by Angel Payne
“Now I’m not sure whether to introduce you two or make sure you know where the spare bedroom is.”
This time, Mel’s the only one chortling at his one-liner. But my hero husband proves he doesn’t possess the knack for just finessing lightning bolts. He saves the moment from transforming from an ice breaker into a glacier with his easy grin. “Well, sticking to the introductions means you can keep mixing the cocktails.”
“Excellent idea.” The volley comes from a new arrival to the little circle: a redhead who could seriously be a descendant of Rita Hayworth, with voluptuous boobs to match. Additionally, her full lips and sculptured profile are absolutely created for any camera lens—as she shows us all when tucking her nose against the side of Calvin’s neck. “That is a super idea, right, Calzie palzie?”
Calzie palzie? Baby Hayworth looks like much more than a “palzie” with Calvin, snaking a hand toward his beltline with the determination of a woman familiar with the area. Cal grabs her wrist in time to redirect her hold around his waist, but not without a noticeable blush stealing up his face.
I watch the exchange with teeth firmly embedded into the inside of my lip. Oh hell, how I yearn to demand an explanation from “Calzie” along with an introduction to his new “palzie.” Ever since the first day we helped Cal and his little sisters, there’s been a special protectiveness in my heart for the guy—and now, the fact that he has a “special friend” in his world is a stunner I can only experience on the inside, turning my gut into an aching knot and my head into a throbbing mess. Holding back tears is a lot freaking harder when I have to paste on a fake pleasant smile.
“Okay, then.” Mel sweeps an empty blender over and tosses in some crushed ice. “Another round of Bolt-inis, coming right up!”
“What-inis?” Reece beats me to the punch on getting to siphon off some of his shock through the query, though his finesse with a mildly amused gape is better than my acting game.
“Oh, yes. Bolt-inis!” Surprisingly, Baby Hayworth isn’t the source of burst. The exclamation comes from Yuli, a member of the New York RRO team. She’s as petite as Cal’s girl but bigger with her fashion statement. She’s wearing a black leather pencil skirt that laces up the sides, with dark-green ties that match her high-heeled patent boots. Her black knit tank has Wicked spelled out across the front in sparkly green rivets, and the tips of her spiky updo are accented with similar hardware. Since I hired her for her creativity with RRO’s marketing pieces, she’s a perfect fit for the look. “Mel got to inventing it about an hour ago, as a tribute to our favorite superhero,” she explains. “Like him, it zaps you before you know it.”
“Zap, zap, zap, zap!” The cheeky chant grows as the whole group catches on, with Calvin’s date adding a shimmy worthy of a Rio Carnival parade line. The look across Cal’s face is a familiar one, making me long to hug him. That’s the scowl he gets before having to break up a tiff between Tosca and Jina.
Reece steps in for the rescue yet again. “What’s in it?” he asks Mel, tripping up the group’s rhythm.
“Seeeecret ingredients,” Mel jokes, starting to douse the ice in the blender with vodka. A lot of vodka. “Designed for loosening its victims’ inhibitions—and checkbooks.”
“Completely valid.” Chester, our hipster PR guru from the LA office, arcs a finger into the air. “I think I’ll be taking out a second on my condo to pay for the Bora Bora package.”
“Unless I snap it up instead,” cracks Clark, one of our awesome case management specialists. Like his comics canon namesake, Clark is boyish and charming on the outside but dogged and driven when given a no when he needs a yes. Or when he’s hell-bent on going to Bora Bora.
“I think I wanna snap you up, baby.” Though Cal’s girl declares it to the whole group, she only has eyes for her guy. While I get it—Calvin is a drop-dead gorgeous mix of three different races—I can also see, along with everyone else, that the last thing on the guy’s mind right now is getting “snapped up.”
“Juliet.” Once more he halts her wandering hand before she cups it all the way around his crotch. Past his well-trimmed beard and mustache, I can tell he’s blushing worse than a Disney deer in a Deadpool plot. “This isn’t the time or the—”
“Oh, yaaayyy!” Juliet herself cuts him off, jumping forward for a Bolt-ini refill along with everyone else. “More blue zaps.”
“What are we drinking to this time?” Yuli asks.
“No better reason than welcoming our new party guests.” Mel hands Reece a large glass of the magic blue libation, which seriously does look to be glowing now. I glance to the countertop and see that the man had the chance to add a number of blue liqueur components to the concoction when I was more focused on whether Juliet would succeed at her hand job efforts with Cal or not. After Mel gives me a glass of ice water, he raises his glasses and shouts, “Everyone, please say hello to Dr. Steven Sarsgard and his lovely wife, Sophie.”
After the group toasts us in a round of boisterous greetings, I summon “Sophie’s” subtle Brit lilt, along with my most open and innocent smile, and reply, “And who all do we get to thank for this rousing huzzah?”
Mel’s too busy strutting out from behind the blender to notice the eye flare I get from Reece, answered by my sheepish shrug. Okay, so maybe the nerves are getting to me. Borrowing British-isms from my Renaissance Faire days wasn’t likely the best call, though everyone smiles as if I’m the hip Londoner in the room with new slang they’ve yet to learn. Not that Mel goes that far in caring. After puffing his chest and tossing his hair, the guy raises his martini glass yet again.
“Another toast!” he proclaims. “As I proudly introduce the LA and New York teams from the Richards Reaches Out organization.”
“LA and New York?” Reece inflects it with the perfect amount of authentic interest.
“Both offices took the week off for the holidays, so Maddie and I invited the New York gang out for a few days of R and R, as well as the party.” He leans in to add, just as I’m about to give him new props for being a bizarre but benevolent soul, “Besides, having them all here means there’s a better chance of the bigger faces coming out for the night.”
Luckily, Mel’s too dense to notice the tension beneath Reece’s “confused” smile. “Bigger…names? What do you m—”
“Oh, come on.” Mel smacks Reece on the back with the force of a grizzly giving CPR. “The big ‘R’ in RRO, man. Reece Richards himself! And as we all know by now, that little spitfire of his wife is sure to add some ‘sunshine’ to this chilly night. Am I right? Sunshine! Haaaaa!”
I struggle to catch Reece’s eye as Mel gives new meaning to the concept of sunshine itself for ten minutes, including a hey-I-used-to-sing-in-high-school version of “You are My Sunshine” that has me seriously but silently exhorting my husband, over and over again, Please don’t kill him. Please don’t kill him. Please don’t kill him.
“And hey, hey, hey.” Fresh out of sunshine references, Mel seems to mellow out—or at least what his version of the stuff is. “At the very least, you know this charity shit is great for press optics.”
Somehow, Reece rustles together a fake smile of commiseration and replies, “Oh, sure. And what does the press love more than their ‘optics’?”
“Not a hell of a lot, I can tell you that.” Mel’s crack, while beyond irritating, is also beyond right. Even Bean jumps into my act, his pissed-off kicks matching the ire I fight to hide away—though likely for unnecessary reasons. Though it might chafe me that the RRO staffers are being used for better press coverage, I’m sure all of them knew exactly what they were doing when coming to the party—and exactly what the end result would be, as well. More exposure for our cause. More money with which to accomplish it.
There’s a superhero life lesson in there somewhere—worthy cause versus stupid attention for the day’s meditation subject, anyone?—but I’m yanked out of that mental mire by everyone’s favorite attention magnet for the evening. All right, maybe everyone except
Cal, who’s bypassed vexated blushes in favor of full-on scorn for his date—which might have a little to do with the Bolt-ini she just downed in a gulp to rival Reece’s fastest finger zap for speed.
We’re all still watching in stunned silence as the first hit of the new alcohol hits her, and she swings her head aloft while letting her whole arm plummet. Fortunately, the martini glass that slips from her fingers is deftly caught by Clark, not that the girl notices enough to thank him. “Woohoooo!” she shouts as if she’s dangling out of a limousine sunroof, waving to the tourists down Sunset Boulevard. “All the kisses for the optics! All of themmmm!”
There’s a round of softly amused laughs from the women, at least—who among us hasn’t been that girl at a party at one time or another?—but I feel awful for poor Cal, who tries to drag Juliet from her stool with calm but firm reprimands.
“Heeeeyyy!” she whines it into the guy’s face, making Cal grimace. Her breath is probably a hundred proof by now. “I don’t wanna go. It’s finally getting funnnnn.”
Calvin’s jaw resembles a bronze box with its fresh tension. “I said you’ve had enough, Juliet, and I mean it.”
“Fuck off!”
Our collective, uncomfortable silence is probably the last thing Cal wants, though the first thing instinct dictates to us. Reece, feeling for the guy, moves forward and murmurs, “Allow me to hel—”
“I said fuck off!”
Nothing’s so silent anymore. At least not to me. After the round of stunned gasps have died out on the air, logical reactions to the Exorcist-style growl that’s taken over Juliet’s larynx, my head is filled with terrified thunder, and my chest is a solid beat of comprehension.
Juliet doesn’t sound like herself—because she isn’t herself.
Not even the next moment, as she visibly “collects” herself to “appear” more like the charming thing who arrived here on Calvin’s arm, I can still feel the additional force in the room—the extra presence who’s unmistakably swept into this atmosphere.
Holy. Shit.
Faline?
I’m so certain about it, I slam both hands across my stomach—not just in a mode of protection but in detection. My boy, already so advanced beyond his embryonic state, must have something to tell me about all this. But damn it, he’s fallen just as silent and still as everyone else in the room.
Too damn still.
“This…this isn’t good.” My rasp is heard only by my husband, but that’s exactly my intention. The second Reece sweeps his stunned stare to mine, I know he’s seen and felt the change too—and is just as tormented about what to about it as I am. There’s a chance, however slim, that we’ve both just let our paranoia run away with our imaginations. But even if that’s not the case, he can’t just rush up, grab the woman, and force a confrontation. No matter how Faline’s controlling the woman—whether it’s full remote control or simple “Faline’s Disciples Army” mode—there’s still a damn good chance our cover hasn’t been blown all the way open yet.
Yet.
So far, Juliet is simply regarding us as Mel and Maddie’s eccentric neighbors. She continues doing so while hopping off her barstool and downing the rest of Cal’s Bolt-ini, only to giggle at her date as if he’s just let her chop off his dick instead. “Stupid, stupid boy,” she spits. “Or am I the stupid one for letting you drag me to this ridiculously rank party?”
“Excuse me?” The objection comes from Maddie, newly arrived to the kitchen area with a stack of empty hors d’oeuvres plates. But her withering glare is given a serene smirk from Juliet—who’s probably continuing to fool everyone that she is Juliet, except for Reece and me—before she rocks back on one heel and cocks one hand to her opposite hip.
“Not sure I can do that,” she snips across the kitchen.
“Huh?” Maddie retorts.
“Excuse you,” Juliet—or whoever the hell she is—counters. “Sorry but not sorry—I am completely certain that I cannot excuse you.”
“Jesus.” Calvin really does cross himself this time—before grabbing the girl by the elbow and pulling her back. “Juliet. That’s completely enough!”
“Is it, now?” She wrenches from him, which propels her around and then right up against the kitchen counter, into the spot Reece occupied until moving to try and help Cal. But as soon as Juliet sweeps herself this direction, my husband is by my side with speed that might baffle a few in the room. But at the moment, I don’t care how he got here; merely that his hand is back in mine and we’re together again.
Facing off against another antagonist again.
Because that’s all Juliet can be categorized as at this point.
Gone is the saucy little flirt we first met at Calvin’s side. Equally gone is the sloshed party girl, emulating her pretend sunset limo ride. What’s left is a creature taken over by bright-eyed malice and open contempt, a demoness sheathed inside a beauty queen—especially as she quirks a demure smile just like a contender for some pageant crown. “Is it all ever enough?” she croons to us both. “What do you think, Dr. Sarsgard? Mrs. Sarsgard?” She draws out the pronunciation of our names as if they’re in a foreign language and she wants to take care about getting them right. But the next second, she’s back to the demeanor of not giving a shit—like the beauty queen who’s already secured her crown.
Or the super-mutant bitch who’s just found her prey.
“What’s wrong?” She bites out the prompt after Reece and I give her nothing but silence in response. I keep praying Calvin will come to his damn senses and come grab her again, but even he looks stalled in the moment, as if he’s still breathing but his limbs are encased in ice—an analogy not helping my careening, screaming senses or cracking the ice that’s encased my baby in silence. “Cat caught your tongues, then?” Juliet spits, leaning over to examine both our faces more closely. “Or are you two simply waiting, just like me?”
I want to cheer and punch Reece as he pushes in, angling Juliet away from me by shooting his hand across the counter and then around her bent elbow. The tension in his jaw and the blazes in his eyes tell me that he’s obeyed instinct more than intelligence for the move, which could be his hugest help or hindrance within the next few seconds. Fortunately, as the girl wrests away from him faster than she yanked free from Cal, I’m thinking the former.
Until Juliet smiles again.
Only the expression doesn’t belong to Juliet.
It’s the smile of someone else. A creature who moves her lips apart just enough to expose her sweet but feral smile…her patient but predatory glee.
“Oh, you are waiting,” she drawls out—her feline inflection all too intimate…all too knowing. “Just like me. You want to know when she’ll be here again…don’t you? You want her back as badly as we all do…don’t you? Don’t you, you sneaky Sarsgards?”
Just like before, she’s back to overembellishing the words—as if making sure she’s projecting to the back of some unseen theater or getting the syllables right in order to file a report. I don’t care why she’s doing it; only that like before, every pore on my body is flooded with raw fear as she does.
But unlike before, my body is dealing with another reaction now.
Sensations I’ve never felt before.
Ice and flames. Cold pain mixed with hot agony. Sharp movements, kicking and blasting at the entirety of my belly. Surging and growing, a rebellion that’s not just bursting in my soul but clamoring at my whole being.
Until I’m screaming.
At least I think I am.
My own voice is nothing but a hollow sound in the background of my senses, relegated to a distant horizon as one unmistakable outcry consumes nearly all of my consciousness. But despite the pain it brings, I welcome the intruder. I gasp in tearful awe of him. Yes, him. The little person who’s been my passenger for so many months. The magnificent miracle I’ve carried, now shouting at me over and over again, repeating a sole phrase of desperate instruction.
Run, Mama. Run, Mama.
Now.
Now.
Run, Mama.
Chapter Three
Reece
“Run!”
It’s at least the thousandth time she’s rasped it since seizing my hand, tearing us out of the party without any goodbyes and then racing back up the street as if the Makras’ place is about to explode. At the moment, I’d prefer that over her exploding—a terror too damn close to possibility as her breath turns choppier and her steps fumble on the dark, uneven sidewalk.
“Emma. Emmalina. You’ve got to calm the hell—”
“Ah! Oh!”
My exhortation barely pierces her, but a crash of waves against the beach has her flinching like a horror movie ingénue fleeing a haunted forest. When she identifies the noise, she’s hardly relieved. It’s right back to the breathless and desperate rush, digging her nails into my forearm as she gouges my heart with her renewed litany. The same desperate repetition. The same rasping fear.
The same chunk of my psyche that understands every note of it.
“Emma.” I try to slow her again. If she goes down on this cracked concrete, even my lightning reflexes won’t be fast enough for the save. “Velvet, I know you’re freaked. I am too.”
“This isn’t freaked,” she rebuts. “This is terror, husband. To be clear, a lot of it. Plain, unfiltered terror.”
“All right, I get that too.”
“No.” She quickens the pace despite having to grab at her back, looking like she’s literally shoving herself forward. “I’m not sure you do.”
“I was there, damn it. I heard every word that came out of that girl’s mouth and exactly how it came out.”
“And you’re still telling me to stay calm about it?”
“I’m begging you to be careful about it.” I manage to stop her long enough to circle around for a resolute stare. “Even if she’s one of Faline’s converts—”
“If?”
“So you’re going to sacrifice our child to that terrorist, then?” I snarl. “Because that’s what you’re on the verge of doing—”
