Crush

by Tracy Wolff

  “Oh, really?” I lift my brows questioningly.

  He shakes his head in response, obviously amused. “Grace, there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to make you happy. I can’t give you Tahiti for a few more months, but I can absolutely get you tacos every day, if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t need tacos.” I reach for his hand and squeeze it tightly. “I just need you.”

  “I need you, too,” he answers before nodding at me to keep eating.

  It’s as I pick up my second taco that he switches the subject. “Tell me about the art project you’re working on. I’m dying to get a look at it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I tell him with a little snort.

  He looks intrigued. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I have no idea what I’m working on. Usually I know exactly what I’m going to paint, but this time I’m just painting like my life depends on it, but I don’t know what it is I’m painting. Weird, right?”

  “Genius is weird,” Jaxon answers with a shrug. “Everyone knows that. I say keep embracing it, see what happens.”

  “That’s what I figure, too. The worst thing that can happen is it’s trash, so where’s the harm?”

  “It’s not trash,” he tells me.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you.”

  It’s such a simple answer, but it has me swooning a little anyway, because it’s just what I need to hear right now.

  “You’re entirely too charming,” I tell him with a soft smile. “You know that, right?”

  Jaxon just grins and leans in for a kiss before sitting back down, and Hudson gags. Again. And I can’t stop myself from turning to glare at him.

  “Hey, is Hudson still talking to you?” Jaxon asks, and he doesn’t sound happy.

  “He’s always talking to me,” I look at Jaxon and complain with a roll of my eyes. “I swear, he never shuts up.”

  “You know, that mean streak of yours is getting a lot wider recently,” Hudson grumps.

  “It’s because you’re rubbing off on me,” I shoot back. But the second the words are out, I can feel myself blush scarlet. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” Hudson interjects, but the grumpiness is gone, replaced by a slyness in his dark-blue eyes that makes me distinctly nervous, though I’m not sure why.

  “My brother sure knows how to ruin a mood,” Jaxon mutters as he gets up to clear my dinner away.

  “Thank you,” Hudson answers. “I do what I can.”

  “Could you please just shut up for five minutes?” I demand as I stand to follow Jaxon.

  “Now, where’s the fun in that?” Hudson walks across the library and climbs on top of one of the shorter bookshelves, dangling his feet down the side as he picks up the mini gargoyle Amka has sitting on top of it and loosely wraps his arms around the statue. “Besides, if I’m quiet, who’s going to point out the error of your ways?”

  “Wow, condescending much?” I stick my tongue out at Hudson, who pretends to catch it like I blew him a kiss and dramatically holds it up to his heart before I can turn away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as I catch up to Jaxon and wrap my arms around his waist from behind. “I know you wanted tonight to be special, and Hudson keeps messing it up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he answers, turning around so he can hold me, too. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It feels like my fault.” I squeeze him more tightly.

  “Well, it’s not.” He leans down a little, brushes a kiss over my temple. “But since our date isn’t exactly turning out as planned, why don’t we at least do something useful with the time?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like find out more about gargoyles? I know you were trying to do that before everything went wrong with Hudson the other day.”

  “Nothing went wrong with me,” Hudson growls at him. “I was trying to help her.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I reply to Jaxon, and he gestures for me to sit back at the table while he fetches the books from the back table where Amka left them for me.

  I turn to glare at Hudson. “Because body snatching is so helpful?”

  “Are you back to being mad at me about that again?” He sighs. “Even now that you know why I had to get the athame?”

  “I’m never not going to be mad at you about that,” I shoot back.

  “It figures. I was trying to help, and this is what I get.”

  “Trying to help?” I make a disbelieving noise in the back of my throat. “Trying to help yourself, don’t you mean?”

  “Are you ever going to get tired of making me the bad guy?” he asks softly.

  “I don’t know. Are you ever going to get tired of being the bad guy?” I answer.

  In the middle of all this, Jaxon walks back to the table and deposits three books I remember from the pile set aside for me. My fingers are itching to read them, and I quickly grab the top book, Magical Creatures Big and Small.

  Jaxon doesn’t sit down like I expect but instead walks over to the bookcase where Hudson is perched and bends down to grab a book from the bottom shelf. For just a second, it looks like Hudson is going to kick him full-on in the face—completely unbeknownst to Jaxon, of course.

  Don’t you dare, I mouth at Hudson.

  Hudson gives me an arched brow, but in the end, he leaves Jaxon alone. “Overprotective much?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. From a murderer? Damn straight.

  “You do know that Jaxon’s the one who killed me, right?” He shakes his head as he hops off the shelf, turns away, and mutters, “This is my limit for abuse for one night. I’ve got more important things to do.”

  And just like that, he disappears down one of the narrow rows between shelves toward the back of the library. It takes a minute for me to realize he’s following the same gargoyle path that I did the first time I’d entered the library. The first time I’d met Lia…

  43

  Even Homicidal

  Maniacs Have

  Their Limits

  More important things to do? The words ricochet in my head. “What does that mean?”

  Hudson doesn’t answer.

  “I’m serious, Hudson. What exactly are you planning to do?”

  Still no answer. The jerk.

  I try one more time, yelling down the aisle toward where Hudson disappeared. “You can’t just go around saying things like that and expect me to—”

  Jaxon sits down and sighs. “Maybe we should do this another time.”

  “Why?” I snap, my anger exploding out at him.

  He raises a brow at my tone but keeps his voice mild when he answers. “I was asking if you want to try out the research thing another time, since you seem a little…preoccupied…yelling at my brother.”

  Just like that, my anger drains away. Because it’s not Jaxon’s fault his brother is a douche who will use any means necessary to get his way.

  “No, of course not. I’m so sorry. I think researching gargoyles is a great idea. I’ve been wanting to do that since I got back.”

  “Are you sure?” Jaxon rests his hand over mine and squeezes gently. “I understand if you need to—”

  “I need to be with you,” I answer, ignoring the residual tightness in my stomach left over from Hudson’s assholery. “And researching gargoyles—and how to get your brother out of my head once and for all—sounds like a really good idea right about now.”

  “To be fair, figuring out how to get Hudson out of your head sounds like a really good idea to me all the time,” Jaxon tells me with a rueful shake of his head.

  I laugh as I slip my hand out from under his. “You’re not wrong about that.”

  I flip to the index at the back of the book and start looking for any topic that might be able to help us.
>
  “So do you know anything about gargoyles?” I ask as I pull my notebook out of my backpack before settling down next to Jaxon. “I mean, surely some things are common knowledge, right? Like how even people who don’t believe in them know that vampires can’t come into a room uninvited or dragons like to hoard treasure.” I pause as I rethink what I said. “Actually, I guess I don’t know for sure that’s true about dragons—”

  “Oh, it’s true,” Jaxon tells me with a grin. But the grin fades pretty quickly into a thoughtful look as he taps his fingers on the table and stares off into space for several seconds.

  “There are a lot of stories about gargoyles from the old days,” he says eventually. “I’m not old enough to have met any—my father killed them all long before I was born.”

  His last sentence falls on the table like a grenade, one that takes a full three seconds before it explodes—and takes me with it. “Your father killed them?” I ask, and I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.

  “Yeah,” he answers, and I’ve never seen him look more deeply ashamed.

  “How?” I whisper.

  I meant how did he kill them all, but Jaxon takes my question literally. “Gargoyles can die, Grace. Not easily, but they can. Of course, for the gargoyle king, he decided to kill him personally with an eternal bite.”

  Eternal bite? A shiver skates along my spine. “What’s that?”

  Jaxon sighs. “It’s my father’s gift. One bite is deadly. Absolutely no one has ever survived. Not even the gargoyle king himself.”

  I make a mental note to not get within biting distance of the king. Ever. “But the rest he just slaughtered the good old-fashioned way?”

  “Well, his armies did, yes.” He chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “Apparently a predilection for genocide runs in my family.”

  The word “genocide” slams into me with the power of a set of brass knuckles. I can’t imagine anything worse for Hudson to have done, can’t imagine how depraved—how downright evil—

  “Oi, you can bugger right off with that!” Hudson suddenly shouts, coming back into the main area from the shadowy aisle.

  The sudden towering rage in Hudson’s voice has my eyes going wide and my heart pumping way too fast. It’s so huge, so overwhelming, that I can feel it threatening the barricade I put up in my head. Can feel the cracks deep inside as the wall trembles.

  “Hudson?” I manage to choke out. “Are you—”

  But he’s not done yet, his voice—and his insults—getting more British by the second. “Don’t you fucking come at me with that bullshite, you fucking wanker! You’re a daft bastard, and I’m fucking sick of you swanning around like the bloody little fucking bastard that you are!”

  Again, the wall trembles. Again, more cracks spring up, and I try desperately to patch them even as I work to calm him down. “Hudson. Hey, Hudson.”

  He ignores me. He’s pacing back and forth in front of the circulation desk as he yells more insults at Jaxon—who is completely oblivious to the fact that his older brother has just called him a rat-arsed git.

  Jaxon gets to his feet now—I guess it’s hard to miss that something is wrong as I chase Hudson around the front half of the library—fists clenched and eyes wild with concern as he stares at me. It’s obvious he’s trying to find a way to fight his brother without hurting me, but he can’t figure it out…because the only place Hudson really exists right now is inside me.

  When he looks like he’s going to say something else, I hold up a hand to settle him back down. The last thing we need is for him to say something else that sets Hudson off again.

  He doesn’t look happy, but he nods and slowly unclenches his fists. Convinced he isn’t going to say anything else, I turn and walk over to Hudson.

  “Hey, now. Hey, look at me.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Hudson. Take a deep breath and look at me, okay?”

  He whirls around then, and the look he turns on me is filled with such fulminating fury, such absolute, abject betrayal, that I can’t help but stumble back a couple of steps.

  I don’t know if it was the stumble or the look on my face, but whatever it is, it brings Hudson back down in an instant. He doesn’t apologize for his outburst, doesn’t try to explain it. But he stops swearing, stops looking like he wants to tear the entire library—and Jaxon—apart. And skulks off to sit in one of the chairs by the window, his back to me.

  I turn around to find Jaxon staring, and there’s an edge in his eyes that has a chill working its way down my spine. Not because I think he’ll hurt me—Jaxon would never do that—but because it makes him feel far away from me, distant in a way I didn’t expect and don’t know how to handle.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t mean to hurt you. It’s just hard to ignore someone throwing a tantrum in my head. I wish I could,” I tell him. “Even more, I wish he wasn’t there at all. But he is, and I’m trying, Jaxon. I’m really trying.”

  The ice in his gaze melts at my words, and his whole body softens. “I know.” He reaches for my hand, pulls me close. “You’re handling so much right now. I wish I could take it all away from you.”

  “That’s not your job.”

  “I’m your mate.” He looks vaguely insulted. “If it’s not my job, whose is it?”

  “Mine,” I whisper, going on tiptoes to press my lips, very softly, to his. “You’re just the moral support.”

  He gives a startled laugh. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been given that role.”

  “I bet. How does it feel?”

  To his credit, he thinks about it for a moment before saying, “I don’t like it.”

  I shoot him a fake shocked look, and he just laughs. Then says, “Do you want to hear about gargoyles or not?”

  “I absolutely do.”

  Jaxon leads me back to the table and we settle into our seats again, reaching for the books we’d started to read before Hudson’s outburst.

  “Like I was saying, gargoyles are old—although not as old as vampires. No one knows how they were created—” He breaks off, thinks about it. “Or at least, I don’t know how. I just know that they didn’t exist before the First Great War but were around by the time of the Second. There are all kinds of origin stories, but my favorite ones always revolve around the witches bringing them into existence in the hopes of saving themselves and humans from another great war. Some say they used dark magic, but I never believed it. I always thought they asked a higher power for help, and that’s why gargoyles have always been protectors.”

  Protectors. The word settles on me. It sinks into my bones, flows through my veins—because it feels right. It feels like the home I haven’t had in four long months and, conversely, the home I’ve been looking for my entire life even though I didn’t know it.

  “What are we supposed to protect?” I ask, blood humming with the promise of what’s to come.

  “Magic itself,” Jaxon tells me. “And all the factions who wield it in all their different ways.”

  “So not just witch magic, then.”

  “No, not just the witches. Gargoyles kept the balance among all the paranormals—vampires and werewolves, witches and dragons.” He pauses. “Mermaids and selkies and every other not-just-human creature on the planet—and also humans.”

  “But why did your father kill the gargoyles, then? If they were the ones keeping everything balanced, why would he want to get rid of them?”

  “Power,” Jaxon says. “He and my mother wanted more power, power they couldn’t just take with the gargoyles watching. And now they have it. They sit at the head of the Circle—”

  “Amka mentioned the Circle to me. What is it?” I ask.

  “The Circle is the ruling body that governs paranormals all over the world. My parents have the highest positions of power on the council, positions they inherited when my father instigated th
e destruction of all the gargoyles,” Jaxon explains.

  “He instigated the murdering of all the gargoyles,” Hudson says from where he’s still near the window, “because he convinced his allies that the humans were planning another war, used the Salem Witch Trials to prove his point. And gargoyles were going to side with them.”

  “He killed them all because of a war that never happened?” I whisper, horrified.

  Jaxon turns the page in the book he’s currently thumbing through. “Well, this is what some people believe, yes.”

  “He killed them all because he is an evil, selfish, power-hungry, cowardly arsehole,” Hudson corrects. “He’s drunk his own Kool-Aid and truly believes he’s the savior of our kind.”

  I’m a little shocked—and a lot horrified—at how Hudson, of all people, describes his and Jaxon’s father. Hudson is the one who wanted to wipe the other species out of existence, so why does he sound so judgmental over the fact that his father did the same thing?

  “I am nothing like my father,” Hudson grinds out, sounding more offended than I have ever heard him. “Nothing!”

  I don’t contradict him, even though it seems absurd for him to try to pretend away the similarities in his agenda and his father’s. Sure, they went after different factions in their search for supremacy, but that doesn’t make them different. It just makes them two sides of the same coin.

  And I would do well to remember this before I get us all killed.

  Because Hudson won’t be in my head forever. And what he will do when he’s out is anyone’s guess.

  Jaxon must be thinking the same thing, because he leans forward and says, “No matter what we have to do, we can never let my brother loose on the world with his power. My father killed the entire gargoyle race. Who knows what Hudson will do?”

  44

  Two Heads Aren’t

  Better than One

  I wait for Hudson to explode, but he doesn’t say a word. In fact, he’s so quiet that after several minutes of silence, I’d think Hudson had fallen asleep if I didn’t see the way his foot is tap-tap-tapping on the ground as he stares out the window.