and the terrifying predator, ex-soldier, and shapeshifting tiger sighed and got up and washed his hands.
He nudged me with his shoulder. “Do they still send you to bed without any supper when you’re bad?”
His eyes were gleaming with amusement, and a tiny bit of perversity nipped at me. Because he was making fun of me, because my aunt suddenly thought she was Rocky Balboa, and because I was tired of the whole stupid situation.
Also, I was rich now. I had twelve thousand dollars burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. Rich people could get away with stuff.
So I leaned closer and whispered: “Sometimes I like being bad.”
Then I snagged the dish towel, wiped my hands, sauntered to the table and grabbed the blueberry pie and pulled it over to my side of the table, leaving Jack making weird choking noises at the sink.
We managed to get through sandwiches (one each for me and Uncle Mike, one-half each for Aunt Ruby and Leona, and six for Jack) and pie (pretty much the same proportions, except Jack also finished off half a gallon of homemade peach ice cream and six chocolate-chip cookies.
By the end of the meal, we were all too busy watching Jack eat his weight in lunch to remember what we were talking about.
“Now I remember why I liked Owen so much,” Uncle Mike grumbled, grabbing the pie plate before Jack could get the last sliver of apple.
“You never liked Owen. You thought he was boring,” I protested. “You were rude to him.”
“Only when he started talking. That boy could wrestle a story down to the ground and choke the life out of it,” Uncle Mike said, sliding
the last of the pie onto his plate. “And then resuscitate it long enough to murder it all over again. He’d be useful in the zombie apocalypse. He’d bore all the zombies to death.”
“That is so unfair. He was a nice man,” I said hotly.
“He was a dentist,” my traitor of an uncle said.
“He was a nice dentist.”
Jack grinned at me. “He was very nice. That story he told us about the antique dental equipment gave me chills.”
“I hate you all.” I slumped down in my seat and put my head on my arms on the table. “Hate.”
“Dentists are useful to have around,” Leona said helpfully. “If you get a tooth knocked out the next time Ruby goes ape-shit with her boxing lessons, you’re all set.”
“Language. And I would never strike the child,” Aunt Ruby snapped, and just that quick, we were off the subject of my ex-boyfriend and back on whatever had caused the Hatfield and McCoy back in my pawn shot.
“She’s not a child anymore,” Mike finally interjected, sounding as calm as if unknown grandmothers showed up every day at his house. “And maybe we’d better get this all out on the table, so we can get on with whatever it is you want.”
“I’m right here,” I pointed out, to the zero people who were paying any attention to me.
“I’m here to get to know my granddaughter. Maybe give her the guidance she clearly needs, if she’s dating dentists when there’s a hot tiger sitting right next to her,” Leona said, pointing at Jack with one well-manicured fingernail.
“Leona,” I groaned, clutching my head.
Jack raised his hand, which should have looked ridiculous but somehow didn’t because—see above—hotness. “Also sitting right here,” he said mildly, but he was smiling. “And thank you, Mrs. Carstairs.”
“Call me Leona, dear,” she said, patting his other hand. “We’re going to be family, after all.”
“That’s about enough out of you,” Aunt Ruby said, standing up and leaning over the table.
“Over my dead body,” Uncle Mike said, glaring at Jack, who smiled at him like…like…oh crap, like a cat who’d gotten into the cream.
Argh.
Leona flinched, but Ruby was only reaching for the empty carton of ice cream. I saw the smug smile on her face at Leona’s reaction, though.
“You’re starting to scare me, Rambo,” I told her, but she didn’t even look a little bit sheepish.
“You tell her, Ruby,” Leona said tiredly. “You’re obviously dying to do it.”
Jack stood up. “I think this is a family thing—”
“Sit down,” all three of them told him at once.
It was a little bit funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. I could feel a headache coming on, and I wasn’t the one who’d been sucker punched, except for metaphorically, by the whole “you have a grandmother and here I am” thing.
Jack raised one eyebrow, probably because nobody had tried to tell him what to do in the past ten years, but he sat down.
Uncle Mike stood up and poured coffee for everyone, and then he told Leona that she’d better get on with it.
“But where do I even start?”
“At the beginning’s usually good,” my uncle replied.
She laughed a little. “Hard to argue with that.”
“So, you’re my mom’s mom,” I ventured, still unwilling to say the word “grandmother.”
“Yes.” She twisted her pearls and looked at me out of those eyes that were so much like the ones that stared back at me in the mirror every day. “She was our only child. Trey—your grandfather—wanted a boy, but once I realized what a horrible person he was, I refused to have any more children with him.”
Aunt Ruby scowled at her. “But you didn’t leave him.”
“No, I didn’t leave him. Or, actually, I left him dozens of times. But he always tracked me down and brought me back. The last time I left him, he told me that he’d take Kate away from me, have me proven mentally unfit and toss me in a psychiatric institution if I ever tried it again.”
Aunt Ruby’s tiny gasp was almost drowned out by the quiet growling sound that Jack was making. He caught me looking at him and stopped, but not before reaching across the table and taking my hand.
Uncle Mike stared pointedly at our clasped hands, but Jack bared his teeth in something too scary to be a smile. “Don’t make me start collecting antique dental equipment and telling you about it, old man.”
“That’s just evil. I never liked this boy, Tess.”
“Suck it up, buttercup,” I retorted, grinning. I was weirdly content, for some reason that didn’t make any sense at all. Just sitting in my family’s kitchen, hearing about my horrible grandfather, holding hands with my—okay, I admit it—hot tiger.
Leona and Aunt Ruby both started laughing at Uncle Mike’s disgruntled expression, but then a phone rang, blaring out a Katy Perry ringtone, and everybody looked at me.
I shrugged. “For once, it isn’t mine.”
Leona sighed and started digging around in her teal-with-silver-accents Michael Kors bag that I immediately lusted over. “I forgot. Ned put that on my phone. Just a moment, please. He’s at the Black Cypress RV Park getting settled.”
Jack and I blinked at each other, and he let go of my hand. (In the privacy of my own mind, I pretended I’d been getting ready to let go first. Sadly, I didn’t believe me.)
Anyway, Leona so didn’t look like the type to be traveling by RV. If they made RV limousines, maybe, but staying in the RV park? So no.
“Hello?” Leona said into the phone with enough warmth that we knew Ned wasn’t her chauffeur. Hmm. How long ago did good old grandpa die?
“Yes, she can stay here,” Aunt Ruby said in answer to the question Uncle Mike hadn’t asked yet.
Jack jumped up out of his seat so fast he knocked the chair on the floor, in plenty of time to catch Leona when she started to slide out of hers.
“They killed Brenda,” she whispered, and then she started to shriek.
Chapter 5
If you think you’ve ever heard a truly horrible sound in your life, let me assure you:
No, you have not.
Not unless you’ve heard a banshee let loose full throttle in your kitchen.
I once read a newspaper article, back when Jeremiah was still alive and subscribing to twelve different papers in three different languages, that said scientists had done a study to determine the worst noises on the planet. I remember a metal knife scraping a glass bottle was in first place, as the very worst.
I’ll never forget that, because my best friend Molly and I tried it out at the bar once. Sure enough, those scientists were absolutely, totally right. That hideous sound made us want to climb out of our skulls.
Worst. Sound. Ever.
Until now.
A banshee wail was a thousand knives scraping a thousand bottles, played in counterpoint to jackhammers, fingernails on chalkboards, and the tortured shrieks of demons burning in hell. I didn’t want to burn in hell; I just wanted to escape it. Tears were running down my face from the pain and pressure on my eardrums, and I bent double, covering my ears, unable to move, even though I desperately wanted to. I wanted to run. I wanted to vomit.
I wanted—oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.
Jack.
His superior tiger hearing had to be killing him right now. I looked up, wincing, and saw that he was clenching his jaw so hard it was amazing it didn’t shatter. But damn, he was hanging in there, still holding Leona, while that gut-wrenching sound went off right next to his head.
“I can take her, Jack,” Uncle Mike said. His face was set in grim lines, but he didn’t seem to be in actual pain, like Jack was. “Ruby, get out.”
Aunt Ruby opened her mouth like she was going to start arguing, not than anybody would have heard her, anyway, and then she just nodded and ran for the door to the back porch. Before I could follow her, the sound changed dramatically.
It. Got. Worse.
Knives on bott
les. Ha. Damn scientists. What did they know, anyway? I was busy wishing that those stupid scientists were around to hear this, when Leona’s wail impossibly took on an even more oppressive ululating quality. The noise was now so bad that my knees were trying to give out underneath me and my brain was screaming inside my skull. To complete the cherry on the cake of my freaking day, I could actually feel the burning acidic path of my lunch coming right back up my esophagus, and I was sure that I was going to hurl in my aunt’s kitchen for the first time since senior year, when Molly and I discovered peach schnapps.
Jack flinched and eased Leona into Mike’s arms and then put his hands over his ears and headed for the door.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” Jack said, or at least I think he said, from my non-existent lip-reading talent.
Mike just nodded and started patting Leona’s back.
I couldn’t take anymore, either. I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I was all the way over to Bonnie Jo’s horse pasture. She was crouching over at the far side of the field, looking as wild eyed as a horse that old could get.
“I know just how you feel,” I told her, taking deep gulps of air and trying not to yark all over the fence. I couldn’t hear Leona anymore, but that might not last.
“So. This is not a time when I’m happy to have tiger hearing,” Jack said, walking up and leaning against the fence. “Any idea who Brenda is?”
I smacked myself in the forehead. “I forgot all about Brenda, I’m ashamed to admit. All I could think about was getting out of that house.”
Bonnie Jo suddenly stood up straight, shook herself all over, and started ambling over to us, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief.
“She stopped. It’s quiet in there now, except for your uncle talking to her. We should go back.” He closed his eyes and sighed.
“I know,” I said in a small voice. “My family. Sorry about all this. Nobody would blame you if you wanted to bail on this whole situation. I know you have painting or cleaning stuff to do at Jeremiah’s.”
Jack shook his head. “No. Your family is a little bit nuts—”