Oberon Boxed Set (Books 1-3) Welcome to Oberon

by P. G. Forte

  Which is why she thought she had to be hearing things when Sam’s voice, warm and deep and filled with satisfaction, sounded in her ears. “I’d love to. Thanks. And afterwards, I can give Marsha a ride back here to get her car.”

  She knew she was being manipulated, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. “What the hell,” she sighed, throwing caution to the winds. “Fine. Why not?” She might as well do what she could to help Scout out, and see where the rest of this was leading. Even if it did mean she’d end up having to drive home in the dark. She hated that. But at least one thing was certain. There was no way the day could get any worse than it already was.

  Ten minutes later, she was no longer so sure about that.

  * * *

  “A motorcycle?” Marsha squeaked, and Sam nearly laughed at the panic in her voice.

  “Sure, doll.” He indicated the saddlebags he was strapping back onto the bike. “What did you think these things were for?”

  “I- I didn’t think. Obviously.” Her eyes scanned the parking lot in vain, her friend had pulled out several minutes earlier.

  “Isn’t it going to be a little cold for this tonight?” she asked, as she buckled on his extra helmet.

  He looked her over. Shit. The lady had a point. He really hadn’t given much thought to the way she was dressed, until now. She was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt, over a thin cotton skirt and sandals, for pity’s sake. Oh, yeah. She’ll freeze. No question.

  “Here,” he growled, taking off his leather jacket and tossing it to her. “Wear this.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” she said as she shrugged it on, not bothering to zip it up. “But what about you?”

  “I’ll live,” he answered, turning away quickly, so she wouldn’t see him smile. Oh, yes indeed. He’d seen the way her nipples were poking through the t-shirt material, and he could already imagine how they’d feel pressed into his back. Giving up his jacket would be well worth it. With her wrapped around him, parts of him would be feeling very warm in no time.

  They caught up with her friend within several blocks of the marina. As he followed her through the winding streets of the town, Sam had plenty of time to wonder just what the hell he was doing.

  It had seemed like the smart thing to do – stay tight with the cop and his friends, and learn as much as he could about how the investigation was shaping up. That way maybe, if things turned bad and he decided he had to make a run for it, he’d have just a bit more of a head start than he might have gotten otherwise.

  So then why did he feel as if he were walking into the lion’s den?

  A nervous shudder ran through him and he felt her arms tighten around him, as an answering shudder ran through her, as well. Shit. He really wished she’d stop doing that. He was feeling very warm, thank you, just as he’d suspected he would. But the way her body seemed to respond to every move he made – to every thought that crossed his mind, as well – was entirely too uncanny. Disturbingly erotic, in fact. Not to mention distracting as hell.

  He pulled back on the gas and the bike lurched forward; roaring around the curves, eating up the road in what would have been a very satisfying fashion, if her fingers weren’t suddenly burning holes in the front of his t-shirt.

  Correction, he thought, gritting his teeth against the sudden pounding of his heart. He wasn’t walking into the lion’s den, he was riding in at breakneck speed. With Harry’s stolen hard drive still stashed in his saddlebag, and a mind-reading, incendiary freak of a witch strapped to his back.

  He had to be out of his fucking mind to have thought this was a good idea.

  Back to Top

  * * * *

  Chapter Nine

  * * * *

  “What kept you?” Lucy demanded as she met Scout at the front door. The girls and the dogs had already dashed through the house and out to the patio, where Dan and Seth, her parents and Nick’s mother were all waiting. “We expected you guys an hour ago!”

  Scout shrugged. “What can I tell you, Lucy? We had to wait until everyone had been questioned and everything.” She glanced into the house, and then lowered her voice. “Where did you put everybody?”

  “They’re out back. On the patio.” Lucy’s gaze shifted from Scout to the driveway, where Marsha was just getting off the back of a really large motorcycle. “What the hell is Marsha doing riding that thing? I didn’t know she was coming tonight? Who’s that with her?”

  “Oh, it’s been a real interesting day,” Scout chuckled, as she patted her on the shoulder. “I gotta get to the bathroom, now. And then I should probably go see your folks. But... we’ll talk. I’ll tell you all about it. Later.”

  Lucy watched as Marsha walked up the steps. She looked really tense, but that didn’t exactly come as a shock. If that bike was only half as fast as it looked it was a freakin’ menace, and Marsha hated fast. She always had. Well, ever since she’d nearly died after being pushed off a cliff in the middle of the night. That’d be enough to put anyone off speeding, Lucy supposed.

  “Have I missed something, Marsha?” she asked. “You lose your mind since I saw you yesterday?”

  Marsha grimaced. “Yes, Lucy, I have. And please don’t start in on me, I already have a headache, thank you.” She gestured toward the man with her. “This is Sam, by the way. He and I have been recruited to provide Scout with moral support in Nick’s absence.”

  Lucy nodded at him. “Sam. You the reason she has a headache?”

  Gray eyes sparkled. “Oh, let me guess. You have got to be Mandy’s mom, right? I see where she gets it now. Nice to meet you.” He glanced at Marsha for a moment, and then looked at Lucy once more, smiling wryly. “I realize it probably sounds strange to you ladies, living here in Oz as you do, but the only headaches I’ve ever claimed to know anything about are my own.”

  “Uh-huh. I guess I’ll take that as a yes then.” Lucy said, her eyes once again on her friend. “No offense Marsha, but you’re the one who looks like she needs support. Are you okay?”

  Marsha smiled wanly. “Thanks, Luce. I’m fine. How’s everything here? Your parents get in okay?”

  Lucy sighed. “Oh, yeah, everything’s great. Except, I’m beginning to think my brother had the right idea in staying at home.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “You mean, besides my father’s paranoid delusion that Nick has somehow engineered this murder as an excuse to avoid being here tonight? Well, to start with, Scout’s got way too many cats.” Once again, Lucy shook her head, remembering the scene earlier, in the backyard—

  “How many do they have, again?” her mother had asked as they stood on the patio, watching three of the cats stalk each other through the grass. She was using that very refined tone of utterly horrified fascination that Lucy had come to almost fear.

  “I don’t know, Mother,” Lucy answered. “Four or five, maybe?” Knowing full well that four plus five, was a whole lot closer to the mark. “I told you. Scout’s stepmother had gotten a little eccentric toward the end.”

  “I understand that, dear, but… and you said they have a dog as well?”

  “Oh, Nick can’t be happy about this,” her aunt said flatly. “He’s never really liked animals all that much.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, Aunt Lil. I haven’t heard him complain.”

  She was not going to get into an argument with her aunt tonight. No matter what the provocation. If the woman didn’t want to remember how her son had begged for a puppy every year at Christmas for as far back as Lucy could recall, then she was not going to remind her.

  “Well, of course he wouldn’t complain,” Nick’s mother insisted loyally. “I’m sure he lets her do whatever she wants.”

  “Well, you know Nick,” Lucy said mildly, refusing to meet the skeptical look on her own mother’s face. They both knew damn well the person most likely to do whatever he wanted to in any given situation, irrespective of anybody else’s wishes, was Nick himself.

  It had always
been that way. It was not that Nick had ever been a bad kid, or a troubled kid, or especially unruly. He’d just always had to do things his own way. And since his way usually involved either excess speed, force or the near total disregard of other people’s rules, he’d ended up in trouble on a fairly regular basis. The whole family had breathed a collective sigh of relief when he’d decided to join the police, mistakenly assuming that he’d somehow developed an appreciation for law and order.

  Their relief had dissolved in a red-hot instant the moment they realized that all he’d actually acquired was the freedom to drive faster and more recklessly than ever – with complete impunity. As well as a license to carry a loaded weapon.

  That had not been a good moment. But it flickered out and faded into total insignificance next to the moment when they’d all learned about his relationship with Scout.

  “She’s fifteen years old, God damn it!”

  Her father’s bellow could be heard right through the two floors that separated them, and Lucy Sylvana Greco then, sixteen years old, grounded for eternity and banished to her room until hell froze over, could not resist the temptation to creep downstairs anyway and find out what had gone wrong, now.

  She found her family in the kitchen, which was not unusual for that time of the morning. Her father paced furiously across the narrow space, while her brother Joey, arms crossed, rigid with anger, propped up the wall at the other end of the room. Her mother sat at the table, wearing a bathrobe and a distraught expression, wearily shaking her head.

  “Joe, please. Try and calm down. I’m sure Nick didn’t—”

  “Fifteen, Rose. Younger than Lucy, even!”

  “Actually, dear, I think she’s sixteen now. But—”

  “And like I keep telling you,” Joey snarled through clenched teeth. “He didn’t know that. He thought she was older. She told him—”

  “Fifteen, sixteen, what the hell’s the difference?” her father said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. “Who cares what she told him! What, is he blind now? He can’t see? She’s a kid!”

  “Yeah? Have you seen her lately?” Joey snapped. “She don’t look like a kid no more, Dad, and she doesn’t act like one, neither! Ask Lucy, if you don’t believe me.”

  “Ask me what?” Lucy asked from the doorway. “What are you all talking about?”

  “Your friend. Scout,” her brother answered. “Or Jen. Or whatever the hell she’s calling herself these days.”

  “Didn’t she have a birthday recently, Lucy?” her mother asked her as Lucy sidled further into the room.

  Good, Lucy thought, as she reached for the coffeepot, they’ve forgotten I’m not supposed to be down here.

  “Isn’t she sixteen now, dear?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s right.” Lucy nodded as she poured herself a cup. “Sixteen.” Jen? What the hell was Joey talking about? Nobody ever called Scout that anymore. “Why? What’d she do?” Besides land them all in hot water for the rest of their natural born lives, of course.

  “Did you know about this?” her father demanded. “What your brother’s been telling us about Scout and your cousin?”

  Her cousin. Nick. The rat. If he hadn’t somehow tricked Scout into telling on them, they’d never have gotten expelled from school, and she wouldn’t be spending the rest of her life trapped in her bedroom. It was his fault she was living like a nun. “Oh. That. The disgusting scene in the principal’s office, you mean?”

  “The principal’s office!” Her father’s face turned a ghastly shade of purple.

  Lucy stared at him in alarm. Is it possible for his head to actually explode? she wondered.

  “What in God’s name is the matter with that boy?” her father demanded of the ceiling.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Dad, don’t listen to her,” Joey groaned. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Lucy turned to glare at her brother. “Oh, I don’t?”

  “No, damn it, you sure as hell don’t!” he snapped, returning her glare with an even angrier one of his own.

  “Your brother says that Nick may have been, um, well, dating Scout,” her mother elaborated for her.

  “Dating?” Her father snorted in disgust. “Is that what they call it now?”

  “Hey, I never said dating,” her brother protested.

  Nick and Scout? Lucy stared at them all in surprise. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “He’s been what?”

  “Sneaking around with her, is what he’s been doing,” her father growled, and Lucy could tell that, for once, he and her brother agreed. “And who knows what else.”

  The look that passed between the two men left Lucy with little doubt as to what else they thought Scout and Nick had been doing. But they were wrong about that, she was sure of it. She shook her head. The whole idea was ridiculous. “No way.”

  “Yep. For over a month now,” Joey insisted.

  A month? Oh, right. Like she wouldn’t notice something like that. “N’uh. No way.”

  “He thinks he’s in love with her,” he sneered.

  “No way!” It was a mistake. It had to be.

  “He thinks she’s in love with him, too,” Joey’s sneer turned ugly.

  “No way, Joey.” Unless... could Scout be planning to use Nick to get back at her, like she’d already used Glenn to get back at Lisa? But that she’d never believe. “Do you hear me? No fucking way!”

  “Yeah, that’s just what I told him, too.” Her brother’s voice had gone so deadly quiet she had barely heard him, as both her parents had hollered as one: “Lucy! Back to your room!”

  “Lucy?” Scout’s voice recalled her to the present. “Don’t you think we should go see your parents now?”

  Lucy saw the sympathy in Marsha’s eyes, heard the nervousness in Scout’s voice, and groaned. “Jesus. What the hell was I thinking? I should have let you guys elope.”

  Scout laughed grimly. “Well, it’s a little late to think about that, now isn’t it?”

  “Oh, come on, you guys,” Marsha told them. “Cheer up. What’s the problem? It’s supposed to be a party, remember?”

  “Yeah, Marsha, we remember.” Lucy shook her head sadly. “And that is the problem. We all remember too damn much.”

  * * *

  “Quite the little cheerleader, aren’t you?” Sam queried as he hung up his jacket and stashed his bags in Scout’s hall closet. “Or do you see yourself as more of an Angel of Mercy?”

  Marsha glanced at him, inquiringly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Just something I’ve been noticing all day.” He shrugged. “Or almost. Seems like whenever anyone around here needs cheering up, or calming down, or has a problem that needs fixing, you’re the one they come to.”

  “Oh, that’s not true.” Marsha was uncomfortable with the thought.

  “It’s absolutely true.” He paused and studied her for a moment, his forearm braced against the door jam, just above head-height. “And if they don’t come to you, you just seem to notice they need something and take care of it for them anyway.”

  “I don’t!” Marsha gasped, truly horrified at the thought. Was that really how it looked from the outside? So much for not involving herself in other people’s business! “When did I do that today? Tell me one time!”

  “You did it for me, didn’t you? Why’d you tell Nick I was in the parking lot all morning?”

  She stared at him, unable to respond for several seconds, and unable to account for the escalating tension between them. “Well…you were, weren’t you?” she finally asked, forcing the words through a throat, suddenly grown too tight.

  “I know where I was,” he answered softly. “But what makes you think you do?”

  “I uh... I saw you.” She shrugged. “You know, we should really—”

  “Once,” he rapped the word out so sharply that she jumped. “Just one time you saw me.”

  She didn’t ask how he knew that. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. “Okay,
well, maybe I didn’t use my eyes to see you,” she quipped, trying for a sinister look, knowing from experience how uncomfortable the idea made most people, hoping it would shut him up. “Ever think of that? Maybe I used... some other sense.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, not shutting up, and not sounding uncomfortable either. Not even a little. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking, all right. So the question is, what sense was it that told you where I was?”

  It was a good question, Marsha thought. It was a question she’d been wrestling with for twenty years, without getting any closer to an answer. It figured that sooner or later someone would show up to call her bluff. “I don’t know,” she told him quietly.

  “Uh-huh. And I kinda figured you’d say something like that, too.” His voice was cold, and his eyes unfathomable as they drilled into hers. “Which brings me to my next question. What made you start paying attention?”

  She felt the thrum of blood in her ears. No way was she going to go there with him. Hadn’t she already been embarrassed enough times in one day? Desperate, she seized on something he’d said earlier. “Well, I guess you got me, there, Sam. It must be like you said, I must have noticed that you needed to have someone pay attention to you.”

  And, then finally, finally! She felt him spook.

  “Maybe,” he admitted, his voice cool and noncommittal.

  “And what I’m noticing right now,” she told him, emotions riding high on her small victory, “Is that it’s way past time we joined the party.” She smiled determinedly. And was relieved when he straightened and gestured for her to lead the way.

  “Sure, doll. Anything you say.” They turned and headed toward the back of the house. “After all, you’re the expert here.”

  And it was only with great difficulty that she managed to hold her tongue that time.

  * * *

  Scout was exhausted. She’d had more than enough partying for one night, but Nick hadn’t come home yet, and his relatives obviously intended to stay and wait until he did. She had taken a few minutes to close her eyes, sitting on the stairs in the front hallway, resting her head against the wall. She could easily fall asleep that way. Would anyone notice if she simply slipped upstairs right now and went to bed?