Kia tears open an antiseptic wipe. “It’s possible.” A shiver ripples through her as she goes over my wound again. “Which means we might need to find a safer place for Jeremy to hide while we come up with a way to convince the Tribunal to arrest Masera. Unfortunately, that’s a complicated thing. I need some time to think.”
“And sleep. You might get a brainwave.”
“Yes, sleep. No point in trying to think straight after an encounter with a howler.” Kia wrinkles her brows. “That offer still stands, Case. We can have the witches wipe your memory and you can leave. Stay safe.”
I pull in a breath. The truth sits on the very edge of my tongue. If I come clean about my own abilities, maybe she’ll understand. Or maybe she’ll realize I’m some kind of curse and drive me away. I’ll be left with the memory of momentary connection with people potentially like me along with the pain of losing it.
Fear shuts down my confession. Instead, I simply shake my head again.
At the center of the room, Ash straightens with Max’s help, distracting Kia from our conversation. Together, we step around the bar to meet him. The night ends in a fog of exhaustion. I need some kind of debrief, but by the time we usher the last of our customers out, clean up the mess, and fully close the restaurant, I’m dead on my feet. Answers can wait until morning.
For tonight, my very human body is completely spent, and no magic in the world can change that.
THE NEXT MORNING, I stumble, only half-awake, downstairs just in time for the very first rays of sun to peek through the windows. I shuffle toward the front of the restaurant, planning to sit on one of the rocking chairs on the porch for a few minutes of quiet, but stop when I notice the door to the basement cracked open. Curiosity gets the better of me.
The smell of cedarwood fades to a mixture of cloves and rubber and the faintest odor of sweat. At the bottom of the stairs, I discover what looks like a low budget gym. Or a secret training facility for a discount super hero. A large black mat covers half the floor, weight racks line the dark cinder block walls, and a massive silver fridge hums in the far corner.
Ash stands on the mat in front of a punching bag. Shirtless. With every punch he throws, the muscles along his back ball up, making the spikes on his spine lift ever so slightly. No signs of the deep cuts left behind by the Ozark whatever-whatever the night before. Just smooth skin and lithe muscle.
The sight sticks me in place. Not because he’s beautiful — though, oddly enough, he is that — but because his movements are so distinct. Equal parts powerful and graceful, one of his fists might break straight through the bag.
Though this doesn’t happen, his final blow does pop a seam, and Ash swears quietly. In an attempt to look way cooler than I actually am, I lean against the doorframe, cross my arms — one of which still throbs even with Kia’s magic — and let out a low whistle. I don’t mean for it to sound like a cat-call, but it kind of comes out that way and heat races up my back.
Way to objectify the man, Case.
A corner of Ash’s mouth hitches in a grin. He grabs a towel from one of the nearby benches and turns to face me. Good grief. Whoever put this man together deserves a medal. Is that a friggin’ eight pack? Mentally, I smack myself for going there again. I tighten the cross of my arms to resist the urge to fan my face.
“How you feeling?” Ash asks, running the towel across his torso. “Shock wearing off yet?”
“I was getting there until a bull-bear ruined my shift last night.” I fiddle with the hem of my shirt. “Then my co-worker had to resist the urge to eat me. Over all, it was a pretty wild night.”
Ash dries the back of his neck, head tilted so the strands of his dark hair fall into his eyes. “I’m really sorry about that Case. There’s no excuse for what I almost did.”
Guilt gnaws at my innards. “Don’t be sorry. You warned me after Jeremy tried to attack that it could happen if you got injured. Plus, I was way rude, bleeding and all that.”
Ash wrinkles his nose. “How’s your arm?”
“Feels like it got clawed by a creature of the night. Twice.” I grin a little, then furrow my brow. “Why don’t you drink human blood? If that’s too personal, I get it, but curiosity’s getting to me.”
Sighing, Ash sinks onto one of the workout benches. “There are lots of reasons. Not having grown up in the paranormal world, I still feel...wrong doing it. I’m not human, but I believed I was for the first thirteen years of my life, so the idea weirds me out a little. So far I’ve only ever used blood bags in an emergency. Even that feels a little bizarre. Sound stupid?”
I rest my head against the doorframe. “It makes perfect sense to me. It’s a little less holier than thou art or emo kid than I would’ve expected.”
Ash chuckles. “There are more than enough willing donors out there. So it’s really not a moral conundrum. Just a personal hang up, really.” Leaning both elbows on his knees, he traces his lower lip with a thumb, eyes sliding up to mine. “How...I have a question about what happened last night, but you don’t have to answer it if you’re not comfortable. When my dad’s minions first attacked, and I was facing down their leader, the ground shook and threw her off balance.”
Tension ties knots between my shoulder blades. Voice lost, I simply nod, barely able to hear over the pound of my own heart in my ears. I’m still not sure why I’m so hesitant to tell him the truth. Ash drinks blood, for raging out loud. If anyone would understand, it’s him. Still, the words won’t come, blocked by a weird ball of emotion, by the fear that my ability is a curse and not natural born magic at all.
Sweat prickles my lower back.
Ash smooths a palm over his jaw. “I thought I’d imagined it, but then it happened again with the howler.” His eyes drop, then bounce back up to mine, still through the strands of his hair.
I fiddle with my feather necklace. “Weird coincidence.”
What is wrong with me?
“Was it?”
My hesitance makes no sense — not with the hope that’s been brewing over the last few days that I might finally have answers — but again I can’t get the truth out. Not with the horrible thought that came to me last night. If I am cursed, if my strange powers are bad vibrations forced on me by an angry witch...
They might do what my mom did, what every foster family eventually did; drive me away.
Kia’s voice sings down the stairs, saving me from having to answer this question. I turn to see her in the doorway at the top. She holds a tray of steaming coffee mugs and what look like empanadas. I swear I could kiss her. But I won’t. That would be awkward.
“Am I interrupting?” she asks.
“Not at all,” I say quickly, tripping over my words, then putting on a ridiculous game show host voice. “Come on down.”
As she basically floats toward us, I focus my attention on my split ends, avoiding Ash’s gaze. The mermaid beckons me to follow her to the other side of the room. I sit on the workout bench next to Ash, sipping coffee in silence for a moment, muscles still cramped with stress. That first bite of empanada is so glorious I almost forget the tension tightening the air between me and Ash.
Kia doesn’t sit, but instead paces. Somehow, she makes even this look graceful, elegant. “I’m glad to find you both here,” she says. “I thought it might be a good time to discuss everything that’s happened over the last forty-eight hours, and how we might take steps to help our new friend. Case, I know this is all overwhelming. As I said last night, I don’t expect you to continue to put yourself in danger. If you’d like to find work elsewhere—”
“No!” My face blazes with embarrassed heat and frustration. “Sorry. I just...as terrifying as all of this has been, I don’t want to leave. I want to help.”
Besides, if I can get over my fear of confirming my powers to them, they’re my best chance of finding answers.
A tight smile crosses Kia’s face. “Thank you. That’s very generous. Our first step should be simple and safe. Though you certainly ho
ld your own in a fight.” She winks and my face flushes with warmth. “That said, today, I’d like the two of you to visit the witch who initially set up the shield spell around The Mercury Room. We need her to come and reinforce it after the last two attacks. I would suggest merely calling her, but she has a tendency to...disconnect. Shut off her phone, computer, all that. She says it interrupts her ability to feel the vibrations around her.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting out in the sun for a bit,” I say. “When do we leave?”
Running an errand will probably do me good. Maybe I’ll finally get the guts to tell Ash and Kia the truth, find out if they’ve ever heard of anything like my abilities before. And hopefully, it’s not a witch curse that might put them, and everyone else at The Mercury Room, in danger. They have enough of that around here as it is.
7.
“DO YOU WANT TO DRIVE?”
Ash’s innocuous question brings on a new wave of hot embarrassment. I shouldn’t care that I don’t own a car. It shouldn’t matter. But that impeccable logic doesn’t stop the discomfort raking every nerve in my body. Shame about feeling shame follows up with a nice little gut punch.
Wiping humidity off my brow with a forearm, I flutter my fingers. “Nah, let’s take your car,” I say. “Show me your wheels, man.”
Laughing, Ash nudges me with an elbow, then leads the way out of the restaurant. Even at eight in the morning, Houston heat pulses down on us. Thick traffic adds an ever-present hum to the sticky morning. Pink from the rising sun splashes over the buildings across the parking lot from the Mercury Room.
The smell of donuts — fried and sweet and oh so tempting — drifts through the air from Stanley’s bakery. A mustached man in a smudged white apron carries boxes out to the dumpster behind the free-standing Taqueria restaurant. Birds peck at the ground where, not so long ago, Ash tore three creatures to shreds. They chirp as they hop, an oddly merry sound, and I wonder how much, if any, bloody bits end up in their beaks.
A weird combination of the odd and mundane.
“Fair warning, she’s not very impressive,” Ash says, “but she’s been with me for a long time.”
“How long is long?”
“So long I’ve had to bring her back from the dead a few times.” Ash laughs again. “She’s kind of like a cat. Nine lives and all of that.”
I snortle and bump him as we round the back wall. “I’ve known a few cars like that.”
When I come face to face with the vehicle in discussion, I stop dead. An old two door Saturn sits next to the dumpster. Its bumper hangs on for dear life, a long crack bisects the windshield, and even from this distance I can see the manual window cranks.
But this isn’t the most significant aspect of the clunker. Oh no. All of this is reminiscent of the cars my mother drove me around in growing up after she started spending all of her paychecks on booze. The most unique aspect of this particular automobile is its paint job.
Purple. It is bright, freaking, purple.
This ugly sucker can not belong to a sexy creature of the night. There is no possible way. It has to be Max’s car. That water spirit would so drive this POS ironically. Or even just to get a giggle. But then Ash marches straight to the door like it’s no big deal. Instantly, I double over with laughter. Full on, tear inducing, laughter.
When the hysterics pass, I gasp for breath, and extend a hand. “I am so sorry. I just...purple...it’s purple. All the tortured vampires I read about in Jr. High drove dark, broody cars. Or motorcycles.”
Ash snickers, his nose scrunching a little when he does. “How can a car be brooding?”
Dabbing the corners of my eyes with a thumb knuckle, I lift my shoulders. “Something in midnight black?”
“I think you’re confusing vampires with Batman.” This only triggers more giggles and Ash feeds my hysterics. “Or one of those eternal eighteen-year-olds who’ve lived long enough to have the money to buy brooding sports cars but also still goes to high school for no logical reason.”
“What? Didn’t want to go back to the glory days?” I ask, sliding into the passenger seat.
In spite of its age, this purple nightmare actually smells pretty good — like cloves in fact — and hasn’t been used as a trash receptacle, a sad fate for many a teenage boy’s car. I’m half tempted to drag a finger along the dash to prove to myself it’s actually devoid of dust. Even Ms. Jan’s Toyota isn’t this immaculate.
Ash cringes. “If I have to live forever, no way am I reliving the most awkward four years of my existence. Puberty’s hard enough without having to accept the fact that blood is required to live your best life.”
He cranks the engine — which sounds like a dying cow — then pulls into the thick morning traffic. As he turns, the dark wood rosary hanging from his rear-view mirror swings gently. Another interesting item for a blood drinker to have.
I poke the bottom of the cross. “I thought vampires had a major aversion to religious artifacts.”
A broad smile spreads across Ash’s face. “That’s just another convenient lie we let people believe to keep our cover. The church has actually been pretty helpful in that arena too, spreading the rumors for us, providing sanctuary, wisdom...Confession was particularly helpful when I first found out what I am.”
My brows lift. “Huh, I would’ve expected them to be Judgy McJudgertons wielding holy water and torches in an attempt to drive y’all out of town. Who woulda thunk?”
“You find the judgemental everywhere,” Ash says. “The church, politics, higher education, religion too. But the clergy I’ve met personally have all just been people trying their best to love in their own damaged and imperfect ways. Apart from my mom and Kia, my priest helped me a lot. He still does.”
I trace my feather necklace with the tip of my thumb, turning this strange concept over in my head as Ash weaves through traffic. Massive trucks dwarf his Saturn, but the purple clunker threads around them with surprising ease. It’s definitely not the smallest car in this vehicular stream, and it doesn’t even call the most attention to itself.
A lime green bug literally buzzes as it cuts people off, one truck bears a set of longhorn antlers on its front bumper, and a few have flags waving from their windows. Zombies march along the back of a mini van’s window, proclaiming to have eaten your stick figure family.
I smirk, deciding to sidestep religion, and backtrack to the first part of our conversation. “P.S. somehow I can’t imagine you being awkward. Ever. Even in Junior High.”
Wincing, Ash turns the corner my favorite taco truck occupies. “I’ve got receipts. Trust me, the pictures are blackmail worthy. Early teen years are real mean to my kind. I think it’s nature’s way of humbling us since we get ridiculously good looking once we hit eighteen.”
I tilt my head back and laugh. “That doesn’t seem to have affected Jeremy all that much. Is that a pureblood thing?”
“It is.” Ash flips his blinker to change lanes. Fifty points to the house of vampires. “Every paranormal creature has their own...flavor.”
Rolling my shoulders, I clear my throat, trying to find the right words. “Are...is anyone with magic considered a creature?”
“Not really.” Ash turns down a cracked side street lined with mobile homes. “But kind of? Technically we just call witches magic users, though they are fundamentally different than normal humans. Genetically speaking. It’s subtle though. Like, it wouldn’t show up on a blood test or anything.”
I grip the door handle, waiting for a question that never comes. In the momentary silence, I stare at the veins in my arm, wondering what my genetics might tell me. Would a blood test reveal a magical curse? Or would it show something else completely?
“I should warn you, Elaxi, our witch, is very cool, but a little eccentric,” Ash says as we pull up to the last driveway at the very end of the street.
Unlike the rest of the homes along the street, this one isn’t a mobile home, but an adorable L-shaped tiny house. Lights hang from the r
ough gray wood roof, brightly colored pinwheels sticking out of the heat-browned grass spin in the wind, and a long haired woman in mandala print yoga pants stands in tree pose on the porch.
“She looks like every other thirty-something in Montrose.” I giggle, trying to get rid of the tension in my chest. “And I’ve met my fair share of weird. I can handle it.”
When we get out of the car, Elaxi doesn’t open her eyes, but she does smile.
“What have you brought me this morning, Daughtry? I haven’t felt unique vibrations like these in a very, very long time.”
8.
AT ELAXI’S WORDS, MY feet flat out freeze and I wobble slightly. Cold shock raises the hair on my arms. Does she mean me? I can’t imagine she doesn’t since she’s clearly met Ash before. In spite of all my maneuvering and hesitation, I’ve just been punted out of the paranormal closet.
I glare at Ash.
Brows lifted, lips pursed against what I can only imagine is a grin, he looks between me and Elaxi.
Immediately, I go on the defensive. “Is this why Kia asked us to come instead of calling? I wouldn’t tell you the truth about my weirdness so you figured if Yogi McYogison said something I couldn’t deny it?”
Ash’s eyes widen slightly and he lifts his hands. “No, Case, I swear. You—”
I jab a finger at him. “If you tell me to calm down—”
“Wouldn’t dare.” Ash takes a backward step as if I could actually cause him damage. “I know better.”
A tinkling laugh disrupts the tension coiling around me like a Texas Coral Snake. Fists clenched, I turn away from Ash to glower at the woman on the porch. Elaxi presses folded hands against her mouth, her hazel eyes shining as she steps down the gray wood stairs and walks toward me, her thick black hair swaying behind her.
“Oh you poor thing,” she says. “You don’t know, do you, love?”
Cursed: The Girl Who Shook the Earth Page 6
