Inside of him? What was he sacrificing?
“What are you saying, Nick?”
“I’m saying that magic isn’t a simple formula. It isn’t like a chemistry set you can put together and expect the same results every time you combine ingredients. It comes from here.” He placed his free hand on my heart. “When you have the right tools—the right words—and you believe without a doubt, magic can happen.”
But I’d said the words. I’d chanted until I felt like I could say them backward, forward. Hell, I could’ve been saying “I like cheeseburgers” in ancient Sumerian all day. But if nothing happened and I didn’t know what to expect, what good would the words do me?
I settled for something I could see ahead of me. Something I couldn’t avoid. “Is there any way I can be ready tomorrow? For the trials?”
“There’s only so much I can do. Whoever did this to you messed up your leg pretty bad.”
So my celebration for how well she’d hit me hadn’t been mistaken.
“I want to know who did this to you.”
I sensed the bitterness behind his words. He wanted to take my pain away and satisfy his anger by finding out who’d hurt me.
Silence was my answer, so he resumed healing me. When he spoke again, he sounded cheerful, as if he was trying to distract me. “Hey, do you remember our first exercise together?”
A small laugh snuck out of my mouth. “The drunken satyr—I mean, shape-shifter.”
“I ran into the fellow over a week ago.”
Memories of our first exercise from Dr. Frank made me feel good. I hadn’t expected to learn this white wizard had an affinity for fine furniture, or that he had the messiest home I’d ever seen in my life. (He even had my brother beat.)
“What form was he in this time? Or maybe I should ask if he was sober?”
“He was only slightly drunk, and he was in the shape of a dwarf … and a pack mule. But I was at a bar at the time.”
I giggled at the thought of a dwarf sitting slumped at a counter—barely able to hold his form between the two. But then another thought came to mind: Who ordered the drinks, the dwarf or the pack mule?
“Did Mike and his Supernatural Drunk Bus service have to come and pick him up?”
“Oh, I think the shape-shifter put in a call somewhere else when a female centaur came by to show him a good time.”
The very thought of it made me want to scrub my mind with bleach to rid me of the awful image of a mule/dwarf/shape-shifter doing the nasty with a half-horse, half-human creature.
When the laughter dwindled, I closed my eyes and clenched the seashell. It never worked, but I guess giving up on its magic was rather difficult.
I lay quietly, thinking about the spell Grandma had taught me. Eventually the words emerged from my lips.
Nick chuckled softly beside me. “You did it.”
“Did what?”
“I felt it.”
My eyebrows lowered.
“Do you feel any different now?” He had a knowing look on his face. Almost like a smug teacher.
“How did you know I did something?”
“Magic’s a part of me as much as it’s in you.”
“So what did I do to you?”
“The spell wasn’t meant to affect me.”
I was calm. Blissfully, wonderfully calm. The kind of calm I only got from my pills. I laughed. The perfect gift from my grandmother for an anxious human and her wolf.
“Can you move the leg?” he asked.
I shifted slightly—only to feel pain sharp enough for me to inhale with a hiss.
“Like I said before, I can only do so much.”
The pain radiated up my leg. How long had I lain here on the cold ground? My hand crawled along my leg until it encountered the tear. The bones weren’t protruding anymore, but even the slightest touch spoke volumes: I wouldn’t be 100 percent tomorrow.
“Can you help me stand up?”
“You need more time.”
“Vulnerable wolves just lie there. I need to get up, Nick.” I shifted to show I was serious, and he finally got the idea.
With the amount of pain I felt, standing wasn’t the smartest idea. But the gesture had a point. Erica may have beaten me down, but I could still stand. The whole thing didn’t have that “Here’s my middle finger” kind of feeling, but it was close enough.
With Nick’s help, I walked a few steps toward the house. Even though we were outside in the cold, I was drenched in sweat. Every step was another nail sealing my coffin. When I cried out, Nick stopped me.
“Just rest for a second.”
A half hour later, I’d made it to my porch. By then I was walking on my own.
Nick laughed. “Do you have a high tolerance for pain or a death wish?”
“Both.” I ran my hands through my hair. It was filthy from the ground—I tried not to care. The urge to cry suddenly came out of nowhere. Maybe it finally hit me that I wouldn’t be able to rejoin the pack. Maybe it was pain from the price I’d paid to put the pack before myself—for Thorn.
I cried quietly.
Nick didn’t speak, nor did he reach for me. He simply let me get it out, like a good friend.
When I composed myself and cleaned up my bloody leg in the house, I returned to him. “I want to feel happy right now.”
“Huh?” was all he said.
“We’re going to the store to do our post-Christmas sale exercise.”
“This isn’t exactly the right time.”
“Yes it is.” I had money, and my fingers were itching to spend it on useless post-Christmas crap. “I need to maintain mobility to keep my body healing.”
“That’s a lame excuse.”
“Just shut up and drive.”
The post-Christmas sale at the local shopping center looked like the North Pole had blown up and left the remains of Santa’s cheery innards scattered everywhere. Discount signs had been hung here and there, hoping to draw in shoppers to pick up decorations for next year.
I didn’t need the signs to make me feel less guilty tonight.
Nick had offered to get me one of those motorized chairs when we went in, but I’d ignored him and grabbed a cart.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked while I browsed the aisle.
“They have really nice fake Victorian lamps here. You might find one you really like.”
“Trying to tempt me won’t help. I have a lot more self-control than you do, apparently.” He watched me toss a Santa hat filled with candy into my cart. It was followed by Christmas coloring books. Sveta was far too young for them, but I’d kindly hold on to them for her for the next two to three years, like a good auntie.
Nick’s cell phone buzzed. “I’ll let you get off on shopping for a bit while I answer this. Once I get back, though, you’re done with your little binge.”
He stalked off and left me to my cart of goodies. I continued down the aisle, examining anything that caught my eye. When I reached for an ornament in a torn box, I paused. Where was the pleasure? That feeling of unadulterated excitement that I felt when I shopped for my treasures? I patted down my pockets as if the excitement were something I possessed in physical form. I picked up the box and waited for the bubbling feeling, but it didn’t come. The box was like others at home. The contents, a golden Rudolph ornament, promised something pretty to hang on a tree. But when I fingered the box’s smooth surface, I felt … nothing.
“Are you gonna keep that, honey?”
I turned to see an old lady staring at the box in my hands. She wore a heavy brown overcoat that smothered her tiny frame. She smiled at me, wearing a shade of red lipstick on lips that were far too thin for it. A golden stocking cap completed her post-holiday ensemble.
“It’s seventy percent off,” she said. “That’s a good deal. Are you gonna keep it?”
“No.” My voice was quiet as I handed it to her.
“Are you sure? It’s really pretty.” She tossed it onto her massive pile
of Christmas purchases. She’d even grabbed the broken candy I’d skipped when I first walked in.
“You find anything good?” she asked, pulling me further out of my reverie.
“Not really.”
“Those mothertruckers here need to reduce the prices some more. My son of a bucket husband doesn’t give me enough money to buy the expensive stuff.”
My head tilted to the side. Had she just referred to her husband as a son of a bucket?
She thrust a set of Christmas doggie shirts into my now empty hands. “Honey, you need to grab this stuff fast before someone else takes it.”
The aisle was very empty. No one came scrambling to snatch my stuff away.
“I don’t really see anything I want.”
“Oh, shake and bake!” She leaned across her cart and shook her finger at me. While she berated me, I wondered if she really had told me “bullshit” or if she actually needed to find a box of Shake and Bake.
“You can never have enough Christmas supplies. Especially at these cheap ace prices.”
Now that I had the pattern of her cursing down, all I could do was chuckle. She cursed like a sailor—a clean one anyway.
I watched her pick out selections for a while, and my heart sank as she joyfully added her choices into her cart. She had a bright smile on her face, even when she groaned while stretching for something beyond her reach. I grabbed the item for her, and she thanked me.
By the time we were at the end of the aisle, it became crystal clear: It was time for me to find Nick and go home. I had things to do, and I was wasting my time here trying to use buying things as a crutch when I had real problems to face. But as I walked slowly down the aisle, dread filled me. I had a healing injury, and I wasn’t fully trained yet. What the hell should I do?
Night came and ate away at the remains of the day. Thankfully, Aggie was spending the night with Will. She’d called briefly to check on me.
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine. Nick stopped by and plotted our next exercise. Right now I’m just hanging out.”
“You should get some sleep for tomorrow.”
I sat straighter in my seat to try to come off as normal. “I’m too nervous to sleep. You know me. I’ll watch TV and then doze off.” Or maybe I’d cry in the corner over how shitty things had become in my life.
Aggie sighed, and then the sounds of enthusiastic chewing came through the phone. Probably fried chicken from the spacing between breaths. “I wish sleeping pills worked on you. When you stay up late your credit card mysteriously pops out.”
“There was this nice china I saw on an infomercial—”
“Useless junk.”
I heard a voice whispering in the background. Aggie giggled, and I could tell she’d placed something over the phone to muffle the sound. As her friend, I was genuinely happy for her. But I was jealous too. Here I was, resting for the night all alone.
After Nick got back to NYC, he had left me a brief message on my cell phone to check on me, but no one else had called. Not even Thorn. Right now, I wanted so badly for him to comfort me. For him to hold me close and reassure me that no matter what happened tomorrow, he’d still love me.
A knock on the front door drew me back into my conversation with Aggie. “I have to go. Someone’s at the door.”
I slowly walked over to the foyer, trying to catch the scent of my visitor. My nose immediately told me it wasn’t Thorn, but another friend: Heidi. I beckoned her inside.
“What are you doing out in these parts?” I asked her.
She came in and sat down in my living room. The mermaid glanced at the fireplace, where I had a small fire going. “I came to see you one last time.”
With everything I had, I managed to walk to the opposite love seat without showing my injury. “What are you talking about?” But then I remembered what she’d said at group therapy. “Are you sure you want to go back? It doesn’t seem like you’re ready for that.”
She laughed softly, her red curls bouncing. At the top of her head, I noticed, her roots were white. I leaned forward to get a better view, and she pursed her lips at me.
“Yes, my roots are showing,” she snapped.
“All this time I thought you were a natural redhead.”
“I’m not.” She rolled her eyes. “And I bet neither are most of the redheads in NYC these days. Anyway, this is what happens to mermaids when they stay out of the water.”
My mouth formed an O, then I said, “So, have you actually gotten in the water yet?”
“I went with Eren to put my feet in to prepare.”
“Eren—that’s the man we saw in Maine?”
She nodded and continued to stare at the fire.
“You said at therapy that he’s your best friend. Did he come to tell you that you had to go home?”
“Yeah.”
From the length of silence that followed, it appeared I’d have to keep prying information from her. “What happened?”
“I’m not just your average truck-driving, bartending mermaid who likes roughnecks.” Her face brightened for a moment. “I’m a member of the Royal Court of the Atlantic Coast.”
“A princess?” As in a fairy-tale princess who’s also a truck-driving, bartending mermaid?
“Oh, nothing that fancy. My dad’s a high-ranking general. He’s like the equivalent of a duke or something.”
I nodded and encouraged her to continue.
“Eren’s one of my father’s men. He was the one who left me that message at the gas station.”
“So he’s the one who killed all those imps. He didn’t leave a trace of his presence other than the note.”
“He’s the best of the best at what he does. I wish he’d fail once in a while so I wouldn’t have to go back.” She bumped her head on the back of the couch. “The note said it was time for me to go home to call everyone to arms.”
I frowned. “Don’t most armies have multiple generals? Why do they need you?”
“My father’s dead.” She said the words without any emotion. Maybe that’s what broke my heart the most for her.
I swallowed hard and stared at the floor. When I couldn’t bring myself to speak, I took in the view of my boxes. “I’m so sorry, Heidi.”
“I barely remember the last conversation I had with him before I left.” She smiled briefly through her pain. “He’d always been on a mission of some kind.”
“So you were alone a lot?” After all the time we’d been in therapy together, I didn’t know much about her past.
“Children are left to fend for themselves at a young age where I’m from. Your mother gives birth to you, and then you go live with the rest of the children born at the same time. Everyone either lives or dies by learning to be strong and choosing to make the right decisions. I was part of a pod with other highborn merpeople. We found a place to grow up protected from the darker things that lurked in the deep.”
My imagination built a picture for me of the ocean with Heidi inside it. She’d frolic with the fish and be carefree.
“Many of the highborn in my pod died from creatures you’ll never see on land. The ocean’s a cruel and vicious place compared to the safety of land.”
Okay, I take it back. No frolicking.
Heidi continued. “When I came of age, it was time for me to start thinking about looking for a mate. My father urged me to join the army so I could learn fighting skills and catch the eye of a suitable male.” She grinned devilishly. “There were plenty to choose from, and most of them were the bad boys my father liked to train. As I worked through training, I came to bond as a lifelong friend with my pod mate Eren. He wasn’t like the others. He followed orders without questioning them. He was—dependable. I came to find that honorable about him.
“While we were resting from a training mission once, Eren took me to a grotto he’d thought was interesting. None of the other soldiers liked him much since they thought he was a brownnoser, so he spent a lot of time alone.
<
br /> “We traveled for hours, until we entered a cave off an underwater mountain.” She shivered and then closed her eyes.
“Everything went perfectly until we were separated. It shouldn’t have been a problem. I was a mermaid, and I could easily search for a path outside. But I never found one.” Her breathing quickened and then broke as she said, “For hours I searched in the darkness, and then suddenly the water shook as an underwater earthquake hit. The cave I was in collapsed.”
I knew where this story was going and I didn’t want her to finish, but she appeared to need to get it out.
“Even though I’m nearly one hundred years old—just barely into adulthood—I’ve seen the deepest part of the ocean, touched the warmest of vents, next to underwater mountains taller than Mt. Everest. But I’d never been trapped all alone in a place that dark and cold in my life. I could move, I could breathe—but I was all alone, and no one came to me when I called. For the longest time I thought I was dead. Eren didn’t come when I needed him.”
I swallowed painfully as her tears flowed.
“Time passed. I don’t know how long. But when I woke up, I found myself floating along a current heading up the coast, toward Canada. Somehow I’d escaped the cave.”
“What happened after that?”
Heidi’s face paled even further. “I washed ashore in Boston, and I haven’t entered the ocean since.”
“But what about your home? Your father? Didn’t anyone come looking for you?”
She shrugged. “My family doesn’t work the way yours does. We don’t band together to help someone unless that person is of value to the merfolk. No one except someone’s mate cares what they do with themselves.”
Heidi said it matter-of-factly, but to me it came off as cold. The ocean was definitely more of a sink-or-swim kind of place than I’d want to live in.
“So why do they care about you now?” I asked.
“I’m the heir to my house. There are things my father was supposed to do that I must now accomplish. Or many people will die.”
“Are you ready to go home?”
Her sigh came out slightly choked. “No, I’m not.”
I stood, wobbling a bit before I managed to sit down next to her.
Kept Page 24
