“Did he say where he was going?” Harper tried to sound calm and unaffected as she opened the fridge. She stared into the gleaming white abyss with only a few stray bottles of condiments and a box of baking soda as she waited for an answer that didn’t come. She stared at the empty shelves and realized that the last thing she wanted was to eat. She shut the door and turned back to the teen. “Did he say anything?”
Starling shook her head, as if it made no difference to her whether or not Chance was there for her, or whether she would be in the care of Harper for an unknown amount of time. Did the girl have no feelings? Or had the wolves of her past forced her to hide her emotions, like they were some weakness that the predators could prey upon?
Most teenagers would have been dealing in some type of hysterics at this point, hating the world for the loss of their mother and hating life because of the injustice of their loss. But not Starling.
If Starling was the type who avoided the pain of the world, Harper didn’t want to force the girl to face things she wasn’t ready for. If anything, perhaps the best thing Harper could do was simply be there for the girl who pulsed with unspeakable loneliness. Starling had lost so much, and now the one person that they both — well, at least Harper — had trusted to take the girl in and protect her was gone as well.
The familiar sound of pen scratching on paper permeated through the kitchen as Harper made her way to the counter and grabbed the coffee pot from the machine.
“You a coffee drinker, Starling?”
“Yes.”
“How do you take it?” She took the coffee pot and stuck it under the faucet and let it fill.
Almost out of habit, Harper brushed her hand over the counter, collecting the dust, which littered its surface. She rubbed her dust-covered hand down her leg, leaving behind traces of her sister’s presence.
Starling shrugged.
“You’re not a cream and sugar girl? I have to admit I’m a bit of a sucker for sweets. I guess it’s my one weakness.”
Starling’s eyebrow arched. “Aren’t you a nymph?”
“Does everyone in the whole world know my secret?”
The teen glanced up at the ceiling. “I have it from a good source.”
Chance must have let it slip. “What about you? You a nymph like your mom or lucky like your dad?” She stepped up to the starting line of their relationship.
A light filled Starling’s blue eyes. Harper hadn’t noticed the girl’s eyes before, the way the blue was about the same color of the ocean on the Washington coast. Starling blinked and the light flickered out, leaving only the cold blue waves and the girl’s normal reserve. “I’m just a nymph.”
This was the closest she and the girl had come to having a normal conversation and Harper didn’t know if she wanted to risk the progress she had made in befriending the girl by asking another question. Yet the young woman had opened the door to an onslaught of questions that had wandered through Harper’s mind for the last twenty-four hours and which seemed to grow only more burdensome.
Flipping off the faucet, Harper carried the coffee pot to the little white Mr. Coffee and filled the reservoir. Opening the cupboard, she pulled out the filters and an ancient red plastic bucket of coffee. Beside the bucket was a little plastic jar of powdered creamer and sugar packets, as if Jenna, who always drank black coffee, had known Harper would be there looking for her guilty pleasures. She peeked around the cupboard door as she pushed it closed, trying to catch one last glimpse of her sister’s touch.
“So?” Harper asked, putting in the coffee filter and pouring a bit of coffee into the paper.
“Hmm?”
Harper clicked on the coffee maker and turned to face the teen. “Do you have a supernatural gift in addition to being a nymph?” The sputters and gurgles of the pot filled the quiet space between the two women and the rich scent of hot coffee started to fill the small kitchen.
“What do you care? You’re going to leave.”
The air rushed out of her. “I’m sorry about the loss of your mom, Starling. I truly am. It’s not fair you have to go through this. You don’t deserve to have lost your mom. Not now. Not ever.”
Starling glanced down at the brown, cracked linoleum floor. She opened her mouth to speak, but paused for a moment. “It’s not fair.”
“As I’ve come to learn, nothing in life is fair. Sometimes those who deserve to die are made king and those that are most needed are the first to be struck down.”
“I didn’t need her.” Starling’s voice was scratchy from lack of use and she cleared her throat. “My mother needed me.”
“That doesn’t make what happened to your mom any easier — I know.”
“You don’t know.”
Harper glanced around the dusty kitchen. “I know very well how much it hurts to lose the person you love the most.”
The young woman raised her gaze and stopped just before their eyes met, almost as if she was looking at Harper’s neck rather than her face. “At least your sister is happy.”
“What?” Harper leaned back, letting the counter support her.
“Jenna. Is. Happy,” Starling repeated.
“Starling, she can’t be happy. Jenna is dead.” Hadn’t the girl heard the news of her sister’s demise?
“I know.”
Was the teenager trying to play some kind of sick game with her mind? Harper was already having a hard enough time trying to understand and come to terms with Chance’s revelation and its possible consequences — was the girl trying to make her think she was losing her track on reality?
Harper turned back to the coffee pot and watched the brown liquid drip into the steadily filling pot. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve been through a lot, but teasing me isn’t going to make anything better.”
“I don’t tease.” Starling turned to the table and lifted up her notebook. “Your sister is here. She woke me.”
There were a lot of things Harper had seen in her long life, but seeing ghosts was a little too far out of her comfort zone. She was a scientist, a woman who dealt with clear actions and reactions. She wasn’t the type who would believe in ghosts.
Then again, there was something about the girl, maybe her no-nonsense and quiet ways, which seemed to make such a thing almost possible. The girl was so different that her revelation almost seemed to fit her — the dark-haired and dark-spirited nymph.
“Okay. If that’s true, how did you talk to her?” Harper tried to keep her disbelief from causing a strange inflection in her words. If the girl could do what she said she could, Harper needed to support her. As strange as talking to the dead was, it couldn’t be said her own shape-shifting abilities would have been any less far-fetched to someone who hadn’t known nymphs existed. In this case, an open mind was her only option.
Starling turned back to her salt and pepper composition book. She opened up the pages and lifted her pen. “Watch.”
The nib of the pen moved in tight circles even before she let the ink release upon the paper. As she moved the pen down, the circles slowed, but her movements made deep black circular gouges. The shapes changed as she moved the pen around and around, and soon they became deep cutting gashes.
“Ask for a spirit to make contact,” Starling said.
Harper didn’t know what to ask, but there was only one spirit with whom she wished to speak. A lump started in her throat and goose bumps rose on her skin. “Are there any spirits who’d like to make contact? Jenna?” Her voice wavered.
“She’s here … ” Starling’s face went blank and her eyes closed. Her left hand dropped down to the open book, but the pen in her right hand kept moving in rhythmic motions. The pen jerked. The nib dug deep, scratching against the paper so hard that it was a wonder the paper didn’t rip. “R” formed on the paper. It was followed by an “E.” The pen moved and
its ink merged into a “D” on the paper, making the word “red.”
“Jenna, what do you mean by red?” Harper looked up, searching for some kind of answer.
The front door of the house opened, letting in a puff of cold winter air and making the goose bumps upon Harper’s arms raise higher.
“Hello? You ladies awake?” Chance called, slamming the door shut behind him.
Starling’s writing stopped. The white plastic pen fell from her fingers and clattered on the table.
“Uh, yeah.” Harper looked around hoping she could catch a glimpse of her ghostly sister, but she saw nothing out of the normal. “We’re in here.”
Chance walked into the kitchen his arms full of groceries. A red plastic bread bag peaked out from over the top of one of the bags.
For a moment, Harper was angry for his leaving without telling her where he was going or when he’d be back, but her anger was replaced with a sense of relief. “Where have you been?”
He dropped the bags down onto the counter and began unloading their contents.
“I didn’t want another popcorn shrimp incident.” He pushed a carton of milk into the fridge and shut the door. “What’s going on?”
Harper stared down at the mysterious symbols and words in Starling notebook. “Starling, do you want to tell him, or should I?”
Chapter Twelve
The last bits of the scrambled eggs wiggled around Chance’s plate as if they were as uncomfortable with the conversation as he was. Harper sat her fork down on the edge of her plate with a clink.
“What do you think?”
“I’m thinking a lot of things.” He tried to give Harper a look that would remind her of how he hadn’t wanted to force Starling into spilling her secrets.
“Thank you, Starling, for telling me about Jenna. I know it must have been hard for you,” Harper said, her voice soft and caring.
“Yeah, thanks,” Chance echoed, but his heart wasn’t in it. He had expected many things from his daughter, anger, resentment, and even the revelation that she was a nymph, but he hadn’t expected this. He wasn’t prepared to hear that his daughter could speak to the dead. He was at a loss.
“Yeah,” Starling replied with a shrug.
“Let me get this right. So you can speak to the dead through writing?” Chance tried not to stare at Starling’s composition book, which sat as the centerpiece of the table.
“Yeah.” Starling ripped a corner from the piece of toast on her plate and popped it into her mouth. It was nice to see his daughter eating. It was the most normal thing he had seen her do since she’d arrived into their lives. It was too bad the little sense of normalcy was so fleeting.
He’d never met anyone who could actually talk to the dead. He’d seen a few late night infomercials in which the psychics claimed they could connect with the dead, but until this moment he’d thought it was all bullshit. Yet, sitting here and staring at the black-haired young woman he couldn’t deny she had a gift. He’d seen it firsthand, the way the pen seemed to skim over the paper, making words given to Starling by a dead woman.
He glanced over at the word Red. Beneath Harper’s sister’s name was a series of lines and then the word Find her. Help all. Chills ran down his spine as he thought of all of the possible meanings for those simple words and what Jenna had meant by red — had she meant Carey’s red hair, or something more sinister?
“Did your mother know about your abilities?”
Starling nodded again. “She could do it too.”
Another of Carey’s secrets he was only learning now — long after it would be of any help. “Have you been talking to her through your writing?”
Starling nodded.
“Can you hear the dead or do they just use you to write?” He stared at the black spiraled M at the end of Find them.
“Sometimes they talk.”
Chance tore his gaze from the letter and tried to focus on the familiar eyes of a daughter he was only coming to know. “Does Carey talk to you?”
“I only listen.”
If Starling was telling the truth and talking to her mother, then she could find out what really happened. The girl was only a day out from finding out about her mother’s death; she couldn’t be ready to talk about it. Or could she?
“Have you asked Carey how she died?”
Starling’s chin moved down and she sent him a look from under her brows, which would have made lesser men question themselves, but he had every right to ask about her mother’s death.
“Did she tell you if someone killed her?” he tried again.
“No.” Starling’s monosyllabic answer overflowed with contempt.
Why did talking to her have to be like pulling teeth? Was it her age? Or was she simply her mother’s daughter? “Did you ask?”
“No.”
Harper sat forward, almost as if she wanted to put a stop to his interrogation, but he shot her a look. “Why not?”
“Why would I?”
Harper shook her head, motioning for him to stop.
“Starling, don’t you want to know what really happened to your mom?”
Starling shrugged.
“Could you at least try and find out?”
“Stop, Chance.” Harper dropped her hands to the table as she stared at Starling. There were tears sliding down the girl’s face.
“I’m … I’m sorry, Starling.” The hope for answers which had only seconds ago been inflating suddenly seeped from him like a balloon let loose from a child’s fingers. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No. You meant to use me.” Starling dropped her face in an effort to hide her tears. “Just like everyone else.” Starling jumped up from her chair, upsetting it and letting it crash to the ground as she ran to Harper’s guest room.
“Why did you do that?” Harper asked him as if she was accusing him of some evil misdeed.
“All I wanted to know was who was behind her mother’s death. I swear I didn’t mean to upset her.”
Harper stood and picked up her and Starling’s plates and walked them to the kitchen sink. “For someone who is supposed to know how to read people, you can be terrible at it.”
“That’s not true.” Even as he spoke the words, he knew Harper was right. He’d pressed Starling too far. She was young and in pain. Chance stood up and walked his plate into the kitchen. He stopped beside Harper.
Harper sighed as she sat the plates down into the sink. “Chance, when you’re playing poker, what do you do when you have a drawing hand? Do you show them your cards?”
“No.” He sat his plate down on top of the others in the sink.
“What do you do?” Harper turned to face him.
“I don’t know, depends on the opponents and the pot odds.”
“What are pot odds?”
“In poker, if your odds of getting the card you need are higher than the odds of your bet in relation to the winning pot you go in. If not, you call.”
“So, in other words, if you think you can win, you keep betting?”
He nodded. “Usually, if the pot odds are in my favor.”
“What happens when you think you can’t win? Do you make a bad bet or do you let it go and hope you’ll get a better hand the next deal?”
It was a no-brainer; no one wanted to bleed chips. “You can chase the hand by calling or you can fold and wait to get back in the game and then make the smarter bet.”
“What you just did with Starling was a bad bet, my friend. Now you are going to have to fight to get back in the game.”
She pushed off from the sink and walked out of the kitchen without another word.
Chance felt like an ass. Harper was right — he had taken a low road to get Starling to talk, and hadn’t been thinking about her and her feel
ings. He wasn’t used to having to take women into consideration. Kodie was nothing like this — he was always just there, ready to brush up some players for the next game. He didn’t get upset when Chance fucked up. Hell, Kodie had to half expect him to say something stupid — it just came with the territory. He was going to have to pick up his game with the women in his life — or else get the hell out.
But was running away the answer? If his past had taught him one thing, it was that running was a hell of a lot easier than facing things. Running away always let him get another perspective and, at least for a short time, forget.
He walked out of the kitchen and made his way upstairs, hoping the entire way he wouldn’t run into Harper or Starling. He needed a moment to think, to come up with the pot odds. Were the odds better to stay or was it smarter to walk away?
Chance pushed open the door to his guest room and grabbed a handful of clean clothes and his shower gear. He grabbed his tired white towel that had turned slightly yellow from the ravages of age and the thousands of nights he had spent in cheap hotels. It struck him how he was a bit like this old worn-out towel — there was always some soiled spot to remind him of his actions from the past.
Throwing the towel and his clothes on the bathroom counter, he turned to the shower. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a shower in a place that wasn’t in a hotel. He hadn’t lived in a real house in a long time. The best he had was a mini storage unit half filled with castoffs from the life he’d shared with Carey. After the divorce, he’d hit the road and hadn’t looked back, but here he was, faced with all of his mistakes.
Dropping to his knees he laid his face on the cold porcelain of the tub. The cold felt good against his skin. Unlike the revelation his daughter had made, it was something real — something tangible. He reached up and pulled the old-fashioned shower knob. The pipes moaned and a deep thumping echoed up from the bowels of the house. He pushed the knob back down. Maybe this was the one thing he could fix.
The Nymph's Curse: The Collection Page 48
