“I’m sure you made up for it.”
“I think so. She was the best friend I ever had.”
“What about Mr. Fraser?” I asked.
“He was a very different kind of friend.”
“Who ran his course?” I guessed.
“Are you implying he got old?” she played offended.
“Potion or no potion…”
“I was head over heels in love with that man, and he offered me all of it. His heart, a house, kids...but I knew what I was, what I could never be to him…”
“You turned him down?”
“I let him marry a woman instead of an eight-year-old girl,” she still sounded upset by it.
“What happened?”
“He married Mrs. Fraser. Had children. But never stopped loving me.”
“Are you together now?”
“Of course not. We keep each other company and pretend there’s nothing there.” Her words painted a sad and lonely existence of never getting what you want, but she said it in a no-nonsense manner.
“That sounds terrible.”
“Love is strange, my dear. And it makes you do ridiculous things.”
“Do you regret it?”
“I regret not having a happy ending,” she sighed. “But I don’t regret letting him have one. I would rather see him happy than sad, even if he isn’t with me.” She looked out onto the street, where there was some kind of a parade going on. “They have parades for everything here,” she sighed after the bride came into view, but I heard a yearning for her own marriage procession before the party slipped away…
I was Annabelle, nervous with my heart beating out of my chest, possibly because of how small my gown was. I looked down and saw it was a wedding dress that bound me so tight.
“It is quite an elaborate affair,” Annabelle teased, as the hands fumbling with the back of my dress stopped.
“I’ll figure out the corset,” Henry said with determination. “I was transfixed by this,” he ran his fingers over the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine.
“It’s a birthmark. I’m told it is a perfect half-moon,” she said, trying to look back, to read his expression. All I saw was the top of his head, the perfectly coiffed hair suffering from the sweat and exertion of unlacing the dress.
“A half-moon crescent,” Henry agreed, kissing the mark before going back to the dress.
While he unlaced the dress, occasionally planting a kiss as he worked his way down my back, Annabelle’s hands twisted the wedding band around her finger. I could feel her excitement at starting a life with Henry, and her gratitude that he loved her in spite of her magic and other flaws. But there was a feeling in the pit of her stomach that was telling me this was a terrible mistake. I couldn’t tell if it was her heart or mine that beat faster at the thought of Gabriel, but Annabelle struggled to push all other thoughts from her mind as the dress finally fell free, and she turned to face her groom…
“Are you okay?” Ingrid asked, her hand on my shoulder when I woke up.
“Did I pass out?” I asked.
“No, mostly stood there playing with your hands,” she shared as I looked around to make sure people weren’t staring. “You had a memory?”
“The wedding dress triggered something,” I agreed, grateful I didn’t have to explain it to her.
“It was a beautiful wedding,” she gave me a smile, thinking I saw Beth with Embry, before Mr. Fraser came over. “I’m sorry about earlier. I’ve been scanning everyone to make sure you would be safe. I didn’t know it was you.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him, his earlier intrusion the last thing on my mind. “I’ll go check out the food.” I made my exit so they could keep each other company.
I went over to the food table, sorting through my thoughts to figure out what the memory was for, or if it was a fluke brought on by the dress. I decided Henry noticing the birthmark was worth a mention to the guys, before someone came up behind me and said, “Charlie brought the crawfish, so it’s to die for, but the scallops have sand in them.”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I turned to face Eric and took him in for a hug.
“Charlie and Ingrid go way back,” he shared. “And he loves parties.”
“I was referring to you being in school.”
“Oh, that?” he shrugged it off.
“I was under the impression you only spent the summers in New Orleans.”
“Usually,” he agreed, getting me to blush again.
“Did you already eat?” I brought the attention back to the food.
“I did. But the crawfish…” he brought his fingers to his lips and kissed the air.
“Is to die for,” I repeated his words back to him.
“You get it,” he smiled.
“Is this your first of Ingrid’s parties, or can you tell a newcomer what to expect?” I looked around, trying to see if anything other than eating, drinking and talking was going on. Gabriel was laughing with Charlie and Embry, the three of them looking like they didn’t have a care in the world, until Embry used two fingers to point to his eyes, then back to me. I rolled my eyes at him before coming back to Eric.
“I’ve been to a few,” he told me. “One was in the streets and absolutely crazy, and the other was above her shop, with maybe five people and twenty courses of fancy dishes with food.”
“So no idea what to expect tonight,” I concluded.
He sighed before looking at me and shaking his head slowly. “Not with the party.”
“But with other things?”
“I maybe have an idea,” he sounded more resigned than excited.
“Of something bad?”
“For me, yes. For you...I’m not sure yet,” he tried to figure me out.
“Is it something with Charlie?” I looked over to the three men again, but they all looked like they were having the time of their lives.
“I think you’re awesome Lucy. You’re probably the fiercest, most badass woman I have ever encountered, and I like you. As friends, sure, but also as a lot more than friends. If I didn’t think Embry and Gabriel would kill me for it, I would want to kiss you right now.”
I could feel myself flush and got nervous. Terribly nervous. At first because I thought he was going to kiss me and I wouldn’t be good at it, but then because I didn’t think I wanted him to. That’s when I looked at him and realized he had no intention of kissing me tonight.
“I would want to, except that I have no interest in kissing a girl who doesn’t want to kiss me.”
“I think you’re amazing Eric. You’re nice and funny and helpful…”
“But I don’t make you swoon,” he understood.
“You do…” I remembered how much I blushed when he took me riding for the first time.
“Not like he does.” It was a weird role-reversal where I felt like he was the one letting me down easy. “And it’s okay… I see the way you look at him, mostly when you know he isn’t watching, how jealous he gets about us hanging out, that fight he had with Embry…”
“What fight?” I was about to argue with his previous comments, to defend myself, but the guys were finally friends. I didn’t want to have to wait another three hundred years for them to make up.
“The big fight that had them refusing to talk to each other for at least a week.”
“That was about Annabelle. Gabriel thought Embry was trying to insert himself in based on loving Annabelle, but it was because he loved Beth,” I explained, but Eric looked at me like I look at Clara sometimes when she doesn’t understand things that are so obvious to everyone else.
“Maybe Gabriel was upset about that, but the storming off was because of you. Embry saw it too, so he told him not to hurt you like he hurt Rosie, and Gabriel said he didn’t understand, and it wasn’t like that.”
“You remembered all that?” I tried to process what it meant.
“It didn’t make sense until you told me about the ones that came before you
.”
“None of it makes sense,” I argued, getting a look from Eric to stop arguing on this. “I’m sorry,” I said, for not liking him like that, for liking Gabriel, who I’m pretty sure will break my heart…
“Don’t be. Proximity doesn’t equal love. It doesn’t even guarantee friendship.”
“But we are friends, right?” I asked, worried it might be cruel, but I couldn’t deal with the alternative.
“If you want to be.”
“I do.”
“Then we’re friends.”
“Is that mean?”
“If you had let me kiss you and I had to wait for you to come clean about your feelings, that would have been cruel,” he said, but he was smiling.
“You’re really awesome. You know that?”
“I do,” he assured me. He took one of the crawfish from my plate and ate it with a huge smile that told me we were going to be okay.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We stayed at the party another hour or so, which included some dancing and a heartfelt rendition of My Way from Charlie, that garnered a standing ovation. He and Ingrid insisted the party couldn’t possibly go on without us, but we weren’t even done saying goodbye before they got right back to partying.
Eric smiled at me from across the tables before we walked to the car.
“What was that about?” Embry asked me while Gabriel drove.
“What?” I asked like I had no idea, but I knew exactly what he was referring to.
“Did something happen between you and Eric?” Embry raised an eyebrow and tried to read me.
“He’s back at school now,” I shrugged, pretty sure I was blushing, but I didn’t want to talk about it with Gabriel in the car.
“What does that mean for the two of you?” he pressed.
“That we’re friends. And we’ll see each other less often. Possibly never again, or every summer for the rest of our lives.” Embry rolled his eyes. “Is that the plan if they never find us? To live in the villa forever? Because so far whatever Beth did seems to be working, or they’re planning something big and scary and luring me into a false sense of security, which is not cool,” I voiced some of my fears.
“I’ll make sure to tell them next time I see them,” Gabriel assured me.
“I am partly serious,” I argued.
“We want to keep you safe for as long as possible, so we can train you and hone your skills.”
“To give me a chance at surviving the next encounter.”
“And live happily ever after,” Embry smiled back at me before a man ran across the street, right in front of our car like he didn’t even see it.
Gabriel slammed on the brakes, propelling me forward. I would have gone through the front window if I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt. Thankfully, I don’t think the impact was strong enough to kill anyone.
“Are you okay?” Embry poked his head out to address the man once he made sure I was unharmed, but Gabriel was fuming.
“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just saw…”
“A car coming, and thought you would run in front of it? I could have killed you, we all could have died here,” Gabriel pointed out.
“I know, of course…” the man was apologetic and frazzled until he spotted me in the car. For a moment I thought it hit him how many lives he put in danger, but he looked right into my eyes, and I could see something clicked for him.
“Gabriel…” I tried to tell him to leave, that I had a bad feeling about this, but I could see the black in the man’s eyes, and knew it was too late.
Without taking his eyes off me, the man put his hands on the hood of our car. I thought it was a means of preventing us from running him over on purpose, but the black hood turned red, spreading from his hand to cover the rest of it in melting metal. It wasn’t long until the engine was smoking, outside at first, but then through the vents, as the car overheated.
By the time we got out of the car, part of the hood was melting. The man had one hand up, palm facing us in a way that suggested he might be able to blast the heat out of it and incinerate us.
“Lucy Owens. Fancy running into you here,” he said cockily while the guys glared at him and I stood frozen in fear. “You must be her faithful lapdogs, Embry and Gabriel?”
I kept thinking how the guys were weaponless. It didn’t even occur to me that the man was outnumbered by us or that I had magical powers. Not until Embry, who was standing with Gabriel between me and the man, reached his hand back to take mine and said, “You’ve got this.”
My magic hadn’t occurred to me because this was a person, not a creature or a monster without a face. The man kept talking about how excited Donovan would be, while I took a deep breath and prepared to use my magic against him. Freezing him would be hard to explain if anyone came by, but it wasn’t like I was going to blow him up either.
“Daddy!” I jumped, as did the man, when a toddler ran out from a driveway and rushed into the man’s arms.
“Hey buddy. I thought I told you to wait for me at the corner, before crossing the street,” he kept his eyes on me while talking to the boy, daring me to proceed with my attack.
“Lucy…” Gabriel said through clenched teeth.
“I can’t.”
“He’s bigger than the rice,” Embry pointed out.
“I can’t do it in front of his son,” I argued.
“He doesn’t look like he cares,” Gabriel nodded to the man, who had his hand out, ready to fire at us even with his son in his arms.
“I can’t…” I was still shaking my head when the man shot a blast of magma in our direction. I put my shield up before it reached us, but it was a very close call.
“We need to get her to the villa. Preferably the panic room,” Embry voiced.
“We can’t leave and let him make contact,” Gabriel argued.
“What about the kid?” I asked, but they both looked at me before exchanging a look that made me feel like a naïve child.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” Gabriel said delicately.
“Then don’t.”
“Whatever it takes, Lucy,” he sighed, not meeting my eyes.
“Can you keep this up while we move?” Embry asked me.
“I’m not leaving,” I argued. No children were dying on my behalf.
“Lucy…” Embry used his paternal tone on me.
“How long would it take you to get to him” I asked Gabriel.
“What are you doing?” he asked as I took the pen Eric gave me from my purse.
“If the man gets knocked out, will you be able to get to the boy before he hits the ground?” I rephrased my question.
“Of course,” Gabriel looked at the tiny needle in my hand with concern.
I wasn’t sure how much I trusted my aim at this distance, so instead of shooting it as intended, I used one hand to keep up my force shield, and levitated the needle so it nearly skimmed the ground, unnoticed, until it was less than an inch from the man’s foot.
“Ready?” I asked Gabriel, who nodded. “Now,” I said, stabbing the man with the toxin-filled needle. He looked down with a slight jerk of his leg, like he’d been stung by a bee, before he fell. Gabriel was barely a blur before the man was on the ground and Gabriel was standing there with the crying boy in his arms.
Without a word, Embry went over and took the child, who stopped crying immediately, resting his head on Embry’s shoulder like he’d known him forever. Gabriel knelt to the ground and went through the man’s pockets, finding a driver’s license. “He lives two streets that way,” he pointed off in the distance.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked, hoping there was a mother or someone at the house who could take care of the kid. Maybe we could keep injecting the man with the toxin until we got away from here. I was about to interrupt their exchange of looks with my suggestion, but Gabriel’s eyes grew wide as he pulled something out of another pocket.
“Did he reach anyone?” Embry asked, recognizing it
as a pager before I could.
“Can you even tell?” I asked, getting a head shake from Gabriel in return.
“We need to get out of here as soon as possible,” Embry decided.
“If he knows we’re here he’ll go straight to your place,” Gabriel warned.
“I didn’t bring my bag,” I admitted. I got too comfortable here and prepared for tonight like I was any other girl going to a party. “Do you have a map?” I asked, doing the mental math to see how long it would take someone to get here from California. They both shook their heads.
“You can’t go there,” Embry argued, accurately reading my determination.
“We need to know if he’s on to us, right?”
“What is she doing?” Gabriel asked before I clutched the moonstone necklace and closed my eyes, picturing Donovan’s face. I embraced the fear and the chill in my spine, hoping I would see him thousands of miles away, unaware that anything happened.
“Richard’s new, but I trust him,” I zeroed in on Donovan, who seemed to be in a garden.
“New Orleans is risky on their part, but not entirely unexpected,” a voice answered from behind a vine. It was oddly familiar.
“Does that mean you’ll be joining me?” Donovan asked, his head slightly bowed in deference to who must be his master.
“You’re going yourself?” There were very few people I knew with British accents. Most of them were movie stars, but I could feel my heart tighten in my chest as I placed this one.
“I want to be the one to bring her to you, my lord.”
“There’s no need. She’ll find us eventually.” He stepped out from behind the leaves and my heart stopped. The expression was different, but the face was otherwise unchanged from the last time I saw it, smiling at me in my wedding dress.
“We might not have time for her to figure it out,” Donovan argued with as much respect as the words would allow. “I’ll take the jet and keep you informed.”
“Unharmed,” Henry warned, looking straight at me. It was impossible, but…he saw me.
“Are you okay?”
“Are they coming?”
Destiny Page 18
