by Aileen Erin
“Dastien.” She stepped toward me, reaching out a shaking hand but dropping it before she touched me. “We’ve talked on the phone twice this week. We talked about you coming to visit us in Peru. You wouldn’t agree, but that’s why we’re here. To pick you up. I don’t think it’s healthy for you to stay here now that the house is done, especially if you’re losing track of time again. Do you remember talking about that?”
I looked at her to see if she was messing with me, but clearly, she wasn’t.
Merde. I was worse off than I thought. I had zero memory of talking to her.
I looked at Axel. “I talked to her?”
Axel shrugged. “I’ve been out with Michael a few times. You might have.”
Wow. I had no idea I’d… Was I fading again? I didn’t think so, but I also didn’t remember talking to her. Claudia wasn’t lying, so I had to be wrong about this. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to go with you to Peru. Maybe later, but not yet. I—”
“What if you came just for a little while? A few weeks could really make a difference to your—”
I looked at Lucas. “If it were your mate?”
“I’m old. You can’t give an old and powerful wolf someone to love and then take them away. It doesn’t work out well. I wouldn’t have survived this long.” He nodded. “You’re doing better than I would be. If you want to stay, then stay. Just…be careful. If your wolf takes control, I don’t want to have to go hunting.”
Fair enough. “See.” I looked at Claudia. “I’m doing fine.”
“He didn’t say that. You’re not doing fine.” She was starting to lose her temper, but for Claudia, that meant raising her voice by five decibels. “You don’t remember talking to me. You—”
Her phone rang—playing one of Mozart’s concertos—and she threw her small bag on the counter, quickly digging through it.
“Sorry. That’s Samantha. She never calls me, and if I don’t take it, I don’t think she’ll answer my call. She’s impossible to get ahold of.” She grabbed her phone. “Samantha. Is everything okay?”
“I found her.” Samantha’s voice was shaky with excitement. “Holy shit, I found Tessa. She’s in Los Angeles.”
Claudia dropped the phone, but I caught it before it hit the ground. “Samantha. Talk to me.”
My heart was racing. This was it. Van was right. This was what I’d been waiting for.
“Dastien?” Samantha’s voice sounded a little frantic, and she was breathing heavily like she’d been running. “Is that you? Because holy shit, I found her.”
I closed my eyes and thanked God. “Yes. It’s me. Where is she? How is she? What—”
“She’s fine. Or she seems fine. It was the weirdest thing. I literally didn’t see her. I bumped into her. God, I’d been annoyed that this chick shoulder checked me. But when I looked at her, I saw through all the magic around her. I could see her. I swear I could see her. But when I stepped away…it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. So, I grabbed her, and there she was. I don’t know. Maybe I’m going crazy because I feel kind of crazy right now, but—”
I wanted to drop to my knees and thank God that someone had finally found her. I bowed my head. “You’re not going crazy. Tell me everything.”
“She doesn’t look like herself.” Samantha took a shaky breath as if she was trying to calm herself down. “And she’s covered in so much magic, it’s like she’s invisible. She—”
Changeling. The fey had made her a changeling. Just like we thought. “Did you talk to her?”
“I mean, kind of, but I totally freaked her out. She doesn’t remember me or who I am. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m a weirdo because I flipped. It was unbelievably awkward when I realized and—”
“Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“Goes without saying. We’d never find her again. I’m watching her, but you gotta come. Like right now.”
I was already moving before I could think. “I’m already on my way.” I grabbed my bag from the hall closet. I kept it there—already packed—for exactly this reason. “Thank you for—”
“I didn’t do a damned thing.” She laughed, and it sounded just this side of hysterical. “I—I wouldn’t have even been here, but Eli told me that he was sending a friend to see me. He said I had to be there, and then he disappeared. And I almost didn’t come. Things have been—that doesn’t matter. Anyway, I needed help, and I thought that’s why he sent me here. So, I showed up, and instead of an angel or an archon or someone that can help me, I smack straight into Tessa.”
Keys. I stepped onto my porch, and I realized I didn’t have my keys. Where had I put them? I wasn’t even sure of the last time I drove my car. Shit. “Eli knew.” I was going to kill that archon right after I got my keys and my mate back.
I turned to search for my keys and found Axel, Lucas, and Claudia standing right behind me, staring at me.
I guessed I should’ve explained, but Lucas and Axel’s hearing was good enough to know. And Lucas was probably filling Claudia in through their bond.
I nodded at Axel, and he ran back toward his room, and I had to assume he was grabbing a bag to come with me. Tessa was his sister, so that tracked. Of course he’d want to come.
“I don’t know how long Eli’s known or what, but he set this up,” Samantha said. “Hang on a second. I’m sending you a picture. She’s literally getting a coffee at a Starbuck’s right now. Remember that she doesn’t look like herself, but I swear to God that is her. You have to believe me.”
“I believe you.” A Starbuck’s? “Tessa doesn’t like coffee.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. She ordered something. Wait. She got it fast. It’s not a coffee. She got a tea.”
“Tea.” Claudia said, which confirmed that Lucas was helping her hear Samantha’s side of the conversation. “Did she say tea? Tessa hates tea.” Claudia was right.
“She doesn’t like tea. Are you sure that’s her?” I wanted to believe—I really did—but I didn’t have it in me to be disappointed again.
“I swear on my life it’s her. I promise. You have to come. Like right now—right now.”
Claudia’s cell phone pinged, and I switched the phone to speaker so that I could check the picture Samantha sent.
There was a blonde girl. I couldn’t really make out the face, but she was tall. Rail thin. No curves.
She looked nothing like Tessa. This was the anti-Tessa.
This couldn’t be her. Could it? “It doesn’t look—”
“That is one hundred thousand percent Tessa Laurent. I promise, Dastien. It doesn’t look like her, but I promise.” There was no waver in her voice. No lies. Nothing but determination for me to believe her.
And I did. I believed her.
Claudia snatched the phone from me. “This is why none of the searches came back. We were looking for a five-foot, two-inch, brown-eyed girl.” Claudia flicked her fingers on the screen to zoom in. “This girl looks really tall. How tall is she?”
“She towered over me, but that’s not saying much. I’m as tall as Tessa usually is.”
I wasn’t about to argue with Samantha. She said this was Tessa, then that had to be Tessa. I believed her. No matter what she looked like right now, that was my mate. “I’m on my way.”
“Don’t come alone,” Samantha said the words quickly, like she was worried that I’d hang up before she could finish. “She didn’t know who I was, and you can’t freak. If you do, I can’t hold your wolf. Dude. I don’t want to get bitten.”
I almost laughed. She’d teased me about that forever ago. “I would never bite you. Promise.”
“You don’t know—” Lucas started to argue that point, but he was wrong.
“Just bring someone,” Samantha said. “This might take some time to figure out. That fey magic is legit thick. No wonder it tried to kill me last time I messed with it.”
“We won’t make that same mistake again. We’ll figure out something else. But she’s alive, and I know wher
e she is. That’s more than I’ve had…” I swallowed down the hope and fear and excitement that was nearly too much to handle. “That’s more than I’ve had in a long time.”
Axel ran down the hall with a bag in his hand.
“I’ll let you know when I’m landing,” I said to Samantha. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“I won’t. Promise.” Samantha was quiet for a second. “Dastien?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re getting her back. This is it.”
I closed my eyes. “Thank you.” My voice broke, and I wasn’t sure what else to say or do.
Claudia hung up, and I opened my eyes.
Tessa was in Los Angeles, and I wasn’t there. I had to go. I needed to be on a plane five minutes ago. I needed—
“We’re going with you.” Claudia looked at her mate, who was on his phone, typing quickly.
“I’ve got the plane ready,” Lucas said without looking up. “Let’s go. I’ll drive us to the airport. Michael said he’ll meet us there.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. Not today.
This was it. We’d found Tessa. I wasn’t sure why Eli had helped us now, and later I’d deal with why he hadn’t done it sooner.
Tessa was alive, and I knew where she was.
Whatever fey magic held her, I would find a way to break it. And I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight until I did.
Chapter Thirteen
TESSA
I wasn’t sure what I’d ordered. That was stupid. I’d pointed at some picture of a special drink and said I’d take that, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I hoped it wasn’t gross.
It was probably going to be gross.
Damn it.
The noise in the coffee shop was abrasively loud, and the guy behind me had been grumbling for me to hurry up, and I was still flustered from that girl.
It was stupid not to order something I actually wanted. Stupid to let myself get so flustered that I couldn’t think. I hated it when I did something stupid like that.
But I’d already paid. Now, I just had to wait and see what it would be. I glanced at the posters of drinks behind the counter. None of them looked good.
Dang it.
This coffee shop was huge with plenty of tables, and since it was attached to a bookstore, I loved studying here. My friend—Georgine—was meeting me here to study for our exam tomorrow. I’d been so distracted by going over my list of things to memorize before morning that I bumped into a girl on the street.
It was my fault. I totally got that, but she freaked out. She called me by a different name. Talked about my husband.
Husband?!
I wasn’t married.
But there was something about her that kept nagging at me. This little spot in the back of my mind that couldn’t brush off the encounter. There was something in her brown eyes, in the way she recognized me. It was making me question everything.
I wasn’t married.
Was I?
No. I would remember that. My mother would’ve told me if I was married.
Wouldn’t she?
Of course she would. I was being insane. There was no way she’d keep something like that from me.
And I wasn’t even dating anyone. Georgine kept trying to set me up with guys in our classes. After three really bad dates—and one completely horrible one—I was done with being set up entirely. I had better things to worry about than finding a boyfriend.
Like the girl who nearly knocked me down, and then freaked out—screaming in my face, asking where had I been, and then ranting how people had been looking for me.
What people? No one was looking for me. It was one of the first things I checked when I woke up in the hospital.
That girl was clearly nuts. I hugged myself as I scanned the place for her, but she hadn’t followed me. Thank God.
“Cassie!” The barista called out.
I stepped up to the counter. “That’s me,” I said, but the barista was already gone, busy filling another order.
God. Why was I always so awkward?
I grabbed the drink. Dang it. It was iced and way too pink.
It had to be one of those new caffeine-infused tea things. This was definitely going to be gross. I took a sip.
Yep. Gross, overly sweetened tea. I hated tea.
Whatever. I wasn’t that thirsty anyway. I just felt like I had to buy something if I was going to spend the next few hours studying. The line was too long to get back in it now, but if I stayed for more than an hour and a half, I’d buy something else. Maybe some food, too.
Definitely some food.
I just ate an hour ago—so I shouldn’t need to eat again—but I was hungry. It seemed like I was always eating, and yet I was still too thin. My weight had worried my doctor for a while, but he saw me eat, and I wasn’t sick. So, he figured I just had a superfast metabolism.
I wove my way through the crowd waiting for their drinks to the wooden table where my friend was sitting. Georgine was beautiful. Like the kind of beautiful that made everyone stop and look at her. She had blonde hair like mine, but a glossier, longer, curling mane. She didn’t wear makeup, but she didn’t need it. Her skin practically glowed. Her small nose, big ice-blue eyes, and full red lips made all the guys in class fall over themselves to get near her. It was almost funny to watch. Almost.
I wished I was as pretty as her, but my blond hair and blue eyes were as plain as plain could get. And that was fine. Maybe not all the way fine, but I was working on that being fine.
I just didn’t feel like myself most days. I wasn’t sure if it was the amnesia or the brain injury or the fact that I was always hungry. I kept losing weight, no matter how much I ate. Some days I thought that my body was slowly committing suicide.
“Hey. Are you okay?” Georgine’s voice sounded like little wind chimes ringing softly in the air.
Shit. Wind chimes? Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe I was a little bit crazy.
Georgine was a normal girl. A beautiful, normal girl. There was no twinkling chimes in her voice. There was no golden glow to her skin. I couldn’t think those things anymore. I didn’t want to get sent back to the doctor. He gave me a severe case of the creeps.
“Hello?” Georgine snapped her fingers in my face. “Cassie? Are you with me? Or do I need to call your doctor again.”
She was not calling my doctor. I couldn’t believe my mother gave Georgine his number. “I’m here, George.” She hated it when I shortened her name. “I’m fine.” I took a sip of the tea to stall for time and regretted it. It was too sweet and too tea-ish and had an aftertaste of flowers. It was like drinking perfume.
I thought about spitting it back through the straw, but would people notice? It might be too gross to do that in public.
I glanced around the room, then back at the cup.
Yes. It was way too gross to do that in public.
I forced myself to swallow and cleared my throat. “I’m fine. I just ordered the wrong thing.”
“You wouldn’t have ordered the wrong thing if you were paying attention. You look weird.” She reached for her phone. “Maybe I should call your mother.”
“And tell her what? That I’m a little spacey. She’d be annoyed at you for wasting her time.”
Georgine looked from me to the phone. Me to the phone. Me and then she put the phone down.
“I’m really fine.” I wasn’t sure how to get out of telling her what happened. She was letting it go for now, but she wouldn’t stop until she knew what was wrong with me.
And there was something wrong. A lot of things wrong. Like how I hated that she was way too close to my mother. She ratted me out all the damned time, like a meddling older sister. Or maybe jailer was a better term for her. It was exhausting. She was exhausting. Then again, I thought everything was exhausting since I woke up in the hospital.
I’d been in an accident a year and a half ago and suffered what my doctor called a traumatic brain injury. I coul
dn’t remember anything from before the accident. I took six months off school after I woke up, but then finally convinced my mother that I should go back. So, I moved into my apartment and was a month into my third year of college.
Sometimes I felt lost in my classes. I couldn’t remember what I’d learned before the accident. My mother told me that I could either pick up where I left off or not go at all. She told me the fact that I was struggling was proof that I shouldn’t be in school at all. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she was doing.
My mother wanted me to quit—that much was clear—but I wasn’t a quitter. So, I did what I could to keep my grades up.
I stared at Georgine. She occasionally did this thing where she’d look me in the eye, and we’d see how long it’d take before I’d look away. I never looked away first, and I wasn’t about to start today. If I got her to look away first, then she’d drop the whole texting my mother thing. I’d win.
At least Georgine wasn’t rooming with me. If I had to do staring contests with her multiple times a day, I’d lose whatever was left of my mind. I was fine studying with Georgine—we were both psych majors, so it made sense—but anything beyond studying every few days was a hard pass for me. My mother said that we’d been best friends since grade school, but some days I found that hard to believe.
Or maybe the accident had fundamentally changed who I was.
Every time I thought about the accident, I got angry.
I was angry. Angry that I couldn’t remember anything. Angry that my past was gone. Angry that it was never, ever coming back. That I was missing so much of my life hurt me in a way that I couldn’t describe, but it literally gave me a migraine to end all migraines when I tried to remember anything. So, I had no choice but to focus on my future.
Like school. Like the books in front of me. Like the test I had tomorrow.
Georgine finally dropped her gaze, and I wanted to cheer myself on.
At least I could win one battle today. “If we don’t get started, we’ll be here all night.” I busied myself with pulling my books and notebooks out of my backpack, then notecards, then my highlighters, and finally, my bag of pens. I lined everything up and then looked at Georgine.
