Authors: Nicola R. White
“I can’t be what you want me to be.”
I sighed. “I don’t want you to be anything but yourself. I get that I’m young, OK? I get that it might be weird between us sometimes, and I admit I’ve never had a really serious relationship before. But there’s more to this than just lust.”
I hesitated, debating whether I should say more, whether I was pushing too hard, but I came out with it anyway. Talking at cross-purposes had caused us nothing but trouble so far. “Alecto says you’re our mate.”
Jackson slid his hands into his pockets and frowned. Another long moment passed before he answered me.
“Even if I did feel something real—whatever that means,” he said, finally meeting my eyes, “it’s always a choice whether or not to give in. And I won’t make the choice you want me to. I can’t. The sooner you realize that, the better off we’ll both be.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
But he was saved from further discussion by voices in the hallway. “Is she up yet?” Alex asked, peering around Jackson. When she saw that I was, she called out to the rest of the house and pushed past Jackson to give me a careful hug. “How are you feeling? We were so worried!”
Rachel, Nora, and Ruby weren’t far behind her and Jackson stepped out of the room to let them all in. Their voices tumbled over each other as they all spoke at once.
“Thank God you’re OK. We—”
“—so scared you—”
“Didn’t know what to—”
They tried to talk over each other until I had to laugh, and I held up a hand to ward them off. “One at a time. I just woke up, you know.”
Ruby chimed in. “I knew you could do it, Tara. You and the snaky lady. I knew you’d be OK.”
“Thanks to your Uncle Jackson.” I looked over her head to where Jackson stood outside the room.
“I don’t know what we would have done without him,” Rachel said tearfully. “We could have lost you. You needed me to drive and I just—” She screwed up her face, trying to hold back tears, then started to cry, her whole body shaking with great, racking sobs. “I’m sorry, Tara,” she blubbered. “I just couldn’t do it.”
“Shhh, it’s OK.” I pulled her into a hug.
“I thought…I thought we were going to lose you.” She took a shuddering breath and sat down next to me on the bed, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She laughed shakily. “God, I’m such a wreck right now.”
“Jackson was awesome, though,” Alex said. “He totally knew what to do. He got you to stop bleeding so you could work your Fury healing mojo.”
“QuikClot,” he supplied from the doorway. “It’s a mineral, not magic. I just happened to have some in my kit.”
“That’s my brother-in-law, the boy scout,” Nora said, wiping away a few tears of her own. “Always prepared.”
My stomach growled again loudly, breaking up the emotional charge in the room, and Ruby giggled. “Come on.” She tugged at my hand. “Mama’s making French toast. You can have some, too.”
“Just a second, kiddo.” I resisted her pull. “Let me just put on some clothes and I’ll be right out.”
Nora provided a loose jersey dress that wouldn’t chafe the tender new skin covering my wounds, then she, Ruby and the others filed out of the room. Jackson cast me an unreadable glance as he followed them to the kitchen.
When I was alone, I peeled off the bandage on my back and twisted to see myself in the mirror over Nora’s dark, wooden dresser. There was a patch of new pink skin there, as well. I pulled on the dress and fixed my hair, re-braiding it in a fishtail style that would keep it off my face, and took one last look in the mirror. I was paler than usual, but otherwise there was no indication that I’d been shot just a couple days before. My stomach complained again and I gave up on my reflection to join the others.
A plate full of French toast and hash browns filled my stomach, but by the end of it my hand shook as I raised my fork to my mouth. My robust Fury’s appetite seemed to have deserted me.
“I guess I’m still pretty weak,” I admitted when I noticed my friends’ worried glances.
Seeing to your physical recovery will only take us so far,
Alecto told me.
Food, rest, and ambrosia are all necessary, but we must also have more…intangible fuel.
You’re talking about what I did to Miller and Priest, aren’t you?
She hummed in agreement.
We are Fury. We live for vengeance.
I don’t want to kill anyone.
As with Priest, there are other ways to dispense justice. It was not Miller’s death that fueled us, it was retribution.
OK.
I nodded and took a deep breath. It was time for me to go hunting.
Chapter 21
I managed to eat another few bites, then outlined my plan to the others. Simply put, I would go out trolling for vengeance as soon as it got dark and when I found someone deserving, I would get my revenge on.
And as a bonus, maybe I would learn something about who was after me. I planned to display the powers Miller and Priest had been ordered to provoke, and I hoped it would be too much temptation for my stalker to resist. The shooting had confirmed that Ruby’s pursuer and mine had to be the same person…or creature…or whatever. After all, what were the odds that there were two separate, homicidal stalkers out to get us? Fate had brought Ruby and me together for a reason.
I bared my teeth in a predatory grin at the thought of the hunt.
“My, what big teeth you have,” Nora said pointedly, glancing across the table to where Ruby sat drawing a picture.
“Don’t worry.” Ruby didn’t bother to look up. “I’m not scared. I know you’ll beat the bad guys.”
Her display of intuition was eerie, as always, but her unwavering trust cemented my determination. I had to get my strength up as soon as possible. It was only a matter of time before whoever was after us tried again, and I couldn’t be there to protect the girl every minute of every day. I had to find whoever was after her before there was another attempt on her life.
And to do that, I needed every bit of power I could get my hands on.
“Maybe I should go to Boston,” I thought out loud. “With Agent Graves in town, that might help keep the heat off Hawthorne. And there will be more prey there to choose from.”
“No way,” Alex said. “If anything happened in Boston, you’d have no backup.”
“That’s sort of the idea. I don’t want anyone else to put themselves in danger. I’m equipped for this—you’re not.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “I can take care of myself.”
That, I knew to be true. She had taken care of herself for years, since her mother had kicked her out a semester shy of our high school graduation. Alex had literally landed on her feet, even without a high school diploma. At first, she’d supported herself by dancing in shady clubs, but she’d been working at the Xanadu since she was old enough to get a legal ID.
“I have no doubts about your ability to look out for yourself,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to put you in unnecessary danger for my sake.”
Nora offered a compromise. “Why don’t you try Spyder’s as your hunting ground? I can get Lucky to hire Jackson as a bouncer for the night, and I can help you scout the crowd from behind the bar.”
“I like it,” Alex said.
I didn’t. “You want me to reenact what happened to the first guy
at the scene of the crime
? I’m sure Graves wouldn’t find that suspicious or anything.”
“No one said you have to kill the guy this time,” Alex pointed out. “Just come up with something else, like you did with Priest.”
“I’m not doing it,” I insisted, shaking my head. “It’s too dangerous.” I looked to Jackson. “Don’t you have anything to say about this?”
I hadn’t thought the two of us would ever agree on anything, but I was sure he would back me up this time. He’d been dead set against Nora being involved from the beginning—there was no way he would let her put herself in danger this way.
“Actually, I agree with Nora and Alex.”
My jaw nearly hit the table.
“What?” He shrugged. “I know your roommates well enough by now to know you’re going to have an entourage no matter where you go. Might as well be on familiar ground.”
“What if no one revenge-worthy shows up?” I tried to poke a hole in Nora’s plan. “Hawthorne isn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. And there was no one there the night all this started.”
“It’s tourist season on Cape Cod,” Nora said. “The place will be packed. And that night was just a weird coincidence. For all we know, your stalker engineered that whole thing somehow.”
“And tonight is the kick-off of Nathaniel Hawthorne Week,” Rachel added. “The town will be crawling with tourists. One of them’s bound to have done something that sets off your radar.”
I sighed. She was right. Ordinarily, I anticipated the festival celebrating the Massachusetts-born writer with a mixture of trepidation and gratitude. The huge crowds meant demanding customers and long hours at the Mermaid, but I was always thankful for the tips they left behind. After the attempt on Ruby’s life, though, I had no choice but to keep pretending I was too sick to go in to work. I needed answers even more than I needed money, and I wouldn’t find them bussing tables and reciting the soup of the day.
I pushed back my chair and got to my feet. “Nora, can I use your phone? I better call my manager if I’m still going to be ‘too sick’ to work tonight.”
Rachel grimaced. “Um, yeah. About that. I called in for you while you were out. They said you shouldn’t bother coming in.”
“Just tonight, or ever?”
She gave me an apologetic shrug in response.
I pressed my lips together and tried not to show my dismay. It wasn’t Rachel’s fault she was the bearer of bad news, but my plans to open my own business had just been set back—way back.
I sank back into my seat. “Fine, I’ll hunt at Spyder’s. But one of you is staying with Ruby if Nora has to work. What if something happened while she was with a sitter and we couldn’t get to her in time?”
“I want Alex to stay with me,” Ruby announced. She held up the drawing she’d been working on. “I drew a picture of us.” The artwork showed two stick figures with black hair, one tall and one short. I looked more closely at a third scribble next to them and realized it was supposed to be a brunette.
“Who’s the other person in the picture with us?” Alex asked.
“That’s the
other
snaky lady,” Ruby told her in a tone that implied she was trying to be patient. “From the zoo. You should call her to come play with us.”
Alex looked at the girl speculatively. “How’d you know about Hester?”
“Who’s Hester?” Nora asked.
“A herpetologist Tara and I met when we went after the snake venom,” Alex filled her in. “We bonded over a boa constrictor and she gave me her number.” She shook her head. “I definitely haven’t mentioned her in front of Ruby, though. This kid’s got some serious skills.”
“How do we know we can trust this Hester person?”.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” Ruby reassured her. “Hester’s a good guy, like us.”
Nora eyed her daughter, considering. “Well, Ruby’s never been wrong before…so I guess I have no problem with it if she thinks you should hang out with Hester tonight. As long as Hester won’t mind babysitting on a first date.”
“No worries,” Alex said. “If she doesn’t like kids, it wasn’t meant to be anyway. A friend of mine’s gotta be a friend of Ruby’s. Right, kiddo?”
Ruby gave Alex a high-five and we made arrangements to reconvene later that night and put my plan into action. Alex promised Ruby they’d go out for mini golf and ice cream, and the rest of us confirmed that Rachel and I would meet Nora and Jackson at the bar around eleven, As I headed for the front door, I reached up to push my lank hair back off my face and grimaced. In the meantime, I would take a desperately-needed shower.
Before I could leave, Jackson gently grabbed me by the arm. “Hang on a second. I want to talk to you about something.”
I waved Alex and Rachel on to the car ahead of me, though my stomach was full of butterflies. So far, conversations that started out with Jackson announcing he had something to say tended not to go well.
“What is it?” I demanded. My nervousness made me more abrupt than I intended.
“I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into tonight. After what happened at the track, you need to be on high alert. If anything happened to you—”
He broke off and I could have choked him. I was so tired of his mixed signals. If anything happened to me—what? Ruby would have one less protector? He would fall to his knees in despair at our missed chance to be together?
Doubtful.
Although he’d pretty much admitted to having feelings for me, it was clear he didn’t want anything more. And no amount of dramatic pauses were going to make that any easier for either of us.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I don’t need you to tell me to be careful.”
“I didn’t mean—” He cut himself off again and I shifted my weight impatiently. “Just be careful, OK? I’ll have your back, but don’t get too brave out there.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything more, so I turned to go. I looked back when I reached the bottom of the front steps, hoping he’d speak again, tell me he wanted me to be careful for his sake, not just Ruby’s.