Mei-Lin reappeared in the door, surrounded by her friends.
“Hi, Ms. Chandler!”
Nessa managed not to make a face. Ms. Chandler was only one of the many names she’d used during her life—she’d much rather be called Agnes or Nessa than anything Ms. That made her feel as old as she truly was. Ancient.
Giving them a smile, she said, “How are you this evening, Kim?”
“Oh, you know.” She rolled eyes heavily made-up with black liner and said, “I’m sort of on probation. Brought home a C on my final, and Mom said if it happened again, I’d lose the car until I brought home something better.”
“You could have a better grade if you wanted.” Nessa knew the line she should use and she used it. Mei-Lin’s friends, the teachers, all the people they knew thought Nessa was Mei-Lin’s stepsister. They even had legal papers to document it. “Your mother just wants you to do your best.”
“I know.” Kim sighed and shrugged. “Chemistry is just so boring. I can’t wait until I’m done with school and don’t have to worry about that sh . . . uh, crap, anymore.”
Dryly, Nessa said, “Paying bills is quite boring as well. You’ll have to do things you don’t enjoy the rest of your life. The good comes with the bad.” She gave Mei-Lin a bright smile and said, “Speaking of which . . .”
She dumped the armful of shoes, books, an iPod and socks into Mei-Lin’s arms. “Before you go out, please put these away.”
Mei-Lin rolled her eyes and obediently trucked up the stairs.
One of the newer girls asked Nessa about her accent, and another started rambling on about how sssexxxy accents were. Kim enviously told the others how Nessa had taken Mei-Lin to France for spring break.
The new girl—Ashlyn—rolled her eyes and said, “Man, Mei. You’ve got the coolest mom. Mine would never let me go that far away without her.”
Mei-Lin appeared on the stairs and pain flashed across her face. Nessa gave her a gentle smile and whispered mind-to-mind, “Are you okay?”
Mei-Lin gave her a tight smile.
An awkward silence fell and one of the girls leaned over and in a loud whisper said, “Way to go, Ashlyn. Mei’s mom died last year. Ms. Chandler is Mei’s stepsister.”
Ashlyn went white. Nessa patted the girl on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Ashlyn. You didn’t know, now did you?” Then she gave her a smile and said, “I imagine your mom is quite the protective one. I’m sure you find it quite irritating, but she loves you. Enjoy it . . . enjoy her, because you never know how long you’ll have her.”
Ashlyn gave Mei-Lin a slightly sick smile. “I’m sorry, Mei. I didn’t . . .”
“It’s cool,” Mei-Lin said, shaking her head.
Changing the subject, Nessa looked at Kim and said, “So, what plans do you girls have tonight?”
Mei-Lin gave Nessa an exasperated look while Kim smiled. In a singsongy voice, she replied, “We’re going to get some dinner at Applebee’s; then we’re going to a movie. The movie is at the multiplex and it starts at nine fifteen. It should be over by eleven thirty. I have to drop the other girls off first, but we’ll be here by midnight and I’m spending the night. And yes, Ms. Chandler, my mother will be calling at midnight, so I hope you’re awake.”
“Cheeky girl,” Nessa murmured. She looked at Mei-Lin. “You have your phone?”
A few minutes later, Nessa shut the door behind them. Alone in the house, she rested her head back against the door and sighed. Alone . . . and it was too quiet.
When silence came, the voice was louder.
The voice . . . Morgan’s voice. Yes, she had Morgan’s body, and she also had Morgan’s . . . ghost, for lack of a better word.
“This is just too cute for words, you old hag. Look at you, playing house.”
It was a taunting, angry jibe, but Nessa pretended to ignore it. Once she had noise, once she had something to occupy her hands, the voice of the dead woman would fade.
For a time.
How much longer, she wondered. How much longer would Morgan linger?
Even now, months, years later, the girl haunted her.
Morgan. Damn her. She’d ruined everything she touched. She brought death and destruction, blood and chaos. Even in death, she’d managed to ruin things. If the woman’s body had just died, then Nessa could have died as well.
“Is this the reason you stole my body, so you could play Holly Homemaker?”
Nessa shoved away from the door and reached out. With the slightest flex of her magic, she turned on some music. Loud. But Morgan wasn’t going to go quiet that easily.
“This is a fucking waste. Why did you take my body if this is all you’re going to do? Shit, can’t you even go out, find a guy, get drunk, get fucked? Something—anything—would be better than watching you play mama witch to that little idiot.”
Nessa smirked. “Not while I’ve got a dead witch whining in the back of my head.”
“I don’t see why not. It’s my body.”
“Actually, no, it’s not. If it was your body, you’d be able to take it back. But you can’t.” She knew what the girl was about—Morgan wanted to make Nessa feel guilty, wanted to exploit any and every little weakness.
“It damn well is my body,” Morgan snarled, her mental voice an angry, ugly growl. “Your body died. That old bag of bones is gone. Hypocritical bitch. How in the hell can you condemn me for taking blood when you took my damn body?”
Narrowing her eyes, Nessa turned to the mirror and stared at her reflection. She saw her face—the face that had once belonged to Morgan. “You didn’t just take blood, child. You took lives. You ended lives. When I came upon you, you stank of death. How many have you killed? Can you even remember?”
“The strong kill the weak. It’s the way of the world.”
“We could write your death off that way if you like.” Malicious cow—she knew just what words to use, when to use them. Guilt tried to settle inside Nessa but she cast it off. “And here’s another way of the world. You can call it karma. I prefer ‘you shall reap what you sow.’ You killed. Blindly, indiscriminately, and you enjoyed it. You would have sucked my body dry of magic, sucked me dry of life, and then moved on to your next victim and your next. But you couldn’t beat me. I didn’t take your body. Trust me, precious, I didn’t want your body. I didn’t want this life. I didn’t take it—it was pushed on me. You don’t like it and I understand that. I don’t like it, either. But we’re both stuck with it.”
“I’ll find a way to get my body back.”
“No.” Nessa shook her head. “You won’t. You’re just a ghost, Morgan, clinging to life. You need to let go and move on. It’s not like there’s much of anything keeping you here now, is there?”
“There’s plenty keeping me here. My body, for one.”
Nessa stared at her reflection, knowing the ghost in the back of her mind would see the insolent smile on her face. That was where Morgan existed now—that was the only place Morgan existed—within Nessa’s mind.
“It’s not your body. You went and got greedy, precious. Tried to take things that didn’t belong to you. This is rather karmic, don’t you think? You took power, you took blood . . . and your body was taken from you. It’s mine now.”
“Because you stole it.”
Nessa sighed. “No, I didn’t steal it.”
After all, stealing another’s body would imply that Nessa wanted to live. She’d wanted anything but. She’d gone into that battle with her eyes wide open, knowing that after more than five hundred years, she could finally rest. She would die, and on the other side, she’d find Elias. Finally.
But fate hadn’t worked out that way.
Nobody else knew. Nessa had told no one about Morgan. Morgan was her burden, her problem. And she’d learned how to deal with the problem relatively well.
Smiling at her reflection, she leaned in and kissed the mirror. “I must get to work now. Toddle off now, precious. We living witches have things to do.”
In the
back of her mind, she heard Morgan shriek . . . just before she blocked her off.
Her workroom was tucked away down in the basement, and she might as well spend some time working on Mei-Lin’s next lesson.
Focusing on the work, she lost track of time. It wasn’t until she felt a brush against her senses that she looked up with a glance at the clock. Nearly ten. Time enough.
“You might as well come in, Mal. I’m alone for now.”
The vampire appeared in front of her, materializing out of thin air. He cast a look around the small, dimly lit room and grimaced. “Fuck me, love. You could do far better than this, you know.”
“This will do me fine, thank you.” She made a few more notes in the margin of the paper and tossed her pencil down. Rising from the chair, she moved around the desk and rose on her toes to kiss Malachi’s cool cheek.
The vampire was her oldest friend—in more ways than one. He was so old, he’d forgotten just how old he was. Nessa knew he’d been a Roman slave at some point during his human life.
She had met him shortly after she’d returned to Excelsior after Elias had died. Five hundred years of friendship.
She knew his moods. Though that pale, poetically handsome face showed no expression, something was bothering him.
He was worried.
“Where is Kelsey?”
“At the school.” He brushed an absent hand down her hair and turned away. Restless, he roamed around the small room for a few moments before coming to a stop in front of the shelf of books.
Many of the books were old. Not a few decades or even a couple of hundred years. They’d belonged to Nessa for several centuries. He studied them and then turned around, looking at Nessa with an unreadable expression.
Nessa sighed. “What it is, Mal?”
“I don’t know.” Dark, deep red hair fell to hide his face as he lowered his gaze to the floor. He stood in silence for a long, long moment.
Her skin started to buzz and adrenaline started to course through her. She didn’t feel anything. But something had Malachi on edge. The bastard had walked this earth for even longer than Nessa—whatever bothered him, it wasn’t going to be some mild little annoyance.
Finally, he lifted his head and pinned her with midnight blue eyes. “Kelsey wanted me here, pet. I don’t know why. She doesn’t know why. But she wanted me here.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Nessa rubbed and then lowered her head, mentally extending her senses. She felt nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
No nasty, hideous supernatural monster creeping close—that she would feel, just as she’d sensed Malachi’s presence. The small town of Browning, Idaho, had a nearly nonexistent paranormal population. It was why Nessa had chosen to live here after she’d made the decision to take care of Mei-Lin. She didn’t need to worry about any vampires or werewolves. The nearest wolf pack was close to a hundred miles away and the nearest vamp was even farther away. There were one or two lesser witches, a family of cat shifters and the odd random psychic.
If anything new had moved in, Nessa would have felt it.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said, although she knew it was unnecessary. Malachi might be a vampire and she a witch, but they were both Hunters, which meant they were tuned in to the monsters—the nonmortals that hunted and preyed on the innocent.
“Neither do I.” A muscle twitched in his jaw.
Nessa felt the bottom of her stomach drop out. The look in his eyes, it nearly froze her to the bone. She closed her eyes and reached out, extending her mind until it brushed up against Mei-Lin’s. She sensed the younger witch, sensed her surprise as Mei-Lin felt Nessa’s presence.
She gave the nonverbal equivalent of Shhh . . . it’s okay. Just wanted to check on you. And that she did—the girl was most definitely in the theater, as were her friends.
Feeling a bit reassured, she opened her eyes and focused on Malachi’s face. “Mei-Lin will be here shortly. It’s her birthday and she’s gone to the pictures.” She paused and took a deep breath. “She was to have a friend spend the night, but I guess I should reschedule that.”
Malachi just watched her.
“She’ll be cross with me,” Nessa said, forcing a smile.
“She’s a good lass. She’ll understand.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps. Although if I knew what the trouble was, it might make it easier to explain, wouldn’t you agree?”
They left Nessa’s small house to drive to the theater. Malachi wouldn’t go for remaining at the house. Truthfully, Nessa was glad he came along, and not just because it was amusing to watch as the vampire forced his big body into the front seat of her Ford Fusion.
“I’d have more room in a tin can, love.”
“Oh, nonsense. Besides, you can’t drive a tin can.” She started the car and backed up, zipping along the roads with careless speed.
“You can’t crash a tin can, either,” Malachi muttered, maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the door frame.
Plastic cracked and she shot him a disapproving glance. “If you make a mess of my car, vampire, I’ll have your arse.”
She could almost see how much it took for him to ease up. “How did you get any sort of license, driving like this?” He gave her a sour look. “You didn’t magic some fool into it, did you?”
“Of course not.” Nessa smiled serenely. “I don’t have a license.”
She checked the opposite lane of the narrow two-lane highway and darted around a semi, grinning as the driver laid on the horn when she squeezed in front of him.
“Fuck me,” Malachi mumbled. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the passenger seat. “Damn good thing I’m not mortal—you’d give me a heart attack.”
As they neared the interstate, she reached over and patted the white-knuckled fist he had resting on his knee. “You worry too much, old friend. Turning into a boring old fusspot.”
He shot her a narrow glance. “Very few people would dare call me a fusspot.”
She opened her mouth but the words locked in her throat.
Blood roared in her ears. She barely had the presence of mind to pull the car onto the narrow shoulder before she wrecked it. Her hands shook, cold and clammy on the steering wheel.
“Mal . . .”
It came as a cold wind.
Death. Uncaring, unstoppable.
Malachi felt it as well—she could tell by the tight expression on his face, the blue light glowing in his eyes.
She shot him a dazed look. For a few short moments, she could hardly breathe.
The sound of her mobile phone buzzing hit like a fist, stealing the breath from her lungs. She grabbed it, recognizing Mei-Lin’s picture on the display.
“Nessa, hey, you didn’t answer the home phone.”
“Mei-Lin, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” Then she paused.
In the background, Nessa could hear the girls talking and their voices lacked the excited, happy tone from earlier. Then Mei-Lin sighed and said, “Kim ran into this guy she was dating at the theater. He started being a real jerk and I told him to back off. He started yelling at me and some guy in the row in front of us told him to back off and then . . .” Her voice trailed off. She was quiet for a minute and then said, “Kim just wanted to leave. So we left. I wanted to let you know we’d be there soon and—”
There was a scream.
A crash.
And Nessa felt it as death came in and claimed yet more lives.
She cried.
His pretty little witch was crying.
Standing in a field of stone, surrounded by people, yet utterly alone.
Day bled into night and the people drifted from her side and still she cried. She was alone now, save for one woman and one man.
Anger bit into him as the man—the vampire—dared to lift a hand to touch the witch. Dared to wrap a big arm around her slender shoulders and draw her close.
Tears choked him.
Her pain racked
him.
He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to be the one to comfort her, to hold her against him as she wept.
But when he whispered her name, she didn’t hear him.
Dominic came awake with her name on his lips and a tearing pain in his heart.
Snarling, he fought free of the covers and dashed a hand over his damp face. Crying. Damn it. Again. Dreams of some woman he’d never met and he wakes up crying. He stared at the pink smears on his fingertips and stormed into the bathroom to wash away the blood-tinged tears.
With water dripping from his face, he looked at the mirror. A muscle worked in his jaw and he gripped the edge of the marble counter.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” he muttered.
He was obsessed. Obsessed, dreaming about the same woman, night after night, year after year. And now he was even crying like some fucking pansy in his dreams.
“What in the hell is this?” Shoving away from the counter, he strode to the enclosed shower and turned on the water with an angry flick on his wrist. He needed a damn hot shower, he needed a good hard run, maybe even a down and dirty fight—if he could get all three of those, it might lighten his dark mood.
But somehow he doubted it.
The dreams were getting worse, and he had a bad feeling he knew why.
Dominic Ralston was going crazy.
Five minutes later, he climbed out of the shower and stood naked in front of the mirror as he towel-dried off. Although legend might say otherwise, vampires did have reflections, and Dominic’s looked the same now as it had the night his human life had ended. Five foot ten, one hundred seventy pounds of lean, ropy muscle stretched over a frame that probably needed another twenty pounds on it. He’d been in medical school when the Change had been pushed onto him.
Now he’d forever look like that medical student, running on caffeine, nerves and not enough food or sleep. It was a fact he’d come to accept and he was grateful he’d been on the skinnier side since this was the body he’d live with until somebody put a knife through his heart or relieved him of the burden of his head.
There was no telling how long that could be, though. It could be tonight or it could be in a couple hundred years. Hunters lived erratic, somewhat dangerous lives. And very often, they were lonely lives.
Veil of Shadows Page 30
