Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (24 page)

I stalked across the bar to join her. I caught part of her conversation as I reached her table.

“You can’t mean that. No one just casts it out. You can’t. No, really you cannot choose because there is no choice!” When she saw me, she gasped and snapped the phone closed. “Janie!”

“Hey.” The guilty look on her face struck me as odd, but I had too much on my mind to get sidetracked by her issues. “I had a few things I wanted to touch base with you about, and I wondered if you had a minute.” I sipped my Corona and waited.

Her nostrils flared as she tried to breathe evenly. “Vance is my soul mate. He’s the one Old Mother meant.”

My brows shot up and, for once, I did not even think about wrinkles, I swear. Darn it. Everyone was more honest than me.

“I saw the silver cord. We were drawn to each other. I have absolutely no clue how you fight it or why you would want to. Anyway, I wanted to tell you. I had no idea it would happen and it never happened before the other night. It was there all of the sudden. I wanted to say I am sorry because, well, not that I had anything to do with it, but you are my friend and I felt bad that it happened at all.” She waved her hand helplessly and looked near tears.

I took a long gulp of my beer. Darn it, she tried being a good friend.

“But I have to say I liked it.”

Or not
. Longer gulp. My eyes narrowed on the ceiling. I could almost feel them flash. I sensed the air shimmer behind me and pop.

“And I really don’t want to fight it. You must understand that.”

Chug. Chug
. Hands closed over my shoulders like steel bands. I ran out of beer and studied the bottle, which now only held a defeated slice of lime. I looked through the bottle at Julia’s warped image. Chance tried to back me up a step. I can’t say I cooperated.

“So, I’m really not sure what to do at this point.” She waved her arms again and gaped at me for the first time. She took in the empty bottle and Chance, who had not been there when she began talking.

The empty beer did not signal good news for Julia. This meant I had nothing to fill my mouth and shut me up. I opened my mouth.

Chance popped us out.

The pop and shift left me staring at a red curtain. I batted at it and he spun me in his arms. I smacked at him instead.

“Would you stop doing that?” I actually hit him for all I was worth, and he stood there staring at me with those green eyes glittering in a red glowing light, which made them almost brown. “I had something to say.”

“Not something you would have wanted to say. Your power spiked and you were about to lose your temper.”

“I was not. Where did you pop us? You are such a jerk! Would you stop?”

He spun me in the opposite direction and pinned me to the wall. A bench ran along the one wall beside me. Where were we? A red light, a bench, and a curtained wall…a closet?

Then his lips closed over mine and my brains oozed out my ears. His mouth, which I had not felt on mine practically all day, took my lips and challenged me not to respond. He stole all thought and the very breath from my body with that one embrace. After a moment, my bones melted, and I went limp in his arms. I clung to him with what strength I had left as if he were a raft in a sea of feelings.

“Huh.” Was all I could say when he finally let me come up for air. I felt like I had all the bone structure of a wet noodle. He had to be supporting all my weight because I certainly wasn’t.

He smirked. “You did not call me. I figured you would have needed to feed by now.”

“That wasn’t why you came.” I tried to rebuild my skeleton. I tried to remember that I did not like him and why.

His hands stroked up my body possessively. I buried my face in his neck to keep from making a sound.

He hiked me up. Like a living scarf he wrapped me around his body and pinned me firmly against the wall…I became the butterfly he was the pin.

Logically I wanted to resist. Physically, I wanted retaliation. I went with physically for the moment and figured we could get to logic in a sec. I licked along the shell of his ear and bit down. I wriggled in his arms, not to get away, but so he would feel me. I stroked my hands under his shirt and then caught his lips and made some demands of my own. His breath went ragged. I so rarely responded to him of my own volition, and never when not attached by the soul threads that bound and tied us. I could almost feel his confusion. When my hand slid between our bodies, he shuddered before I touched him.

“Why now?”

Why?
Because I was tired of him driving me to distraction and never getting even. I wanted him to ache with need. I wanted him to want me, and then pop out on him for once. I wanted to leave him burning like he usually left me. Mostly, Chance was the why. He had taunted me for weeks. All of this rolled through my head in a wave when my hand closed around him. Although my mind had seen and touched already, I crossed a physical barrier that had been taboo.

His breath hissed between his teeth. “Because it’s me?” He groaned and shifted his hips closer. “I’m not sure which feels better, your reasoning or your hand.”

I tightened my grip and he stiffened. His hands closed over my arms and he whispered my name. “God, not here, let me…I can’t think.” His eyes closed.

I could feel what he wanted, but he couldn’t organize his thoughts well enough to do it.

His face was tight, and his breathing grew uneven. “I want to take you somewhere. Alone. Somewhere safe. We’re in a strip club, Janie.”

He sounded desperate and my mind cleared. His confusion created the opposite effect he usually had on me, and probably not what he intended either. He had not popped us out of the strip club. My brain rattled through information. If we were in Peaches, we were probably in one of the lap dance rooms. I could still corner Julia. My eyes flashed, and I removed my hand and shoved at Chance.

He groaned. “You are killing me, woman.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I abandoned him, and he went to his knees.

I shoved past the curtain. On the upside, his brain had not cleared. I had left him, for once, muddled and needing.
Nice
. Now that I knew I could…

Once I found my bearings, I stormed back into the main bar from the lap dance hall. No one seemed to notice me, but then again, no one had seen us go back there. Which explained how I managed to sneak up on Julia and my vampire. I saw them, and I went still. I even stopped breathing.

I had entered the bar from behind them, past the T-shaped stage. I could clearly see Julia, whose red hair and beacon red outfit made her conspicuous against the dark woods of the bar. Vance did not stick out at all. He was the color of liquid night, and I had to admit, against his backdrop of black, Julia’s red stood out like blood and looked oddly lovely.

They talked in an obviously heated debate. He said something that from where I stood did not seem like she appreciated too awful much.

If Mia had cast a freeze spell on me, I would have not been more still. I watched. I felt myself becoming more predatory. Her hands reached to him, and his came up to block her. Their fingers linked instead. My eyes narrowed.

As I watched, Vance shook his dark head at Julia, and she said something back. When he answered her, he let go of her hands, even though he didn’t look happy to do it. I could almost see Julia thinking even from across the room. He had showed a weakness, and I waited to see what she did about it.

When he turned from her, I smiled.
Yeah! He is going to leave!
 

Instead, she caught his arm and wrapped her lovely, slender, naked arms around him.

His arms closed around her waist. It seemed almost automatic. His eyes closed.

Red glazed my vision. I must have crossed the bar, but I didn’t have any clear memory of doing it. I climbed onto the stage and picked up the microphone. Neither Julia or Vance noticed me. They were lost in their embrace.

I held one and only one thing in my range of vision, Vance and Julia standing there in the semi-darkness. His arms around her. His hair, like a big blanket of night come to life, falling against her ivory skin, mingling with her red curls.

I found the jukebox on the wall and somehow knew I could control it from the stage. I spun it and laughed quietly. And my man, the one holding another woman looked up and saw me for the first time.

Power crackled down my skin, and I could almost see it fall and sparkle on the stage.

He stepped toward me, and I heard the CD click into place as he disentangled himself from the woman and rushed the stage.

Too late
. No one could stop me

“Janie, I came to tell her I can’t see her. I came to tell her what I told you. Janie, can you hear me?”

I could hardly hear the words through the crimson that bled over my vision and mind. I did not believe him. He lied. Mia lied, too. They all did. All liars, each of them had their own agenda, and I played the fool falling for it all along. No more. Everyone wanted something. And it seemed all the more devious that they had used the guise of friendship and lies to hide their intentions. At least the so-called monsters like my mother and Chance flat out admitted what they wanted from me.

The liars had to pay. I could make them. And when the first notes rang through the bar from the speakers attached to the jukebox, Vance’s eyes widened. Julia tried to pry him away, to make him run. I wondered why he did not try, why he continued to come closer to me. He knew. I saw awareness in his eyes. Not that it would have helped him, but he did not even try to escape me.

He met my eyes and rushed to get to me before I parted my lips and began to sing along to Evanessance, “Call Me When You’re Sober.”

I had picked the song for him.

If you love me, come find me; make up your mind… Can’t keep believing, we're only deceiving ourselves and I'm sick of the lies and you're foolish.

Before I had finished that first verse, his eyes blurred. My power spread across the bar and encompassed the entire room. Although, he could not hear the words, I sang to him. I opened the fist and I began to feed. I fed off the vampires and the humans. I fed off Avery, and I fed off the witch. They all fed me, and I made them pay for the privilege.

I cradled the microphone as a precious thing and allowed my voice to ring through the speakers, even though I did not need them. The music poured over my skin and hummed through my pores as all the lovely light flowed into me.

I glanced away from my adoring lunch and saw Chance. He had come to stop me. I glared at him and shifted toward Vance. I could finish him. I could take him and Julia. Chance could not stop me.

I sang and Chance stole the microphone from me and it emitted an evil hissing screech of feedback.

“Enough.” His rough voice raked my conscious.

“No!” I punched his chest. “No!” The tears came hot and fast. I hated crying, and I had cried a lot since I met him.

“You don’t want to hurt anyone.” His eyes gentled, offering a better choice than to destroy a room full of people.

“Yes, I do.” Old Mother had warned me I would betray my friends. The tears fell harder as her prophesy came true. God, I really had become a monster. I crumbled then and he caught me. I stopped fighting for the microphone. My spell over the bar slowly shattered. I had lost my hold when he took the mike.

Vance groaned. Since I was on my knees on the stage, his confused and tortured gaze met me at eye level. He tried to get to me again. Maybe I still had him somehow captivated.

“Janie.” His voice was soft.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know if I was talking to him or Chance or Old Mother.

Chance wrapped his arms around me and I crumbled inside. I clung to him and energy began to shimmer down his skin.

“No!” Vance’s hoarse voice rang loud. “Don’t you take her away! She didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Let her go! I can help her!”

“You caused this.” Chance’s his voice bit cruel and cold, and he glared at Vance with the kind of distaste one usually reserves for cockroaches.

I shook my head no. But as my face remained pressed to Chance’s neck no one saw me. Vance had not caused this. I had. Me, the monster.

“You can’t take care of her, can’t help her control this, vampire. You’re nothing more than a dead man. Only I can help her now.”

I shook my head more fervently. I tugged at Chance.

He ignored me.

“I love her.” Vance yelled it, and the words echoed in the silent bar.

Julia gasped.

I glanced down at Vance, who I had tried my hardest to kill. He crawled toward us. I had weakened him, and fed from him, yet he claimed he loved me. I blinked and the tears fell without restraint. I reached a hand toward Vance, but Julia placed her hand at his back. If Vance loved me, why was he letting her touch him? Vance, quite simply, did not love me. I let the hand drop and remained silent.

Chance shoved to his feet, sweeping me up in the process. He glared at Vance like some avenging god from Greek mythos. His tousled red hair framed his angular face like a ring of flaming garnets, and his sneer so acidic it burned. “You cannot help her. If you loved her, you would leave her to me. I am the only one who can protect her, the only one who can teach her to live with this. Someone who loved her would want the best for her. By keeping us apart, you are killing her.”

But that wasn’t true. I loved Vance, too, and he certainly would not kill me. I opened my mouth to disagree, but Chance popped us out before I could debate.

After a moment in the silence of my room where Chance had taken us, I had to agree with popping out. Vance had Julia. Love did not have someone else in its arms. That remained the big flaw in Vance’s and my relationship. Too many people in it.

I curled tighter around Chance. “What have I done?”

“Shh.” He helped me out of my clothes with all the care of a brother. He put me in bed and curled around me, but didn’t try anything. He held me and kissed me and whispered to me. Little nothing comments, dumb things meant to soothe.

“I am a monster.”

“No.” His hand stroked my hair. “You are still Janie Smith. Nothing more or less than you were yesterday. One slip up does not end the world. The vampires will cover it up and what they don’t, I’ll fix.”