Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (44 page)

I’d never understood Nana. I didn’t understand how she could throw herself into marriage after marriage, knowing each was doomed to end, sometimes within months, sometimes after a few years. It made no sense to toss my heart out there, only to have it trampled, because the trampling was inevitable. The women in my family had no trouble attracting men; we had trouble attracting men
who stayed
. They always left. Nana’s men left her amicably: She was friends with all of her former husbands, worked with several of them still, and regularly attended various events with them. Sofie’s men disappeared, drifting out of her life in slow increments until one day they stopped showing up. Annabella’s men abandoned her, though maybe that was what she preferred—I’d never discussed men with my mother.

Men didn’t leave me. I left them. I appreciated them while I had them, and then I left before they could. It was beyond time to leave Hudson. He was hammering cracks in my emotional walls, catching glimpses of my secrets. By all rights, and by habit and logic and every self-preservation instinct I possessed, I should have been severing all ties with him. ASAP.

Yet, for the first time since I was a teenager, I didn’t want to run from the risk. For the first time in my life, hope outweighed fear. I trusted Hudson. But did I trust him
enough
?

You don’t walk into love, Eva. You throw yourself into it. It’s all or nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“You sure you’re okay? You look a little pale,” Hudson said, coming up behind me.

I turned the water off and dried my hands, then snuggled into his chest for a hug.

“I know this is tough. I’m so sorry they destroyed all your things,” Hudson said. “If you want, we can go back to my place tonight.”

I shook my head. “I’m good. Really. Let’s finish the library. We’re halfway done.”

We resumed our previous positions, Hudson cleaning the books and stacking them for me to place back on the shelves in order.

My hands shook too badly for me to do anything but stand there.

“I think there’s something else going on,” Hudson said, falling back into his musings. “I mean, I’ve lost count of how many cars have broken down. Don’t you think it’s bizarre?”

I took a deep breath and threw myself off the cliff of certainty. “No.”

“No? So you’re saying all these electrical malfunctions are normal?”

“For me, yes.”

Hudson looked up from the book in his hands. “What does that mean?”

I sank on weak knees to sit in front of him, thinking this might be a better conversation to have eye-to-eye.

“It means that cars typically break down when I’m in them.”

“What, like you’ve got the world’s worst car karma?”

“No. It’s a fact. Why do you think Ari was so blasé about her car breaking down? It isn’t her car—it’s me.”

Hudson was smiling, looking for the joke.

“Same with your cell phones. It’s the proximity to me that keeps killing them. All those phones—okay, the really good ones—should be working fine again by now if you left them at your house. They just needed time away from me.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

I shrugged. My heart hammered in my chest. I still had time to back out. I could burst out laughing and pretend I’d been pulling his leg. Hudson would accept it was a joke, too. He was too pragmatic not to. But the nagging suspicion would be in the back of his head. That suspicion would wedge space between us, and in a few days or a few weeks, one of us would be ending this relationship.

I ground my teeth and took deep breaths.
Oh, God, Nana, I hope I’m doing the right thing.

“Think about the last few days. Every time a car broke down, I was in it.”

“So was I,” Hudson said. “Are you saying that I now kill cars?”

“You’ve driven places without me. Your car didn’t die then. And what about Dempsey’s truck? It only died when I was in it. Same with the Tercel.”

“Not every time. It was random bad luck.
Really
bad luck, but random. An elephantini curse.” He was backpedaling away from his reasoning now. He’d talked himself up to the threshold of making the connection between me and the curse, and now he refused to see it.

I rubbed my palms against my knees to dry them. “Forget the cars, then. What about the cell phones? Every cell phone you’ve had since you met me has died.”

“A bad batch of microchips.” He didn’t sound like he believed himself.

“Your house? How often has the power gone out at your house?”

“Not often.”

“Would you say it only happened when I spent the night?”

“You’re saying you being in my house made all the electricity stop working?”

“Stop working, die, suspend. Something like that.”

“That’s—”

“Preposterous? Impossible? What about Annabella’s house? When we found the ransom note, did you notice the power went out in the entire house?”

“Eva, this is crazy. You don’t kill electricity. That’s not possible. That’s like . . . like something out of a comic book.”

I hugged my stomach and pushed on through the nausea. “This loft is wired with gas for a reason, and it has nothing to do with feng shui.”

Hudson’s smile disappeared, replaced by a furrow between his brows. “You really believe this, don’t you?”

“I do,” I whispered.

He studied my eyes, and his face became a stony mask. Rotten bananas piled up at his feet. My heart squeezed and I dug my fingernails into my palms.

“This has been a really rough couple of days,” he said. “Maybe we should get some rest. Everything will seem clearer tomorrow.”

“No. Time won’t change who I am.
What
I am.” A freak of nature.

“‘What’ you are? Are you going to tell me that you’re not human now?” Hudson rose. I pushed to my feet, but he kept his distance.

“No, I—”

“I think I’ve been a damn good sport, Eva. I’ve played along, done things I shouldn’t have, because, shit, because it felt right. But this? You? Electricity?” He shoved his hand through his hair, his hard eyes scouring me.

I’d misjudged. I’d jumped without a safety net.

“Hudson—”

“Uh-uh. No. The woo-woo shit stops here. You’re not cursed and neither is that elephantini.” He paced away from me, only half turning when he spoke. “There’s a logical explanation to this, and it’s not that either one of us is crazy. I need . . . I need to think. Good-bye.”

The impact of my heart against the concrete of reality shattered it into a hundred pieces. I’d been a fool to think he’d believe me. I’d been a complete besotted idiot to believe for one instant that love could conquer my curse; worse, that a few days’ drama-filled crush could counter what a lifetime had taught me—I wasn’t permitted long-term love.

Good. He hadn’t believed me, which meant he wouldn’t be a danger to me. Of all possible outcomes, Hudson’s reaction hadn’t been the worst conceivable.

My heart was too busy imploding to care.

A long time after the finality of the closing door had reverberated through my empty apartment, I swiped away the tears dripping from my chin, grabbed the unfinished bottle of wine, and headed for bed.

* * *

The windows framed a heavy navy sky when I woke. My head pounded, and I rubbed a fuzzy tongue against the dry roof of my mouth, grimacing at the foul taste. An empty Chardonnay bottle rolled against my hip, and I vaguely remembered finding it in the back of the fridge after I’d finished the Cabernet.

I threw my arm across my eyes, my thoughts swan diving back to Hudson. For the ten thousandth time, I berated myself for telling him about my curse. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have savored the limited time left in our relationship. I should have grabbed him by his T-shirt and told him to shut up and had my way with him. I should have stopped him from leaving and proved myself to him. I should have—

Enough.
I staggered out of bed and dressed in yoga pants and a soft T-shirt. I needed water.

I told myself the emptiness of my front room didn’t look as bad this morning. I’d find furniture to fill it. It was a lot easier to fill an empty home than an empty heart.

A shape detached itself from my kitchen cabinet, and for a second the man’s height and build made me think it was Hudson. Then his torso disappeared, spinning golden clockwork gears whirling above and below the impossible gap, and my surprise flashed to terror.

I opened my mouth to scream even as I spun to run, but my legs were in a different time zone, oozing into the first step when the retrievalist slammed into me. He shoved me into a wall, pinning my throat with a forearm and leaning his weight on my windpipe. The other hand jammed a cloth over my nose and mouth, and sweet fumes coated my tongue. I lashed out, shoving away from the slender man’s chest, struggling to knee him.

Unfazed by my blows, he mashed against me, leaning forward to whisper in my ear, “Don’t fight it, Eva.”

I clawed at his arm, vainly trying to dislodge the cloth. Black spots danced in my vision. A flat white clock masked the retrievalist’s face, Roman numerals circling his head and sleek black hands radiating from where his nose should have been. The clock face fell backward through his head, vanishing and revealing his true features.

Empty dark eyes held mine until the blackness in my vision swarmed, and the world disappeared.

* * *

Agony jolted from my neck down my torso, waking me, then retreated to a dull ache in my bones and a sharp pinch at my neck. Gasping, I curled into a ball, hands reaching blindly for my neck.

“Don’t touch it.”

My eyes snapped open at the unfamiliar woman’s voice. Lights blinded me, and tears blurred the white room and unfamiliar shapes. I scrambled to orient myself, physically and mentally. How had I gotten here?

Don’t fight it, Eva
.

Memory rushed back. I stilled, but my heart kicked up to triple-time, the pulse pounding in my head.

“Where am I?” My voice croaked and cracked. I ran a dry tongue around my parched mouth. The strange woman leaned close, filling my vision as she peered into my pupils one at a time. Asian, with dark brown eyes and black hair tied back in a neat bun, she wore a long white lab coat and held a tablet in one hand. Gold medals hung on red ribbons around her neck, remaining against her gray shirt and defying gravity as she leaned forward, proving they were apparitions. I tried to pull back, but I lay on the floor and had nowhere to go.

“It’s time to work, Eva Parker,” she said, straightening and stepping back.

Feet moved behind her, and I pushed myself up to sit. My fingers tingled and my arms protested. The second person wore a lab coat, too. He was slightly taller, with thick short black hair and clinical almond-shaped eyes. A thick band of sunlight speared over his head to pierce my forehead, and I blinked unhelpfully against the bright apparition.

I twisted to take in my prison, then wished I’d kept my eyes closed. Beakers and computers and microscopes and apparatus I couldn’t name lined the wall and the narrow counter built against it. The opposite wall pressed close, the ceiling tight above. All the walls gleamed white and sterile, making Kyoko in a metal cage at the far end of the room completely out of place. I jerked in the opposite direction, bracing myself with a shaking hand. Jenny stood at the counter, white lab coat in place, dropping blood into little vials stacked next to a small pyramid of writhing naked babies.

She glanced up and smiled, her cut lip swollen and the bruises on her face yellow in the fluorescent light.

I whirled back toward the scientists, and the room kept spinning in my head. Panting, I fought down nausea. A laboratory coffin. I was trapped in my worst nightmare.

Clenching my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering, I grabbed at the safeguards on my curse and shoved it tight, tight, tight into a little ball inside myself. Hide. I needed to hide. Not physically; the tiny space held no secret nooks or convenient wardrobes. I needed to conceal my curse. I needed to hide my freak of nature.

With complete ruthlessness, I smothered my emotions along with my curse until my brain hummed within a shell of numbness. For now, it would hold. It had to. It would be enough until we were rescued.

If we were rescued.

I swallowed hard. A band pressed against my throat. I raised my hand. Pain lanced through my body, tightening my muscles into cords of agony. When it faded, I lay on my side, staring at the toes of men’s maroon leather shoes shaped into long points and sized for a giant. The male scientist standing in them made a tsking noise and shook his finger at me.

“Try to take the collar off, and you’ll be shocked,” he said. He squatted in front of me. The ends of his lab coat disappeared into the tips of the shoes. “Try to lie, and you’ll be shocked. Don’t work, and you’ll be shocked. Stall, and you’ll be shocked. Is that clear?”

I nodded when I wanted to scream.

“Why am I here?”

“To help me,” Jenny said.

I swiveled to look at her. She gave me another serene smile, ruined by the scab on her bottom lip.