by DD Prince
I turn away from her penetrating gaze.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asks.
I empty my lungs loudly.
“Ivy, you gotta tell me everything. Now. It’s really important.”
“No, Mom. I can’t. I’m sorry. I just… can’t.”
Mom doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t.
“Are you wearing colored contact lenses?”
I shake my head.
“What the hell, Ivy?” Mom shrieks.
“I can’t tell you. It’s too…” Dangerous? Painful? Absolutely unbelievable? We never talked about my eyes, I should’ve asked Cat and Bailey, but it’s obvious that it has something to do with Tyson.
“I can’t talk about it. Please just cut me some slack, okay?”
“You’re scaring me,” Mom says, clutching her throat, eyes horror-stricken.
“Don’t be scared, Mom, I’m just being a drama queen.”
“That’s my job,” Amelia says, her voice sounding funny. She looks scared, too.
And that’s why it’s so funny that she bought me a drama queen keychain. Because everyone knows my sister is the one who blows up, who has meltdowns, who has the temper.
“No, I’m not a drama queen, you’re a drama queen.”
“You’re such a drama queen, you need a warning label,” I’d argued back.
She bought me the keychain for a joke when I was sixteen, her seventeen. And I still use it.
“I bet Ivy wants some pancakes?” Mom looks to Amelia. “Do you have the stuff for pancakes?”
“I don’t, but I can go get it,” Amelia offers. “You want pancakes, Ives?”
I nod. “I really do.”
I don’t. But, if they have something to do, this conversation can be over.
“Okay, I’ll be back.” Amelia snaps to it and heads out, leaving me and Mom in the guest room.
My mom’s eyes hit mine and now I know she got rid of Amelia on purpose.
Fuzz.
“Wanna go watch TV on Rick the Dick’s ridiculous eighty-six inch?” I try, faking a smile.
She shakes her head. “Wait until she goes.” Mom flicks between the white horizontal blinds to peek through.
I feel the groan of the automatic garage door opening under my feet. The guest room is directly over it.
“Now, young lady, talk to me,” Mom demands, turning around and folding her arms across her chest.
“I can’t, Mom. I’m too…”
“Broken-hearted?” she asks.
Yes. But more. So much more. Just broken, mostly.
“I guess.”
“I’m gonna tell you a story. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s just a story. But, if it makes sense… you’ll talk to me. Okay?”
I nod and shrug at the same time.
She sits on the bed and gets comfortable.
I put my head in her lap and she strokes my hair.
“Aunt Nelle believed in a lot of things that most people think aren’t real,” Mom says. “She was more than a conspiracy theorist in her beliefs. You know this.”
My body goes stiff. Holy shit. Where the heck is this going?
“And I know a lot of people never took her seriously, but she was serious. She believed everything she told us. And she didn’t talk about the things she believed with just anyone, Ivy. She did it with you. She did it with me. With your brother a little. Never your sister for some reason. At least not that I know of.”
This was true. And odd.
“Never your dad. She never liked your dad. The way you feel about Rick? That’s how Nellie felt about your father.” Mom takes a deep breath. “Nelle was ten years older than me and before she came to live with us when you guys were little, she lived like a bit of a gypsy. She traveled a lot. Always on the hunt for answers, my sister. She was like Fox Mulder of the X-Files, kind of. Believing the truth was out there for her to find. But in BoHo gypsy form. We all know she was quirky, but also, she was incredibly lucky.”
Aunt Nelle was lucky in a lot of ways, for sure. Except that she got cancer and died in her fifties.
Mom continues. “She won the lottery, as you know. She won it twice. And yet she traveled and splurged on airfare, but other than that, lived on next to nothing. She’d go off on her adventures. She’d go tree planting way up north and be gone for six months. She’d join a mission with her latest church and be gone a year before coming back and joining another church or cult or whatever. Yeah, some of them were definitely cults. She always came back with crazy stories and on the rare occasion your dad caught wind of something out of her mouth, he’d tell me she did drugs.” Mom laughs. “He used to call it that Nellie peyote or some shit. My sister didn’t touch drugs. She wouldn’t even drink alcohol. She was just one of those naturally happy and adventurous people.”
Mom’s right. I remember when she came to live with us and started telling me all the crazy stories of the places she’d been, the people she met, the mysteries out there that she’d heard or crazy things she’d seen. She’d talk about seances. Ghosts. Listening to her stories was like sitting around a campfire for ghost stories, but she wasn’t trying to scare me with them. She was trying to convince me that magic was real. That I could find it, too, like she had, only find more of it because I was so young.
More than once, she asked,
“When are you gonna look for magic, Ivy? It’s out there, you know.”
“All the time you girls were growing up when she lived with us, she didn’t spend much. She helped us by paying off the house when she died, but put a caveat that the deed went in just my name. And she put away enough money for Leo’s education. Your father balked. Why have his name taken off the house? Why only Leo and not you girls in the will? No wonder.” Mom goes quiet. “It’s like Nellie had a hunch about him. Anyway… she didn’t have much else left. I wondered what she did with it. All her winnings. I knew she should have in the seven figures stashed away but figured she gave most of it away. Besides paying off our mortgage and putting a tidy sum into a special account for me for when I retire, she left me a letter when she died. A really crazy letter.”
I sit up and cross my legs, then reach for and take a sip of my Sprite. I offer it to Mom.
“No thanks. I’ll make some coffee in a minute. Anyway, she told me when you were born, sitting there with Amelia on her lap, that she spent the majority of her savings not on an education fund for you kids or anything practical like that. She said she spent the lion’s share of it on securing you and your sister a happily ever after. I thought maybe she meant stocks, bonds, something like that at first, but she acted like I was way off base. I let it go; my sister would just talk in riddles a lot, especially once the cancer went to her brain. But then I got that letter when she died. In it, she told me she went to her fortune teller and paid for you two to have the best fortune possible. True love. She told me, in the letter, to keep my eyes open on the anniversary of her death. That it would begin. And then you went missing.” Mom’s voice hitches. “On the anniversary of her death.”
I’m trembling.
“She said some other stuff too, but the important part here is about you and Amelia. I find out from your sister that you’re gone away for the weekend and then I look at the calendar and it hits me. The anniversary of Nelle’s death. It hit me like a ton of bricks. And I called your phone a hundred times and you didn’t answer. And then you finally call and tell me you’ve been bit by a snake and you disappear again and, well… you can imagine what I’m thinking…”
I can imagine. And she has no idea.
“Especially with you being in Drowsy Hollow. They still never caught that guy that went on the killing spree in town last Fall. Still never found his wife. They both just vanished.”
I shiver. I heard that story before. It was all over the news. Talk about chilling.
“My sister’s letter hinted at something that would convince you girls that magic is real.”
“Rick isn’t real m
agical,” I mutter.
Mom laughs loud. “No, he’s not. Maybe my sister knew something I don’t.”
My laughter dies in my throat and my chin wobbles.
“What about you?” Mom asks. “What about this man who’s made you cry?”
I shiver. She grabs my hand and her voice takes on a strange tone. “We grew up around that area and there were some rumors,” Mom whispers. “About shapeshifters, witches, vampires…”
I shiver some more. No, more than a shiver. More like a full-body shudder. She grips me tight. She felt that.
“Crazy stories we’d tell around the fire. It was like a rite of passage for teenagers to go looking for them. I’ve heard stories about nosy kids getting too close to the truth and bad things happening to make them back off, to make them unwilling to talk about it.”
I gulp.
“A guy Aunt Nelle dated in high school said he’d seen a man change into a wolf in the woods one night. He told everyone who would listen. And then that boyfriend of hers… he disappeared. Weeks later, his parents told her, when she was so distraught she was pleading for them to answer the door… they said he joined the army. She asked for an address. They said they didn’t have one. She knocked at their door again a few weeks later again asking for an address to send him letters. They told her he died in a military accident and slammed the door on her. But… he would never have joined. It was completely out of character for him.”
I blow out a breath. “Holy crap.”
“And then she saw him, in a crowded marketplace sixteen years later in Eastern Europe. I have a feeling she went on a quest for him. But anyway, he pretended he didn’t know her. She was sure it was him. She said he hadn’t aged.”
“God, Mom.” All the hairs on my arms are standing on end.
“Yep. Anyway, you go missing and you tell us about a snake bite, and then you come back distraught after having said you met somebody, and you’re all bandaged, and your eyes are different. Not just the color, Ivy. Your eyes are different.”
I blow out another breath.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I see.” She goes quite for a long moment. “Sweetie…” She lets that hang.
“It’s over with him,” I say.
“Do you believe in magic, Ivy?” Mom asks in a whisper.
“Yeah, Mom. I do.” My voice breaks on the ‘do’ and I burst into tears again and bury my face into Mom’s chest. She holds me tight.
“Then, maybe it shouldn’t be over with him. Your Aunt Nelle wanted you to be happy.”
I can’t do this. I can’t tell her. I can’t. I shake my head vigorously to make her stop saying those things.
“But, how bad of a fight?” she pushes.
“Please drop it, Mom? Please, please please?” I look up at her.
She looks like she’s aged ten years suddenly. There’s so much concern on her face. She nods.
“You talk when you’re ready. I’ll go make some coffee.”
I’ll never be ready to talk. I nod anyway.
***
Amelia is back thirty minutes later, so Mom makes us chocolate chip and banana pancakes and bacon. We say nothing about any of that stuff to my sister, but I only get two bites into me before I’ve lost my appetite. I stare at the plate thinking about how much Tyson loves bananas. And bacon.
Amelia looked between us upon getting back. We were sitting at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee, not talking.
Her eyes bounced between us and her mouth opened, as if she was about to speak. I pretended not to see Mom give her a sharp shake of her head, clearly discouraging her from bringing anything up that would upset me. Then we pretended like nothing happened. Amelia didn’t typically let things go.
Thank God she did this time.
43
Tyson
After lecturing me on not doing anything in public to call attention to myself, Riley and Greyson insisted on coming with me to bring Ivy home.
“You can’t let yourself shift let alone half-shift, Ty. You have to hold it together in public. If she made it to a town, you’ll have to be careful about getting her into your car without anybody alerting the cops.”
“Cornelius did something right, he taught me at least all that.”
I argued with them against coming and they told me they’d just follow me.
“We’re your reinforcements. Let us help,” Grey offered.
“I don’t need help.”
First, I thought they might be doing their duty to make sure I didn’t reveal my true nature where I shouldn’t but before long, I listened to what they said, to how they said it, and watched their body language. They were relentless in their pursuit to show their support, to help me.
“We’re here for you, brother,” Grey says. “Let us help. She lives in a bigger city. If she gets that far before you catch up to her, we know bigger cities.”
“Hate ‘em,” Riley mutters.
“Yeah, we hate ‘em but we know ‘em,” Grey pressed. “You can drive if you want. Or we can. But, let’s all go together. You’ve got backup. Want my help looking her up or you gonna hunt?”
“Of course I’m gonna hunt,” I say.
She couldn’t have gotten too far.
I knew I’d find her just as easily as I’d find my own home.
“You’re discombobulated, Ty,” Riley touches my arm.
I glare at my mother. I’m still discombobulated because she drugged me.
Her face is remorseful. “Please eat something before you go. Have breakfast with us,” Cat says. “Your grandparents are here, and…”
“Not now.”
“Then, let me pack food for the road. In case she’s deep in the woods.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“Don’t you think giving her time to catch her breath, time to cool off might help, Tyson?” Cat suggests.
“Yeah,” Greyson says. “Maybe one of us can find her, bring her to you, talk to her first, and –”
“I don’t…” I thrust my hand through my hair.
I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I was filled with a combination of frustration, panic, remorse, a bunch of emotions.
I shift, not thinking about the closed door, and am about to shift back halfway so I can open the door when Bailey steps inside.
I shift back to man.
“Did you see her?” I demand, backing her up against the door.
Bailey’s chin quivers and she shows me her throat but then she chokes out. “You asshole. You fucking broke her.”
“Bailey!” Greyson warns.
I growl.
“I don’t give a shit. He needs to know. Lead council alpha or not, able to rip my throat out without trying or not, and whether you choose to join us or not… you need to know that it’s fucking not okay to do that to a woman. Never ever.”
I back up. Fuck.
Bailey advances and pokes me in the chest. Her face is red.
“She’s gutted, Tyson. Just gutted.”
I bare my teeth.
“Tell me everything. Now.”
“I drove her to your place, and I gave her the key.”
My eyes narrow. “The key? The car key?”
“Yep,” she says defiantly.
“She took her car and left?”
“Yes.” She folds her arms across her chest.
“She’s gone?” I try to confirm. Shit. The heels of my hands fly to my temples. “When?”
“Three, three thirty, I guess.” Bailey shrugs defiantly.
She’s clearly very angry with me.
I’m also very fucking angry with me.
Cat touches my forearm. And then she’s shaking me to get my attention. “Go home, shower and change and see if she left a note and I’ll meet you at your house.”
A note.
She left me a note before. Where’s that note with her telephone number? At the cabin.
I’ll look for it. I need a telephone.
“I’ll come with you,” Cat says. “Wait for me.”
“I’m not waiting. Stay here, mother.”
“We’ll come,” Greyson says.
“No,” I say. “Stay here, all of you.”
“Ty…” Riley says. “You running? You walking, driving? If you’re shifting you need clothes. If you’re driving, you need a car ‘n your truck is at the community center. We came here in Aunt Cat’s Jeep, remember?”
Shit.
“Where are my keys?”
“Maybe in your jeans. We got you to put them back on when we got here.”
I reach for the jeans on the floor and dig into my pocket. They’re there.
“I’ll drive you to your truck,” Riley offers.
“Fine. Hurry.”
“We’ll be here,” Bailey says. “Grovel good. Grovel real good. It might take a year for her to forgive you. If you’re lucky.”
Pain shunts through me.
“Out of my way,” I tell Bailey.
“I hope she makes you work for it,” Bailey snaps as she moves aside.
“If you need us,” my mother says, “We’re here.”
“Did I mistake her as omega?” I ask Grey, jerking my thumb toward his sister.
He shakes his head. “No, but she’s pretty ticked. Women get ticked on each other’s behalf; it can be hell.”
***
“You have a phone?” I demand, seeing there’s no note in the cabin, but finding the note that Ivy wrote me last time. I find it tucked into the little monkey book on the shelf of my old room. I wanted to save it for some reason and that seemed like a good place.
Grey passes me his phone.
It’s different from Ivy’s and I get confused with the navigation to find how to make a phone call.
I only used the apps on Ivy’s phone to look at her photographs, to go into the one app with the funny jokes.
“Here,” Grey says and shows me how to make a call.
It makes a noise for a minute and then I hear Ivy talking.
“Hi, this is Ivy.”
“Ivy!”
“I can’t take your call right now so you can either leave a message or you can hang up and text me. Hint. It’s better if you hang up and text me. I hate voicemails.”
The phone makes a beep.
