No . . . his energy had been different. Hungrier. More terrifying. Plus, he’d had that scar on his brow and should have been able to heal himself. Maybe he had other powers.. . . I felt a surge of excitement. He was the first person like me I’d encountered. More than anything, I wanted to learn everything about him, but instinct warned me away.
Good instincts had kept me alive this long, and they said the boy was dangerous. If I ever saw him again, I’d walk the other way. The slight twinge of regret I felt could be ignored.
I stared down at the dramatic scenery. An urge to be out there in the storm, to feel the snow melting on my skin, seized me. If I stayed long enough, I could explore those woods in the fall when they exploded into reds and molten gold. Bells sounded in my head clamoring
“danger, danger”
when I thought of the future.
What the hell,
I decided, and rested my forehead against the cold glass. One month wasn’t so long.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep. I started awake in a darkened room in the middle of a nightmare in which Dean had cornered me in a hallway without doors. It took me a moment to remember where I was when I heard the bedroom door open and the soft murmur of unfamiliar voices. It wasn’t Dean watching me from the shadows, but Ben and Laura checking on me. I pretended to be asleep, and they left without disturbing me.
The nightmare made it impossible to fall asleep again. Sweating, uncomfortable, and aware of every gloomy silhouette, I waited until the house itself seemed to sleep. Then I climbed out of bed and crept to the kitchen, where I hunted for and found the knives in the third drawer from the left. Five months ago I’d started sleeping with a steak knife, and I wanted the small amount of security it offered. Back in the guest room, I slipped it under my pillow and ran my finger along the serrated edge. I didn’t know if I’d be able to use it, but I felt safer with it nearby. Exhausted, I closed my eyes on the shadows.
Drifting in a dreamless sleep, I woke again when someone bounced on my bed.
My eyes cracked opened enough to spy a girl about my age staring at me. Lucy had Laura’s heart-shaped face and brown eyes, but Ben’s black hair that looped in tight curls instead of indecisive waves like mine. I pulled a pillow over my head to shut her and a twinge of envy out. It was too early in the morning to deal with my new family. Then it hit me.
Morning.
I’d slept a day and night away.
My voice came out muffled and grumpy when I asked, “What time is it?”
She sounded cheery and bright when she answered, “Seven. We were starting to wonder if you were ever going to wake up. Dad sent me to act as an alarm. He said to tell you we’re enrolling you at the high school with me tomorrow, if you feel up to it.”
Groaning, I tossed the pillow aside. The girl hadn’t moved and wasn’t planning on leaving. I guessed she must be a year or so younger than me since I was Ben’s firstborn.
“I’m Remy.”
Your sister.
Her knee brushed my calf when she shifted. Out of habit, I focused my attention on her enough to make sure she wasn’t carrying a hidden disease capable of flattening me.
Nothing. Healthy, except for her irritating morning cheer.
She nodded. “I know. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“Sorry about that. It’s been a long week.”
Serious brown eyes studied me. “Dad told us what happened. Want to talk about it?”
“Uh, no.” Seriously, what was with this family’s need to talk everything out?
Lucy smiled and wound a curl around her finger. “That’s okay. We’re glad you’re here. By the way, I’m Lucy. We’re sisters.”
She didn’t sound upset. In fact, she sounded downright chipper, a fact which surprised me. Lucy rose when I stood, and I towered over her like I had Laura. I’d have to thank Ben for passing on the genes that made me an Amazon next to most women. I escaped to the bathroom that connected to my room, half expecting her to follow. A door on the opposite side of the shower opened onto another room that had to be her bedroom.
The bathroom door muffled her voice. “You’re not a morning person, are you? Neither is Dad. He says I can’t talk his ear off until he has his first cup of coffee.”
Good rule.
I opened the door a few minutes later to find her going through my few belongings.
“Hey!”
She didn’t even act guilty. She held up one of the few shirts Anna had packed for me, an old, hand-me-down tee with the color faded to an ugly puce from too many washings. “You can’t wear this. They’ll eat you alive at school. Where’re all your clothes?”
I grabbed the tee from her and shoved it back in the dresser. “You’re looking at them.” Anna and I’d never had money since Dean tended to drink through it faster than we could earn it. I’d learned not to care
much
that my clothes had been used and ill-fitting, but my face flushed at her obvious disbelief.
Lucy didn’t notice my embarrassment. She reached back into the dresser for the tee before I could stop her and held it between two fingers in disgust. “Why would you wear this? It’s way too big. You’d swim in it.” She studied my figure with a critical eye. “You’re too skinny, you know. My mom intends to fatten you up.”
Gee, thanks.
I moved to take the tee again, but she strolled through our adjoined bathroom to her bedroom. It was a duplicate of mine, except posters of rock bands plastered every wall. Her bedspread was a frightening shade of fuchsia, like spilled nail polish. She disappeared into a walk-in closet with my shirt and resurfaced a moment later with a turquoise silk blouse. I’d never owned anything so luscious and wanted it as soon as I saw it.
Lucy surprised me when she handed me the blouse. “I think this will fit you. I think I have a scarf, too, to hide those bruises around your neck so you can avoid all the questions. Mom’ll want to take you shopping later. By the way, Crimson Chaos is playing at the Underground tonight. I thought maybe you’d like to meet a few of my friends before you start school tomorrow.”
Nobody was this nice.
She saw my suspicious expression and laughed. “You better get dressed before Mom and Dad barge in to check on you. I’ll find that scarf for you.”
Walking toward the bathroom, I stopped in the doorway. “Thank you, Lucy. For the shirt.”
And the welcome.
She laughed again and waved me away, and I rushed to get dressed.
C
HAPTER
T
HREE
T
hat evening Lucy drove us to the Underground in her white hybrid Toyota. The Underground turned out to be a tiny club with red brick walls, worn pool tables, and a few tables surrounding a stage where tarted-up rockers were sound checking their gear. The room was packed with teenagers taking advantage of the club’s under-twenty-one night.
“Come on.”
Lucy shoved through the crowd. Lagging behind slightly, I already regretted coming.
I hated crowds, and I really hated meeting new people. For too long I’d kept to the shadows to hide what I could do. Before that, I’d learned to hide evidence of Dean’s abuse. Going unnoticed had been easy in Brooklyn when I was one of 4,000 kids at my school. That wouldn’t work here at a school with “only 452 students total including grades eight through twelve,” according to Lucy.
From my spot at the door, I watched her greet a group of her friends across the room. She waved at me with a huge smile, and I waved back, abandoning my plan to duck out the entrance. Three sets of curious eyes stared at me when I stood next to her.
Feeling like a complete moron, I muttered, “Hi,” and wished I hadn’t let Lucy railroad me into this. I didn’t particularly care if I fit in, but it seemed important to her that I meet her friends, so I’d agreed to come.
I knew what her friends saw—the fragile bone structure of my cheeks and jaw, the dark blue eyes too large for my face, and the unruly hair in need of a trim. Even with the aid of Lucy’s cabinet of makeup, I hadn’t been able to hide the bruises or the black eye. I looked . . . damaged.
“This is my sister, Remy. Remy, this is everyone. You can forget their names later.”
She laughed and tossed her black curls in a way that would look ridiculous if I tried it. A girl and boy sat at the table, and she shoved the boy until he made room for us. As we settled in, one of the musicians sauntered up to the table and stole a chair from a nearby table to join us. He was a slice of Brooklyn among Lucy’s clean-cut crew, with his inked arms, spiky hair, and pierced ears.
The pretty brunette with glasses introduced herself. “Hi, Remy. I’m Susan Reynolds. Great shirt,” she said, lightly brushing her fingers down the sleeve.
I smiled and tried to shove away the shyness tying my stomach into a snarl of knots, like the mysterious clump the cheap necklaces in my jewelry box formed when I wasn’t looking.
Susan gestured to the tattooed boy on her left. “This is Brandon Green. His family owns this place.”
I nodded hello and he acknowledged my new throaty smoker’s tone with a “kickass voice, new girl.”
Last, but not least, was the tall, muscular blond. I would have bet all the spare pennies at the bottom of my purse that Greg De Luca played football, but it turned out he preferred playing chess to first downs and yearbook to touchdowns.
When I noticed Greg and Susan eyeing my discolored face, I rolled my eyes, despising the way people treated me with pity and fear. As if Dean’s brutality was my fault or, better yet, as if it was something contagious they could catch on contact.
“You think I look bad, you should see the other guy.”
My tone cut off any discussion about the bruises, and they looked away quickly.
“Remy, you’re from New York, right?”
Susan’s question sparked an inquisition about my life in Brooklyn. My sister’s friends surprised me with how welcoming they were, and she quizzed me along with the rest until I grimaced at her. She caught on and grinned. I couldn’t blame her for being curious about me since I shared her bathroom. My own curiosity about her startled me, when she’d scarcely registered on my radar before coming here. I’d never expected to meet her, let alone hang out in a club with her and her friends.
The conversation died when Brandon rose and joined the band onstage. I was the only one left sitting at the table when he manipulated the first grinding note out of his guitar. Arms and legs flailed to the primal beat on every inch of the dance floor. Watching Brandon sway with closed eyes, I felt a spark of envy for his ability to lose himself in the music.
Tapping my fingers on my leg in time to the song, my gaze strayed to the far side of the room. Forest-green eyes stared at me with familiar intensity.
I inhaled to steady my suddenly jangling nerves. The boy from the beach sprawled in a chair, with his long denim-covered legs stretched out under the table. In the dim light his disheveled brown hair looked black. The shadow had disappeared from his wide jaw, but he didn’t look any less dangerous. Even with the stage between us, I could see the scar cutting through his right eyebrow. His broad shoulders slouched as he played with the wrapper from a straw.
I hadn’t realized how perfect his posture was at the beach until seeing him relaxed like this. Relaxed didn’t look . . . right on him. Despite his lazy demeanor, his potent gaze had the power to make my pulse sprint. He watched me with a curiosity that mirrored my own, and I couldn’t look away.
Lucy sounded anxious when she appeared next to me. “Oh, no, you don’t. Don’t even think about it.”
Her words enabled me to break the spell cast by those wicked green eyes. One song had faded into another while I’d been staring at the boy, and I hadn’t even realized it. I turned to her in confusion. “What?”
She nodded her head in the boy’s direction. “Asher Blackwell. He’s your classic bad boy, black motorcycle and all.” She leaned close to shout over the music. “Dad would have a frickin’ heart attack.”
Asher Blackwell,
I thought, glad to have a name to go with the face.
I forced a smile for Lucy’s benefit, trying to appear normal. “Ooh, a motorcycle. That’s bad, right?”
An impish playfulness colored her grin. “It’s our job to worry Dad, not kill him.”
Asher no longer studied me when I turned, but spoke to a boy and girl I hadn’t noticed sitting at his table.
“Is that Blackwell as in Blackwell Falls?” I asked.
“Got it in one. His ancestors founded the town in the 1800s. That group is the latest descendents and heir to the estate.”
I set aside the pictures that the word “estate” brought to mind. “Who’s that with him?”
Lucy tossed a glance at the table, but she needn’t have worried about being surreptitious. None of the table’s occupants paid us any attention. “The girl is his sister, Charlotte, and the really hot one is Gabriel Blackwell, their brother. He’s their guardian. Their parents died last year in a car accident right before they moved to town. Apparently, they didn’t know they owned property in town until they read the will.”
The Blackwells shared the same angled bone structure and dark brown hair; although Gabriel wore his cropped shorter than Asher’s. Charlotte shouldn’t have been pretty with the sharp features of the two boys, but somehow it worked on her. Her scarlet lips and bobbed hair made her look like some 1920s gangster’s jailbait girlfriend.
Gabriel appeared a couple years older than Asher. He seemed larger and more muscular than Asher and was breathtaking. Gabriel’s eyes flicked up as if he sensed my stare. They were the same green as his brother’s, and I couldn’t help being awestruck by his beauty. The air in my lungs disappeared until Gabriel dismissed me by looking away.
I glanced sideways, and Asher glared at me as if he knew my thoughts. As if he wasn’t happy his brother’s appearance impressed me. His arrogance irritated me, and I raised an eyebrow. A scowl darkened his features, and fear skittered up my spine. Just in case, I strengthened my mental brick wall.
He looked away first, and I smiled, feeling I’d won my first skirmish with him. A silly idea since we weren’t at war.
Lucy breathed, “Whoa.”
“What?”
She shook her head with a grimace. “Remy, Asher is the worst kind of player. When he targets a girl, she can kiss her brain good-bye. And every girl who’s gotten serious about him has had her heart broken when he walked away.” She spoke in a rush as the music ended and the others returned to the table. “It would be a really bad idea to hook up with him.”
My initial impression of him had been right. Lucy didn’t have to worry. I had no intention of messing with him for reasons she couldn’t understand.
Susan overheard her last comment. “You’re talking about Asher Blackwell, right?” She didn’t wait for Lucy’s confirmation. Her eyebrows wiggled above her glasses as she grinned, and I guessed she was the gossip of the group. There always had to be one. “Hot, right?”
Lucy’s breath hissed out, and I had the urge to laugh.
“A talented photographer and the best center our hockey team has ever had. Lucy’s right, though,” Susan continued. “The Blackwell boys are serial daters. My older sister went out with Gabriel last year before she left for college. She was a wreck when he broke it off.”
Greg nodded. “They lived all over the world before they moved here. They’re grotesquely wealthy. Even more than Brand’s family. Some kind of inheritance their parents left them. Lucky bastards.”
Brandon shoved Greg. “Dude, jealousy is an ugly emotion. Just remember. You’ll always have a job cleaning my pool when you need it.”
“Hey, man. Anything that gets me closer to your mom. You know she’s in love with me, right?”
They started bickering, and the others joined in. Asher’s accent made sudden sense. It wasn’t American or British. Maybe some weird mix of the two, plus other places he’d lived. Exotic, like him. I glanced over at the Blackwell table, but Asher had left when I wasn’t paying attention.
Lucy touched my arm when I rose several minutes later. Contact with her grew more familiar with each brush of her hand, but I didn’t mind.
“Seriously, Remy. Be careful.” Her eyes flicked to the table where the Blackwells were sitting. I guessed she thought I was planning to look for Asher, and her next words confirmed my suspicion. “Asher and Gabriel bought sailboats from Dad last summer to race in the festival.” Ben ran a shipbuilding company in town, building the sailboats and racing ships used in the Sail Master’s Regatta. “They crashed them racing each other. They’re a little. . . reckless.”
To acknowledge her concern, I nodded. She was more right than she knew. Asher, at least, was dangerous. Maybe good instincts ran in the family.
“Is there somewhere I can go to get some air?”
“Try the patio.”
Following her directions, I headed to a side door that opened onto a deserted patio, sheltered from the snow by a large awning. I picked a table in the shadows, rubbing my arms to keep warm. Everyone with half a brain stayed inside, but the press of bodies exhausted me. Alone in the dark, I could relax my mental walls without fear of someone bumping into me.
Chatter filled the night air as the door swung open again behind me, and a couple headed to a corner of the patio to smoke. They didn’t notice me in the darkness, and I closed my eyes listening to their quiet conversation and the constant roar of the ocean in the distance. There was something peaceful about this town.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
The low voice rasped over my nerves. With a small sigh, I firmed my mental barricade again and looked up. Asher sat at the table next to mine. He must have been sitting there before I came on to the patio because I hadn’t heard him arrive. Up close, he was more handsome, more attractive, simply more than I remembered. The scar slashing through one brow was highlighted by his high cheekbones and the long hair swept off his forehead. The imperfection reminded me he could be bad for my health. That and the small hint of anger I glimpsed in his gaze
His eyes lit with a challenge when he said, “I’m Asher Blackwell.”
He introduced himself as if we’d never met. It took me a minute to realize he held a hand out for me to shake. I didn’t shake hands. Ever. It left me open to pain, even with my barricades. After what had happened on the beach, I wouldn’t be touching him anytime soon. I nodded in his direction and ignored his outstretched hand.
He smirked as if he’d won this battle.
As I returned to watching the couple, I caught him studying me from the corner of my eye. The deep curiosity I sensed beneath the scrutiny unsettled me. He wasn’t like me—able to heal. He was something else that used energy like I could. My guard stayed up as I pretended to ignore him.
“And you are?” Watching the smokers take furtive puffs, he made polite conversation without looking at me.
“Remy O’Malley.” My voice sounded huskier than usual.
That caught his attention, and he turned those amazing eyes to mine with rapt attention. Trapped, I couldn’t have glanced away even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.
One dark brow rose again. “Lucy’s sister?”
I shifted in my seat, uneasy answering questions about myself. “We have the same father, so I suppose she is.”
He mistook my discomfort for another emotion. “You don’t like her?”
“Sure, I like her. What I know about her.”
He waited for me to continue, leaning forward as if to pull the words out of me. When my silence continued, he snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You’re new to the Falls. You’re the other daughter.”