by Molly Ringle
“How the hell—” Terry shut his mouth, and his posture stiffened. He stepped back. “Actually, you know, hang on. It’s cold out. I’ll find my gloves—I left them in the back room—and we’ll talk. You stay here, all right?” He skittered toward the cash register. “Just wait right here,” he repeated, and darted into the shed at the back of the produce stand.
Betty, of course, had no intention of waiting. The man was almost certainly dialing 911. Besides, she had delivered her message. She hobbled to the car and got in. “Time to go,” she told Landon.
He had kept the engine running. Before she’d even clicked her seatbelt on, he hit the gas and they took off from the parking lot, and left Carnation behind.
“She said what?” Phone pressed to her ear, Sophie stopped walking in the middle of the crowded campus sidewalk. Someone’s backpack slapped against her and sent her sideways. She dodged around the other students and hopped up onto the steps of a lecture hall. “Dad. Did you call the police?”
“Course I did. Obviously it was the woman you warned me about, so I told her to wait right there and I’d come out and talk to her. Then I got into the shed and called 911. But she had a getaway car ready. Heard them peeling out a few seconds later. By the time I got out there to look, they were too far off to make out a license plate. Cops haven’t found her.”
Sophie clamped her teeth down against a selection of words her father wouldn’t like to hear from her. “Did you get the make of the car?”
“Silver SUV. Think it was a Toyota. About the most common thing in the Northwest.”
Sophie expelled her breath through her nose. Fear had caught up to her, and her hands were shaking. “But you guys are okay?”
“Yes, we’re fine. No one laid a hand on me, and your mom and Liam weren’t even there. But Sophie, you have not answered my question. What is this about some New Zealander named Adrian who isn’t supposed to be in the country?”
She leaned back on the cold bricks of the building. “She’s crazy, Dad. I have no idea what she’s talking about.” She wanted to sob already. Lying so blatantly, about something that mattered so much, to the father she loved dearly.
“It was weirdly specific, you know?” he said. “You can tell me. I want to help you. I trust you here.”
“I really think she was only trying to cause trouble.”
“That guy David we met. Where’d you say he was from?”
Uh-oh. “Um. Why?”
“Just asking. Where was he from?”
“He’s moved around a lot. Some time in the South, also some here, in Oregon.”
“His accent sounded a little weird.”
Training Adrian on a better American accent: another item for the task list. “Yeah, probably from the time in the South,” she said.
“Then, you two, are you…?”
“Oh. I don’t know.” She looked around, distracted, as if someone was at this moment about to stroll up and stab her. “It’s, um—Jacob’s still pretty recent, you know, so…”
“No, that’s good. You’re taking your time.”
She rubbed her temples with trembling fingers. No, I’m not, Dad, I’m completely rushing into madness. “But you guys are okay?” she repeated.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re fine. And believe me, I’m keeping a baseball bat with me next time I’m manning the stand. And 911 on the speed dial. It’s going to be required for anyone working out there.”
“Good. I hope they catch her. And keep her this time. This is…it’s scary.”
“I know, honey.” He sounded like her properly commiserating dad at that moment. He’d hug her if they were together; she could tell from his tone. Then he shifted back to suspicion. “But it’s awful damn strange, all these attacks on you lately. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to wonder: is there something you got mixed up in that’s causing this? Even if you didn’t mean to? Something some friend was involved in, let’s say?”
This. This was exactly what was bound to happen when you had a relationship with an immortal, and a family who actually cared and noticed what happened to you.
“They’re a crazy cult, Dad. Who knows what they think or why they think it? I probably said something about…I don’t know, being agnostic, or curious about Wicca, or something, where someone overheard me. Who the hell knows.”
“You’ll tell me if you figure it out, all right? We’ve got your back.”
Oh, how she wished they could guard her back—and that she could guard theirs. But none of them were equipped to do that. “Okay. I love you. I’ve got to get to class.”
“I love you too. Don’t worry, baby.”
After she hung up, she tapped out a quick text to Adrian. Scared as hell. Q showed up at fruit stand and told my dad I’m dating you, then took off. I said it was a lie but what if they hurt my family??
Before sending it, she navigated to Tabitha’s number in the contacts, and added Tab as a recipient for the text too. She sent it off.
It was now a week and a half into November, ten days or so since Tab’s first video with a rock star. Since then, she had posted two more. Two separate parties, two new celebrities, either singing for Tab or telling her an embarrassing story while at amusing levels of tipsiness. The celebrities themselves surely didn’t even mind these things being posted; the videos made them look endearing and human. Each one had gotten over a hundred thousand views, and climbing. Tab was well on her way to becoming an Internet celebrity. Sophie couldn’t imagine how she found time to study, and doubted Tab would want to do anything else serious either, such as protect Sophie’s family. Still, Tabitha was her best friend, and turning to her in an hour of trouble was Sophie’s instinct. It had felt wrong during that recent phase of getting involved with Adrian when she couldn’t tell Tab about it. At least now she could, even if Tab wasn’t able to help.
Sophie shoved the phone into her coat pocket and set out miserably across the muddy ground to her chemistry lecture.
Still, it was Tab who answered first, her text coming before Sophie took her seat in the lecture, beating out even Adrian’s response.
Bastards!! Tab texted. I am on this. Don’t worry. We’ll talk soon.
Chapter Sixteen
Tab’s idea of being “on this,” it turned out, was to dash to Carnation on her ghost horse and casually check in on Sophie’s family, then stalk around town looking for Quentin. “Didn’t see the old bat,” she told Sophie when she called that night. “But I’m going to go back every couple of days and check again, and make sure no one’s acting shifty around your peeps.”
“Thank you, Tab. Really.” Sophie was moved, and Adrian grudgingly admitted, after she hung up with Tab, that it was a generous gesture, and no better than he could have done himself.
But Sophie’s alarm level had only slipped down one notch, not all the way to “relaxed.” Even with Tab prowling Carnation a few times a week, that left plenty of other times Quentin could send in her thugs. And if Tab did catch one of them and it came to a fight, she’d have to reveal her super-strength, and none of them wanted Thanatos to know about Tab’s immortality yet. An imperfect solution it definitely was. But a perfect one likely didn’t exist.
Tab did have one more gift in store, however. Sophie walked out of her communications class a couple of days later to find Tab awaiting her under a tree, wearing a new knee-length tan leather coat and gorgeous heeled boots.
They met in a squealing hug. Exquisite perfume wafted from Tab’s hair; its scent mingled with the leather, and made Sophie think of crates of grapes unpacked on a fresh summer day.
“I have a surprise for you,” Tab said. “Ready? I already cleared this with your boy.”
Sophie laughed. “You texted Adrian?”
“Yep. Come on!”
Five minutes later, Sophie found herself on a saddled gray spirit horse, soaring through the chilly air toward Seattle, her arms latched around Tabitha’s soft waist as if her life depended on it—which in fact it did. “Oh my God,” she shri
eked above the wind. She found herself laughing in spite of her fear.
Tab’s long, loose blonde hair whipped across her own face and Sophie’s. She grinned over her shoulder. “Haven’t you ridden one of these puppies like this before?”
“Not in this lifetime. Dude, the trees are right there!” Beneath them, treetops blurred past, appearing to be mere inches away.
“Objects below horse are farther than they appear. Trust me.”
Once they landed in Seattle, and switched into the living city, Sophie forgot her shaking knees and her thoughts of kissing the ground. Tab led her down a busy sidewalk and into a hotel—no, a convention center. People swarmed the room. Sophie spotted several wearing costumes from “Nightshade,” one of their all-time favorite shows.
“What’s going on? Convention?”
“Yup. I wanted to do this for you sooner, but it took me a while to pull all the right strings.” They stopped at a velvet cord guarded by a muscular guy in a “security” T-shirt. With a few words from Tab and the flash of a laminated badge she pulled from under her shirt, the guy unhooked the cord and let them through.
They dodged through a hanging curtain, then Tab stopped behind a table where three people sat, signing items for the fans who approached. When Sophie recognized them as three of the central cast members for “Nightshade,” a star-struck dazzle jolted her from toes to fingers. And she and Tab stood behind the table, with them.
The woman nearest them, who had played Merrin on the show, looked up at Tab. “Hey, you’re back. Is this her?” The other two actors looked up and smiled at Sophie too.
“Yep,” Tab said. “Everyone, meet Sophie.”
They chorused “Hello”s and “Hey”s. Sophie stammered back, “Hi! I’m—wow—I’m such a—I love the—”
“Here, sit with us,” the actor in the center said. He had played the actual character of Nightshade, the shape-shifter. He pulled over a folding chair and wedged it between his and Merrin’s. “Hang out a while. It’s cool.”
Drifting in a glitzy dream, Sophie turned to Tabitha and mouthed, “Thank you!”, then accepted the seat and hung out with the famous people a while.
How far back have you got? Zoe texted to Tabitha. She dug her bare toes into the smooth gravel on the shore, trying to enjoy the warm spring day rather than obsess about the rock-star American with the sexy voice. After all, said woman could have any bi-curious groupie she wanted, and was surely fast on her way to that, to judge from what Zoe had seen the other night.
Tab did invite Zoe as promised to the latest party, which was in Los Angeles. Zoe jumped at the chance. She threw all kinds of placating lies at her parents on her way out—staying with a friend overnight, bye…
It wasn’t like her to leave and enter countries illegally. But then, it wasn’t like Adrian either—he was so law-obsessed it was positively nerdy—and he didn’t mind leaping all round the globe for convenience and romance, in technically illegal fashion. So Zoe indulged too.
The good part was being with Tab and soaking up the glamor of a posh party. The not-so-good part was they had no chance to be alone, what with all the social-butterflying Tabitha did. Tab gave and received kisses and hugs from beautiful celebrities all round the multi-million-dollar house they were visiting. From the playful growls and flirtatious grabs Tab exchanged with some women, Zoe had little doubt that invitations for dates were arriving regularly in Tab’s texts. Unless everyone behaved like that in L.A.?
Meanwhile Tab had kissed Zoe in greeting and farewell. On the cheek. That was all. Bit frustrating.
Oh well, a crush was fun, and at least this time the object of Zoe’s infatuation was actually gay too. That rarely happened.
Tab’s answer came within a few minutes, though it was nearly 1:00 a.m. in Tab’s time zone. Tabitha kept late nights, it would seem. Memories? Not paying much attention. Still in India I think. 1800s.
Go back faster! It’s great stuff and we need to get to it. Think I’m almost to it.
But why rush, you know? Tabitha answered.
Zoe lifted her eyebrow. She deliberated whether to use the bribe she held up her sleeve, and finally couldn’t resist, even though it meant throwing the spotlight on a different woman. Did no one tell you who you shagged a lot back then?
Uhhh no, who?
Years ago, Adrian had told Zoe about Adonis and Aphrodite, and Niko had confirmed it last time he’d visited her. In loyalty to Adrian and Sophie, Zoe had punched Niko hard on the arm for his blue-orange theft before settling down to enjoy a chat with him.
Before long, Zoe expected to remember meeting Aphrodite herself—though probably never as intimately as Dionysos had, back in his Adonis days.
Aphrodite, she texted.
THE Aphrodite?? Tab responded.
The one, the only. I’m jealous, mate.
OK yeah. I better get to those. How do you move the memories faster again?
Zoe pulled her knees up to sit cross-legged, and set about texting the instructions to Tab. To help her crush remember being a man who was madly in love with a woman who wasn’t her.
It stung a bit. And could sting more before they got through it all. But by now Zoe knew her life usually went that way, one reincarnation after another: a sobering habit of ending up alone. A wise, stoic, inspiring type of alone, not a completely miserable alone. But Zoe would have liked a romantic “together” rather more often.
Chapter Seventeen
It eased Sophie’s worries at least a small amount to hear Tabitha was accelerating her memories to learn about Dionysos—whom Sophie still hadn’t dreamed about herself—although it had been an eye opener to realize she had also been Adonis. It might at least help Tab take the immortal business more seriously and do a more diligent job protecting herself and her friends. Rather than merely spending every night partying, and less and less of her time in college classes, which is how Tab’s life sounded like it was going lately. Sophie couldn’t really complain, given the cast meet-and-greet she’d been treated to—which had thrown a happy glow over her life for several days afterward. But as the glow diminished and real life resumed, her worries trudged right back in. Parties and famous people spiced things up, sure, but what good were they against murderers?
Sophie hurried to class through a near-freezing downpour, her ski coat’s hood over her head. She gripped her new stun gun in her pocket, but doubted anyone would attempt an attack in the daytime on a crowded campus street, especially in such awful weather. November in Oregon was turning out almost as gray and dismal as November in Washington. Maybe it should have made her feel at home. Instead it served, as so many things did lately, to make her miss home.
When she walked the university sidewalks, or ventured into the Corvallis residential neighborhoods, homesickness rolled over her, brought on by the lighted windows at dusk and the smells of dinners cooking and the raked piles of leaves. Her rental house, which she visited a few hours a week, provided no sensation of “home” for her, though its inhabitants were always friendly to her. Adrian’s Airstream came closer, since it contained him and Kiri, and she felt safer sleeping there than in the living world.
But it didn’t fully measure up either. The other day she had wanted to bake gingerbread, thinking the activity and the sweet smell would ease her domestic longings. But Adrian had no spices in the cupboard except cinnamon, and no flour at all.
“Who doesn’t own flour?” she had wailed.
He had scrambled over with cash in his hands, offering to take her to a grocery store at once; she could get anything she liked. But she hadn’t bothered. It was too late at night to shop and make gingerbread. Another day, she’d said in defeat.
The cash. That was another issue. She told him she’d have to find a part-time job to cover her rental money and some of her tuition, as agreed upon with her parents.
“Don’t be silly,” he’d said, again producing envelopes of cash from inside one of the trailer’s compartments. “Here. It’s yours as much as mine.
It’s from the Underworld’s gemstones. Come on, this way you can focus on your studies.”
She had refused to take the envelope. She stared at it from a step away, embarrassed. “No!”
“Oh, don’t think that. Look, it isn’t like I’m…rather, I don’t mean that you’re…” He at least knew better than to bring out words like “mistress.” Or “hooker.”
“I can’t take money from you.”
“It isn’t mine. Not really. You’d hate having some part-time job, and I’d worry about you the more hours you spent out there. Look, I give some to my dad and Zoe too, all right? It’s not like any of us were rich before this.”
They argued the topic for what felt like an hour. She ended up accepting the money, wearily acknowledging that her class assignments, combined with the Underworld drama and the family issues along with it, ate up every last second of her time already. But it still embarrassed her.
Then there were the animals. The spirit world teemed with them, some giant and carnivorous, as she’d found within her first few minutes there. All the animals, large and small, tended to keep away from Adrian and Kiri, and the trailer too, though if Sophie were by herself she was fairly sure she’d get attacked and eaten. And yesterday when Sophie and Adrian returned after dinner out, a fir tree was lying at an angle against the Airstream’s roof. They shone flashlights upon the trunk and found it had been plowed over, its trunk splintered and broken after something strong rammed into it.
Picturing Tyrannosaur-like monsters, Sophie had gone dry-mouthed with terror. But Adrian shrugged. “Probably mammoths having a disagreement with one another,” he said, and shoved the tree off the trailer. “I see them around from time to time.” The shiny roof now had a dent and a few scratches, but none of the windows had broken. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “They wouldn’t come round while we’re here.”
Right. Like she could sleep after that. All night her ears seized upon every strange sound, and she pictured herds of stampeding mammoths overturning the trailer and trampling them to a pulp. Or maybe some other-world version of rabies would infect one of those giant lions and make it unafraid of Adrian’s immortal scent, and cause it to pounce upon them and devour them the second they emerged from the trailer one sleepy morning. Or what if a lightning storm swept through and stabbed a million volts through the metal trailer, frying them where they slept?
