by Kristie Cook
She smiled sheepishly. “Oh, right. Sorry about the babbling. I was a little excited.”
I didn’t have a lot of work to do—only a bit of paperwork and ordering supplies for the safe house, such as animal blood. Sonya wasn’t ready for anything stronger, but maybe if Heather could help, we’d finally be able to get her onto donated blood, and maybe, even, get her out of the safe house. Of course, then what would we do? Sheree and I would practically be out of a job.
“Some kind of delivery arrived,” Sheree said from the doorway of my office, making me jump in my chair. I’d been so involved in my online research of the most recent murders and missing persons—evidence of more Daemoni attacks—that I hadn’t heard her approach. “They’re really old and kind of neat looking, so I’m not sure what they are. Maybe something for Christmas?”
“I’m not expecting anything. Not like that, anyway.” Sticking to my childhood traditions of handmade gifts only, we hadn’t ordered any Christmas presents. I massaged my eyes, then glanced at the clock and sprang from my seat. “Oh, crap! I’m late for Dorian’s English lesson, and I promised we’d work on the book today.”
Sheree hopped out of my way as I rushed into the hallway. “What about the delivery?”
I waved my hand at her as I ran for the backdoor. “I’ll check it out tomorrow. Just put it in my office.”
I hurried outside, jumped in my car and drove the six miles home. I could have flashed, but in the interest of maintaining Norman appearances as much as possible, I didn’t want to leave my car at the safe house. I expected to find either Tristan still working with Dorian on math or Dorian impatiently waiting for me. Instead, I found them in a heated discussion.
As soon as I walked through the door, Dorian pounced on me. “Heather’s mom is taking her to Universal Studios this weekend, and they said I could go, too, but Dad won’t let me. Tell him he’s wrong, Mom.”
Ugh. No way would I risk Dorian’s life to go to an amusement park, especially unprotected. I didn’t care what Galina’s people had said about South Beach. The Daemoni were out in full force.
“Sorry, but I have to agree with Dad.”
“Why? That’s so not fair! You and Dad won’t take me, so why can’t I go with them?”
“Well, um, we want to take you, Dorian, but—” I clamped my mouth shut at his expression. His face scrunched up and his shoulders sagged. He didn’t want to hear any more excuses.
“Forget it,” he muttered. “You guys never have time for me.”
He slumped into a kitchen chair, crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his bottom lip out. Tristan and I exchanged a glance, both of us feeling guilty. No matter how much we tried to make time for Dorian, it never felt like enough.
“We have time right now. You want to go skim-boarding?” Tristan said.
“Nah. Don’t feel like it.”
“Wanna spar with me?” I suggested. “Maybe you can beat me this time.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll never beat you until I’m big like Dad.”
“Video games?” Tristan asked.
“Heather’s coming later to play with me.”
“We’re supposed to be working on our book today, anyway,” I said. “But if you don’t want to do that, we can read something.”
“Bor-ring.” Dorian yawned.
I began to grow annoyed with his attitude, especially when he’d always had fun working on the book. He was just being obstinate. “We obviously have time for you, Dorian. We’re always doing these things together. So what do you want to do now?”
His toe scrubbed at the floor tile. “You already know. I want to go to Universal and ride the roller coasters. Why can’t I go with Heather?”
I pressed my lips together. “We can’t allow it, Dorian. End of discussion.”
“See!” he yelled, jumping from his seat, a ball of angry fire. “You never let me do anything!”
I jerked back as if he’d slapped me. I’d never seen my son behave this way. “Dorian Stefan! You’re acting like a spoiled—”
Tristan cut me off. “Dorian, Mom and I really want to be the ones who take you, and we will soon. But not if you keep acting like this. Be patient, son, and we’ll go. I promise.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled, and he stomped out of the room.
“How can you make that promise when we can’t deliver?” I demanded with a hiss through clenched teeth. “That’s what started all this, why he’s acting like such a—”
“He’s acting like this because he’s nearly nine years old, almost a pre-teen, and his one and only friend is a seventeen-year-old girl.”
“Heather’s not a brat.”
“Not in front of us. But you know she’s probably overly dramatic about how bad her life and mom are when there aren’t any adults around. That’s how teens are. It’s one constant I noticed while observing them all those years before approaching you.”
“So what do we about it? He needs other friends, obviously, but who? And what good will that do if all preteens—oh, no! Tristan, he’s nearly a teen.” The sudden realization crashed down on me like a ton of bricks. “Puberty …”
“He has a few years yet.”
“Not enough! Look how fast time flies. He’ll be … gone … if we don’t figure something out.”
Talk about drama queen. I suddenly exploded into fits of sobs and tears. The first time I’d cried in months. I’d become so much better at controlling my emotions, holding back until it could no longer be dammed. Fear, hurt, anger, love, worry for Dorian, for Tristan, for Rina, for the Amadis, for everything—they all mixed and roiled and flowed out of me in a messy gush of tears and snot. I couldn’t have been more of an emotional mess if I’d been PMS-ing or pregnant. Of course, neither could be possible. This was only me, finally letting loose of what I’d been so determined to hold onto. So much for mastering control.
After a long while of leaning over the counter and crying into my arms, the sobs diminished. I dragged in long, jagged breaths that shuddered their way out. I finally lifted my head and blinked against the brightness. I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, and then swiped at the wetness on my cheeks. Tristan handed me a tissue.
“Feel better?” he asked.
At the thought of what sent me into the emotional crash in the first place, new tears welled in my eyes. “Not really. Tristan … I can’t lose him. It’d be like losing you all over. Only worse. He’s my baby. I couldn’t live through it.”
Apparently he decided the danger of another fit had passed because he came around the kitchen island and wrapped me into the warmth and comfort of his arms.
“You’d have to live through it, ma lykita. I’d need you by my side to beat the living shit out of everyone who tries to keep us from getting him back. We’ll find a way to break the curse, and if we don’t, they’ll all be dead by our hands anyway.”
I drew in one more shuddering breath, and then nodded against his chest. I straightened my back and swallowed down my fear and worry.
“Of course. If the Daemoni is annihilated, then Dorian has no reason to leave us.” Feeling at least a little better, I looked up at Tristan. “But first, we have to get the stone, and how can we possibly do that if they’ll control you if you go near them? I mean, I’m assuming it’s a distance thing, right, since they’re not controlling you right now?”
“Yes, that’s my conclusion.” He stroked a hand down my hair. “We’ll figure it out.”
That night, as we were about to head to bed, Tristan’s phone rang, indicating a text message. And then mine echoed it. I glanced at my Caller ID to see if the text was worth answering, and my breath caught. I practically shrieked like a little girl. “Owen!”
Chapter 12
Tristan read the text aloud: “Did you get my delivery? I thought I’d hear from you by now.”
“Sheesh,” I said. “We haven’t heard from him in ages and that’s how he greets us? And he thought he’d hear from us by now?”
I would
have given the guy some electric-shock therapy if he were here.
“I guess your eight hundred previous texts don’t count,” Tristan muttered. “Do you know what delivery he’s talking about?”
“Must be what came in today. Sheree told me about it when I was leaving, but I didn’t think anything of it.”
Tristan typed out a response. His phone rang immediately.
“Yep, that’s it,” Owen said through the speakerphone as soon as Tristan answered the call. I was so happy to hear his voice, I bounced on the balls of my feet like a child. “Didn’t you read the note right inside? The one that said, ‘call me before you open the bags’?”
“First of all,” I began, “what do you mean you thought you’d hear from us by now? We’ve been trying to contact you for over a year, Owen. Over a freakin’ year! And then you disappear with the freakin’ Daemoni, and you don’t have the decency to at least text back and say, oh, I don’t know, ‘Hey, I’m alive.’ Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? And now you call up like nothing’s wrong, asking about some delivery with nothing to indicate it came from you, our long lost friend and my so-called protector.”
The line remained silent. Oh, no. Did I scare him off? It’d been so long and I was so thrilled to hear from him but angry, too, that I’d forgotten the circumstances that had caused him to leave. When I’d just taken out the person who he’d thought had been his father.
“Ouch,” Owen finally said. “So-called, huh?”
Whew. “Yeah. So. Called. Because you’re not here protecting me, are you?”
The sound of his throat clearing came over the line. I could picture him running a hand through his blond hair. “Right. Yeah. I guess I deserve that.”
“So are you coming back? Or did you decide to send us some fancy souvenirs from all the places you’ve been in the last year while we’ve been worried sick about you?”
Owen chuckled but even through the phone, it didn’t sound humorous. “I guess you could call the contents souvenirs of a sort. Not what you’re thinking, though.”
“What’s going on, Scarecrow?” Tristan asked, apparently hearing the same dark tone I did.
“Just, uh, wait until morning to open them. That’d be the best time. And don’t let anyone else open them, okay? It’s really—” A loud clamor sounded in the background. “I, uh, gotta go. Catch ya later.”
“Owen,” Tristan and I said at the same time, but no reply came. The phone’s screen showed Call ended.
“What happened to him?” I asked, throwing my arms in the air. “Do you think he’s okay?”
“Scarecrow can take care of himself,” Tristan answered as he headed for our bedroom with me on his heels.
“I can’t believe him,” I groaned. “After all this time … that’s all he says. What do you think the delivery is?”
Tristan shrugged. “We’ll find out in the morning.” He lifted his eyebrows at the look I gave him. “Owen said wait until morning. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it.”
“Fine, I won’t be reckless,” I said as I plopped onto the bed. “But, it’d better be good, since it didn’t even sound like he’s coming here. Which is probably in his best interest right now, because I swear I’m going to kill him if I ever see him again.”
The next morning I couldn’t get out of our home and to the safe house fast enough. We found the delivery in my office, and I stared at the two beautiful wood-and-leather boxes for a long moment. Each about three feet long and two feet high, they resembled old-fashioned travel trunks, piquing my curiosity even more at what could be inside. The intricate carvings in the wood, the leather adornments and the ornate silver latches made me think they must have come directly from the Amadis Island. But what would Owen have sent from there? And why him, when he hadn’t been there for so long? Or had he? He didn’t tell us where he called from.
Tristan and I knelt side-by-side in front of one of the trunks, the one with a number 1 scratched into the lid. The other one showed a number 2.
“Guess we open this one first,” Tristan said. He jiggled the latches but they didn’t budge.
“Don’t tell me he put some kind of spell on them and forgot we couldn’t counter it,” I muttered.
“No. He knows what he’s doing.” Tristan studied the lid of the trunk for several minutes, ignoring the impatient tap of my fingernails on my leg. Finally, with deliberation, he touched three of the carved designs as if in a certain order. The latches popped open. He grinned. “Scarecrow and I have our ways.”
I shook my head as Tristan opened the lid. Black velvet lined the interior, at least what I could see of it. A tray sat across the top of the trunk, hiding the contents below. A folded piece of paper lay in the tray.
Let me know when you get this. Take to a ‘safe’ place before opening the bags. And be sure to open them in the morning light. Tristan, you’ll know what to do. Owen
“Well, we don’t have to call him,” I said, lifting the tray to reveal two leather bags. “What does he mean by ‘safe’? He sent them to a safe house.”
I pulled back the drawstring top of one of the bags to take a peek.
And screamed.
Tristan pushed my hand away and slammed the trunk closed.
“Did … did you see …? Was that … what I think …?” I couldn’t get the words out as the thought of what I’d just seen sucked the air out of my lungs. It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be. Surely I didn’t see what I thought I had. My eyes had to have been messing with me. I mean, I’d only caught a quick glimpse before Tristan had shut it out of sight.
“Yeah, I saw,” Tristan said through a clenched jaw. “We can’t open these here.”
His tone and implication made my stomach roll.
“Alexis,” Sheree said from the doorway.
Tristan sprang to his feet and jerked me up with him, but my trembling legs could barely hold my weight. With a hand on my waist, he walked me to the door, as if he didn’t want Sheree inside, near the trunks. Was it really …? I swallowed down the acid that had lurched into my throat.
“Um … are you okay?” Sheree asked, her voice distant beyond the rush of blood in my ears.
I tried to look at her, but I couldn’t see her face past the image of the black bag and the smooth, white—I blinked and shook my head, trying to erase it from my mind. It didn’t go away, but danced around like a ghost only my eyes could see. My lips parted, but no words came out. My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth.
“What’s going on?” Tristan asked, his tone sharp.
“I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Sonya, Alexis.” She paused but I still couldn’t answer, so she went on about something having to do with Sonya and Heather and a phone call. “It went really well, did wonders for her, and I think she might be ready for an in-person visit.”
Her voice stopped again, and I looked at her without really seeing her. She apparently waited for me to say something. My hand drifted to my temple and massaged, as if that would make the vision go away.
“We can talk about it later,” Sheree said, her eyes tightening with worry as she stared at me. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”
“Later’s a good idea,” Tristan said, speaking for me again.
Thankfully, Sheree left us, and only then was I able to let out the breath I’d been holding since Tristan first opened the trunk. The breath felt good in my tight lungs, so I tried deep breathing while closing my eyes to center myself, but on the back of my eyelids I saw my hand reaching inside the trunk, opening the bag and then the … No! That’s not what it was. It couldn’t be, because Owen would never, ever send us such a thing in a million years. Would he?
“We need to move them,” Tristan said. My throat remained too dry and constricted to answer, so I simply nodded.
He raised his hand and one of the trunks lifted into the air. I swore I heard the contents inside shift and rattle. My imagination ran wild about what could have caused that sound—if it’d even
been real—and I bit my tongue to stifle another scream. With a hand that shook worse than a recovering drug addict’s, I lifted the other trunk with my own power and followed Tristan out of the room.
We’d put Sonya in one of the five guest rooms in the right wing, so, purposely avoiding Sonya’s wing and Sheree, Tristan took us down the left side. We passed the two master suites, continued to the end of the hall and turned right into the rear wing. Three bedrooms and a bathroom were back here, most recently used by the previous owners’ nanny, live-in maid, and chef.
I called this wing the dungeons, not only because it was the remotest part of the mansion, but also because Tristan, following Mom’s instructions, had bolted heavy silver chains to the concrete walls and attached silver cuffs on their loose ends. The rooms were furnished similarly to the others, with beds, nightstands, chairs, and table lamps, but the chains on the walls and the carts in the corners housing medical supplies made the rooms anything but homey. Instead, they felt as though we’d somehow merged a hotel room, a mental facility, and a torture room in the cellar of an old castle.
The eerie environment didn’t help the foreboding feeling in my stomach.
We took the trunks into one of these rooms and set them on the floor. Tristan closed the door, then grasped me by the shoulders. The look on his face told me I’d really seen what I thought I had. My body began to tremble again. Or perhaps it had never stopped.
“Ma lykita, it’s okay to be afraid,” he said softly, looking into my eyes, “but I need you to be brave. You remember the definition of courage, right?”
My head bobbed once. Not only had he and Charlotte pounded their definition into me while I trained back on the Amadis Island, but we also drove it into Dorian’s memory every time we worked with him.
“Feeling fear, but doing what’s necessary anyway,” I whispered.
“Right. I need you to be courageous, because you need to see this. It won’t be the last time you’ll come across something like this, and there’s a chance you won’t be in a safe place next time.”
