by Holley Trent
CHAPTER THREE
Tess followed Harvey down the narrow staircase and into the cool night air.
Stars spangled a blue-black sky and the only sounds Tess could discern were ticking from the plane’s engines as they cooled and the thuds of their feet against the ground as they filed onto the tarmac.
She didn’t know what she expected to be waiting for her on the ground given the inauspicious start to the trip, but it wouldn’t have been a small, platinum-haired woman wearing a holey black D.A.R.E. shirt. Especially not one escorted by what seemed to be a living, breathing G.I. Joe doll—complete with camo gear and a big fucking gun. Tess was pretty sure that semi-automatic rifle wasn’t a toy.
“What in the hell…” she muttered and scanned the open desert behind them, then the tiny airport’s roof. No one else was around. “I’m pretty sure this is the way the Tantric Assassin graphic novel started. I’m going to be really freaked if a sniper’s bullet takes someone out. I wouldn’t mind inheriting a superpower or two, though.”
“You might get lucky with that last thing,” Harvey whispered as they came to a stop with the group.
“Really funny.”
The silver-haired woman twined her fingers in front of her belly and raised her chin to the new arrivals.
Harvey lowered his head briefly.
“How was the flight?” she asked airily. She rocked back on the heels of her—Air Jordans?—and kept her steely gaze locked on Harvey.
“Uneventful.”
The redheaded harpy cleared her throat.
“More or less,” he amended.
“Good.” She turned to the man in the beanie hat, and seemed to study him silently for a long while. Too long.
They were practically frozen with only their eyelids moving as they blinked and their chests rising and falling from breaths.
“What are they doing?” Tess whispered to Harvey.
“Talking.”
“Should I make myself a tinfoil hat and join the conversation?”
“You’re welcome to try, but I should warn you that tinfoil went out of fashion fifty years ago.”
“Ha ha. If you can hear them, what are they talking about?”
“You,” the harpy said in a tart tone that set Tess’s teeth to grinding.
Tess balled her hands into fists and turned on her. “Look, you cantankerous harridan—”
“Whoa!” The older man edged between them with his hands up. He looked more amused than angry, and Tess filed that reaction away for later along with that info about private planes and security. “Okay, we started off on the wrong foot, but you two are going to have to learn to get along and fast.”
Harpy rolled her eyes. “I’ll do my job, Pop.”
“I don’t doubt you will, but I’d like you to do it with as little antagonism as possible, do you understand me?”
Harpy sighed. “Pop…”
“Nadia, I asked if you understood me.”
“Perfectly.”
How perfect could her concession be if it was given through clenched teeth?
Joe turned to the woman in the raggedy T-shirt. “May I?”
Tess couldn’t tell if he had disrupted the “conversation” between beanie cap guy and D.A.R.E. shirt lady, but the woman nodded and made a be-my-guest gesture.
“Thank you, Mom.”
Tess made lines in the little family tree in her head. Nadia was Joe’s daughter. Joe was the older woman’s son. Three generations. So, apparently, Tess’s abduction was a family affair.
Joe took Tess’s hands in his.
Her natural instinct usually would have been to pull away—to shake off his uninvited touch—but he felt familiar to her. Him holding her hands didn’t stir feelings of discomfort, but instead an odd sort of connectivity, and she tightened her own grip around his fingers.
Safe.
He made her feel safe.
The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened as his smile broadened. Maybe it was that smile that was familiar. The way the muscles on the left side of his mouth dominated it, the way the cheekbones beneath his red beard hollowed as he grinned.
It was familiar because it was her grin when she was nervous or shy.
She dropped his hands as if they were hot potatoes.
What the hell is going on? This has to be some trick—an elaborate setup.
She tried to take a step back, but Harvey’s solid form was in the way.
“No one’s going to deceive you Tess,” he whispered as if he’d been reading her mind. “I meant what I said on the plane. This is your family.”
“You look so much like your mother,” Joe said. “I could hardly believe it when I saw you.”
The turmoil in her gut surged up her chest. She put her hand against her pounding heart and closed her eyes. Cutting off that sense always made thinking easier. “Listen. You all have to excuse me for being skeptical, but for all I know, this is some well-rehearsed ruse. To what end?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, and I really don’t know why Harvey’s tangled up in it. We weren’t on great terms the last time we saw each other.”
“Tess, you can trust me. You know that,” Harvey said.
Sighing, she opened her eyes. “Put yourself in my shoes.”
“I was in your shoes earlier this year.”
Joe pressed his hands to Tess’s shoulders and turned her to him. “You were both born here in New Mexico. It took us this long to find you and bring you home. Harvey remembered a little about us. We hoped you would, too. Things would be easier if you did.”
Harvey’s expression had gone solemn. “Tess was younger, so she probably has limited memories. I was four. I don’t remember anything from when I was two.”
Convenient story. Of course she wouldn’t remember anything from toddlerhood. “Pretty sure I read this in that graphic novel, too. Found orphans are kind of a trope. Let’s see if I can guess what’ll happen next.” She tapped her index finger to her chin. “Oh, I know! You’ll drop some bombshells about my parentage, tell me a lot of sad things, and I’ll break down only to rise like a phoenix from my own metaphorical ashes. That sound about right?”
Joe cringed and turned to his mother. “Mom, I don’t know how to do this.”
“I’ve been ruminating over this for more than twenty years, Joey,” she said. “Even being who I am and with all the power at my disposal, I don’t have all the words for this.”
Tess waved at them. “Hi. Let’s start with the basics. Who are you? And what’s this power you speak of?” She made air quotes when saying “power.” After all, wasn’t New Mexico where all the kooks and conspiracy theorists lived?
Joe gave her shoulder a squeeze. She looked at him, and he wore a smile for her. He was so nice. She hated herself for firing off all those bullets of sarcasm, but that had always been her protective mechanism. When she was so confused at what was happening around her, she could take people off guard with a little attitude, even when it wasn’t appropriate.
Maybe if she tried just a little harder to understand. No, to trust. Harvey had always looked out for her, and that would never change. The least she could do was not assume the worst.
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at Joe. She tried to see a lie in his expression, but she didn’t see any guile there, just pain.
Pain? Why?
That look took the wind out of her sails. She’d always been the kind of person who absorbed other peoples’ sadness as if it were her own, and that was yet another reason she valued her solitude.
Fuck.
“Your mother was the epitome of a brat,” he said. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “From the day she was born, she gave me hell. She never stopped giving me hell, and she always smiled while she did it.”
His mother stepped forward and put a hand to Tess’s cheek. Before Tess could pull back, a stream of images she couldn’t turn off bombarded her brain. A redheaded woman and her dark-haired husband. One son, then two, and then a daughter, f
inally—one with dark hair like her father’s. Everyone held her. Her brothers. Her Uncle Joe. Her grandparents. Her father, and especially her mother. She’d fall asleep holding her as if she knew that putting her down meant losing her.
But, she had lost Tess. Then she died.
The images stopped and Tess opened her eyes to the group. “That wasn’t me. I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t me,” she said softly and shook her head. A burn inched up her chest and her throat constricted around grief she shouldn’t have felt—not for a woman she’d been told abandoned her.
“That baby was you,” the older woman said. “You really don’t doubt that.”
Harvey pulled her in close and pressed her face against her chest. Rubbing her back, he whispered, “It’s okay to feel something. People expect you to.”
Another large hand added to the rub of her back. “I miss her terribly,” Joe said. “She was smart and funny and wise. She had a huge heart and an unquenchable enthusiasm about life, and she loved you so much. She would never have given you up, Contessa. None of us would have. You were stolen. You and others.”
“I… Wait.” Tess squeezed her eyes shut. Too many people. Too many words in too many voices. Too many thoughts and emotions all at once, ping-ponging inside of her skull and refusing to settle down. So loud, and so much dissonance. She could take a punch like a champ, but emotions were sometimes worse than strikes.
Tess didn’t have to wipe the tears away because Harvey’s shirt took them all. Solid as he was, though, his chest couldn’t muffle the sound of her wailing sob.
Harvey’s arms tightened around her, and he planted his lips against her hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything is going to seem more intense now that you’re here. You might feel like it’s going to break you, but it won’t. I promise.”
“This stinking runway isn’t the place to eulogize my daughter,” the older woman said. “Not even April would have found humor in this.”
All the connections settled into Tess in pieces.
April had been her mother. Joe was her uncle. The shrewish redhead, Nadia, was her cousin. The woman in the D.A.R.E. shirt with the odd psychic gift was Tess’s grandmother. Sniffling, she pulled away from Harvey’s chest.
The older woman put a hand on either side of Tess’s face, but this time she didn’t pour thoughts or pictures into her. She just looked at her. She looked so tired—like she’d been awake for far too long and had seen too much. It wasn’t just the dark circles under her eyes, but every movement. Her posture was straight and elegant, but her hands had a slight shake, and her gait was stiff as if she feared her legs would give way beneath her.
“You’re my grandmother,” Tess said. It sounded more like a question than a statement of fact, but Tess knew.
“Our queen and matriarch,” Harvey whispered.
Her grandmother closed her eyes and sighed. “Not for much longer now that she’s here,” she said. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you home, Contessa.”
Uncle. Cousin. Grandmother.
Tess cut her gaze to the man in the beanie hat and knew who he was without asking.
That sideways look he cast at her was all Tess. She’d seen it in enough of her own pictures to recognize it.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Everyone calls me Jody.” He rolled his eyes. So fucking familiar. “I’m named Joseph after Uncle Joe. Our last name is Dahl. Joe D. Jody.”
Squinting at him, she let his words replay through her mind. Sometimes, she felt like people were speaking in algebra with background music provided by the band Spinal Tap turned up to eleven. A plus B is equal to B times C when A is equal to drum solo.
Jody. Named after Uncle Joe. Got that.
“Dahl?” she queried.
He nodded. “I don’t know what you go by now, but your surname is supposed to be Dahl.”
Contessa Dahl. Doll. What an odd coincidence. “Which brother are you? First or second?” She raked a hand through her hair and massaged a throbbing spot in the middle of her head. There was such a thing as too many surprises, and she was nearing that point.
“Second. Our brother is missing, though not for the same reasons you were. Now that you’re here, we hope you can help us find him.”
“Me?”
Fuck, half the time she was lost herself, so how was she going to find anyone?
He nodded solemnly. “That’s your job. Or will be when you’re able to do it.”
“Do you mean I can toss thoughts around like you?” she asked her grandmother.
“That’s yet to be determined. Let’s pile into the truck and go home. I’m sure we could all use a strong nightcap before bed, and I’m happy to pour them.”
She let go of Tess’s hands and waved Nadia up.
“For reasons I’ll explain in great detail later on, you’ll always need an escort. Nadia will act as that in the interim, as well as your lady-in-waiting of sorts. It’s traditional.”
“A what?”
“A lady-in-waiting, my dear, for lack of a better term. She won’t help you dress or sit with you for tea every afternoon, but she’ll help navigate our world until you get linked in.”
Before Tess could even ask the question about what being “linked in” was, her grandmother shook her head. “I’ll explain that later, too. Let’s go. I don’t like being in the open like this. My old paranoid tendencies have come roaring back now that you’ve put the thought of a sniper in my head.”
They moved en masse toward the truck—everyone except Tess, that is. Her brain might have been working, but it had apparently short-circuited everything else.
Harvey backtracked and grabbed her hand. “Come on, princess. I don’t want to manhandle you, but you seem to enjoy it.”
She wrenched her hand free of his and gasped. “Don’t tell me we’re related, too.”
If death by mortification were possible, Tess wanted to pitch in and get a head start on digging her grave before she collapsed.
She’d had her fucking face in his crotch less than an hour ago.
“Don’t worry, princess.” He gave her ass a solicitous squeeze that made her face burn hot, and bent down to whisper, “We’re not. No connections for at least the last few hundred years. I asked and your nan looked it up. The matriarch keeps our genealogies.”
“Oh God. What on earth is a matriarch? I think you’re all just making up shit now to confuse me.”
He didn’t answer. He tugged her to her second SUV of the night. She boarded immediately following Nadia. A driver dressed in all black and wearing mirrored shades, in spite of the late hour, sat at the wheel. Tess’s uncle rode shotgun. Jody, their grandmother, and the guy with the gun took the narrow third row. Tess sat in the second row sandwiched between Nadia and Harvey.
“Where are we going?” Tess asked. “Can you at least answer that?”
Harvey squeezed her knee and looked out the window. The SUV had started moving, and as far as she could tell, there was nothing in front of them except desert. “Not far. Just a few miles from here. To outsiders, the place looks like an out-of-the way subdivision.”
“But what is it really?”
“Home of the Afótama,” her grandmother said.
Tess turned as much as she could beneath the constraints of the seatbelt to see her.
“We’ve been in the area for about three hundred years. Long before the English settled out here, but we’ve been discreet. Desert’s not ideal. We’re ocean-faring people. It’s in our blood to be near the sand and surf, but we had to move west for own safety.”
“You mean like the Mormons?”
Her grandmother raised a silver eyebrow. “Not quite, but an interesting comparison all the same. Like them, we were running from trouble, or at least trying to prevent it from catching up to us. People are afraid of what they don’t understand, and the English colonists were afraid of us when we finally did meet.”
“Why?”
“Because w
e see too much. Know too much. Our abilities are why we left the Old World in the first place. They wanted us dead.”
“I hate to sound like a broken record, but why?”
“You’ll understand soon. I promise. But I’ll tell you this. Some types of deviance are more forgivable than others. People judge harshly because they can’t empathize with situations outside of their norm. We Afótama, well, we’re outside the norm.”
“In what way?”
“In the same way witches and fairies are. The gods have favored us with certain gifts to ensure our survival.”
Tess ground the heels of her palms against her eyes and sighed. Didn’t see this in that graphic novel. “Those things don’t exist.”
Her grandmother didn’t respond to that, except to ask, “Is that your natural hair color? That black?”
“Yes, why?”
“Sometimes the color changes at childhood. Nadia’s was dark at birth and turned red later. Recessive genes rule the roost around here. Has to do with the way we’re wired. You saw your mother and know now you resemble your mother a great deal. Her hair was as red as your uncle’s and mine before it turned gray.”
“Sorry to break the streak.” Tess faced front. “This is just like everything else in my life. I’m already disappointing people, and this time for something completely beyond my control.”
“Quit it. It’s not just you,” Jody said. “My hair is brown.”
“It’s auburn,” Nadia said. “Nice try, though.” She grinned for the first time since Tess had been in her acquaintance, and Tess couldn’t be certain, but it looked genuine. Nadia was amused by Jody, and probably felt real affection for him. Maybe she’d been like the sister he’d never had.
Well, good for them.
Tess crossed her arms and slumped lower. “Am I aberrant in any other ways?”
“That’s yet to be seen,” Nadia said.
“Stop it,” Joe said. “Remember who you’re talking to.”
“I haven’t forgotten who she is. You tell me she’s the next queen, fine. I’ll serve her since that’s what the line of lineage dictates, but I’m not going to hold my tongue and pretend she’s suitable for the job. She can’t hear a damned thing we’re saying telepathically, and that doesn’t bother you?”
