“Ernie the pilot?” Dick asked.
“Wasps?” Jane added.
“I think Finn was careful not to tell me anything useful about them because this was his end game.”
“Don’t feel bad,” she told me. “Vampires can be devious to get what they want, and Finn is more devious than most.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I told her. “What are you going to do to Finn once you find him?”
“I will give him a severe scolding,” she deadpanned.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because you can interpret my tone of voice.” Jane patted my shoulder gently. “Are you OK staying with us for a few more days?”
I nodded.
Dick put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to have to give your official statement. Now, if Finn helped you, we need to know. I also need you to be completely honest about what led to the crash and how his actions affected what happened with the shifters. We need to know what we’re dealing with, OK?”
I nodded. “It will probably help me to talk about it anyway.”
“Well, I’m going to call in some favors.” Jane sighed, dialing her cell phone. “And it’s going to cost me a fortune in beef jerky.”
I looked to Dick as Jane spoke softly to someone on the other end of her phone line. “Am I supposed to understand what that means?”
“Jane’s calling our werewolf friends. They’ll be able to track Finn’s scent a lot easier than we can.”
“Werewolves are a thing?”
Dick ruffled my hair in an amused, big-brother fashion. “Yeah, werewolves are a thing.”
“That’s nice to know for sure. What about zombies? Zombies aren’t a thing, right?”
“Trust me, sweet cheeks, you don’t want to know.”
Jane proved to be a very understanding employer, insisting on hosting me in her home while I slept off the aftereffects of my “adventure.” I was fully prepared to get on a Greyhound to Atlanta after giving my (incredibly descriptive) official statement, but instead, she’d taken me to River Oaks, the palatial pre–Civil War house she shared with her husband, Gabriel, and put me up in one of the more human-friendly guest rooms just before dawn.
Riding in a car again was a weird experience, and the motion actually made me a little sick. The lights of town seemed too bright, too colorful. Every noise, including the music on the radio, seemed too loud. It was going to take me a while to get used to being a somewhat normal, city-dwelling person.
I hadn’t even realized how tired I was until I woke twelve hours later, my hair matted to my face and near-permanent pillow creases imprinted on my cheek. I’d passed out on top of the covers in my Council-issued yoga pants and T-shirt. At some point, Jane must have checked on me and thrown a quilt over me.
I rolled over in bed to see that Jane had installed a mini-fridge next to my nightstand. It was stocked with protein drinks and juice and several different types of yogurt. She’d seemed pretty worried about putting the weight I’d lost over the last few days back on my frame, but the Council doctor who’d examined me had forbidden me to eat anything more challenging than steamed veggies until the weekend, so my rendezvous with a ridiculously large steak would have to wait.
I sat up, wincing at the insane soreness in my muscles. I guess walking every waking minute combined with sleeping on the cold ground was finally catching up to me. I didn’t have much to accomplish tonight, other than realizing my plans for bloody, stabby revenge on Finn.
I’d called Rachel from Jane’s cell phone on the drive to the Hollow. I was struck speechless by the sound of my best friend’s voice, roughened by sleep and grief. “Hello?” she’d croaked. And when I didn’t answer, she repeated it. “I said, hello!”
“Rachel, it’s me.”
“You sick freaks think this is funny? How about I troll the obituaries looking for a nice painful death story in your family and call you to mock your pain. Assholes!”
“Wait, don’t hang up!” I cried. “Rachel Edmona Grady, I swear by Jai Courtney’s naked abs that I am alive and well and in a place called Cooter Holler, Kentucky.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
“Anna?”
“I promise you, it’s me.”
“Anna, if this isn’t you, I’m going to kill you!”
“Rach, that doesn’t make any sense, killing me because you’re so glad I’m alive.” My eyes welled up with tears. I felt sorry for joking around with Jane about pine-tree madness. Suddenly, everything I’d been through seemed so much more serious, hearing how it had affected my closest friend.
“Was it swearing on delicious Australian abdominals or the embarrassing middle name I swore never to use in vain that convinced you?” I asked, my voice quavering.
“The abs, honestly. You know how important Jai Courtney’s torso is to me.”
I snickered, the heavy weight of my guilt wriggling loose from my chest. “I’m sorry. The last couple of days must have really sucked for you.”
“I’m just so glad you’re OK! I saw the plane’s disappearance on the news, and I didn’t want to believe it. People kept calling and asking about you and the business and whether the projects on your calendar were going to be completed—which made me realize a good portion of our client list is made up of total jerks. Your mom has been over here, trying to get into your apartment and go through your paperwork. I had to show my power of attorney to the cops to keep her out. I always thought maybe you were sort of exaggerating about her, but she is mean, Anna. And crazy. That sweet little lady on the phone who’s so short of breath that she can’t manage much more than a whisper when she calls every week? She tried to body check me to bust through the door to your apartment. I have a bruise on my shoulder the size of a grapefruit.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “It’s OK. I don’t think anyone is ever really prepared for meeting my mother in person. And I appreciate you keeping her out, despite the obvious risk to your emotional and joint health.”
“You are going to call her, right? To tell her that you’re OK?”
I weighed the pros and cons of that in my head. Yes, my mother was in emotional distress, but if she thought I was dead, she wouldn’t call me nearly as often. “Eh.”
“You have to tell her that you’re alive, Anna.”
“Do I?”
“I will not fake a funeral for you.”
“Oh, sure, if you’re going to set limits on our friendship now.”
“That’s right. We finally found it. A faked funeral is my hard limit.”
But despite some very earnest promises to Rachel, I had not spoken to my mother. I knew one of Jane’s Council employees had called to let her know she had to cancel the big, bodyless funeral she had planned. And to my mind, that was almost the same thing.
True to every expectation I had of my mother, that employee filed for hazardous-duty pay almost immediately. I knew I would have to talk to her eventually. I needed to learn how to communicate with her in a way that didn’t result in me folding like a cheap lawn chair. Even if I didn’t end up having a normal relationship with her, I had to give her a chance to have a relationship with me in which I responded like an independent person with her own will.
In other words, I needed to learn to be a damn adult.
I looked out the window to find weak moonlight filtering through the glass, shining down on the gardens behind River Oaks. Some careful hand had planted a variety of night-blooming flowers there. And with Jane sitting on a bench, her husband’s head pillowed on her thigh while she read from a book, it was a perfectly lovely, albeit nocturnal, scene of domestic bliss.
An unexpected pressure squeezed at my chest, knowing that this was something I would never have. The vampire I’d believed could be mine had walked away. Whatever it was that we’d shared out in the woods was just that, in the woods. It didn’t survive the transition into the real world. He was a con artist, and I was a book nerd who was still
working through the remnants of agoraphobia. Maybe he hadn’t meant to hurt me in that way, but he had. He’d given me a taste of something special and then taken it away without a thought.
What was I going to do now? Try speed dating? Date nice, safe accountants I met through Internet matchmaking sites? Go to the movies and dinner and pretend it was exciting and fulfilling, when I knew what it was like to strip down to nothing under the full moon and attack a man like an animal? The very thought was depressing. I’d tasted freedom and adventure and horror. You couldn’t really go back to speed dating after that.
I’d outgrown my own damn life. And I had no idea what to do about it.
I shoved a brush through my tangled hair, slipped into a slouchy lavender sweater Jane had left thrown over the vanity chair, and padded down the stairs. In the kitchen, I found a glass of orange juice on the counter, condensation beading thick on the glass. I drained it in three long gulps and poured another from the pitcher in the fridge.
The garden was even more beautiful up close, the light of the moon casting a bluish glow over the trumpet-shaped flowers that bore its name. Small yellow daylilies stood in banks along the path to Jane’s bench, their faint yellow aroma blending with the heady scent of jasmine.
“Whoever did this sure knew what they were doing,” I muttered into my juice glass.
“I’ll tell Iris that you said so,” Jane called, tapping out a message on her cell phone and setting it on top of a book on her garden table. I noted the title, Mansfield Park, in faded gold lettering on the dyed canvas cover. It was definitely mid-nineteenth century, maybe one of the first mass-produced editions, but worth little beyond potential sentimental value. I smiled, even as the book-related gears seemed to whir in my head. It felt good to touch base with my bibliographical instincts, to know that they hadn’t been replaced by sunrise timetables and possum cookery.
“Iris?” I asked.
Jane’s husband, Gabriel, sat up, giving me a polite smile.
“My landscaper and one of my best friends in the vampire community. She insists on taking care of the gardens for me, otherwise I’ll just kill everything off,” Jane said. “As it is, she’s taken several of my desk plants into foster care for their own protection. How are you feeling?” she asked. “We’ve been keeping tabs on the Finn situation but didn’t want to wake you up until it was necessary. You needed the sleep.”
“Exhausted but OK,” I confessed. “And starving. I drank the juice in the fridge, but it’s like my jaws are aching to chew on something solid.”
“Well, you did sleep through the last twelve hours,” Jane told me. “Tess, one of my nonvampire friends, sent over some tummy-friendly heat-and-eat meals. Heavy on the carbs and protein to put some of the weight you’ve lost back on your bones.”
“I’ll go heat one of them up now,” Gabriel said. “How does bacon-infused macaroni and cheese sound to you, Anna?”
“Like I will cry if it’s not in my stomach very, very soon,” I told him. “But not a big portion, because the orange juice will probably fight for dominance in my belly, and that could get ugly.”
Gabriel glanced at Jane. “I can see now why you two get along so well.”
“Wear the gas mask!” Jane reminded him. Gabriel nodded, waving without looking back at her.
She sighed the contented sigh of a person fully satisfied by her life (unlife?), watching her husband walk back into the home they shared together.
She turned her head toward me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, shrugging, wincing at the soreness in my shoulder. “I don’t want to put you out. I already feel like I’m taking advantage being paid for this job.”
But Jane would hear none of my protests. “Hey, you showed determination and resourcefulness in the face of some pretty serious complications. I think I should give you a bonus.”
“That can’t possibly be true,” I said, laughing as the back door opened. I had never seen such a classically handsome man in all my life—sandy hair, tawny eyes, a wide, generous mouth made for sin. And he seemed to be built in the manner of a Greek statue, with a barrel chest, a narrow waist, and long legs clad in weathered jeans. And I couldn’t help but notice he had a healthy tan, so clearly not a vampire.
Dick and Gabriel ambled out of the house after him. Gabriel was wearing a gas mask around his neck to deliver my steaming plate of macaroni and cheese, something that seemed to tickle both of his companions. I guessed I could understand why, considering I could smell the cheesy, bacony goodness from yards away. Gabriel was polite about it, though, even setting a napkin across my lap before handing me the plate.
“Thank you,” I whispered, watching the fragrant steam rise from my plate.
“The happy expression on her face is worth suffering the smell,” Dick said.
“Well, before you tear into one of Tess’s legendary mac-and-cheese experiences, I should probably introduce myself,” the human said, his deep Delta accent thick as molasses and twice as sweet. “Hi, I’m Jed Trudeau, not a vampire, not a member of the Council, more of a good friend than a bro, and my girlfriend destroys most of the shirts Dick gives me.”
“My granddaughter doesn’t have much of a sense of humor about the shirts,” Dick said, shaking his head.
“Sorry, what?” And before I could question exactly what Dick meant about his granddaughter, I recalled the name Jane had mentioned at the inn. “Wait, are you Jed the shapeshifter?” I asked him. He nodded. “I’m so sorry I lost the book.”
“Not your fault,” he assured me. “You did more than anyone could ask of you. And from what Jane said, you damn near died in the attempt.”
“I appreciate that.”
The gentlemen took their seats around us, while I tried to prevent myself from inhaling the pasta so quickly I’d hurt myself.
“So we’ve had a pack of werewolves tracking Finn from the inn through the woods for most of the day,” Jane said. “They also happened to pick up on the shifter pack’s scents. The good news is that the scents went in two different directions. We’re hoping that means he hasn’t met up with them again. The better news is that they followed Finn’s scent here to the Hollow before they lost it. They’re searching that same area now. I’m waiting for their text so we can meet up with them.”
Just a few seconds after she said that, Jane’s phone beeped.
“And we need to meet them behind the Cellar. Now. Jed, we’ll need your big, manly truck.”
“Of course you will,” Jed scoffed.
“I think that hurts my feelings,” Gabriel muttered.
“Definitely hurts mine,” Dick told him.
I took one more huge bite of the macaroni and hopped to my feet, following the group to the F-350 parked in Jane’s driveway. Even with my long legs, the huge tires put the truck at such a height that Gabriel had to boost me up. Jed peeled out of the driveway, throwing me against the window. Dick helped me buckle my seatbelt while I flopped around in my seat. Jane gave Jed directions to the Cellar, which was relatively close to her house.
Dick grinned at me, with the same devil-may-care charm as Finn’s but without the underlying threat to my panties. “You’re going to love this,” he said. “You don’t have a problem with unnecessary nudity, do you?”
My head whipped toward him. “What?”
I suddenly felt very protective of my panties.
We drove past a cement-block building with a neon sign that blinked “The Cellar.” Jed spun around the mostly empty parking lot and parked behind the bar. And behind that bar? Trees. Lots of them.
“Aw, man.” I groaned. “More woods? I just got out of the woods.”
“Don’t worry, sweet cheeks,” Dick told me. “We’ll have you back in the house before midnight.”
Several large wolves in varying shades of brown and gray seemed to melt out of the tree line, standing in a semicircle in the glow of Jed’s headlights. Jane climbed out of the truck and approached a large gray female, who seemed to unfold
into a human shape in a flash of golden light. There stood the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen: beautiful peachy skin, a perfectly symmetrical face, long waves of auburn hair, and wide green eyes with an almost feline shape. And she was naked. Not just a little naked but super naked.
“You were not kidding about the nudity,” I whispered to Dick as we slid out of the truck.
“No, I was not.”
“Anna, these are some family friends, the McClains, and our good friend Jolene Lavelle. Jolene, this is Anna.” Jane waved for me to come closer.
I stayed where I was, which made Jed snicker behind his hand.
Gabriel pushed me gently toward Jane and Jolene. The gorgeous woman’s full, rosy lips parted, and out came the most aggressively nasal backwoods twang this side of Deliverance. “Hi there! Nice to meet ya!”
She extended her hand, but I couldn’t make eye contact, trying to look anywhere but at the woman’s naked body. Still not looking at her, I put my hand forward, hoping I wouldn’t make contact with anything personal. She took it in her strong grip and shook it hard. “Jane’s been such a mess these last few days. I’m glad you’re OK. And don’t worry, hon. We’ll track this guy down quicker than you can spit.”
Behind Jolene, the other wolves made an odd noise, a combination of whickering and huffing that would have made me very nervous if I were Finn.
“That would be great,” I said, still not making eye contact. “I don’t spit a lot, but I can appreciate the sentiment.”
“Am I makin’ you uncomfortable?”
“Decidedly.”
She snickered. “OK. And that’s about to get worse, because I’m going to sniff you.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I was shocked enough to look down and saw that everything else about Jolene was perfectly symmetrical, too—as if my self-esteem hadn’t already taken a beating tonight.
“Um, Jolene and her cousins need to refresh their scent sample to track Finn. And, uh, you kind of reek of him,” Dick said in what I imagined was supposed to be a delicate tone.
I winced, thinking back to our activities just before Jane showed up. I might as well have wallowed around in a big vat of cologne labeled “Finn.”