Touch

by Rose Wulf

  Eric spat in Vaughn’s face, smirked, and pressed his hands to Vaughn’s chest. The amount of muscle strength he had left shouldn’t have been enough to earn him much relief, but he added a sharp jolt of electricity for extra effect.

  Vaughn grunted a curse and stumbled back, his chest tingling uncomfortably and his shirt effectively ruined. He lifted one hand to his chest, glaring back at Eric in time to see the bastard straightening and stepping away.

  “If you want to keep living,” Eric taunted, his breathing beginning to stabilize, “you should go home. And stay the hell out of this.” Any “perfect recovery” he was going for in his departure was irreparably marred by the noticeable limp in his step as he walked off, but Vaughn didn’t make a move to pursue him. He certainly had the strength—and the energy—to continue the fight, but that shock Eric had given him had been enough to reawaken his common sense.

  Common sense which dictated it was unwise to pick a fight with a man who could toss lightning around like a football. At least, without a plan.

  Vaughn rubbed at his chest and glared at Eric’s back for several seconds before finally returning to his car. It wasn’t until he was pulling back into traffic that it really occurred to Vaughn how stupid his actions had been. Not only had he gone and confronted Eric without so much as telling someone, but he’d done so in a largely residential area. He’d been surprisingly lucky that no one had walked around the corner, or deliberately come up to them to stop the fight.

  And that wasn’t even touching the concept of police involvement.

  Acknowledging how much worse the incident could have gone didn’t do much to ease Vaughn’s frustration. Eric had gotten away again. Yes, he’d been something of an idiot to attack Eric like that, but that wasn’t justification for letting Eric walk away. And if it wouldn’t have been too little, too late, Vaughn suspected he’d have turned right around to follow Eric back to wherever he was going.

  Instead, he swung into his designated parking space, killed the engine, and climbed from his car. He probably needed to rub some kind of burn cream on his chest, and it would be best if he could make it inside without any of his neighbors, or anyone at all, catching sight of his unnaturally destroyed shirt.

  His plan stalled when he found a handwritten note taped to his door. He didn’t need to read it to know who it was from. He remembered all the stories. That explains what Matthews was doing around here, too. Still, he couldn’t let someone else find it, so he tugged it off the door and quickly let himself inside. And as much as he wanted to drop it without a glance into the nearest garbage pail, he figured he probably should read it first. There was always a slim chance the message was important.

  You should’ve stayed out.

  Fat chance. But at least the note, just like he’d suspected, wasn’t actually important. So he crumpled it in his fist and detoured to his kitchen in order to toss it out without another thought. For a half-second, he considered using the note as an excuse to call Angela, but he didn’t want to bother her with that kind of thing. She would get upset and feel guilty and start apologizing as if she thought for an instant that he regretted getting involved. It was better to pretend it hadn’t happened. Assuming that would be possible. Guess that depends on how these burns are. He didn’t want to have to go to her for healing, either, if he could avoid it. That meant it was time to deal with whatever he found beneath the holes in his shirt.

  When he got in front of his bathroom mirror, though, he found himself more than a little confused.

  Having been blasted by lightning at point-blank range, Vaughn expected to find something rather gross looking back at him from his reflection. Instead, all he saw was a slightly overlapped pair of bright red, swollen, and somewhat sore circles. A couple of inches to the right of his heart. His chest definitely still hurt, but the actual burning was nearly gone and his breathing had almost evened out. None of which made sense, because it had only been a few minutes. Though he’d never been struck by lightning before, either, so what did he really know?

  Might be something worth researching.

  Carefully, Vaughn applied the burn cream he kept in his medicine cabinet. As he rubbed, frowning at his reflection, he wondered if it was also possible Eric had pulled his punch for some reason. That scenario didn’t seem too likely. Regardless, he was definitely glad he hadn’t reached out to Angela over this. It wouldn’t have been worth her time and energy to heal him, let alone her guilt.

  He returned the burn cream to the cabinet, tugged on a new shirt, ordered pizza for dinner, and was reaching for his laptop when someone knocked on the door. Since he’d been off the phone with the pizza place for all of three minutes, and he wasn’t expecting anyone, he paused and listened.

  Had Eric decided he wanted a rematch already? Were they jumping straight to the burn-the-house-down stage they’d put more than one of Angela’s new in-laws through? Attacks at home were nowhere near unheard of for the Matthews.

  The knocking resumed after only a couple of seconds. There was a strange, almost musical pattern to the knock, and while he didn’t recognize it at all, he doubted Eric or anyone associated with him would knock like that. Besides, he had neighbors to consider, so he pushed to his feet. Just to be safe, he paused when he reached the door and snuck a glance through the peephole. For a moment, he was thoroughly confused, because he could have sworn he was looking at his mother. Only about a decade younger, wearing clothes his mother would never touch. His brain kicked back into gear as he reached for the knob, and he realized since she obviously wasn’t his mother, there was only one other person she could be.

  Riley Gabriel, his mother’s estranged younger sister.

  This isn’t going to end well. But he swallowed his nerves, pulled the door open, and managed a small, uncharacteristically awkward smile. He’d opened his mouth to greet her, though he had no idea what to say, but she beat him to it.

  A crooked smile lifted Riley’s lips. She threw her arms dramatically into the air, then around his neck in a tight hug. “Vaughny! Long time no see!” Her long, loose blonde hair practically smothered him as she pulled herself almost off her feet with the strength of her hug. And just as quickly, she’d released him, bouncing back to her feet and giving him room to breathe. “How’s my favorite nephew?”

  It took Vaughn another second to find his voice again. “Hey, Aunt Riley. I’m good… How’re you?” What did one say to someone they hadn’t seen in ten years?

  “Oh, I’ve been good!” she said laughingly. “You know me, never a dull moment!” Then she promptly swooped down and lifted a large duffel bag to her shoulders from the ground beside her feet.

  His stomach sank a little lower at the sight of the duffel. He couldn’t think of many reasons why she’d have brought it. Not that he could think of many reasons why his aunt would even be knocking on his door. As far as he knew, she still wasn’t on the best of terms with his mother. Vanessa was sixteen years older than Riley and they’d never quite figured out how to get over the age gap. Their distance was largely why he hadn’t seen her since he was ten. That, and the fact that the sisters had had a massive fallout as a result of Riley’s unwillingness to “shape up” during the brief time she’d lived with them.

  He didn’t actually want to hear the answer to the necessary question rolling off his tongue. “So, what … brings you by?”

  Riley smiled widely, adjusted the weight of her duffel, and replied, “I need an excuse? It’s been ages since we spent any time together!” That was true. He didn’t dare point out it was because his parents thought she was a bad influence. She’d lived with them for nearly three months when he was ten, and she twenty, and his parents had never once allowed him to be alone with her for longer than a few minutes.

  “It has been a while,” he agreed carefully. He’d intended to add more, but the words died in his throat when Riley started forward. In barely two steps, she was forcing him to step aside and let her in, unless he wanted to be awkwardly rude and
have her walk straight into him instead. So he moved out of the way and watched with escalating apprehension as she strolled into his condo, on a collision course with his couch.

  “Ooo, this place is nice!” Riley called, looking around as she walked. “You did good for yourself, Vaughny!”

  Vaughn shut the door with a cringe. He absolutely loathed that nickname. Never, not once, in his life had he encouraged her to call him that, but she kept doing it anyway. When he was younger, he’d tried asking her to stop. It had never worked. He knew better now than to say a word. She’s a permanent teenager. He kept the thought to himself and instead trailed after her, saying, “Thanks.” He swallowed, knowing what he needed to ask and not wanting to have to go through it at the same time. “But really, Aunt Riley, isn’t it a little late for a casual visit?” And what’s with the duffel?

  Riley dropped her duffel on the floor in front of the couch, turned on her heel, and flopped down, arms spread wide over the backrest. Her crooked smile firmly in place, she replied, “It’s not that late, silly. Don’t be so uptight!” She shrugged and watched as he settled in his armchair. “Also, I could use a place to crash for a little while. Not forever or anything, I’m just sort of between places. And I figured just because Nessy and I can’t share a roof, that doesn’t mean I can’t spend a little good ol’ fashioned quality time with my nephew! You’ve got a spare room, don’t you? Of course, you do, who’m I kidding? So I’ll just keep it warm for a while!”

  Vaughn held his breath, waiting for the pit in his stomach to stop expanding and praying it wouldn’t eat him alive. That was the last thing he’d wanted to hear, even if it was exactly what he’d expected her to say. How the hell am I getting out of this? “Aunt Riley,” he began carefully, leaning forward. “I don’t think that’s a great idea. I … don’t have authorization from my landlord for a roommate.”

  Riley waved a hand toward him dismissively, looking around again. “Don’t worry about silly things like that. What your landlord doesn’t know won’t kill him. Besides, it’s just until I get my own place, I promise.”

  Why does that not fill me with confidence? “Aunt Riley,” he tried again, even though he suspected his efforts were in vain. He couldn’t actually throw her out if she was legitimately without a place to stay. Just because she should have had plenty of money didn’t mean she did, and knowing her, she would pick the worst possible place to stay if he kicked her out. All of which put him in a bad position. A very, very bad position.

  “So, which way to the spare room?” Riley asked, reaching for her bag as she pushed to her feet. “I really need a bathroom, too, and I should get a little settled, you know? Hey, we should order a pizza! I’m starved.”

  Vaughn sighed and gestured to the stairs. “The room’s upstairs on the right. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall. I already ordered a pizza, actually, so you can split it with me.”

  Riley beamed, turned for the stairs, and exclaimed, “You’re the best, Vaughny!”

  Chapter Five

  “Daniel’s flying in tomorrow,” Lillian announced over lunch on Saturday. She kept her focus on her salad, her movements carefully consistent, and Angela couldn’t help but wonder if her mother noticed them go still.

  Angela and her parents were gathered on the back deck for lunch, enjoying the ironically fabulous weather. Angela was seated opposite them at the large round table, so she had a perfect view of her mother’s controlled behavior and her father’s startled reaction. She was fairly sure her response more closely resembled her father’s.

  “He is?” Christopher finally asked, cautious curiosity in his voice. Sometimes Angela wondered if her father’s misgivings of Daniel were the result of sympathetic frustration for his wife or his own aggravation. Probably a little of both. Daniel had turned his back on his family, but Christopher had been around to see the fallout. He’d been there to try to comfort Lillian when her brother walked out, and Angela imagined some part of him was still a little angry about it.

  Lillian nodded, holding her verbal response until she’d chased another bite of food down with her tea. “Yes,” she said. “He insisted on coming up when he heard the Matthews are back, and he’s going to bring some copies of the old texts that he and Nicholas have been working with.”

  One eyebrow arching, Angela asked, “What, so we can gather around and all read the story about how one of our ancestors was stupid and fell in love with a psychopath?” What more could they possibly need to know? It’s not like it really matters how this thing all started.

  Lillian frowned disapprovingly. “Angela, I shouldn’t have to explain to you how important it is that we try to learn from our history. Nor should I have to remind you how amazing a discovery their findings really are. It’s been generations since we’ve had written records of our ancestry.”

  Angela sighed and dropped her gaze down to what remained of her lunch. “I get that part,” she said. “It’s cool to have more access to our history as a whole. It’s just … what’s the big deal if we figure out the origin of this feud? It won’t change anything. Who cares which of our ancestors started it? They’re the ones keeping it going, not us.”

  “That’s true,” Lillian acknowledged carefully. “But don’t you still want to know? Perhaps there’s a detail in the records somewhere that will give us a better understanding of their powers. It’s entirely likely that they have a weakness, the same as we do, and we just haven’t figured out what that weakness is yet.”

  “Something like that would be helpful,” Christopher pointed out.

  Angela frowned. “Okay, so say we figure out what their personal kryptonite is, what then? If it were one of our natural powers, we’d have noticed by now. Are we supposed to gather as much of whatever it is and hurl it at them the way they do to us?” She pulled in a breath in an effort to contain her rant, pushed to her feet, scooped up her plate, and said, “That would make us just like them. I don’t want to kill anybody. I just want to live in peace.”

  “That’s hardly what we meant,” Christopher said as Angela turned and started toward the sliding glass door.

  “Angela!” Lillian called, her voice somewhere between anger and mortification, when Angela neglected to respond to her father’s statement. She neglected to respond to her mother’s outcry as well, with anything more articulate than the solid thunk of the door as she slid it back into place.

  And what am I angry about?

  She undoubtedly was, but even as she swung her Mercedes onto the road a couple of minutes later, she couldn’t identify why. Was she angry at her parents? She couldn’t really think of what they might have done to justify it, so if she was, she’d need to find a way to apologize. But that didn’t feel right. Maybe it’s Daniel. That was a possibility. She’d been avoiding the idea of having to actually see him again. He’d come back into their lives over two years earlier, but he’d only come to Darien for two nights. And not until after she’d moved out. Angela had been so angry at his audacity that she’d refused to be in the same room with him. Something I won’t be able to get away with twice.

  Especially if, this time, she was living in the same building he would be staying in.

  That’s what I need to do. She needed to find a new place to live, the sooner, the better. That probably wasn’t the ultimate source of her irritation, but not having her own space was certainly not helping. And it wasn’t like she had anything better to do that afternoon. It was Saturday. She didn’t have class again until Monday and she was pretty much caught up on her homework. Well, okay, half-caught up… But the rest could wait until Sunday night. The only problem was that she’d pretty much exhausted her rental options if she intended to stay in Darien. Which she did.

  There’s always the house thing…

  It had been, at best, a half-formed idea when it had popped out of her mouth before. But since that conversation, she hadn’t been able to fully dismiss it. She was sure her biggest hesitation was the loneliness factor. That was some
thing she was going to have to get over, anyway, so maybe it would be a good idea to start looking around at houses. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Come to think of it, there’s that new housing development on the north side of town. She knew all about it, even if she hadn’t once seen it, because Logan’s company had been hired to do all the work. Surely, if Logan’s company had built the houses, then she should start there.

  Angela was just getting into the song blasting through her speakers, barely two intersections later, when her phone rang and cut off the chorus. She tripped over her tongue, shooting a reflexive, pointless glare at the dashboard, as the automated voice announced the caller. Vaughn.

  She tapped the necessary button and connected the call, her mood instantly lightened. “What’s up?” she greeted casually.

  “What are you doing?” Vaughn asked, forgoing any usual greeting. She couldn’t quite read his tone through her stereo speakers and her lips fell into an automatic frown.

  Please don’t let anything be wrong. “Uh, I’m actually headed out to investigate that new housing development,” she replied. “Why? Is something wrong?” Would he admit to it if it was?

  “Depends on how you mean,” he said with a groan of faint exasperation. “Want some company? I need to get out and do something.”

  Frown fading, Angela teased, “Well, if you don’t mind settling for boring ol’ me, then sure. I’ll wait for you.”

  “Meet you there,” Vaughn assured her, not bothering to comment on her joke before disconnecting.

  Angela’s frown returned as the song resumed. Usually, Vaughn was game for a little joking around. Not to mention he hated letting any perceivable weakness show, and she was pretty sure that level of near-desperation normally qualified. But if he wasn’t having a problem of the Matthews variety, what else could be bothering him? She couldn’t think of anything off-hand.