6. Never
“Ow.” The pull of my bandaged wound stung as I pried my eyes open and tried to untangle myself from my blanket.
An eerie yellow glow bounced across the room, snagging my attention despite my difficulties. Why is it light in here? The thought had no more crossed my mind before the light flickered out, and I paused in my battle with the blanket.
“Hello, weirdness.” I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in the room with me because there wasn’t really anywhere for anyone to hide in my crappy little bedroom, but still. The light could have come from the street, maybe. If someone decided to shine a powerful flashlight up into my window.
It wasn’t a horrible theory, except the light hadn’t been shining from the window. Or from the ceiling or the lamp on the nightstand. It was more like it’d been shining from... well... me.
I finally yanked the blanket free, preemptively cursing the pain that would inevitably slice through my back with the effort. Only it didn’t. It still hurt, a lot, but that sharp, searing pain that had plagued me the day before now felt dull and not quite so hot.
That or I wasn’t completely awake yet.
Only one way to be sure. Carefully, oh-so-carefully, I pulled myself up into a sitting position. I had to suck in a breath and brace myself against the added discomfort that came with the movement. It was taxing but completely manageable.
Letting my head hang for a beat as I gathered myself for the monumental task of swinging my legs over the edge, standing, and making my way to the bathroom, I caught the last hint of light fading from the amulet around my neck. I remembered clinging to it, feeling that desperate need to keep it safe from the wicked thing that had taken over my brother’s body. I did not, however, remember slipping the chain over my head.
Maybe the weirdest thing was how it felt like it belonged there. Like I’d been wearing it my whole life.
“No, actually, that sounds about right,” I whispered into the darkness. The thing was glitchy as fuck, so yeah, why wouldn’t it feel at home resting against my chest? Broken, glitchy, unreliable; those were the things I attracted in life.
I pulled in another steadying breath, pressed my hands into the mattress, and did my damnedest to spin around without twisting at the waist. It was mostly a success. Even standing was a fraction as painful as it should have been. I was three steps shy of the door when it swung open with a very stern looking Lily silhouetted in the light from the hallway.
“You couldn’t just ask for help, could you?” she asked, scowling down at me.
“You’d think, after all the years we spent together, you would already know the answer to that question,” I fired back. I squared my shoulders. “And I don’t need help going to the bathroom. It’s like twenty feet away.”
She just continued staring me down. If her plan was to block my path through the door, that might create some difficulty. I felt better than I had any right to feel, but I wasn’t in the mood to scuffle with her over something this stupid. A fact I wasn’t particularly fond of admitting to myself.
The day before, when I’d been hell-bent on following my brother, I’d had adrenaline on my side. That was not currently the case.
“Fine,” I said, conceding defeat. “Would you mind helping me to the bathroom? Please?”
Her mouth quirked, lips pursing just enough to let me know she wasn’t impressed. Then she stepped aside and motioned me through. “Between the doorway and this narrow ass hallway, I’m sure you can make it the rest of the way just fine.”
Ooo, she cusses?That was new.
And she’s mad at me.That wasn’t new, but whenever she’d been mad at me before, she’d just grumbled her displeasure, curled up on the couch, and pretended she could hear me for a few hours.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
Her eyes drifted shut, and she shook her head. When she opened them, there was no missing the worry in them. “I care about Matty too, but you can’t go off half-cocked after him. The demon’s shadow might not be as strong as the demon. That doesn’t mean it’s not still incredibly dangerous. Especially for you.”
“Why especially for me?” I asked, sounding surprisingly less breathless than I felt as I shuffled down the hall using the wall for support.
She didn’t answer. When I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder, she was leaned against the frame of my bedroom door with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Chatty as ever, I see,” I mumbled. “At least my pajamas look cute on you.”
They really did. She had a couple of inches on me, but she managed to make my pink capri sweatpants and black racerback tank look like they were tailored for her.
She lifted an eyebrow, not even bothering to look down. “You have no idea how unnatural it feels to be wearing clothes again.”
I could only imagine. There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but my bladder felt like it was dangerously close to exploding.
An hour later—at least that was how long it felt—I shuffled my way back out of the bathroom and headed straight for the living room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lily asked, still propped in my doorway.
“To find my phone and my laptop.”
“Leo!” she called past me.
I heard movement in the living room before my own personal Adonis appeared at the end of the short hall. I knew the guy was big, but with him looming like that in the dimly space of my crappy apartment hallway, he looked downright huge.
“Calling in the muscle to force me back to bed?” I asked with a glance over my shoulder.
Lily ignored my taunting. “Can you help her to the couch?”
He looked at me, then at Lily with a knowing smirk. “Yeah, I’ve got her.”
With that, Lily disappeared into my bedroom and shut the door. That should have been strange, having some woman I barely knew closing herself in my room, but I did know her. Sort of. I knew the hellhound/dog version of her.
Leo offered me his arm, and I took it gratefully. Once I was settled into the couch with my laptop propped on my crossed knees, I leveled Leo with a look.
“Before I open my computer and harass every person my brother has ever met via social media and email, I have a few questions.”
He sat at the opposite end, staring at the blank space where my television had once lived. We’d spent a good chunk of the evening cleaning up the mess from fighting with Matty—the shadow, but I had a feeling he and Lily had kept working after I’d passed out in bed.
“I’ll answer what I can,” he said.”
“Why did you follow us here? Into our world?”
His tongue darted out, wetting his bottom lip before turning to meet my eye. “You mentioned Lily. I already knew you were a Darling, and it seemed like too big of a coincidence to not take the chance.”
“She’s your cousin? As in, actual blood relative cousin?”
“Yeah, though she’s more like a sister to me. Best friend. Call it whatever you want. We grew up together, did everything together.” His gaze slid from me to the hallway. “When we got older and had to take our places in the clan, we made it a point to meet up and spend time together at least once a week.”
“Did you know why she came here?”
He shook his head. “I have my suspicions, given the timing of her disappearance, but we haven’t discussed it yet.”
I twisted a little, instantly regretting the move. He must have heard when I sucked in a sharp breath at the jolt of pain that shot through me because he turned.
The hint of a smile curved his lips on one side. “Easy, Never. It takes a while to heal from a stab wound.”
“No shit?” The retort was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
He laughed. A real, genuine laugh, that turned his golden god appearance into something much more casual and inviting. The guy was hot. There was no pretending like that wasn’t a panty-combusting fact. And I was attracted to him, but what I felt for him was dim compared to what I’d felt for Hook.
Except pining over my broody pirate was pointless. He was trapped in his realm, and I was here. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to try using that amulet to go back to his world, but I couldn’t. Not with Petra’s shadow camping out in my little brother.
Even after this whole nightmare was over, I couldn’t picture myself leaving Matty alone in the world. And what if Hook didn’t want me to go back? It wasn’t like he’d asked me to stay. Hadn’t even hinted at it.
I shook my head and turned my attention to the thing that actually mattered, finding Matty. Or at least a lead on where he might be. I flipped my laptop open, turned it on, and navigated to one of Charleston’s local news sites.
Leo’s eyes went wide when the screen flickered to life, but he didn’t say anything.
“Have you ever seen a computer before?” I asked.
He gave his head a little shake. “No.”
“Do you want to know what it does?”
He scooted a little closer. “Sure.”
I did my best to explain the magic of the internet. He seemed interested enough to learn as I checked news stories and live feeds for any sign of Matty, but I wasn’t sure if he really understood it.
“Do you know if Lily had any luck finding my cell phone?”
Smart work there Never. Because a guy who’s never heard of a computer will totally know what a cell phone is.
I held up my hands in the vague size of it. “It’s about yay big, black, with a shiny screen?” I tapped the computer screen.
He lifted his chin. “Um, there was something...” He stood and crossed the room, grabbing something off the counter by the toaster. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Thank Pete for small favors. “Yeah. Would you mind bringing it over here? I would do it, but I have a feeling Lily might tie me down if I try to do too much.”
His smile crinkled the skin around eyes. “Sure thing.”
He prowled across the room in clothes I belatedly realized I’d never seen before. Royal blue basketball shorts, a faded gray t-shirt that fit a little too tight, and running shoes that were cheap enough they didn’t have a logo.
When he handed me my phone, I motioned to him, up and down. “Where’d you get the new clothes?”
“Lily. She took off for a little while early this morning and came back with these.”
Hmm. “She didn’t say where she was going?”
He shook his head. “Just something about a donation bin?”
Clever. I mean, she could’ve taken a hundred bucks from my admittedly limited cash stash in my room. Hellhound Lily had seen me adding to and taking from that stash a thousand times. Instead, she’d filched almost new looking clothes from a secondhand bin.
“When you’re shifted, do you think the same way you do in human form?” I asked.
He sank down next to me, careful not to move me too much. “It’s not the same. You still have logic and reason, to an extent, but there’s a lot more instinct involved. The animal part of a shifter will always be more primal than the human part.”
“But you still understand what’s happening around you?”
He nodded.
“What kind of shifter are you?” I held up a hand. “Only answer if it’s okay for me to ask that. I don’t know anything about shifter etiquette.”
He hit me with another one of those defense-crushing smiles. “It’s fine to ask. My animal is a tiger, the same as everyone in my clan.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious? Like a real tiger? With stripes and fur and all that?” Meaning deadly teeth and claws.
Instead of answering me directly, he let out a low, terrifying growl through barely parted lips. Every fine hair on my fragile human body stood on end at the sound.
“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, trying to think of how to word what I was about to say. “But that was terrifying.”
His very human and enormously comforting chuckle replaced the growl. “That’s the point.
“Wait a minute.” My brain was super slow putting pieces together. “You said everyone in your clan is a tiger? Does that include Lily?”
His expression fell a little, becoming guarded. “I don’t know what happened to her in this world. I tried asking. She wouldn’t talk about it. But I can tell you, as someone who has seen her shift a thousand times, what she was when I arrived in this world was nothing like her real animal.”
“But you knew it was her. How?”
He shrugged. “She’s family.”