by Kate Douglas
The red and white marquee sign that read POWELL’S BOOKS—USED & NEW BOOKS was the most welcome thing Merek had ever seen. The drizzling rain felt like a hammer blow every time a drop landed on his skin, and he wanted to get out of it. His gaze swept the street one last time before he crossed toward the mammoth bookstore.
His movements were slower than he liked, his step careful. He was on autopilot. Just make sure no one followed him. Just get to Alex and Chloe. Just be certain they were safe.
The lights inside the store blinded him when he walked in, and he shuddered, fighting a wave of nausea. He paused for a long moment, trying to remember where he was going. Mystery. The mystery section at Powell’s. Where he’d told them to meet him.
Reading the signs to get to the right area hurt his eyes, the words blurring and streaking, a halo of light forming around every person he passed.
And there they were. Two dark heads of hair bent together, one so deep a brown it was almost black, one a shining blue-black like a raven’s wing. Chloe. She looked up at him, pushing that raven hair from her face. Her relieved smile made his heart skip a beat, but then her grin faded when she got a good look at him.
“Merek, what happened?”
“Took . . .” Somehow his tongue didn’t want to shape the words correctly, but he forced himself to speak distinctly. “Took a knock to the head from an airport security guard.”
Alex’s hand closed around his shoulder, and Merek startled because he hadn’t seen the wolf move. The quick motion was like an anvil slamming into him, and his view tilted sideways.
“I’ve got you, Merek.” It was Alex’s voice, but he sounded like he’d spoken from a great distance. Hadn’t the boy just been next to him? Merek thought so, but he wasn’t quite sure. He blinked a few times, but couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t think clearly.
He blinked again, and things had changed. What, he wasn’t sure, but he felt a shift in space and time. A soft rocking motion told him he was in a moving vehicle. It was disorienting, and he didn’t like that, but when he pulled in a breath, he smelled his lover’s sweet scent. “Chloe.”
“Yes, Merek. I’m here.” Her hand stroked his forehead, and it felt good. He felt good, energized, but that wasn’t right either.
“I got hit by a police baton.” He frowned up at the gray fabric that covered the ceiling of the car. He was in a tilted back passenger seat. Chloe perched in the backseat behind him. Turning his head, he saw Alex behind the wheel.
Alex’s green eyes left the road for a moment, and they reflected a deep concern. “Yeah, you had a pretty nasty concussion. Chloe put you under a healing spell, so you’d sleep until you were completely better.”
“I didn’t want to try to do any kind of quick healing on you. The brain can be so delicate to work with, and I just don’t have the skills to rush it.” Her fingers brushed through Merek’s hair, and he felt her testing him with her magic. “This was the best I could do.”
He reached up and caught her hand. “You did good, sweetheart. I feel fine. Great, in fact.”
Groping under his seat, he felt for the lever so he could sit up. The sun was setting, its light breaking through the overcast clouds. There were trees and a few houses along the road, but nothing else to indicate their location. A prickle of unease ran down his spine. “Where are we?”
This vehicle wasn’t a rental, of that Merek was certain. Someone’s graduation tassel hung from the rearview mirror, and his shoes stuck to the soda on the floorboards. Whoever owned this car was a total slob. The long silence made him glance around. Chloe was wedged into the middle of a nonexistent backseat. Ophelia sat beside her, using the back of Alex’s seat as a scratching post.
He looked to Alex again. “Do I want to know where the car came from?”
“Stole it,” he replied, more cheerful than Merek had ever heard him. “I reprogrammed the onboard computer and scrambled some records so the owner will have a bitch of a time proving the car even belonged to him in order to report it stolen. We switched out the plates of six cars in a mall parking lot of similar makes and models, then drove over to a parking garage at Portland State University and did the same.”
Smart. It would take them a while to sort that mess out. Merek wasn’t going to say it out loud. “You want to tell me what all this is for? Where are we, and where exactly are we going in this stolen vehicle?”
He could feel the tension ratchet up in the small car, saw Alex glance in the rearview mirror to meet Chloe’s eyes. The teen swallowed. “Yeah. There’s a story for that.”
“So.” Chloe took a deep breath. “Here’s what we figured. We can’t use the IDs or credit cards Millie gave us, and if those are blown, then any of the properties she owns are out as well. We haven’t been using them, but not using them has seriously depleted our cash fund. And now we can’t use them because we don’t know which are covered by Smith’s men and which aren’t.”
Alex took up the thread of the explanation as he slowed the vehicle to make a turn onto a narrow two-lane road. “We need somewhere safe, somewhere I can Change, somewhere away from Magickals, somewhere not related to anyone we know.”
“ And . . .” Back to Chloe, and Merek was already sure he wasn’t going to like where this was going any more than he liked riding in a stolen car. These two were too damn smart. “We are running low on cash, but contacting Millie for more would be a bad plan, since they probably know she helped us with the IDs.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Cut to the chase. Where have we gone?”
“You’re going to be pissed.” The glance Alex gave him was worried, and that in itself worried Merek.
“We stopped and picked up groceries after we . . . after we got off the ferry from . . . Seattle,” Chloe whispered the last word, as though that would somehow dampen the effect.
He jerked around in his seat to stare at her. “No.”
“Yes.” The stubbornly mutinous look was so familiar he wanted to shake her. He usually found it endearing, but he was usually in control of the situation. “It’s already done anyway. We’re here.”
He snarled. “You know how far werewolf senses can stretch!”
Rearing back against the seat, she held up a placating hand. “Well, we just passed through Seattle. We didn’t stop. We’re on Bainbridge Island.”
As if that would reassure him. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Tess’s aunt and uncle have a house here.” Her fingers linked together in her lap, and she began reciting calm, scientific facts as though reading a checklist. “They’re on sabbatical in Rome, and I know the security code to their place. They have no connection to me; I’ve only been here once with Tess, when the system was installed, and I never even met them. More important, no Magickal is going to expect another Magickal to be there.”
He clenched his jaw, looking for a way around her facts. “I don’t like it.”
“Do you have a better idea for where Alex can Change?” Her hands lifted and fell back to her lap in a helpless gesture. “We have no ID to rent a car or house or campsite and not enough cash to convince anyone to look the other way.”
Of course he didn’t have a better plan. Damn it. “This is a bad idea.”
“We’re already here. If anyone was going to sense us, it’s a done deal. We can take a ferry back, if you want, but we might as well stay until the full moon is over. It’s just for a few days, and it’ll buy us the time we need to figure out what to do next. We know it’s not ideal, but we don’t have that kind of option on the table, do we?” Alex spoke for the first time in several minutes.
“No, we don’t.” Chloe reached over and patted the boy on the shoulder. “I think this is the best plan we can get in the limited time we have until full moon.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Merek rounded on the kid. “Can you control yourself surrounded by that many Normals?”
“Yes.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, but the obstinate set of his jaw said he was se
rious.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I can.” He nodded for emphasis, taking his eyes off the road for a split second to glance back at Chloe, the person who’d believed in him first, who had trusted him and reassured him when he’d had a silver bullet punched through his gut. Then he met Merek’s gaze, his green eyes clear and certain. “I won’t hurt anyone. I can control it.”
“Shit.” Merek slumped, his face dropping into his hand for a moment. He rubbed his fingers against his eyes.
“It’s going to be okay.” Chloe patted his shoulder, and it pissed him off more that he liked her touch, craved it.
“This is a bad—”
“Do you have a better one?” Her fingers tightened on his shoulder, a reassuring squeeze, an apology. He shrugged out of her grip.
“I would have said so if I did.” He sighed and dropped his hand.
“I know.”
The last place he wanted them to be was Seattle, but the damnable truth was he didn’t have a better idea of where to go to keep Alex safe for the full moon. Chloe was right about all of it, and their future was as foggy to Merek as it always had been. This could be the perfect plan, or it could be utter disaster. All he could do now was mitigate any damage.
He jerked the cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. He placed a secure call to Millie, got her voice mail and left her a message, then he tried Luca. Same thing. He tried to rein in a growl. “Cavalli, this is Kingston. We’re on Bainbridge Island for the full moon. Don’t send anyone over to check on us because I don’t want undue attention. I’ll call again if anything goes down, so be prepared to send in the cavalry.”
Closing the phone, he watched a barn-like two-story house come into view. Another wave of icy, impotent fury ripped through him. He just hoped this wasn’t the mistake that got them killed. Or captured. With Smith’s track record, Merek wasn’t sure which one would be the better option. Probably death.
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”
Chloe slapped her hand against the shingled siding of the Jones’s house and glared at the keypad as if she could will it to do what she wanted.
“What?” Alex’s quiet voice sounded behind her.
“The security code isn’t working.” She blew out a frustrated breath, shrugging her shoulders to work out the tension. Hours of sitting cramped in the miniscule backseat while she hovered over a pale, unconscious Merek had done nothing to make this easier. She’d never forget the way her heart had literally stopped when her strong warlock had keeled over. The fact that he was obviously annoyed with the situation didn’t help either. She didn’t even want to consider his reaction when he found out she couldn’t get in the house as she’d claimed she could.
The wolf nudged her out of the way to scrutinize the panel. “Are you sure it’s the right one?”
“It’s Tess’s date of birth.” She lifted her hands and let them drop. “So, yes, I’m sure.”
He rocked back on his heels, sliding his hands in his pockets. His dark brows drew together as he thought, then he gave a definitive nod. “I can get around this.”
“What are we getting around?” Merek rumbled from the far side of the porch. He mounted the steps, a few grocery bags gripped in his hands. Alex had stayed in the car with the sleeping Merek while Chloe had stocked up with enough supplies to hole up until after full moon.
If they could get into the house. Chloe’s muscles tightened even further as dread curdled in her belly. She hated this, hated not being on the same side as Merek. Neither of them was backing down, because they both thought they were right. She pulled in a deep breath. “They’ve changed the security code, but Alex says he can get around it.”
The teen glanced back at Merek. “I’m going to have to break the no gadget modification rule.”
He snorted. “You already broke that when you hijacked the car.”
A flashing grin answered that, and Chloe rolled her eyes. She actually thought her godson might be having the time of his life with this little day trip. Sicko. “Even if you can disable the security system, that won’t get it to unlock the door like Tess made it do. And there will be no magic used here. Nothing to make it obvious Magickals are in residence. No spells.”
The kid cocked his head, considered the problem, offered: “I can use a little wolf strength on it. One quick push, and we’ll be in.”
Merek gave a growl worthy of a werewolf, his gaze flinty as it slid over her. Oh, yeah. He was not happy about this little snafu. She couldn’t even blame him. She should have considered that Tess would have her uncle change the code. Probably on a regular basis. Merek slid his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open, pulling out a few metal tools. “We can do this with no magic of any kind.”
Interest flickered in Alex’s eyes, and he arched an eyebrow. “You know how to pick locks? Sweet.”
“Security system first.” Merek jerked his chin toward the keypad, and Alex’s enthusiasm slid away until he wore his most solemn expression.
“Right.” The wolf fished his cell phone out of his pocket, then dug some tools out of his backpack. Unfastening the face of the panel, he pulled it out to reveal the maze of wires inside. He hooked his cell phone into the wires, and the screen lit with information Chloe had never seen on a phone before. He got to work, his face set in lines of fierce concentration.
A few minutes later, the panel beeped, went black, and then flashed back to life. Alex set the keypad back in place and typed in a series of numbers. “Okay, I wiped everything and reset the code to 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0. Lame, but easy to remember.”
Chloe finished his thought for him. “But having to wipe everything also means the keystrokes to unlock the door aren’t in the program anymore.”
“Yep, and that would take equipment I don’t have with me.” He shrugged. “What’s a little breaking and entering after grand theft auto?” Pulling her out of the way, he motioned Merek forward. “Your turn.”
The reminder of all the laws they were bending just made her warlock scowl more ferociously, and she sighed. He had the door opened in under forty-five seconds, which Alex clocked on his wristwatch. Chloe went in to the guest bedroom on the ground floor and put away her belongings. It stung more than she could have imagined when Merek followed Alex up the stairs to claim rooms on the second floor.
Ophelia padded into Chloe’s room and made herself at home on the bed. Chloe took a moment to pet her, and then went to close all the curtains on the bottom floor, knowing Merek would do the same upstairs. She watched the sunlight fading on the cloudy horizon as she shut the last set of blinds.
Turning on every light she passed on the way to the kitchen, she went searching for pots and pans to cook dinner. After a minute or two, she heard the males tromp downstairs and out the door to finish unloading the car. Neither of them was speaking, which didn’t bode well for the evening. She wondered how long Merek could hold on to a grudge. Not long, she hoped, but she didn’t know him well enough to be certain.
They spent the next hour mostly silent, and Alex turned in early, without getting his usual self-defense lesson from Merek. The boy just escaped to his bedroom upstairs for a loud television show. She had an idea that he was hoping to drown out any arguments they might have. That he assumed they’d default to screaming made her heart ache and told her things about Jaya’s home life that she wished she didn’t know.
Merek left her in the kitchen to do the dishes and stalked into the living room. She heard him rustling around, but couldn’t figure out what he was doing. She went to peek at him, couldn’t see anything, but could still hear him moving. Frowning, she stepped into the room and saw him kneeling near a wall, a pile of night-lights next to him on the floor while he fitted one into a socket.
Her lips shook when she opened her mouth, and she had to press them together for a moment before she thought she could talk without tearing up. Even pissed off and not speaking to her, he was still taking care of her, plugging in night-l
ights to save her from the dark.
“I love you,” she blurted. The words just fell out, shocking the shit out of her. Until they were out there, she hadn’t known she was going to say them.
His muscles went rigid, his head turning slowly to stare at her in utter, dumbfounded shock. “You can’t.” His eyes went stormy, turbulent with too many emotions for her to decipher. The words that came from his mouth sounded rough and desperate. “We’ve been together under some extreme circumstances—”
“Save the police psychobabble for someone else, Detective. I’m the one with the medical degree, remember? I know what love is, and I love you.” She spat the words at him, but the fury burned itself out as quickly as it flared. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Again, she needed someone more than they’d ever need her, like she’d needed Millie as a child. But she wouldn’t cling or make demands. She refused to be that person ever again. Not even for him. “You don’t have to feel the same, but don’t try to tell me what I feel.”
“I won’t.” He rose to his feet, the stunned look still glazing his eyes. His mouth opened, closed, but he just stood there staring at her until she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Good night, Merek. Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.” Turning on her heel, she marched into her room and shut the door behind her.
She collapsed on the bed and dropped her face into her trembling hands. It hurt. Gods, how it hurt. Tears burned her eyes, but she refused to cry. She had expected this. Even then, it felt like her heart was shredding into tiny pieces, and she was bleeding to death from internal wounds. It was one thing to think she was in love alone, it was another to know it.
Yet, it was something of a relief. She had said it. It was out there. She didn’t have to hide it or worry that he’d figure it out and feel guilty or obligated. Obviously, he hadn’t felt obligated. He’d tried to talk her out of it. A laugh that was almost a sob bubbled out, and she clamped her hand over her mouth to stop it. Shoving her head between her knees, she sucked in slow, deep breaths until the need to cry—or vomit—passed.
