Returned

by Samantha Stone

  Where are you, Alex?

  Chapter 1

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  May 2016

  LEILA reveled in the silence wrapped around her in an almost-suffocating embrace.

  Six months ago, she would have hurried through her morning routine—shower, brush her hair and pull it into a tight bun, find a cover for her cochlear implants’ sound external processor that matched her outfit, get dressed—but today she was in no hurry to rejoin the world of the hearing. Her hands were slow, fumbling as she bathed and brushed her teeth. Peering into her closet, she sat on her bed. She should be looking for the practice leotard she wanted to wear, but she stared sightlessly instead.

  It didn’t matter that she would hold up the entire rehearsal for Don Quixote if she was late, or that she’d promised to get breakfast with Wish before facing the terrifyingly full day she’d lined up for herself.

  Breakfast. Rehearsal. Meeting with Dr. Cooper about graduate school. Ballet class cancelled until June 10th, practice with Birgitte postponed until the 8th.

  Alex. Alex. Alex.

  Alexandre was her boyfriend. Her mate, really, not that they had the chance to solidify that aspect of their relationship before he’d died, murdered by the warlocks currently terrorizing the New Orleans werewolf pack. By terrorizing, they did nothing, which was worse than attacking.

  The werewolves couldn’t fight against those they couldn’t find.

  Six months ago, those warlocks had made some sort of agreement with Raphael—the local werewolf pack’s Alpha and Leila’s sister Mary’s mate—for a temporary truce. No violence, and the weres could gather soldiers and resources from other packs for the inevitable battle. The peace, Leila understood, was meant for a mere matter of months. Yet more months passed, and still nothing from the warlocks.

  They could attack any day, with powers beyond Leila’s comprehension. Ever since she’d learned what she was—an immortal banshee—through her own murder, she’d been determined to live the most normal life she could. That meant concentrating on college and finding work with a local dance company.

  Accomplishing those goals left her with a hollow sensation in her middle, as if she were a heartless robot moving through the motions she’d expected for herself, and more importantly, the motions her sister and new supernatural family expected of her.

  Mary had sacrificed everything in order to put Leila through her first three years at Tulane University. To do anything except follow her dreams would be a slap in the face Leila would never deliver. To make matters worse, Mary hadn’t had any idea Leila was killed the same night as their parents, assuming the men hunting their family had miraculously left her alone. Wrong.

  One bullet to the heart was all it took, a wound that healed enough before the police came that she’d quickly changed shirts, hid the one covered in blood, and promised herself Mary would never know. That night had brought enough irreversible violence for her sister to deal with. By the time Mary had driven down to New Orleans from college in Baton Rouge, she was only shown what Leila wished for her to see—a shaken, albeit human younger sister.

  Of course, neither of them were really human, and now both of them had been killed, something that turned mortal banshees into more powerful, immortal versions of themselves. It was the reason there were differing ages of the immortal banshees found in Ireland: whatever age the woman died was the age she’d stay for eternity, barring burnings or beheadings.

  That, among a few other dire circumstances, would kill them forever.

  Luckily, Mary had gotten over it when she’d found out Leila had kept what they were a secret for the first three years after their parents’ deaths.

  Mating the local werewolf Alpha had that effect on a woman, she figured. Mary hadn’t been quite as forgiving when she realized Leila had been killed too. She’d been loving and supportive through their graduation from Tulane, helping Leila apply for dance companies and encouraging her to continue her education in way of her other major, English. The hurt was still there, however. It was in a cringe when Mary thought she wasn’t looking, or the shuttering of her expression when she spoke to her.

  The closed, locked door to Leila’s room vibrated impertinently. Liz was knocking. Cautious not to sigh—that she couldn’t hear it didn’t mean her roommate couldn’t—she took a flip-flip off the floor and tossed it at the door, her signal for Liz to leave her alone.

  Suddenly exhausted before she’d even begun the day, she gave her unmade bed one last longing look before turning on her cochlear implants and giving her attention to the neon pink clock resting on top on her chest of drawers. Time to go.

  Sound came back in a rush, making her wince. Just like that, her short-lived peace was ripped away.

  When she’d first gotten her implants at age nine—along with a stuffed koala bear with matching implants on either side of his head—she’d been ecstatic to gain back the sense so callously taken away by a particularly bad case of bacterial meningitis. Sure, it was a slightly off-channel radio version of real hearing, but she could hear something again…hear about everything again.

  Lip reading wasn’t nearly as accurate as she’d hoped it would be. After months, years, of speech therapy, she could understand speech with the implants on and speak with little to no characteristics of deaf speech. That was, when she had speech therapy on and off through high school. Near her high school graduation, after she and her parents had been killed, she’d stopped speaking altogether.

  Immortal banshees weren’t meant to be deaf; she imagined it was like being a bird who couldn’t fly, or a vampire with a mouth full of cavities. When she first came to after being killed and realizing her parents’ fates, she’d screamed. At the time, it seemed to be a reasonable reaction.

  One that had destroyed the home she and Mary had grown up in, which had been carefully, painstakingly rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

  In seconds, she’d opened her mouth and destroyed it all. So she decided not to open her mouth again.

  Not being able to speak back made hearing a lot less fun; although, it was better now that she had the pack to communicate with. All werewolves inherently knew most languages, including Signed Exact English, the manual language system for English that Leila used. A few deaf people had tried to sign to her in American Sign Language, but it was a completely different language from English, and when she’d learned SEE signs at nine, her family thought it would be best for her to learn the signs for the language they all spoke to begin with.

  Her fumblings with ASL hadn’t earned her any deaf friends, while most everyone who heard didn’t know either SEE signs or ASL. Now, she had the werewolves and their friends and mates to communicate with, as well as her roommates, who were all speech-language pathology majors who’d learned SEE signs for a class before meeting Leila.

  “I hear you rumbling around in there! Are your implants on? I need you to try my bacon; Katherine says it’s too dry and crumbly.” Liz was shouting from the kitchen, and it was the volume of the native New Yorker’s voice that made her audible through doors and walls.

  After quickly making sure everything she needed was in her bag—ballet shoes, an umbrella, backup batteries for her implants, pepper spray—she raced from her room, waved hello to Liz and their other roommate, Katherine, and took a bite of bacon.

  A little dry, but not bacon-bits bad, she signed quickly before taking two water bottles from the refrigerator and racing out to her car, an SUV Raphael had bought for her before he’d known about her lies. Of course, he hadn’t asked for it back because she’d hurt Mary, but she still felt a twinge of guilt every time she used her car.

  The bank had taken away both their cars after they’d realized their parents were dead and their debts would go unpaid. After three years with no car to drive, the novelty of this luxury hadn’t worn off. Leila tried her best to keep the new-car smell clinging to the leather interior, and obsessively cleaned it once a week, inside and out.


  It took a minute to get to Wish’s house. The tall Tulane professor met her at the door, a battered-looking book in his hand and a worried frown on his face. Lately, he’d been frowning at her a lot.

  “Have you read this?” he asked without preamble. Only someone really paying attention would notice he was hovering about an inch and a half above the ground, something Leila found he did when he was preoccupied with things other than appearing alive.

  Wish was a haint, a ghost so furious he’d been killed that he regained his form even after death. Haints could wreak all sorts of havoc if they wanted to, but Wish was content to merely raise his daughter, who was very much alive and mortal, and continue to teach most of the English department’s Southern literature courses.

  No. She’d had to squint to see the book he held was El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, the original novel Don Quixote was based upon. In Spanish. Unlike with werewolves, she wasn’t aware of any superpower that allowed haints to understand other languages. Wish simply liked knowledge, and apparently that included French, Spanish, SEE signs, and probably a number of other modes of communication Leila hadn’t seen or heard yet.

  Normally she would have found a translation of Don Quixote and read it to help get into character, but she didn’t care enough to. She was playing Dulcinea, and so far there hadn’t been any complaints about her performance. Yet she wasn’t giving her all.

  There wasn’t any all for her to give.

  Disapproval shone in Wish’s eyes, but he refrained from scolding her. Leila wished he would, but it wasn’t in the man to kick someone when she was down. If it hadn’t been for him, neither she nor Mary would have graduated from college. He’d managed to get both of them on track to a degree, with need-based funding.

  He was the type of man all universities needed: someone who really cared about his students.

  Leila didn’t understand how he had so much kindness left to give after seeing the love in his eyes as he watched his daughter. Molly sprinted straight at her from the house, throwing herself against Leila with all the force a five-year-old could muster.

  Pretending to lose her balance, Leila let her bag drop to the ground with a dramatic exhalation—she was careful to let no other sounds escape her throat—and tumbled down underneath the fierceness that was Molly, who raised her hands in triumph.

  “I am strong,” she exclaimed proudly, straightening the plastic tiara on her head.

  Within the past few months, she’d decided she was a princess and as such, it was only appropriate for her to dress like one every day. Wish had bought her ten different pastel-colored cotton dresses, and their repeated washings were beginning to show.

  Big and strong and smart, Leila signed. Wish translated over his daughter’s shoulder, something the child was used to by now.

  Molly mimicked the sign for smart with a grin, raising her eyebrows and turning to show the newly learned sign to her father, who picked her up from where she lay across Leila.

  Fierce wee beastie, Wish signed to Leila, who couldn’t help but smile.

  “What did you say?” Molly demanded. When Wish didn’t answer, she became distracted by something flashing on the screen of Wish’s large desktop as soon as she was put down inside the house.

  Leila shifted uncomfortably, wishing she’d read Don Quixote as Wish had suggested.

  His silence clearly stating he still wanted to reprimand her, he served her a plate of eggs, vegetables, and hash browns. When he raised a single dark eyebrow, she understood he wasn’t too miffed.

  Are you excited May classes are almost over? Leila asked as Wish tucked into his food.

  He nodded fervently, but his words weren’t aimed at her. “Get off that game and come eat your eggs. You promised you’d finish before I take you to school.”

  With a grumble, a scowling Molly plopped into the chair opposite a half-eaten plate of eggs and Nutella toast.

  “In June and July classes, at least I have about eight weeks to teach the material. Helping someone understand the intricacies of To Kill a Mockingbird takes at least three weeks, much less that and four other texts.” Wish sighed. “I’m going to have to scale the final paper. I can feel it.”

  As tough as Wish was, he wouldn’t fail an entire class. He took it personally when the majority of his students were struggling, and tried to scale as a means of meeting them halfway.

  Wish had the same problem last summer. The ghost of a smile came to Leila’s lips. She’d just begun to date Alex then. They’d all but fallen together, not needing to discuss whether they saw other people, or what, exactly they were.

  It was unspoken, yet blatantly obvious from the fierce pride in his eyes when he watched her dance, and the way her arms always spread wide on their own accord whenever she saw him.

  Your class might surprise you.

  Wish smiled. “I hope you’re right.”

  Their conversation stayed light, surrounding Molly’s school and Leila’s experience with the New Orleans Dance Company. She’d been working with them for a month. It was her dream job, to be a principle dancer right out of college without having to leave her home. Mary and Raphael had suggested they pay her rent in for new, single apartment until she had her feet under her, and Sebastian, the man who ran the pack’s finances, simply offered to buy her a house.

  Instead, she’d accepted Mary and Raphael’s help living in the same place she’d been, while her roommates began graduate school at LSU’s School of Allied Health Sciences in downtown New Orleans.

  Since they lived uptown, Leila felt lucky her commute involved a lot less traffic. Her dance company was based in Mid-City, which wasn’t quite as far as her friends had to drive every day.

  “Great, we have our own Heather Whitestone,” Winnie Pratis had murmured yesterday as she laced up her pointe shoes.

  “She can hear you,” Zach Murphy, one of the few men in the company, whispered in a hiss.

  “Then she wouldn’t be deaf, would she?”

  Heather Whitestone was the first deaf Miss America. She didn’t have cochlear implants, but she didn’t sign either—she lip read and felt the vibrations of the music under her feet as she danced. Leila had idolized her even before becoming deaf herself.

  Now the comparison made her feel like a commodity. Come see the deaf girl trying to dance! If only they knew what she really was. Step right up and watch the blonde take down an entire building with a single scream!

  Leila deftly avoided Wish’s questions about her coworkers, halfheartedly signing bland comments and shrugging when he really pressed. In some ways, Wish had adopted the father role in her life. They both knew he wasn’t a replacement for her real father, but she was glad Wish cared. With all the duties Mary had as the Alpha’s mate and the growing trench between them, albeit created by Leila, she often felt like she had no one.

  And then Molly would try to tackle her, and Wish would shove a book into her hands.

  “Do you need a ride to the dance company? You can leave your car here, and either I’ll pick you up or someone from the pack will fetch you.”

  No, thank you. She’d been anticipating his offer, but it probably wasn’t his idea. While he’d been careful not to mention the pack, this was something they, namely Raphael and Mary, would have asked Wish to do. If they could get away with wrapping her in bulletproof cotton wool, they’d have done it.

  She was well aware the pack had battled everything from vampires, the Fey and warlocks in the past year. Not once did anyone, even Alex, ask her to help. Instead, they holed her away with Wish, where he could guard her and Molly. To be protected like a five-year-old…it was embarrassing. She was no black belt, but she could hold her own.

  If, she thought disgustedly, I open my mouth and yell. It was how she’d almost killed Briony right after the warlocks kidnapped Alex. Then, she hadn’t cared about the damage she could do. The only reason Briony, who’d already been weakened by a spell at the time
, survived was because Sebastian turned her into a werewolf. Now she was the sole witch and were Leila had ever heard of. Well she and Sebastian were. He’d picked up a few witchy abilities from their mating bond, just as she had a small piece of his abilities with fire as well as control over earth and plants.

  Annoyed as she was, she couldn’t take it out on Wish. He merely wanted her safety. She couldn’t hold that against him.

  It didn’t mean she had to accept his offer to drive her to and from work.

  Really, it’s not so far from here, and everyone leaves at the same time. Nothing will happen.

  A chill went down her spine, and she resisted the urge to knock on wood. Once, when she was in middle school, she’d read that the tingles some people believed were the devil walking over their graves were the sign of something much worse. “Readers, you only wish it’s what that particular feeling means.” Delighting in the mystery of it, the author never explained what the sensation really meant, leaving Leila scared every time it happened.

  The last thing she needed was for Wish to pick up on her fear.

  “If you’re sure.” He gave her his back when he turned to put the dishes in the sink, standing there a moment longer than he should have. Either he was distracted, or he was considering whether to insist on driving her.

  When he faced her again, his face was carefully neutral. “Let me know how the day goes,” he told her mildly. He offered her a small smile when she gave him a quick hug, and it grew when she hugged Molly, who had been waiting her turn with her small, fisted hands on her pink-clad hips.

  Wish had taken Leila’s side. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was…refreshing. Leila waved at them one more time, turned and put her hand to her chest to thank them for breakfast, and headed to work.

  Leila arrived early, changing quickly before any of the other female dancers came into their dressing room. She wasn’t modest—dancing all her life had made her view her body as a tool, rather than something to be proud or embarrassed of. There was nothing soft about her body; a thin layer of lean muscle barely covered bone, which still showed more on her than most people. But because she wasn’t self-conscious didn’t mean she liked chatter all around her when she prepared for rehearsal. The day would go much more smoothly without her starting the day feeling left out.