For Love and Blood and Fury (Lilith’s Legacy #1)

Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Vibrating with anger and all the I’m-about-to-turn-this-car-around energy of an irate soccer mom, Marisol slammed her foot on the golf cart’s accelerator and wished it would move faster. Wished that it could travel at the speed of her irritation instead of five inadequate miles per hour.

Marisol jumped out of the cart while it was still rolling. She stalked away before stopping short, turning around, and helping Zuri get Elena back into the house. She’d never been so pissed off that it blurred her vision before. The moment they were inside, she stormed into the living room, her bare feet slapping against the floor.

“What the hell was that?” she shouted, whirling around to face Elena seated in the armchair. Standing next to her, Zuri’s dark gaze was fixed and evaluating. “You two are acting like children! Screaming at each other like?—”

She stopped, her anger momentarily forgotten and replaced with exhaustion. She was at her breaking point, terrified and utterly lost.

“I’m stuck here,” she said, voice cracking despite her efforts to keep it steady. “With two complete strangers. I have no idea what’s happening. No clue when I’m going to get back to my life, no way—” Her voice broke. Tears welled up in her eyes before they were forced out by the gnarled tangle of incomplete thoughts and crush of reality. “And you two are seriously going to behave like this?”

Elena, her anger morphing into a look of concern, reached out a hand towards her. “You’re not alone,” she said, her voice soft. Despite only having known her for a few days, Marisol knew that the gesture was unnatural. And if she didn’t know, Zuri’s what-the-hell expression would’ve given her the context clue.

“Not alone?” Marisol laughed, the sound brittle and hollow and more than a little maniacal. “I’m completely alone. My entire life has been ripped away. I have no one to turn to, no one to—” She choked back a sob, her body trembling with the force of her emotions. The ones she’d been shoving away because there was nothing she could do about them. She shouldn’t make herself any less helpless or ignorant or adrift.

Zuri, her expression softening, stepped closer to Marisol. “You’re not alone,” she repeated, her voice gentler than Marisol had ever heard it. “I know this is a lot?—”

“Which part is a lot?” Marisol was a rearing horse, kicking and braying and wild. She couldn’t find the will to tamp herself down. “The whole vampires are real thing? Or, wait, is it the vampires are real, and I made out with one, and then a whole other one tried to kill us and neither of you seem to know why the heck that is!” Her pulse was racing, tangling her tongue and obscuring her thoughts. “Don’t know who that guy is, if he’ll find us while we sit here and all we have to protect us are some dream catchers that look like they came out of someone’s ‘shroom-fueled nightmare.” She glanced at Zuri. “No offense.”

“She can see them?” Elena asked, voice low and aimed at Zuri.

Without taking her attention away from her, like she feared what Marisol might do if she looked away for a blink, Zuri nodded.

“It’s tough luck you didn’t know about all this before.” Elena looked at Marisol like she was ill prepared to talk anyone off a ledge. “You know now, and you can join Zuri’s coven. They’ll teach you?—”

“No,” Zuri interrupted. “She can’t.”

“Oh, don’t be such an asshole right now, Zuri.” Elena’s anger flickered back to life. “The girl is?—”

Zuri turned to Elena. “No, I mean, she’s not a witch.”

“What?” Elena’s brow furrowed. “Then what the fuck is she?”

“I don’t know. She’s?—”

“She’s standing right here,” Marisol thundered. “Stop talking about me like I’m a child. Just because I don’t know all this stuff you two do doesn’t mean I’m like… some annoying little kid?—”

“To me you’re both a bit juvenile,” Elena joked, like that was going to make anything better. “It’s a good thing I’ve always liked my partners?—”

Marisol’s thoughts were a freight train. “What do you mean, I’m not a witch?” Her gaze darted between Zuri and Elena. The universe of things Marisol didn’t know expanded like a supermassive black hole swallowing a galaxy. Staggering backward, she was drowning in frustrating confusion. In the hopelessness of being even more alone than she realized. “What the hell else is there?”

Exchanging looks like parents debating whether to admit the truth about Santa, they glanced at each other then back at Marisol. Zuri inched closer to her. “I don’t think knowing what else goes bump in the night is going to make you feel any more in control, Bambi.” She took another step. “But I’ve never heard of anyone who can”—she gestured huge wings with her hands—“heal anyone the way you did.”

“So why didn’t you tell me I’m not a witch?” Marisol let her anger ebb, even if it meant the return of her grief and confusion. “We spent hours together?—”

“I know,” Zuri admitted, taking another step. “I didn’t want to freak you out.”

“And here I am anyway,” Marisol snapped. “I’m only a few years younger than you, you know. You’re not my mom, so stop…” She searched for the right words, but she was too angry. Too tired. “Stop trying to shield me, or whatever it is you think you’re doing. I’m a grown ass woman.”

They watched her in deafening silence for so long, Marisol wondered whether they were going to kick her out. Whether she was going to have to fend off some terrifying man with fangs waiting just outside the boundary of Zuri’s place. Despite the worry wrapping around her spine and wearing down her muscles, she didn’t backtrack.

“Noted,” Zuri decided after a beat.

Elena flashed her a smirk, like watching Marisol have a meltdown was akin to watching her crawl toward her in lingerie. When Zuri noticed, she rolled her eyes at Elena and put her hand on Marisol’s upper arm. The touch was softer than Marisol expected.

“Don’t treat me like I’m breakable,” Marisol protested, but didn’t pull her arm away. She hated how the touch soothed her. How she wanted someone to pull her into their chest and rub her back until she cried herself to sleep. But she could never admit that. Not here. Maybe not anywhere. Her grandmother had always soothed her, and she’d never have that again.

“Bambi, you got between me and a furious vampire.” Zuri led Marisol away with a warm hand on her lower back. “I think you’re fucking nuts.” She breathed something like a chuckle. “But I do not think you’re made of glass.”

They were at Zuri’s bed when Marisol’s depleted brain registered what Zuri was doing. Pulling back the covers on one side, she patted the crisp, white sheets. They looked so warm and so soft, and Marisol’s body was so heavy. It was like someone had ripped out her batteries and she was struggling to function.

“Oh, come on. Lie down.” Zuri’s tone didn’t have any bite when she urged her into bed. “You’re tired and it’s been a lot. Just close your eyes for a few minutes.”

Sliding under the softest quilt she’d ever felt, the sandalwood scent of Zuri’s perfume surrounded her. She wanted to protest that she didn’t need a damn nap, but she was lying on her side and nestling into a plush feather pillow that felt as close to an embrace as she was going to get. Her eyes closed against her will when Zuri pulled the covers up to her chin.

Delirious, Marisol nearly asked Zuri to stay with her for a while. Nearly asked her to lie down with her. Mercifully, she was too tired to open her mouth and embarrass herself.

Not a witch . Marisol’s eyes flew open as the words sunk in. Sleep ripped away. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

Not a witch. Then what the hell was she?

The question clawed inside Marisol’s mind, sharp talons of panic tearing at her. She wanted to demand answers, to beg them to tell her what she was. But the words dried up in her throat. Unsure whether she believed them, they’d already said they’d never seen someone like her.

How old was Elena again? What did it mean that she hadn’t met someone like her before? How could she be so utterly alone in this new reality, isolated on an island of the unknown? She had no one to guide her, no family histories or ancestral knowledge to make sense of the impossible.

She pulled the covers tighter around herself, as if the cotton might keep her safe. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She couldn’t show that weakness, not here. Not again. It was bad enough that Zuri and Elena had looked at her like she was unhinged. That she’d stopped their fighting by having a meltdown.

Marisol squeezed her eyes shut, willing sleep to come and provide a temporary escape. Not a witch , she thought again, with a sick pit in her stomach.