Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
~Three Years Earlier~
Atropos, Texas didn’t have much of a night scene, and with a population under two thousand people, Emma had all the privacy she needed, aside from the occasional snooping neighbor.
For the past month, she’d shacked up with her human pet in a single-wide trailer home in a park on the outskirts of town.
Joe deserved more than what she’d given him, but she’d always known from the start it wasn’t possible to take their relationship anywhere deeper.
They meant nothing to each other beyond fulfilling the role of mutual distraction.
She made him forget the pain of losing his wife and kid to divorce, and he reminded her of what it was like to be desirable. Human.
Outside, the air was hot and sticky. Chirping cricket song penetrated the thin walls. Joe had turned on the window air conditioning unit, and the blissfully cold current tossed Emma’s blonde hair against her cheeks.
She sprawled on the couch between Joe’s jean-clad legs, his arms around her, her cheek against his shoulder, soaking in a few final moments of comfort.
Tomorrow, she had to leave. She’d pack the last of her belongings at the plantation house and embark on a journey to the north. But first, she had to break it to him.
Emma eased up to a sitting position and into the empty space on the couch.
“Where you goin’?”
“Nowhere. Hey… look. Joe, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“Yeah?”
“Something I think is going to hurt you.”
“Sweetheart, there ain’t much of anything you can say that’ll hurt me. My feelings are cast iron.”
“I’m leaving Texas tomorrow. For good, I think.”
Joe swung his legs down from the couch and put his feet on the floor. “What do you mean, you’re leaving?”
“I received approval to move on. I’ve been in Texas for too long.”
“So that’s it? You weren’t going to say a damned thing?”
“I’m saying something now. It’s complicated, all right? My acceptance to the north didn’t arrive until today.”
“But you knew you planned to go and didn’t say shit to me. I thought you liked bein’ here.”
Loathing the accusation in his tone, she flinched and looked away. “I do like being here. I like being with you, but you knew as well as I did that this wasn’t going to last. We discussed it.”
Joe quieted for a second. “I didn’t expect it so soon,” he said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “Thought we had a couple more years together maybe.”
“Better now than later when…” When she became attached to him. Months, or even years down the road, the temptation was bound to strike and she’d offer to turn him, or worse, he’d ask. He’d ask, and she’d give it, eager to spend eternity with someone who could make her laugh.
“This is a shit thing to do, telling me the day before you plan to leave, Em.”
“You want my advice? Finish getting your life back in order and go get your family. Tell Pamela whatever she wants to hear until she’s willing to give you a second chance.”
He shut down and stood, hands shoved into his jean pockets and shoulders tense. “You’re just going to walk away from me after spitting out some bullshit advice about unfucking my family?”
With one sentence, he made her feel lower than low. “I don’t have a choice.”
Joe’s expression contorted into a mask of fury, blue eyes narrowing in his handsome face. “You use me for my blood and stay in my house whenever you need to get away from them bloodsuckers out in the woods—”
“I didn’t use you. Unless my memory is incorrect, we’ve both benefitted from this arrangement over the past year, so don’t you give me that shit. I gave you blood too.”
“And now you’re taking it away.”
“You’ll be fine. You aren’t a thrall, Joe, so don’t start acting like one because I’ve cut off your supply.
” She’d always been careful to never give him more than a drop at a time, just enough to be a working man at peak efficiency, a man who could embrace eighty-hour work weeks without batting an eye.
It helped him out in his efforts to build a respectable nest egg.
“Why’d you even bother coming inside then?” he spat.
“You know what, fine.” She crossed the room and grabbed her purse off the peeling linoleum countertop.
“Fine,” he shot back. “Get the hell outta here.”
“Gladly.”
Shit. So much for one last night. For one last kiss. She shook with rage as she stalked to the door, throwing it open before storming down the creaking wooden stairs.
The screen slammed open and heavy steps thudded against the porch behind her. “Em, wait,” Joe called.
She paused. “For what?”
“Don’t go. You know I don’t care if you stay here with me however long you gotta, girl. Just stay here. Don’t leave like this.”
“I’m leaving Texas, and nothing you can say or do will change that fact. It’s not because I want to, but because I have to do this. I’m sorry.”
After a brief hesitation, she drove away and headed back to the coven to complete packing her belongings, the sight of her sullen companion a dark silhouette against a dingy white trailer door in the rearview mirror.
Letting Joe go had been the right thing to do. Despite the gnawing pain in her gut, Emma knew she’d had no alternative. He had a family who needed him, and she needed to get the hell away from Rosenhaven.
The touch of a warm hand on Emma’s back roused her from her restless dreams. She lifted her head and blinked bleary eyes at the shadowed figure sitting on the bed beside her.
“Hey?” Adrian’s hand slid up her spine until his fingers splayed between her shoulder blades.
“Is something the matter?” she asked groggily, hair falling in her face. A glance at the phone on the pillow beside her revealed it was noon. Only six hours had passed since they had stopped for the day to sleep in a modest two-bedroom sanctuary in the hills of Virginia.
“You spoke in your sleep,” Adrian said.
After smoothing her hair away from her face, she looked up to notice Adrian had perched on the edge of her bed while clothed in only a pair of black boxer briefs. Too unnerved by her bad dream to enjoy the view, she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Especially at this ungodly hour. She never stayed up until midday.
“Don’t worry about it. It sounded like one hell of a nightmare, I’ll say that much. You even thrashed around a little at the end.”
At some point during her sleep, she’d kicked the covers off. Sheets and blankets tangled around her feet until Adrian tugged them up over her legs. Wearing yoga pants and an oversized tee meant she was dressed more than him at least.
Emma bit her lower lip and gazed at her lap. Thrashing in her sleep over a human she’d left behind?
“Want to tell me about it?”
“I…” She hesitated and drew her knees up to her chest. “It’s stupid.”
Adrian shifted closer. He tucked her tousled hair back away from her face and ran his fingers through her blonde waves. “Emma, whatever you have to say, it’s not stupid. You can talk to me.”
“I was dreaming about Joe.”
The soothing touch hesitated. “Joe?”
“Remember the feeder I told you about in Texas? His name was Joe.”
“Right. Do you normally have dreams about a guy you left behind?”
“No. I haven’t thought about him in over two years, not since I left. It wasn’t the most amicable of splits.”
Adrian popped up a brow. “Why’s that?”
“He didn’t want me to leave,” she explained.
“Addicted?”
She crinkled her nose. “No, I never gave him enough for that. I’m not that cruel or reckless.”
Although he chuckled at her, Emma didn’t sense any condescension. “I didn’t think you were, but some humans have a weaker tolerance than others. Did you remain in touch at all?”
She tried to pretend she didn’t notice he had removed his hand.
“No. When I say it wasn’t amicable, I mean just that.
The evening I received authorization to move, I told him I was leaving, and he got pissed.
I don’t think I was in danger, vampire or not, but he was hurt.
He chased me outside, but I didn’t sense violence.
Just a lot of pain. Like I betrayed him or did something wrong, you know? ”
“Tell me about him.”
She blew out a breath, stirring her bangs. “Okay, where to start? He was funny, but sad most of the time, not that he let it show usually. Guys like him don’t end up in bars catering to our kind unless they’re desperate or suicidal.”
“And you hit it off.”
She nodded. “I guess it was pity at first. Better me than some of the others he might have ended up with. He grew on me though. We went from meeting once a month to every week. He asked me out on a date, of all things. He always had money, you know? He thought it was all his ex-wife wanted him for. He worked twelve-hour days on a construction crew to pay alimony and child support.”
“And you lived with him.”
She turned her head and wrinkled her nose at him. “No, nothing as serious as that. I only stayed there those last few weeks while I waited for my transfer to be approved. I didn’t think I’d get it. A dozen smaller clans turned me down. No space.”
“You mentioned alimony?”
“He had an ex-wife and a kid in town. I thought—I had this feeling they could work things out, so I urged him to do that. A few months later, I wrote the mistress of liaisons at Rosenhaven and asked her to check on him.”
“Which she did, I presume.”
Emma nodded. “Felicity told me their relationship appeared to be on the mend. As far as I was concerned, that door was shut behind me, and I moved on.”
“Until now.”
“Until now,” she whispered weakly, sick to her stomach every time she thought about him.
“Odd to dream about him, don’t you think? You may claim he didn’t mean much to you, but maybe it’s time for a call to get some closure, Em.”
Em. A single little one-word syllable did something to her heart.
It beat so fast it skipped a beat. It wasn’t the first time Adrian had used it, but every damned time had the same effect on her.
“I wouldn’t know who to contact now. Margot murdered Felicity, the coven is gone, and all my friends were staked when the Overseers took charge. Everyone I knew is gone.”
“Facebook? Don’t most humans have an account there? Hell, most of us have social media accounts of some kind, even if the elders discourage it.”
Their vampire leaders tended to disapprove of everything that kept records of faces and appearances in digital databases.
“Joe wasn’t into that kind of thing.” She smiled. “He had a flip phone when I left. You know, one of those ugly ones with no touchscreen. Said it was all he needed.”
“Why don’t you call him on it then?”
“I would if I remembered the number,” she grumbled. “Don’t have my old phone anymore, and I upgraded to an iPhone this year. Lost all my contacts.”
“You could ask the local witch representative to do a welfare check. There’s a couple in Atropos. I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive the head witch in charge lives there too.”
For every recommendation she shot down, Adrian had one more. “I’m aware. How do you know about Atropos witches anyway?”
“Part of any mission is preparation, Emma, and that particular witch is a little more special than most. Atropos also happens to be shifter territory now, and as a master, it’s necessary for me to announce my presence while in their domain.
I needed to know who or what we may encounter along the way and research the local alpha. ”
“Fort Worth isn’t anywhere near Atropos,” she mumbled. Weren’t they supposed to investigate a hunter’s safe house there with a shrine dedicated to staking her?
“There’s an Overseer I want to meet in San Antonio for a chat. She was there on the day Rosenhaven fell.” Adrian rose and returned to his bed, the impression of him left in the sheets. “We can swing by town and you can check on Joe yourself.”
“Adrian—”
“You don’t have to talk to him or even let him know you’re there. But you can look and maybe get some peace of mind.”
And deep down, Emma agreed that peace of mind was exactly what she needed.