Mrs. Loehr almost passed out. Mr. Loehr caught her and helped to steady her. He nodded for the conversation to continue without them while he took his wife upstairs.
“Okay,” Garrett said once they were gone. “You had to fight him?”
“Yes. To the death.” She bit her bottom lip. She only did that when she didn’t want to admit to something. “The problem was, I didn’t kill him. And now, he has to hunt me until the stars burn out. Either I have to finish the job, or he has to kill me. He can’t go back home until he honors his house, though his reputation may never recover.”
Cookie glanced around the table. “And we care about that? Are we caring about that?”
“No, sweetheart,” Robert said.
“What I did was actually very cruel, though I didn’t mean it that way.” Elwyn glanced at Cookie as though seeking approval. Or forgiveness.
“Of course, you didn’t,” Cookie said. “You were trying to spare him.”
“Exactly. Instead, I ruined his life. If I had just killed him, he would’ve died at the hands of a champion. It would have been a good death.”
“So, no kidding?” Angel asked, shaking his head. “You fought those things?”
“Yes.”
“Hijueputa.”
“When I didn’t kill him, I ran to the nearest departed, right there on the battlefield, and just took my chances. I didn’t think he’d be able to follow me, but he’s right there every time I jump. I can’t figure out how he’s doing it.”
“Can we get back to the part where you two were going to be married?” Eric said.
“No,” the entire table said in unison. Then Garrett asked, “Any idea why he went after Marika?”
Elwyn’s gaze darted to the subject at hand. “After you?”
Marika nodded.
“No. Unless… Were you carrying this?” She held up the Osh doll.
“Yes. In my bag.”
“That could be why.” She put the doll to her face and inhaled. “The doll smells like me. Hayal was after me and caught my scent. I’m so sorry, Marika.”
“Don’t be silly.” She squeezed Garrett’s hand. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course, it was. All of this is my fault. Wait. He didn’t scratch you, did he? Hayal?”
“No, but he did—”
“Any tips on how to capture the creature? How to kill it?” Garrett asked, cutting Marika off.
“Oh.” Elwyn straightened her shoulders as though surprised by his question. “I apologize. I should have finished my statement earlier. He’s my fiancé. Thus I have to be the one to kill him.” Everyone stilled, so she quickly continued. “It’s okay. He won’t be my first. Sadly. Sometimes I had little choice. There is an old saying on that world. Kill or be killed.”
Robert smiled. “We have something very similar here.”
“I just don’t understand how you fought them,” Cookie said. “You’re tiny.”
“But fast,” Elwyn said, a smile widening across her impish face. A visage that was at once familiar and strange and hauntingly beautiful. Garrett had known she’d be gorgeous. He did not expect the enchanting creature before him. Especially at the age of fourteen. Or somewhere thereabouts. Kids these days.
“And the other one?” Angel asked. “The smaller one who followed you here?”
“Did you get a look at it?” Her face lit up with hope.
“Not really.”
“Fudge,” she said, pouting her lower lip. The whole table chuckled.
That was the only curse word the Loehrs allowed her to use, but they had to make it feel like it was truly scandalous. So for a few months after Beep turned four, everyone would…slip and say the word fudge in front of her. Whoever was nearby would scold the loose-tongued devil for cursing in front of a child, and said child, naturally, started using the word as frequently as possible. It worked like a charm, and that was when Garrett knew what he was dealing with. The Loehrs were mad geniuses.
“Like I said,” Angel continued, “he looked almost human, but not enough to pass as one in public. At least from the half-second glance I got.”
Robert took a sip of the beer he’d been nursing for the last hour. “He’s been following you through the portals, too?”
“I’m not sure. I just know he’s been on my tail for the last few dimensions. How he’s getting there, I don’t know.”
“I can’t believe,” Marika said, her gaze traveling the length of Beep, “that you grew up in another dimension. In several dimensions, in fact.”
“Puts a whole new twist on foreign exchange student,” Eric said with a snort.
That one wrenched a smile out of pretty much everyone. Except for Angel, who looked ready to blow up the world. Then again, maybe he always scowled like that. Since he’d never actually seen him before, Garrett had no way of knowing.
A faint look of alarm crossed Beep’s face, but he couldn’t imagine what she’d been through. He chalked it up to a bad memory, one he hoped she’d tell him about someday until she stood abruptly and started clearing the table.
That small act served as a cue for everyone to pick up their own plates, take them to the kitchen, and rinse them off—per house rules. The little explorer rinsed hers first and then made a beeline for Garrett’s office. Curious, he followed her.
Robert hadn’t missed the expression on her face either. He trailed right behind, and he and Garrett exchanged glances as they walked into the office. Decorated in heavy woods with gray accents, it sat in the back of the main house, close enough to the wooded area out back to have a gorgeous view, and close enough to the kitchen to be downright handy.
Beep stood in front of a framed map of the compound, a birthday gift from Cookie.
“This area is beautiful,” Elwyn said to them, not bothering to turn around.
Garrett’s chest tightened when he got a really good look at her frame. Far too thin with dark circles under her eyes, he didn’t doubt for a moment how impossibly hard the last few years must have been for her. To be lost and completely alone on top of that. The thought was almost too much for him to bear, and guilt assaulted him on a whole new level.
He should have figured out what was going on before it’d come to what it did. It was his job to watch her every move. To know her every thought. To try and predict her every step. She was a child with powers beyond belief. This thing could’ve ended up so much worse.
It still might, come to think of it.
“You have no reason to feel guilty,” Elwyn said to him, keeping her eyes on the map.
“I don’t,” he lied. “And how did you know?”
“You make faces when you think no one is looking.” She grinned and pointed to a decorative mirror on the wall beside her. The one in which she could see him clearly.
“Cheater,” he said.
Both he and Robert strolled up to her, flanking her to also look at the map.
“What’s up, pumpkin?” Robert asked.
“Hayal is close.”
Garrett tensed, and he was certain Robert did, too. “How do you know?” he asked.
She raised her face heavenward and drew a deep breath in through her nose. “I can smell him.”
Garrett couldn’t help it. He turned his head and sniffed, too. Nothing out of the ordinary. It must be another of her gifts.
“How close?” Robert asked.
“Three miles. Maybe four.”
“And you can smell him?” Garrett asked. “From that far away?”
“I lived with them for many years. I could smell him from twenty miles away. But this is bad.”
“Why?”
“If I can smell him, he can smell me. He knows I’m here. He will come for me.”
“Let him,” Robert said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“I cannot risk it. I brought him here. He’s my problem.”
Garrett stepped to the side to look at her, but she wouldn’t make eye contact. “He is our problem, Elwyn.”
&n
bsp; She lowered her head until her hair blocked his vision of her oval face. “No. I must leave.”
“I forbid it,” Robert said.
She turned at last, and they could both see the emotion glistening in her eyes. “You could not stop me if I wanted to go.”
Robert raised his chin a notch. “I know, but I still forbid it. We’ll do this together.”
“We’ll set a trap,” Garrett said. “He’ll never see us coming.”
“Yes,” she said with a breathy giggle. “He will.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to be really smart about it.”
After taking a few moments to think it over, she straightened her shoulders, agreed with a curt nod, then threw her arms around both of them in the best group hug Garrett had ever been in.
Chapter Ten
Just think…
Somewhere out there someone is thinking of you,
trying to figure out how to make your death look like an accident.
—Motivational Poster
After lunch, Marika called her mother and talked to Zaire. He asked about Beep, but that would definitely take some explaining, so she told him she’d fill him in the next day.
They sat up for hours throughout the afternoon and into the night, eating everything in the kitchen and listening to Elwyn’s stories.
Every so often, Garrett left to consult with their security team on this or that, or Robert would take a call from their accountant or banker or decorator—the last one being the most ridiculous. It was all very clandestine, but she knew the troops were fortifying the barricades, and she had to wonder if the ruse was for her alone. If so, they needn’t have bothered.
True to her former self, Elwyn apparently didn’t need much sleep. Even now. And her stories were the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. The different forms of life she had seen. The food she’d tasted. The worlds she’d explored.
If Marika didn’t know better, she’d have sworn she was in a coma somewhere, dreaming it all. It was so surreal. She was now part of the elite. A tiny portion of the population privy to the information in this room.
At a little after two in the morning, Garrett gestured humorously for Marika to look at Elwyn. Sure enough, when the girl crashed, she crashed hard. She’d passed out on the sofa in the great room, her pixie face turning absolutely angelic, one arm and one leg dangling haphazardly over the edge. It was adorable.
Donovan was asleep in the great room as well. He’d passed out on an overstuffed chair after everyone else had gone to bed.
Artemis decided to make an appearance just as they were about to carry Elwyn upstairs. Only Elwyn and the Loehrs lived in the main house, along with the housekeeper and the cook. Everyone else had his or her own cottage, with the biggest of those belonging to Garrett.
But he did have a nice sofa in his office here in the back of the main house that would accommodate her nicely. There were also at least two fully furnished guest rooms that Marika knew about. Still, she hadn’t exactly been invited to sleep over, and she wondered if that was because everyone assumed she’d be sleeping with Garrett.
Not likely.
Artemis sat panting near Garrett’s feet. He stood to gather up Elwyn but then stopped and said, “I can’t believe I can finally see them.”
Marika stood as well. “I’m glad you’re not mad about it. It will take some getting used to.”
“I think I can handle it.” He reached down to pet Artemis. She got excited, a little too much, and jumped up.
Normally, since she was incorporeal, that would not be a problem. But since Garrett was so new to it all, he stumbled back and tripped on a lamp. It crashed to the floor with all the explosive bravado of a thousand thunderstorms. In his defense, he did try to catch it on his way down. He missed. Of course, that could’ve been chalked up to the fact that he’d almost died not twenty-four hours earlier.
Marika knelt down to him as he moaned in agony. “You can see them,” she said, fighting a grin. “You can’t touch them, Einstein.”
He climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. “Just when I was starting to like you.”
His words made her heart clench, a fact that annoyed her beyond measure. He was not taking her moratorium seriously at all.
That aside, he hadn’t been kidding. The kid slept hard. She didn’t even flinch when the lamp crashed. The Loehrs, unfortunately, did. They rushed downstairs, only to find a broken lamp on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” Marika said, searching the utility closet for a dustpan.
Mrs. Loehr shooed her aside. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll get that if you and Garrett will get Ellie Bug to bed.”
“You got it, Mrs. Loehr.” Garrett bundled the elfin into his arms. “She weighs like two pounds. How can she fight anything other than a pesky gnat?”
“Do you think she’s awfully malnourished?” Marika asked, following him. Unable to resist, she brushed back the girl’s hair and kissed her forehead before he made it to the stairs. “There’s no telling what she had to eat on all of those worlds. We live in this universe on this planet for a reason. It has everything we need to survive. To meet our nutritional needs.”
“True.” Mid-step up the stairs, he turned back to look at Donovan.
To the biker’s credit, he hadn’t flinched when the lamp fell over either, but that was probably the beer’s influence.
“The doc will be here tomorrow,” Garrett said, continuing up the steps.
“Do you like her?” Marika asked point-blank, not that she had a chance with Garrett. She just wanted to know.
“I adore her. When she’s not jumping through dead people, that is.”
“No, I mean the doctor.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure, I guess.”
Of course, he did. She was gorgeous. At least now she knew. “Is this hurting your back?”
“Not at all. It’s probably eighty percent healed by now.”
“Garrett, how is that possible?” she asked, rushing to his side now that they were on the landing.
“I told you. We have a secret weapon.”
“Does it have anything to do with a certain little god and the fact that her blood heals?”
“Maybe. But what makes you think it heals humans? Maybe it only heals hellhounds.”
“That would be pretty specific.” She ran ahead and opened the door to Elwyn’s bedroom. Thankfully, it had a full bed because there was a massive Rottweiler sprawled across it.
“I take it they share?”
Garrett chuckled. “’Parently.”
She pulled back the covers and watched as Garrett, with the gentlest of movements, tucked the fully-clothed girl into bed.
“She’s so beautiful,” Marika said, still utterly in awe of the new teen.
Garrett kneeled down next to her and brushed a thick lock of inky black hair off Elwyn’s face. “I have to admit, I can’t get over the fighting thing. That boggles even my mind, and I’ve been in the know for many years.”
“I just can’t imagine how she could bring one of those creatures down, much less dozens. And she had to have begun when she was still a child.” When he lifted a questioning brow, she added, “A smaller child. Who, apparently, sleeps like the dead.”
“Yeah, when she sleeps.”
Garrett had held his temper all afternoon and well into the night, but that was about to change. Now that he had the hellion all to himself, he planned to give her a piece of his mind then send her packing. Except, he was the one who’d brought her to the compound. He would have to give her a piece of his mind, not that he had many to spare, then take her home himself. It would be an uncomfortable drive back, but quite frankly, he didn’t give a damn.
He stood and led Marika to the door. After one last look at the only being on the planet he would give his life for, besides his son, of course, he closed the door and started down the steps.
“I’m going to sleep on the sofa as long as Donovan doesn’t snore too loudly,” Marika said.
“Oh?” she asked, her voice tinged with a hint of surprise. “About?”
“Outside.”
“I love the outdoors. Was that it?”
“You’re funny.” He took her by the elbow once they reached the first floor and led her out the front door into the cooling breeze of the New Mexico night. She couldn’t help but notice two armed security guards walking the perimeter of the compound.
“It’s lovely out,” she said, her stomach filling with butterflies.
When he turned toward her, his face the definition of rage-filled—or hormonal, it was hard to tell—she started to contemplate her chances of hitching a ride away from the boonies in the middle of the night. Because she had a strange sensation that she was not going to like this conversation.
* * * *
Garrett looked across the moonlit compound at the adobe outbuildings, the Tuscan greenhouse, the area Beep insisted, before her vanishing act, would make the perfect spot for a pool. But more important were the people who lived here.
The creature was close, holding steady at almost three miles out. Beep had assured him not an hour earlier that Hayal was apparently going to wait until daybreak to attack.
“He is honorable,” Beep had said to him during a third clandestine meeting that night, though the uncertain tone of her voice had given him pause. “Most of the time.”
“Then again,” Garrett had countered, “you did ruin his life. He could be feeling a mite vengeful at the moment.”
“Yes. I did. I ruined his life. I just don’t think he would attack a human.”
Robert had been with them. He cast him a sideways glance full of admonishment.
Garrett had to agree. Why didn’t he just tell Beep about the attack? Why keep it from her? Probably because she felt guilty enough about the whole thing. “What about when he went after Marika?” he asked, broaching the subject without giving away his secret.
“It had to be the scent. Perhaps”—she turned away in frustration—“perhaps he thought she was me?”
“Maybe,” Robert said, doubt lining his face.
The Graveyard Shift: A Charley Davidson Novella Page 10
