Chapter 21
CHARLOTTE
Ijerked awake, smacking my knee on something hard.
“Crap! What the hell,” I mumbled, rubbing my knee while forcing my eyelids open. The sun streaming through the windows made me slam them shut again. “I’m too tired for this.” I rubbed my eyes before once again forcing them open and glancing around.
I was in a car. My car, a beat-up Honda Civic that had seen better days, but it was all I could afford after I escaped the clan—as they liked to call themselves—of ingrates I’d had the misfortune of falling in with, and I’d just smashed my knee against the bottom of the steering wheel.
Opening my door, I stepped out onto the asphalt and stretched, groaning as I felt my spine popping as it realigned itself. I guess that’s what I get for sleeping in my car. Again.
I was at a rest stop somewhere outside a little coastal town called Driftwood Pointe. I inhaled, filling my lungs with salty air. The scent brought to mind the dream that woke me. The same dream I’d been having for the last month.
It always started the same: the smell of salty air, the roar of the tide, the crackling of a fire, and underneath it all, a low voice, threading through the noise, telling me it was time to take a break from running.
Time to find the town that was neutral ground and within it, a sanctuary sacred to all.
I didn’t know about sanctuary, but I did know I was tired of being on the road.
I needed a break, and the little town of Driftwood Pointe would do nicely.
From the admittedly brief and seriously lacking research I’d done, Driftwood Pointe was also neutral territory.
There were no prides, packs, or other groups of shifters nearby, and the town consisted mostly of supernaturals like me.
Well, not exactly like me. No one was quite like me, but from the information I could gather, the people there were welcoming to all.
“Well, I guess we’ll never get there if we don’t get started,” I mutter as I get back in the car.
In the back of my mind, where she had taken up residence, I heard my leopard grumble.
She’s tired of being cooped up. I’d been driving so long, trying to put as much distance between myself and Texas as I could, not staying in one place for more than a few days for fear of being found, that I hadn’t had time to find a safe place where we could shift so she could go for a run. I needed to fix that.
“Yes, you do,” she grumbled. I felt her shift restlessly under my skin, pacing. She’s not trying to force a shift, she’s just doing her own form of stretching.
I pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose and breathed.
I’d been on the move for two months now, since I left Texas. Since I realized that every time I used my gift, every time I let the weaving loose, it was being studied to determine the best way they could use it. Use me.
I pulled up the map on my phone. The little blue dot that was me blinked on a road that threaded along the coastline until I saw Driftwood Pointe.
Population: 4000.
Something in my chest went quiet when I read it. Not the anxious kind of quiet that made your skin prickle, the other kind. The kind that felt like a reassuring hug, or a hand on your shoulder when you didn’t know you needed one.
I held my breath as I turned the key in the ignition of my car, the motor on my starter grinding before the engine finally coughed and sputtered to life.
“Thank you, Goddess,” I whispered. Car in drive, I threaded my way around the semi-trucks parked haphazardly in the lot of the rest stop and eased onto the highway heading towards Driftwood Pointe.
I’d been following the dream for three days without admitting that’s what I was doing. I told myself I was just heading away from the invisible lines Breaker’s enforcers patrolled. Away from the clan’s hot, dry territory, to a cooler climate, when in reality I’d been following a freaking dream.
Goddess, I felt stupid, but I was still doing it. After all, feeling stupid had never stopped me before.
The first thing I saw through the morning mist as I got close to town was the lighthouse, standing like the guardian it was.
Following my ever-so-helpful GPS, I swerved to the right just in time to take the correct offramp, then turned left at the stop sign, toward the lighthouse, even though my GPS told me to turn right.
One by one the outline of buildings began taking shape.
The no-name street I was on turned into Harbor Street and ran parallel to the water.
Storefronts painted in faded seafoam and cream passed on either side of me as I slowed my car to a crawl while looking for a place to stay.
I passed a diner on my left with a hand-lettered chalkboard sign in front listing the day’s specials and an interesting looking bookstore that I was definitely going to have to check out while I was here.
On my right was a pub with a sign that read Hex & Hearth swaying in the slight breeze coming in off the water.
“This is a cute little town,” I muttered.
“Said every person in every horror movie that took place in a small town,” my leopard grumbled.
“So cynical. I’ll try to find someplace to shift,” I said, hoping to help her mood.
As luck would have it there were two rental options I could pick from.
The first was a nice-looking two-story building called the Tidal Inn.
It looked very well maintained and was right next to the pub and definitely out of my price range.
The other was a basic, no-name, generic motel.
It wasn’t fancy, but it was more aligned with my wallet right now.
I parked my car in the motel’s parking lot and sat with the engine off for a long moment.
My leopard went completely still. She wasn’t afraid, she was listening.
“Everything okay?” I asked her.
“It’s different here. Peaceful. Lots of magic. You’re going to have to be careful. Our magic wants to sing,” she said. That’s always what she said when our magic was too close to the surface.
I got out, pulled my jacket tighter against the October bite in the air, and looked across the street at the pub. Something about it called me. I shivered and looked at the time on my phone.
Just past 11:00 a.m.
It was too early to check out the pub and frankly, I wasn’t ready to dive into yet another thing I didn’t understand right now. What it wasn’t too early for was a shower and a nap, in that order, so into the motel lobby I went.
Room 113 wasn’t the most luxurious room, but it was clean and that’s all that mattered. After taking a quick shower, I decided a two hour nap was in order, so I set the alarm on my phone, climbed into bed, and crashed.
“Two hours wasn’t long enough,” I grumbled as I groped for my phone to turn the alarm off.
As much as I wanted to go back to sleep, I knew that if I didn’t get up now, I wouldn’t sleep tonight, so I pulled myself out of bed and got dressed in my usual jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and running shoes.
Deciding a trip to the bookstore I’d seen on my way into town was in order, I grabbed my purse, double-checked that I had my key card, and headed out the door.
As I walked I looked around. The town was small and appeared to have been laid out in a way that made it easier to walk places than drive.
The buildings were older, but well taken care of.
It was peaceful. Nothing felt rushed. It was like the town itself was saying, I was here at the beginning and will be here at the end.
I had only walked about five minutes when I reached the bookstore. Above the door, in weathered gold lettering, was a sign that said Finch & Fable.
I reached for the door handle when something hit me, squarely, from the left. My shoulder went first, then my arm, and I spun sideways into the doorframe as a warm, solid wall of person walked directly into me from the sidewalk, nose buried in his phone.
“Oh God. I’m so sorry. I—”
His messenger bag had hit the ground, books and papers scattered out and I scrambled to catch them. We ended up crouching on the doorstep at the same time, reaching for the same stack of crinkled papers. I looked up and, holy goddess of hotness, the man in front of me was fine.
He looked at his phone screen, then at the books and papers, then finally at me. His face turned a color I can only describe as mortification red.
His dark hair was a little spiky, like he’d run his hands through it too many times today.
He had blue-grey eyes behind wire-framed glasses and full lips that were pressed together in an expression of genuine, comprehensive embarrassment.
Even crouching down I could tell he was tall.
He’d clearly have several inches on me. He was lean, but not in a too skinny, unhealthy way, more like someone who swims: broad through the shoulders and tapered to his waist. The jeans and the flannel he was sporting over a black T-shirt did nothing to hide how built he was.
He looked exactly like what you’d get if the most handsome man alive and a very comfortable librarian had a baby.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. That was entirely my fault. Are you hurt?”
He looked at me with such genuine concern, I felt a tightening in my chest.
Crap. A bond. Goddess damn it. A bond was trying to form between us.
“Nieva, are we doing this? Forming this bond?” I asked my leopard. It didn’t feel like it was my magic, but I wanted to make sure.
“No. A true mate bond is trying to form. Because of your magic, I don’t think it will form fully unless you accept it,” she said.
“You don’t think it will. You’re not sure?”
“I’m not entirely sure how fated bonds affect Weavers,” she said.
Wonderful.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying hard not to let my southern accent come through. “Are your papers and books okay?”
He looked down. The cover on one of his paperbacks was bent. He actually winced.
“The cover,” I said solemnly, “may never recover.”
He glanced up at me sharply, checking whether I was being sarcastic, and his expression relaxed the smallest amount, like a door opening a crack.
“Brutal,” he said, “but fair.”
We stood. He gathered his books, some of which I noticed were dense and looked quite old, and papers. I slipped my purse back on my shoulder. He opened the door and held it for me, then seemed to immediately second-guess himself, like he’d done it on instinct and now wasn’t sure of the protocol.
Someone as socially awkward as me. Yay.
I walked through and into a bright, cheerful room full of books from floor to ceiling.
It even had one of those rolling ladders to help people get to shelves easier.
Taking a deep breath of warm air that smelled like paper and lemon oil and something faintly herbal, I felt the tension from the encounter outside melt away. I was in my happy place.
He followed.