Not Dead Yet

by Alice Bello

  She’d told Seth once that his father was just a very busy man.

  But Seth wasn’t blind. He saw how the man doted on his sister, as if she were a freaking fairy princess. It hurt.

  But that was then, this was now. Now he didn’t give a good goddamn what Adam Hart thought of him. And though at first Seth had a justified sense of satisfaction when their father started ignoring Lucy as well, that feeling soon changed to pity, and then compassion. Lucy wasn’t prepared to be treated so harshly by their father—she’d been his little girl. It had devastated her to the point she’d lost most of her personality.

  He was about ready to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she snapped out of it. He wanted to scream in her face to get over the bastard. That once he decided you didn’t matter anymore, that was it. Their father wasn’t human, he couldn’t be.

  But then she’d turned eighteen and wham, that towering personality came back with a vengeance... though, truthfully, she’d been a lot nicer than she’d ever been. And after her little Goth friend had guessed his secret so loudly, he was certain she knew what he was.

  And she hadn’t said a word about it... not one.

  That had been decent of her. And Seth really did like her choice of a fiancé. The guy was nice and seemed decent, so not like his father... but he did wear a suit far too much for Seth’s liking.

  Seth pulled on clothes and his shoes, grabbed his wallet and cell phone and started out his bedroom window. There was an old trellis below his window and leading almost all the way to the ground.

  Very considerate. As if his grandmother had known that he would want to have a secret way out of his room so he could prowl the night.

  He was all the way down the trellis when someone cleared his throat, making him jump and miss the last step. He hit his ass on the cold ground, and cursed.

  He looked up and behind him to find Gabriel’s brother, Micah, standing there staring at him, a shit eating grin on his handsome face, his arms folded over his hulking chest.

  Bastard.

  “Aren’t you a little young to be sneaking out at night?”

  Seth pulled himself back onto his feet. “I’ll be eighteen in a few days, so no.”

  Micah nodded, and then took one step closer... well, he’d started to, but then he’d stopped. It was just like the other day in Gram’s kitchen. He’d come closer to him, as if drawn by a magnet... but then he’d stopped, and the effort to remain even that far apart was palpable.

  Seth smiled. So it hadn’t just been his imagination, the big guy liked him. Neat.

  “So,” Micah said distractedly, “what do you want for your birthday?”

  Seth chuckled. The big guy seemed so uncomfortable, it was hysterical, and so very, very sexy.

  “Oh, I don’t know: the usual. A car, merry bushels of cash...” He looked Micah in the eye with an intensity he’d never peered into anyone’s eyes with before. It wasn’t just flirting, he wanted for the man standing before him to know that he was welcome. “And my first kiss.”

  “First kiss,” Micah said breathlessly. “You’ve never been kissed?”

  Seth smiled and crossed his heart. “Never.”

  Micah did that almost moving forward thing again, his eyes boring into Seth like the head beam of a racing train. But then finally he pulled his eyes from Seth’s and took a step back.

  Seth felt an acute pang of disappointment.

  “So when’s your birthday?”

  Seth felt a geyser of hope flood up through him. “In two days.” He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

  Micah sighed and shook his head, and then he turned to walk away. “I’ll see you in two days then.”

  ~*~

  Lucy woke with a start. It was dark outside, so she could go back to sleep. The dream that she’d been torn out of sleep by had been vile. It had scared the daylights out of her, that was for sure. But the details were already fuzzy. Something was... chasing her? No, it had already caught her, and was beating her to death... maybe. And then she was back on her feet, covered in blood, and she was reaching out to grab this weird old sword. The metal was cold under her hand. She was about to... about to...

  Uhg! Lucy despised it when dreams faded away on her, and this one seemed important. Or maybe it just seemed important because she was so sure she was about to die in it.

  Blah! Dreams that didn’t entail shopping sprees or chocolate waterfalls weren’t even worth having.

  She closed her eyes and tried to picture that chocolate waterfall. Maybe there would be a unicorn that flew... no, that would be a freaking Pegasus. Maybe she’d dream of a unicorn/Pegasus hybrid?

  And then the alarm blared, the sound so horrifyingly loud and obnoxious it could wake the dead... well, not literally, Lucy conceded. It took a hell of a lot more than a little noise to wake the dead.

  She rolled over and slapped the alarm clock she’d paid for by flipping burgers at McDonald’s into silence. She’d kept the damn thing not to remind herself how low she’d gone, but because she’d worked so very hard for the money to buy it. In a twisted sense, it meant much more to her than the fine clothes she now enjoyed, or the red hot Mustang convertible she raced around California in now. It was truly hers. Plus it was a GE alarm clock. It would work flawlessly for decades. She knew this because...

  Lucy stopped breathing. The cold, unwelcome feeling of just thinking about her father still could cripple her in a heartbeat. Why the hell was she letting him get to her still? He didn’t care, wouldn’t even see or talk to her (and she’d gone to try and visit him only the month before). So why was she still even thinking about him? Why did she care?

  Because she was Daddy’s Little Girl, that’s why. She’d grown up happy and spoiled, and the apple of her father’s eye. It didn’t matter that he’d turned out to be as much of a scumbag criminal as any of the convicts he’d defended. He was guilty of tax evasion, bribery, extortion... oh, and trafficking in immigrant slave labor.

  Who knew what else Adam Hart had done that they hadn’t found out about... or just couldn’t prove? That thought alone made Lucy’s very soul droop and pool around her feet like a big puddle of suck.

  Lucy had looked forward to this day about as much as she looked forward to getting her teeth drilled in the dentist’s office... or a pelvic exam by her gynecologist—she’d chosen Dr Larkin for her small, warm hands as much as her much vaunted Princeton education.

  This was one of those days she’d always imagined spending with her father: the day of her bridal shower. She’d wake up and he’d be toiling in the kitchen—something he almost never did—making his patented chocolate chip pancakes.

  “The trick,” he’d tell her whenever he’d don his spotless “Kiss the Chef” apron, “is to only use miniature milk chocolate chips. Otherwise the chocolate won’t melt right.”

  Lucy closed her eyes on the memory. Lila, her mother, couldn’t cook to save her life. As long as Lucy could remember they’d had maids and full time cooks to do the house work and prepare the meals. So when her busy, highly paid lawyer father took time out of his morning to make her pancakes, it was like... no, it was a moment in Heaven.

  She clamped her mind down on that as hard as she squeezed her eyes shut, and slowly pushed it all back down to wherever in the hell it had come from. As strong and wretched as those emotions and memories and thoughts were, she was amazed that she could function at all in real life.

  She swiped at the tears drying on her cheeks as she wrestled with the covers and sheets of her bed and trudged out of bed. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a top, a bra and panties, and headed for the bathroom.

  About twenty minutes later she went down stairs, her hair still wet and crazy curly. She hadn’t bothered with makeup or styling her hair. She had an appointment for later that afternoon to get all that done, and her nails and toenails, before the bridal shower.

  Her Maid of Honor, Elaina Enoch, would be busy all day executing the plans she’d orchestrated for this
big day, so she’d have to put up with the other two youngest female members of the Enoch family to accompany her to getting coiffed.

  Olivia and Sophie Enoch, the snobbish, spoiled, resentful daughters of Gabriel’s Uncle Remy, where in her bridal party too, and they’d sort of insinuated themselves as Elaina’s back up.

  Actually, they’d been very helpful. They’d handled the invitations, and helped secure the venue—a swanky new eatery that boasted not only five-star culinary delights and a list of mouth-watering desserts to tempt even the apostles themselves, but the hottest waiters in Sacramento.

  And though they hadn’t been overly friendly to Lucy (which would have freaked her out anyway) they had been indispensible in expediting everything. Between them and Elaina, Lucy hadn’t had to make one decision for her bridal shower... and that had been a huge relief. She’d already fried too many brain cells dealing with the wedding, her hyper/happy mother, and her just terrifying future mother-in-law.

  The sight of Vivian Enoch dispatching that Hell Cat in the back office of the patisserie would haunt her for the rest of her life. The woman hadn’t batted an eyelash, broken a nail, or even exerted herself. Lucy never wanted to be on the woman’s bad side in a fight.

  At least tonight’s festivities would be safe. The wedding party was comprised of seven female werewolves and Lucy’s recently bad-assed witch best friend Abbey. Though the big tough men in her life, all of which were werewolves, hadn’t been able to keep the baddies from crashing in on her and taking a swipe, between Abbey and Vivian, they’d saved her life three times. It didn’t matter that there would be a dozen wolfy guards on-hand, it was the women who had been instrumental to Lucy’s survival.

  It would be the safest she’d been since the assassins had started showing up, trying to gut, drown, and chop her into itty-bitty pieces.

  She still wasn’t looking forward to it.

  That was until she stepped into the kitchen and found her mother and Gram cooking side by side. Lucy felt her eyes well up in happy tears, and she was so choked up that she just stood there with her hands over her mouth. In actuality, she knew Gram was doing all the cooking, but it meant a lot that her mother was stirring… and from the band-aids on her fingers and flour and butter and milk stains all over her clothes, her face, and in her hair, she’d been slicing and measuring too.

  “Stir all the way to the bottom,” Gram told Lila with sweet patience. “Don’t want it to start sticking.”

  “Yes, mama.” Lucy couldn’t believe her ears. Lila always called Lillian “mother.” She’d never heard her call her anything else. But that had always sounded wrong, forced.

  Gram looked at her daughter, her eyes liquid pools of dark chocolate. The love on her face was fierce. A smile played on Lila’s lips as she sunk the wooden spoon further into the pot to stir the bottom: Gram’s special oatmeal.

  Lucy remembered soon after they’d had to move to Four Corners that Gram had said offhand one day that she didn’t trust a woman who called her mama “Mother.” Now it made perfect sense why.

  Gram smiled brightly and blinked the wetness from her eyes. Then she cleared her throat and said, “So Lucy-bean, I hope you’re hungry. We’ve cooked enough food for an army.”

  Lucy swiped at her eyes before anyone turned to look at her, and rushed over and hugged Gram’s back, and then went over and hugged her mother.

  “I’m a mess,” Lila said, but she chuckled and sighed with delight. “You’ll get all dirty.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t have to be presentable until seven o’clock. And there’s a team of highly trained professionals waiting to make that happen.”

  When she finally disentangled her arms from her mother, Lucy poured herself a cup of coffee. Gram always made the best coffee. She said it was because she added a little chicory to the mix, whatever that was. Whatever it was, it made Starbucks seem like cheap swill in comparison.

  Lucy sat at the old worn wooden kitchen table, and watched happily as the two women dished out waffles, oatmeal, fresh dipped melon balls—cantaloupe, honey dew, and watermelon—crispy bacon, sausage, and hash browns.

  I’m never going to fit into my wedding dress if I eat all this...

  But that was the last Lucy thought about her waist size as she dug into the feast with relish and an appetite worthy of an actual werewolf.

  “So what do you have planned for today?” Gram asked.

  “I was just going to hang out here, maybe go over and visit with Abbey.” And maybe have a talk about how dark her magic had gotten. Though she’d used it twice to save Lucy’s life, it still worried her that her best friend was harnessing the forces of darkness with such lethal efficiency.

  Also she felt guilty that that black magic was tainted with her own necromancy. She knew that she shouldn’t feel that way. Abbey had hijacked her power to resurrect her dead parents. It had been painful and scary, and Abbey had deceived her. But Lucy still thought of her as her best friend. She could relate to doing anything to get your parents back. She’d do anything to get her father to look at her like he used to again.

  No, no, no. Go away! She shook those thoughts out of her head and plodded on with her itinerary.

  “After that, the Double Mint Twins—”

  “Their names are Sophie and Olivia,” Gram admonished with a sage lift of an eyebrow.

  “Sophie and Olivia... are picking me up for a quick lunch, and then to whisk me off to get all prettied up for the party, where you two will meet us.” Lucy took a bite of the pancakes. Heaven.

  “So, Mrs. Enoch will be there?” Lila asked, her eyes hopeful. Her mother was still her mother, and she was materialistic to the bone. It really was where Lucy got her taste for the finer things. But for Lucy it was a sense of entitlement—that she’d lost when she’d started working at McDonald’s, and scrubbed her first toilet bowl.

  For Lila, it was a deep seated hunger. She’d had everything she could have wanted when they had money, but she’d always wanted more. And just looking at Vivian Enoch had rekindled that hunger with a vengeance.

  Lucy cringed at the prospect of her mother trolling the reception in something skimpy, trying to land herself a new, filthy rich husband.

  For one thing, she had no idea the Enochs turned furry. She’d known about her mother’s necromancy, and that Lucy might inherit it, but otherwise she chose to stay ignorant of the supernatural all around her.

  And for another thing, she was still married to Lucy’s father. The thought of them divorcing, for any reason, made her chest hurt.

  Gram’s eyes turned wide as saucers. “She is?” There was that panic again. Lucy had tried to tell herself that it hadn’t been important, that there were all manner of explanations for Gram to have known Jonas Enoch beforehand. And even more reasons for her to look so spooked and guilty when they’d met last week for dinner.

  But if she’d known Jonas, then why had she been surprised to see him? And there was no doubt about it; she’d been bitterly surprised to have Jonas Enoch in her house.

  Lucy tried to act as if she’d missed the panic in Gram’s voice. “Yeah, the Ice Queen is invited... but I doubt she’ll show.”

  Lila looked deeply disappointed, while Gram looked just as deeply relieved. This kind of shit just can’t be happening...

  She pushed it all out of her head. There was going to be security galore, and with her new family there, ready to go furry and kill anything that looked funny at her, and with Abbey going all Dark Sabrina on anyone who tried to lay a finger—or an axe on her—Lucy felt she would be safe enough to let down her guard and have some fun.

  This new and unwanted development between Gram and Jonas Enoch would just have to settle itself. It was just one too many things for Lucy to deal with today.

  She wolfed down her food, pecked both her mother and Gram on the cheek, and then rushed out of the house to Abbey’s next door. Any excuse to get out of the house. Any excuse at all would do. Maybe she could talk Abbey into going to the mall?<
br />
  When she rapped on Abbey’s front door, Oz the cart wrangler from Wal-Mart answered.

  Lucy just stared at him for a moment, her mouth open. He wore an old pair of blue jeans and a threadbare t-shirt that was nearly see-through. Add to that his hair was kind of messed up and he stood there in bare feet, and Lucy was pretty sure he’d moved in.

  “Hey, Lucy. You here to see Abbey?” His smile was warm, a little crooked, but still delightful.

  “I’d say I was here to see you,” Lucy replied. “But I didn’t know you lived here now.”

  Oz chuckled. It was a warm, comfortable sound, nearly touchable. “I’m off today, so I thought I’d spend it getting to know Abbey better.”

  “Good idea. She’s worth getting to know.” Lucy walked in and around him as he held the door open for her, and then started back through the house to the kitchen. Oz didn’t follow right away, which was good of him. Just in case she and Abbey had wanted a moment alone.

  A strangely familiar young girl sat at the kitchen table. She had freckles and peach colored skin that really brought out her green eyes. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup, and her multicolored hair—black, pink, blue, and white—was tied back into a single ponytail.

  She was wearing a plain blue t-shirt under an even plainer black sweater, and she wore a pair of faded jeans.

  Her feet were bare also.

  It wasn’t until she smiled that Lucy realized who it was looking back at her.

  “Abbey... is that you?”

  Abbey’s smile turned shy, and a flush came to her cheeks. Lucy didn’t even know she could blush. She’d never actually seen her skin before. Abbey had always presented herself as pure, if not exotic, Goth-chick chic.

  The pretty, sweetly innocent looking girl before her could be the all American little sister—if it weren’t for the multicolored hair and pierced eyebrow.

  “Who else would it be?” Abbey had shrugged off her shyness and had worked up a descent amount of attitude, so she sounded a bit more like herself: sarcastic and wise-assed.

  “Touché.”