Fade (32 page)

I barely left my room the rest of the night. I didn’t want to move. My head hurt, my heart hurt, and I was beyond tired. The nightmares came, and they didn’t come alone this time. All night, the flickers of memory that had flooded me at Chelle’s weaved through my dreams like loose tapestry strings. I woke more than once with Dace’s name echoing in the dark around me.

The following evening, I stumbled downstairs, my head still aching and my eyes burning. I’d won one battle though. I hadn’t cried once since Dace walked away.

Dad sat in the kitchen when I stumbled in. “Hi, hon. Hungry?”

My stomach rebelled at the thought of food, but I nodded anyway.

I made it halfway to the table before the phone started ringing. I groaned as Dad turned to pick it up.

“Hello?” He listened for a minute. “She’s right here.” His eyes flickered in my direction, widening slightly.

I lay my head down on the table.

“Of course,” Dad said into the phone, surprised. “Uh-huh. Are you … ?” A sigh. “Alright. Yeah, that’s fine.”

I heard the phone beep before he placed it back on the base.

I waited for him to say something. For a long time though, he didn’t. I began to relax, thinking maybe it hadn’t been Dace on the phone after all. I lifted my head to find Dad staring at me.

“Please, don’t,” I begged when he opened his mouth. “I don’t want to know.”

He narrowed his eyes and blew out a breath between his teeth, but he nodded.

“Thanks,” I said, relief running through me.

“Sure,” he muttered and turned back to the food.

I hopped up to gather plates and utensils, feeling incredibly grateful that I had him. He didn’t push and didn’t interfere. He accepted.

“Need tea?” I asked.

“Juice,” he said and started whistling. The tune sounded less cheerful than usual.

I filled two glasses with apple juice, then deposited them on the table before going back for the plates and forks. We worked in silence as I set the table and he finished the stir-fry.

“That was Dace on the phone, wasn’t it?” I sighed, defeated, fiddling with the placement of my silverware.

Dad stopped stirring and nodded.

Of course it was Dace. “I suppose you have a message for me?”

“No,” he said, his expression wary. “He just wanted to check on you. He said he’d been calling … .” He trailed off with a shrug, not even mentioning how many times Dace had called the house since I returned yesterday.

Nineteen, including that one. He’d called my cell almost as many and hadn’t left a single message. That hurt more than it should.

I dropped back down into my seat, scowling down at my glass.

“Did you two have a fight or something?” Dad asked, his voice steady, disinterested almost.

“Something like that,” I mumbled, not sure how to classify what’d happened. Dace simply left. No argument. No explanation. Nothing.

“Ah.” Dad deposited the wok on the table.

I dished out a heaping helping for him and not so much for myself.

Dad frowned at the little bit on my plate, but didn’t comment.

“Um …” He cleared his throat as he picked up his fork. “He asked if he could stop by to talk to me this evening. I told him yes.”

“What?” My head shot up.

Dad held up his hands. “I didn’t know you were angry with him.”

Great. Just great. I glowered, viciously stabbing a piece of chicken with my fork.

“I’ll call and tell him not—”

“It’s fine,” I interrupted sharply. Too sharply. “Sorry,” I said when his fork wavered near his mouth.

He quirked a brow.

“Really, it’s fine.” I told him, more calmly than before. “I have some reading to do anyway.” We both knew that was a lie.

“If you’re sure,” he said, still hesitant.

“I’m sure,” I lied, feeling anything but. My problem though, not his. Besides, the house was big enough for both me and Dace for one evening. I would simply hide out until he left. No problem.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A
fter dinner I made my escape to the back porch, afghan and book in hand. I was prepared to camp out there for as long as necessary for Dace to come and go. Cowardly maybe, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see him. The back porch seemed as safe a place as any to accomplish that. Dace had no reason to come this way, and I happened to like the back porch.

Dad had decked it out with comfy chairs and an awesome sound system. He’d also had it enclosed with glass windows that could, when warmer, be thrown wide open. In the winter, a gas stove piped heat in. All in all, the room was quite comfy.

I curled up in one of the two plush recliners, draping the afghan around me then opening my book. Within moments, I found myself completely absorbed in Verne’s fictional account of poor Axel being separated from the professor and their guide in the heart of the earth. The book was my favorite. No matter how many times I read it—and I’d lost count long ago—the story sucked me in. Axel made such a reluctant and endearing hero. No false bravado marked his account, and he didn’t embellish to make himself seem braver, more charming, or amusing. He was an honest-to-goodness reluctant hero, and had no qualms about letting the reader know it.

Fifteen minutes after I started reading, the door creaked open. I froze in the midst of turning the page, my hand hovering in midair.

Dace stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind him.

I turned the page.

A board creaked as he stepped closer.

I lifted the book higher, pointedly ignoring him, and continued reading. Somehow, I managed to pull it off.

He sighed and sat in the other chair.

I kept reading.

I closed the book on the last page, wiping tears from my eyes.

“
Journey to the Center of the Earth
makes you cry.” The way he said it was neither question nor statement of fact, but more … a revelation.

“So?” I muttered, not about to tell him the book never made me cry before. The ending just seemed happier than I remembered. Axel returned to Grauben and made her his wife as he’d hoped to do all along. His constancy, at least, did not merit question.

“Are you very angry, then, with me?” Dace made it sound like two separate questions.

“Nope,” I lied, pulling the afghan up around my shoulders. “Anger would denote caring that you walked away with no explanation and left me there.”

He cringed, his shoulders hunching.

I wouldn’t feel sorry for hurting him. I wouldn’t.

“I haven’t looked in on your thoughts all day,” he said, staring straight ahead.

“Good for you,” I retorted, secretly relieved he hadn’t looked. Having him in my head would have made everything harder.

“I felt frantic all day, worrying if you’d made it home safely after sending Buka away yesterday, but I didn’t look. I didn’t know what I’d find if I did. The lost look on your face yesterday horrified me.
I
made you look that way,” he whispered.

I refused to be swayed by how distressed he sounded.

“Buka’s very angry with me, you know. She threatened to feed me to the shifters if I didn’t make you smile again.”

“Good for her,” I said, making a mental note to thank her for her loyalty.

“Kalei and the others offered to help her.” I heard a trace of a smile in his voice as he relayed that piece of news. And then he turned serious once more, still staring straight ahead, his voice pitched low. “I faced down an entire pack of very angry wolves to come here tonight. They didn’t want to let me.” He clenched his jaw, though his voice didn’t rise above that low, silky whisper. “I would have fought through them had they made me.”

“You better not.” I narrowed my eyes. “If you hurt Buka—”

“She shouldn’t have tried to stop me from coming to you,” he interrupted angrily, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have decided to come.” I refused to let his vehemence worm its way into my heart.

“I had to,” he said. “You belong to me.”

My stomach flip-flopped. My heart followed. I swallowed, trying to force the butterflies away.

He rose gracefully and paced toward me.

I leaned away from him as he hovered over me.

“There’s something I want you to see.” He held out one hand toward me, his eyes wary. “Will you come?”

I stared at his hand for a minute, worrying my lip between my teeth. There was no choice, I decided, not really. I placed my hand into his, cringing as even that little bit of contact erased some of the chill clinging to me since he’d left me out there alone yesterday. Touching him should have been illegal. I couldn’t think with his skin near mine, and I still wanted to be angry with him.

He gave me that half smile, his eyes softening, and pulled me to my feet. My afghan slithered toward the floor, but he leaned down and snagged it.

“You may need this,” he said and wrapped it around me.

I hesitated as he led me toward the door to the backyard, not sure if I should tell Dad I was going out or not.

“He knows,” Dace said, smiling when my eyes flew to his. “Just a guess. I didn’t look.”

Of course not.

He led me down the steps into the backyard. Night was falling, causing the air to cool quickly. Relief that Dace had wrapped me in the blanket rolled through me. It would be cold again soon.

I expected him to lead me around the house, but he didn’t. He started across the backyard.

“Where are we going?” My question sounded more breathy than I’d anticipated.

“Not far,” he promised, his voice no less gentle than before. “The pack is waiting ahead, through the trees.” He nodded toward the trees that started where the lawn ended.

The pack? I frowned, more intrigued than I had been moments before. His earlier comment, about the pack refusing to let him through, rose to the surface of my mind. I brushed it aside though, not sure I wanted to know what he’d meant.

The trees were thick where we entered, the tangle of branches causing shadows to gather faster than they had in the yard. I pulled the afghan more securely around my shoulders.

Within seconds, we broke through into a tiny clearing. The area appeared more natural than the pond: a simple break where trees had not grown versus an area cleared and then forgotten at some time in the past.

Ten pairs of yellow eyes turned in our direction.

My steps slowed.

Dace squeezed my hand.

That little pressure on my fingers gave me the strength to keep walking forward though my heart felt like it would beat out of my chest. I suddenly understood why Dace had requested Kalei bring as few to our first meeting as she could. Ten wolves watching me approach was an impressive sight.

Even though I knew that two, at least, wouldn’t harm me, the sight still caused a moment’s pause. Compared to some of the wolves standing there, like the one that
had
wanted to eat me, Buka could have been a puppy. On all fours, she reached me mid-thigh. Several of the others reached Dace mid-thigh, and he stood a solid foot taller than me.

He stopped a few feet from the pack, not exactly wary, but definitely alert. His eyes sought mine, questioning. He wanted to know if I was okay with them approaching, I think.

I nodded, raking my eyes over the wolves.

Kalei and Buka padded forward to greet us, the others ranging into a sort of semi-circle behind them. Kalei seemed as regal and formal as before. Watching her, I understood why she was in charge. She had a certain majesty about her that had me more in awe than I had been previously. Surprisingly, that same feeling came when my gaze met Buka’s.

With the pack ranging out behind her, she seemed more dangerous to me than she had even that first night. As I watched her, I knew I’d been wrong. I’d mistaken her wiry grace for a careless excitability. There was nothing careless about her at all. A subtle danger radiated from her. I couldn’t believe she was the same creature that’d hunkered joyously over my iPod yesterday. The others were as lovely and majestic in their own right, but I couldn’t escape the fact that Kalei led the pack, with Buka not far behind in the line of command.

The smallest member of the pack paced directly behind Buka and Kalei like a tiny honor guard. The one that had leapt at me weeks ago stood to his right. I shivered and pulled my gaze away from him.

An old, grizzled wolf stood at the end of the looping line. I couldn’t put my finger on what made me certain of his age, but he seemed almost ancient, as if the years he’d lived hung in the air around him.

The pack ranged in color from a gray so dark it was almost black to a shade so light it was almost white. Buka wasn’t the only one shot through with strands of white. The little honor guard behind her, seeming gangly next to her graceful lope, had that same highlighted coloring.

“He belongs to her,” I said, looking first at Buka and then Dace. “She has a baby?”

“Yes,” Dace said, his voice pitched low. “Fuki.”

The cub growled in recognition of his name.

“He’s very pretty,” I told Buka when she and Kalei halted in front of me.

Buka huffed.

“She says he’s very tiring too,” Dace translated, a smile in his voice.