“Oh, gross!”
He closed his mouth and finished chewing before swallowing abruptly. “Excuse me. Must have been around the guys for too long, sent my manners right out the window.” He brought his cloth napkin up and wiped his mouth clean. “Up there? You see her?”
“See? The blonde one up there with that fake look on her face? Like she’s only pretending to enjoy this?”
He looked from her and back to my face. “Yeah,” he said, “I see the resemblance now. The hair change threw me off.”
“If I know Eve, and believe me I do, that’s what she was betting on.” I turned to him. “I’m going to go talk to her.”
“Sure that’s a good idea? She’s under an assumed name here, Elise.”
“She’s my fucking sister, Jake. I have to say something, especially after all the shit we’ve been through because of her.” I went to stand just as I heard his cell buzz in his pocket.
“Elise!” he called, his voice low like he was trying to avoid a scene in front of all the white-robes. He pulled his cell from his pocket, and cursed low as he checked it. “Elise!” he hissed again.
I started to head down the little path separating all the folding tables that made up the seating placements. I walked between the crowded tables full of meat-eating Great Alpha followers, their voices like an out-of-tune orchestra as they filled the hall.
Behind me, I heard a crash of metal folding chairs, Jake swearing quietly and murmuring an apology.
I stifled a grin that came to my face despite the seriousness of the situation, and glanced back.
Jake was busy apologizing to one of the congregation members, their pristine robes soiled in meat.
I went down the center aisle and headed right for the main table.
Boots sounded behind me as Jake tried to catch up.
My head spinning from a mix of emotions, I practically charged up the middle as fast as I could while still walking. My eyes locked with the man seated in the center, a man I recognized from his image on the website: Reverend Fenris.
He went to stand, his graying eyebrows raised almost to his thinning hairline as he took in my plain clothes. “My child, how may I–”
“Can it, Reverend,” I snapped as I turned to my sister, who was seated two spots down on his right, and pointed an accusing finger right at her. “She’s the one I want to talk to. Not you.”
Eve’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates as she stared at me over the napkin she’d pressed to her mouth. She shook her head almost uncontrollably and sank back into her chair. Behind me, the crowd was beginning to realize there was something going on up front, and the sound of chairs moving and robes fluttering began to fill the air.
I didn’t care.
My emotions got the better of me, building up inside my head like a fever. “You fucking bitch,” I spat with more anger than I thought I had in me, “I finally fucking found you. I can’t believe you’d abandon me the way you did! I’ve been cleaning up your messes all over, Eve!”
“My child,” Reverend Fenris said from behind Eve’s chair, “there must be some mistake. Elm is a child of the Great Alpha.”
I glanced up at him, my brow furrowed. “Stay the fuck out of this, preacher.”
Eve took the napkin from her mouth, the look of surprise already gone from her face. “Sister, he speaks the truth,” she said in a voice completely unlike the Eve I remembered, and almost identical to Sister Veronica’s in both tone and rhythm. “My name is Elm, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I gritted my teeth together. That wasn’t like Eve, either.
She smiled beatifically at me, like some kind of low-rent saint.
The Eve I knew would have climbed over the table at me, nails raised like talons as she went straight for my eyes. We were sisters, and even though we’d grown up with our mom preaching love and happiness and acceptance, Pops still thought we needed to stand up for ourselves. I’d be the first to admit that sometimes the two of us took that a little too far.
I stepped back, shaking my head as I looked into those eyes of hers, those eyes that matched mine perfectly. “No,” I said vehemently. “You’re Eve! You’re my sister!”
“We’re all Sisters here,” Eve said airily, her lips still curved into that warm, perfect smile of hers. “Sisters in the Great Pack of the Great Alpha.”
“Elise,” Jake said from behind me as he gently took my arm, “we should go. We’re causing a scene.”
“That’s her, though,” I said, my voice somewhere between anger and a whine. “Don’t you see it, Jake?”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice so low only I could have heard it, his words like a knife through my heart. “She says she doesn’t know you. Maybe she doesn’t?”
My teeth ground together harder, my nostrils flared as I sucked in the meat aroma in the air. Denied again. I’d finally found her. I’d finally caught up to my sister, finally found a place to put all my anger. And now Jake, the man I cared about, didn’t even believe me. The bastard. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“Elise,” Jake said in a low voice, looking down at me. “Not here.”
Suddenly, the crowded hall felt like it had ten times as many people crammed within its walls, all sucking the air out of me. I yanked my arm from him and turned away, pushed past him, and headed to the doors leading outside at the back of the hall.
Behind me, Jake tried to fumble out an apology, an excuse for my behavior. In my mind it just sounded like a rumble of words, a mumbling burble that seemed to join in with all the conversation overflowing around me.
The whole way, as I was stomping my heels with each step, I had the same constant question in the back of my mind: Why didn’t Jake believe me? Why was Eve pretending? I knew it was her, I just knew it. Was she that afraid? Was she that worried they’d throw her out, and she’d have nowhere else to go?
Concerned faces followed me as I fled back down the center aisle.
“Poor girl,” one said.
“She must have lost her mind,” said another.
I slammed the door open, fled out to the cold, away from the voices of the white-robes.
I needed to get away from them. I needed to be by myself. I needed to think.
Chapter Thirty-nine – Jake
I found Elise around the corner of one of the buildings, bawling her eyes out.
My heart broke. I knew I was partly to blame for those tears. “Hey, hey,” I said gently as I slipped my arm around her, trying to pull her into an embrace.
She shrugged off my arm and stepped away from me, her hands still pressed to her eyes. “You don’t believe me,” she sobbed.
I shouldn’t have told her I didn’t think it was Eve. Between the big meal, her sister actually sitting up there, and the text I’d just received, I’d just wanted to get her out of there, so we could talk about it in private or back at our table. Instead, I ended up having to rush away from the table after sputtering out an apology to the reverend and the rest of the crowd. Sure, they’d been understanding of my explanation, but it was still embarrassing to have to do it.
Besides, there was no doubt in my mind on her identity. The young woman that was calling herself Elm was certainly Eve. You could see it in the eyes, in the nose, in the chin. Even in that little defiant twist of her mouth. She could try and hide it as much as she wanted, but it was her.
“Elise, I’m sorry. I do believe you, I just wanted to regroup and try to change our plan of attack.”
“Fuck you, Jake,” she muttered, stepping farther away from me.
“Elise,” I said as I tried to go to her, “I’m sorry. I just thought that would be the best way to get out of there. I fucked up, alright?”
She sighed, sniffled, and sighed again. “Goddammit. You believe me, though, right? It’s not just because I’m crying out here all alone in the cold?”
“Of course I believe you. There’s no way she’s not your sister. But, I don’t know, w
hat if something happened? What if she lost her memory or something, and doesn’t even remember that you’re actually her sister?”
She wiped a tear from her cheek, almost a dainty expression from a woman I hadn’t thought to equate the word dainty with. “I don’t think so. I think she’s sucked into this thing. I think she’s part of it now. That’s what they do. They separate you from your family, fill your head with bullshit, make you think you’re right and everyone else is wrong.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to deal with a cult deprogramming case. Those were rough, and took years of practice to pull off correctly. Years of experience I didn’t have. Years of experience I didn’t have time to go get.
“It’s been known to happen. But why wouldn’t she remember you, if that were the case?”
“Oh, no,” she said, “that little lying bitch remembers me. She used to lie to Mom with a straight fucking face. You have no idea. Mom always let her get away with it, but Pops never did. I never did.”
“Maybe she’s trying to hide her identity because she feels safe here, and she doesn’t want to leave? If they find out she lied about her name, maybe they’ll think she’s lying about other stuff, too, like actually being committed to the congregation.”
“Congregation? Call it what it is, Jake. A cult.” Lips pressed into a thin line, she just looked at me. “She’s always did want the easy life, that much is true.”
“And what life would be easier than sitting at the big table with the reverend?”
“Didn’t I tell you she’d have weaseled her way up there?”
I grinned. “You did.”
“She probably fucked that Fenris guy to get herself a plum spot, too. Still screwing him. That’s how she works. First Kevin, then those bikers, now him. She sees the guys, finds out how to manipulate them, then gets to it.”
My smile dropped, though, as I realized the implications. “First problem now, though, is how we get her out of here. Especially when she’s got it easy.”
“First problem?”
“Here’s the second,” I replied, pulling my phone from my pocket and handing it to her, showing her the text on the lock screen. “I was trying to read it when you went storming off to confront her.”
“Twenty-four hours?” she read aloud as if it were a question. “Who’s it from?”
“One guess, as long as it starts with a ‘T.’”
“Trigger.”
“Yep.”
“Twenty-four?” she hissed, brushing a stray hair back from her face. “That’s all we get? How the hell are we supposed to pull that off?”
“With no coke?” I asked. “Only hope we had was if she still had it with her. Since she doesn’t have it anymore…”
“What about getting it from the Skull and Bones? Buying the package back, I mean?”
I made a face. I couldn’t imagine giving them money for drugs, or, for that matter, giving anyone money for drugs. Ever. Not like that. I used to be a cop for Christ’s sake. Buying a key of coke wouldn’t ever sit right with me, even if it were the only play we had. I already had plenty of regrets in life and I didn’t need to keep piling on top of them.
“If you were Spike,” I began, “would you make a deal with a shifter just to save his skin?”
She sighed. “No. Would you?”
I shook my head. “Hell no. Not in a million years.”
“Jesus, Jake, what are we going to do? We’re screwed if we don’t come up with something. We’ll end up like Kevin in that trunk of his.”
I groaned and ran a hand through my hair. I wasn’t worried about me. I could handle myself and disappear if I had to. Fuck, I could run off and become a wolf if nothing else worked. And bullets? Bullets didn’t do much to me, not with the way shifters healed. “Your guess is as good as mine. But, you read it, we’ve got our deadline.”
“Deadline for what?” asked a woman’s sweet-sounding voice from behind me.
Elise nearly gasped in surprise as I turned around. “Eve?” she asked incredulously.
Eve/Lilith/Elm stood there in all her white-clad glory, her short blonde hair shining in the light of the winter afternoon. I’d heard footsteps and the door opening, but I’d just assumed that it was the other congregation members coming out from their group meal.
She stepped closer, her head hanging a little. “Hi, sis. Been a while.”
Chapter Forty – Elise
There’s nothing quite like family. They can lift you as high as the heavens with a single hug, or sink you to the depths of Hell by reminding you of that one stupid thing you did all those years ago. And no one does either of those better than a sibling.
As I pulled Eve into a tight embrace, ran my hands through her choppy pixie hair and held her tighter than any woman I’ve ever hugged, a warmth and relief took root in my heart and flooded out to the very tips of my body.
“God, it’s good to see you,” I said as I pulled her tighter. “Do you know what we’ve fucking been through trying to find you?”
“I’m fine, Sis,” Eve replied, stroking my back. “I’m fine, okay? You didn’t need to come all this way.”
We broke apart from our hug and I eyed her closely. I looked at her change in hair and at how she’d stopped wearing makeup. “You look good.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling widely. Around the side of the building, the meal was letting out and a flow of white-robed cultists were coming out of the main hall. “Hey, let’s go get some privacy, okay?”
“Sure,” Jake said. “Lead the way.”
We stepped into a side building, what looked like a small warehouse. Building supplies were stacked up in the corner, and a bare bulb hung from the center of the room, casting a yellowish light over our little trio.
Eve and I stood in front of each other, an arm’s length apart. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hug her again or slap her for the shit she’d put me through. Seeing that beautiful face of hers, those wicked eyes, it was hard not to love her, to just be thankful she was back in my life. She was my sister, after all.
Then she ruined it. After all, she was my sister.
“How’s Pops?”
I decided the slap worked best. A good, hard slap.
She held her hand to her cheek, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open. “What the fuck, Elise?”
“Pops is fucking dead!” I yelled, my hands balled up into fists at my sides. “You left me with him, you fucking bitch!”
She stood frozen with a look of complete bewilderment. “Dead?”
“He had fucking cancer!” I yelled, all that relief I’d felt somehow flipping immediately to anger and outrage. “You left me with him, you left me to watch him die, clean up his puke, watch him wither away! How the fuck do you think he’s doing? Think he’s going on nature hikes, taking the scenic route out to Santa Fe? Doing day trips to Albuquerque? He’s in the fucking ground, Eve! Did you think the Great Alpha was gonna come down and give him a slobbery lick, and he’d be magically fucking cured?”
Her eyes began to wander. Behind me, Jake cleared his throat and took a step back.
Staying out of this was probably his best option. Sisters could fight like Amazons when they’re into it.
Her gaze strayed off into a distant, dusty corner. “I didn’t think about it,” she said after a long moment. She shook her head. “I just—I don’t know. I just ran. I just ran from everything. First Mom, then Pops. I just couldn’t take it.”
I clenched my jaw and squeezed my knuckles so hard they popped, the snap-crackling sound surprising me a little and causing Eve to flinch. “You’re right,” I said, “you didn’t think. You thought you could just leave and let someone else clean up your damn mess for you. Well, it was me that was stuck mopping up after you. Me, your fucking sister. And now I’ve had to travel across three fucking states to find you. Are you fucking happy?”
“You didn’t need to come find me,” she said, her voice dropping so low it almost seemed like a groan. “I didn’t ask you
to.”
“You didn’t ask? You sent me that damn postcard, didn’t you? What did you think I was going to do? Stick it on the fridge with a magnet and just wonder where you were for the rest of my life?”
She sighed and dropped her hand from her cheek. “Look, Elise, I’m sorry. Okay? I fucked up. I fucked up big time. I should have stuck around and, I don’t know, left afterwards if that was what I still wanted to do.”
I kept my eyes on her and gave her a good long stare.
“It’s just, watching him…watching him wither away like that, shrinking down to a skeleton—I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle watching Pops die. And I’m sorry. You were always the stronger one, but what I did still wasn’t right or fair. I’m sorry, okay?”
I sighed deeply, frowning. “Come here,” I said with a groan, pulling her back into my arms.
We hugged tightly again.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.
I sighed again, hugging her more tightly but careful not to strangle her, which was very tempting. “You’re not one of them, are you?” I asked, my voice husky and at a near whisper. “You’re not really one of them?”
She pulled back, her brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. “Fuck no. You really think I would buy into that crazy shit?”
I released a breath of relief, a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. “Thank fucking God.”
“Were you really worried?” she asked as she pulled away, her eyes searching mine for an answer.
I shook my head. “No, not really. I mean, not entirely. I mean, no, I guess not.”
“That’s noncommittal as all hell.”
I looked away. “I thought that maybe, I don’t know, you were kind of taken in by it. This is totally the kind of shit Mom would have gone for if Pops hadn’t been around.”
She let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, probably. But there’s spiritualism, and there’s the Great Alpha. I’m definitely not in that camp yet. Besides, I’m just here because, well, you know.”
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