The Trouble with Fate (20 page)

“There’s always a first time.” He rolled his window back up. “Do you have some money
on you? Enough to get out of town with?” When I nodded, he continued. “It’s probably
not worth telling you this again, but the smartest thing would be to put the car into
gear right now and keep going.” His tone was flat, carefully washed of any expression.
“Don’t call your friend.
Forget him
. Keep moving, that’s the key for the first few months.”

“I won’t be here when you come back.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. Are you still going to call your boyfriend?” His cold
eyes measured mine. When he read the answer there, he tossed his head, the way men
do, with their chins, not their hair. “Never let me stand in the way of true love.
Go ahead. Call Billy-Bob. Tell him to run.” He leaned back to dig into his pocket
and came out with a handful of change. “Here.” He put a couple of coins into my hand.
“Take my fifty cents.”

I stared at the coins. They were dull, old, and had probably crossed too many hands
to count. Trowbridge escorted me to the pay phone, and waited until I lifted the receiver
off its cradle. He watched me, expressionless, as I pushed the coins into the slot.
When the change fell and the phone chimed, he turned toward the club.

“Their Alpha wants the amulet to open the portal,” I called after him. “You know that,
don’t you? He wants to send someone to the other side. I won’t help him, but he’ll
keep on searching for a way. Do you know what will happen if he ever finds one?” I
thought of the terrible cold fury marking the Fae executioner’s face as he drew a
line across my mother’s throat. “It will be war if he finds a way. You should warn
the other Weres about him.”

“Your concern is duly noted.” He looked over his shoulder at me. I could see the laugh
line where it curved up past the whiskers on his face, stopping short of his eyes.
“But it’s not going to happen, is it? None of us are in any danger as long as the
portal is closed.”

“The whole world is falling apart,” I heard myself say.

“It fell apart a long time ago. There’s no going back,” he said.

He was still close enough that if I reached for him, I could have put my hand over
his heart and felt the blood surge in and out of it. “The portal is closed?” he asked.
I nodded. He tilted his head and searched my face. His fingers touched my jaw and
then slid down to my throat, where my pulse beat. “And you can’t open it?”

I shook my head, feeling nothing more than the heat of his knuckles against my throat.
Nothing else. Not the rain. Not the sadness uncoiling like a worm.

“You don’t know anyone who can?”

“No.”

His eyes were slits as they studied mine. No glow, no gleam, just Mediterranean blue
studying cool green. Then a door snapped shut between us that I hadn’t even realized
had been open.

“So, no problem,” he said.

“What kind of man are you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the answer will come to me over my second Jack.” He gave me a
smile that wasn’t one.

“You’re not the guy I thought you were.”

“Nobody ever is,” he said, turning away again.

“Bridge,” I called.

He held up a staying hand, but didn’t turn back. He pulled open the door to the strip
club. The music swelled, and he walked out of my life for the second time: it was
only after the door closed behind him that I realized I should have pulled out the
gun.

Chapter Eleven

The rap artist knew what he liked—big butts. A round thing in his face apparently
made him “sprung.” It was hard to hear the lyrics over the pounding bass streaming
from the club, but I got that.
Baby better have back
. I hunched my shoulders against the sudden cold. The rapper chanted on, each word
spitting out the same message over a driving beat. Lust. Sex. Satisfaction. A simple
enough equation. I wonder if the floor vibrated with it—if the tremor wicked right
up the chair legs so that men felt it while they watched the girls who moved to the
music and sprang things with their big, round bums.

I called the shop and got the answering machine. “Lou and I have stolen money from
some drug lords,” I said. “They’ll be looking for anyone who knows us.” I thought
about what else I wanted to say, but the words dried up, and so I finished with, “I’ll
leave Bob’s car somewhere the cops can find it.” Someone picked up. I listened to
their breathing, and then carefully replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Humans are more afraid of each other than the big bad wolf.

Stupid mortals.

The rain had gone to bed. All that was left was the smell of it, and the water beading
up on the windshields of the vehicles in the lot. As I reached the Taurus, the door
to the club opened. I spun around, ready to say something snappy like “Hah!” but the
man exiting the bar wasn’t Trowbridge.

The club patron stood for a moment, holding the door open, waiting for his eyes to
adjust, or maybe just hating the thought of leaving. He was around forty, with a fat-blurred
jock build that was starting to sag, and a certain vanity to his clothing and jewelry
choices. He started for the cars, thought better, and detoured for the laneway. He
unzipped his pants.

A thin stream of urine hit the bricks.

He shook it, zipped up, and went back to his car. Before he drove away, he checked
the mirror and smoothed his hair. I stood, one foot in the Taurus, and watched until
his taillights grew small, wondering if I was invisible, or just a witness to a future
that pained me to think of.

My Were-bitch’s anxiety brought a metal taste to my mouth.

I forced myself into the car. Trowbridge had left his mark there, adjusting the seat
way back to fit his long legs. I hung on to the steering wheel as I felt for the handle.
The second I touched it, the seat ratcheted backward another notch.
Damn Were and his stupid long legs.
I grimaced, and fought with the seat mechanism until my toes were comfortable on
the gas pedal. I fixed the side mirror; checked the rearview one too. All I had to
do was decide on a direction and turn the key.

But first, I had to come up with a plan for a Lou swap that didn’t include offering
my head as a bonus. The original concept of a “here you go” trade seemed wildly naïve
now. Stone-cold killer, Trowbridge had said.

“Merry,” I murmured. “I don’t know what to do.”

I rubbed the back of my neck and felt Merry’s chain roll under my fingers. She was
a heavier burden now, what with the dead amulet stuck to her. She’d found a place
under the damp knot I’d tied under my boobs with my shirttails, having been forced
to give up on her usual comfort spot in the left cup of my bra. Merry, I was okay
with. Anytime, sister, cuddle in. But when she kept trying to drag the other amulet
up toward that warm sanctuary? I’d pushed her away.

I brooded down at the lump that was Merry and “it.” I gave a polite jiggle. “Can we
talk?” Instead of emerging for a parlay, she huddled deeper under the scant warmth
of the knot, tightening around it—him?—with another sinuous twist of her gold. Which,
considering the fact that I was sitting in a station wagon outside of a strip club,
listening to grind music and hoping the door would open again, just felt a tad insensitive
on her part.

I jerked her out by her chain.

She brought him with her. The love-melded clump of the two of them bounced off my
knuckles and slid with a rasp to the bottom of her chain. And there they spun, slowly,
first his foreign side, then hers, then his. She surrounded him like a lover or a
mother, or maybe a shroud—God knows which—but Merry was cleaved to him like she’d
never let go. Stuck willingly. Obstinately. And for my sake, I hoped, bloody well
not-everlastingly.

I stroked her with the tip of my finger, while I considered the bit of him exposed
beneath her twined tendrils. His gem was surrounded by a fretwork of gold. I ran my
thumb over its cool surface. The dead amulet was a he. No doubt in my mind now that
I’d actually made a point of touching him. He might be pretty, but he was a male Asrai.
Even his chain felt masculine. I flicked on the overhead light and took a good look.
There was a faint similarity to the design between them, but a huge gap in execution.

Merry screamed knockoff while he purred designer goods. A disloyal thought, but, screw
it, his chain was nicer. It was thicker, heavier, with doubled-worked links, giving
it additional depth that spoke of money. Real money. As a rule, I approved of Merry’s
over-the-top styling. Nobody believed she was any more genuine than the two point
five carat diamond on the grocery checker’s hand, and that worked for us as we tried
to stay under the radar. But this male amulet could never go undercover. His chain
had a presence, an obvious, supple density that hers didn’t, and there was no Woolworth’s
to him at all. And that was just his
chain
. How had Trowbridge hidden him all these years?

“Who is he, Merry?” I twisted the clump around so that I could examine him closer.

I felt my mouth drop open.

Okay, I knew that his center was blue—light blue from the photo—but colors are off
in photos and really off on cell phone screens. I held my fist up closer to the overhead
light, careful not to let him brush my knuckles again. His stone was icy blue. Pricey
blue. Even in the dim light available, I could see that this wasn’t a piece of amber,
polished up for the pretty; this was a jewel, cut to make it sparkle. Set carefully
in a piece of Celtic artwork. This guy was the real goods. Which made me wonder, what
was Merry?

What would he do if I touched his center? I swiped my thumb over his heart. The blue
gem didn’t change color. Or heat or cool. Lifeless. Defenseless except for Merry,
who was already stretching herself impossibly thinner in a futile attempt to keep
my fingers off him. Merry gave off a warning burgundy flash. Crap. She couldn’t even
summon up enough energy to spark vermilion.

“Okay.” I placed them so that she rested against my heart. “I’ll leave him alone.”
He would be easy enough to give to the Alpha if I could find a way to chip him loose.

That thought started a string of maybes. Maybe there
was
another Fae in this realm—someone who’d let a Were take a paddle in the Fae Pool
of Life. Maybe Lou was just a backup plan—a spectacularly weak one. Maybe this mystery
Fae would make a trade of my aunt for Trowbridge’s amulet. One corpse for an almost-corpse.
Harsh words, even said quietly in my head. But that was the truth, wasn’t it? People
comfortable with deception recognize truth more often than those who never fib. We
have to, so we don’t trip over it as we lay down another layer of lies.

Lou was actively dying, fading at a spectacular speed, gone within a couple of months
unless I found a way of healing her. There were no books for that—no titles in Bob’s
bookstore that read
Save Your Fae
or
A Guide to Better Health Among the Paranormal
. I’d checked with the witches: a bunch of mumbling losers right up there with the
tree huggers. I’d spent some time in the graveyard, searching for answers. The spirits
that didn’t run were bores, and the ones that did were incredibly nimble. I’d come
away from each expedition with diddlysquat, and so I’d watched, and quietly noted
every change of Lou’s downward spiral over the last nine months. Now I waited, and
wondered how long, and sometimes, when all I could think of was me-me-me, I prayed
that when she left, I’d wither as fast as she had.

She was going to die in this realm sooner or later. And at this rate, probably sooner.
It would be easier this way. I could do what Trowbridge said: drive until the Taurus
had no gas.
With a quarter of a tank left, I won’t get far.
I snaked my hand down to the bottom of my backpack and pulled out my brown envelope
and put the bills on the seat beside me. Six fives. Two tens. Two twenties. Grand
total: ninety dollars. That was all that was left of my doomsday fund.

Doomsday had come.

I’ll have to sell a Tear from Mum’s bride belt when the money runs out
.

Surely it hadn’t come to that.

I stared at the needle on the gas gauge and pictured my life in the days ahead. Me
sitting behind the wheel of Bob’s Taurus, driving along the long, flat ribbon of the
Trans-Canada Highway. The old wagon vibrating every time the speedometer hit sixty.
Nothing in the seat beside me except the litter of old takeout meals. Merry and her
boyfriend grafted into an unbreakable lump, a suddenly heavy and foreign burden between
my breasts. Fear behind me, choices in front of me, loneliness a spreading pool all
around me. Knowing nothing about my future except the fact that I’d be spending it
alone. Always on guard against that casual human touch. Eating by myself while eavesdropping
on the conversations around me. Making stories in my head about those people’s lives
and futures as I drove on through the night.

Half of me would always be waiting for the Weres.

Could I stand living like that? Or would I run out of gas like the Taurus? Find a
town on the road to wait until they came to put me out of my misery?

I picked at the stitching on the steering wheel cover.

Maybe I could find a good place to hide. Somewhere they’d never think to find me.

A quarter inch of graying thread hung from the line of stitches. I tugged it, and
it slipped through my fingers.

It would mean another cautious life. Holding myself in check until the inevitable
explosion. And then I’d have to travel again, and find another place … not quite running,
but something that felt close to it. Scurrying with my breath held, chin tucked in,
eyes always scanning my surroundings. I knew that hunted feeling; it had been my constant
companion the first dreadful year after the fire. Even after we’d settled in Deerfield
and I’d relaxed into my life somewhat, there’d always been that residual tight sensation
in my chest, as if Creemore’s air were still stuck deep in my lungs. I’d been holding
on to it for … forever. All this time, waiting for permission to exhale.