by Holley Trent
“Times were different then,” Lachlann said.
“And so I am to let the new times pass without me participating?”
“Not like this.”
“Then how? When? I’m tired of being frightened of the outside. I wish to act.”
“You may act when it is safe to do so.”
“And who decides when that will be, since obviously my opinion on the matter holds no weight?”
Lachlann kept his mouth shut.
Cringing, Jody opened the door, and Nadia followed at his heels.
“Shit,” she murmured after the door had clicked shut. “I wish he would just go ahead and tell her the truth.”
“What difference would it make? Even if he told her she’s his mate, I’m not sure that would change anything just yet.” Jody headed toward the stairs. He needed a way to get to Nebraska. Ollie had a pilot’s license and the Afótama had a plane, but he doubted Ollie was going to want to depart from Tess and April at such a tender time. There was one other option for a pilot, though.
Jody pulled his phone out of his pocket, ready to dial out the moment they cleared the fire door at the bottom of the stairs.
Ollie picked up on the second ring. “Yeah?”
“I need to fly to Nebraska. Is Xander up to snuff to pilot solo?”
“Shit. I can’t answer that without seeing the weather conditions and my hands are a little full right now.”
“What’d he say?” Nadia asked.
They paused in the mansion’s atrium. Jody covered the phone’s mic with his thumb. “He said he couldn’t tell without checking the weather.”
“If there are caveats, assume that means no.” She brazenly wrested her phone out of her cleavage and wiped the screen on her shirt. Seconds later, she said into it, “Hey. You feeling energetic today?”
Jody hooked an eyebrow up.
Nadia held up her hand in a just wait gesture.
“We’re tracking a lead on Lora,” she said. “Tell Heath you’re going adventuring. Nope. Just you. If Heath goes, Thom will want to go, and then Jeff won’t want to be left out.”
Ah. Simone.
The fairy princess was something called a “key.” She had a rare ability to make portals. She was handy to have around, though she didn’t always have enough energy to spare. Efficient pathways between one location and another required a massive expenditure of energy from their builder.
“You can’t make a portal large enough for all of us when you’re tired, and also, those guys kinda stand out in a not-so-good way. Hard to be discreet when your entourage is a bunch of fairies and Vikings.” Nadia twirled her long red braid around her index finger and grunted. “Fine. Let me talk to him.” She rolled her eyes, and then said, “Hi, Heath. No, I won’t keep my hands to myself, but I’ll try to keep my pants on. We’ve already negotiated this. Nice try, though. Tell Simone to meet us in front of Jody’s house, ’kay? Bye-bye.” Nadia disconnected and shoved her phone back into her bustier.
Jody gave her a scolding stare.
She shrugged. “Keeps my hands free.”
“No. What was that?”
“What was what?” Realization dawned on her face. “Oh, you mean that thing with Heath?” She blew a raspberry and started walking toward the exit. “Forgot you were in the dark about that. Don’t worry.” She winked at him. “Everyone who needs to know knows.”
“Are you and Simone…”
“Uh-huh.”
“And Thom and Jeff are aware of—” Jody shoved the door open and winced at the blinding sunshine they stepped into. “I’m guessing you all have some…sort of arrangement?”
“Yes. We have an arrangement.” Apparently, “arrangements” weren’t so uncommon amongst the Afótama lately. He certainly didn’t give much thought to the exact nature of his sister’s relationship and had had his head too far up his ass to think much about Nadia’s coming together with Thom and Jeff.
Thom, being a fairy, was something of a sexual libertine. Him embracing multiple partners wasn’t a surprising thing. Jeff, though, was a dyed in the wool biker with a penchant for big knives and strong liquor. Jody couldn’t have seen that match-up coming.
They were halfway to Jody’s house when he finally couldn’t resist clearing the air. He was going to be preoccupied with wondering if he didn’t. “Is your arrangement like Tess’s?”
“You’re asking me if Thom and Jeff romantically involved, right?”
“Yes. Because if they are, they’ve been far more discreet than Ollie and Harvey have been.”
“Yes.”
Jody whistled low. “Is that a secret?”
“No. It’s not a secret. We’re giving Jeff time to get used to everything. Thom’s his first man. Hell. Thom was my first man. I wonder if I should buy him a trophy or something. That’s like, peak love god status right there.”
Jody clapped a hand over her mouth. “Too much information, cousin.”
Nadia shrugged and peeled his hand away. “Sorry. You know how I am. Once I get comfortable with something, I flaunt it.”
“Yeah, I see. And apparently, you have a fucking fairy princess for a girlfriend?”
Nadia seemed to chew on that. “Well, Simone says that she has an Afótama princess for a side chick and that there’s plenty of bragging rights to go around.”
Jody ferreted his house keys out of his pocket and shook his head. “It’s like we’re living in a fantasy novel or some shit.”
“Or a crazy romance one. But that means we get a happy ending, right?”
“I sure as hell hope so. I hope this trip has a happy ending, because no matter what kind of mess she’s gotten herself into, I’m not coming home without Lora.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Trailblazer Bus Station, Central New Mexico
Mallory
“That’s him,” Mallory whispered. She stood from the bus station bench she and Asher had been on for the past hour.
Keith waited next to them in his wheelchair, tenting his fingers and staring ahead at nothing in particular.
She couldn’t worry about Keith’s poor attitude, though. Her attention needed to be on the man they’d raced to the station. He was stepping off the bus at that very moment.
From where she was standing, the man appeared to be a bit more than average height with unkempt brown hair that skimmed his T-shirt’s collar. His bronzed skin was indicative of frequent outdoor work, and he was wearing the clothes to prove it. The navy blue Dickies he wore with his old concert shirt were broken in almost as well as his leather boots.
She’d never met him, but he was familiar to her.
He was…her brother and he needed her care.
As he approached the driver, who was pulling open the cargo compartment beneath the bus, he turned with furrowed brow toward Mallory and the men.
For a few tense seconds, they stared at each other from their respective parts of the parking lot.
That’s my brother.
They probably would have kept staring if the bus driver hadn’t said something to him that made him shake his head and then point to a duffel bag inside the cavernous space. Once he’d gathered his bag, he carefully picked through the small crowd at the curb and waited near the bus station entrance, peering curiously at her.
“He doesn’t understand,” Keith murmured, looking forward at the loading bus. Asher was doing the same. They likely didn’t want to make the man more skittish than he already was by staring at him.
Vic cleared his throat quietly and said through barely-moving lips, “Wave him over rather than walking to him. Give him the upper hand so he doesn’t bolt.”
Nodding, Mallory dragged her tongue across her lips and looked back toward Elliott.
His eyes…
They were a different color from hers—indistinctly pale from that distance—but they were deep-set and hooded just like their father’s. Just like hers and Marty’s.
She lifted a hand slowly and wriggled her fingers in something
that approximated a wave.
His brow furrowed.
She lifted the hand higher and mouthed, “Hi.”
Hi felt right. Hi wasn’t a burden or a threat. It was merely an acknowledgment.
He took a step forward, and then another.
Mallory shoved her hands into the pockets of her khakis and nodded encouragingly at him.
He stopped about five feet from her and just stared.
His eyes were gray and so was a bit of the hair in the scruff on his chin. He couldn’t have been that much older than her, but perhaps life hadn’t been as kind. Her father may have been a shit, but her mother had been lovely and doting.
He dragged a hand through his hair and scratched his head before giving it a minute shake. “I’m…supposed to take the next bus, I think.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess I’ll know when I get there.”
“Maybe we’re going there, too.”
“How do you even know where it is?”
“Maybe I live there.”
He swallowed and rubbed his forearms as he looked at the men in her company. They weren’t threatening, at least not to Mallory, but her opinion may have been skewed. Broody Vic in his all-black probably looked like a killer—which he technically was—to everyone who didn’t know him. Keith was assertively sulky as always. Asher was just…not normal. She didn’t know how anyone could look at him and think he was human, but then again, she wasn’t quite completely normal, either.
Elliott’s attention was drifting and fixating too long on the men in her company, so she took a small step forward, both hands turned over so he could see her palms.
“Can I show you something?” she asked. “A picture?”
“Of what?”
“Someone I wonder if you know. Someone we may both be connected to.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s in this pocket.” She pointed to the flat slit at her left hip. “I’m going to reach in, okay?”
Again, he nodded.
She withdrew the photocopied image, carefully folded over so that the two people flanking the central subject were cropped out. Holding it out to Elliott, she said, “It’s an old picture, but he hasn’t changed much since.”
He took it and after staring at her for a few seconds with his head canted curiously looked down at the image, running his thumbs along the creases. “If you’re mixed up with him…”
“If you’re going to question my character,” she said, “I’d hope that you’d at least let me sit down and talk to you.”
“Why do you…seem peculiar?” he asked haltingly. “Why do I feel like I know you?”
“Because you do. You’ve heard my voice, haven’t you? You’ve heard people wondering about you, if you were safe, if you were well.”
“That was you?”
“Me and my sister.” Gently, she took the paper from him and opened it to its full width. Dan of fifteen years ago was in the center of the picture with a barely smiling Mallory at one side and a completely unsmiling Marty at the other. That hadn’t been a good day for the sisters. Dan had finally shown up at Mama’s house after a year of absence and had no good excuse for being gone.
No money either.
Her parents had argued and then Dan had tried to brush it all under the rug as though nothing had happened. When the girls had been a year or two younger, they were more flexible with their forgiveness, but their teen years had made them jaded and dour.
“That’s me,” she said, pointing to the teen on the left. “And that’s my sister Marty.”
“That’s your father.”
“Biologically, yes. I suppose now, I have a hard time saying he provided much fathering in any other respect. Have you met him?”
“No. Seen pictures, though. Long ago. My mother told me his name when I asked her.”
“What did she tell you it was?”
“Dan. Dan Petersen.”
She nodded.
“Did he kill your mother, too?”
Marty’s hand flew to her mouth before she could try to temper her reaction, but Elliott wasn’t marshaling restraint into any of his. His expressions were unguarded, his emotions raw.
“Did he kill her?”
She shook her head and, swallowing, dropped her hand. “No.”
“I’m not crazy,” he whispered, pale eyes flashing.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“They keep giving me these pills…”
“I’ll look at them,” she said. “I’m a nurse. If I don’t know what they’re for, I can ask my mother. She’s a nurse, too.”
“Nurses never believe me.”
“Because they don’t understand what you are.”
“What am I?”
“That’s tough to explain. Actually, I’m still trying to make sense of things myself. I’ve only known for a few months.”
“What’d you come here for?”
“To help direct you to what you were looking for. Marty and I were…” She didn’t know how to explain what they’d been experiencing. Describing magic was a bit like trying to describe the shape of water. “When we moved to where you were headed, our understanding of things changed. You began to invade our thoughts. That’s normal for people like us, I hear.”
“Like us?”
“I can explain it all to you during the ride there. I’ll understand if you’d rather catch the bus that’s coming in and follow along at your own pace. I’d be hesitant to get into a stranger’s van, too.”
“A van with you?”
Finally, she turned and gestured to the men behind her. “Those are my friends Asher, Vic, and Keith.”
“They’re not like you. Not all of them.”
“You can tell that?”
He pointed to Keith. “He’s bizarre.”
Keith rolled his eyes.
Mallory couldn’t suppress her snort. “Bizarre is an interesting way of describing him, but, yes, he’s different. He’s…”
She didn’t know how to describe what Keith was. A clan prince, yes, but out of context, that didn’t make sense.
She patted down the flyaway hair at the front of her head and cringed.
Let’s just go with honesty and see if he runs.
“Keith is…central amongst people like us. His family is at the center of our population. They have a powerful legacy.”
“Powerful,” Elliott murmured, looking to the sky.
She gave her throat a subtle clearing and muttered, “Magic.”
Keith flicked a bit of light from his fingertips. To passersby, that act probably looked like a neat magic trick but was a true release of lightning. She’d never seen him do that before, but she should have expected he’d have such an ability. After all, Jody had a proclivity for making thunderstorms and Tess could hurl electricity when she got in certain moods.
Elliott didn’t run. In fact, he marched over to Keith, turned his hands over, and looked up his sleeves. Of course, there was nothing in them.
Keith grabbed the sides of his face and pulled him down to eye level, his expression flat and cold as his gaze bored into Elliott.
“Keith! Stop that.” Mallory rushed over to disentangle the two men, but Asher grabbed her wrist and gently pulled her back.
“Wait,” he whispered. “Look.”
So she did. Elliott wasn’t struggling under Keith’s grip but behaving as though he needed more of whatever he was giving him. His brow was furrowed with serious contemplation, mouth parted wordlessly, and hands digging into Keith’s shoulders as if Keith were the one trying to pull away.
And then Keith let go of him.
Vic was over enough to stop Elliott from crumbling onto the ground, catching him under the arms with a late assist from Asher.
Keith resumed his bored staring at the parking lot.
“What did you do to him?” Mallory demanded.
Keith shrugged jerkily. “He needed to know, and I didn�
��t see the point of holding everything in suspense. Now he knows.”
“Knows what?”
Keith’s icy gaze flicked toward her. “What he is. What we are.”
Elliott was still staring at Keith slack-jawed, awe visible in his widened eyes, wobbling side to side.
“I’m going to the van,” Keith said dryly. He disengaged the brakes on his wheelchair and rolled away from the bench and into the lot.
Mallory was torn. She was conflicted about whether she should follow him—her client—or to stay and aid her confused brother.
“I got him,” Asher said, helping her decide. Adjusting the leather cuff on his left wrist, he looked to Elliott. She’d seen the cuff before, but hadn’t noticed the silver insets on the underside. Something about the age-darkened color of them poked at her memory. For the time being, she pushed the thought away. She couldn’t handle one more mystery so soon.
“You’re going with us, right?” Asher asked him.
Elliott nodded slowly.
Vic grabbed his bag. “We got you, man.”
Relieved, Mallory followed Keith.
“That’s my sister,” she heard Elliott say to one of the men. “I’ve got sisters.”
“Yeah, you do,” Vic said. “You’ve got lots of family. Nieces and nephews and all that, and every single one of them hates your father. You’re not alone. Okay?”
“Oh. Good.”
All of his fear seemed to escape on the ragged exhalation that fell out of him next.
“Good.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Idylton
Lora
Lora picked her way down the soggy roadside shoulder past Callahan’s cornfield, nibbling on a tart green apple as she went. She’d woken up with fire in her chest, and it wasn’t simply pregnancy heartburn. Mr. Callahan had yet to show his face, and she was sick of being given the runaround about the mysterious “benefactor.” As her memories trickled slowly back, she craved answers. She could even remember a bit about the day she’d first met Shea, though she couldn’t remember where that home was or what it was called. Nor could she remember what Shea had wanted with her that day.
She’d been working as always that day, checking references, she believed, and had left her office to grab lunch. For some reason, she couldn’t get lunch where she worked. She couldn’t remember why, but something stuck out in her brain about her having to temporarily avoid her workplace’s kitchen.