by SM Reine
Things weren’t different. Samir was still going to come for me. I wasn’t ready. I was more powerful than I had been a week ago, thanks to Bernie’s donation, but I was magically flabby. I couldn’t even put a fight half as good as the one I’d given him twenty years before. Not yet.
Someone tapped lightly on my door. I hadn’t heard footsteps, so I knew instantly who it was. One giant blond pain in the ass coming right up.
“It’s open,” I called out. I actually wanted to talk to Alek. He’d been in and out of the B&B over the weekend, but we’d never had a chance to be alone.
He closed the door behind him and smiled at me before detouring into my kitchen and setting down a bag on the counter. Garlic and soy sauce wafted over to me. It smelled like heaven.
“Is that Chinese I smell?” I asked, even though the bag that read Lee’s Magic Kitchen on the front was kind of a dead giveaway. “You are a god among men.”
“That’s a much nicer greeting than you gave me the first time we met,” he said. He came over and sat down on the couch beside me, close enough that his thigh touched mine. I didn’t move away.
“Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly nice either. I believe you called me a murderer.” I frowned as I said it. I hadn’t been one that day. I was definitely one now.
He studied me for a moment and then looked at my duffle bag. “Are you still leaving?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m tired of running. And as much as it really, really kills me to admit you were right… well… you were right.”
“What’s that? I’m sorry, I think I dozed off for a moment.” He was smirking again.
“My ex is still going to come for me,” I said, ignoring his teasing. “I’m not ready.”
He shrugged. “So get ready.”
“It’s not that simple. I’ll have to start using my magic. A lot. Training. I don’t even know where to begin. I should probably learn to use a gun, or how to fight, or maybe Kung-Fu. I’m not cut out for this, and I probably don’t have enough time before he shows up. He could be here tomorrow. Or in a year. I don’t know. It’s not simple,” I repeated.
“Yes,” he said, flipping to serious mode. “It is. I have been assigned to this region. The Nine want a Justice around here for a while. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Even knowing what I am? Seeing what I did?” I bit my lower lip and held my breath. This was the conversation I wanted to have, but I dreaded it anyway.
“Two weeks ago, I was sent a dream by the Nine. In that dream I saw a beautiful woman with hair like smoke and eyes full of fire. A giant crow soared above her and on one side of her was a pile of corpses shrouded in shadows as far as my eye could see. On the other side there was a sea of woodland creatures who laughed and danced in a sunny meadow.”
“I think the humans have psychotherapy that can help with that,” I said, trying to diffuse the awkwardness I felt at his intense recounting.
“Hush,” he said. “That woman was you, Jade Crow. But she was not you, also. That night, in the circle beneath the full moon, I saw you choose the sunlight, choose life. That is a strength I am happy to encourage. A woman I want to know.”
Tears burned in my eyes. I was going to have to magically cauterize my tear ducts or something at this rate if I kept crying all the time.
“But I killed him,” I said, curling my hands into fists in my lap. “And I don’t feel bad about it. At all. I’d do it again. I want to do it again. To Samir. I want to rip his heart out and destroy him forever.”
“Good.” Alek wrapped his hands around mine and gently pried my fingers open, rubbing his thumbs over my palms. “Some people need killing. Not everyone deserves life. This is something they taught me at Justice Academy.”
I squinted at him. “Wait, there’s really a Justice Academy?”
He laughed, the sound deep and beautiful and clean. “No.”
“Fucker,” I muttered.
Then he kissed me. His lips were firm against mine and liquid desire raced from my mouth straight into my lady bits. I moaned as his tongue slid into my mouth and crawled into his lap as his hands wrapped around my back and tangled in my hair. After what felt like much too short a time, he pulled away. Looking into his eyes I saw only a warm summer sky shade of blue, none of the glacial ice I’d always compared them to.
“The food will get cold,” he murmured. “Do you care?”
“Yes,” I said as my stomach growled in a very un-sexy manner. “To be continued, okay?”
“If you are staying,” he said, and I knew he meant more than just here, in this moment.
“Yes,” I said. I could almost say it without feeling terrified.
“I like when you tell the truth,” he said.
“I’m a work in progress.” I pried myself off of his lap. “Now we’re gonna eat. And then you, mister, are going to play a video game with me.”
“Oh?” He stood up and pulled me back against him, nuzzling my hair.
I could definitely get used to that. “Yep. I can’t date a non-gamer. It’s just not done. So we’re going to have to shoot some bandits and save the Borderlands.”
“I’ve never played a video game,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I teased. “I’ll be gentle.”
He bent down and bit my ear lobe before whispering in Russian, “I won’t.”
His words turned my legs into Gumby imitations, but I managed to stagger away from him toward the kitchen, ducking my head so my hair fell in a curtain and covered my blushing face. I might have brown skin, but I was sure I was scarlet at that moment. This thing between Alek and I, whatever this was, it was new to me. I hadn’t dated in years, choosing to keep my relationships in Wylde strictly friendship-based. After all, I really hadn’t shown great judgment in choosing boyfriends before.
But here I was, about to share a meal with a sexy tiger shifter who knew what I was, knew the dangers I posed, and was still here. In my home. Not running.
I knew then that Alek was right, damn him. I was done just surviving. It was time to live.
Want to read further adventures of Jade Crow and her friends?
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JUMP TO...
WITCH HUNT by SM REINE
DEATH’S SERVANT by CJ ELLISSON
TORRENT by LINDSAY BUROKER
SPARK by ANTHEA SHARP
DEATH TIMES TWO by BOONE BRUX and CJ ELLISSON
ROOK: ALLIE’S WAR EPISODES 1-4 by JC ANDRIJESKI
JUSTICE CALLING by ANNIE BELLET
ARCADIA’S GIFT by JESI LEA RYAN
WILD NIGHT ROAD by KARA LEGEND
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(Prologue)
(Ch 1)
(Ch 2)
(Ch 3)
(Ch 4)
(Ch 5)
(Ch 6)
(Ch 7)
(Ch 8)
(Ch 9)
(Ch 10)
(Ch 11)
(Ch 12)
(Ch 13)
(Ch 14)
(Ch 15)
(Ch 16)
(Ch 17)
(Ch 18)
(Ch 19)
(Ch 20)
(Ch 21)
(Ch 22)
(Ch 23)
(Ch 24)
(Ch 25)
Acknowledgements by Jesi
Arcadia’s Gift Playlist
More from Jesi Lea Ryan
About Jesi
Arcadia's Gift
by Jesi Lea Ryan
From the bestselling author Jesi Lea Ryan comes the heartfelt novel Arcadia’s Gift, a story about teenager Arcadia (Cady) Day, whose family tragedy unleashes hidden power. After experiencing what can only be called a psychic episode, Cady finds her family in tatters. W
ith her twin sister gone, her dad moved out, her mom’s spiraling depression and her sister’s boyfriend, Cane, barely able to look at her, the only bright spot in her life is Bryan Sullivan, the new guy in school. When Bryan is around, Cady can almost pretend she’s a regular girl, living a regular life; when he’s not, she’s wracked with wild, inexplicable mood swings. As her home life crumbles and her emotional control slips away, Cady begins to suspect that her first psychic episode was just the beginning…
Prologue
“Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The differences between people lie in their use of these senses; most people don't know anything about the inner senses while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more.” — C. JoyBell C.
It felt like ripping… ripping through me, ripping from me. A deafening roar reverberated all around as I lay flat on my back, drowning the shrieks and screams echoing on the river valley walls. My eyes were wide open, unblinking, but all I could see were abstract forms in shades of black, gray and red. A searing burn cut across both of my thighs as if I’d been struck by a flaming hot iron. My flesh melted and bubbled, absorbing the phantom burning metal and shattering my femur bones like glass. Although I was screaming as loud as I could, the sound was distant, like someone screaming under water.
A hub of activity swirled around me, but I had the distinct feeling of being alone… alone in hell. I groped around on the cool soil at my sides, sparse patches of long grass and loose gravel, trying to remember where I was and what had happened to me. The pain prevented any coherent thoughts.
Voices. Panic all around me. Yet I was alone in my hell.
A flash of heat seared through my head, pounding rhythmically. Rust coated my tongue. The heat began to sink down my torso, leaking out of the stumps left under my hips. I sucked in jagged breaths as I realized that the heat was my blood, pumping through my arteries and spilling onto the cool ground.
No! I don’t want to die! Again, the screams tore out of me. No one answered my cries.
My body grew colder. The pain faded to numbness. They say when you know that you are dying, your life flashes before your eyes. I knew I was dying, but curiously, it was my twin sister Lony’s life that came to me in last minute mourning, not mine. I saw her love for me, even if we fought more than talked these days. I saw her fierce hope that our parents would reconcile their failed marriage and reunite, before nothing remained to salvage. I saw her boyfriend, Cane, and the lost promise of young love. A swell of love and pain filled my chest when I pictured Cane. It made no sense…I didn’t even like him.
The forms in my vision began moving more slowly, becoming even darker. I struggled to reach out to them, but my arms were as heavy as iron weights. I opened my mouth to scream again, but only rust flavored foam escaped my throat and rolled down the corner of my mouth and into my hair. The skin on my face broke into a cold sweat as I steadily bled out.
It was almost over. I wanted my mom.
A shock of pain ripped through my chest as my heart raced, running out of blood.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The faster my heart pumped, the less time I had left. My back reared up, head scraping the ground. My lungs heaved, panting. The forms in my vision swirled so dark they blended with the night. I reached out desperately with my hands, fingers not even finding a hand to hold. Breath rattled in my chest as it left my body for the final time and the whole world faded to black.
Chapter 1
The day before…
Yellow morning light seeped through the pink curtains of my bedroom, intruding on my Ian Somerhalder dream and nudging me awake. I brushed the crust out of my eyes and rolled over to check the time. Ugh! Why did I always have to wake up ten minutes before my alarm was set to go off? I dropped my head back onto the pillow and pulled the covers over my head. It was no use and I knew it. Those extra ten minutes of sleep were gone forever. The wisps of my dream faded away like smoke.
The sounds of morning in my house seeped into my warm blanket cave. My sister, Lony, was getting ready for school down the hall in our shared bathroom, her little radio tuned in to the local morning show. Every so often, she’d giggle at something the host or his sidekick said. Lony got up a half hour earlier than me every day so she could claim the shower —and eighty percent of the hot water —first.
In the kitchen below me, my mother hollered threats down the basement steps at my brother, Aaron, to coerce him into getting up for school. We only lived two blocks away from our high school, but Aaron still managed to be late at least twice a week.
Although I couldn’t hear him, I knew my father must be sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and checking the sports section for last night’s baseball scores.
Moisture tickled the insides of my eye lids, threatening to spill my grief. This would be Dad’s last morning here with the family. He was moving out this weekend into one of the rental properties they owned, the one where the hallways between the apartments smelled like stale Vietnamese cooking.
I turned onto my side and hugged my down pillow to my chest. It was best to get the crying done and over with now. It wouldn’t do any good to break down in front of the kids at school.
Anyone with two eyeballs in their head could see my parents hadn’t been happy for a long time. They used to argue at night after we went to bed, usually about money, but a lot of times, just nit-picking at each other. We’d hear them down in the kitchen snapping and hissing, trying not to wake us. I should’ve known things were really bad when the arguing stopped. One or both of them must have given up the fight.
I had to get up if I was going to see my dad off to work. On a normal morning, I wouldn’t have bothered, but today, it was important. I rubbed my face dry with the sleeves of my pajamas and crawled out from under the covers, turning off the alarm before it beeped. Time to boot Lony out of the bathroom. I crossed the hall and pushed open the door without knocking. My sister did her best to ignore me.
Everything about Lony’s face was glittery and pink, from eye shadow to blush to lip gloss. She stood in front of the vanity methodically sectioning and flat-ironing her natural waves into a perfectly disciplined curtain that would hang down the middle of her back. Seeing her was like looking at myself in a funhouse mirror. Technically, we’re identical right down to the DNA, but these days no one ever mixed us up. I’m more the “wash and wear” type.
“What’s wrong with your eyes? Auditioning for The Walking Dead?”
I ignored her, stepping past to flip on the shower. I dropped my pajama bottoms and tugged my t-shirt over my head. Lony was the one person that I could change in front of without being self-conscious.
“Cady! Why do you have to fog up the mirror while I’m still getting ready?” Lony complained.
“Get ready in your room,” I snapped back, stepping into the hot water and drawing the curtain closed. I heard her yank the electrical cord out of the wall and stomp off toward her bedroom in a huff. She came back a minute later to get her radio.
I took the fastest shower of my life, not even bothering to blow dry my hair. I threw on my clothes and hurried down the stairs. But when I got to the kitchen, the table was empty. Dad’s coffee cup sat abandoned in the sink. He was already gone.
Chapter 2
“Girl, your sister is a piece of work,” Shawn declared as he slid into the bench seat across from me at the lunch table and set his tray down hard. Shawn Cole has been my friend since kindergarten, but as much as he liked me, he could never hide his aversion to my sister.
“What did she do now?” I asked, jamming a fork full of pasta salad into my mouth.
He rolled his eyes and complained, “Mr. McDonnell paired me up with Lony for our semester long chemistry project. We both know I get better grades than she does, but I just spent the last half hour having her dictate to
me her ideas and how she insists we’re gonna do things. I refuse to be bossed around for the next sixteen weeks by the Cheerleader from Hell. Any advice for me on how to handle her?”
“Yes,” I replied, swallowing. “Pick your battles.”
“Thanks,” he muttered. Shawn set to work dissecting his cafeteria pizza until it was free of all veggie matter.
“Hi, guys,” Bronwyn said cheerfully, taking her usual seat by my side. Bronwyn Perkins was my other best friend. We met in the first day of junior high when we showed up wearing identical outfits. In many ways, Bronwyn was more like me than my own twin. We’re both quiet until you get to know us. We both love animals and work part-time at a local shelter. We listen to the same music, like the same books and think the same movie stars are cute. My high school career would royally suck without her.
“Shawn just found out that Lony is his partner for the chem term project,” I explained.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bronwyn replied, patting his arm. There was no love lost between her and my sister either. Lony thought Bronwyn was a nerd of the highest caliber, and Bronwyn thought Lony was a spoiled brat. Both were right to a certain extent, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love them both.
My gaze trailed over to where Lony and her friends sat at the center table, clearly the loudest group in the room. If a bomb fell out of the sky and took only Lony’s table out, Dubuque Senior High would lose all of its varsity cheerleaders and most of the football team, leaving the marching band miraculously intact. At the moment, I could barely see my sister, because, Cane, had his muscular arms draped over her shoulders. They started dating almost a year ago, at the beginning of our sophomore year. Since then, Cane had become a regular fixture on our living room couch.
