4. Tara
Chapter four
Tara
Serena should have been there yesterday.
Tara paced the length of her apartment for the hundredth time, phone clutched in her hand, watching the screen like she could will it to light up with Serena’s name.
The coffee she’d made before bed had gone cold.
The one she’d made before dawn sat untouched on the counter.
Outside, Nashville was bustling through a busy lunch hour.
The sounds of traffic whirred past her apartment, but none of them were her best friend.
Where the hell are you? Please be okay…
She tried her number again. Straight to voicemail. Again.
“Hey, it’s Serena. Leave a message and I’ll call you back. Probably. Eventually. Don’t hold your breath.”
She’d listened to that recording so many times since yesterday; she had it memorized. The slight laugh in Serena’s voice. The self-deprecating humor that hid so much pain. The sound of a woman who was finally, finally starting to believe she deserved good things.
“Serena, it’s me. Again. Please call me. Please, just... let me know you’re okay. I’m really scared, and if I don’t hear from you by tonight, I’m calling the police. I know you hate that; I know it’s complicated, but I can’t just sit here and—”
Tara’s voice cracked. “Please. Just call me.”
She hung up and threw the phone onto the couch.
Serena had texted yesterday morning. On my way! Should be there later tonight. Get the wine ready. And then nothing. No updates, no “running late,” no response to any of Tara’s increasingly frantic messages.
Almost a full day now. A full day of silence from a woman who always had her phone in her hand. A woman who was running from a dangerous ex. A woman who was supposed to be safe.
That was the thing that really made Tara’s stomach churn. Serena should have been safe.
When Serena told Tara she was renting an apartment from three brothers in a little Louisiana town backed up against a preserve with some creatures that howled all night, Tara had stopped what she was doing and called Grandmère.
Grandmère had been quiet on the line for a long beat.
Then she’d said, only: “The Voss boys. Triplets. You friend has stumbled into something good, chère. Best you no say more on this phone.”
Tara had laughed out loud when she’d hung up. Of course Serena had stumbled into them. Serena had a knack for stumbling into trouble.
Serena had no idea, of course. She thought she’d just chanced upon a sweet rental situation with three hot landlords. But Tara knew exactly what she’d found, and she couldn’t have been more thrilled.
“Girl,” she’d told her on the phone, “you stay right where you are. Those boys will keep you safer than any restraining order ever could.”
“You sound like you know something I don’t,” Serena had replied; suspicious.
“I know plenty of things you don’t. Trust me. Stay with the hot brothers. Enjoy yourself. God knows you deserve some fun after Marcus.”
And she had stayed. Had started to thrive, actually, in ways Tara hadn’t seen in a long time. The exhaustion that had clung to her for years seemed to lift. She laughed more. Worried less. Talked about the brothers in ways that made Tara tease her mercilessly about her situation.
“You know how much fun… well...hmm.. nevermind..” Tara had teased her once, unable to resist. “The stamina alone—”
“What are you talking about?” Serena had sounded genuinely confused.
“Nothing, girl. Just saying. Enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it.”
Tara hadn’t told her the truth about what the Voss brothers were.
That was their secret to share, not hers.
And besides, what did it matter? Werewolves had rules, strict guidelines they followed when it came to humans.
She was safe. She was happy. She was being protected by three wolves who, from everything Serena had told Tara, were already half in love with her. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything, apparently. Because now she was missing. Vanished somewhere between Louisiana and Nashville, and Tara couldn’t shake the feeling that Marcus Webb had something to do with it.
But that didn’t make sense either. Marcus was human. Just a man, however cruel. And Serena had three werewolves watching over her. How had he gotten to her? How had he taken her right out from under their noses?
Tara’s phone rang. She lunged for it, nearly knocking over the cold coffee. But it wasn’t Serena’s number on the screen. It was an unknown caller, a Louisiana area code. Her grandmother’s area code.
“Grandmère?” she answered, her heart hammering. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a girl.” Her grandmother went straight to the point. Her voice was steady, but underneath it Tara heard something that made her heart race. “She visits my dreams. I think you know her, chère. She carries you charm. She keeps finding her way to my kitchen.”
Tara sank onto the couch, her legs suddenly unable to hold her. “Serena. You’ve seen Serena?”
“The charm you gave her, the one I made for you, it created a thread between us. She’s been following that thread, though she doesn’t know it.” A pause.
“Is she alive?” Tara’s voice broke into a sob.
“I think so, but she’s in trouble, Tara. Real trouble. Someone no good has her.”
“Marcus.” The name came out like a curse. “Her ex. But that doesn’t—Grandmère, she was living with wolves. The Voss brothers. How would a human get past three werewolves?”
A long silence on the other end. “He’s no human, chère.”
The words hit like ice water. “What?”
“That man. Marcus, you say? He’s something else. Something old,” Grandmère’s voice went hard. “He practices gray arts and takes what no belong to him.”
Tara couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. All this time, she’d thought Serena was running from an abusive ex-boyfriend. A dangerous man, yes, but a man. Human. Limited. Not a monster.
“Come home,” she said. “Now. Tonight. You friend is running out of time, and I need to show you what I’ve seen.”
“I’m leaving as soon as I hang up.”
“Drive safe, but don’t be slow.”
Tara packed a bag and wasted no time getting on the road.
She made the drive in a single hard push, pushing the speed limit the whole way.
The sky was dark, and the moon was high by the time she turned onto the dirt road that led to Grandmère’s house.
Spanish moss hung from the cypress trees like gray-green ghosts, and the air through her open window smelled like mud, moss, jasmine, and childhood.
Grandmère was waiting on the porch. She looked smaller than Tara remembered, but that happened every time she came back. Time was catching up with her grandmother, though her eyes were still sharp as cut glass and her presence still filled the space around her like she was twice her physical size.
“You made good time,” she said as Tara climbed out of the car.
“You scared me.” Tara took the porch steps two at a time. “And the drive down gave me far too much time to just think. Please. I need to know what you know. How do you know Marcus isn’t human?”
“Inside,” she turned toward the door. “I need to show you something first.”
The kitchen was exactly as Tara remembered it.
Blue walls faded to winter-sky pale. Herbs hanging from the beams. The old wooden table where she’d learned to filet fish, shell peas, throw bones and read the patterns of fate.
Grandmère’s kitchen had always been the center of the world to her, the one place where impossible things made sense.
But something was different today. In the center of the table sat a bowl of water, dark and still. Beside it, a candle burned with a flame that didn’t flicker despite the breeze from the open window. Scattered around both was a pattern of bones she didn’t recognize.
“Sit,” her grandmother said. “And watch.”
Tara sat in her usual chair, the one with her initials scratched into the arm, and watched her grandmother move to the table. She didn’t pour coffee. Didn’t offer food. Just stood over the bowl of water with her eyes half-closed, her lips moving in words Tara couldn’t hear.
The water began to ripple. Not from movement. Not from vibration. It rippled from within, as if something was stirring beneath the surface.
“The charm you gave your friend created a thread between us,” she said, her voice distant.
“She’s been following that thread in her dreams, finding her way to my kitchen.
At first, just glimpses. A face in the corner of my eye.
But then more. And more. Then earlier today, I got a strong enough trace for a scry, but I can ‘t hold it. It comes and goes.”
The water stilled.
“Look, it's here now.”
And on its surface, an image. A room. Dark wood walls, floor to ceiling. No windows. A massive bed scattered with what looked like flower petals — pale in the gloom of the room. A figure huddled on the petals, wrists bound, face hidden by shadows.
Serena.
“She doesn’t know what she is,” Tara’s grandmother murmured. “Doesn’t know what she can do. But she’s finding her way to me anyway.”
“What do you mean, what she is?” Tara’s voice came out hoarse.
“Watch.”
The image in the water shifted. The shadows in the corners of that dark room were moving. Not the way shadows move when light changes. This was something else. Something deliberate. They seemed to lean toward Serena, reaching for her like hands in the darkness. And Serena was reaching back.
“Mon Dieu,” Tara breathed.
“That man, the one who has her.” Grandmère’s voice turned to steel. “I know his kind. Parasites. They take what do no belong to them. They find people with gifts and they feed on them, drain them dry, keep them weak and ignorant so they never learn to fight back.”
“He’s been feeding on Serena?”