He answered her before I could. “No, please. I want to know Maddie and Emma are settled in before I leave. We’ll have plenty of time for answers later.” He shot me a pointed look. “And don’t think I didn’t hear what you said to Emma. Though it hardly matters now, I think we both have confessions to make.”
I nodded, wanting more than anything to find some distraction outside of the hurt making each breath harder for me to take than the last.
Luckily, Dana had a whole speech memorized and well rehearsed. She slipped something onto her face, a frame that hooked just behind her ears and enlarged her eyes behind twin circles of transparency. They looked to be a reading aid, though I doubted any detail, no matter the size, escaped her eager eyes.
“Each colony member is given lodging, a modest sum of cash and employment. The town here is pretty small, so choices are limited. Everything is on a first-come, first-served basis.” She flipped open a vibrant blue folder, licked her thumb and shuffled through the pages. “Let’s see what we have. The grocery store, salon and diner are all vacant.” She looked over her rims at us. “If you don’t mind working under someone, there are other options, but I thought you might enjoy establishing your own place here, given your…um…unique situation.” She took the frames off and leaned closer, as if confiding. “I’m not saying you’d have any trouble, mind you. This is a very close community and we all want to help one another out, but we’ve never had Askarans seek shelter here. I just don’t want to see anyone’s feelings get hurt. That’s all.”
Beside me, Emma spoke through gritted teeth as she worked to sit upright. “How will we live if no one is willing to pay for our services?” Her earlier fog cleared as she shifted into survival mode. We sat shoulder to shoulder.
The simple contact with her reassured me. It helped me to remember even with Harper gone I wouldn’t be alone. I would have Emma, and it would be enough.
“Oh, we have a decent amount of through traffic. We’re sort of a truck-stop town. People come and go. We just do our best not to encourage them to stay.” She smiled. “So you should be just fine.”
Emma hummed low in her throat, considering. “We’ll take the diner. No matter their feelings for us, everyone has to eat. If you have an abundance of travelers, then our history will be a moot point.” She bumped against me. “Does that sound all right with you?”
“Yes. Until we see what type of reception we receive, we need to focus on the necessities.”
Emma tapped a finger stained with blood against the crisp, white paper held in Dana’s hands. “The diner is what we’d like. How will this work?”
“Well, it’s all fairly simple, really.” Dana repeated the quick lick to her thumb and shuffled through a new stack of papers. “Clayton Delaney owns the property.” She made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Since he’s never here, I have power of attorney, so it won’t be a big deal to make this all official in the morning.”
“Will he mind you giving away his property?”
“Clayton?” She chuckled. “No, this is how it works for everyone. The town is our sanctuary. You’ll only find Evanti, their wives and children here. We have the occasional human. Some even work in town, but they’re mostly family members or are demon friendly.” She glanced up. “Otherwise, like I said, we make sure passersby keep passing by, unless one of the males becomes interested.” Her gaze shifted to Harper. “You know how they are when they set their mind to something. For such big and bad demons, they sure fall hard and fast.”
She produced a marbled pen from her pocket and waved the uncapped end between me and Emma. “I assume you wish to live together?”
“Yes,” we said in unison.
She flipped through another file and made notes. The fluorescent yellow folder made me squint and finally look away. I hoped obnoxious colors weren’t the norm here.
Dana straightened. “We have temporary quarters you can use until a suitable home can be located.” She rubbed slow circles in the small of her back. “As I said before, the town was quaint to begin with and our numbers keep growing. You might be cramped for a while, but we’ll find somewhere you both like.”
“Thank you for your kindness.”
Emma repeated my sentiments.
“You’re both very welcome.” Dana went to stand by the door. “One more thing before I start processing your paperwork. Have you considered changing your last names?” She frowned. “It might help everyone forget faster if they aren’t hearing the DeGray name or its derivatives thrown around.”
I shrugged. “I’m not partial to my last name. It would be nice to share a common name with my sister.”
Emma leaned back against her pillows and sighed tiredly. “I agree with any measures you think will keep Maddie safe.”
Harper pushed from the wall. “Dana will see to it that neither of you are bothered.” Walking over to the bed, he stooped down to press a kiss to my cheek, and then lifted Emma’s hand to brush his lips across her knuckles. “I don’t want to leave either of you this way, but every minute I’m here is time that good males are stumbling around blindly out there.”
“We can entertain ourselves for a few days.” I sighed, too exhausted to feel much of anything. “Don’t worry about us.”
He strode to the door and took the knob in his hand before looking back at us. “I love you, Maddie. No matter what else happens, know that.”
Dana’s jaw dropped open. She tucked the files as close to her chest as her stomach allowed. “I didn’t realize…is she yours?”
Her curiosity fueled my own. My heart lodged in my throat as I waited to see if he would claim me as his.
His cocky grin made one final appearance. “She is my heart and always will be.”
His sweet words soothed the worst of my anxieties. Whatever else he’d done or said, and wherever else he’d been, he had always come home to me.
I offered him a smile, and this time, I meant it. “Just be careful.”
“As you wish, my lady,” he teased.
Dana glowed. “Well, well. How the mighty have fallen.” She followed him into the hall, pausing just outside the door. “Would you girls like me to leave the light on or off?” She glanced at a thin gold chain around her wrist. “It’s around two a.m. here, so no one will be up for a few hours yet.”
Emma’s eyes had already closed. “Turn it off. Please.”
I lay beside her, draping my arm over her waist and tucking it between her side and the mattress. Then the room went dark.
“Sweet dreams.”
“Good night.”
I snapped awake drenched in cold sweat. Throwing off the covers tangled around my waist, I had one foot on the hard floor before I realized where I was. Not home, but safe. The burst of anxious energy subsided until my ears filled with the wail of sirens piercing the night.
I jumped as an agonized scream rose from somewhere just beyond our room. Doors slammed open in the hall as the house awakened. Male voices called sharp orders and issued soothing words before leaving us in stilted silence.
The mattress shifted. Emma righted herself and closed her strong fingers around my wrist, holding me in place.
“What do you think it means?”
Emma remained silent, but she almost vibrated with coiled anticipation. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Stay here. I’ll find Dana and ask what this is about.” She paused. “And if we should be worried.”
The door to our room swung open wide and filled with Dana’s curvy silhouette. Her frantic hands pawed along the wall. A sharp click later and light bathed the room.
She panted deeply. “They’re gone.”
Pain contorted her features, washing the color from her face. She clutched her stomach with both hands and groaned hoarsely, leaning into the doorframe and sliding down to the carpeted floor. Her red nose sniffled and dark circles filled the hollows beneath both eyes.
“What do you mean, gone?” I asked. “Harper should have left hours ago.”
<
br /> A second woman arrived and bent down. Dana slapped away her hands. When a third woman came into view, they threaded their arms through Dana’s and pulled her to her feet. When her breath caught on a sob, the room spun around me in dizzying circles. I broke Emma’s hold as I went to my feet.
“What’s happened?” I looked between the women. “What’s wrong with Dana?”
“She’s gone into shock,” the woman on the left supplied.
To the right, the other woman added, “She’s gone into labor. We have to get her to the hospital.”
My skin prickled with awareness, and I turned to find Emma standing behind me. Her brow crinkled with thoughts and implications my fevered mind failed to grasp.
“What aren’t you telling us?” Emma asked quietly.
Neither woman answered.
“The rescue party,” Dana gasped. Her harsh breaths sawed in and out, shaking her petite frame with each unsteady gulp. “They heard about the ceremony… The guards were doubled… They were attacked on their way back to the colony.”
Slipping boneless through the women’s hands, she landed in a graceless sprawl across the floor with her body centered in a pool of pink fabric from her nightgown.
“They’re dead.” Her body quaked with her cries. Each sob caused violent spasms in her back. She bucked against the floor before curling into a ball on her side.
My feet guided me forward. “What about Harper?”
Dana didn’t answer. I would have shaken the information from her if Emma hadn’t stepped to my side and turned her attention from them to me.
“Where is Harper?” I shouted in order to be heard over her mewling. “Where is he?”
“He didn’t come back,” the woman on the right snapped. “We have three dead and two more males missing. Bodies they were unable to retrieve. Does that answer your question?”
I didn’t realize I had charged them, only felt the weight of my sister anchoring me in place. My nails lengthened to black-tipped claws. I barely registered the sharp pressure of Emma locking my arms behind my back.
I charged again, fueled by my desperation to find Harper.
Emma anticipated me, forcing my elbow up until my wrist was level with my spine. Then she slammed me to the floor and pinned me beneath her.
“Stop it.” Her knee dug into my lower back as her arms twined with mine in a hold I had no hope of breaking. Her hollow voice collapsed. “He’s gone, vinda koosh. We’ve lost him.”
“No! They’re wrong!” I shrieked and thrashed beneath her. “I have to see him. I have to.” I couldn’t get enough air. I inhaled, felt my lungs expand against my ribs as if preparing to scream. Then I realized the sirens had stopped. The ear-piercing wails bouncing off the walls of the small room were mine.
“He can’t be gone,” I cried, lowering my head to the hardwood floor. “He can’t be.”
I think I stopped breathing.
Chapter Five
Earthen Realm, Five Years Later
Emma crossed our peeling front porch wearing fleece pajama bottoms tucked into heavy work boots. She huddled inside her quilted jacket, carrying a pair of mugs steaming a trail in her wake. “Madelyn Toliver, I want your butt back in the house this instant.” Clouds of hot breath huffed out over her lips, suspending in the air between us.
“I’m almost ready to go inside.” I dropped the book I’d been pretending to read for the last few hours on the wicker coffee table nudging my knees. The table and two chair set was courtesy of an end-of-season clearance sale at Home Depot the previous summer. Along with a few gallons of paint, the furniture represented our first purchases as homeowners.
She sank into the rocker beside me, and after a brief pause our chairs creaked in tandem. “Drink this.” She pressed one of the mugs into my hands. “Extra marshmallows, just the way you like it.”
The first sip of cocoa scalded the taste buds from my tongue. By the second gulp, I accepted the fact a week would pass before I would taste again.
“Do you see that white fluffy stuff?” Emma pointed towards an offending snowflake, tracking it with her finger until it drifted down to nestle among other equally offensive flakes littering our front steps.
“Yes.” I took another drink, enjoying the way the hot chocolate twisted down to warm my insides. I snorted in the face of her sarcasm. “I think it’s called snow.”
Emma’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. Glamour concealed her lavender scrollwork. She lifted her mug and blew across the steaming liquid, but lowered it without drinking. “It’s freezing out here.” Her gaze swept me from head to foot. “You do know that, right?”
I glanced down my body, checking to see if all my bases were covered. A petal-pink fleece jacket zipped just under my chin, covering a turtleneck sweater in the same shade. Starched denim encased my legs. I had even donned the pink crocheted cap Emma hung on a coat hook next to matching mittens dignity forbade me to wear even as far as my own porch.
I felt like one of those Barbie dolls the little girls from the colony favored—all pink and plastic.
Dressed by my sister’s hands instead of an eight-year-old’s, most days I could have doubled for the iconic figure since both of us relied on someone else’s dreams to fulfill us, to make us real. I felt like my price tag was showing and the dollar amount found lacking. Her eyes were still on me. “What?”
“Your feet.” Emma pointed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them that lovely shade of blue before.”
Numbness having nothing to do with the temperature had spread through my limbs hours earlier. I kicked out my foot, rotating my ankle back and forth as I admired the periwinkle hue. “Pretty.”
She snatched my foot out of the air. “This is the kind of detail a human wouldn’t overlook.” She rubbed her hands, still warm from her cocoa, over my frozen skin. “A human would catch pneumonia or frostbite or something.”
“I didn’t notice it had gotten so cold.”
Emma cocked one perfectly manicured brow. “You didn’t notice your feet turning into blocks of ice?”
“No, I didn’t.” Pinpricks of discomfort spiked through my feet as blood began to sluggishly circulate. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”
Her sharp exhale ended on a sigh. “Yes, you do. We both do. Today makes five years since Harper…since he didn’t come home. I know this day always knocks you for a loop, but there are things you need to—”
“Did you see that?” I leaned forward, staring down the road winding its way into town. Had I seen a flash of black against the whiteout? Flakes swirled by wings instead of wind?
Emma snapped her fingers an inch away from my nose. “Are you even listening to me?”
“I thought I saw something.” A cyclone of snow twirled down the lane, forming a graceful, ghostly dancer. She stared at me, rather than the snow devil, which set my teeth on edge. “What?”
“Nothing.” She smoothed her hands down her face as if I had made her tired instead of the late hour and long shift we’d both pulled today. “You can’t keep going on like this; it’s not good for you.”
“I can take care of myself. I’m not the spoiled little princess from a faraway kingdom anymore.”
“You never were.” Her eyes mirrored my own ghosts. “You were the brave princess rescued from a nightmare by a handsome prince.” She continued to rub my feet. “But it’s been five years, and the other women are talking.”
I picked at the crust of a dried marshmallow glued to the lip of my mug. “What are they saying?”
“They think you’ve been in mourning long enough.” She ticked my offenses off with her fingers. “You only leave the house to work, you spend your days off hiking Emasen, you don’t have any friends…” she saw my mouth open, “…and no, I’m your sister so I don’t count. Everyone is worried about you.”
“Why would they worry about me? I do my job and pay the tithes that support the colony. We’re making progress in repaying the business loan fro
m Mr. Delaney.”
“See? That is my point exactly.” Emma rested her hands across the flat tops of my feet. “It wasn’t a loan we had to repay. The diner was a gift to help us begin our new lives with a purpose, a sense of ownership and belonging to this community. It’s the reason we pay tithes in the first place.”
“I don’t want to owe anyone anything, certainly not some benevolent, faceless benefactor.”
Emma snorted. “Clayton is hardly benevolent.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” Unless a person passed through the diner during my shift, they didn’t rate a ping on my social radar. From everything I’d heard about Clayton Delaney, he made the kind of ping that turned heads, dropped jaws and required bibs to mop up drool having nothing to do with Emma’s daily blackboard special.
During the five years I’d lived in the earthen realm, I had yet to cross paths with the illustrious Clayton, son of the deceased founder of the colony, Marcus Delaney. Since his father’s death in the raid that cost me Harper, I had only interacted with his overeager assistant, Dana. Because ours was a tight-knit community—excluding me—I figured that meant he was too self-important to frequent our little diner.
That, or the rumormongers were right, and he really did spend all his time off realm saving lost souls and bringing them back here to start over. If the latter were true, then I had no use for him. I’d already lost one male hell-bent on being my savior, and I would never endure that loss again.
I rocked back, taking my feet with me. “Look, if you don’t want to help make the payments, I’ll take them out of my paycheck.”
“It’s not about the money.” Emma slapped the empty mug from my hands. It collapsed in a spray of ceramic shards at my feet. “It’s about you hiding out and living in denial, which isn’t living at all. You speak more often to the day guard at Marchland Cemetery than you do the women and men living two houses down from us. You can’t live among the dead.”
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