The Trouble with Fate (32 page)

I shook my head. “Even now, I don’t know what I am to her. Does she love me because
I’m her sister’s kid? Or am I her burden of guilt? Her redemption? How can someone
be both sides? The good and the bad?”

“It happens all the time.”

I looked over to Merry, hanging off the edge of the lampshade where I’d put her after
she’d taken the juice out of every living plant in Cordelia’s home. Other than some
squirming—no, not squirming, more like two lovers adjusting to each other in bed,
everything a sensuous ripple of gold—she hadn’t moved. Not only that, but she hadn’t
spoken to me since I had made love to Trowbridge. No flashes of color. No soothing
brushes of Fae metal against my skin. Another bridge had been destroyed; my stomach
clenched at the thought. Everything seemed different in this new day’s light.

“The amulet that Merry’s wrapped around was Lou’s. It’s how she got back and forth
from one realm to another. She must have come that night hunting for
it.
Not me.”

“Some sort of portal key,” he said.

“I wonder if this is what it felt like for Lou.” I shifted away from him, but he moved
his leg to breach the gap. “Your uncle used her like a pawn.”

“No. They were equally guilty.” He released the strand of hair twined around his thumb.

I tossed my head, and rolled on my side. The pillow smelled of him. “So why aren’t
you doing something about it?” I asked, staring at the
Vogue
magazines stacked neatly on Cordelia’s side table.

“Who says I’m doing nothing about it? I’m not stupid enough to go in there on my own,
but I’ve learned patience. There’s more than one way of killing him.” For a moment
neither one of us spoke, both wrapped up tight in our own individual hells. Then he
sighed, and slid behind me. He pulled me close until we were as tight as two spoons
nestled in the same drawer. “The worst is over. Not knowing for sure—that was the
hardest part. The questions, the guessing … that’s done with now.”

“I’ll never see Lexi again.”
Or visit Threall.

He held me tighter and rubbed his chin on my shoulder. “Probably not.”

The pain was sharp. It took me a couple of minutes before I trusted my voice. “Lou
loved your uncle, Trowbridge. I could see it in her thought-pictures.”

“Thought-pictures?”

I told him. Somewhere near the end of my explanation, his two fingers bumped into
my ear. The peak of it seemed to fascinate him. I put a hand over his to stop him.

“Does it feel bad?”

“No, it feels too good. When you touch me there, it’s hard to think. It’s easier just
to feel.” He kept running his finger over its curved tip. I felt my distress easing.

“Can you see into my mind?” he asked.

“No.” Oh, how I wished I could. “You’re not Fae.”

“Let’s run away,” he said in his husky voice.

“Where would we go?” I closed my eyes and thought of places we could run to. New York,
Paris, London, maybe—

“B.C. I have people who owe me there.”

Oh swell.
Let’s go live with a bunch of granola-eating, tree-hugging, let’s-recycle nut-jobs.
But I didn’t say that. Thinking back, I probably should have, but instead, I asked,
“You think humans can protect me against Weres?”

“Not humans. Weres in B.C.” His fingers momentarily stopped stroking, and my tension
started building. “There’s a bunch of them out there—all free-will Weres. It’s pretty
out there. There aren’t many rules, like there are here. You don’t have to work for
any of the Alpha’s approved companies; you can take any trade you want. We’ve got
everything there, from artists to road crew to Internet geeks. Every four months we
all pitch in and raise enough money to keep the Western Council off our asses, but
for the most part, we’re too far north in the bush for them to bother with us. The
town’s run more like a pirate ship than any Alpha pack. Some of them are a little
rough around the edges, but they’re good people. I’ll take you there.”

Wasn’t that a cheerful thought. “They’ll send me back to Mannus in a box.”

“I’ll shred the neck of the first Were who threatened you.” His skin released a small
scent-bomb of possessiveness.

I felt my stomach get tight. “I don’t want to live among Weres.”

He thought about that as he resumed his sweet caress of my peaked ear. When my eyelids
started to droop, he murmured, “Then I’ll find us another place, somewhere remote,
where you’ll feel safe.”

A long thin streak of sun had laid a path of gold along the carpet. Another finger
of light was reaching for Merry. I felt that squirm I got when I thought I was doing
something right, but instinct was howling, “Be careful, danger is all around us.”

“What’s wrong?” He inhaled then his hand went to rest over my heart. “You’re hiding
something.”

I killed a soul today. Not with my own hands, but it amounted to the same thing. If
I hadn’t dismissed Mum’s warning about mystwalkers, those entwined pines would still
be growing arrow straight, their two soul-lights safe in their boughs
.

“What is it?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“If it’s about your aunt, you need to tell me.”

I pushed his paw off me. “Why?”

“This is bigger than us.” He sounded like the Alpha he was supposed to have become.
“The Gates to Merenwyn have to stay closed. The Council needs to know what my uncle
is trying to do. When they find out that Mannus has the last remaining Fae in his
possession, they’ll send a small army to kill him.” He rolled onto his back and stared
up at the popcorn ceiling.

I did the same, flopping on my back, but I chose to tilt my head to watch the morning
light stream through the window. “And Lou too.”

“She should have stayed in Merenwyn.”

“I’m half Fae,” I said, feeling suddenly cold. “What do you think they’ll want to
do to me?”

“You’re also half Were. I won’t let them harm you.” Exasperated, he pulled me toward
him again.

I lay there, but I didn’t let myself melt into that boneless Trowbridge-let’s-make-love-again
ooze. “What am I, then?”

He didn’t answer. Seemingly preoccupied by my hip, he ran his finger along the slope
of it, like a kid playing with his toy car, and then he tried to lay his palm flat
in the dipped valley at my waist but it wouldn’t lie flat. His hand was too large,
and my curves too serious. “I love your skin. No one has skin like yours.” A study
in contrasts. My skin, whiter than white, blemish-free except one small reddish freckle.
His broken hand, sun-kissed, missing fingers, with a crosshatch of pale white scars
decorating the knuckles.

I insisted. “What am I?”

His voice was reflective and sad. “Addictive.”

“You can’t keep me safe,” I said.

“I can try.”

I asked quietly, “Until you feel like you’re trapped?”

A flush crawled across his cheekbones. He raised his glittering eyes to mine. Underneath
the cold set of his features, I thought I saw something vulnerable. “I give you my
word, as the son of Jacob Trowbridge, that I will protect you, Hedi Stronghold.”

I bit my lip and nodded, and then leaned my cheek against his shoulder.

He hadn’t answered directly. “Addictive” is an adjective, not the pronoun I wanted
most. And protection doesn’t mean lifelong devotion. He sealed my mouth with his and
stroked my ear, and muttered things into it that were neither verb nor noun. And for
the moment, I chose to believe that when I looked at him, and thought “mine,” he did
too. I chose not to think too deeply, because that would lead me out of his arms and
into a cold scary place.

We made love again. Slowly, achingly beautiful. When it was finished, I wound a finger
in one of his curls and laid my head to rest against his chest.

“Robbie, I—”

“Don’t call me Robbie.”

I lifted my head, and gazed at him, disappointed. “I can’t call you Robbie?”

“No.”

“You’re destroying a childhood dream,” I said, feeling my lips turn into a wistful
smile. “I always wanted to kiss you and call you my Robbie. I don’t want to call you
Trowbridge for the rest of time.”

“Robbie Trowbridge is gone.” His face was sad; the lights in his eyes extinguished.
“I’m Bridge now.”

“Bridge.” I kissed him and stared deep into his eyes, hoping they’d spark again. But
they didn’t, and after a bit, I said, “They call me Hedi Peacock now. Helen Stronghold
died in the fire.”

And then I put my head on his chest again. Pulled my hair away so I could feel his
flesh under my cheek. He began to finger-comb my hair, slowly, from my temple to its
tip, each gentle tug weighing my eyelids until they drooped. I was tired. So tired.
I closed my eyes as I felt his arm tighten around me. I would not count the minutes.
I would just yield, and take this memory, one for my own—one that no one would ever
share. “My Robbie,” I mouthed silently against his skin.

I’m a thief, so I did what I do best: I curled into my lover and stole some time.

Before time ended.

Chapter Sixteen

Trowbridge’s arm fell off my shoulder and I woke with a start. And then she pulled
me. No slip, no slide. Lou put a hand into my brain and yanked me into hers.

She’s waiting.

For me? No, not for me. Waiting for something else.

“Lou,” I say. “Where are you?”

I can feel her impatience. And then she surprises me. “Quiet,” she says, quite clearly,
with an authority I hadn’t heard in months. So I watch silently, and realize she‘s
in the same room as before, but now I’m seeing it from the vantage point of the floor.

The door opens. One of them walks in. Young. Strong. Enemy. His footsteps are confident.

Stupid.

He uses his boot to roll her over onto her back. Stuart Scawens stares down at us.
His mouth opens to say something. I can’t read his lips, but it doesn’t matter, because
he suddenly stops mid-breath. His eyes widen and he takes two stumbling steps for
the door.

Too late. The crudely shaped spike catches him mid-chest.

An expression of horrible surprise flickers across his face. Stuart bends his head
to gape at the silver sticking out from his breast, and then he wilts, sinking to
the floor. Lou clenches her fingers, and turns her fist sharply to the right. Stuart’s
face contorts as the spike rotates deep into his body. She smacks her fist down on
her open palm. His legs jerk when she splays her fingers wide. The silver spike melts
into his body. Pure agony twists his features. His eyes roll as he convulses on the
floor.

Lou walks past his body to the door. Up the basement stairs, straight through to the
kitchen. Pauses to lift the keys off the brass key rack that had four running wolves
over four hooks. She pulls open the door and takes a moment to scan the backyard.
Fir-dotted hills are in the background. The yard is outlined with a line of straggling
pines. She gets in the truck, and turns the key. Then, my sick old aunt, who loathes
driving, puts it in gear. Her hands are rigid on the steering wheel as the car begins
to move.

“Where are you going, Lou?” I ask her. “Show me.”

The dream speeds up. I see a sign on the corner. Airport Road. The back of a truck.
Signs overhead passing. Barrie. Highway 400 South. Cars speeding past hers. Highway
401. Then she’s in Toronto, driving down city streets. The pedestrians change from
business people to students. She makes a left and a right, turns onto a short street,
filled with Victorian houses mixed with small towers. Her gaze is constantly moving.
Street. Pedestrians. Left. Right. Then she sees the sign:
PUBLIC PARKING
.
We pass another sign,
ROTMAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
, before she noses the car down into the underground lot. She stops on level three,
pulling the car into a slot in the middle of the empty parking level. Her hands are
shaking as she turns off the ignition.

“Come,” I hear her say, loud in my brain. “I am waiting.”

*   *   *

“I know you’re awake,” he said. “I can hear the gears in your brain turning.”

“Go away, Trowbridge. I’m sleepy.”
She’s waiting. “Come and get me,” she said.

“Get up, Tinker Bell, we’ve got to get going.”

“Where?”

“West, Tink.”

But Lou was northward. She’d run the same dream sequence in my head for the two hours
I’d slept, until it felt like a new scar. I knew where to find her.
She knows I can dream-walk or, at the very least, she knows that she can speak to
me in her dreams. Can she use it against me? Keep me captive to her needs?

I’d never escape her. She waited for me on the outskirts of every dream, hovering
over me in the daylight hours, ready to slip her dreams into my mind the second I
had an unguarded moment, or an instant of unfocused thought. A fear had grown inside
me that even death wouldn’t be able to stop her. An echo of her soul would stay in
this realm to haunt me, until there was no peace in sleep, and no comfort found with
daylight.

I’ll go mad if she doesn’t drag me back to Threall first.

If I abandoned her and stayed with Trowbridge, what would happen? Would his attraction
fade as my own brain started to soften under the weight of Lou’s madness? Just how
much of an aphrodisiac is it to watch your girlfriend babble about dreams? Could I
ever tell him about the dangers of Threall? And even if Lou died, and left me free,
there was the other problem. Could I hang on for that day he says, “You know what?
I’ve changed my mind. I’m real keen on Faes. And by the way, I love you.”

I don’t have that type of stamina.

I rolled over stiffly. Fifteen minutes ago, Trowbridge had moved from sitting and
staring at me from across the room, to standing over the bed and staring down at me.
I had a leg cramp from not moving.