Gray Dawn, page 21
“Brother.” Elise—sweet little Elise—threw herself at me hard enough to bruise. “You’re here.”
The last time I saw her, she was five years old and spitting mad at me for handing her over to the cleric. It had taken me six months to convince him to place my much younger siblings into foster care to protect them from our eldest sister’s maliciousness. To foster each child in a different family had been my own idea. It tore us apart, and I had been prepared for them to hate me for it, but it had given them the best hope of surviving to adulthood when Delma had wanted to slit all our throats to become Calixta’s heir.
“How is this possible?” I wrapped my arms around her, hugging her close. “How are you here?”
“Rue found us.” She held on like I would vanish if she took her hands off me. “All of us.”
“Rue…found you?” I had been promised that was impossible. “How…?”
“Okay, well, Colby located us. She’s the best. Then Rue picked us up and brought us back.”
Colby.
I should have known.
The last part of Elise’s comment stuck with me, and I asked, “You live in Samford now?”
Before Elise could answer, the door flew open again. Three more girls and one boy spilled out in a tangle of limbs. They ranged in age from eleven to seventeen. They spilled down the front steps in a rush of yells and laughter, kicking up gravel as they stampeded toward me.
Impact knocked me to the ground. I landed on top of someone—probably Elise—who yelped before crawling out from under the pile of wriggling and squealing bodies pinning me.
“I missed you.”
“Hi.”
“I love you.”
“It’s really you.”
The tumble of words scrambled together as my vision blurred, either from sharp elbows and bony knees that kept sinking into my gut or from this unexpected surprise I never could have imagined awaiting me.
A shadow stretched across my face, and the kids scattered, leaving me in a bruised sprawl.
“Sorry about the dogpile.” The figure leaned over me. “I swear I warned them to behave.”
Her.
It was her.
Years ago, I had locked her name in the vault of my mind and thrown away the key. It broke free now, as my vision cleared to find her offering me a hand up before the kids swarmed again.
Arden.
It was Arden.
My Arden.
“You know them?” I wiped the sweat off my palms before allowing her to help me to my feet. “How…?”
I wedged my legs under me, but my knees shook. Fear. Excitement. Anxiety. I couldn’t tell.
“First things first.” Arden took her hand back, leaving my fingers to curl as they chased her warmth. She twisted the inside of her wrist up for me to see then tapped an old scar. “We’re going to talk about this.”
The courtship mark I left on her the last time I saw her ignited heat under my skin, but she hadn’t agreed to bear it. I shouldn’t have done it, gifted her with one of my scales, but it had kept me sane knowing she carried some piece of me with her.
“When a girl says that to you, it means you’re in trouble,” Daniel informed me. “Big trouble.”
“You’re really in fascination with Arden?” Allie bounced on her toes. “Can she really be our sister?”
“I can’t believe she waited for you.” Caressa thinned her lips. “For ten years.”
The sharpness of her tone told me the waiting hadn’t been easy for her either. As the oldest, she carried the most memories of me.
“She could have gotten married and had babies like Auntie Camber.” Talia blinked wide eyes. “Then you would have cried and cried and cried, like that time my toenail fell off after I stubbed my toe on coral.”
The idea of Arden marrying someone else carved me hollow, and I caught myself checking her fingers for a wedding band even though Talia said could have. Not did. But Arden’s hands were bare.
“Back to the kitchen, brats.” Arden clapped her hands loudly. “Finish icing the cupcakes.”
They ducked in, formed a huddle, and hugged me close before scampering back to the house.
Once we were alone, I found the courage to search her—Arden’s—face for signs I was truly welcome.
“You sound different.” She hesitated. “Not in a bad way. Just more formal.”
“I grew up with this accent.” I envied her honeyed drawl. “It was worse when I first met Rue.”
Life on the fringes of the Haelian Seas court as a child had left me with a crisp accent, a nasal tone, and a more rigid thought and speech pattern. I had sanded down the haughtiness until Hael brought it rushing back, snapping it in place like muscle memory.
“I set up Camp Aedan for you, in case you missed the creek, but I have a spare bedroom now.”
“Rue told me about Camber. The wedding. The kids. The move to Birmingham.”
About every notable moment in Arden’s life too, leaving me equal parts contented and tormented.
“Hollis Apothecary Too opened last week.” She rocked back on her heels. “We’re officially a chain.”
“Congratulations.” A curve found my lips without me forcing the smile for once. “I’m glad she’s happy.”
“Me too.” She blew out a sigh. “I miss having her as a roommate, but I visit once a month. We video chat every day and text. It’s nice. Not the same, but good.” She hadn’t looked me in the eye once, and she didn’t now. “You’re wondering about your sibs.” She quit fidgeting. “Rue began locating them after…” She cleared her throat. “She brought them to the farm as she found them. They’ve been living with Clay and Moran. They were already raising Peleg together, so what’s five more daemon kids, right?”
A fist of emotion squeezed my throat. “Rue didn’t tell me.”
Shutting my eyes, my lashes matted with tears, I imagined Clay as the father to this brood. Chaotic, loud, and happy as they appeared to be, it wasn’t hard to picture him raising the rough-and-tumble children as his own.
“She didn’t want to say anything until we had collected the full set.” Arden twisted her toe into the dirt. “We only found Caressa ten months ago. She was the last one. By that time, Rue felt it was safer not to tell you anything that might encourage you to rebel against Calixta so close to your contract ending.”
By that point, I would have chewed glass at every meal and smiled as blood stained my teeth if it meant I got to walk out the doors the second my time expired. But I could see why Rue would worry. I had seen her, Asa, and Saint once a month, every month, after the ink on their bargain with the queen had dried.
Those visits saved my sanity. Maybe even my soul. Not only did they tether me to the person I had been, but they altered how Calixta treated me. I was elevated from nuisance or plaything to potential ally in an understated war she waged against Rue to convince her to take my place as heir to the Haelian throne.
Rue passed, of course, but by then it had been too late for Calixta to take back her, if not kindness, then tolerance of me. Calixta and I parted on amicable terms, and she bestowed the title on her infant son. The unexpected child had been born after a dalliance with a visiting Haelian Seas noble.
From time to time, I wondered if Saint had laced the queen’s drink with a fertility spell to spare his child, but he only smiled the one time Rue hinted at the same suspicions. Perhaps he thought Calixta deserved a second chance to be a parent, the same opportunity he got with Rue. Or maybe the gods had given me a gift in ensuring my replacement, guaranteeing I could leave without further negotiation or bloodshed.
“I figured you would visit the farm first.” She popped her knuckles. “Everyone is waiting for you there.”
That was where Rue told me to go, but my feet led me here. “I had to come.”
“She told you the kids were here,” Arden guessed, nodding in understanding.
“No.” I had wasted a decade, I wasn’t wasting another second. “I had to see you.”
Warmth spread across her cheekbones. “You’re still in fascination with me.”
“I am.”
“You’re sure?” She dragged her upper teeth over her bottom lip. “I’m not the same person I was then.”
She was harder, stronger. But then again, so was I.
“Neither am I.” I lifted my hand, my palm itching to cradle her cheek. “May I?”
“Yes,” she breathed, leaning into my touch, closing her eyes as she anointed my fingers with her tears.
“I thought about you every day.”
“I missed you.” Her lashes glittered when they rose. “I tried to date, to move on, but…”
She finally, finally looked at me, and time ground to a halt as grief and joy shone in her eyes.
“I’m glad.” I stroked her soft skin with my thumb. “I only ever wanted the best for you.”
“Yeah, well, I put in the effort. I never said it was a success.” She flashed her wrist again. “One of your scales, really?”
“You’re more offended I marked you with a scale than me being in fascination with you?”
“There’s a little thing called consent we need to discuss.” She rolled her eyes. “But I would have said yes. I think you knew that. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise. You’re not a selfish person.”
“You have no idea how selfish I can be when it comes to you.” I clamped my jaw shut. “I shouldn’t—”
“I’ve waited long enough to hear what you have to say to me, don’t you think?”
All the things I wanted to tell her got lodged in my throat. I wasn’t sure what I ought to say about my time with Calixta. If I should say anything at all. I didn’t want her to think I was broken. Even if I was. I knew my family would piece me back together. No. They would help me piece myself back together. But that would take time. Time I wasn’t willing to steal from her when I had already taken so much.
“I want you to be happy.”
“Good.” She took my hand and rested it on her hip. “I want that too.” She hiccupped, just once, and it took me back. I saw the girl she had been in the flush heating her cheeks. “I also want this.”
Rolling onto her toes, she pressed her lips to mine in a gentle kiss that gave and gave without taking.
It was a greeting. It was forgiveness. It was a promise.
Perfect.
“I want to try this.” She spoke the words against my mouth. “Me and you.”
Hands clutching the back of her shirt, I murmured, “I do too.”
“Stop being gross out there,” Daniel yelled through the screen door, a perfect mimic of Clay. “There are children present.”
“There’s a tub of your old clothes in the living room,” Arden said, “if you want to change before we go.”
The tunic and trousers I wore were the last remaining vestiges of my tenure as prince. I burned the rest. I had returned home the same as I left it—with only the clothes on my back.
“I’d like that.” I kept hold of her, my grip locked on. “I seem to be having difficulty letting you go.”
“Then don’t.” She took my hand and laced our fingers. “You can hold on for as long as you want.”
“What if I want forever?”
“Then we take forever one day at a time.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I,” I promised her, daring to brush my lips across her knuckles. “Never again.”
THE BODY SHOP
CHAPTER ONE
The comforting scents of oil, gasoline, and exhaust filled my lungs as I shoved through the office into the garage with the yellow sticky note I’d found on my monitor pinched between my fingers. I had a new repo on the schedule. At least Josie was working. Collection visits sucked, but she guaranteed I survived them.
Wishing I had taken a closer look at the schedule, I had to guess at tonight’s mechanic. “Paco?”
Only the bottom half of him was visible from underneath a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible getting an oil change. The threadbare denim of his favorite ratty overalls and the scuffed leather of his steel-toe boots were more familiar to me than his face these days.
“No.”
“Pascal?”
“Getting warmer.”
“Pedro.”
“Guilty as charged, mijita.”
The Suarez brothers were a fixture around The Body Shop, but it could be hard to tell them apart.
Mostly because their spirits took turns sharing my brother’s body from noon until nine, Tuesday through Saturday.
“Tell Matty I’m driving down to Savannah.” I checked my smartwatch. “I should be back in a few hours.”
“Another repo?”
“Yeah.” I puffed out my cheeks. “Grimshaw.”
“The Disney lady?”
The rental agreement provided her with seven days in the body of a (recently deceased) fifty-year-old to spend quality time with her grandkids at the iconic family vacation destination. She paid the extra fee to take the loaner out of state, a popular add-on, but her weeklong stay was up two days ago and counting.
“The tracker says she’s on River Street.” I had the app up on my phone. “I’ll try my luck there first.”
Why waste magic on dowsing for her location when a chip injected under the skin got the same results?
“I’ll let Matty know.” He resumed his work with a huff of laughter. “Take Josie with you.”
“Planning on it.”
Josie blended. She could be any pretty blonde girl on the street. Me? Not so much.
Fresh air swirled through the perpetual tangles in my long hair as I stepped through the side exit into the customer parking lot. Moonlight glinted off the errant strands that kept getting stuck in my lip balm. The color was a trendy silvery-blonde shade that rejected hair dye like water repelled oil. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if my eyes weren’t the greenish gray of moss creeping over mildewed tombstones. Or, let’s be honest, if I didn’t share a skin tone with Victorians who nibbled arsenic wafers to achieve translucence.
“Mary,” Josie called out from her perch on the hood of the love of my life.
The 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Nomad station wagon had been a birthday present from the Suarez brothers the year after they came to work for us. My brother wasn’t much of a mechanic without their guidance, but they split the credit with him. With his body anyway. Glossy Regal Turquoise paint cut to a gleaming India Ivory fluted roof. The matching bicolored interior still caused my heart to skip a beat. And it wasn’t lost on me that the cargo area had room to fit a body. Or three.
“Why are you on my baby?” I resisted the urge to reach for a polishing cloth. “Do you want to die?”
“Eh.” She slid until her bare feet hit dirt, grinning while I gritted my teeth. “You’d just bring me back.”
The wagon had come with a pricy preservation spell on it, which vainly included the paint job, but still.
Little sisters were a menace.
“Necromancy won’t work on you. You’re a dryad.” I hummed low in my throat. “Miracle Grow might.”
“You’re not half as clever as you think.”
“Get in.” I followed my own advice, climbing behind the wheel. “You track the repo, I’ll drive.”
“Have you talked to Matty today?” She caught my phone when I tossed it. “He’s got a hot date tonight.”
“I checked in with Pedro on my way out, but he didn’t mention any plans.”
Pascal was the more likely Suarez to tattle on their host. Pedro was more respectful of his privacy.
The throaty rumble as I turned the key always brought a smile to my face.
“How does he even meet women?” She stuck out her bottom lip. “He’s asleep all day.”
“I always figured he was ducking into their dreams and planting the idea to meet him for a beer.”
Oneiros spent their days as narcoleptic voyeurs. Or at least ours did. That was why our brother loaned his body to the Suarezes. He wasn’t using it anyway. While they maintained our legitimate business, auto repair and maintenance, he drifted in and out of others’ dreams, visiting the subconsciouses of unconscious minds.
“You give him more credit than I do.” She banged her elbow cranking down her window. “Shit.”
“Watch your mouth, Mary, or the sisters will eat you.”
Not a joke. I saw it happen once. To this day, I hadn’t spoken another curse word out loud.
“Do you think the sisters at St. Mary’s expected our names to become a running joke?”
“I doubt they thought about much beyond what seasonings enhanced our natural flavors.”
The orphanage where we met, back in the forties, had been established to accommodate the children of others who had no surviving family to take them in. The founders named their outreach St. Mary’s Home for Children. Not because they were catholic, but to blend in with similar charitable organizations run by humans. Their lack of humanity, and their total ignorance of the catholic faith but dogged determination to fake it, led to some confusion when naming the babies entrusted to them in a likewise similar fashion.
And birthed an entire generation of Marys.
I got stuck with Mary Frances, which wasn’t too bad. There were, however, a lot of us. I went by Frankie. It was the only way to scratch out an identity for myself. Then there was Mary Josephine. Josie. My little sister. And Mary Mathew. Matty. Our older brother.
The three of us had been as thick as thieves since we were toddlers, so, yeah. Us Marys were family. The only one we had ever known. We even chose our own surname and made it legal after Josie aged out of the system. Talbot. Sounds fancy, right?
“You’re determined to ruin all our happy childhood memories, aren’t you?”
Chills swept through me, raising gooseflesh down my arms, prickling up my spine to sting the base of my skull as I tamped down those happy memories. “If you’re determined to act like we have any, then yes.”
“Meanie.” She oriented herself before studying the map. “So, Grimshaw.”
“Yes.” I located my preferred parking deck near River Street and turned in. “Grimshaw.”
