“Get out. I don’t care if you got shot,” he growled the two words, his mouth elongating as he began to shift to his wolf form. “As a mentor, if I believe there is a cause, I can remove you from the training program immediately. There is a cause. You are bringing harm to the Hollows.”
A wash of power seemed to flow off him and push me back, and even though I didn’t understand, I had no doubt he’d somehow just cut my ties to the Hollows.
“Sarge, have you lost your mind?” I couldn’t lose this job. I needed to keep training, to keep learning. More than that, I liked most of the people here, they were becoming friends.
Suzy cleared her throat. “I think you’re being harsh, Sarge. Eric is fine I’m sure, and Feish is not going to—”
“You can go too then.” Sarge wheeled on her, and that same push of power curled around her. She gasped and stumbled backward as if he’d struck her.
He’d lost his mind, that was the only way I could make sense of it. This was not the lighthearted, sweet guy I’d met. His body kept on shifting, kept on changing until he was the massive werewolf I’d tackled on that first night in the cemetery.
I didn’t take a step back as he bared his teeth and growled at me. I was between him and Feish and Eric. “Sarge, don’t make me stab you again. ’Cause this time I’ll cut your balls off to make sure we deal with the obvious overload of testosterone that is frying your brain.”
His ears flattened against his head, but he didn’t come at me.
He didn’t back down either.
Eric touched my shoulder, his big hand engulfing it. “We should go. Before this gets any uglier than a werewolf being territorial.”
He wasn’t wrong, but damn it, I hated to leave as if I were the one who should have my tail tucked between my legs.
I put my hand on top of his, and gave it a pat. “You go with Feish, take the boat. I’ll meet you at my gran’s house.”
Sarge snarled, snapping his teeth in my direction, and my hand shot out and smashed him right in the nose. He dropped to his belly, eyes shut tight. “You are being a total shit. I don’t know why, and I don’t care at this point,” I said.
Eric and Feish hurried back down the slope. I didn’t want to leave either of them alone, so it was best that they went together. I watched them go to the boat and get in before I turned my back on them.
Suzy, though, would be alone if I left now. And if I remembered right, she had a car.
I walked over to her and touched her arm, feeling the clamminess of her skin. “Come on. I can drive if you want.”
When I directed her toward the gate, she went willingly enough. I realized that no other mentor had witnessed what had gone down. I wanted to go find Eammon, but I didn’t dare. Because I had a feeling that Sarge would do more than snap his teeth if I pushed this right now. “I’m sorry you got sucked into that,” I said.
“Not your fault. He’s lost his mind. But I need this job, I can barely pay my rent right now,” she whispered.
“Let’s go get a drink,” I said. “We can discuss our options.”
And that is how I ended up in Suzy’s battered old car—dusty blue if you didn’t count the rust spots as orange—which barely had room for two in it because of all the stuff jammed into the backseat. I twisted around to try and identify the items that were taking up all the room and ended up shaking my head. There was too much of it, contained in boxes and bags, and it smelled a little funky. “Are you living in your car?” Was this what she’d meant about her rent being too high?
“No.” She flopped in the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine turned over surprisingly well for what the car looked like. “I just don’t trust my landlord, so I keep some of my stuff in here.”
“Paranoid much?”
“Oh, totally.” She bobbed her head and grinned, but the grin slid off her face. “Life is much better if you think everyone is out to get you. That way, you’re never surprised when the knife finally comes swinging your way.”
I rolled my eyes. “That sounds like something Corb would say.”
“He is my trainer, or I guess he was.” She tried to smile at me again, but the edges of her lips trembled. “And he had his reasons for picking me. One of them is that we think alike.” Her eyes swept over me.
“What was his other reason?” I smiled back at her so she wouldn’t think I was being a bitch. Apparently it didn’t work. She glared at me, and tears pooled at the corners of her eyes.
“It’s not like that. I mean, yes, he’s hot but . . . he’s not interested in me, he made that clear,” she snapped.
I held up both hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t being a jerk. I was just wondering if you had a connection to the shadow world. Eammon picked me for my family connections and previous training.” At least, that was what I assumed. I’d never told Eammon who I was, but I had to admit it was too much of a coincidence for him to have randomly approached me.
“Oh,” she said, all the ire going out of her. “I think it’s because my mother is half siren.”
I stared hard at her. “Seriously? Like you could sing a man to his death and . . .”
“And make him enjoy it while he died? In theory, yes. But the truth is my blood is too diluted. So the siren in me calls men, but I can’t kill them unless I use a weapon. Corb was immune to my call, and I liked that.” She seemed a little too sad about that for my liking.
I cleared my throat. “So are you dating anyone right now?”
She glanced at me. “Are you hitting on me?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what, just because you are young and beautiful does not mean that everyone wants to sleep with you.”
“Sure it does.”
“No, it doesn’t. I am just trying to get to know you since we both got kicked out of the Hollows. Also, you need to get used to the idea that at some point you won’t be the young one anymore. You’ll be just like me, fighting to prove yourself.” And apparently losing that fight because one stupid werewolf got his tail in a twist.
I bit back the rest of the words that wanted to pour out of me. How it was hard to get anyone to take you seriously if you were a middle-aged, divorced woman starting a new career. How I was finding it all beyond exasperating. Irritating as duck.
She giggled at me. Freaking giggled. “I will never be you.”
I gritted my teeth and stared out the window. “One day, you’ll understand, and by then you’ll have wasted your youth thinking it would last forever.”
“No, seriously, I won’t age. That’s the perk of siren blood. I’m over fifty already.”
I might have strangled her right then and there if not for the fact that she’d tried to stick up for me back there with Sarge. She was older than me, but had none of the side effects of age. I settled for twisting around to stare hard at her. She shrugged and turned the car onto River Street. “Look, I don’t age like a real human. I really am still like a teenager in a siren’s lifetime.”
Yes, I could see that with my own eyes—she didn’t look a hair over nineteen. “Great.”
“It’s not my fault. People don’t see me either, you know. They see a young blond white chick, and they think I’m an idiot. That I couldn’t possibly have a brain in my head, or muscles in my body. Because I’m pretty.”
“Heartbreaking,” I drawled.
“It really is,” she whispered.
I twisted in my seat. “I have a friend who is a woman of color, her name is Mavis. If you want to talk about being treated cruelly for no reason, taken for granted, and walked all over as if you are nothing, then you can talk to her. She has a shit deal. But don’t complain to me because you have perfect skin, teeth, and hair, and there are some things in life you have to actually work for. Do you expect that everything should just be handed to you? Get over yourself.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “That was mean.”
I was angry now, and whatever compassion I might have had for her because of the Hollows situation w
as gone. “That was honest. Pity no one has told you that you have a leg up that most women would kill for.”
And yes, maybe that was harder than the situation warranted—again, she’d just lost a job. Damn it, we both had. What the hell was I going to do now? I rubbed my hands over my face and let out a deep sigh. “Look, I’m sorry if that was harsher than it needed to be.”
“Doesn’t make it not true.” Suzy tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “We’re both in the same spot now. Stuck.” We were both quiet until she parked the car a few minutes later.
She turned to me. “Whenever I’m stuck, I get my cards read and it helps me figure out what to do next. I can’t think of a better time for that than right now, after I lost a chance at a job that I loved. I’m going to a tarot reader, do you want to come?”
I got out of the car. “You sure you want more of my pithy, hard-ass truths?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “It’s been a long time since anyone has been anything but afraid of me. Even my mother.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? I give you a smack down after you got fired for sticking up for me, and you still want to be friends?”
She shut her car door with a loud slam that bounced through the night air. Just after dinner for most people, there was still a lot of movement along the river’s edge. Lots of people out walking hand in hand.
“I think honesty is a great foundation for a friendship, even if it is with an old lady.” She grinned at me and I glared at her.
“That’s rich coming from the half-century chick. And just so you know, I think I see a wrinkle,” I shot back.
Her hands flew to her face. “Really?”
“Left eye,” I said.
She gasped and bent to look in her side mirror. “I don’t see it.”
Suzy kept on talking, muttering about dermaplaning, laser therapy, and a spell that her mother had given her on her deathbed. But my eyes were drawn to the river flowing in front of us. River Street was named because—you guessed it—it ran along the Savannah River. The river was wide and deep and dark, flowing out to the Atlantic Ocean. I’d spent my childhood looking at it, and yet that night it seemed entirely different. Maybe it was the quiet of the night, or the clear sky above that allowed the stars to reflect in the water, but the river called to me. It felt like more than just a river.
I was at the top of a set of stairs that led down to the actual river when Suzy caught up to me. “Did you really see a wrinkle?”
“Must have been my mirror,” I murmured. “Does the water seem different to you?”
She paused and looked out over the river. Her breathing slowed and then hitched. “Yes. It’s alive tonight. It happens at certain times of the year. It is full of the dead, you know.”
I jerked around to look at her. “What?”
Her eyes were misty as she stared into the water. “The dead of the ships that went down, of course, but also the supernaturals who scared the locals. They don’t talk about that in the history books, or even in the tours. Dead people suspected of being supernatural were stuffed into coffins full of rocks, wrapped in chains, and sunk out in the river. It’s deep enough they could do that.”
There was a moment, just a split second, where I thought I could see the past, see the panic on people’s faces as another sweep of plague ravaged their city. They’d been desperate, the kind of desperate where they’d do anything to stop it. The vision changed, and I watched as the panicked humans stuffed living people into coffins, wrapped the death traps in chains, and rowed them out to the middle of the river. Some fought back, and a few of them had fangs that drew blood, something that only emboldened the humans and filled them with righteous certainty. I blinked as the images faded to nothing.
I bit my lower lip. “The ones they sunk, were they from the shadow world? Some of them were vampires.”
“Yes,” she said. “They were the ones who worked with the humans, trying to help them. And in the end it got them killed. My mother said it was a big part of why the shadow world keeps to itself, even now. But the vampires made it worse. They drew a lot of heat for it, which is why they were wiped out by the rest of the shadow world after that.” She paused and the air grew heavy with the weight of her words. “I think,” she said, “there are a lot of people who would want to meet us now, but the past has shown us that humans aren’t capable of sharing. We are too frightening for them.”
I gave a slow nod. “Yes, I can see that. Similar to what my gran told me. She always told me it was safer this way. That the best way to look after those in the light was by staying in the shadows.”
Suzy was very still as we stood there staring out over the river, the past flowing around us as surely as the water before us. I shook myself and the spell—if it was even that—broke. “Let’s go see that tarot card reader.”
She blinked a few times and then nodded. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
10
Suzy led the way down the stairs on River Street to the actual water’s edge of the Savannah River. The water lapped at the banks below the walkway, splashing up here and there. She was clearly bringing me to a different tarot reader than the one Sarge had brought me to at the start of training. Then again, there had to be hundreds of tarot readers in Savannah. To the left of us was someone else walking down River Street, enjoying the cool air no doubt. But unlike us, they disappeared over the edge of the street toward the river itself.
“Where is this tarot reader?” I asked. I mean, what if she was leading me to my death? Completely possible seeing as a) she had lost her job defending me and then b) I had basically kicked her ass in a verbal spar that was nothing but hard truths.
“He’s in one of the old slave’s quarters. A very old man, but good at what he does,” she said, picking her way along the path.
I frowned. “Enslaved.”
“Right,” she said. “He dabbles in darker magic, and the blood and death here work for him.”
My feet stuttered and it wasn’t because I’d stumbled or had a muscle cramp. “Why are we not going to Annie from before?”
“Because she won’t tell you shit. She gives you a card and then says nothing. She’s not going to deliver any bad news like a real tarot reader. We need to figure out what we’re doing, you know? The Hollows is out, so we need to find new paths.”
I frowned. “Maybe I don’t want bad news. I’ve had a lot of that lately.” Besides, I had a habit of picking death cards, and that was the last thing I needed just now.
“If you don’t know what’s coming, how do you stop it?” She looked over her shoulder and raised a perfect eyebrow in an enviable arch. Damn it. I didn’t try to out-arch her—I knew when I was beat. Besides, she had a point. Maybe knowing what was coming, good or bad, was not a bad thing.
Maybe I’d be able to use whatever the tarot reader said to figure out who was shooting at me? Or maybe why they were shooting at me.
“The tide is out, which is going to make this easier.” She jogged ahead of me down the path. Of course she didn’t know about the whole gunshot thing. The second I tried to break into a jog, the still somewhat wounded calf cramped up and I yelped. She looked back at me. “You need to hurry. If the tide comes in while we are still with him, we’ll be trapped.”
I forced my aching legs to move, wincing with each step of my wounded leg, limping along behind her, feeling every bounce of my hips and even a ripple under my bra strap along my back. Back fat is a real bitch, let me tell you.
Suzy ducked suddenly to her right, as if stepping directly into the seawall, but of course it was an opening into one of the old enslaved quarters. Water dripped from the ceiling, and the only light came from sputtering candles placed here and there to lead us further into the depths. I couldn’t help but notice not only the shackle bolts that still hung from the ceilings and walls, but how shiny they were. As if they were still in use.
Jaysus lord, this was maybe not the best idea.
My guts twisted as we went f
urther into the tunnel, far deeper than was prudent given that we might need to scoot back out quick.
“Ah, Suzanne, lovely to see you. And you brought a friend.” The tarot card reader’s voice tugged at my dusty memory banks. Okay, I wasn’t that old, but it felt like it at the moment. I was tired, sore, sweating, and tired (yes, I meant to write tired twice). I wanted to go home, and bury my face in a bowl of ice cream chased with a good dose of whiskey, and yet here I was tagging along with Suzy as if I could keep up with her.
Suzy slowed. “Where is Dracus?”
I glanced at her and tried to get a look at the speaker in the shadows. “Dracus is . . . otherwise occupied. I was just leaving.”
I was guessing Dracus was the tarot card reader that Suzy had wanted to see, but if that was the case, then, “How did you know her name?” I asked. “If you aren’t the tarot card reader?”
Suzy stiffened as if just realizing she didn’t know this new dude.
Laughter rolled to us through the darkness. “I know many, many people. I make it my business to know them. Especially the talented ones that the Hollows Group bring in.”
“Bree, I think we should go.” Suzy took a step back, and in theory, I was right there with her, except that something stopped me. Instead of going back, I stepped up beside her and got my first good look at this guy who knew her name, but shouldn’t.
There were candles stuffed into random nooks along the curved wall, held in place only by dripping trails of wax. The smell of fetid sea water and marijuana was strong, and if the plumes of smoke around his head were any indication, he was the source of the smoke. I made myself take the space in, trying to memorize it like Eammon had been instructing me. That was the best way to prepare oneself to fight, bargain, or run. Or so Eammon had said. I’d yet to put it into practice.
The man sat behind an old card table with green felt peeling at the edges, something that almost certainly was not his own. The legs were probably rusted, but I couldn’t see them. At the four corners of the table stood long black taper candles that sputtered pale blue flames. I tried to look past him into the confines of the tunnel, but there was nothing but darkness.
Midlife Fairy Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 2 Page 11
