Wren was quiet for a moment. With my hand braced on his chest, I felt him draw a deep breath and release it slowly. “We’ll be hunted.”
“I know,” I said.
“That won’t keep those we care about safe.” He reached for my hands, gathering them in his. He held them in the small space between us, gently squeezing as if to accentuate his point. I bit my bottom lip, brows furrowing because I knew he was right. Running away wouldn’t fix anything. “It’s late. You need to sleep,” he told me. I started to protest, but he tightened his grip around my shoulders, picking me up as if I weighed no more than a bag of apples, and sat me upright on the deck. “Bed,” he demanded, hands steering me toward the door. I rolled my eyes.
“You’re impossible,” I muttered, wrapping my fingers around the door handle.
He chuckled at that, the deep sound catching in the back of his throat. “I think I’ve definitely met my match.”
“Just make sure you don’t forget it,” I teased. He nodded, giving me the okay to open the door. With his super-hearing abilities, he could hear a mole scurrying underground from a mile away. Handy little gift, I thought to myself as we headed up the stairs. I discarded the throw blanket on the back of my desk chair before climbing into bed. I slipped the silver pendant from my neck and hung it from my bedpost. Wren climbed in beside me and wrapped his arms around my waist. My heart thrummed beneath my rib cage, and I hoped I’d never grow acclimated to the sensation of his body so close to mine. He reached for my hand, lacing his fingers with mine.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I’m fine.” He pressed his lips to the back of my neck, the warmth of the kiss absorbing into my skin. “Better now.”
“Do you want to talk about your mom?” I felt his body stiffen behind me, but his thumb continued to stroke my inner wrist. “You were surprised to see her.”
“I was,” he agreed, “but her coming here doesn’t change the way I feel about what happened.”
“Do you want to see her?”
“No. I’ve closed that chapter in my life and don’t plan on revisiting it anytime soon. She’ll be gone in a couple of days and that will be the end of it.”
I nodded into my pillow. “I wonder where she’s staying.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just get some rest.”
A breeze ruffled the curtains in my window, and outside, the night creatures sang their melancholy songs. I closed my eyes but there was one last thing on my mind I needed to address. “Wren?”
“Hmm?”
“Niall wanted you to know that he loved you… that he was proud of who you are. Those were his last words.” I didn’t know why I hadn’t told him before now. Perhaps I had been waiting for the right moment. I wasn’t sure if now was right or not, but with the finality of today, it seemed like a good time to share.
“Thank you.” He kissed my shoulder and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. With his arms around me, I managed to drift off to sleep. But even in my dreams I could feel the power humming through the walls. Through my delirious state, I swore I heard my mother’s voice in my dreams.
“Come find me,” she said.
Chapter Four
The Demons Within
The smell of burnt eggs woke me from my sleep. I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the cobwebs from my brain. I was alone, and with a quick touch of my hand, I could tell that the sheets had been cool for quite some time. The neon numerals of my alarm clock informed me that it was almost ten thirty–which was the longest I’d slept in weeks. I’d needed it, but the residual fog rolling around my brain indicated that a serious amount of caffeine would be needed to jumpstart my day.
The fire alarm began beeping from down below and just like that the clouds parted. I flung myself out of bed, dashing for the stairs. “Dad!” I called over the obnoxious high-pitched clamoring. I skipped down the steps, taking them two at a time and rounded the corner into the kitchen. Smoke was thick in the air and Dad was hoisting the kitchen window upward and fanning smoke out of the window with a tin baking sheet. “What happened?”
“I forgot I was cooking.” A look of bewilderment contorted his features and widened his dark eyes. I grabbed a kitchen chair from the table and placed it underneath the smoke detector and climbed up; eardrums ringing painfully. I twisted with all my strength but the darn thing just wouldn’t budge. “Twist it to the left,” Dad called over the racket.
“I am twisting to the left.”
“Come on Quinny, righty tighty, lefty loosey–I taught you that.”
I rolled my eyes and dug my fingernails into the contraption. I was not about to get into it with my father before I’d had coffee.
A bright light bled across the floor as Wren opened up the front door and swept inside. He was wearing his beat-up leather jacket and carrying a tray of coffee; he deposited the tray on the table before reaching up and dexterously plucked the contraption from the ceiling. It took him less than two seconds to disconnect the battery and the awful buzzing stopped. I stood there, gazing down at him with a grateful expression. He extended his arms up to me and helped me down from the chair.
“What are we burning breakfast this morning?” Wren asked. He lifted his trademark eyebrow as the corner of his mouth twitched into something of a grin.
“Dad apparently forgot he was cooking,” I said.
“I was distracted,” he admitted, continuing to waft smoke out the screen window above the sink. The frying pan was pushed to the back of the stove, containing the remnants of charred scrambled eggs and bacon.
“With what?” I placed my hands on my hips.
“I thought I heard something in the walls,” he said. “It’s probably nothing, just mice coming in from the cold I bet. I’ll have to stop at the Mill’s and grab some traps next time I’m in town.”
“Where did you hear the noise?” My heart picked up pace, and I sensed Wren watching me. He heard the change in my heartbeat, and I knew his eyebrows were furrowing into a frown without having to look.
“I couldn’t pinpoint it,” Dad said. “Behind the living room wall, maybe up toward the ceiling? I don’t know.” He waved this off with both hands.
My heart stopped beating all together.
“Maybe we can go to Jo’s for breakfast,” Wren suggested, “and in the meantime, I brought coffee.” He picked up the tray he’d been holding when he walked in, offering us each a cup from the Silver Mountain Coffee House.
“Thanks Wren, that was very thoughtful.” Dad reached over and took a cup from the cardboard carrying tray. “I’ll just head upstairs and get changed.”
After Dad had disappeared from our view, Wren turned his penetrating gaze on me. “Something you want to share with the class, Quinn?”
My heart skipped at the sound of my name. He’d used it so infrequently, but when he did, it sounded as though it belonged to him. “I was going to tell you,” I said, shifting my weight. Wren took a half step forward, fingertips sliding around my upper arm. I started from the beginning, explaining what had happened before Niall’s funeral when my pendant smacked into the wall. “I know she left it for me to find,” I said softly as I finished reiterating the tale, “but I’m not ready to open that door.”
“She’s not afraid to fight an army of rogue werewolves, but a hidden door on the other hand…” He tilted his head, grinning.
“You think I’m being ridiculous?”
“No, I don’t.” He stepped forward, closing the small distance between us and pulled me closer. “It’s personal to you.”
“It makes me weak.”
Wren shook his head. “Whether you open the door or not is your choice. But,�
� he altered his tone, “I think your mom would want you to.”
“And now he plays the guilt card.” I sighed.
“It’s just my opinion.” He reached up, smoothing a strand of hair back from my eyes. My thick waves were especially unruly in the morning. “And when you do decide to open the door, I’ll be right there with you.”
“How do you know I’ll open it?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Because I know you, Quinn Callaghan. You’re curious by nature.”
He wasn’t wrong… I chewed at the inside corner of my lip and looked up at him with an apprehensive glance. “I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed.” There. I’d admitted it out loud.
“Okay, what’s the worst possible thing you can imagine?”
I snorted. “I don’t know… that there’s nothing in the room, or like a note, telling me she doesn’t want me to practice my gifts. I don’t know,” I repeated, shaking my head.
“I don’t think that’s what you’re afraid of.” His tone, combined with the look he was giving, was omniscient.
“Enlighten me, then.” I welcomed his perspective.
“It might be the last thing your mother left for you, which makes it so much more sentimental. You miss her, and that room is holding something that will change the last memory you have of her and that, I think, is what scares you.”
His declaration was delivered with tact, but it hit me with a force of raw, weighted truth. I let his words wash through until they had taken root and I felt brave enough to meet his tawny colored eyes. There was so much strength and warmth there. I wanted to tell him that he was right–that he’d hit the nail on the head, but I couldn’t find the words.
“Breakfast?” He opted for a subject change, countering my silence.
“Right. I’ll go get dressed.” I turned for the steps, but as my foot hit the second step, I turned to face him. “What time did you leave this morning?”
“It was early. You were sleeping so well and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Still having nightmares?”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he said, leaning against the wall. He didn’t quite meet my gaze as I looked at him–really looked at him and saw the dark circles underscoring his eyes. I knew what monsters plagued his sleep.
“Wren, you know there was nothing you could have done…” He did meet my eyes then, and the look he gave me shattered a piece of my heart. Apparently neither of us could accept that we couldn’t have stopped Niall’s death from happening. “We were standing too far away. We wouldn’t have reached him in time.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He lifted his hand to the nape of my neck, gently pulling me forward as he pressed his lips to my forehead. “I still should have tried.”
Jo’s was crowded with finely dressed patrons. It was Sunday morning, and the regular church crowd was shuffling in after their services had ended. I spotted Torrance and her family in the front corner and waved as Nadine whirled by with a loaded serving tray. “Take a seat anywhere you can find one and I’ll be right with you,” she said.
We eased our way through the maze of crowded tables and found a booth that had recently been vacated. Salt and ketchup smears stained the surface of the table, but we grabbed a couple of napkins from the dispenser and helped clean up the mess. It looked as though it had been left by someone with a small child; I was wiping up something sticky that suspiciously resembled spittle.
“Really busy this morning,” Dad commented, glancing around the room.
“At least it smells better than your kitchen,” Wren teased. Dad shot him a look that only caused Wren and I to chuckle. A few minutes passed before Nadine strolled up to fill our coffee mugs and take our orders.
“Sorry about the wait,” she said, dropping a couple of creamers and extra sugar packets in the middle of the table.
“No need to apologize,” Dad told her.
Nadine always had a smile plastered to her face, but as she glanced up and really looked at who she was speaking to, her features shifted. Her blue eyes swept over Wren and churned with sympathy. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to guess what she was thinking. It was the day after his father’s funeral, how was he even functioning? She placed a hand on his shoulder, her painted fingertips squeezing. “I’m real sorry for your loss, Wren.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I appreciate that.”
“Well if you need anything, there’s a whole community of people ready to help. You just say the word.” She started to turn, halted, and pivoted on her right foot as if she’d just remembered something. She reached into her apron and unloaded an extra handful of creamers, patted Wren on the back and then strolled off toward the double-sided swinging doors of the kitchen.
“How long before I’m officially off everyone’s radar?” Wren asked, reaching for a spoon to stir his coffee.
“She means well. We all do.” Dad offered a small half smile.
I wanted to tell him that someone like him would never be off the radar. Anywhere he’d go, people would always notice. He just had that sort of discernable, commanding presence. And of course it didn’t help that he was also jaw-dropping good-looking, either.
Beside me, Wren tensed; the spoon he was holding beginning to bend. I reached out and wrapped my palm around his hand, squeezing with force to get his attention. The little bell above the door chimed and I looked up to see the sheriff and his son walking in. Carl had his thumbs tucked through the belt loops of his slacks, his wide shoulders squared, and his beady little eyes scanned the room. The atmosphere chilled in the pulse of a second.
Wren let go of the spoon around the same time the restaurant resumed the steady buzz of chatter. I swept it off the table and placed it in my purse when my dad wasn’t looking. He’d bent it in half without thinking.
The sheriff and his son started for the bar, but Carl had spotted us. His expression stayed neutral before very boldly shooting me a wink. He sat up on the barstool next to Margaret Lynn, tucking his sunglasses in the collar of his shirt. I wondered what sort of seedy information she was spilling this time.
Josephine bustled out of the kitchen to greet them; I watched as she handed them each a menu and filled their coffee mugs. I could see the tendons in Wren’s forearms shifting. My dad was looking out the window, studying the work he’d done on the outdoor dining patio. I closed my eyes and called on the Spirit element, asking it to calm Wren before he burst out of his clothing and unleashed the werewolf version of the Incredible Hulk.
“Good morning!” Blaire appeared from the side with a bright smile pulling the corners of her mouth upward. She placed her hand on Wren’s shoulder, and I felt his body slacken beside me. I deflated in an exhale.
“Well hi, Blaire.” Dad turned and smiled at her. “What a nice surprise. Why don’t you join us?” He scooted over to the window and patted the bench beside him.
“Why thank you Mr. Callaghan, that’s very kind of you.” She let her hand fall from Wren’s shoulder and sank down in the space across from him. “I certainly hope I’m not imposing.”
“Not at all,” I told her. “I’m glad you’re here.” That was my subtle way of thanking her for showing up in the nick of time. Wren acknowledged her by a slight nod as he reached for his coffee mug.
“Have you eaten yet?” Dad asked, “We just ordered, but I can flag Nadine down and get something placed for you.” He glanced behind the booth, searching the café for our waitress.
“Thanks, but I’ve already eaten. I won’t pass on a mug’o scald, however.”
“Scald?”
“Hot tea,” I told him. Some of Blaire’s Irish slang was starting to stick in my memory bank now–yet to be de
termined if that was a good thing.
“Of course,” Dad said. “So how are things faring at the Magic Shoppe without Penny around?” We’d told him that Penny was vacationing in Ireland and Blaire was here running the shop in her absence. The lies were piling so high now, I was beginning to lose track of all the fabrications we’d created.
“Oh it’s fantastic,” Blaire said. “I’m having loads of fun.”
“That’s great, we’re happy to have you here.” Dad grinned. “Plus, we all like your accent.”
“Oh Mr. Callaghan, you’re the ones with the accent.” Blaire playfully nudged his shoulder and giggled.
“So what time is your sister getting in?” I asked.
“Her flight is to arrive around seven. Thought I’d leave around six to give myself plenty of time to find parking and meet her at the gates.”
“Be careful on the mountain pass, it gets pretty foggy up there in the evenings,” Dad told her. He glanced at me, and I knew he was thinking of the accident I had foreseen years before involving one of my classmates. My stomach still tightened at the memory. I hadn’t been able to stop it.
“I’ve got Penny’s truck, not to worry.”
A moment later, Nadine returned with our breakfast and filled Blaire’s cup with hot tea. Wren stayed quiet beside me, eyes fixed on the back of Officer Stevenson’s uniform. His silence could’ve been mistaken for grief, but I knew he was making a concentrated effort to keep the wolf at bay.
Nadine brought our check by, and Dad excused himself to pay the bill at the counter. Jo was there, smiling at my dad as he made his way up to the register. She leaned in, shaking the wooden bangles down around her wrist.
“She likes him,” Blaire purred.
“I know. Everyone knows.” I sighed.
“Does he?”
“I’ve pointed it out several times,” I said. “I don’t think he knows what to do, ya’ know? With my mom being gone, I mean.”
The Calling of the Trinity (Trinity Cycle Book 2) Page 4
