Adrian used it to get what he wanted, and now he was gone.
Her foot eased off the gas pedal. It wasn’t entirely his fault. She’d pushed for it—pleaded. Even after he’d told her no. She’d brought this on herself.
She’d broken herself.
What good would a broken doll be to anyone?
Samuel’s words seemed awash with helpless concern. “Take care.”
The connection severed.
Chapter Sixteen
The large, glass bulb tipped forward. Moss-colored liquid flooded into its long neck and pooled against the cork stopper as the glass bowed toward the floor. The glass tipped further, losing its perch on the narrow shelf fixed several inches over Adrian’s head.
He sidestepped the footstool and brushed by a pile of dusty books, sending several volumes cartwheeling.
His attention cross-haired on the container as it plunged through the air. Corrosive? Explosive? It could be anything, and headed right for the wooden floor.
His fingers stretched wide, forming the largest net his hand could muster. The heavy weight plunked to the center of his palm.
He expelled a rush of air from his lungs. “Good hell.” He cradled it to his chest with both hands as its contents sloshed and spun. Dark sediment billowed from the glass’ bottom. Adrian sniffed. A heady licorice odor emanated from the bottle. Anise, if he had to guess. He glanced to the illegible cursive that stretched across the yellowed label, then to the petrified library of murky bottles towering overhead.
“Brewing some green fairy, Dad?”
“You know I don’t indulge in all that boozing nonsense.” His father muttered over his shoulder. The ground-shaking baritone had gone thin and raspy with age.
Adrian’s reply came in the form of a quiet snort behind the old man’s back. When did that change?
As if sensing Adrian’s response, the old man’s tone elevated. “My hand in the apothecarian trade has gone passive. Youthful stupidity has long since passed
me
by.”
Adrian grinned. “What you getting at, dad?”
“Not a thing.”
The dumpy cat that stalked along the shelf mewed in agreement. Her tail brushed the remaining bottles, and a chime of rattling glass echoed through the room.
“It’s merely a collection of curiosities now.” His dad used the blunt end of his cane to scratch behind the cat’s ear. “I suppose it’s grown a bit over the years.”
The cat’s attention followed his father’s pot-bellied hobble until he moved out of reach. The cat then sprang from the shelf, dislodging yet another bottle.
Adrian snatched the second one more easily. “You still haven’t managed to blow yourself up.”
His father’s tone lifted. “What’s that?” He spun to one side; the handle of his cane crashed into a square decanter.
Adrian lunged again and caught it. The containers clinked together in his arms. He closed his eyes and pulled in a slow breath, then scowled at his father’s back.
A growling chuckle paired with his father’s shuffling steps.
“Very funny.” Adrian placed the containers back.
“At one time, you found my collection pretty fascinating.” His father continued to the couch, where scattered tissues and soiled plates marked his favorite corner. “I couldn’t keep you out of here. No matter how many switches I broke over your backside.”
True. The world of apothecary had strict rules. Secrecy was the biggest. Recipes weren’t handed down, they were reinvented. In Adrian’s teen years, he defied every one of those rules. Except for Shauna. Must have been waiting for that peak of stupidity to finally hit.
Adrian’s father turned. “But enough of all this pantywaist nostalgia crap. To what do I owe the honor of this visit? Or better yet, to whom?”
“It’s about the curse.”
“So it
is
a girl then?” His father gripped the arm of the couch. He crouched slowly and then eased onto the couch’s dark impression with a faint groan. “She pretty?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty.” Not that
pretty
even began to describe her. The hometown troublemaking that sculpted her slender frame and fed light into her smile—all that had infatuated him in youth.
But this whole new infusion of womanhood, the weight of her breasts that fit perfectly in his palm. Her nipples, like little bouquets of blush-pink baby’s breath—with tiny petals unfurled and begging for his tongue. Her soft curves and even softer moans—and then,
then,
if she hadn’t already pushed him to the brink,
those moans formed words.
Simple enough words to come by in the daytime. She might even use them over Sunday dinner. But if she ever spoke like that again, he’s sweep the cups and saucers to the floor and take her right there on the table. The woman knew what she wanted and how to ask for it.
The tight heat between her legs had welcomed him into a world his brain had conjured a million times over. His imagination, he could harness. But the real thing? The taste and the feel of her? For over ten years, he had waited for this. That’s an eternity in cock years. When her fragrant nectar met his tongue, he dropped his brain at the door.
She had his blood pounding and his deep thinker begging for every treat her body tossed his way.
Of course, with the deep thinker in charge, holding back hadn’t even entered his mind. Not until it was too late. But Adrian meant what he said. He’d redeem himself by whatever means necessary. Or spend an eternity trying.
Now if he could just arrange the eternity part.
“Well, isn’t that nice.” His father’s tone hardened with its typical bitter edge. Then it changed, as his brows lifted in afterthought. “Got the implants?”
Adrian ignored the implant quip. “It’s Shauna Tamson.” He said the name slow, clear, and waited for the words to connect.
The man’s gaze chased back and forth across the floor as if skimming distant memories until…
Yep. Bingo.
His father’s pale lips clamped together, and a look of dismay etched into his forehead. “Well.” He frowned. “This is good news then, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Adrian countered.
“Sure. Why not?” His gruff tone sounded a little too complacent.
“Are you going senile?” It had been years since Adrian visited the decaying cottage. Even longer since he stepped into the forbidden archive. What performance could his father have witnessed in that upholstered, front-row seat that would alter his outlook from caution-Nazi to Willy-fucking-Wonka?
The old man put his hands in his lap. “Look…that little sparkler of yours holds no match for the fates. But if it’s a good time you want, you should have it. At least until it takes her.” The bobble-head nod seemed to carry on longer than necessary. As though the old man had moved on, but his body forgot to follow. Or maybe he was still trying to convince himself. “It’s your life now.”
Adrian pushed a hand though his hair. “I don’t want it to end like that. I need more information. Something else to go on.”
The bobbing stopped. “You’ve come to an empty well.” His father leaned forward a bit. The floor beneath him creaked in protest. “I told you that stuff was powerful. That it was dangerous. You have a gift, but as all gifts do, this one comes with consequences. You refused to ignore the calling, and despite my efforts, I could not keep you from it.”
Adrian dropped into the chair facing his father and braced his elbows on his knees. “Okay…
When
does it happen?”
The old man searched his son’s face for a moment, then shrugged. “It varies. For your mother and I, God rest her soul, it was two years after your birth.”
“With no indication? No turn of events?”
The old man ignored his question and puttered on like an old, abandoned motorboat.
Round and round. No clear direction. No one at the helm.
“Your grandfather—he never admitted love—though he found her just the same. He sired the curse eventually, but he died a wealthy man.” He looked away in puzzlement, and then returned with a pointing finger, directed at Adrian’s chest. “A Hugh Heffner type fellow…if you know what I mean.”
His father widened his eyes in clarification. “He got laid.”
“I know.”
“A lot.”
Adrian let his head drop forward. “I know, dad.”
“You did well to follow his footsteps.” He stroked a hand down his grizzled beard. “You should have stayed a playboy and done the world a service. Maybe then the fates would have forgiven you. Look at all the lives you’ve touched.”
His grip tightened on his cane. Desperation sparked in his grey eyes. “Maybe if you would’ve saved enough, you’d save
the right ones
.” He paused again. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down just over the collar of his wool sweater. His eyes gleamed with moisture. “Not that you’ll ever find them.”
Adrian looked to the floor.
Several moments crawled passed in silence.
This wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed answers. Not the audible rendition of How to Screw Over Your Life: Volume One and Two. The scholar’s edition.
“Romeo and Juliet,” his father declared, with renewed gusto.
“Don’t need to remind me.”
Not that it mattered. When the man’s mouth opened, his ears shut off. His father’s voice grew with force, as though something had taken a hold of his soul and shaken it from its afternoon nap. “The first apothecary robbed the world of those star-crossed lovers, and the fates will never be satisfied. We have taken, and we must pay our debt—or you do, in this case.”
His voice softened a bit. “Sorry, son, but I failed at this one.” He looked to the side table. His shaky hand reached out to where his mother’s picture once sat. Fifteen years ago, they had finally put it away, but they both knew its rightful place. “I wish they would have taken me too. But that isn’t how it works. We’re left to rot.”
His father held up one finger. “Great Uncle Lance, now there was an idea. Tried to hang himself.” His father scoffed. “Showed him, didn’t they? Paralyzed him from the chest down.
“Your grandfather was a major ass too, parading all his gold-digging bimbos around him. The lap dances. And the—” The he made a conjuring motion with his hand. “Oh, what do you call it?” His hand froze mid-air. “Blow jobs—”
“Dad!” Geez. Maybe he liked the bulldog from his youth better. This old hound could do little more than lick old wounds and fart obscenities. At least in the growing years, there was a boundary of respect between them. Back then, they weren’t stirring the same sexpot.
“What I’m saying is, you can’t push that misery off onto someone else, and you can’t delay it forever.” His father breathed a heavy sigh. “I was wrong to keep her from you. The fact is I was only keeping you for myself.” His father’s pale fingertips traced a shapeless pattern through the layer of dust on the tabletop. “I see the light of your mother in your eyes. I’m afraid that’s the only thing they haven’t taken.” He swallowed and looked away. “Yet.”
“You met her so young, Adrian.” He shook his head. “Until the paired hearts of young love cease to beat, your curse will follow you.”
“Can we cut the poetics, here?”
His father’s cane cracked against the wooden floor, and all the fury that Adrian remembered in youth came roaring to the surface. “I mean it, boy!” His gaze turned wild. The deep furrows in his brow became a battlefield of determination. “If you fail, and she produces an heir to the curse, they will take her.”
Something cold and spiny seemed to dig its talons into Adrian’s heart. He couldn’t lose Shauna. Not after starving for her all this time.
The future had run backward until this point—for both of them. Shauna, God, look what he’d done to her. He’s already put both of them through a lifetime of misery.
Could the fates really be so cruel as to force down another poisonous ending?
“There has to be a way.”
His father nodded. “Then you find it. It’s selfishness that fuels our demise. And for coming here, perhaps you’ve done yourself a service. Do what you are. An Apothecary. Do not let this curse run your life by running from it as I have, as they have. You find a way to work with it. Find a way to let her go, and who knows? Maybe the fates will find a way to bring her back to you.”
“It’s not worth it. It’s not worth the risk.”
His father tipped his head. His voice softened with wonder and inspiration. “Isn’t she? Isn’t she worth every risk?”
****
It took another hour of winding turns, one-way streets, and switchbacks until Shauna lost him. Stopping for gas must have really pissed him off. But that blind turn-off, the one just before the eternal stretch of desert road, was
such a shame
for him to miss.
She grinned.
Have fun in Nevada.
Shauna’s nagging paranoia tugged her gaze toward the rearview mirror one last time before rounding the corner into her neighborhood.
Or was it?
She slowed her vehicle to a crawl and looked to where the dented mailbox once stood. Had the neighbor kids down the street taken a baseball bat to it again? Maybe a cherry bomb?
She couldn’t get too mad. She’d victimized plenty of boxes in her youth.
Adrian’s twice, actually.
But she never took the post with it. The impish curl of Shauna’s lips faded as she leaned over the steering wheel and peered closer. Only a gaping crater remained.
And the house. The faded shadow over the garage, where the house numbers had been, was that really necessary? Her gaze veered through the ant-scattering of construction workers and landscapers, then to the other flat-faced bungalow next door, and to the one across the street. Yep, Vanillaville, as always.
Quite the short-ordered facelift Richard must have organized. As though the place suddenly had to meet his caliber before he took another step inside. Guess the “perfect picture of domestic life” wasn’t perfect enough after all.
She pulled to the curb and put it in park, beside a pile of overstuffed bags and suitcases. Even if she
could
squeeze between the commercial trucks, the driveway just didn’t seem fitting.
It wasn’t hers any more.
A low buzz rattled in the cup dispenser of her center console. She picked up the phone.
Speak of the devil…