Infinite Harmony (20 page)

“Munchkin…”

Her hair was hanging in long, loose curls down her back. One lone curl had defected to dangle over her shoulder. She gave it an almost violent toss back to where it was supposed to be as she said, “Go away.”

Her irritation only grew as a grin stretched across Joshua’s face. He knew he should try to smother it, but he was happy to have his easily-irritated, holier-than-you Angel back. She might be a pain in the ass, but she was his pain in the ass. He would be just as devastated if anything happened to her as her biological siblings, which was why he needed a minute alone with her.

“As I see it,” he said, “you’ve got two options, munchkin.”

“I swear to all that is holy, I will end you if you don’t stop calling me that.”

“You can either dance with me—”

“I’d rather die.”

“Or every single contact on your phone can see the picture I took of you last Christmas. You remember the one, right?”

Angel’s eyebrows dipped low over her blue eyes. “You are Satan.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault.” Joshua flipped through the pictures on his phone until he found the right one. “I’m not the one who decided you needed to try on your new bra over your pajamas. That was your mother. I’m just the guy who was smart enough to take a blackmail picture.” It had come in handy over the past few months. So far he’d been able to get out of the chores Mr. and Mrs. Donovan insisted on assigning everyone despite the fact they were all college graduates, and score an extra dessert at Easter.

“Fine,” she practically spat at him. “I’ll dance with you, but I want you to delete that picture.”

Joshua clicked on the trashcan icon and the image blipped away.

“And the back-ups?”

No one could ever accuse Angel Donovan of being stupid.

“Come on,” Joshua said, already walking toward the dance floor. “You promised me a dance.”

He wasn’t sure she was following until he found them a place and turned around. Angel was stiff and hesitant as he pulled her into his arms. It was going to take some time for her to be as comfortable with him as she once was, but Joshua didn’t doubt they would get back there.

The DJ was playing an old country song, so he led her in a two-step. She didn’t know the dance, but it only took her a few beats to catch on. By the chorus they were adding in spins.

“You’re a good dancer,” he told her with complete sincerity.

“And you’re stalling,” she said. “Go ahead. Spit it out.”

Joshua maneuvered them around Miriam and Hank. “Spit what out?”

“Whatever it is you drug me out here for.” Her eyes narrowed. “I know when you want something, so what is it? Am I getting lectured? Do you need a favor?”

Joshua scanned the crowd to see if anyone was obviously listening to his conversation. There was a good chance Scout was tuned in, but as far as he could tell, she was the only one.

“Has anyone from the other packs said or done anything in the past few days to make you uncomfortable?”

It wasn’t what she was expecting. “Uncomfortable? Like how?”

Joshua shrugged. “Like they were paying too much attention to you. Or being too nice. Or being mean at all. Anything that rubbed you the wrong way.”

“I’ve mostly talked to the people I know,” she said. “There was a guy with a British accent flirting with me earlier, but then Jase came along and growled at him. Like literally growled at him.” She shot her brother a look of death. “That made me uncomfortable.”

“British accent?” Joshua started running through everyone who was attending from one of the UK packs in his head. “Any chance it was Irish? Or Australian?”

Angel’s sigh was filled with more exasperation than someone twice her age. “His name is Henry, he’s from England, and before you get your panties in a bunch, he is only fourteen.” She jerked her chin toward the dessert table. “If you need a visual, he’s currently filling up cups with chocolate from the chocolate fountain and guzzling them. Cute, but kind of an idiot. I seriously doubt he’s behind the nefarious plot against me.”

Joshua stopped moving, which caused Angel to step on his foot.

“Who told you?” The vein on the left side of his head was pulsing with fury. He could feel it.

Angel rolled her eyes. “No one told me anything. No one
ever
tells me anything. But I’m not Henry, the pretty idiot. Maybe someday you guys will realize that and start being a bit more secretive with your big secrets, but until then, just assume I know everything going on, because I do.”

Joshua closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

She’d figured it out on her own. Of course she had. This was the girl who, once Scout finally decided Angel was able to handle knowing her sister and brother Changed into animals during the full moon, didn’t freak out or ask a million questions. She had simply said, “That’s old news,” and went back to watching the Disney Channel. Eventually, Jase cracked and admitted she’d seen him Change when she was only six years old. They never figured out how she knew about everyone else, but there was no doubt she knew way more than she should.

Still, Joshua was caught off-guard, and more than a little pissed.

“You took off the other night knowing you were a target?” Was it possible for a vein to burst through the skin?

Angel had the good sense to be abashed. “I had a hunch then, but it wasn’t until Charlie trailed me all the way to the main lodge and you freaked out that I knew for sure.” She tried to look up at him through her eyelashes, but it didn’t work out so well since they were practically the same height. “That was stupid. I’m sorry.”

The song changed over to the pop anthem of the summer, one of those songs you instantly hated but couldn’t get out of your head, and Joshua moved off the dance floor, giving all the half-tipsy party-goers plenty of room to flail about. Angel followed him to an empty table where he threw himself into one of the chairs.

“I’ve been really careful since then. I promise,” she said, sitting down next to him. “I make sure I can see one of you guys at all times, and I’ve kept my emergency button up on my phone.”

The emergency button was a program Joshua created for every member of the Alpha Pack after a fire almost claimed the life of Maggie a few years ago. It placed a red dot on the home screen of their phone. All they had to do was drag it across the screen and it would send out a 9-1-1 message to the entire Alpha Pack, complete with coordinates and an audio feed. Joshua had installed it on all the Donovans’ phones the first time he visited them after inventing it.

“The emergency button app you’re supposed to run
always
? That emergency button?”

Angel flashed an unimpeachable smile. “Yeah. That one.” At Joshua’s scowl her face dropped. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I don’t mean to stress you guys out. It’s not like I want to be kidnapped or murdered. It’s just… who has to worry about that, you know? I mean, I live in Timber, Kentucky. The biggest crime story of the past year was when they caught the VFW serving beer without a license.”

“Your sister is the Alpha Female—“

“I know that,” she said too loudly. “I know,” she repeated, at a normal volume. “I’ve known for years, but I didn’t understand until this week. I didn’t know what it really meant.” Joshua wasn’t sure Scout knew what it really meant until she’d been in the position for a year. “I’ve screwed up this week. I know I have. And I’m sorry. I really am.”

Joshua reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I know you are, munchkin.” She wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t mean it. Apologizing wasn’t one of Angel’s strong suits. “And I’m just as much to blame as you are. I should have trusted you enough to tell you there was a threat.”

“Yeah, like you had a choice,” Angel said, cutting her eyes at her sister.

“Hey, I’m the master of my own destiny. I don’t just blindly serve.”

At least, he used to be the master of his own destiny. When had that changed? He wanted to follow Angel’s lead and blame Scout, but that would’ve been unfair to Scout. She never demanded blind obedience from anyone, least of all Joshua. But somewhere along the way he’d stopped cutting his own path through life and following the trail the Alphas left in their wake because it had been the easy thing to do. Seeking out God’s will and looking to yourself to determine how to best carry out His divine plans is a task so difficult it’s close to impossible. Joining the Alpha Pack and letting other people make those calls had been a lifeline for Joshua after finding himself adrift without purpose once the old Shifter regime had been torn down, thus ending the mission he’d been on for the better part of six decades.

He still believed in the current Alpha Pack and planned on sticking around for as long as he had friends there, but he knew they no longer needed him around all the time to hold their hands as they navigated the politics of ruling the majority of the world’s supernaturals.

Ada might not need him either, but he needed her.

Unable to just sit there and let his chance at a life worth living continue to slip further and further away, Joshua pushed himself away from the table. “Stick close to your siblings,” he said to Angel, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve got to…”

“Be the master of your own destiny?”

Even with the most powerful Seers alive in the room, no one there saw as much and as clearly as Angel Donovan.

“Has anyone mentioned how precocious you are yet today?”

Angel sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes. “At least a dozen times.”

Joshua bit back a smile. Leave it to Angel to be annoyed at being told she was wise beyond her years.

“Go ahead,” she said, shooing him away with her hand. “Sweep her off her feet with all your nerdy charm.” She was trying to smile, but Joshua knew her well enough to see the lingering hurt and sadness in her eyes. He hesitated, trying to think of something to say to make it better, but she shook her head and flicked her fingers at him again. “Go.”

Filled with the happiness and excitement that comes with having a true purpose, Joshua leaned down, dropped a kiss on Angel’s cheek, and then went in search of his destiny.

Ada studied the image on her computer, trying to imagine what it would be like in real life.

Plaid flannel sheets on the bed. A Woodstock poster on the wall. Books stacked on the desk. And in the middle of it all, Ada Jessup, college student and dorm resident.

Living on-campus had been on her list for a long time, but she’d only thought about it in the hypothetical, wouldn’t-it-be-nice way. Tonight, as fireworks went off over the water in celebration of Scout and Liam’s wedding, she was thinking about it as a real possibility for the first time in her life.

She couldn’t remember making the decision to attend the local university part-time and live at home with her parents. Honestly, she wasn’t sure a decision had been made. She simply understood it was what her parents expected, and so she hadn’t applied anywhere else. It didn’t feel like a sacrifice at the time, it was where Marsden was going to school after all, but now…

Now everything felt like a sacrifice.

Hours before she’d been willing to make that sacrifice, to keep the peace with her parents at the expense of her own happiness, but as she sat and talked Vacation Bible School decorations and activities with her mother, she realized she couldn’t do it forever. She couldn’t keep pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Well, she could. The problem wasn’t in the pretending, but in the loss of her soul. She could feel it dying, piece by piece, as she discussed whether shields with a dragon emblem on them sent the wrong message to children about the world God created.

She’d agonized over it for the remainder of the afternoon. She wanted to live her life on her terms, but she didn’t want to crush her parents in the process. There didn’t seem to be a solution until she’d shown up at work to relieve Martin, who was wearing the Harvard baseball cap his uncle gave him as a Boston souvenir. Normally when he wore it, which was at least once a week, Ada tried to figure out if Martin’s uncle was blindly optimistic or ironic, but today her thoughts took a completely different route.

As soon as she finished her tasks for the evening, she started researching colleges. She was currently looking at the floor plan for a girls’ dorm at the University of Louisville. The picture made it seem spacious and nice.

She flipped over to the University of Kentucky’s site as the back door, the one that required an employee badge to unlock, snicked open. She was the only staff member on duty for the night with the exception of Jo, who was overseeing things down at the banquet hall. Since Jo had called in just a few minutes before to complain about the catering staff, she didn’t think it was her. Ada could only think of one other person who would be opening that door, and he wasn’t the kind to let a computerized lock keep him out of somewhere he wanted to be.

“I thought we agreed last night was our goodbye,” she said with no censure in her voice. In all honesty, she was glad he hadn’t listened to her. She wanted to see him one more time before he left, and maybe talk to him about her plans to go away to college. See if he had any suggestions, like maybe a school close to where he lived.

She swirled her chair around and then stopped so quickly she nearly toppled out of it.

“Dorian.” She hadn’t seen him since the whole party/shooting disaster. He was already thinner and more ragged. His eyes were unfocused and glazed. His left eyelid was visibly twitching, and his fingers were drumming against his thigh.

Rehab was obviously not working out.

“Your dad isn’t here,” she said rather stupidly. Mr. Rudolph was never there past four in the afternoon. Everyone knew it, especially his son. “Is there something I can help you with? Like I could maybe, I don’t know, call someone to pick you up or something?”
Anything to get you out of here and away from me since your strung-out ferret routine is freaking me out?

Dorian jerked forward, moving further into the office. “You would like that, wouldn’t you, bitch? You would just love to call your cop friends and have me hauled off to jail again, wouldn’t you?”

“No!” Although that was starting to sound like a really good plan. “I just thought maybe one of your friends might want to swing by and pick you up since…”

Since you’re obviously tweaked out of your mind.

Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best thing to say to a high person.

“…you don’t look like you feel good?” Ada finished, the words sounding more like a question than an observation. “Do you want a Sprite or something? I could—“ She was starting to stand when Dorian pulled a gun out from the waistband of his jeans and pointed it at her head.

“Sit the fuck back down!”

Spittle flew out of his mouth, the droplets catching the light. For some reason, Ada was transfixed by them. She couldn’t look away. And she couldn’t sit. Or finish standing. She was stuck somewhere in the middle. Nothing felt real. She was aware of individual things - the cold air pouring out of the air conditioning vent, the appetite-suppressing smell of an old Lean Cuisine meal, and the perfectly round circle in the middle of the gun’s barrel - but the big picture had fallen away. She could have been standing in the middle of her high school gymnasium for all she knew.

“You ruined my life, you stupid bitch,” Dorian said, accenting each word with a jerk of the gun. “I have the biggest drug dealer in three states after my ass because of you. They’re going to kill me. Do you understand that? I’m going to die because you’re such a damn goodie-goodie-busybody you can’t just leave people the hell alone.”

He’d been the one to send the texts, she realized. It made sense now. Well, as much sense as being held at gunpoint by a drugged-up crazy person could. And here she’d been thinking they had been from someone who wanted to harass her for her less-than-godly ways. Instead, they were from a guy who thought she was
too
godly.

She might have been more inclined to appreciate the irony if there wasn’t a gun pointed at her head.

What was she going to do? It wasn’t like she knew any disarm-a-crackhead ninja moves, and her phone was sitting on the other side of the desk, too far out of reach. Not that she could do anything if she had it. Dorian could fire a bullet a lot faster than she could dial 9-1-1.

“Listen, Dorian, we both know you’re not going to shoot me, so why don—“

She didn’t see him fire the gun. She wasn’t even sure if she heard it or felt it. She barely registered her head slamming against the edge of the desk before crashing onto the floor. Her last thought before everything went black was she hoped Kinsey would remember to mark “Die from something other than CF” off of her list.