Stormfront (Undertow Book 2) (19 page)

It turns out, Cape Co
d
is many things in the winter: quaint, picturesque, and loaded with traditions. I personally was a fan of the whole Christmas-trees-strapped-to-the-tops-of-sailboats thing, especially when a fat seagull would park his butt on top like a star. The owners weren’t so fond of the makeshift tree toppers though, especially when the birds decorated the boats with their own, homemade ornaments.

Man, I love nature.

But there was one other thing in abundance on Cape Cod in the winter that I could absolutely do without.

BOREDOM.

Boredom could be blamed for why I was experiencing a head-rush of excess blood flooding my brain as I lay upside down on our camelback couch, my fuzzy-socked feet in the air.  The new band that MJ had downloaded played through the speakers, and we had been listening to his playlist for the past couple hours. The music wasn’t cutting it, even upside down.

Pinning Raef against the wall and kissing him until I lacked oxygen would have been a perfect way to pass the time
, only he was with Christian.

Last Friday, Mark Howe had opened a Pandora’s box with the revelation about Ana’s mom. Since then, Christian had quickly returned, and Mae had been matched up with an unknown “secretary” who would travel with her, thou
gh I suspected the secretary might be packing a firearm or two along with her organizer.

Vigilance and security had become the order of the day, resulting in very little time alone with Raef, and thus very little kissing. Cape Cod sucks – SUCKS, in the winter.

I turned toward MJ, whose hair was standing on end as he too hung upside down, though he managed to defy gravity by munching on cheese puffs and swallowing without gagging. “Is Cape Cod always this super fun in December?” I asked with a sigh. My eyeballs felt like they could roll around loose inside my skull.

“Yup. Thrilling isn’t it?” he replied, wiping away a dusting of neon orange on the underside of his nose – a reminder that his snack was SO not organic.

“You know, we could have gone with Ana. Why’d you say ‘no’ anyway?” he asked as he drew his knees forward and flipped backward off the couch and onto the floor.

I let out a deep breath as I looked at him, his hair back to its floppy normalcy. “First of all, she was going to see some
slasher flick and I have had my fill of creepy killers, thanks very much. Plus, Kian was going and, let’s face it, those two have been dancing around each other since last week. I can’t tell what is going through their heads. I swear we should just rig a game of spin-the-bottle and jam the two of them in a closet.”

“So you passing on a movie has more to do with matchmaking than bumps-in-the-night?” asked MJ with a grin.

“Look . . . ” I replied, rolling off the couch with a less-than-graceful thud. I scooted up to sit in front of him, “I say they deserve a chance. Not to mention she actually let him tag along. When does that ever happen? Hmm . . . let me think. Oh yeah – NEVER.”

MJ started picking up bits and pieces of his snack from the oriental carpet, “Technically she only got to go because he insisted on tagging along.”

Okay – yeah I did know that, but I was still sure there was an ulterior motive in there as well. Like Ana, I too had a designated babysitter for the night and he was currently licking the tips of his fingers clean.  It was the first time, in a long time, that MJ and I got to hang out alone. With Kian and Ana on their anti-date, and Raef at Torrent Road, MJ was my designated keeper.

We were trying to go for “normal fun” such as TV, music, and junk food. Thus far
, “normal” was working, right down to being bored out of our minds. Monopoly might literally become an option if I wanted to keep my sanity. MJ seemed to sense my fraying mind. “We could go grab a hot chocolate at The Raven?” he propositioned.

I glanced at the clock. “Doesn’t the Chocolate Raven close at five in the off-season?” I asked, noting that it was well past closing time.

“Oh dang it – I think you’re right. Sorry, Eila.” He got to his feet, gathering up our munchies and drinks and headed for the kitchen. I could hear him moving around as he put things back.

I pulled at a wayward thread in the carpet. “I think I am going to need a library card soon,” I yelled so MJ could hear me. “I have a feeling that reading is going to become my one escape during the winter. I wish I had something to read now. Even a brain-candy magazine would do the trick!”

Suddenly the kitchen went quiet. “MJ? Did you hear m . . . AHHHH!” MJ bounded back into the room so suddenly that I toppled backward. “DON’T DO THAT!” I yelled, whacking him in the shin.

“I know what we are going to do tonight!” he proclaimed, eyes like saucers filled with excitement.

“Uh . . . okay. What are we doing?”

“Getting Elizabeth’s necklace!”

“Ha ha. No, seriously. What is your plan for tonight?”

“What are you? Deaf? We’re getting the necklace! We’ll just get into Nikki’s place and take back what is technically yours!”

Poor kid had slipped into a state of psychosis brought on by toxic snacks. “We are not breaking into her house,” I said laughing as I got to my purple feet. MJ’s juvenile ideas were sometimes just hilarious.

“Yes we are!” he argued, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me towards the stairs. “You want reading material? Let’s get some real reading material! Let’s get that damn necklace and unlock the diary!”
 

Holy crud, he was serious!

I tried to stop him from dragging me along, but my stupid fuzzy socks acted like little skis and I slid easily along the wood floor.

“MJ! Listen to me! Her place will have a security system to rival the White House. And we don’t even know her
addre . . .”

“No it doesn’t and she lives at 647
Bluestock Lane. Brown house with black shutters. Granite mailbox thingy,” he interrupted, giving me one last shove toward the stairs. “Now get your butt upstairs and change into something stealthy, will ya?”

“I’m NOT committing a felony. I’m NOT breaking into . . . wait, how do you know she doesn’t have a super security system? And for that matter, how do you know what her house looks like?” I questioned, suspicious as I hung onto the wooden railing.

He shuffled a bit on his feet as he rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes avoiding my glare. “Well, see . . . I sorta, well, kinda . . . already broke in once.”

“
What?
Are you FREAKIN’ INSANE?” I yelled.

“Chill
, alright? I heard that she made the youngest members of the squad do her chores when her folks weren’t home. So I did some digging and it turns out that she leaves a key under some stupid stone frog near the back door for her slaves. I tested the theory.” He took another step towards me and slowly began prying my fingers from the railing one by one. “We. Can. Get. In.”

This was such a bad idea. “I bet she’s home, bored like we are, although probably
not
planning a B&E on someone’s house.”  More likely, she was planning a way to torture me just for kicks.

MJ managed to pluck my last finger from the railing and gave me that damn, devilish grin. “Actually, Casa de Shea is empty right now. Nikki is stuck at the hospital’s charity event with her folks tonight. They should be gone until at least ten.”

He glanced at the hall clock, which defiantly proclaimed it was five minutes to eight. Stupid clock would side with a maniac. “We have plenty of time and we are only getting back what is rightfully yours in the first place. I mean, technically it isn’t stealing.”

I folded my arms and glared at him.

MJ sighed, “Okay – it may be a teensy-weensy bit like stealing, but we’ll get in and out and no one will be the wiser.”

I muttered a curse. I was torn between doing the sane thing, which was locking MJ and his idiot ideas in the laundry room, or reclaiming Elizabeth’s necklace. A necklace that could very well shed some light on who exactly
Rillin was and what the deal was with the atom-thing. Plus, I might finally be able to understand how to channel my ability. I needed answers, which might or might not be inside Elizabeth’s diary and there was only one way we would ever know – we needed the necklace.

I
moaned as I looked at MJ who waited, hopeful that I would join him in his psychotic plan. I muttered a few choice curses, “DON’T tell Raef or I will jam your furry butt in a zap-collar the next time you phase.”

MJ threw his hands in the air, victorious “YEAH! Let’s go be criminals!”

God help me.

Forty minutes later, I found myself sitting on the split vinyl seats of MJ’s decrepit Bronco. The night was cold, but with a snow-less ground, we could actually creep from our parking spot near the neighborhood florist to Nikki’s house about a quarter mile away.

Elizabeth and her neurotic ideas about locking her diary with a blasted necklace was going to lead me right into a rap sheet, I was certain. I silently fumed at her, knowing that she was probably watching us from some ethereal place and laughing at our stupidity.

I had dug around in my closet and drawers for MJ’s specified criminal clothing and turned up a black pair of yoga pants and a black sweatshirt with a logo of a favorite band on the back. My partner in crime was smoothing a green knit hat down over his ears as he looked around at the abandoned parking lot. Why, WHY did I listen to a kid that liked to shift into a black, stray dog with an endless appetite? “Just for the record, if we DO get caught I am totally throwing you under the bus once we are in police custody. I’m going to say that I was drugged and dragged along against my will.”

MJ smiled out the window, “Tsk
Tsk – that is completely not something a warrior would do.”

“A warrior wouldn’t be breaking into someone’s house!” I hissed. A car drove by and we both dove down in the wide bench seat, landing nose to nose with one another.

MJ tapped me on the forehead, “Have a little faith, will you? I’ve got this and I’m dragging you along so you can think like a chick. Show me where Nikki might stash the necklace in her room and whatnot.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Did you really just refer to me as poultry?”

“I’m going to refer to you as a full-on chicken if you don’t stop stressing and get with the program.”

I gla
nced at the digital clock MJ had taped to the dashboard. It blinked 8:42 in neon green. “A half hour. THAT’S IT! If we can’t locate that sucker in thirty minutes, we are gone. Got it?”

“Yes
, Ms. Bossy-Chicken-Pants. Jeez.”

We slowly sat up
, and when the road looked empty, slid from the car and darted into the hedge line, sticking to the shadows as we made our way towards Nikki’s McMansion. The neighborhood was built near a resident-only beach, and the air near the water was raw and cold.

The beach, barely visible at the end of the dark road, was supposedly a favorite place to go in the summer for the locals.
If I managed to not be incarcerated by June, I would like to visit myself. Of course, I was a friend to MJ Williams, and thus jail-time was a foregone conclusion, apparently.

We rounded the side of her huge, Tudor-styled home and dashed between a four-car garage and a storage shed. Finally we made our way to the back
door that MJ had gone through once before. “Grab the frog,” he whispered to me.

“What frog? I can’t see a damn thing.”

He pointed near my feet and I glanced down. Sure enough, the butt of a fat toad peeked out from under an evergreen bush. I bent down and tipped the frog over, officially starting my life as a criminal mastermind.

MJ was so getting a zap collar for Christmas.

Nikki’s key lay squished into the dirt slightly, but the silver glistened in the light from the backdoor. I swallowed, knowing there was no going back now, especially with MJ standing by the door waiting for me. I picked up the key and handed it to him while setting the over-weight amphibian back on his tummy.

MJ stuck the key in the lock and it easily turned. He did the same to the deadbolt and within seconds, we were standing in the
back-half of a designer kitchen.

“Wow,” I whispered, taking in the bright white cabinets, lime green bar stools, and iron chandelier. Marble counters, huge windows, and a stove that could make Rach
ael Ray envious, finished off the Shea’s huge kitchen. The cherry floors looked pristine even in the darkened house.

“We should take off our shoes,” I whispered to MJ. He gave me a ridiculous look, but then I pointed to the
foot-prints we had already left. He nodded, and we took off our shoes, and I quickly rubbed away any sign that we had stepped on the floor with my sleeve.

Carrying our Reeboks with us, we carefully made our way through Nikki’s stunning home. Soaring ceilings, beautiful moldings, and designer furniture was everywhere. My home, while stunning, had a very different feel than Nikki’s. We had antique furniture, built mostly by Raef, and it was nowhere near as spotless.

It was then that I realized the real difference between our two homes: my house was lived in, but Nikki’s was more like a museum. What was it like to live a life that was so flawless? MJ and I had just been hanging out casually at my home eating cheese puffs. Somehow I didn’t see that happening here on the cream-colored furniture and white rugs. Plus, my fuzzy socks would clash with the stark décor.