Taran walked around to climb into the passenger seat. I turned to make sure his dad wasn’t watching and adjusted the seat so I could reach the pedals, then drove the three blocks back to his house.
* * *
By the time we got to his place, his temper had built back up again to massive proportions. I couldn’t figure out why his mood had swung so far south until Josh said something about Taran needing to make up with his dad and Taran nearly took his head off. All three guys were yelling when we got to Taran’s. They fought the way I did with my sisters. The big difference was Josh and Grim stalked off to go home. All my sisters and I could do was pick different rooms or hang out at a coffee shop or something until we cooled down.
It surprised me that Josh and Grim weren’t demanding to know about my rune tempus. I walked inside with Taran, and he turned and smashed his fist into a wall by the front door. His hand went right through the drywall.
He didn’t even flinch.
I hurried over and picked up his hand, frowning at the blood on his knuckles. “Your dad is going to be pretty pissed about the wall.”
“Yeah, it’s not the first time I’ve done that.”
“Ever thought about finding a nonviolent way to deal with that temper of yours?”
“What temper?” He snorted.
I shook my head because he’d calmed down and I had no idea why. Grim’s description of him as a walking mood swing was beginning to make sense. I actually felt dizzy. “Let’s clean up your hand. Where is the first aid stuff?”
He pulled away. “It’s just a few scrapes. I’ll wash my hands.” He opened both hands, stared at his palms. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“You shouldn’t have to see me punching stuff. You’re probably right. I need to find a new way to deal. It’s just this anger feels so massive and so hot sometimes—like it’s going to come spilling out of my throat in this massive, roiling wave of lava.”
“That’s an image.” I twisted my lips, looked at the hole in the wall, then moved a picture of a duck over to cover it. It was only a few inches from the original spot, but it hid the hole. “This should work until you can get it fixed. I think your dad is angry enough at you right now.”
“He’s been angry at me since I was nine years old.” He flexed his hand. “I’m so damned sick of it.”
I shook my head. “He’s exasperated, confused and, yeah, pissed. But it doesn’t seem like the kind of anger that’s been around that long.” I bit my lip, looked back at the duck picture. “Are you talking about what happened with your mom?”
“Billy made you curious, didn’t he?”
I nodded. Not just about his mom, but the girl he supposedly hit, too. I couldn’t see that at all. Taran was the most protective boy I’d ever met. Not that I’d met that many, but he seemed to tuck me out of the way of danger instinctively.
“He’s right, you know.” His lips tightened. “It was my fault she died.”
“How can a nine-year-old be responsible for his mother’s death?”
“Let me go wash my hands. You might not want to hang around me after hearing this story.”
“Doubt anything could make that happen.” I stopped him before he could stomp into the kitchen. Touching his arm, I noticed how tight and stiff he was holding himself. “Taran, I can see you, you know.”
“See my temper, you mean? Pretty, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “There’s more to you than a temper. You may walk around looking at everything through a shroud of anger, but you could take it off. You’re pretty nice to look at under it.”
He stared at me for several long, quiet moments. Something snapped between us, something that made me tighten my hands into fists so he wouldn’t see them trembling. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed and suddenly that something had heat. A lot of heat.
He stepped closer.
I held my breath, pretty sure I was about to learn what that gorgeous mouth of his felt like. But he suddenly frowned, looked at his hands and stepped back.
I kind of wanted to scream.
“Come on,” he said, chuckling as if he knew what I was thinking. “Let’s get you warm. I’ll tell you the whole bad story. We’ll see if you change your mind.”
A kiss would have warmed me faster than anything else. I couldn’t understand why he’d pulled back. But I followed him into the kitchen, wincing at how bright it was with all the light reflecting off the snow through the windows and onto the white countertops and walls. If I lived here, I’d paint the cabinets.
Taran turned the water on and let it run—probably to get it warm. He stared out of the window over the sink as he washed his hands, only looking down at the end. He grabbed a paper towel and blotted the back of his hand. “I was having a tantrum. I was nine years old and had thrown a fit over something stupid.” He turned to look at me. “What’s crazy is I can’t even remember what I was so mad about. I can’t. All I remember is being in the store and I guess I wanted something or wanted to go somewhere. I didn’t scream or yell or anything—it wasn’t like some toddler’s tantrum, but it was still me acting out in fury. I walked out of the store while my mom was paying for the stuff. Walked right out and she came running after me, not realizing she still had something in her hand. Something she hadn’t paid for. The security guard chased her down and she wasn’t paying attention. She only had eyes for me because I had stomped right into the street.”
I put my hand over my mouth because I could easily get what happened then.
He stared at his knuckles while still blotting them with the paper towel. The blood was bright red against the white paper and I worried one of the wounds was worse than he thought.
“Mom ran right into the street and grabbed me, and she would have gotten all the way across, wouldn’t have been hit. But I yelled and the security guard grabbed her. He saw the truck coming and for some reason just let her go, snatched me and ran.” Bleak brown eyes looked up at me. “He was a big man. I still can’t understand why he didn’t just take us both.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“There were witnesses. They said that the angle was all wrong and that if he’d grabbed her, she would have dropped me and I’d have been hit by the truck.” He balled up the paper towel and tossed it into the trash. “It should have been me.”
I shook my head. “None of that sounds like your fault. You were just a kid.”
“A kid who ran into the street because he didn’t get something he wanted.” He walked to the roll-top desk and opened it. He picked up the small, framed photograph and didn’t even look at it as he carried it to me. I stared at the image of the smiling blonde woman, my heart twisting because she held a much younger Taran, and the way she looked at him was so sweet. He looked back at her with the same expression. “Doesn’t look like you always had the anger. Not here.”
“I loved her so much. I miss her every single day and I would do anything to be able to go back in time and do that over. It’s so weird. You get up one day, and it seems like any other day, and one stupid mistake changes your life forever.”
I thought of my mother that last time at our house. She’d chopped up my snapdragons, which I’d been carting from one campground to another for years, then looked at me as if I were a stranger. “Life can change abruptly.” I looked back at the picture. “I don’t think the woman I see in this picture would like knowing how long you’ve blamed yourself.”
“It’s easy when others think the same thing.”
“I doubt your father blames you, either.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, then he smiled. “Enough with the maudlin. I’ll make us some hot chocolate and we can watch a movie by the woodstove. I don’t know about you, but I could use something that feels normal.”
I had more question
s about his dad, but could tell he was done. A lot had happened today—he’d had a lot to take in. So I nodded and put his mother’s picture back in the desk. We went into his living room and I pulled off my coat, draped it over a chair. Again, I was faced with the goddess symbol on his wall. I walked to it and smoothed my palms along the parallel circles, feeling the texture changes against my skin, following the lines that to me represented the connection I have with my sisters.
My heart tightened. I suddenly missed them so much. It had been a constant steady ache, but in that moment, our separation squeezed my heart. Hard. I missed Raven’s bleary-eyed stare in the morning while she waited for tea—the way she’d smile sleepily at me as she tried one of my new blends. The way she never made a face, even when it was awful. I missed Kat’s fierce protectiveness, even when it drove me nuts. I flattened my hands on the art, wishing we could have done this together. I wanted to prove my own strength, but I also knew that we were better together. That it was supposed to be that way.
And I couldn’t help but worry that the prophecy would come true and one of us wouldn’t make it. What would it be like to be only two? I closed my eyes because I couldn’t imagine any of us surviving the death of one.
“You okay? You suddenly look really sad.” Taran stood next to me and gently touched my shoulder.
I took a deep breath, got myself under control, then looked up at him. The concern on his face, genuine and solid, warmed me. “I’m missing my sisters and I’m worrying about what they’re going through.”
“Do you want to call one of them?”
“I will. Soon.” I turned toward him. “What’s it like being an only child?”
His laugh startled me. “You did notice that most of the time Josh and Grim are here, right? Technically, yeah, I’m an only child, but they’ve been around as long as I can remember. We played on this floor in diapers.” He patted the pocket of his jeans, where I could see the outline of his phone. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard from their mom. She sort of adopted me when mine died.” He looked up at the metal art. “She came here with my mother, who brought that thing with her all the way from Norway. Apparently, it cost a fortune to ship, but she always said it was priceless.”
He moved away from me, picked up another log and knelt by the woodstove. “It belonged to my grandmother first. Knowing what I do now, I have to wonder if she’d known about me.” He looked up. “If she’d known I would meet one of the norns. She was obsessed with them—with all stories and myths of three sisters.”
“I’m not a norn.” I walked over to kneel next to him. “Just like you aren’t Thor. We’re still ourselves.” I had to believe that. Raven had always been scared that the goddesses we had inside us would take us over and make us disappear. I couldn’t believe mine would do that to me. Just couldn’t. I put my hand on my chest as warmth flowed through it. “I believe they’re here to help, to guide us.”
“And we’re supposed to work together, aren’t we?” He brushed wood chips off his hands, rubbed them down his jeans, then touched my cheek. I noticed he took care, held back so the touch was feather-gentle. “Your face is still red from the cold outside.”
My stomach fluttered.
“I’m not sure what it is about you, Coral. I feel like I know you and I don’t think it has anything to do with your goddess. And it isn’t just that you’re hot. Because you are that.” There came a hint of that wicked grin. One dimple appeared. “But I really like you.”
“I like you, too.” I touched the hand he still had on my face. “You’re a good person, whether you believe it or not. I can tell.”
He shook his head slowly as his grin faded. “I’m not too sure about that.” He abruptly pulled his hand back and did that flexing thing I was starting to think was habit. He stood and walked toward the kitchen. “Go ahead and pick a movie. Anything but The Day After Tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m so sick of snow!”
I sighed and stood, then walked to the shelves of DVDs, wishing he’d stayed kneeling by me a little longer so I could have erased that self-doubt on his face. Wishing I knew why he seemed to want to touch me...but seemed afraid of that desire. I reached for The Shining, snickering.
Taran rolled his eyes when he saw it, but put it into the DVD player. He pointed to the couch and we sat next to each other. “Do you think that thing in the restaurant was really a dark elf?” He leaned down to pick up one of the mugs off the coffee table, handed it to me, then grabbed a throw blanket off the back of the couch.
The blue throw was one of those soft fuzzy kinds I loved, and I shared it with him.
He scooted closer and his smile this time wasn’t wicked or flirty or anything like any of the others he’d given me. There was a hint of shyness and sweetness to this one that stole my breath.
I realized a sweet Taran could possibly devastate me.
For a split second, fear knotted up in my stomach, then I let it go because I quickly accepted that it would be worth it.
He pressed the side of his leg against mine and I shivered, hoping he’d attribute it to the cold, but pretty sure he’d know he affected me.
I’d seen something in his expression several times today. He felt disconnected from people, apart from things. It was an emotion I knew intimately, and it made me feel linked to him even more. I’d also noticed that every now and then he looked at me in a different way. Maybe with a little hope.
Turning his head, he laid it against the back of the couch and stared at me. “Did you notice the way he looked at you? That elf? Like he knew you?”
I didn’t want to think about that thing. Didn’t want the return of that fear—the absolute creepy wrongness I felt when around that dark elf. But it swept back in with the memory of its expression. “I think he does know me.” I bit my lip. “I think I’ve seen him before.”
“Really? When?”
“When I was little, I went through this weird period of nightmares. I kept dreaming this scary man-shaped thing was sneaking into our tent to watch us sleep—me and my sisters.” I shivered, remembering how helpless I’d felt then, how angry I always grew when nobody saw him, nobody believed me. “I would wake up and he’d be there and when I screamed and my sisters woke, they never, ever saw him. They thought I was making it up.”
“What did your mom say?”
“Oh, of course I didn’t tell her. All she knew was bad dreams made me scream. I didn’t tell her about the thing I saw.”
His frown drew his eyebrows together. “Why not?”
“Because my mother is the most paranoid person alive. Remember, I told you that she brought us up believing someone was going to kill us. But I think it was more than that. I think she was running from someone in her past, too. Why else wouldn’t she ask her huge family to help keep us safe?”
“You have a huge family?”
“Maybe. I think so.” I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Sometimes she’d forget and talk about her past, but then she always got weird.”
“Weirder than normal, I’m guessing you mean. You did say tent, right? You lived in a tent?”
I nodded. “Most of the time. We moved around to different campgrounds and when I say she got weirder, I meant she’d go silent and moody, then almost manic. We were still allowed to go to school then and we never knew if she’d be crying or dancing around a campfire when we got home.” I paused, not sure I should share more. But I wanted to—wanted him to know more about me. “The worst times were when she’d go sort of catatonic. She’d sit and not move for hours. One time, it lasted days. My sister Kat got into her face, screaming, and she just...she just didn’t move. Not even to get up to pee.” That was when we’d learned to look out for ourselves—when Raven had suddenly started acting more adult. “We were eight. But now that I’m talking about it, I remember seeing that elf thing even before then.”
He reached out and tucked the blanket around my neck, offering comfort so effortlessly I don’t even think he knew that’s what he was doing. I rested my cheek on the back of the couch as he had, stared at him.
“I can’t even imagine what your childhood was like,” he said, his tone soft. “Mine was a little strange with my mom’s obsession with her stories, but nothing like that. I always felt safe.”
His breath brushed across the space between us, brushed over my mouth. I shivered.
“I hate that you didn’t feel safe.”
“I wonder what that thing wants. Why it keeps coming around.” I didn’t say it, couldn’t even bring myself to carry the thought all the way through, but Mist calling me a darkling had sparked a horror deep inside—one I was terrified to let loose.
It was one thing to know you carried the soul of a goddess and another to have magic that turned your life into a big mess. But to see an actual mythological creature from the stories...to know that it had followed me...to think maybe it was my...my...
I quickly shoved those thoughts away fast. Tried to remember anything significant about dark elves other than that they lived in Svartalfaheimer or Svartalfheim—depending on where I read about it. They were sometimes thought to be the same as dwarves. I’d never seen either, of course, but it was hard to equate that black, pointed thing in the restaurant with the description of a dwarf.
Or maybe I’d watched too many movies about lords, rings and Hobbits.
“Coral, this is going to sound weird because we just met, but would you stay here tonight? You can take my bed. I’ll sleep out here. I don’t like the idea of you home alone with that thing still out there. We don’t know what Mist and Magnus did with it, and we don’t know if there are more of them around.” He let go of the blanket, picked up the remote. “Plus, my dad already said it was dangerous on the roads and it’ll be late when this movie is over. You picked a long one.” He winked, turned toward the television again and held out his left arm.
I took up the obvious invitation to snuggle. “I’ll stay. I’m a little too creeped out to go to my cold house alone.” And it wouldn’t be late when the movie was over, just dark. Maybe. Who knew with the crazy weather?
Forecast Page 9
