Wicked Release-ARE-Epub
Page 12
He shrugged. “Can’t a demon do something selfless? Out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Not usually.”
“Do you care?” Saint stalked toward the shifter, his voice lowering hypnotically. “Does it matter what price is paid to win the heart of your mate? And she is your mate, Liam. You know it. I know it. What wouldn’t you do to make her yours?”
Saint knew the instant he’d won him over. Liam would do exactly what he said. Shifters were decidedly passionate about their mating habits. A trait that made him malleable to the whims of a hungry demon. He wasn’t sure who this Ume was, or why he was so drawn to her, but he would figure her out soon enough.
It was time to play.
“I can’t believe James and Cindy are pregnant again. Jinny is only one year old. Are they trying to start a baseball team?”
Ume heard Julie snort from the kitchen where she was making tea. “It does look like that doesn’t it? Still, if I’m going to be a spinster aunt, my brother and his wife have made sure I’ll have enough nieces and nephews to distract me in my old age.”
“Jules, all the children your brothers and sisters keep having aren’t a distraction. They’re an army.”
The Wu clan had always been known for having large families. Julie was one of seven children, and her father and Ume’s had been a set of twins, the oldest of nine children themselves. Ume was the only one her parents had had. Though since her father had moved back to China and remarried, he’d given her four half-brothers.
Not that she heard from him much. She supposed it was because she reminded him of her mother, his Japanese-American bride. The one who’d made him a young widower by dying of a brain aneurysm a few days before Ume’s sixteenth birthday.
She looked over at Julie from the daybed she was confined to, as usual. At least he’d left her with family. Her cousins, especially Julie, had been her angels. They treated her like another sibling, teasing and harassing her and becoming completely tangled in her life. She loved it. She loved them.
But she hated being a burden.
Three years of this. Three years of being waited on. Of looking up at people from hospital beds and couches. No dancing, no running. Just resting and physical therapy. It was enough to drive a normal person crazy. But Ume knew she wasn’t normal. At least, that’s what her mother had always told her.
Special Ume, plum blossom, meant for greatness. Ume looked down at her slender, pale legs and laughed sourly. What greatness could she achieve locked away from the sunlight? From life?
“Oh, I know that face.” Julie plopped her tiny body down beside Ume’s long legs with a sigh. She set the tray of tea and snacks down on the table alongside the daybed and looked at her cousin. “Keep that pout going and I won’t tell you my news.”
Ume dragged herself out of her private pity party and lifted an eyebrow. “What kind of news? Were these baby pictures smoothing the way? Did more happen in Scotland than just dirty inspiration?”
Julie blushed and pushed on Ume’s shoulder playfully. “Ha ha. No babies. But it does have a little to do with my inspiration. My last ebook just became the bestselling paranormal romance of the year. My editor tells me its breaking sales records left and right.”
Ume squealed and Julie blushed deeper, looking down at her hands. Ume rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that good little daughter expression. You deserve to be proud. If your parents didn’t have to be kept in the dark about what you do for a living, I’d shout it from the rooftops. Luckily for you, neither one of them knows how to use a cell phone, let alone a computer.”
Julie giggled. “Which is one of the main reasons I decided to write online.” She glanced up at Ume through her lashes. “It is exciting.”
Ume nodded forcefully. “Yes. It is. And just think, all of this because of your secret obsession with those online webisodes. Now that I’ve read your story, I really wish you’d tell me more about your time up there. I mean, the parts I wasn’t watching live, of course. Did you ever find out how they did it?”
Julie’s brow wrinkled. “How they did what?”
“All those special effects.” Ume waved her hand expressively. “The ghosts, the strange goings on. How did they do all that live?”
“They’re real, Ume. That’s how they did it. I told you that.”
Julie sounded so confident, so certain, that Ume didn’t laugh—though she didn’t, couldn’t believe. There lay a slippery slope, believing that magic was real. A slope her mother had fallen down long before her death.
Julie seemed to have a similar imagination, but she’d made a career out of hers. The hardest part was Ume wanted to believe it too. Wasn’t that why she’d become obsessed with that ridiculous game around the same time Julie had started watching Shifting Reality?
Julie was still studying her. Waiting for her reaction. “So what you’re saying is, that werewolf in your story is real? Cause he was hot.”
Her cousin stood so quickly she almost spilled the drinks in front of her. “You’re changing the subject. But, yes. He’s real too.”
There was something in Julie’s voice. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Julie shrugged, her smile not quite disguising the regret in her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. Because I wasn’t brave enough to take what I wanted. Story of my life.”
Ume reached for her cousin’s hand, her heart aching at her words. “Jules, don’t say that. I’ve never known anyone braver than you. You put yourself out there every day. You wanted to write, and you succeeded. You flew to Scotland to be on camera, having no idea what you were letting yourself in for.” She smiled charmingly. “And you’re the only one who can deal with me when I get all maudlin and bitter. If you’re not brave I don’t know who is.”
Julie squeezed her hand. “You are, Ume. If you’d been there, if you’d seen the man you wanted, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would’ve jumped in with both feet and never looked back.”
Ume’s smile wavered. “Yeah. Look where that got me.”
She thought about Julie’s last abusive relationship, the controlling man who’d convinced her family he was the perfect suitor. And Ume had had her own brush with a wild, uncontrollable hellion who loved to drink more than anything. Including her. Ume may have deserved her fate for being so reckless, but Julie didn’t. She deserved to have someone love her passionately. Someone who didn’t want to change her.
Too bad the world was full of jackasses.
A few hours later, she leaned back against her pillows, emotionally worn out. Werewolf or not, it was obvious Julie had feelings about a man she didn’t believe she could have. Ume’s protective instincts had come out full force. If she knew where he lived she would drag him to her cousin’s house herself, and wrap him up for her in a neat little bow, shifter or not.
It boggled Ume’s mind. Julie truly believed in all of it. In shifters and vampires, ghosts and demons.
Oni was the name her mother used for the demons she was constantly trying to protect Ume from. But in her stories the evil spirits never looked like the one from Shifting Reality. Saint.
When she’s seen him on camera, he’d always been looking down at some device, his dark hair swooping across his forehead, concealing his eyes. But from what she could see, he was gorgeous. Nothing like a troll or monster. Nothing that would kill you or steal your soul. The worst that beautiful creature could do was break a heart or twelve.
She had to admit, at least to herself, that seeing him in a link from one of Julie’s emails was what initially had her looking up the online role-playing game he’d created. Demon Saint.
Usually she preferred her entertainment to be active, out of doors, somewhere in nature. But being confined for the last few years had gotten her a little too involved in soap operas, reality shows and online games.
When she saw how big the world of Demon Saint was, how challenging…she simply couldn’t resist. Nothing had helped her pass the time between therapy sessions, or deal with her never-ending insom
nia, better than the online quests.
Just thinking about it gave her a burst of energy. She opened her laptop and quickly typed in the password to enter the game. On the screen she could see her character statistics and the quests, or storylines, she was currently involved in.
She also saw Plum, the name she’d given the figure that she controlled within the confines of the game. Plum was the English translation for Ume, and she had to admit, she had fun bringing her character to life.
The creation of her avatar had taken days, and it was a masterpiece in her opinion. Just the right combination of warrior and mystic to be a sought-after player.
Maybe she’d gotten her mother’s imagination after all. Plum was nothing if not an homage to her mother’s beliefs. A female kitsune. A fox spirit with the ability to appear human and magic enough to fight the different demons the game created to challenge its players.
Ume had also created a talisman for her character. A necklace with a single, perfect pearl. A hoshi no tama, a star ball, believed to be the energy of the kitsune spirit, as well as protection against evil.
Her character was everything her poor mother believed Ume was. Special. A defender against the Oni. Powerful.
It was, without a doubt, the height of escapism. But she was addicted to this game. And, she reached up to grasp the teardrop pearl around her own neck, it reminded her of her past. Of her mother’s stories.
If only her mother and Julie were both right. If only it were real.
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