“Not even slightly,” Roman returned, his tone a little harder. “But I am hoping that this will at least begin to make you feel better.” He leaned back, waved his hand once over the table top in front of him, and a short burst of white light filled the cottage.
Evie was growing used to the light blast. It was a transitional thing for magic. It seemed to accompany the comings and goings of conjured items or transporting people. It was just something about the way magical physics worked.
When it passed, a new computer rested in front of Roman. It was by its shape obviously a Mac, but instead of the boring silver that delineated every single Macintosh computer in existence, this one was metal flake royal purple.
Evie had always wanted a Mac. This one was absolutely breathtaking – and in her favorite color.
“Wow,” she whispered. She reached for it, but then hesitated, remembering her fudge-smeared fingers. She looked down at them, but before she could worry about finding a towel or napkin, Roman must have used more of his wonderful magic because her hands were clean and the food had been cleared, leaving only the steaming pots of tea and the empty mugs.
Evie grinned. “May I?” she asked, reaching for the Mac once more, this time tentatively.
“From now on, it will be everyone else who has to ask,” Roman said. “Because this computer is yours.” He picked it up and held it out to her. “Seventeen inches, as I knew you wouldn’t want it any larger. But I didn’t want to sacrifice the DVD player; you’ve got an obsession with the obsessive compulsive detective.”
Evie took it from him, at once impressed with how light it was despite its size. She was still grinning. “You mean Monk,” she said, laughing softly. She had the entire collection of DVD’s and used to pop one of them in when she felt a panic attack coming on. Since becoming a vampire, she’d been spared that dreaded, unforgiving terror. But she remembered them well enough and always would. Monk had always helped. Now she just watched him because he was like a member of her family.
She opened the computer and ogled it at every angle. She placed her fingertips over the keys, gave it a pretend type, and felt her grin expand. “It’s perfect. It definitely begins to make me feel better.”
Roman chuckled. Evie looked up at him, suddenly held stock still in his sway. He was beyond handsome when he smiled like that. He may have been able to hide his fangs, but the predator in him was patently visible. “Good,” said Roman. “Perhaps this will help as well.”
This time, he slid his hand under his suit coat and pulled something out of its inner pocket. Gold glinted in his hand as he opened his palm and held the gift out for her.
Evie stared at it. She felt her mouth drop open, her jaw heavy with awe. Her eyes felt like saucers in her face. After several breathless beats, she whispered, “It’s stunning.”
The pendant was old, that much was obvious. The gold had taken on a beautiful weathered patina, lending an ancient appearance to the medallion. It was round, bordered in thick gold, and unlike any piece of jewelry Evie had ever seen.
A deep blue lapis night sky was speckled with diamond stars and a gold and diamond crescent moon. A guardian bat rested at the top of the medallion, and two smaller bats decorated the bottom. Intricate ribbons of gold were wrapped around the medallion like wisps of clouds.
“I had planned to give it to Ophelia on our wedding day,” Roman told her softly. He caught her gaze when she looked up this time, and he held it meaningfully.
Visions flashed before Evie’s mind: the explosion, the note, the insipid mental voice of Ophelia as she spied on her and Roman, the destroyed computer. And a thrill rushed through her as she took the medallion from Roman’s hands and slipped it over her head. It felt good there, like it had been meant for her all along.
“Oh, I’m all better now,” she told Roman matter-of-factly.
Roman grinned, his dark, fathomless eyes reflecting an inner mischief. “I knew you would say that.”
Chapter Twelve
Chloe was being watched.
It wasn’t necessarily a rare sensation; she was attractive. But standing before the gates of Disneyland, surrounded by families and smiling children, the weight of this particular attention felt out of place.
Also, by the heaviness in her gut, she could tell she was being watched by someone or something supernatural. Inhuman.
Chloe did a quick turn in place, her sea foam colored eyes scanning her surroundings. A stray breeze brushed through her long blonde locks. She peered long and hard, searching the shadows beneath trees and beside buses. But she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
It was a warm day, but she experienced a sudden chill and hugged herself harder.
This is stupid, she thought. Of course Jason was going to be watching over her somehow. The situation with the 13 Kings was becoming dire. Safe houses were being blown up and what not. Jason had all but told her that something was coming for her too. He seemed to think she was integral to some bigger and badder plan.
So she wasn’t alone here right now. Not by a long shot.
As she stood on the green tarmac considering her situation, people bustled past her toward the various gate queues where ticket checkers waited to ID guests. Chloe had already purchased her ticket and gone through the bag-check line. Her leather backpack rested comfortably against her back, carrying her license, a debit card, cash, water, lip balm, a pack of sugar free gum, a few protein bars, and some Excedrin just in case Anaheim became too much for her to handle and she ended up with a migraine.
So far, she was okay. Sticking to a hotel right across from Disneyland and taking a shuttle to the park had helped. The general consensus of emotion here was one of excitement. The kids were the most pleasant to be around. They were like the difference between reading a colorfully illustrated children’s book and a law dictionary. They were fee simple absolute versus absolutely simple. They were fun. They were wide open. They were easy to understand, and they made Chloe happy.
I can do this, she told herself, allowing the slightest hint of a smile to curve her lips.
She got into the shortest line she could find and pulled her baseball cap down lower over her eyes to shield them from the sun. It also afforded her a little more privacy, which always helped.
The feeling of being watched lingered, but she shoved it to the back of her mind and concentrated on the task at hand. Within seven or eight minutes, she had drawn near enough to the gate to see a sign proclaiming park hours and current closed attractions. The Haunted House was shut down for repairs.
Chloe felt a pang of disappointment. She had to be so careful about what she exposed herself to; it was fun and refreshing to experience “fake” fear. She hated blood and guts and gore and never would have chanced any of the disgusting creations of modern-day “haunted houses” at Halloween. They were nauseating more than anything and not at all worth her time.
However, she knew that Disney would never allow such atrocities in their parks and that they had the right idea about what constituted the perfect amount of laid back, gothic spookiness.
“Damn,” she whispered, lamenting the closed attraction.
A few minutes later, Chloe was presenting her ticket card and ID to the man at the gate. His name was Ralph, and his ID tag said that he was from Laredo, Texas. Laugh lines had been carved into his face years ago, but clear blue eyes smiled up at her as he waved her on through.
She’d just pushed past the turn-style when she felt a spike of hard frustration from behind her. She stopped and turned to find an old woman attempting to get through the turn-style. Her walking cane had gotten stuck on one of the rungs. Chloe rushed to help her and was met with the usual ambiguous emotional response of half gratitude and half embarrassment. It was par for the course.
Chloe helped the old woman to the guest/information station just inside the gates and saw her situated with a wheelchair before heading once more on her own toward the center of the bustling, musical, colorful park.
*****
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Imani Zareb watched as the blonde woman turned a slow circle, her green-gray eyes searching the faces around her, no doubt wondering if they all belonged to people who actually were what they appeared to be. The woman’s name was Chloe Septeran, and Imani and her friends had been charged with watching over her.
Imani and a few fellow witches had cast shielding spells on themselves and the werewolves with them. There were around a dozen stationed by the front gates, and another dozen or so spread throughout the park and along its outer perimeters. All eyes that could see Chloe were on Chloe. She was Jason Alberich’s queen.
Poor girl, Imani thought.
Imani had very mixed feelings about Jason Alberich. Hell, who didn’t? The unfairly handsome and charismatic man was a warlock, for one thing. As a good witch and a herald of her own coven, Imani was predisposed to be untrusting toward warlocks. They used a darker magic – and in turn, that magic used them.
But that wasn’t the crux of the reason behind Imani’s negative emotions when it came to Alberich. It was the fact that Jason Alberich had not too long ago actually stalked – and kidnapped – Imani’s best friend, Dannai Caige. He’d caused a whole host of ugly problems with his obsession of Danny, not the least of which was resurrecting one of the worst men any paranormal creature had ever had the misfortune of running into: Gabriel Phelan.
Phelan, she thought grimly. That was one bad, bad man. They’d had to kill him twice. Hopefully the second time was the charm.
Admittedly, Alberich seemed to have come around since then. He was no longer obsessed with Danny and had more or less accepted her marriage to Lucas, her werewolf mate. He’d also gone on to become the Warlock King.
And now he’d found his queen.
Imani continued to watch Chloe as the Akyri got past the checkpoint and faced the Disneyland archways that welcomed newcomers to the park. She contemplated them for a moment, chewing on her lip. As she stood there, an elderly woman with visibly arthritic joints fumbled with the turnstile she’d been attempting to get through.
Chloe hurried to assist the woman. Then she helped walk the woman toward the customer service station just inside the gates, probably because they rented wheel chairs.
Imani shook her head. “Oh, she’s too good for him.”
“You can’t have her, baby doll. Jason would never share.”
Imani looked up at the large black man standing beside her. He shot her an all-white, all-wolf grin, and an arc of desire speared through her middle, warm and powerful. She would never get used to the way Jesse Graves looked at her. The man was all predator, more monster than he would ever let on under that deceptively genteel exterior. He was the werewolf council Overseer, and it showed.
“Jason wouldn’t?” she questioned with a sly smile of her own. “Or you wouldn’t?”
“Both.”
Imani turned back around with a bit of a smirk and resumed spying on the new young queen.
Not so young, she corrected herself mentally. According to Lily, who seemed to know about everything these days, Chloe Septeran was very, very old. “She doesn’t look more than twenty-two.”
“Add a bunch of zeroes to that,” mumbled Jesse.
“What the hell is she doing here, anyway? The world’s falling apart and the girl’s decided to go to Disneyland. Why?”
“It’s a mystery,” said Jesse, whose amber gold eyes skirted their surroundings like a hawk’s. “Jason didn’t say, and Lily had no clue.”
“Ride the Haunted House ride with me.”
Jesse blinked and looked down at her. Imani put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Let’s follow the Akyri in. What better way to find out what’s going on?”
Jesse didn’t reply.
“Brownie points,” Imani hinted.
Jesse’s pupils expanded, making her feel very much like prey. “Exactly how many brownie points are we talking about?”
“A whole night’s worth.”
Jesse took her hand in his and led them to the park’s front gates.
Chapter Thirteen
She had to admit that despite the “happiness” of Disney, Chloe was getting tired. She’d already eaten two of her protein bars, a Churro from one of the vendors, a bag of cotton candy from another vender, and downed three bottles of water, but nothing seemed to help. It was more than a lack of food energy; it was a deep down kind of exhaustion, one she’d always had but that had felt more thorough since her initial run-in with Jason.
She’d been on the Alice in Wonderland ride, the Nemo submarine ride, the Snow White ride, Star Tours, and the Indiana Jones Ride, which was awesome. She’d been on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blaster, the Pinocchio ride, and Splash Mountain – and was finally dry again. She’d been on Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan’s Flight, she’d gone all through Toon Town, and she’d driven a buggy on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – her personal favorite because it literally took its passengers through a representation of Hell.
She’d even done the Soarin’ ride across the way in Disneyland’s California Adventure. She had been considering riding the Tower of Terror when a shaking woman got off the ride with her husband and daughter and had a sort of breakdown. Chloe had been able to feel her emotions as if they were jagged radio waves actually slicing into her nerve endings. From what she could make out of the woman’s almost hysterical speech, the ride had dropped them not once, but three or four times, and renewed the woman’s deep-down fear of flying. After all, what was a fear of flying really, but a fear of falling? The woman was terrified, traumatized, and nauseated. So Chloe re-thought that attraction and left it alone.
Now she smiled at the female attendant and took her place on the bench in what was a fairly empty boat in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was the only one she could think of that she hadn’t yet tried. It was early on a Tuesday night and most of the patrons had begun clearing out of the park. Chloe had all but given up on finding the Akyri she’d heard about fifty years ago. Maybe she was remembering it wrong. Maybe it had been a dream.
Or maybe, if the guy did exist, he’d moved on to Disneyworld.
Oh crap, she thought. That was something that actually hadn’t occurred to her before.
She sighed and sat back against the hard seat behind her, trying to relax as the boat gently dislodged itself from the launch pad and floated quietly along the beginning of the ride.
The tunnel the docking station was under opened up, and Chloe found herself meandering alongside a “Frontier Land” restaurant on one side and a representation of a “Blue Bayou” on the other. A backdrop of swamp and twilight framed a few thoroughly detailed derelict houseboats and a shack on stilts. A wax man on the front porch of the shack rocked back and forth while a banjo plucked lazily in the background.
As the boat passed this, the tone changed and Chloe could make out a voice warning, “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” along with a few other things she couldn’t quite understand. The boat veered to the right and sped up slightly, turning a corner.
New décor greeted Chloe. A cave entrance sported a pair of pinned flags with a skull and crossbones above it. It was the skull that was issuing the warnings, its jaw hinging magically as it spoke, its lung-less voice carrying with creepy clarity.
Despite her exhaustion, Chloe felt a renewed excitement. She sat up a little.
Darkness engulfed the boat next, and the sound of rushing water and ominous music overlapped the waning warnings. Now Chloe leaned forward and considered holding on to the handrail. But before she could decide to do so, the boat dropped.
Chloe squealed as the ride dipped like a wet rollercoaster, taking her stomach. It lasted just long enough to make her wonder whether it would continue when it pulled up again and leveled out. Perfect.
She laughed, despite herself.
“I always love that part too,” came an unfamiliar, rather scratchy voice from behind her.
Chloe turned to deliver a friendly agreement to what she assumed would be another Disneyland guest when she
found herself staring into eyes that were like her own.
They weren’t physically like her own, of course. They looked nothing like hers, in fact. They were deep black rather than green-blue, and they were framed by layers of wrinkles. But they were like hers in the one way that truly counted.
He was an Akyri.
Contrary to everything she knew about Akyri and aging, the stranger looked to be about ninety years old, with long gray hair that was braided at the temples and a black satin top hat. He was clothed in what appeared to be a 1940’s Zoot Suit, but also wore about two-dozen love bead necklaces from the 60’s around his neck, which fell to varying lengths over his chest. In his left hand was a bag of popcorn, its red and white stripes robbed of their color clarity by the ride’s dark lighting. He smiled at her, revealing slightly crooked but healthy white teeth, and popped a kernel of corn into his mouth.
Chloe was contemplating her discovery and taking in his bizarre mode of dress and his age when the man leaned forward. “Surprise,” he said.
Chloe froze. Then her eyes widened as she registered the new and now familiar sound of rushing water.
She spun back around toward the front of the boat as it plummeted out from under her a second time. But just as she was leaning forward to grasp the rail, positive that this second drop would be far worse than its predecessor, the water again leveled out, proving her wrong.
Laughter from behind her was friendly in a slightly insane kind of way. She turned to look at the old man as the scenery around them changed once more, revealing a ship wrecked at sea, caves filled with treasures, and animated skeletons that were apparently the remains of pirates who’d stabbed one another in the backs.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’m who?” the old man countered distractedly, his dark eyes twinkling as he took in the special effects. He chuckled at something he thought was funny and pointed. “Oh would you look at that, a hidden Mickey!” Then he tossed another palm-full of popcorn into his mouth and crunched away.