“Isn’t that what the bad guy always says to the stupid blonde chick in horror flicks?” Anna asked skeptically.
“Good point,” Sally conceded.
“Oh good freaking grief,” the white haired deadly woman groaned irritably. “Look, we’re here to take you to a safe place and teach you all about your Gypsy heritage and magic. We don’t want to sell you on the black market, we don’t want any of your organs, and if you’re lucky you will even get one of those,” she pointed to the guy named Costin, “of your very own. Okay?”
“Oh, okay,” Anna replied.
“Really?” Sally asked.
“No,” Anna said dryly. “Not really.”
“Oh I like her,” a laugh came towards the back of the group from a guy every bit as handsome as Costin, but with sandy brown hair and sharp eyes that seem to see everything.
“Would you be willing to meet with me and Crina?” Sally pointed to a beautiful dark haired girl standing next to the sandy brown haired god. “In a public place of course.”
“To talk?” Anna asked.
Sally nodded. “Yes, just to talk. Don’t mind Peri, she has no bedside manner.”
“Sally dear, I would remember if we’d been to bed together and since I don’t swing for our own team, I know we haven’t. So how would you know anything about my bedside manner?” Peri retorted.
Sally blushed. “And she has no couth either.”
“So she’s generally honest then?” Anna asked, not able to help the small smile that appeared despite her reservation towards the group.
“Brutally so,” Sally confirmed.
Anna glanced hesitantly towards the group and then back to Sally. “I can meet you in twenty minutes. There’s a Starbucks just a block up the road.”
Sally smiled and nodded. “Great, we’ll see you in a few then.”
Anna watched as they all filed out of the store. The door finally swung shut and the chime that usually didn’t even register to her ears was like the warning bell in a boxing match. Round 1 had just ended and round 2 was coming. As she hurried forward to lock the dead bolt on the door before any other oddities could come through, she tried to figure out her next move. Did she go and meet with Sally and the girl she called Crina? Though they looked normal enough, the others that had been standing in that bunch were definitely not normal. The one called Peri had mentioned Anna being a Gypsy. How would she know that she was indeed of Gypsy dissent?
Her mind was a chaotic mess as she counted her till and closed down the cash register. As she went about her usual closing routine her thoughts continued to bombard her with what ifs and what should I dos. She wished, not for the first time, that she could call her mom and ask for some guidance, but true to her Gypsy heritage, her mother was a nomad. As soon as Anna had graduated high school two weeks ago she had taken off. She said it made her antsy to stay still for too long, that it would draw evil spirits to her if she didn’t keep on the move. Whatever that meant, Anna thought as she rolled her eyes. She might be a Gypsy and she might work in a voodoo shop called Little Shop of Horrors, but she didn’t buy into all that magic mumbo jumbo. Anna was a realist. She believed in what she could see and touch. Since her mom was so frequently out of touch with reality, one of them had to be firmly fixed in the here and now.
With everything done, she glanced at her phone to check the time. She had five minutes until it was time for her to meet with Sally, if she was even going. She paced back and forth in front of the door with her purse slung diagonally over her shoulder. Her loose, dark brown curls were thrown up into a messy bun as the humid heat of the New Orleans’s June evening clung to the back of her neck.
“Okay,” she finally stopped, facing the door her hands held out dramatically beside her. “I’m going. We’ll be in a public place,” she continued to talk out loud as she took a step towards the door and reached to unlock it. “What’s the worst that could happen?” As she exited the shop and relocked the door she muttered to herself. “The last time you asked yourself that you wound up in a belly dancers costume on a float with a sign on it that said Gypsies do it for the five finger discount. So ask yourself again, do you really want to do this?” Anna was lost in her thoughts and didn’t notice that someone had joined her until the female voice hit her ears.
“Do you always talk to yourself?”
Anna jumped and her hand flew out to catch herself against the side of the building. “HOLY CRAP!” She hollered. Her breathing was heavy as she leaned down with her hands braced on her knees. She looked up and was instantly hit with a sense of familiarity. This woman hadn’t been with the group that had come into the store, but she was definitely a member of their weird club. She reminded her of the white haired one called Peri. She had the same delicate features, her hair was the same white color but it didn’t shine with the same intensity and her eyes were pale blue instead of green. She was wearing some sort of cloak which Anna might have found odd if she hadn’t been from New Orleans.
“You really should pay more attention to your surroundings,” the woman said in a cool, detached voice.
Anna didn’t respond. She righted herself and straightened her purse and started walking again. “I told your people I would meet you in twenty minutes, I don’t need an escort,” Anna told her tersely. She was irritated that she had allowed herself to be so distracted that someone had snuck up on her. This part of town is not a place to find yourself caught unaware after dark. She had lived here all her life and knew better than to let her guard down.
“What do you mean, your people?” The woman asked as she suddenly appeared right in front of Anna causing her to stumble and take several steps back or run straight into her.
Anna once again righted herself and folded her arms across her chest. She pulled her shoulders back and straightened to her full, albeit unimpressive, height of five foot, three inches and met the woman’s hard gaze. “I mean the group of people that showed up at my shop just a little while ago spouting off about Gypsies and magic. You can’t tell me that they weren’t with you because one of them looked just like you.”
“What do you mean just like me?”
Anna rolled her eyes as frustration began to dance across her nerves. “Do you speak the same language as me? Because you keep asking what do I mean, when I’m making myself pretty stinking clear.”
“I will ask you one more time, healer,” the woman practically growled, “what do you mean just like me?”
“Hell, fire and brimstone,” Anna muttered, then added in an equally irritated voice, “I mean as in related like maybe your sister. She looked like you.”
∞
Lorelle stood frozen, staring at nothing as the healer walked around her. She should follow her, or at least turn and see where the girl was going but she couldn’t seem to move. Her heart was pounding in her ears and for some reason her lungs didn’t seem to want to work as she struggled to take a breath. Like you, the healer had said, someone that looked like her had been to see her today and not only did she look like Lorelle, but she looked as if she could have been her sister.
Lorelle turned suddenly just in time to see the young healer slip into a coffee shop. Her mind was jumping rapidly from past to present. She remembered the forest and Peri dying, yet this gypsy was giving her reason to think that her sister was alive. Oh, no she didn’t say Peri’s name, but there was nobody else who the girl would have compared to Lorelle’s appearance and said she looked like a sister. She had to know. She had to know if Peri indeed was still sucking up precious oxygen instead of feeding the maggots like she should be. Lorelle cloaked herself in her magic, making herself invisible to those around her and practically sprinted across the street to the coffee shop. She would like to say she wasn’t shaking like some pathetic human junky craving their next fix, but then she would be lying and frankly her sins were beginning to rack up.
As she pressed her face closer to the glass window her eyes landed on the Gypsy and then quickly moved past her to th
e brunette sitting on the other side of the table.
“No,” Lorelle gasped quietly, her warm breath fogging the glass in front of her. She took a quick step to the left and blinked several times to make sure that her eyes were working properly and hadn’t just suddenly taken a detour to the twilight zone. But still, there she sat, Sally Miklos, gypsy healer, mate to Costin and weeks ago dead to the world. If Sally was alive, then the odds of Peri being alive had just increased exponentially.
“This is going to put a damper on things,” Lorelle muttered to herself as she quickly flashed away from the coffee shop. She reappeared at the edge of the Dark Forest and began pacing as her thoughts raced. All the while the pull of Volcan’s magic to find the healers tugged at her insides like a hook caught in the gut of its aquatic victim. With each tug she felt the rip and tear of the foreign magic, but even that discomfort was nothing to the knowledge that her sister had somehow escaped fate. Now not only did she have Volcan to contend with, but she had to kill her sister—again.
“This time, sister mine, you better damn well stay dead.”
∞
“She’s frazzled,” Sally sent the thought to Costin through their bond as she watched Anna walk into the Starbucks where she and Crina currently sat. He was sitting in the outside dining area, no doubt with a frown on his handsome face because he had lost the Rock, Paper, Scissors game to get to come inside the restaurant. Sally didn’t want Anna to be scared, and though Costin wasn’t as big as Lucian or Decebel, he could still be very intimidating when he wanted to be.
“Well I would be better able to help you decipher what is wrong with her if I were inside with you instead of sitting out here like a dork,” Costin huffed.
Sally bit back the smile that threatened to inch across her face. His Romanian accent coupled with American terms had become a big source of amusement to her, though for some reason he never seemed to find it as funny as she did.
“Quite pouting it’s not attractive.”
She heard his chuckle in her mind. “Now you’re just telling lies love, you think everything I do is attractive.”
Sally sent him a mental eye roll but didn’t respond because Anna had taken a seat across from her.
“You didn’t have to send someone to get me,” Anna said with obvious irritation. “I said I would meet you and I keep my word.”
Sally looked at Crina and then back at Anna. “Um, sorry but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Anna’s head tilted ever so slightly and Sally could tell that she was trying to decide if Sally was blowing smoke up her butt or not.
“You didn’t send someone to walk me here?” Anna asked.
“No,” Sally answered shaking her head. “What did this person look like?”
“Like the woman you called Peri, only she seemed dim, like a washed out version of Peri.”
“Lorelle,” Crina spoke the name Sally had been thinking.
“This is not good,” Sally murmured. “Houston we have a problem,” Sally sent to Costin.
“I’m not Houston, but I imagine I can help,” Costin retorted playfully.
“Lorelle is here,” Sally relayed. “Anna said she showed up at her store.”
“I’m on it,” Costin growled.
“So she isn’t with your group?” Anna asked.
“No,” Crina answered. “She is quite the opposite of being with our group.”
“But you know her?”
“Not exactly,” Sally rejoined the conversation, feeling slightly better that Costin was making sure that Lorelle wasn’t hanging around outside waiting to ambush them. “It’s quite a long story but the short version is that she’s evil.”
“Wicked,” Crina confirmed.
“Psycho,” Sally added.
“Diabolical.”
“Maniacal.”
Anna’s head bounced back and forth between the two as they tossed out adjectives.
“What their trying to say is she’s bat shit crazy and she will stab you in the back with a spoon, dig your heart out and feed it to the vultures,” Peri’s voice came from behind Anna.
Anna turned to look at the woman who did bear a striking resemblance to her sister, but now that Anna was before her again she realized that the one key difference between Peri and her sister was their eyes. Not the color, though that was indeed different. Peri’s eyes were alive. They danced with light and mirth. They were perceptive and alert but there was no malice in them. Her sister’s eyes had been the eyes of someone with a soul that had withered and dried up inside of them and all that was left was an empty husk.
Sally looked up at Peri and smiled tightly. “So glad you decided to let us have this private meeting with Anna so that we wouldn’t overwhelm her, Peri.”
Peri rolled her eyes and took the empty seat next to Anna. “My sister killed you and me for that matter, just a few weeks ago. Now she’s in the same city, on the same street, talking to the same person that we are, that sort of changes things, healer.”
Anna’s eyes had widened at Peri’s words. She looked at Peri and then back to Sally. “Did she just say that her sister killed you?”
“Uh, and me,” Peri piped up.
Sally nodded and then held her hands up. “Okay just wait before you freak out and call us crazy. Can I just try and explain why we’re here?”
“Is it going to keep me from calling you crazy?” Anna asked.
Peri let out a snort. “Oh, totally.”
Sally ignored Peri’s remark and kept her eyes on Anna. “You know that you are a Gypsy, right?”
Anna nodded.
“Okay, well that’s not the only thing about you that is special. You have probably never heard of the Great Luna, but she is the creator of the Canis lupis. After she created them she realized they would need someone very special to be able to care for them in times of sickness or injury so she looked at the people of the world and saw that the Gypsy people had the most affinity for magic. Within the Gypsy females she looked for those with pure hearts, and gentle spirits and she chose them to be healers for her children. For centuries now Gypsy healers have been living with and taking care of the Canis lupis. To ensure that the healers would stay with their packs and to protect them, the Great Luna made them compatible true mates to the Canis lupis.” Sally paused and glanced at Peri. “Have I missed anything?”
“Aside from all of the recent developments, no I think you’ve done a very good job of explaining it, although judging by the look on Anna’s face she indeed thinks you’re a few coffee beans short of a full cup. See what I did there,” she pointed to the Starbucks logo, “because we’re in a coffee shop?”
Crina and Sally both chuckled.
“Ask,” Sally said to Anna whose narrowed gaze held her captive.
“Who is the Great Luna? What is a Canis lupis? Magic, pack healer, true mates?” Anna’s voice grew with each word and then as if losing the wind from her sails she slumped down into her chair like a deflated balloon.
“The Great Luna is a deity, she’s a creator,” Sally explained. “The Canis lupis, well they are a little harder to explain.”
“They aren’t hard to explain Sally, it’s just hard for the human brain to wrap their little cells around the notion of something so supernatural,” Peri interrupted. She looked at Anna and said deadpan. “Werewolves, as in huge, furry, for some reason absurdly handsome to a near ridiculous amount, body changing beasts.”
Anna’s mouth dropped open but when nothing came out Peri reached out and gently pushed her chin up to close it.
“Anna,” Sally reached out and touched the girls arm to get her attention. Anna’s head turned and her gaze met Sally’s. She didn’t look terrified yet, just shocked, so Sally decided to continue. “They are real and we can prove it to you, although not in the middle of Starbucks. But let’s finish answering your questions first okay?”
Anna nodded slowly unable to formulate any words.
“So as for the other, well, magic is
just that, its magic. There is no science behind it and no way to explain it. As for the whole pack and true mate thing, now that you know what we are talking about ‘werewolves,’ well that explains the pack part, I guess. There are werewolves all over the world and they live in packs, with a hierarchy to keep them in line. Werewolves tend to be quite violent if not kept under tight control.”
“Ya think,” Anna let slip out and then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled through her hand.
Sally waved her off. “No worries, you got nothing on my friend Jen so don’t worry about anything that might pop out because of shock.”
“Are you a Canis lupis?” Anna asked Sally finally able to find her voice.
Sally shook her head. “No, I’m like you.”
“Like me?” Anna asked slowly.
Sally nodded with a smile. “A Gypsy healer.”
Chapter 7
“The world has advanced more than I could have ever imagined. As I withered away in the darkness, life outside continued to move forward, to grow and change. It’s so big, so full of wonder and danger and I want to experience it all, but I want my mate by my side. Until she commits to me I can’t fully enjoy all that this life has to offer. How do I get her to see that she is the kaleidoscope through which I want to see the world?” ~Lucian
“Is she alright?” Lucian asked Peri as he waited for her outside. He had not put up much of a fight when she had asked him to stay outside because he really was enjoying himself. There was so much to see and look at and when he didn’t understand something he just sifted through Peri’s thoughts for the answer. She didn’t particularly like that, which only made his smile grow bigger because for some reason aggravating her was a strange form of foreplay. Well, that’s what she accused him of doing anyways and he wasn’t going to disagree with her.