He clapped her on the shoulder and his fingers slipped through her. “Yes. Just stay here and keep your head down.”
Yeah, right. There was no way she was saying in the cooler, sitting behind stacks of dairy and shivering like a scared little damsel. It wasn’t the role she was meant to play. Whatever was going on out there, she would be right behind him. Ready to fight with him.
The sinking feeling in her gut warned her what to expect. And the niggling voice in her head told her it was something she’d done. Which was impossible. She’d been good. Keeping her head down. Working her way toward information in an offhanded manner so she wouldn’t be caught. Oriel had no idea she was actively trying to steal the potion from him.
The man in question squared his shoulders and pushed down the hallway. Two steps behind him, Georgia could hear his heart beating faster than the hum of a machine. She urged her feet to move faster and faster until she burst through the coffee shop doorway a second after him.
“Keep your head down!” she shouted, taking stock of the situation in a split second.
He didn’t keep low, the stupid man. In every action scene she’d done, the director always said to stay low, to make sure your center of gravity was closer to the ground whenever you approached a fight. And what was this moment but a fight? Opposing sides ready to clash in war.
Oriel burst into the room like a battering ram with just as much impact. The crowd of supernaturals split to steer clear of the two imposing figures standing on opposite sides of the room. Oriel towered over them, an avenging god.
Their flight response was good, Georgia thought. Better to get them out of the way before something happened. If only she could take her own advice.
The shifter she’d spoken to weeks ago was hunkered in the shop doorway. Six feet of pure intimidation dressed in blue jeans and a dark t-shirt. His hair was long and blond, falling straight down over his ears. The wave of menace rolling off of him hit her square in the face.
“Who the hell are you?” Oriel called out.
The shifter smiled, his eyes hidden behind a pair of wraparound glasses. “I’m an invited guest. Didn’t you hear? You have something I want and I’m in a damn good position to get it.”
“Get out of here.”
“I will when I’m good and ready.”
Georgia felt his eyes on her. Crazy, she knew, as she tried to blend fairly well with the reclaimed brick walls at her back.
“Oriel, don’t…” she began.
“You have something I want,” the shifter repeated, louder this time. He held his hand high and let the rest of the terrified patrons see the prize he held. “At least, you had it. Thanks to a little birdie, I knew just where to find it.”
Excuse me?
Oriel hardened his gaze and said nothing about the shifter making it out of there. They all knew it was too late. “You better hope none of my people are hurt.”
“Would I tell you if they were?” He fired off another round of shots directly into the ceiling, causing the crowd to scream and flinch away.
God love him. Oriel stood his ground.
In a last-minute draw, the stranger pointed the gun directly at Georgia. She closed her eyes, breath catching in her throat. Would he try to hurt her, too?
“Should I?” he murmured. Still, she heard every word. “Would it be too much?”
Dread turned her stomach to cement until it threatened to sink her.
Laughter filled the air and although she waited for the impact, it never came. When she opened her eyes, the shifter was gone and Oriel was bent over a prone figure on the floor.
“You okay?” he asked softly, trying to stay calm amidst the panic.
Hilary hissed. One hand braced her up while the other put pressure on her knee. Blood seeped from the quarter-sized hole in her knee. Pooling. “I don’t know how he knew, boss. I tried to keep him contained in the main area but the son of a bitch got me in the knee.” She cried out when Oriel tried to move her. “Fuck, it hurts!”
“We need to get you to the hospital.”
She reached out and took hold of his arm when he tried to move her. “Jesus Christ, you know I can’t go to a regular doctor. Use your head!”
“Then where?”
“We have a person over on 3rd street. By the shore. I’ll give you the address.”
“Done.” Oriel glanced up. His face gone white. “Georgia? Where are you?”
It took her longer than she wanted to admit to rematerialize. Not because she didn’t know how, even though she didn’t, not truly. Because she was afraid. A slithering cold had gone up her spine and settled there. She solidified in the harsh fluorescent glow. “You need to go after him.” She kept her head down and her frigid gaze on the floor tiles, biting off her syllables hard enough to crack her teeth.
“Come here and take Hilary to the hospital. She’s gonna need someone to address the wound.”
Georgia tried to steer clear of the blood on the floor and turned instead to her favorite alternative to fear. Fury. “Didn’t you hear me? You need to go after him and kick his ass! He took off with your potion. What are we, er…you? What are you gonna do?”
His gaze met hers and instead of lashing out as she expected, he slowly helped Hilary to her feet. When the other woman couldn’t handle the pressure on her leg, he bent to pick her up, ignoring her whimpers, then set Georgia with a look.
It was his stillness that took her off-guard. Profound stillness in the middle of the chaos. There were bullet holes in the walls and screaming customers on the ground. Steam rising from a container of burning milk Hilary had been in the middle of making.
“We don’t have time to sit around here and clean up. We need to follow the man before he gets too far away. We need to get the potion back,” she argued, hearing her pulse in her ears. The hunger rose inside of her, snapping its jaws, urging her to kill. Kill. Her vision darkened around the edges.
“Easy, Geor—”
“What are we going to do if we can’t get anymore? I mean, people are going to starve.” Frantic energy had her striding toward the door. I’m going to starve. “And you’re standing around here acting like it’s no big deal, no big problem. It’s a huge problem! And that asshole is going to get away with it.”
“Georgia, wait!” Oriel called out after her. “Going off half-cocked isn’t going to solve anything.”
“No, but it’s going to make me feel better,” she retorted over her shoulder.
She had to do something before the energy ate her up from the inside. The confusion, the panic. The shame. The drive to hurt someone the way she was hurting. The son of bitch bear shifter had played her like a finely tuned instrument.
Last week she was alone on the graveyard shift and the man came into the shop. He never gave her a name and offered up nothing more than a smile on first greeting. He never said anything unless it played on her weaknesses. And once again, he had made sure they were alone before asking her what she knew about the nullum fame. Asking her about Oriel and his business.
Had he really played on her weakness? she thought again. Or had he known what buttons to push? He’d talked to her about her career before the accident. About how he’d loved watching her on the screen, and that was where she belonged. She shouldn’t be stuck here, being forced to work for a man she didn’t respect. It was a waste of her talents, her beauty, her brain.
Georgia wanted to smack herself in the head. Had she lapped it up? Yes, yes she had. It had been so long since she’d been in the game that she’d forgot how to play. Someone else had snuck in and took her king. Could she still protect her queen?
She was out the door when Oriel’s hand latched onto her elbow.
“This isn’t the way,” he told her. There was a streak of blood across the front of his shirt and his pupils were dilated. A muscle ticked beside his lips. “Think about what you’re doing.”
She sent him a ferocious glare in return. “I am thinking. You can’t let them get away with i
t. They came in there with guns blazing and they hurt people. They hurt Hilary.”
“Yes, and it’s Hilary I’m thinking about. We can’t run after whoever these people are without a plan. Odds are good they’re long gone by now because, unlike some people I might mention, they knew what they were doing. They executed whatever plan they had. And here we are standing in the street yelling at each other like a bunch of assholes.”
“Then shut the hell up!”
She stomped her feet on the ground and turned in a half circle, raising her face to the sky. Feeling broken. There was nothing quite like being helpless. Knowing you didn’t have it in you to solve the problem. More than anything, she wanted to run after the shifty shifter and beat him to a pulp. She wanted Oriel to strangle the life out of the man, and not just to assuage her guilt, but because it was deserved.
A swift lance of pain struck her stomach to remind her where she stood. Georgia purposely took a second to breathe in deep. This wasn’t the way, her rational mind told her. Her human mind. It was like when she’d come back from the dead, she had come back a different person. Angrier. More bitter. More violent. More willing to hurt the people around her even as she was hurting herself more.
“Come on with me.” Oriel held out a hand. “We need to clean up the shop and see about the damage. Hilary might not be the only one hurt. I can send her off with Jasmine if you’d rather stay with me and do the hard work.”
Georgia shook her head. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I want.”
Except she did. She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to make the shifter pay for what he’d done to her, and to the coffee shop, and to the customers. She wanted to tear him limb from limb and make him suffer for hurting Hilary. Stealing from Oriel. She’d wanted the potion, true. But not like this. And she wasn’t the one with the vial in tow, now, was she?
“Then take my hand.”
The next few hours passed by in a blur. Jasmine carted a sobbing and screaming Hilary off to whatever selkie physician she knew and Oriel called in the rest of the staff for reinforcements. The customers left behind in the aftermath were checked. Comped their food and drink and god knew what else Oriel offered to get them to calm down. He locked the door behind them before putting up a sign stating they were closed due to an emergency.
None of it worked for Georgia. Her insides felt electrified. Like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket while standing in a puddle of water. Oriel told her it wasn’t her job to clean up the blood. He’d have one of the dish boys come out and take care of the mess.
She insisted. Even when her gut heaved and her head lightened and her gloves came away streaked crimson.
A wave of exhaustion hit home. God, was the air heavy or was it just her? She felt like she was breathing in cement, with a feeling it wasn’t just about the break-in.
“Hey.”
She jumped when Oriel’s hand fell on her shoulder. He was always doing that.
“Are you okay?” he continued. “You look like you’re thinking some deep thoughts over here.”
She brushed off the contact and ducked her head. All the better to hide the guilt coloring her expression. The guilt she couldn’t seem to shake. “I’m fine,” she answered. “Distracted.”
Oriel sighed. “Yeah, I know. The best thing we can do now is put our nose to the ground and see if we can find out anything more about who did this. Focus on our people here and carrying on. Making sure our customers feel safe.”
“Staff, too,” she muttered.
“Hey, what happened to Hilary wasn’t your fault. You’re safe here with me.” His eyes were earnest. His voice strong. His demeanor steadfast.
And Georgia felt like the world’s largest pile of shit.
“Sure, thank you.”
Oriel walked off across the room and she let out a breath. No, she thought, it is my fault. No matter how she tried to spin it.
Because she was the one who had invited the shifter inside.
She wanted to beat her head against something hard for what she’d done. Inadvertently, and because of her own selfishness. She remembered the conversation last week when the shifter showed up at his usual time.
“This place is hopping. Much busier than I would have thought of a small town. Almost like the places I’m used to seeing down south.”
“Yeah, it usually stays busy.”
“That’s not fair. You deserve to take a breather. Relax a little. Not hop up and down like a servant for the whims of these people.” He let his hand gesture weakly toward the crowd filling up the main space of the shop.
Georgia shrugged. “It’s not always bad. Usually, the busiest times are noon and around sunset when the night creatures come out to play. There’s always a few dead zones in between. And Oriel lets me take breaks.”
The shifter scoffed. “He lets you. Lets you. Someone like you doesn’t act according to the whims of someone else. You make your own way.”
She liked the sound of that. “Well, at the moment, I’m pretty well stuck.”
“We’ll see. Soon enough you’ll be free, Georgia. To go wherever you want. To be whoever you want. Then we will see what you can do.”
She’d told him when to come. Inadvertently, yes, but she’d given him information on their busiest moments. And wouldn’t you know the son-of-a-bitch chose noontime to terrorize the coffee shop? How he managed to find the potion when she hadn’t first was beyond her.
Hands curled into fists at her side. Because she’d wanted so desperately to get her old life back, she’d endangered the lives of others. She’d shot off at the hip and the mouth without thinking things through or really getting to know the shifter. The shifter, shit. She didn’t even know his real name!
She’d made a fool of herself and worse. She’d lied to Oriel. She’d hurt Hillary.
It was time to face the facts. The monster needed to be hunted. And she was the only one who could do it. She had the power. Instead of forcing it down or condemning it, maybe she needed to use it to her advantage.
No matter what Oriel said, she began to formulate a plan of attack. She was going after the shifter. Tonight. Maybe it was time to put away her childish aspirations for a normal life.
And maybe it was time for her to realize. She’d never be in the spotlight again.
7
“You’re going to have to stay home,” Oriel told his sister, gathering his jacket and wondering what kind of essentials he would need. “I need you here.”
Was this going to be a long trip? Or would he be able to kick a little ass and come straight home? It depended on how big of a bee’s nest he poked. The way his luck was running, he needed more than an overnight bag.
Turning in a circle to make sure he had the essentials, he listened to Jasmine respond with an outraged squawk.
“Why do I have to stay? And where the hell are you going?”
He sighed. “Language!”
Georgia was starting to rub off on his sister in the wrong ways. They would have to have a conversation about Jas’s language when he returned. He refused to think of it in anything less than concrete terms. He would be back. Period.
“Fine. Where are you going?” she repeated, although it cost her.
“Better, thank you. And I’m not sure yet,” he admitted. His hands were on his hips. Would he need his toothbrush? “I have to try and follow the shifter’s trail. Assuming it hasn’t gone cold yet.”
“How are you going to do that, Einstein? You’re human. You don’t have the supernatural gifts it takes. You can’t even track down sales at a grocery store.”
“I’m going to take Georgia with me.”
Jasmine stopped, her legs crossed left over the right as she sat on his bed. In the middle of the mess he’d made digging clothes out of his closet. When she remained silent for too long, he stopped to stare at her, noticing her pale cheeks.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” she began slowly. “I mean, what if something happen
s here while you’re gone? We’re going to need a little paranormal muscle. Hilary is out of commission. She won’t be up to snuff for a while even with the hyper healing. And I refuse to take orders from a bottom dweller like Kim.”
“I’m leaving you in charge.”
One eyebrow lifted. “Last time I checked, I’m still human, too.”
He finished stuffing clothes in a bag, feeling it better to be safe and take more than he needed rather than needing something he didn’t have. “You’re a human with a lot of connections. One’s other normal people don’t have. If there’s any trouble then you have a list of numbers to call. I’ll also bring in Arturo.”
Jasmine started. “The phoenix?”
“If he’s still in the area. I was thinking about giving him a ring anyway. If you’d feel better knowing he’s close by…” Oriel trailed off at the look on Jasmine’s face. That and the way she kept her eyes averted, teeth nibbling the inside of her cheek. It was a dead giveaway. “Please don’t tell me something I don’t want to hear.”
“Fine, then I won’t.”
He didn’t want to know what had gone on between the two of them. It was better he continue to picture his sister as the sweet little virgin he wanted her to be instead of the…no, wrong. Scratch that. “He might not be around,” he scrambled to say.
“Go ahead and call him. I don’t care. At least I know that no one will bother me if he’s here. I’m not sure I can handle a repeat of what happened today. Not alone.”
Oriel crossed back to the bed, Jasmine bolting to her feet, and took his sister in his arms. He drew her close. She felt too small. Too delicate. For a second he questioned the sanity of running off and leaving her here. Who was going to protect her? If anything happened to her, he would burn down heaven and earth.
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself while I’m gone,” he muttered, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“I promise.”
“You answered way too quickly.”
“I. Promise.” Jasmine slowed down purposely then leaned away and rolled her eyes. “Just go. I don’t want to deal with you anymore.”
Shadows and Sorcery: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 66
