by Tracy Wolff
“You know what? You’re being a jackass and I don’t even know why. Or did you just use up your entire niceness quotient for the month yesterday?”
“Don’t you mean the year?” he asks with an obnoxious smirk.
“More like the decade, apparently.” I stand and make my way to the table by the door to pick up my hot chocolate—and a book. Because there is no way I’m going to spend the next however many minutes listening to Hudson whine.
“Make sure to check the shelves at the back of the room. I’m pretty sure there’s a book of fairy tales in there somewhere. I mean, if you want to keep telling yourself a bunch of lies.”
“Oh. My. God!” I whirl on him, my fists clenched and a scream building in my throat. “What is your problem? You’re acting like a douche!”
At first I think he’s going to answer me—it certainly looks like he’s got a lot to say when he gets up in my face—but then he just stares at me, eyes blazing and mouth pressed into a line so tight and straight that it has to be painful.
Long seconds pass, and the tension ratchets up between us more and more until it feels like the top of my head is going to explode. Just when I’m about to lose it or scream at him—or both—Jaxon walks out of his bedroom, black jacket in hand.
“I didn’t know if you remembered to bring a coat,” he says, holding the jacket out to me. “The playing field is heated, but the walk there takes a few minutes.”
Hudson turns away, muttering something obscene-sounding under his breath, and there’s a part of me that wants to grab his arm. That wants to demand we finish this argument that makes no freaking sense.
But Jaxon is waiting for me, looking sweet and also sexy as hell in a pair of slim-fit black track pants and a black compression shirt that shows every muscle he’s got. And he’s got a lot of them.
“I brought one,” I tell him, nodding to the back of the couch where I dropped my coat when I first got here. “But thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Of course.” He grins as he grabs an empty backpack and stuffs it full of water bottles—then reaches into the closed cabinet under one of his bookshelves and pulls out a box of my favorite granola bars and adds a couple to the bag.
“Where’d you get those?” I ask, a little surprised and a lot touched.
“I ordered them when we first got together, along with some Pop-Tarts in case you’re ever hungry when you’re hanging out here. They came when you were…” He waves a hand to encompass everything that happened. “So I put them away for when you got back—and here you are.”
“Here I am,” I repeat, nearly swooning at the way he takes such good care of me, even when I don’t know he’s doing it. “Thank you,” I say again.
Jaxon rolls his eyes. “Stop saying that,” he tells me as he zips the backpack before picking up my coat and helping me into it. “None of this is a big deal.”
“That’s not true,” I say, snagging his hand when he would have started for the door. I wait until he turns toward me to continue. “It’s a very big deal to me, and I appreciate it.”
He gives a little one-shouldered shrug, but I can tell he’s pleased by my words. Still, looking at him out here in the light, I also realize the tiredness I saw on his face from earlier wasn’t just sleepiness. He’s feeling drained, even though he won’t say so. I can tell, from the open books scattered all over the table by the window, he’s been burning the candle at both ends researching the Unkillable Beast. We know it’s on an enchanted island in the Arctic, but he wanted to learn more about it to help us prepare. Plus, he’d mentioned earlier trying to find a weakness.
My chest tightens. I know the horror is weighing on him of what Hudson could do if we bring him back with his abilities.
“Ready?” he asks, taking a step back. “It’s almost nine.”
“Almost ready,” I answer, wrapping my arms around his waist. As I do, I reach for the mating bond, which is easy to find after last night, when I discovered all the different threads inside me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
Instead of answering, I grab on to the black string with green streaks and start channeling a bunch of energy down the mating bond and straight into him.
“Stop!” Jaxon pulls away. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” I answer. “But I’m doing this.” And now that I can hold the mating bond in my hand, it doesn’t matter if I’m touching Jaxon or not. I’m not letting go of it until it looks like Jaxon has all the strength and energy he needs.
“What are you doing?” Hudson demands. “You can’t just send all your power into him! What are you going to do when you need it?”
I smile at Jaxon, but I’m answering them both. “I can do anything I want—and what I want is to take care of Jaxon.”
Hudson throws his hands in the air. “Maybe you’ll feel differently when you get your ass handed to you on the practice field today.”
My breath hitches. I know he meant to hit back at me, but I’m still surprised when I feel the punch in my chest. Just a reminder I’d started to let my guard down around Hudson, started to believe he really thought I was stronger than everyone else gives me credit for. And I have no idea why finding out that he doesn’t suddenly makes me so sad.
Besides, he’s completely wrong. We have a plan, and now that I can shift into my gargoyle, I know it’s going to work.
Win the Ludares tournament and get the bloodstone.
Grab a bone from a graveyard.
And well, yeah, stealing the Unkillable Beast’s heartstone feels a little iffy, but Jaxon is positive we can do it.
Once we do all that, we’ll get Hudson out of my head once and for all—and he won’t be able to hurt anyone else. Jaxon can finally get some sleep and we can maybe, maybe have a normal end to our senior year.
Or, you know, at least completely doable.
For the first time since I learned Hudson is stuck in my head, I can’t help the smile spreading across my face. We’ve got a plan: Win the game. Get the bone. Kill the beast. As Macy likes to say, easy-peasy. We’ve totally got this.
Jaxon and I head out of his room hand in hand, a lightness in my step that’s only marginally dimmed when I think I hear Hudson mutter, “We’re all doomed.”
59
Two Vampires
Too Many
Jaxon and I are the first to make it to the practice field. Because I’m bundled up in four layers of clothing, he insists I strip off the top two layers—which doesn’t sit well with me, considering I’m still freezing from the walk through the forest, but he says if I start to sweat, it will make the walk back a million times worse.
I mean, the temperature isn’t terrible—at least not by Alaska’s standards—but something tells me I’ll still be cold here in the middle of July.
“So what are we going to work on today?” I ask as I strip out of my coat, my hoodie, and my ski pants. The fact that I’m still wearing my fleece pants, leggings, a tank top, and a long-sleeve thermal shirt makes my head spin—and I’m pretty sure it always will. I guess it really is true that you can take the girl out of San Diego, but you can’t take San Diego out of the girl…
“I thought we’d see what you can do,” Jaxon says. “And I know Flint wants to get everyone talking strategy for the game.”
“He’s really taking this seriously,” I comment as I start to stretch. “Especially considering we only have a couple days to train and the stakes are so high.”
“Oh, I think he’s got a lot of reasons he wants to win,” Jaxon tells me with a look I can’t quite decipher. “Plus, I don’t think you get what a big deal Ludares is here. The whole school looks forward to March for the tournament, and the winners get bragging rights for the rest of the year. And there’s also the fact that Flint’s team came in second last year, and I’m sure he’s planning on mak
ing sure this year is different.”
I bend over and put my hands flat on the ground as I stretch out my legs. “Thankfully, considering this is our best shot at a bloodstone.”
Jaxon makes a sound of agreement deep in his throat, but when I peer around my thigh at him, there’s a gleam in his eye that says he’s focused on something else entirely: namely my butt as I bend over to stretch.
“Hey! We’re supposed to be talking about the competition,” I tell him as I open my legs wider so that I can stretch from side to side.
“Get first place, win the bloodstone, vanquish Hudson. I got it,” he says, but he still hasn’t lifted his eyes from my ass.
“Jaxon!” Heat rushes to my cheeks, but it makes me happy that he gets as much pleasure looking at me as I do looking at him—after all, I’ve been enjoying the sight of him in that compression shirt since I first saw him in it this morning.
“Sorry,” he says, coming closer to rub a hand up and down my back. “Sometimes it hits me in the face how lucky I am to have you.”
His honesty makes my knees tremble. But when I stand up, I’m still determined not to let him see how much—at least not until he leans forward and drops a kiss on first one cheek and then the other. “You’re beautiful, Grace, inside and out. And I’m so grateful you found me.”
This time there’s no hiding it as I full-on melt. “I’m really glad I found you, too,” I say as I wrap my arms around his waist and hug him close. “And ignored you every time you told me to get the hell out of Katmere Academy.”
He pulls me even closer. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Yeah, me neither.” I press a kiss to his collarbone before pulling back. “Then again, you might have had a point. Considering the whole Lia thing and now the whole Hudson thing… I mean, I’m glad I didn’t know this was coming, because I would have run as far and as fast as I could. And then I would have missed out on you. On us. But your warning does make a lot more sense in retrospect.”
I expect him to laugh with me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he gets that tortured look on his face that I hate, the one that says he’s beating himself up over things that are completely beyond his control.
I think about trying to coax him out of the mood, about doing what I usually do and try to talk some sense into him. But the more I learn about Jaxon, the more I’ve learned that that doesn’t always work on him. So instead of sitting him down for a heart-to-heart, I do the only other thing I can think of.
I pull away and say, “Catch me if you can.”
One incredulous eyebrow goes up. “What did you just say?”
I take several big steps backward. “I said, catch me if you can.”
“You do realize I’m a vampire, right?” Now both his eyebrows are raised almost to his hairline. “I mean, I can just…” He fades the distance between us. “Catch you.”
He goes to wrap his arms around me, but I push him away. “Not like that.”
“You mean there’s another way?”
I wiggle my brows at him, even as I take several more steps back. “There’s always another way.”
“Oooookay. I’ll bite—”
“Not if I can help it, you won’t.” And then I do what Hudson taught me yesterday in the laundry room. I reach down deep inside myself for all the colored threads and wrap my hand around the bright platinum one. When my fingers wrap around it, I feel that same strange heaviness coming over me.
“Grace, are you okay—” Jaxon breaks off, eyes widening in shock as I start to turn to stone right in front of him. But unlike that time in the hallway, I don’t hold on until I’m a statue. Instead, I let go as soon as it feels like the shift is complete.
And it works! Just like last night, I’m a gargoyle, but I can still move around. I can still talk. I can still be Grace, just in gargoyle form.
“Oh my God!” Jaxon says, coming closer again. “Look at you.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” I hold a hand out for him to examine. “I mean, except for the horns.” I run a self-conscious hand over one of them.
“I like the horns,” Jaxon tells me with a grin. “They give you character.”
“Oh yeah. Sooooo much character.”
“I’m serious. They look good. You look good.”
“Yeah?” I hate how vulnerable I feel when I ask that question, hate that I need to know Jaxon loves this side of me, too. Which gives me a whole new appreciation for how Jaxon felt when he was waiting to see how I would react to him being a vampire.
“Yeah,” he says as he reaches out and runs a finger down the back of my hand from wrist to fingertip.
It feels good. We feel good.
“So, have you been practicing shifting into your gargoyle form?” he asks as we walk a little ways together. “You did it so easily.”
“Just last night, Hudson helped me—”
I break off as Jaxon’s face goes completely blank. “Hudson helped you?” he repeats.
“Yeah, just for a few minutes when I was doing laundry,” I tell him, suddenly feeling the need to babble to get the words out faster. “I mean, it was no big deal. I was nervous about today, so he explained to me how shifters do it. Turns out, it works the same for gargoyles.”
“Wait a minute. So you were nervous about coming out here with everyone?” Jaxon’s jaw tightens, regret and self-disgust swirling in the depths of his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have brought you here alone first and worked as long as you wanted to. Or told them we couldn’t come. I’d never force you into something you felt weird doing.”
“I know that. I just…” I drift off with a shrug, not really sure what I want to say or how I want to say it.
“Just what?” he demands.
“It’s embarrassing, okay? Everybody here make it looks so easy to be a paranormal, and it’s humiliating to admit how freaked out I was about consciously shifting for the first time. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself in front of everyone.”
“First of all, there’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about. Most people are nervous about their powers as they learn to use them. It’s totally normal, and I would have said that to you if you’d asked me. And second, it’s humiliating to admit that to me, but not to Hudson? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Come on, Jaxon, that’s not what I meant at all. I just want you to see me as strong, you know?” I go to run a hand through my hair, totally forgetting that it’s stone as well, so I end up just patting my stone hair instead. Because that isn’t awkward at all.
“I don’t need to see you that way, Grace. You are that way. You’re strong and powerful and amazing and no one knows that better than I do—you saved my life twice.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, but that’s what I see when I look at you. So if you need help for once or feel uncertain for a little while, why wouldn’t you come to me? Why would you go to Hudson of all people?”
“Damn it, Jaxon. I didn’t go to Hudson with anything, but it’s not like I had a choice. I can’t get away from him, so what am I supposed to do?”
Jaxon’s eyes go watchful. “What does that mean exactly, that you don’t have a choice? What don’t you have a choice about?”
I can practically see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to reason this whole thing out, and it suddenly occurs to me that telling him that Hudson knows everything I’m thinking is akin to walking through a minefield without a metal detector. Terrifying, dangerous, and potentially very, very messy.
But it’s obvious from his face—and his questions—that it’s too late to step back now, and I’m not sure I would anyway, because lying to my mate seems like a really bad idea. Then again, so does jumping down her throat when she makes a simple comment about a simple choice she made for herself about her own power…
Which is why I don’t b
acktrack and why I don’t apologize or try to prevaricate. Instead, I take a deep breath in an effort to beat back the annoyance and the anxiety that are building inside me—and then tell Jaxon as much of the truth as I understand myself. “It means he knows every single thing I’m thinking. Not just what I’m doing, but if I’m hungry or what pair of underwear I’m thinking about wearing or that I really don’t understand aeronautical physics at all.
“So yeah, he knew that I was nervous about shifting again—who wouldn’t be, considering I don’t even remember doing it the first time? Or, for that matter, how I shifted back to my human form. I was worried about not being able to turn into a gargoyle. I was worried about not being able to shift back again. I was worried about it all. Every single part of it, even though I was doing laundry late at night because I was trying not to think about it so I could actually sleep.”
I’m all worked up now, so I start to pace—which, it turns out, feels oddly different from when I do it in my human form but also oddly the same. It’s something to think about, but at a different time, when Jaxon isn’t looking at me like his head might explode at any second.
“So yes, Jaxon,” I continue, “Hudson helped me out. Not because I had anything against you, but just because he was there.”
Jaxon holds my gaze, and I watch a muscle in his jaw tick, but he doesn’t say anything.
I can’t help the sadness creeping in to fill the void where my anger had been. This isn’t Jaxon’s fault any more than it’s mine. I sigh. “Fucking Hudson.”
“Ouch. Don’t hold back, Grace. Tell me how you really feel,” Hudson says from where he’s suddenly sprawled out on the Astroturf right behind Jaxon, a copy of Sartre’s No Exit open in his hands.
60
Paranormal Telenovelas
Are a Lifestyle
Choice
“Are you kidding me?” I turn and yell at Hudson, sadness disappearing under the reservoir of annoyance he so easily taps into. “You decide to show up now?”
