Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic
Page 161
The volume of my voice was steadily rising into a shout. “We’re all running around here taking care of things so you don’t have to. So you can feel sorry for yourself. But what about us? We lost someone too. You do not have a monopoly on loving her!”
Mom’s skin faded to a grayish white and her hands visibly shook. I had gone too far. I’d kicked her when she was down. What kind of shitty daughter does that?
Dad appeared at the door. The tight press of his lips let me know he’d heard at least part of my tirade. “You ready to head out, Julia?”
Mom stood, smoothing her clothes, not meeting either of our eyes. She nodded.
“Mom,” I said, reaching for her as she brushed past me. She yanked her arm from my grasp, leveled her lightly blood shot eyes on me and said, “Goodbye, Arcadia.”
The odd formality in her tone rooted me to the spot, keeping me from following them out the door, down the steps and to the car.
I crossed the hall to the guest bedroom and watched from the window. In the driveway, Aaron hugged Mom tightly and Dad tucked her into the passenger seat of his truck as if she were fragile cargo. Aaron waved until the truck turned out of sight.
I slumped down to the floor, drawing my knees to my chest, too upset to even cry. I never had temper problems before, but for the second time since the accident, I found myself feeling guilty and embarrassed by a sudden outburst. It wasn’t like me at all.
A long sigh from the doorway made me look up.
“So now what?” Aaron asked.
“Huh?”
He entered the room and sat down on the carpet near me. “Well, one of my sisters is gone, and I can’t do anything about it. My mother has a drug problem and is headed to rehab, and I can’t do anything about it. My other sister,” he cut his eyes to me, “has turned into some sort of psychic healer, and I probably can’t do anything about that either, but well, I’m here and so are you, so I guess that means we’re in this together. So again, what do we do now?”
“Now,” I shrugged. “It’s time to figure out what in the hell happened last night.”
Aaron’s head nodded in agreement. “Okay. Where do we start?”
I grinned. “I think it’s time for you to meet the neighbor.”
Acknowledgements
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes at least an apartment building filled with an eclectic bunch of neighbors to publish a book. I give my appreciation and thanks to the following people who played a part in Arcadia’s Gift.
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my writing group Mercy Loomis, R. Scott Steele and Joe “Zombie Joe” Alfano. They saw the most horrendous versions of this story and still chose to support me. Thank you for your input and peer pressure. Sometimes, not wanting to show up empty-handed on Tuesday night was all that kept me going. A special thanks to you, ZJ, for helping me out of my title crisis and for your phenomenal baking. Seriously, your cupcakes are like ambrosia.
Thank you to my editor, Vicki Keire. Your comments, suggestions and support were valuable to me. I look forward to working with you again in the future.
Even with a fabulous editor, it is essential to gather input from others. Thank you to all of those who beta read for me: Victoria Grundle, Elyse Rector, Mercy Loomis, Jennifer Lowe, Tammy Treleven and Ashlyn Rae —who helped me with getting the teen perspective right.
Thank you to Phatpuppy Art for my gorgeous cover. Every time I look at it I feel like Cady is alive and not just a fictional character born of my imagination.
On a personal level, I need to thank my longsuffering husband, Steve Riggles. You never complain about the time I spend in front of my laptop or running around with my bookish friends. I couldn’t wish for a more supportive man in my life.
Speaking of bookish friends...thank you to Victoria Grundle, Lindsey Hebel, Jamie Annear-Feyrer, Laura Kate Leibelt and Mercy Loomis for our book club. That one night each month has kept me sane through this whole process. I love you all like sisters!
Lastly, I want to thank Eleah, Eliesha and Michael Dickenson for educating me on what it means to be a twin and how powerful the connection between twins can be. I don’t think those of us who are not a twin can fully understand the relationship. I hope this story in some small way honors that special bond.
Okay, enough of the love fest. I have another book to write.
~Jesi Lea Ryan
Arcadia’s Gift Play List
Music is powerful inspiration for writers. The following are the songs that provided fuel for my imagination during the writing of Arcadia’s Gift. They are also the music most likely to be on Cady’s iPod.
Teenage Love - Lee MacDougall
Hurricane Drunk - Florence + the Machine
If I Die Young - The Band Perry
Handlebars - Flobots
Run - Snow Patrol
Mad World - Gary Jules
I Lay My Head - Fallulah
Return - Ok Go
Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order
Calling You - Blue October
End of the Dream - Evanescence
Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
How - Regina Spektor
Trumpet Vine - A Stick and A Stone
Kiss Me - Ed Sheeran
Sleep - The Dandy Warhols
More from Jesi Lea Ryan
Arcadia’s Curse (Arcadia - Book 2)
Arcadia’s Choice (Arcadia - Book 3) (coming soon)
And don’t miss the FREE prequel story
The End of the Line (Arcadia - Book 0.5)
Find all of Jesi’s books at http://www.jesilea.com/
About the Author
Jesi Lea Ryan grew up in the Mississippi River town of Dubuque, IA. She holds bachelor degrees in creative writing and literature and a masters degree in business. She considers herself a well-rounded nerd who can spend hours on the internet researching things like British history, anthropology of ancient people, geography of random parts of the world, bad tattoos and the paranormal. She currently lives in Madison, WI with her husband and two exceptionally naughty kitties.
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Website: http://www.jesilea.com/
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
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More from Kara Legend
WILD NIGHT ROAD
by Kara Legend
Witch Lilith Darke will do anything to get out from under the thumb of her seraphim master—even hexing the mark a werewolf placed on a mortal female. Neither of the lovers should have noticed.
But they did.
The last thing Lilith needs is more trouble in the form of shifter Remy Lemarchal.
Lilith and Remy scramble when all hell breaks loose and the packs face off.
PROLOGUE
She wakes in the body of her eight-year-old self. Once again she flexes the fine-boned strength of her thin arms, revels in the curled power of her small fists. Her pipestem legs pound the narrow mountain trail as if gravity is a theory that applies to ignorant mortals, not powerful witches. Her hair flies be
hind her like an ebony silken cape. Only this morning, her mother had told her to braid it because they would be moving. Again. She did not listen, preferring to leave it loose after her mother’s fashion. Brambles and sticks and burrs catch in the fine strands, but still, she runs.
These things she remembers while her adult body sleeps in a rented room on the wild, rocky coast of a continent which her child self did not dream.
She falls into the distant past.
Her lungs suck air never fouled by coal-fired furnaces under skies free of chemtrails and smog. The world of her childhood where safety smelled of exotic ginger and cinnamon, fresh bread slathered with white butter and milk from Frau Dieter’s cow.
The world where her mother lived.
That last night before they ran, she watched her mother comb her hair, and it was like looking in the mirror of what she would become. A long-boned woman with a narrow, beautiful face dominated by large, almond-shaped eyes so dark the hearthwitches said that to look into them too long would rip a man’s soul from his body. She hadn’t known what that meant in those days, but loved the way the comment made one corner of her mother’s mouth turn up in a sly smile.
Her name was Lilith, but her mother called her Lili. Sweet Lili. Lili of the Valley. But most often, Lili girl, and that was what she called out, urging from behind. “Faster, Lili girl, faster.”
It is comfort she wants when she dreams, comfort and the safety of her mother’s arms, the enveloping warmth of her embrace, but the dream always takes her to the mountain trail under a leering full moon while wolves howl in the distance.
Her mother had promised they could stay in the small village. Allegiances there varied, sometimes west to France or east to Germany—or what would become France and Germany down the long centuries. Borders and passports and full-body scans belonged to an unimagined future. Local folk fell silent around the dark woman and her scrawny child, but they did not throw stones or pile wood for a bonfire. They whispered with one another, but that was all, and that, her mother said, was good.
All Lilith knew was home and mother and Frau Dieter and her brood of sturdy, blond children. That evening before full dark, she had been playing with Agnes and Marie, always keeping a sharp eye for the approach of a man with a furtive look about him or a woman swathed in mantles to hide her appearance. When she found such a person, Lilith ran to him and asked if he were lost. Should he need to find his way, she could be of assistance.
For a small fee.
They always nodded. With a small silver coin in her palm, she would lead him around and around until they found the entrance to their small cottage. Her mother would open the door, the man or woman would pass inside, and only when they departed was Lili allowed to return.
She would open the heavy wooden door and creep softly over the dried rushes strewn over the hard-packed floor. Lili would find her mother unconscious on a pallet before the fire, the usual silvery blue of her aura dimmed to gray. There would be coins on the table. The higher the stack, the longer her mother slept afterward.
It was Lili’s job to tally the cost. She would lift the wooden lids of the stacked caskets where her mother kept her herbs and magicks, count the wizened ears in the red silk bag, open the gold case containing three hummingbird’s hearts and tap the stopper on the vial of unicorn’s tears. If she found anything missing, Lili had been ordered to wake her mother immediately, no matter how deeply she slumbered.
On that last night, a woman had come to the cottage, highborn as well as lovely, Lili judged from the cut of her jewels, the sweep of her gown and the absence of any effort to disguise her appearance. Her cool blue eyes, pale skin and ice-white hair declared her origins were far from a rural village, yet Lili had seen no sign of a horse or wagon. After she’d delivered the lady to her mother’s door and returned to Marie and Agnes, the girls had giggled, drawing with sticks in the dirt images of the elegant carriage such a lady would require.
In her sketch, Lili had given the great lady wings.
Later, when she returned to the cottage and tallied her mother’s supplies, instead of the tall stack of gold coins expected, she had found a single white feather. It was a large feather, so large that it must have come from a giant eagle. Lili had seen one once when she and her mother had traveled from the south and climbed into the mountains. But something whispered in Lili’s mind that this feather belonged to no eagle.
The contents of the first two caskets were untouched. Inside the third, she found a silver rune strung on a fine chain. She scooped it into her palm. It was shaped like a line curved on itself, like the body of a fish or the sweep of a bird’s wing. Frowning, she studied the shape and decided it was most like the first loop of a knot before it was pulled tight.
She cradled it in her palm while the fire crackled, and her mother slept, and though she did not know it at the time, everything had changed.
At first, the howling was faint, a distant hunt that was no more threat to folks tucked safely indoors than the lofty flight of a falcon. Notable only in that wolves rarely hunted so close to the village in late summer. Winter was when they braved the populated slopes in hopes of catching an unwary traveler. Still, Lili shivered while she tidied the small bottles and tied the pouches and wondered if the beautiful lady had found shelter on this night.
Then the howling grew louder.
Her mother woke, sitting up abruptly, her face pale as death, her eyes wide and terrified. “They have come.”
Fear slicked cold down Lili’s scalp.
“Who, Mama?”
And then her mother said a word Lili had never heard before. “Weres.”
On another night, Lili would have asked what that word meant, but on this night she knew only the word came with howling in the night, and it frightened her fierce mother.
Lili started to shake.
Her mother threw off her quilt and leapt to her feet, took Lili by the arm. “None of that, girl.” Just girl, no Lili, spoken with hard eyes and a set jaw.
Everything moved quickly after that. A jumble of images. Dressing, packing, dousing lanterns and even the hearth fire, before running into the night.
Up, always up, they ran away from the village, away from the lights of lanterns and humans. Up into the darkness of the ancient forest.
Running until her legs burned, running while her mother panted behind her, running while the earth thrummed, and the howls drew nearer.
Running until her mother fell.
Lili halted, turned back, saw her mother collapsed on the ground, one foot turned at an unnatural angle.
“Mama?” Lili whined.
The pounding is louder now, the distinct sound of heavy paws. Terror blooms in Lili’s gut, blooms into petals sharp as blades that cut every word.
All she can do is open her mouth for a silent scream.
Lilith Darke wakes in a room by the ocean and weeps.
CHAPTER ONE
He shouldn’t be in the company of humans on a night like this. It wasn’t safe.
For them.
He knew better than to put innocents at risk. Often raged at his reckless younger brother and his arrogant older brother for doing that very thing, but (tick tock) he was out of time.
Owen kicked back another slug of rich, dark lager. The beer was supposed to dull his senses, but it wasn’t working. There probably wasn’t enough alcohol lining the lighted glass shelves behind Chill’s old oak bar to shut him down on a night like this, but such thoughts didn’t help and only made him edgier. Made his vision narrow and turn every body he sighted into potential prey while his balls drew up as if in preparation for a hunt.
Which was all he needed.
A breathless run through tall pines, pounding a trail into higher elevations with his paws flying over the dense undergrowth, ears back, nose into the wind—a wild run.
What had once been a simple prescription for any complaint was now fraught with danger. He dared not shift because doing so would put others at risk.
>
He’d screwed up royally, and all that he’d taken for granted over the centuries of his long life might disappear.
Maybe for good.
He dragged his thumbnail along a groove in the scarred surface of the table and wished it was not the puny crescent that tipped his human digit, but a powerful claw.
His wolf wanted out.
For now, he was in control, but it was a white-knuckle, hanging on moment-by-moment thing, and he didn’t know how much longer he could hold on. Leaving the sanctuary of Lost Legacy to come to a popular bar hadn’t been the brightest idea, but when your only choices were bad ones, it was useless to rank them in order of evil from simply screwed to eternally fucked.
Success was something he now defined as surviving until the next full moon.
He looked around the bar in an effort to distract himself, allowing his gaze to linger on the half-naked bodies of women on the dance floor. Their pheromones floated through the thick atmosphere, mingling with the faint stink of sweat, the haze of tobacco smoke that drifted through the open windows, and the sweet musk that was uniquely female.
On this night, he was all nose, and that was a dangerous thing for a were who hadn’t shifted in far too long. Scent fired the deep, primitive regions of his hybrid brain and triggered, he’d been told by the only scientist ever allowed to study the pack, a werewolf pheromone designed to lure, entice and entrap prey as well as sexual conquests. It coiled around him now like an invisible sexy cloud.