The Change (Unbounded) (23 page)

She held me back and eyed me critically. “Baby, your hair’s marvelous! Or will be once we even it out a bit. Didn’t I say you’d look great with a short cut? Nice dress. Too bad it was ruined. But that color is fabulous on you. Did you pick it out?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“I couldn’t. Not until I knew about you for sure. Tom didn’t even know.”

He was grinning. “All those questions I asked at your parents’ house? It wasn’t because of you. I started thinking about Justine and how she never changed in all these years. How sometimes she’d go days without eating and still beat me in a bicycle marathon. All the long business trips she’d take without telling me where she’d been. The final proof was when I remembered the death certificate listing her age as thirty-five. But Justine was thirty-five when she came to get me at the foster home all those years ago.”

“You were furious.” I shivered at the memory of the moment when I’d realized I didn’t know him as well as I thought.

“Because she’d lied to me.” He cast a dark look at his sister that she met with a bland smile. “So I went looking for her. I tried to break into the funeral home and was arrested by police. At the precinct I called a number she’d given me for emergencies. In the morning two guys showed up and got me out. I had a little argument with them”—he touched his bruised jaw—“but they finally took me to her.”

“Bet you wished you would have taken those self-defense classes I’ve always wanted you to take.” There was a hint of spitefulness in Justine’s tone. Those classes were the only continuing source of irritation between them, and the only time Tom had ever ignored one of her requests.

“The Emporium got you out of the hospital, didn’t they?” I asked Justine, remembering the tampering Stella had found.

Justine grimaced. “The morgue, you mean. They would have gotten you out, too, if we’d realized you were Unbounded.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Not until the restaurant.” She pulled off her scarf to expose a beautiful length of auburn hair. “It was all I could do not to throw my arms around you, but I didn’t want to spook you.”

Now I knew why the woman at the restaurant had taken such pains not to let me see her face, and why she’d seemed familiar, but I hadn’t been looking for my blond friend who was supposedly dead and buried.

“I was almost certain you would be Unbounded,” Justine continued, “but it’s really hard to tell in the beginning, even for people who know what to look for. They wanted proof. Because my face isn’t well known to our enemies, I was sent here to look after you until you Changed. Or until you didn’t. Like I said, it was hard to tell because you had nothing wrong with you.” She grinned. “Well, nothing a little fun couldn’t remedy. I kept waiting for you to ask me about changes you might be experiencing.”

So her choosing me from a crowd at the club wasn’t coincidence. Ava’s people had watched over me, and now it seemed Justine had been recruiting, too—for the other side.

I should have known,
I thought. According to Ava, I might have been Unbounded for a month or more, but my sensing ability either hadn’t kicked in, or Justine had carefully held her feelings in check because I’d believed she was exactly what she’d presented herself to be. Even if I’d felt something odd from her, like the incredible confidence of the Unbounded, I wouldn’t have known what it meant.

What else had she lied about? The numbness in my leg had spread to fill my entire body.

“I take it that getting hit by that van wasn’t part of the plan,” I said.

The first hint of a frown tugged at her lips. “I noticed a few Hunters following us earlier, but something like that crash isn’t usually their style. They must have done something to my car to cause it to explode when they hit us because the impact wasn’t that great. Plus, the police never found the van. That alone tells me it wasn’t really an accident.”

Great. More Hunters.

“What are Hunters?” Tom asked.

Justine’s gaze rested on her brother’s face. “Just a few nasty pests that pop up from time to time. They hunt Unbounded. Fortunately, they’re mortal and die rather easily.”

Tom blanched, and I thought the better of him for it. “We should be leaving,” he said. “We almost lost Erin to those Renegades, and this is going to be one of the first places they’ll look once they realize she’s gone.”

Justine nodded agreement. “I have a private plane scheduled for the morning, but it’s a bit of a drive to reach it, so as soon as Erin has a chance to clean up, we’ll be on our way.”

A private plane? I didn’t know her at all.

“Renegades won’t hurt me,” I said. “Their leader is one of my ancestors.”

“Forget that. Your place is with the Emporium.” Beneath Justine’s sweetness, there was a steel edge. “Darling, you know me. I’m your best friend. I wouldn’t lead you astray.”

After what I’d been through this past week, I knew I’d be a fool to believe anything she said. “You didn’t tell them about my family, did you?”

Her brows creased. “They weren’t supposed to be hurt. I know it looked bad, but everyone’s going to be okay. Your father’s stable now. I checked myself.”

“What about Lorrie?”

“What about her? She’s fine.”

For a brief instance, I felt an inconsistency in her words, but the feeling vanished so quickly, I wasn’t sure I could trust it.

Justine put a hand on each of us. “The important thing is that you and Tom are together again. Your father and the rest of the Triad will try to convince you to choose an Unbounded mate, but they’ll see reason enough if you insist. Our mother was Unbounded, so Tom carries the latent gene. With a little help from our genetics lab, your children will have a very good chance of being Unbounded. They will be the future leaders of the Emporium.”

“I want nothing to do with the Emporium after what they did to my family.” I backed away from her and Tom.

Justine arched a brow. “I told you, they’re fine. Everything is fine.” A sense of calm radiated from her, but I didn’t want to be calm. I knew what I’d seen.

“That’s enough, Justine. Leave her alone.” Tom stepped near me and put a hand on my back, a show of solidarity, a glimpse of the man I’d admired. Too late.

I shrugged off his hand. “Don’t touch me ever again.”

I was rewarded by a brief explosion of hurt before his face hardened.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Erin,” Justine said. “You and Tom were meant to be together.”

“No, we weren’t.”

“Tell her, Tom.”

He glared at her. “I love Erin, but she’ll make her own choice once she understands everything.”

Justine’s lips curled as she lifted her eyes to his. “Everything I do, I do for you. You had every bit as much a chance to be Unbounded as I had, but you didn’t Change, and now you need to do this right. For me.”

I realized Justine wasn’t simply disappointed that Tom was thirty-five and hadn’t Changed. She was furious. No wonder she’d leapt at the chance to throw me and Tom together. From our chance meeting to his subsequent pursuit of me, just how much of our relationship had she engineered?

Maybe the real question was why had she gone to such effort? Why would it matter to her if Tom and I had Unbounded children? I knew the Emporium wanted new Unbounded, but why was she so particularly interested in Tom succeeding with
me?
I tried to sense the answer, but nothing came past the dull aching in my head.

“Let me go,” I said. “Please, Justine.”

“Before you’ve met your father?” She gave me her wide-eyed, innocent stare. “Of course not.” She bent down to get the bags. “I’ve brought some clothes I picked up for you yesterday.”

Anger squashed the hurt. “I don’t care about meeting the monster you think is my father. I want to leave.”

“It really doesn’t matter what you want,” Justine said in the calm voice that grated on my nerves. “Like it or not, you are a member of the Emporium now. You’re better off accepting that because if you don’t you won’t stay alive very long.”

W
ITH POORLY HIDDEN IRRITATION
, I
WENT
through Justine’s shopping bags, finding a sleeveless, one-piece body suit made of black stretch material that promised comfort if not the familiarity of my usual jeans. No place for weapons, but I knew they weren’t about to give me any, so that hardly mattered. Justine tried to insist that I wear a red half blouse over the top, but I refused. Mostly because it made her angry.

I was no longer beholden to this woman who’d pretended to be my friend. I wasn’t aware of the politics involved in the Emporium hierarchy, but I wasn’t about to be anyone’s pawn. Not anymore. I would meet the man claiming to be my father, and I would pretend to go along with anything they threw my way. I’d watch and wait and learn, and when the moment was right, I’d leave, bringing down as many of them as I could before I vanished. What better way to fight the Emporium than from the inside?

Unwrapping my leg, I saw that the edges of the wound were healing rapidly, the bleeding long stopped. Inside would take more time, but as long as I didn’t reopen the wound, I wouldn’t need the bandage.

They let me shower, though Justine stayed in the bathroom with me, and another Unbounded was stationed outside the tiny window. As I rinsed the day’s grime from my body, I wondered what Justine’s ability was. Not combat, I didn’t think. She didn’t move with the same fluidity Ritter, or even the mortal Keene, had displayed. So what was her talent? Maybe she was like Laurence, fighting the family gene until she was ready to deal with it.

I told myself I needed to know her strength in order to arm myself, and that I didn’t really care about her as a person. I knew I was lying.

“So what’s your ability?” I asked as I wrapped myself in a towel and emerged from the shower.

Justine met my eyes in the mirror, wrinkling her small nose. “Ah, they told you about that.”

“I’m supposed to fight.”

“That’s natural—given who your father is.”

“Well?”

“I influence people. I’m an inspiration. A muse, you might say.”

“I don’t understand. How?”

She gave me a feline smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You will soon enough. For now, let’s get you fixed up.”

I recognized by the set of her jaw that the subject was closed. In a way it made sense that she could influence people—she certainly had Tom eating out of her hand, and I had once been every bit as blind. Even now I felt the silliest urge to please her.

She helped me get ready, combing my short hair and trimming the uneven parts, babbling all the time as though we were simply going on a shopping trip together.

I hated and loved her.

I was glad she wasn’t dead.

Furious knocking at the door stopped Justine’s prattle. “What is it?” she called. “I’m busy here.”

“The other prisoner has escaped. Keene wants us ready to go in five.”

She opened the door to reveal the Unbounded Edgel, his large nose jutting sharply from his ebony face. “My brother?” she demanded.

“Of course not. I meant the Unbounded prisoner.”

Her lips tightened. “I see.”

“How long has he been gone?” I asked.

When he didn’t respond to my question, Justine said, “Edgel, darling, she’s one of us. Give her an answer.”

His sternness melted before her, something I wouldn’t have thought possible of the big man. If he’d been a dog, he’d be rolling over on his back and asking for a rub. “We’re not sure. Could have been as long as half an hour.”

Justine tossed her head. “Keene’s incompetence is unacceptable. The Triad will hear about this.”

Was she trying to cover Cort’s involvement, or did she even know about him? I reached out to touch her, to see if I could sense something, but she spun out of the bathroom, leaving Edgel and me staring after her. Edgel with longing, and me with growing anger. She and Keene were taking me somewhere against my will, and that meant she was the enemy now.

Meanwhile, Cort would be wreaking havoc with Stella’s relatives or digging into the exchange with John Halden. Knowing this added to my determination to help the Renegades—despite the lies they’d told me. Or the truths they hadn’t. Same thing.

I started after Justine, but Edgel clamped down on me before I’d gone a step, his face once again expressionless, as though carved from black granite.

Combat,
I thought, but I doubted he was as fast as Ritter.

I was loaded into a fifteen-passenger van with Tom, Justine, Keene, three mortal guards, and the two Unbounded guards I’d seen earlier, including Edgel, who was driving. Tom sat next to me but didn’t try to talk, for which I was glad. He also didn’t appear to notice that Justine treated him as if he were nothing more than a cute pet she’d picked up for amusement. She treated the other mortals in the same way, except for Keene. She seemed to be strangely fascinated by the man, and demonstrated this by alternately insulting and flirting with him.

“Where are we going?” I asked no one in particular.

“Tulsa.” Justine’s eyes were bright, even from the front seat where she sat. “Ever been? There’s a really great hotel I stay at. Great night life, though you’d never guess it.”