Tab Bennett and the Inbetween (35 page)

“Is there anyone you can call to come sit with you?”

I thought of Trudy and Nina; what could either of them do if someone attacked me? Not much besides die. Trudy was a soccer mom. Unless she could flirt her way out of the situation, Nina wasn’t going to be much help either. I decided on Allison. If she wasn’t trying to kill me herself she might be just the thing. I had the sense that she could hold her own in a fight.

“Go,” I said again.

“Don’t worry about Robbin; he’s extremely difficult to kill. And besides, Nicholas will bring him to Daniel first. He may have lost you, but Robbin is a prize in his own right, one They won’t want to give up quickly.”

I couldn’t stand to think of Nicholas hurting him. About what would happen if Alex arrived too late.

 “I’ll reset the enchantments on my way out of the house. Be careful while I’m gone and please go upstairs and not outside if anyone else comes looking for you.”

Anyone else? Seriously? I couldn’t take another beating. A light tap on the shoulder would probably have knocked me to the ground.

“Can you call someone?” he asked, stroking my hair.

“Allison,” I murmured in spite of the ache in my jaw.

He nodded and kissed the top of my head again and put his arms around me. “If I lost you…,” he whispered.

“You didn’t.” I laid my head against his chest. Now that I wasn’t dead, the whole event was starting to seem less terrifying. Violence was getting to be normal for me. Loved ones finger in a box? Seen it. Nearly beaten to death by a red-eyed intruder? Done it. I wasn’t fine but I was alive and that was close enough, right?

“I’m fine.”

“I like it when you pretend to be tough,” he said.

I listened to the laughter rumble up in his chest. It made me feel better just to hear it; all the bruises and would-be-bruises-in-the-morning stung a little less. I drew in a deep breath, delighting in his scent.

Homecoming.

Homecoming.
 The word flashed from his brain to mine, surprising us both.

“I love you,” I said.

I can’t really describe what happened next. It felt like being found after wandering alone for a long time. It felt like coming back from a trip and setting your bags down inside your own house, so relieved to be where you belonged at last. It felt like finding twenty dollars you’d forgotten all about in the bottom of a purse you haven’t used in a while. It felt like wonder and awe, like Fourth of July fireworks and Christmas morning. Suddenly, I recognized him for what he was to me, what he was meant to be.

All my indecision was gone; in that one instant I had no doubt that I belonged with him, to him, and that he belonged to me. I couldn’t believe such a simple truth had been so difficult to admit.

 “Of course I love you.”

He held me away from him and looked at me with the most serious look I’d ever seen on his face. He seemed puzzled. “Earlier you said maybe.”

Do bruises blush? I think mine did. “Not maybe. Definitely.”

He stood and clapped his hands together. “I’d better go rescue Turnbough then,” he said with a smile that took my breath away. “Be a shame to lose you now to a martyred ghost.”

*******

Once Alex was gone, and I was alone, really alone, the first floor seemed to have too many windows and not enough locks. There were noises; the kinds of noises Pop used to tell us were caused by the house settling but which Rivers and I knew to be monsters trying to get in. There were shadows I couldn’t explain on the lawn. There was a wind that wailed through the trees. Between my aches, bruises, and a severe case of the heebie jeebies, I couldn’t relax.

I called Allison three times and left three increasingly desperate messages. Then I took more aspirin than my liver would’ve recommended and went looking for some place safe to hide. Obviously the solarium was out.

After dragging my tired, abused body up the stairs, I discovered that being on the second floor didn’t make me feel any safer. All the unused rooms were dark. And the hallway seemed very long, not
The Shining
long or anything but long enough that I knew I wouldn’t make it to the stairs if someone was chasing me.

All I wanted to do was lay down and go to sleep. I thought of the cottage, all small and snug, and wished I was there. No one could sneak up on you there; you’d see them coming. And it was so small there was nowhere for someone to hide. Witchwood Manor was so big someone else could’ve been in the house and I wouldn’t have know. It was possible that a whole group of someones were already on their way up the back stairs.

I stood in the hall, which as I mentioned was long and dark and scary, and stomped my foot. That’s how mad I was – I was reduced to ridiculous foot stomping. It wasn’t fair. I was in my own home; I had a right to feel safe there. But that had been stolen from me. Nicholas came in and took the last of my illusions about Witchwood Manor’s ability to protect me.

I opened the attic door, remembering the weapons that were still hanging on the wall. I was on my way up the steep and narrow stairs when my cell phone rang.

“Tab?” I was so relieved to hear a friendly voice I almost cried.

“Nina! Hi.”

There was a pause before she said, “Let me just say this, ok? Before I chicken out and just make some bullshit small talk with you for an hour and don’t say this.”

I couldn’t imagine my brash, sassy friend chickening out or what could be bad enough that she’d be afraid to say it. Nina always said what was on her mind. It was my favorite – and also least favorite – thing about her. “What do you want to say?”

Momentarily distracted by curiosity, I sat down on the attic stairs.

“Ok,” she said. “Here goes. I don’t want to intrude or tell you how to live your life, but sweetie, you’ve got to stop wallowing. It’s been too long. You’ve got to stop living like you’re the one who died. Rivers wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself.”

“Oh Nina,” I said, the regret thick in my throat. As far as she knew I was having a grief-induced nervous breakdown.

“When was the last time you even left the house? It’s been weeks, right?”

“It’s not….” I paused. I was going to say, ‘It’s not what you think,’ banking on the fact that she probably didn’t think I was hiding from a group of subterranean Elves who wanted to kill me. But then, knowing Nina, she would demand to know what was wrong if it wasn’t grief and I would end up telling her and I didn’t think she should have to hear about it over the phone. It just seemed like a conversation best had face-to-face. “There’s a lot going on right now…that you don’t know about.”

“With Robbin and that blonde guy, what’s his name?”

“Alex. They’re both involved but my man problems are the least of it.”

“That’s the least of it?” She sounded doubtful. “You are in some trouble, aren’t you?” 

“Can you come over? I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Sure,” she said quickly. “I’m on my way.”

As we said goodbye, I began to feel better. She would come and I would tell her everything, lay all my secrets bare. I was pretty sure I could convince her that I was telling her the truth; that I wasn’t crazy in spite of how crazy I would sound. She would wait with me until Alex and Robbin came home. She would keep me from worrying about them until I knew they were safe by telling me hilarious stories about her life. I couldn’t wait for her to get there. I went to the sitting room and opened the curtain so I could watch the driveway and run down stairs to let her in as soon as she rang the bell.

******

The sound of Nina’s worried voice ringing through the hall startled me. “Tabitha?” she called. “Where are you Tab?”

“Nina?” I couldn’t believe I’d missed her pulling up. I looked back out the window at the empty driveway. I clicked the TV off. “Where’s your car?”

She laughed. 

I went out into the hall. “Nina? Where’s your car? How did you get in here? Wasn’t the door locked?”

One second I heard the sound of her footsteps on the stairs and the next she was standing in front of me.

“Matt gave me a key.” Her smile didn’t look right and her hair was wind blown. There was a small rip in her shirt. She followed me into the sitting room. I sat on the couch and she went to the window, looking out across the dark yard.

“He’s been away so much lately.”

“Yeah…” I wasn’t ready to give up the details just yet. “He’ll be home soon.”

She nodded without looking at me.

“Is everything ok?”

She turned from the window and smiled that weird smile again. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s not a lot of time. She’ll be here soon.”

“Is Trudy coming?”

“Allison.”

I was surprised that Nina had invited her. It kind of killed my plan to come clean about my secret identity. “I called her earlier, when I couldn’t get you on the phone.”

“Then that’s probably why she was here.” Nina nodded again. “I wondered when I found her at the gate.”

As the pieces of the puzzle clicked together for her I became even more confused.

“She was at the gate? Is she coming in?”

Nina closed the curtains and turned to face me. “She’ll wake up and then she’ll come.”

 Everything about Nina was wrong. The closer I looked at her the more there was to see. There was a little blood running down the side of her face. She saw me staring and wiped it away with the back of her hand. She shrugged at the bright red smear when she saw it.

It’s funny, in the way that funny sometimes means terrifying, that you can know someone your whole life and never really actually know them at all. Nina rode the same bus to kindergarten with me. She taught me to roller skate. She froze my bra at a junior high sleepover and sat beside me at high school graduation. I would have said I knew everything about her. I would have said I knew her face better than I knew my own. But standing there, I watched it change into something alien and very cold. Her cheekbones sharpened, her chin pointed, she looked at me through narrow red eyes and hated me.

“Where’s Allison?” I asked this stranger Nina had become.

“She’s probably still out by the gate. I hit her pretty hard,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “But, you know I was thinking about it on my way up here, and it wasn’t hard enough to kill her. I really don’t know why I did that. I should have done it, gotten this over with so I could go home. Maybe it was some ridiculous feeling of loyalty to you? Do you think that could be? I’ve been a part of your stupid life so long, pretending to like you, pretending to care about you, pretending to worry about you. Maybe I’ve been human so long I’ve forgotten how to be Dark?” The thought clearly troubled her, the confusion was written all over her face.

While she worried about the motivation for the small amount of mercy she’d shown Allison and me, I found myself calculating the distance to the door for the second time that day, wondering how far I’d get. Banged up as I was, I knew the answer: not far. Even with a generous head start I wouldn’t make it to the attic door before she caught up. Nina would end up hauling me down the stairs by my ankles

I knew the minute she noticed I wasn’t paying attention to her. She looked at me with her new eyes and pouted. “Oh, sorry,” she said with exaggerated sweetness. “Am I boring you? I mean come on Tab, are you in such a hurry to die that you can’t bear to listen to me do a little soul searching before I snap your neck.”

Generally I don’t recommend poking at a wasp’s nest with a stick, but I could resist taunting Nina a little bit. I knew her so well and it was easy to push her buttons. Fun too.

“Your friend Nicholas tried and he couldn’t kill me. He’s your king’s right hand man, isn’t he? So that makes you…what? Second best? If the king’s favorite couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can?”

“Shut up,” she said, her lips pulling into a harsh line. Nina did not care for being called second best anymore than she liked acknowledging that someone else was the favorite.