“Check,” I said, moving my bishop into place.
He moved a knight in to block my bishop. “I wish I could have been there.”
“No, you don’t.” I eyed my captured pieces, lined up on his side of the board. If I could just get my other bishop back…“Trust me, it wasn’t pretty.”
“Well, considering the alternative…” His sweeping gesture took in his entire body.
“How many times can a girl apologize?” I asked, moving my queen forward to back up my remaining bishop. “I should never have taken your car. But look what you get out of it. I’d love six weeks off.”
“Not me.” He moved a pawn forward one space to threaten my only remaining knight. “Four weeks down, and two to go.”
His nose had healed the fastest, and thanks to Dr. Carver it looked as good as new. It would have been a shame to ruin Jace’s face with a crooked nose. His toes hadn’t been quite as lucky; the little one on the end would never be the same. Jace had a great attitude about it, though. He said the flaw gave him character.
What it actually gave him was a new pick-up line. He’d already made up a story to try out on poor unsuspecting women next time he and Ethan went barhopping. It involved a runaway train, a damsel in distress and a baby carriage. No one ever said he was original. Luckily, he still had his looks. And two more weeks to work on his pick-up line.
Two of his ribs had been broken quite badly, and Dr. Carver refused to set him loose on the world again until they healed. Until then, it was my job to keep him company, playing the game of his choice, so long as no clothes came off. It was my punishment for taking his keys. It was also punishment for Marc. Daddy had finally been forced to agree that Marc’s temper was out of control.
Marc was handling it well, mostly because one side of my bed smelled like him more often than not. He was happy, and annoyingly chipper. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it didn’t happen soon, I’d have to take off one of my own and throw it at him.
“Checkmate,” I said, moving my poor overworked queen to her final resting place, in direct diagonal line with Jace’s king.
“Bullshit!” Jace cried. “Give me a minute and I’ll find another move.”
Fat chance. I had him walled in with my remaining bishop and knight. “Take all the time you need.” I leaned back in my chair, lacing my hands behind my head. “Just wake me up when you think of something.”
“Who won?”
I spun to find Marc in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Work clothes. Great.
“I did.” I unlaced my hands and leaned forward. “What’s up?”
“Stray in southern Louisiana. The call just came in.”
I froze, my heart pounding in my ears. “Jungle cat?” I asked, but he knew what I really meant. Is it Luiz?
Since ridding the world of Miguel, we hadn’t seen or heard a thing from Luiz, in spite of doubled-up patrols in every claimed territory. Because there were no known victims after the girl in Oklahoma, the council was convinced that another stray eliminated the problem for us, even before we’d caught Miguel. There was also a rumor circulating among the wildcats that Luiz had fled the country after hearing about what happened to Miguel. I didn’t know which was true, and I didn’t really care, so long as he never showed up again.
Marc shook his head, keeping his smile easy and light, trying to set me at ease. “Nope, plain old garden-variety American stray. He’s ours if we want him.” He grinned. “You feel like seeing New Orleans?”
I glanced at Jace. He was frowning, but when he noticed me looking, he smiled. “Go ahead.”
“You sure?” I asked. “I can stay and kick your ass in a couple more games if you want.”
“Gee, how could I turn that down?” He waved me off with a flick of his hand. “Go on. Bring me back some beads.”
I laughed. “Jace, it’s July.”
“So what?”
“So, Mardi Gras is in February.”
He frowned again. “Oh. Then just bring me some jambalaya.”
I smiled and rolled my eyes. “Sure, Jace. I’ll bring you some jambalaya.”
“Thanks.” He turned back to the board and began setting up the pieces. “Grab Ethan on your way out and tell him I’m bored, will you?”
“No problem.”
Marc followed me to my room and took my suitcase from the closet.
“We’re staying overnight?”
“In New Orleans? Hell, yeah.” He dropped the hard-shell case on the bed.
“What if we catch him this afternoon?”
He grabbed me around the waist and tossed me onto the bed next to the suitcase, pinning me down before I could get up. “What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
I rolled us over and straddled his waist, staring down at him with a smile. “It’ll hurt you if you try to bill him for the trip.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He grinned up at me.
“What?”
“You’re beautiful.”
I blushed. I’d refused to look into the mirror for weeks, until my face felt normal when I touched it. My cheek healed okay, but my throat had scarred. I had four small white crescents running in a vertical line, just to the left of my esophagus. I wasn’t vain enough to think they marred my reflection, but I never once looked at them without remembering that night. So I looked in the mirror less and less.
“You’re right,” I said, planting my palms on his chest. “And you’re very lucky.”
“I never denied it.” And he hadn’t. He pulled me down and kissed me again, then rolled me onto my back. “Get packed.” Flashing me one last smile, he left for the guesthouse to pack his own bag.
I stood at the end of my bed and opened the suitcase, surprised to discover that it was already full—of books. What the hell? Then my eyes settled on a technical-writing textbook, and I remembered.
After my face healed, I’d gone back to school to pack up my stuff, say goodbye to Sammi, and to try to explain my decision to Andrew. But he wasn’t there. He’d withdrawn from school shortly after I left, with no explanation. Confused by his absence, I said a tearful goodbye to Sammi as I tossed my belongings into various suitcases and boxes, paying very little attention to what I took and what I left behind.
Now, staring down into the bag, I realized I’d never bothered to unpack.
With a sigh, I began pulling out books, lining them up on my shelf four at a time, in front of the row already in place. At the bottom of the suitcase, my hand hesitated over the last book. Walden, by Thoreau. It was a thin paperback edition—and it wasn’t mine. I hated the transcendentalists. I preferred to experience nature on four paws rather than read about it.
I probably packed one of Sammi’s books by mistake, I thought, pulling back the front cover. But there at the top, printed in his own neat, all-caps handwriting, was the name Andrew Wallace.
Why would I have Andrew’s copy of Walden? I’d given away my own copy as soon as I’d finished the survey course requiring it. I was flipping through the book, trying to decide what to do with it, when something stuck between two pages caught my eye. It was a flower. A dried, pressed flower. My best guess was that it was some kind of tropical bloom, maybe an orchid. It had beautiful, pale pink petals, a shade darker in the middle.
Huh. I hadn’t known Andrew liked tropical flowers. Maybe there were several things I hadn’t known about Andrew…
“What’s that?”
I slammed the book shut and whirled around, my heart hammering in my throat. Marc leaned against the door frame, duffel bag in hand.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” He shook his head, clucking his tongue in mock disappointment. “What is it about women and luggage? You don’t have to bring everything you own, and it shouldn’t take this long to throw some clothes into a bag. In fact, if it will save you any time, just leave the underwear out all together. Here, let me help.” He dropped his bag on the carpet and leaned down to pick up a bra I’d dropped. “Now, see what I mean? Y
ou’re just wasting time packing stuff like this.” He tossed the bra over his shoulder and shoved a T-shirt into the bag.
I laughed, Andrew’s flower already forgotten. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He smiled. “But you can’t take that either.” He plucked the thin volume from my hand, stacking it with the others on my shelf. “You won’t have time for reading. You won’t even have time for sleeping if I have my way.” He headed for the door, then turned back, as if something else had occurred to him. “Don’t forget your ID.”
I frowned, as his reminder led me to another thought. “Hey, Marc?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me why you really had my wallet that day in Mississippi.”
Marc blushed, just as he had the first time I’d asked, and I was intrigued.
“Come on,” I begged, brushing his lips with a kiss as I wrapped my arms around his waist. “Spit it out.”
He sighed, his face still red. “I took your wallet because your shirt wouldn’t fit in my pocket.”
“What?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?” he asked, and I nodded. “That first day you were gone, I couldn’t think straight. All I could do was yell and hit things.”
I nodded again, thinking of poor Jace.
“Later, I found your shirt on the floor in the hall. I carried it with me all day because it smelled like you. But when your dad put me in with the search party, I needed something smaller. I came in here, and your wallet was lying on the dresser. So I took it.” He looked up at me, searching my face for scorn or amusement, but there was none to find.
“Because it smelled like me?” I asked.
“Yeah. I know it’s stupid, but…”
“Yeah, it is stupid,” I said. His eyes widened and his jaw tightened, disappointment filling his face. “Thank you for being stupid for me.” I stood on my toes to kiss him, and when I pulled away I met his eyes, preparing to eat my words. “I love you, Marc. You’re a huge pain in my ass, but I love you.”
He smiled. “You said it.”
“I believe the proper response is ‘I love you, too.’”
He laughed, and shook me gently by the shoulders. “Yeah, but you already know that. And you said it.” He glanced around the empty room, then jumped up and ran into the hall, leaving me staring after him in wonder. “Where the hell is everybody?” he asked from somewhere to the left of my doorway. His footsteps came closer, and he passed by my room on his way to the other side of the house, searching for witnesses. “She finally says it, and there’s no one here to hear her.”
“I heard her,” Jace called from Ethan’s room, where he was recovering.
“Ah-ha!” Marc jumped back in front of the door with a thud, and I shook with laughter. “There’s a witness. You can’t deny it now. You’re caught.”
“All right.” I couldn’t control my grin. “You got me. I’m caught.” So long as you don’t say the M word, I thought. But there was no reason to warn him. Five lonely years had taught him a lesson.
He swaggered toward me and kissed me again. It was a good kiss, the kind where, in the movies, the girl always raises her foot. I didn’t do that, of course, because I wasn’t stupid in love. Not yet anyway. But it was a damn fine kiss.
“So what are you going to do with me, now that you’ve caught me?” I asked, looking up into his eyes.
He grinned. “Put you to work.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s it?”
He nodded. “Come on, woman! Duty calls.”
Yes, duty called, and apparently it had my home number. For the first time in my life, I was answering to someone other than myself, and for the most part, the workaday world sucked. Fortunately, my new responsibility came with one awesome perk: all the ass I could kick.
What self-respecting girl could say no to that?
ISBN: 9781426801693
STRAY
Copyright © 2007 by Rachel Vincent.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Rachel Vincent, Stray
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