Fever Fae Page 4

  “It’s best you don’t keep that promise for your own sake,” I said, licking my lips before I knew what I was doing. I withdrew the tip of my tongue and pursed my lips to a thin line when I spotted his heated gaze dipping to my mouth. “And it’s Evelina to you. Only my friends and family call me Evie.”

  “I accept your bargain,” he said, his smile still ghosting his perfect, suntanned face. And then, he was suddenly in front of me with a hundred dollar bill in his hand as if he’d just conjured it up like a magician. He put the wrinkled bill in my hand and snatched the refresher from me. “Here’s for your bathroom refresher. Keep the change, Evelina.”

  Chapter 4

  Baron stalked off my property, and I watched until he disappeared in the trees. His comments burned in my mind as I crossed the yard to the back door.

  I’d always thought our family wasn’t normal. We’d never stayed in one place for more than six months until I left home to attend college.

  I’d been grumpy about the nomad lifestyle. The last time I’d seen Dad, I had shouted at him about the unfairness of uprooting us constantly and pleaded with him not to continue to do this to my siblings. I had left seven high school boyfriends behind, and long distance relationships never worked.

  But after fighting off a handful of monsters today, I started wondering if my parents had been running away from something. For the first time when we stayed in one place for more than eight months, my parents just disappeared, and then this supernatural world I never knew existed showed up at my door.

  I stared at the broken window, trying to string things together. The nightmare creature, the Nightling, had looked straight at me and called me Dark Princess before it went for the kill. I was as far from a princess as east from west. The two Fae dudes claimed that my siblings and I didn’t share the same bloodline, that I wasn’t even human.

  All of today’s misfortune came from one giant misunderstanding—all of them mistook me as someone else. They got the wrong girl.

  What if the Nightling came back? What if the Fae posed as a threat to my family? The Fae courts had been hunting the dark one, and Baron had said he’d have to kill me if I was dark. I didn’t even know what that meant.

  Just remembering Baron’s vow to eliminate the dark one made me shudder.

  Maybe we should move again?

  But where could we go? We didn’t have much money left. If we ran blindly instead of having a solid plan, we’d all be homeless.

  I shook my head and stomped into the kitchen. Six pairs of still terrified eyes stared at me across the island.

  Then my siblings all started shouting questions at me.

  I listened for about three seconds before I yelled back. “Shut up and finish your breakfast. If you’re done, get your school bag and lunchbox ready. You’re already late for school, and I don’t want you to make a habit out of it. And don’t tell anyone, not even your besties of what happened this morning. You know the rules Mom set, and we’ll keep following them.” I waved a hand at them. “Wait for me in the car.”

  My siblings rushed into action. It was a wonder they kind of obeyed me this time. Safiya gave me a glare, but she picked up her backpack.

  I turned to Emmett. “Did you call the cops? They didn’t show up!”

  “Uh, the phone line was cut off,” he said. “We haven’t paid the bill.”

  I sighed heavily. “I’ll take care of the bills today.”

  “Who were the gorgeous guys?” Safiya repeated her former question with a dreamy look in her brown eyes. “Why didn’t you invite them in?”

  “Seriously? You developed a crush on the two hooligans already?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Stay away from them if you ever see them again.”

  Her eyes brightened. “So we’ll see them again?”

  “I’ll make sure they don’t come back,” I spat. “They’re more dangerous than bad men.”

  Every instinct told me they were the ultimate predators, even though their intoxicating scent still flowed in my bloodstream.

  “You just want to have both of them for yourself,” Safiya sneered. “I watched through the window. You tried to throw yourself at them shamelessly. You’re the biggest slut—”

  I slapped her.

  “Bitch!” She lunged at me, but Emmett was faster and grabbed her around her waist.

  “Chill out, Saf,” Emmett said. “You crossed the line, and you aren’t Evie’s match. She can easily take you down. You think she drove away the monster and then faced off the two scary men without all those years of martial arts training?”

  “That’s just it, isn’t it?” Safiya said, angry tears streaming down her face. “She’s the only one who got all the training. Mom and Dad always made sure she had everything. They revolved around her. They treated her like she was the princess and the rest of us didn’t matter. Why do you think we kept moving around? It’s all because of Evelina! It’s her fault that Mom and Dad are gone.”

  My face paled. “What are you talking about?”

  “I overheard a conversation between Mom and Dad before you took off for college!” Safiya kept yelling and crying, and my other siblings were frozen on the stairs, watching the drama unfold. “Dad said we’d need to move again since we’d stayed in one place for too long, and then Mom said it didn’t matter because you were in college now and we should be safe. Mom wanted us to settle down like a normal family, so we could finally have a life!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” I asked.

  “I’m telling you now!” Safiya said.

  “What else did you hear?” My throat tightened, as if I couldn’t get air into my lungs.

  “Nothing else mattered because Mom cried!” she said.

  That might be one of the reasons Safiya hated me, but then she never liked me. I didn’t put up with any of her crap ever since she was a toddler. I just didn’t have the patience for anyone’s nonsense.

  “I’m working on finding Mom and Dad,” I said, scanning my siblings as I tried not to let my voice go weak and croak. “We’ll get them back, I promise. I know you’re all hurting and afraid, so you act out. I’ll do my best to put the food on the table. As long as I’m standing and breathing, I’ll make sure you’re safe and you’ll never go hungry. But in the meantime, you’ll cooperate like soldiers, and I’m your commanding officer. When I say hide, you hide. When I say run, you run, like today. Today you did well. And when I say go to school, you’ll grab your lunchbox and backpack and get in the car. That’s how we’ll operate and get through this crisis together as a family. Understood?”

  For the first time since my parents vanished, hope bloomed on my siblings’ faces, and my heart ached.

  “Crystal clear, Captain Evie,” Fawn said and nodded at me like we were conspirators. “We won’t let you down.”

  Again, she didn’t talk like a six-year-old. But I’d make sure she still got all the things a six-year-old should have.

  One of the twins snapped to attention on the stairs. Sometimes I still had a hard time telling them apart. “Is that why you blew the whistle today? Are we your soldiers now?”

  As he spoke, I realized he was Nox, the slightly more sociable one.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “But could you not blow the whistle again?” Asuka, the other twin, looked at me ruefully.

  “I can’t promise that,” I said. “But I won’t need to do that if you all behave.”

  Cassidy raised his hand.

  “Yes?” I frowned at him. He was a troublemaker under any circumstances, though his nuisance was more tolerable than Safiya’s.

  “I want to be your lieutenant!” he said.

  I stared at him hard. “You’ll have to earn it. I don’t just hand over that high rank to anyone that easily.”

  He pursed his lips together in determination and nodded. “I’ll earn it, but you must teach me how to fight monsters!”

  I sucked in a breath. I was sure none of my siblings had seen the shadow fire surge out
of me and toss the Nightling out the window, or they’d have asked a million questions. They’d only assumed that I defeated the monster when they saw the broken glasses in the kitchen.

  I did not want my own family to think I was a freak.

  “No more Q&A today,” I said. “We don’t have time for that. Get your asses in the van.”

  I picked the car key hanging on the wall and tossed it at Emmett. “Get it started, please,” and scrambled up the stairs to put on a pair of jeans.

  When I came down the stairs and out of the front door, my siblings had buckled up the safety belts and sat tight inside the green SUV, their eyes staring out of the windows nervously, still worried about the monster.

  Emmett sat shotgun, grinning at me.

  I pulled the van out of the driveway and sped down the street. I darted my eyes all around in high alert and constantly checked the rear mirror.

  The Fae weren’t in the perimeter, and somehow I felt both relieved and disappointed. I shoved those feelings away. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except my siblings, and they needed a period of stability more than anything.

  We’d only run when I was sure we were losing the battle against whoever came after us, and I hoped it didn’t come to that. I’d make the monsters see reason that they’d gotten the wrong family. If I had to resort to violence to kick some senses into their thick skulls, so be it.

  “Don’t worry,” I said softly. “We got this. I got you. And we’ll get Mom and Dad back.”

  Chapter 5

  After I dropped off my siblings, I went straight to Costco and bought as much food as my credit card limit allowed.

  Then I drove home. As soon as I veered into the narrow lane a mile away from my house, the hair on my neck stood up. Once again, I had the uncanny feeling of being observed.

  I surveyed my surroundings, unleashing all of my senses, as Dad had taught me when he took me hunting.

  “Never act like prey, princess,” Dad had warned.

  That was the only time he’d called me princess. He never called my sisters that, not even Fawn.

  Now in retrospect, I got it why Safiya was jealous of me. My parents spent most of their money on me to make sure I got the best of everything, especially all sorts of training and private tutoring, even though we kept moving around. They’d never trained my siblings, and I’d bitched about how they were too hard on me and demanded too much of me.

  I’d been a rotten brat.

  The van cruised down the lane, passing by a small vineyard, a junkyard, a farming pond, and the old woods no one dared to visit. Plenty of places for someone to hide.

  After a quarter mile, I sensed that someone was still following me, though I couldn’t see anyone. My foot hit the gas pedal, and the aspen trees blurred beside my window. The stalker sped up as well. I couldn’t explain how I knew, except I felt their shadowy energy no matter how fast I drove. My senses seemed to have powered up since the incident this morning.

  Part of me wanted to get out of the van to investigate, maybe catch my pursuer. But I quickly abandoned that idea. I might be a daredevil sometimes, but I still had a healthy dose of fear. And I wasn’t stupid enough to walk blindly into danger or a trap. Dad had taught me that much.

  I didn’t let my foot ease on the gas until my house loomed ahead at the end of the alley. I passed the house, then slammed the van into reverse and zoomed into the driveway back end first, and killed the engine.

  Unsheathing a hidden dagger from my boot, I scanned the road and saw nothing out of place. I exited the van as quietly as possible, dagger in one hand, keys in the other. Wind shuffled in the bushes near the white fence as I snuck up to the back door.

  I slipped into the house as quiet as a cat, paused at the back door, and let my hunter sense take over.

  There was no presence in the house, but I sensed that someone had invaded my space while we were gone. I glided into the kitchen and peered around. I couldn’t see any further traces of the visitor that had violated my family’s privacy. Just a gut feeling, and I knew I wasn’t wrong.

  I exhaled long and slow. Once again, my instincts screamed for me to grab my siblings and run and never return.

  We weren’t safe here. But logic also told me that we’d already been marked. Running would bring the hunters closer on our tails. After encountering a Nightling and two Fae, I knew our pursuers weren’t ordinary Joes. They were a supernatural force.

  We’d be more vulnerable on the road, and no one could run forever.

  I had to stay. We had to stay. All I needed to do was to show whoever stalked us that they got the wrong family, and then I’d make sure they left us alone.

  Another thought trickled into the back of my head.

  The stalkers might have something to do with my parents’ disappearance. If I was clever and sneaky enough, maybe I could stalk the stalker and find new clues that would lead to my parents.

  I slid the dagger back into its sheath in my boot and steeled my shoulders. I’d keep a close eye on my siblings while we were in the house at night. In the daytime, they’d be safe at school, and I would show my unwelcome visitors they were messing with the wrong girl.

  Half of my confidence returning, I strode across the house to the front door, pulled it open, and strolled out. The trunk of the van opened with a click of the remote on the keys.

  As I stood by my car, once again, I had the unpleasant feeling of being watched. I scanned the perimeter of my house, and whoever stalked me hid from sight. Someone had followed me to my house. And I had a hunch that it wasn’t just one party spying on me.

  Perhaps the two Fae had returned.

  I kept vigilant watch as I carried groceries into the house. Once I had put the perishables in the fridge and freezer, I grabbed a couple canisters of salt and trekked around the outside of the house, pouring a steady stream of the white crystals along the foundation and across every entrance. Then I hung strings of garlic above the front and back doors and the windows on the first floor. Lastly, I hefted the bag of iron crowbars I’d picked up at a hardware store and secured one across every window as well.

  I’d checked Google in the Costco parking lot, and every search result agreed that Fae were allergic to iron. Witches and demons couldn’t cross pure salt. The garlic was to ward off vampires, just in case.

  And if all those preventive materials failed to stop the supernatural beings from getting into the house, I had a failsafe.

  I climbed upstairs to my parents’ room and strode to the heavy metal cabinet in one corner, then punched in the combination to unlock it. Dad’s three shotguns rested safely in their spots. The .308 Winchester looked like a classic hunting rifle, equally suitable for stopping coyotes or intruders. The black AR-15 shotgun was an upgrade from .308 Winchester both in looks and power.

  My gaze lingered on the last weapon, the Legend Heavy, an elephant gun in every sense of the word. It was my dad’s beloved. It was worth a low-income family’s yearly salary. The rifle used .458 Lott cartridges and came with a four-round capacity magazine. Never mind an elephant, that gun could take down a dinosaur. I’d told Dad so when he brought it home.

  “We don’t have a T-Rex for you to blow up, Dad.” I’d rolled my eyes at him.

  “You never know, Evie,” he’d said. “Sometimes the world shifts in a blink of an eye. Anything can happen.”

  “You’re such an optimist. Does Mom know about this shit?” I had asked.

  “Language, young lady.”

  “Sorry, sir. I’m not going to rat you out to Mom. But it seems overkill to get that fancy rifle. You could have used the money to feed the poor.”

  “We’re the poor,” he’d said good-naturally.

  “Not that poor, if you could get your hands on a weapon like that.” I had laughed. “When can I try it?”

  Dad had given me an indecipherable look. “That rifle was a present.”

  “Who would give you such an expensive gift, Dad?” I’d fished.

  He didn
’t answer as he carefully put it in the gun cabinet.

  “I’ve never met your associates. I’m still not convinced that you aren’t working for a secret agency or something.”

  “You have no idea, baby girl.” He had flashed me a doting smile. “At least we aren’t in a cult.”

  My eyes misted at the memory. To this day, I still didn’t know whom my parents worked for or the actual sources of our income. And the owners of all the houses we’d lived in, including our current one, were untraceable.

  My parents’ disappearance wasn’t random. I knew for sure now, as I started to pieces memories and clues together. They should have told me if something was wrong. They could have trusted me and I would help.

  I placed the .308 Winchester above the highest cabinet in the kitchen and pushed it farther back, so my siblings wouldn’t see it. Then I tucked the AR-15 under the folding top of the side table in the foyer, where it would be within fairly easy reach near the front door. I debated if I should hide the Legend Heavy in the van, just in case we got attacked while on the road, but it was risky to carry a rifle in the vehicle. Instead, I brought the powerful gun to my bedroom and leaned it against the wall by the bed.

  I also activated the trapdoor in the basement, which would hide my siblings when I battled our enemies. They could evacuate through a short tunnel and reach the backyard of our neighbor a few blocks away and escape.

  Another suspicion rose in me as I stared at the trapdoor. Had my parents thought of the worst-case scenario and prepared long before?

  Why hadn’t I paid attention?

  When I was in high school, all I’d worried about was boyfriends, clothes, parties, and if we’d move again in another two months. I blew air out my nose and stomped back upstairs. Now I paid the price for being shallow and spoiled and rotten.

  The phone vibrated on the kitchen table where I had left bags of groceries. I’d talked to a T-mobile representative and paid the balance when I was shopping in Costco. I scooped up the phone and saw a waiting text message from Richie.