by Carol Oates
As soon as we returned from Tara to Camden, Maine, Uncle Lewis had put me right back to work alongside him as a carpenter. Uncle Lewis was my dad’s brother—the human side of my bloodline. He and my Aunt Carmel raised Triona and me after the Council murdered our parents in a faked car crash. It didn’t matter to either of them I had just come into the massive fortune my ancestors had amassed. “Pride comes from a salary, not an inheritance,” Lewis always said.
My only extravagant purchases had been a nice house—clear on the other side of town from my family and Amanda’s—and this serious piece of driving machinery. I justified it by saying we needed a decent truck. Winters in Maine were harsh—thick blankets of melting snow still covered almost everything from the mountain trails to Main Street.
Many of the businesses in Camden shut down for the winter. They were just beginning to open up again, preparing for the deluge of tourists who would hike up Mount Battie or head out in windjammers from the bay. We had already said goodbye to the sports enthusiasts that frequented Camden over the cold winter months, all headed off to fresh powder some other place. Maybe I didn’t need to be quite so ostentatious in my choice of vehicle, but she sure was pretty. I carefully swiped some dust from the dash and smiled.
“I’m going to think you’re having an affair with this truck.” Amanda smirked, giving me a side eye.
“She’s a beauty,” I sighed. “But not nearly as beautiful as you.” I reached over and ran the back of my index finger over her cheek. I loved that I could still make her blush.
Amanda slapped my hand away playfully. “My husband, the smoothie.”
Mmm, smoothie. My stomach grumbled again because I still hadn’t eaten.
Amanda switched her attention back to the pamphlets about potential colleges in her lap, making my thoughts run in a different direction. She still hadn’t managed to complete a full course thanks to traipsing off to London with Triona less than a year into her two-year design program. Then the whole dying thing kind of wiped the gloss off foreign study for her. She wanted to come straight home from Ireland, and I wanted to make her feel safe.
“Tell me again why you need to go to college when the business is already doing so well.”
Amanda’s smile faded, and she forced out a heavy breath through her teeth. “There’s always going to be some idiot who thinks I can’t put colors together or choose furniture because I don’t have a diploma that says I can. I want to do this right. Besides, I want to do more than make rooms look pretty. I want to create the entire space from the core of the building. I want to put flesh on its bones.”
Amanda was as determined as the rest of us that her whole life wouldn’t change because of what happened over the last few years. Sometimes I wondered how realistic it was.
What made an average human life so special? We weren’t the people we thought we were. The world we thought we lived in never existed. We were so much more than human now. Guardians lived for centuries. We were beautiful, faster, and stronger. We weren’t susceptible to human illnesses or disease, and injuries healed with supernatural speed. As long as I lived, magic protected Amanda and she would never succumb to her human mortality. I couldn’t deny the part of me wanting to embrace it.
However, for Amanda, her close brush with death had made her even more determined to succeed within the human world. Amanda had always been considered a little flighty, even by her own family—a little spoiled, nosy, disorganized, indulged, and a gossip. She had so much more going for her if someone took the time to see.
Amanda loved without limits, and she was as fierce as an angry lioness when it came to protecting those around her. She was brave, thoughtful, and loyal.
I glanced sideways and glimpsed her reaching into her bag to pull out a big Ziploc bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She held the open bag out to me. Amanda was also a fantastic cook.
“I knew there was a reason I married you, woman,” I told her, smiling and stuffing one whole cookie into my mouth.
“I knew there was a reason I would divorce you eventually, caveman.” She giggled, brushing away crumbs from the front of my jacket.
My cell phone rang, and her smile suddenly disappeared. We both knew it was someone calling to see why we weren’t there yet. Surely they could have used their imagination.
Amanda picked my cell up from the compartment between us. “Hello.”
“Hi, Amanda. Can you put Ben on the phone please?” I heard Lewis’s voice on the other end.
Judging by her frown, I guessed Amanda could hear the restrained…something in Lewis’s voice just as I could. She immediately handed the phone over to me.
“We’ll be there in five minutes,” I said before he had a chance to speak, glancing over to see Amanda tilting her head to the side and watching me. It was something she always did when she contemplated.
“No, don’t go to the house,” he said quickly, too quickly.
I listened to the background noise behind his voice and could clearly hear the rumbling of an engine and Carmel sniffling.
“You need to get to the medical center as quickly as you can,” Lewis instructed gravely. “We’re already on our way. It’s Triona and Caleb.”
Chapter 2
A Broken Pretense
I FLINCHED AGAIN, wondering if my own bones might splinter from the nervous tension inside my body. The sound of Triona’s arm breaking in a room forty feet away was almost too much to take. If I wasn’t concentrating so intently, it might be too quiet to discern.
I forced myself to remain motionless by focusing on a tiny hair embedded in the paintwork of the doorframe to the waiting room. My toes curled inside my boots at the next bloodcurdling crack. Amanda placed one hand on my shoulder from behind and stroked my other arm reassuringly. Her touch was the only thing stopping me from going in there and tearing Samuel apart.
So what if Samuel had more experience dealing with this stuff than I did? So what if he knew more about covering tracks than I did? It didn’t make it anywhere near acceptable to break her arm a third time—even if the doctors would find it strange Triona healed so fast.
He’d also been administering extra doses of sedative and pain relief to Triona. It made sense our bodies burned off medication at the same rate they replenished blood, remodeled bone, and regenerated tissue.
I couldn’t escape an idea scratching at the back of my mind. Why should we have to hide in plain sight, pretending to be human—vulnerable and weak—all so humans wouldn’t have to feel threatened by us?
“It’s done.” Samuel, Caleb’s father, entered the room after the pretense of checking on Triona for the entire stressed out family.
Carmel, Lewis, Caleb’s mother, Annice, as well as Amanda and I moved closer to him automatically.
“Well?” The word cut like glass in my throat. Or was it all the other words I held back?
“There is an orthopedic surgeon in with her now. She should have a cast on soon, and then we can arrange to get her out of here.” Samuel spoke barely above a whisper so as not to alert the passing medical staff. He paused before continuing. “She never woke up.”
Samuel looked worn out—older. He was older of course, about two hundred and fifty years older than his mid-thirties appearance. He had been part of the Guardian Council before he gave up his position as part of a brokered deal so Caleb and Triona could be together. He bared an uncanny physical resemblance to Caleb. Both men were tall with short, almost black hair, cut glass cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes the color of sapphires. At least, that was Amanda’s description of them. I didn’t see the attraction, but I had to concede the last few hours had been hard on Samuel too.
Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to thank him. I left the verbal gratitude to Lewis, and I nodded my head in acknowledgment. Samuel slipped his arm around Annice’s shoulder and led her away to the corner of the room. In contrast to Samuel’s sun-kissed complexion, she appeared unusually drawn. She hadn’t attempted to talk to me in his absence
. Her pale blond hair was pulled away from her face to a knot at the back of her head, and her silver eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Normally Annice remained the calm one, the one always in control. Helping people make sense of difficult situations was a special gift of hers. It worried me when even Annice couldn’t see a silver lining here.
Lewis and Carmel retook their seats, Lewis in his working attire of checked shirt and steel-toed boots as always. Carmel substituted her immaculate, groomed appearance in favor of jeans and a shabby sweatshirt. Lewis mussed her short, blond hair, running his fingers through it as she leaned against his chest. Lewis was a huge man with tree trunk arms and a chest the size of a bear. Carmel’s tiny frame looked lost in his arms. They cared for Triona and me, loved us and protected us as much as any parent would. They kept our secret, hoping we’d grow up more like our father than our mother. In other words—human.
Amanda continued to hold on to my arm with one hand and with the other rubbed circles on my lower back. It did nothing to still the rage inside me. I felt selfishly unable to offer any comfort in return. Instead, I continued to glare at Samuel and Annice with equal amounts of anger and guilt. They, too, cared for all of us.
Samuel held Annice close, his knuckles bleached white and straining. She looked up to his eyes, gazing into them as though conducting a private conversation without words.
Their son was gone—again.
Still, Caleb wasn’t my greatest concern. Our relationship remained awkward because of the choices he’d made in the past. He’d lied repeatedly. He’d selfishly started a relationship with Triona before she left high school, knowing they had a finite amount of time together, and bailed when the going got tough. Despite returning, somehow, nothing he had done for her since then tipped the scales back in his favor.
Everything bad Triona had been through in the last few years had started with him moving to Camden. I vividly remembered my sister in the hospital after he’d pulled her from a fire at his house, started when his adopted brother had tried to kill her. I closed my eyes and pictured the look on her face when she thought he was dead. It had been as if she had died too in that instant—a light had gone out behind her eyes. He’d made the choice to leave then, and despite Samuel’s reassurance, I couldn’t be sure Caleb hadn’t left her now. Apprehension caused my pulse to race at the idea I’d have to see that look in my sister’s eyes again.
None of that was fair to Caleb. I knew it.
There was no denying he’d made Triona insanely happy since their reconciliation, but it was easier to paint him as the bad guy and expect the worst, than not see it coming again.
Silence consumed the small room, so thick it was like wading through sludge. The underlying scent of antiseptic, blood, and death permeated the air and burned in my nostrils.
Smells and sounds had the ability to take a person back in time, just as sure as turning the hands of a clock or tipping an hourglass. My fingers curled into fists by my side, and my nails lengthened, cutting crescent shaped wounds into my palms. I closed my eyes, and I was seventeen again, standing with my hand pressed to glass, trying to reach her and failing. Back then, I had been unable to take her pain, just as I would be powerless to take her pain this time too.
Despite it still being day, dark, heavy rain clouds muted the light from the window in Triona’s hospital room. Strip lighting hummed overhead, a sound human ears would miss but left me with the sensation of a bee loose inside my head.
Triona blinked a few times before attempting to focus on her surroundings. Her fingers twitched as if testing them, and the fine metal of the needle piercing her skin on the inside of her elbow strained. She winced and scrunched her nose. She appeared groggy and disoriented but not badly hurt.
Someone had taken the time to braid her long hair, and the thick copper rope curled like a snake over her shoulder. We had both inherited dark red hair and the same shade of green eyes from our mother. Because Triona was only ten months older, people often mistook us for twins until we got to high school. Junior year wasn’t the greatest time of my life. Back then I was her dorky little brother, a lanky kid with red hair, a secret crush, and no idea of the storm brewing in my genes.
Now it seemed as if we were witnesses standing around her room, waiting to observe a barbaric sentencing. The clock on the wall outside the room threw out a steady beat, measuring each passing second while we waited. I had the strangest sensation of tightness in my chest and imagined the ticktock becoming a perpetual clicking, time stretching without end. If I could, I would have willed Triona unconscious so she would never have to face what she was about to. I doubted Triona would make it through his death a second time.
Suddenly panic rolled over her, and she lifted her hand to rip the oxygen tube from her nose. I moved fast, locking her arms in place by keeping a hand on her uninjured wrist and one on her shoulder. She resisted instinctually, and a low hiss left her lips.
“Calm down, Triona,” I whispered close to her ear.
She struggled again to free herself.
“You’re in the hospital. You need to calm down.”
Her body stiffened below my hands in an obvious attempt not to react, and she took a deep breath.
“I’m calm. I’m calm,” she said flatly, matching the volume of my voice and looking in my direction, although clearly struggling to focus.
I forced my lips to curve into a stilted smile and loosened my grip but didn’t relax completely. A foreboding settled on my shoulders like a dark cloak, and her eyes flashed to the other side of the bed in the small blue room. Among other gifts, Triona possessed a unique ability to see a spectrum of invisible colors. She perceived a person’s emotions as an aura surrounding their body.
“Annice,” she mumbled.
Panic stepped up a notch in the room. Lewis held Carmel back from approaching, and Amanda stood on her other side. If Triona decided to fight, Annice and I were better suited to hold her still given the increased strength of our kind. Annice glanced up at me, waiting for direction—three fine lines creased her normally smooth forehead. Samuel kept watch by the door to warn when a doctor or nurse approached.
“You are in the hospital under observation,” Annice started in a calming voice, perhaps in an effort not to frighten Triona. “You healed after they found you, but…”
Her eyes lowered.
“But?” Triona pressed.
Annice met her eyes again and sighed. “But there was so much blood and nothing to show where it came from.” She paused catching herself and the panic that had begun to creep into her voice. “Don’t worry about that now. Samuel has taken care of it. You’re being monitored, and the doctor is right outside. So you have to relax.”
Her words calmed Triona as I knew they would. I guessed Samuel had to use large quantities of money to pay someone—a cop and a couple of doctors struggling with college loans. If he hadn’t, he would have had to do more than break Triona’s arm to cover this up.
“Caleb?” Triona managed to garble with some effort.
Annice’s eyes flickered away from her, darting to the end of the bed. I followed her line of sight to Lewis, whose expression couldn’t hide his concern. When I turned back to Triona, her eyes were narrow as if trying to bring him into focus and read him all at the same time.
“They gave you something to help you sleep. They had to cut you out of the Jeep. The drugs should wear off soon,” I explained to Triona, wanting to alleviate some of her worry. She had to be freaking out and being disoriented didn’t help.
Her heartbeat built rapidly. I leaned back against the heart monitor attached to her finger and switched the machine off. When asked, I would have to say it was accidental. I didn’t want to risk an overcautious doctor keeping Triona overnight for observation.
“The doctors said it was a miracle you weren’t killed,” Annice went on, raising her eyebrow a little. The tenor of her voice was so even, so serene and reassuring.
Triona twisted a little to look past me
, but I managed to move and block her full view of Amanda. Amanda’s heartbeat drummed against her rib cage, and no doubt Triona heard it too. Amanda couldn’t hide anything from Triona right now. One glance at her and Triona would know exactly how bad things were.
She wriggled again. My nerves were already jangled raw. I struggled to keep myself calm and my emotions hidden while at the same time attempting to balance the force I used on Triona. I didn’t want to hurt her but I had to keep her still. Every sense heightened, and I recognized the distinctive shuffling of her attending doctor outside the door.
As Guardians, we had a more feral nature than humans—our base animal instincts amplified when in danger. It was part of the reason for many tales of supernatural creatures that sprang up across the continents. The nearest to reality being the fae—fairies. Oh, not the tiny little winged creatures that lived at the end of yards or sprinkled magic dust everywhere they went. The darker stories, the ones about beautiful magical creatures descended from gods, the people of the mounds or Daoine Sídhe, as we were once called.
Right now every instinct in my body told me to protect: my blood pulsed through my neck and throbbed behind my eyes. The doctor’s pen scratched across a chart. The smell of coffee lingered on his breath and adrenaline laced his blood. His own instincts must have kicked in, and he suspected something amiss in the room he was about to enter.
“Where’s Caleb?” she demanded, her voice still weaker than I expected it to be. “Where is he? Is he hurt? Is he…Is he…” The words caught harshly in her throat as if she couldn’t bear to finish.
The tears of frustration that were only threatening in her eyes moments ago gathered and overflowed. Lewis’s head flashed to the right. He coughed and looked back to Annice. She turned to me before quickly wiping away the tears from Triona’s face with a linen handkerchief.
“Tell me,” she commanded.
