by Jayne Faith
“It was a long time ago when we hung out here,” I said. “It feels like last week in a way, but . . . so much has happened.”
“Tara, I—” he started, but then broke off with a tiny shake of his head. A small movement of his hand at his side drew my attention. He’d lifted it a few inches but then stopped. I looked up and found his gaze intent on me. “I really feel terrible about how we left things back then. There’s a lot I want to say, but . . .”
He shook his head again and ran his hand over his hair.
“What do you mean? What is there to say?” I asked.
His hand came up, the one that had moved at his side before. Almost as if in slow motion, he brought his palm to rest lightly on my cheek. That small touch set off a cascade of tingles spiraling through my body and coming to curl around in my stomach, heating my blood and sending my pulse racing. It was all I could do not to lean into his touch. My breath stilled, and time seemed to freeze for a few seconds.
“Leaving you behind was selfish,” he said. “Ever since, I’ve regretted the way I handled it.”
“Judah, I forgive you.” I barely managed to get the words out.
“No, don’t say that,” he said. “It wasn’t just the way I left you, it was also . . .”
Oh, goddess, don’t say it. Don’t bring up the fact that I’d declared my epic crush on you the last time we’d stood in this room.
“It was also what you told me, and how I just stood there like an idiot.”
He shifted slightly closer. My eyes flicked to his lips, which were slightly parted. He was breathing more rapidly. I tilted my chin up the slightest bit, a suggestion of an invitation. Even in the dark of the basement, I could see the heat of attraction in his eyes, and it made my blood blaze hotter.
At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to feel his lips on mine. As a lovesick teenager, I’d imagined it a thousand times. Back then, I’d never dared wish he was interested in me. But, the way he was standing there touching me, it occurred to me that things had changed, that he saw me differently.
He was going to kiss me. I was positive of it.
But then he blinked hard, dropped his hand, and pulled back.
“I didn’t realize you felt that way about me back then, Tara,” he said. “I wish I would have known sooner. Before we got in that fight. We shouldn’t have kept secrets from each other.”
I peered up at him, confused, but his eyes flicked away and he gave a slight shake of his head, as if trying to clear his mind. Disappointment flopped like cold, wet mud over the heat that had been building inside me.
Just like that, the magic of nostalgia and the livewire electricity of attraction dissipated. I shivered, realizing just how chilly the basement was.
I wondered if I might have misread him. Maybe being in our old hangout spot had brought back those adolescent feelings and clouded my perception. Maybe it was just the fervent wishes of a teenage girl with a giant crush resurfacing, projecting into the present.
I wrapped my arms around my middle. “Did you want to check out the upstairs?” I asked.
He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “Nah, that’s okay.”
I led the way out of the basement, and he locked the door. Awkward silence hovered around us as we walked toward my car. I still wasn’t sure what to make of what’d just happened.
“I think I know what I want to do with the Dullahan skull if I find it,” I said, turning my focus to less emotional matters.
“What do you want to do?”
“I-I’m thinking about taking it to someone else,” I said haltingly. “If I do, it’s going to be dangerous. Stupidly dangerous. And that’s why I can’t tell you any more than that.” Saying it out loud brought the old fears welling up through me, and I tried not to think about what Shaw would do if I presented the skull to O’Malley. I ran my hand over my hair, suddenly not sure I could go through with it. “Hell, I’m not sure I have the guts to do it.”
He straightened. “Even if it’s dangerous, it seems like something you need to do. Show Shaw he can’t just push you into a corner.”
I drew a slow breath. “Yeah, maybe.”
We’d stopped next to my car, facing each other, but with more distance between us than at any point that evening.
“We’ll do it together, right?” Judah asked. “You’re still okay with that?”
If I ended up doing it at all.
I nodded.
He pulled out his phone and glanced at the time. “Listen, I have to go. But I want to start figuring out where we’ll look for the skull tomorrow morning, if you’re not busy.”
“Since I’ve been suspended from my other job, I happen to have some free time. I have to figure out some stuff at home, though.”
“What stuff?” he asked, seeming to pick up on my downtrodden tone.
“Just some bills,” I said reluctantly. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll figure it out.”
He peered at me for a moment, and I could see he didn’t quite believe me.
“Okay,” he said. “But after that, we’re on the hunt.” He’d walked me over to my car, and he touched the hood of my Rover. “Such a cool car. I love these.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m selling it, actually.” I hadn’t meant to say it, but fatigue had lowered my guard, and the words slipped out.
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Why? You always wanted one of these, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but it’s a gas guzzler and repairs are killer. I’m going to get something more efficient and cheaper to maintain.” I didn’t sound anywhere near as convincing as I’d intended.
“Damn, that’s too bad. You really should hold onto it, though, if you can.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t,” I said. “I’ve already listed it.”
He ran his hand over the car, his brows pulled low in an expression that he quickly masked. He drew a breath and turned to me.
“I need to head out,” he said. “Get some sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got in the Rover and turned on the ignition, but even after Judah drove away, I just sat there with my hands hanging on the steering wheel, staring at the basement door we’d snuck through. Had I really gotten his signals so wrong? The hand on my cheek, the way he’d moved closer and his breath had quickened? Why had he suddenly distanced himself?
My pulse throbbed softly through my lips at the memory. For a second there, in that musty room where we’d spent so much time together, I thought maybe Blake had been right, that Judah felt a spark of something for me. But if he had, he didn’t want to act on it for some reason.
“Whatever,” I muttered.
I pulled away from the curb and headed toward home.
On the way, a text came through from Judah, and I read it while idling at a red light.
I’m so sorry, but I can’t meet with you tomorrow. I have some urgent business I have to attend to. I’m working on something I’ll explain later. It could be a day or two. I’ll let you know. I WILL be back. If you can, please try to trust me until then.
My brows drew low in a frown. What the hell? After all his promises, how badly he supposedly felt about abandoning me and how much he thought he owed me after helping him and Blake, he was suddenly taking off with some vague promise of something he’d explain later?
“You could have at least called me,” I groused.
I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and gripped the wheel hard. With every passing second, my annoyance grew.
I was so distracted when I drove past the front of the house, I nearly missed the legal-sized envelope taped to the door, highlighted by the porch light.
Leaving the engine running, I parked on the curb, hopped out, and jogged up to the door. I pulled the envelope off, frowning at it. It was addressed to Karleigh, Felicity, and Tara Knightley, our names typed out in all caps.
I ripped it open, and the large text across the top was like a punch to the gut.
We were g
etting evicted.
Chapter 21
MY INITIAL SHOCK dissolved away, quickly replaced by the familiar flavor of fear that I’d first come to know when I was a kid. It was a dark, tight, ugly sensation that settled in the pit of my stomach and squeezed my chest. Anyone who’d ever huddled in the night, worrying about things like having enough money for food or electricity or rent, would recognize it well.
I forced myself to breathe and read through the letter again.
My mind started whirling as I struggled to come up with a solution. I had to talk to Mom and Felicity, but they’d already be asleep.
I stuffed the letter back in the envelope and trudged to my running car. After parking in the back, I crept into the silent house and sat down at the dining table next to Fel’s laundry basket.
We had a problem.
The landlord had started eviction procedures, which meant that any possibility of working out something with him had become next to impossible. If we got kicked out, he’d still come after us for the money owed—which he had every right to—but we’d be left scrambling for a new place. With the eviction and a lack of funds for first and last month’s rent, no one would want to give us a lease.
We had a very, very big problem.
I propped my elbows on the table and held my head in my hands.
I tried to shift my thoughts, grasping at anything good, anything I could be grateful for. Mom was alive and healthy. Felicity was strong. The kids were all thriving. I hadn’t lost my job, only one paycheck. We’d seen bad times before, and we’d survived them.
I stood up and paced, trying to jog my brain out of alarm mode so I could think. I had to come up with something to propose to Mom and Felicity. My thoughts spun, but they were like wheels in mud. Spraying shit everywhere, but not making any progress.
Partway through my fourth circuit around the living room, my phone vibrated. I stopped in front of the sofa and pulled the device out of my pocket with the irrational hope that it would present a solution. Maybe Katerina would have a change of heart, or it’d be a message telling us that a long-lost relative had died and left us a fortune. Ha.
It was a notification from the used-car listing service. My Land Rover had sold. Someone was willing to pay the asking price.
My knees gave out, and I sank to the sofa, staring at the screen.
I should have been relieved. But I felt no relief. Just a numb sort of letdown.
The sale would give us a chunk of cash to work with, and that, along with a truck load of luck and a new landlord willing to take a risk, might get us into a new rental. But the thought of trying to negotiate the eviction proceedings, finding a new place to live and a landlord who would overlook our poor history, and moving all the people and things out of our current house was too much to process all at once.
I pulled my legs up, tucking my knees to my chest, and tightened myself into a ball.
I was so tired. Tired of trying to keep up with the expenses, tired of working every waking minute of my life but never really moving forward, tired of feeling so trapped.
Most of all, I was tired of not having a solution for any of it.
I was never going to get out. I’d be Mom’s age, still doing retrieval jobs and still jumping every time Shaw summoned me.
With the thought of Grant Shaw, the vice around my chest returned, squeezing until I could barely draw a breath. Working for Volkov Retrieval was a job—a good one. Being bound to Shaw was more like slavery. Rox and Heloise were right. As long as I was tied to Shaw, I’d never have a life of my own, and I’d never get ahead.
“I can’t go on this way,” I whispered to the dark room.
The phrase continued to repeat itself in my head, the words marching through over and over, until the pale light of dawn began to ease through the darkness.
I went and woke Mom and Felicity before the kids got up for school. The three of us huddled in Mom’s room, the two of them in their bathrobes and me still in the previous day’s clothes.
They’d both read through the eviction notice. Felicity was trying not to cry, but tears kept leaking down her cheeks anyway.
“I spoke to him,” she said. “I thought he was going to give us a week. That’s what he said.”
Her anger and fear were laced something worse, something that all of us were feeling but hated and refused to name aloud: shame. It felt shameful to have reached this point, to be reduced to begging.
“Well, the Rover sold last night, so I have enough to cover the back rent,” I said. “I’m getting the money for it today at noon.”
I’d messaged the buyer, telling him to come and get the car that day and to have the payment in cash.
Fel swiped a tear away with a frustrated flick of her fingers. “Okay. After you get it, I’ll take the money to the rental office and see what I can do. Maybe I can get him to change his mind.”
“We’ll get through this somehow,” Mom said, pulling both of us into a hug.
I grimly put my arms around my mother and sister in a brief return of the embrace, but I wasn’t in the mood for encouraging words about how we would once again pull together through adversity. In a few hours, I was going to be out a vehicle, and there was a damn good chance the cash would be too late to save the lease.
The sound of the shower turning on upstairs signaled that the kids were starting to wake up. I desperately needed sleep, but there would be too much commotion in the house while the kids were getting ready for school. I couldn’t stand the thought of facing them, knowing what was probably coming, so I slipped out the back, got in the Rover, and left.
There wasn’t anywhere I wanted or needed to go, so I just drove, taking a winding road up into the foothills. I found a street with an east-facing view, where I pulled over and killed the engine.
I sat there, shivering in the morning cold, and watched the sun come up.
My phone buzzed a few times with incoming messages, but I ignored them. There wasn’t going to be any miraculous Hail Mary catch to get us through this. We were going to lose the house. And it was going to be very, very difficult to secure a new lease.
I should have been focusing on the biggest and most urgent things we faced, like figuring out where we were going to live, but my mind insisted on tallying up the lesser insults, too. Losing two weeks at Volkov. Judah taking off back to Portland. Most of all, the way Shaw was trying to keep a stranglehold on me.
I needed to escape my life, if only for a few minutes. I started the car and headed down from the foothills toward downtown. With the commuter traffic, it took a little longer than usual to get to the overpass. No one was in the skate park so early on a Monday, and the fish market nearby hadn’t opened yet. I parked in front of the market, got out, and headed to the Faerie doorway.
The cold spring morning was soon replaced by the deeper chill of the netherwhere. But then I was standing in the Duergar kingdom, where the air was warmer, more humid, and fragrant with the blooming flora of an almost eternal summer. My pulse quickened by a fraction, a subtle greeting between the magic in my blood and the magic that saturated the realm of Faerie.
Taking a familiar route from the doorway, I headed toward Heloise’s cottage. It was early on this side of the hedge, but I knew she’d be awake.
Shopkeepers, artisans, delivery people, and other workers were already busy in the business districts surrounding the Duergar palace. I didn’t bother trying to hide my presence. I wasn’t in Faerie to defy Shaw or bend the terms of any of our agreements, and if he wanted to question me, he’d find out as much. There was a certain safety and peace of mind in knowing that.
By the time I knocked on Heloise’s door, my body was humming from my swift walk.
“Tara,” she greeted me, her face registering slight surprise and genuine delight.
“Hi,” I said, stuffing my fists into my jacket pockets. “Sorry to just show up like this.”
She shook her head, the skin around her rosy-orange eyes crinkling as she smiled.
“Not at all. Come in and have a cup of tea.” She swung the door wider.
Her own cup and saucer sat on a table next to a comfortable-looking easy chair in her little living room. A blanket was pushed to one side, and an open book waited on the seat, turned upside down to hold her place.
I sat on the end of a chaise lounge upholstered in a cheery floral fabric while she disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, she returned with a steaming cup balanced on a saucer that also held a slice of her homemade biscotti.
“How are you doing, Heloise?” I asked.
I took a bite of the cookie-like treat, which crumbled deliciously over my tongue, then washed it down with a sip of flowery deep amber tea. Nothing in the Earthly realm quite compared to Faerie tea.
She gave me a faint smile. “Retirement is very quiet. But there’s a pleasantness in it.”
“Are you bored?”
“No,” she said after thinking for a moment. “But I’m still adjusting to a different rhythm of life. What about you, Tara? Did you decide to focus on paying off Shaw as we discussed?”
I grimaced. “I’ve run into a snag there.”
I told her about Shaw’s stepped-up efforts to keep me out of the hunt for the Dullahan skull.
“I’ll have to find a different way to pay down my debt,” I said. I straightened and lowered my cup. “Do you know anything about a man named Isaac O’Malley? Salamander.”
Her green gaze sharpened on me, and her brows pulled down. “I’ve heard vague rumors. But I’m not particularly connected to the information network these days.”
“What have you heard?”
“That this O’Malley fellow is attempting to elbow into Shaw’s territory.”
Heloise usually spoke cautiously of Shaw. Unlike many in his network, she hadn’t been a child when she began working for him. She’d joined the organization much later in life. By the gray hair that dominated the loose bun at the nape of her neck and the lines that creased her face, I guessed she was quite a bit older than Shaw. I didn’t know what her story was or how she’d ended up in his employ. Even though she’d never expressed it outright, I believed that underneath she despised Shaw in the way that most of his people did; though if she did, she kept her true feelings carefully masked. I had no idea what the terms of her retirement were but had no doubt that he’d forced her into some sort of agreement, perhaps swearing an oath that she would never train anyone else in the throwing arts and most likely promising to keep any secrets about the network.
