Lunacy Page 10

  "Don't ask," I said simply. "You really don't want to know where my brain just went to, Jynxxie."

  "Stop calling me that!" He sounded exasperated and tired.

  I chuckled and we made our way back into the house with Elomina tailing behind us. She was congratulating me on my success, but I just felt guilty. Conner was passed out on the couch curled up next to Jimmy, his hair wet and sticking to his forehead in clinging strands from his recent shower. "You really did very well, Kacea. Everyone came out of it in one piece, and that is the most important thing. You should be proud of yourself."

  Jynxx ran off upstairs with my hoody, likely going to clean himself off as well. I sat on the floor, my hands covered in grossness that I wasn't quite prepared to acknowledge just yet. "Elomina... I reek. I am literally covered in bits and pieces of two guys. Bits and pieces that a girl should never see, much less be splattered with. Once Jynxx is done, I just want to clean myself off and have something to eat. We never did get to have breakfast this morning..." I was focusing on normal things, trying to cocoon myself in the ordinary. I knew that if I dove too fully into what had just happened, what I had just done, that I was going to go into shock and lose my mind. It was scary, and it wasn't natural.

  But maybe that was exactly my issue. It was natural. It was more natural than anything I'd ever experienced in my entire life. The power and knowledge had just come to me, and flowed through and out of me almost effortlessly. Thinking about it that way, I knew that I wasn't okay with it. I wasn't ready to accept that werewolves were real, and Gods only knew what else was true, and that I had the power to draw a horse-sized wolf from the body of one of my classmates. Elomina gave me a soft, understanding smile and patted me on the shoulder, her accent strangely soothing to my currently battered psyche.

  "Worry not, Skadhi.” She paused and corrected herself. “You will be fine, Kacea. You stress yourself too much with worries about that which you cannot control. Were you not meant to manifest as the Goddess now, you would not have. Everything is as it should be in this world, whether you believe it to be truth or not. Many things can change, and nothing is truly predetermined, but you can rest assured that this was meant to be. You coming into your power, and bringing Jynxx into his, is a good thing. It means that he will be able to see his parents once more, to be reunited with the family he thought lost to him forever.”

  Damn it. I hate it when other people are right…

  I sighed and responded back with, “And how am I supposed to explain this to my parents? I know they aren’t anything other than human. Do I keep this a secret from them?” My mother would likely have me committed if I told her anything about werewolves, exploding boys, glowing eyes, and Goddesses reborn into the body of her little girl. I could practically feel the arms of one of those lovely huggy jackets tightening around me just from the thought of it. Her silver eyes regarded me silently, knowing that she didn’t need to respond. The decision to involve my parents or not was much like Jynxx’s about Jimmy. Elomina seemed older to me, then. I had thought her to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, but her Zen statement about destiny made me wonder...

  “Elomina?” She looked at me curiously. “How old are you, exactly?”

  She laughed heartily, and it startled me a bit with how sudden it was as it bubbled from her lips like a small stream over a bed of pebbles in the woods. “It is not polite to ask a lady’s age, Kacea. But I shall indulge your query. I am older than Skadhi, by quite a bit, actually. I spent a large number of years in Romania, as you may have guessed from this accent, but I was born in Ireland nearly twenty-five hundred years ago.”

  My jaw dropped. I expected it to hit the floor, but thanks to the functional structure of the human body, I was spared that embarrassment. "You mean... You're two thousand and five hundred years old?!" I managed to stammer out.

  Elomina nodded like it was no big thing. "Nearly. My birthday falls later in what everyone now calls November."

  I was beyond shocked, but then my attention was drawn by the feeling of being watched. I looked over to see Gavin staring at me with those creepy red eyes of his. I narrowed my eyes and shot him a rather nasty glare, half contemplating seeing if I could shove a change down his throat from across the room. But then I realized that it would make a huge mess and I didn't want anyone to have to clean up that mess inside the house. It just wouldn't be nice, and I had a feeling it would be poor Conner who'd be doing the cleaning. Aloud, I half snarled, "Got a problem?"

  His response was a slow smirk that chilled me to the bone and made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. His words, however, were rather innocuous. "We do have a second bathroom, you know. I could show you to it, if you'd like. Then you won't have to wait around for Princess Jynxxie to get out of the shower. And you'll gain the added perk of actually having some hot water left, too." He added the last with a chuckle.

  Every instinct in my body said it wasn't a good idea. But I felt goddamned disgusting, and smelled even worse. And maybe I was just letting his contacts creep me out more than I should have. Everyone deserved a chance to prove that they weren’t a serial killer, right? Right.

  So what did I say at the prospect of a nice long, hot shower? "Oh, God... That would be amazing."

  Teigan shot a glare in Gavin’s direction, but said nothing. He seemed like a cool customer, so I felt that his being bothered by Gavin’s offer should have freaked me out at as well. But before I had time to retract my previous statement, he hopped from his seat on the back of the couch and tipped his head back towards the hallway behind him, those cherry red curls of his falling back perfectly into place. "Follow me, milady."

  Chapter 13

  The house was apparently much bigger than it had appeared from the outside. It had looked sizable, but damn. This place was easily an eight bedroom house, if not more. And there was probably an attic and basement, to boot.

  “This place was a falling down old multiple rental when we got our hands on it,” Gavin said as he led me through the dim hallways to a set of stairs. “We’ve got three half baths, but only two full bathrooms,” he said back over his shoulder as he walked up ahead of me.

  I put my hand on the thick railing as I familiarized myself with the distance between steps, glancing down at my feet so I didn’t trip and fall up the stairs. Bashing your face off the steps above you is never a picnic, no matter which way you look at it. As we neared the top of the stairs, I saw that there weren’t any windows in this part of the hallway. I have decent night vision, nothing compared to the way I could see when I was looking through Skadhi’s eyes, but it was almost pitch black up here and I could barely see my hand a few inches in front of my face.

  I knew Gavin wasn’t too far ahead of me because I could still smell his cologne, something sweet and sugary and almost feminine. In my distraction by the tasty confectionary scent coming from the young man ahead of me, I missed a step and scrabbled vainly trying to grab onto the railing to keep from falling backwards. But, since Fate seems to have this deep seated hatred for me, I started to totter backwards and saw in my mind’s eye how much it was going to hurt and how much it would suck to have my brains ooze all over that pretty hard wood floor downstairs.

  Gavin’s big hand grabbed my wrist and stopped my fall just before my head could make that first crack like the shell of an egg on the stairs. He righted me and pulled me up to stand on the level floor at the top with him, yanking me up so quickly that I stumbled into him. I bounced off his chest and his arm wrapped around me before I could fall again. He was shorter than Jynxx, but just as solid, if not more so because he wasn’t as tall. I stiffened and froze, his laughter practically a purr against me.

  “You sure are an accident prone little thing, aren’t you?”

  My pride was wounded by that statement. “I’m not that much shorter than you are, ya know.”

  That smirk again, coupled with the glimmer of his red eyes in the dark, made me want to jump down the stairs and take my chanc
es with permanent brain damage and likely more permanent death. His voice was low and soft as he leaned in close enough that his breath felt hot on my ear as he said, “Your heart’s hammering in your chest like a bird trapped in a cage, Kacea… Do I frighten you?”

  Many responses came to mind. I settled for the truth. “I’ve got a feeling you get off on fear, so we’re gonna lie and go with a ‘no’ on that one, Gav. Mind showing me to that bathroom, now?” My arms trembled ever so slightly in his embrace, but I managed to keep the tremor from my voice.

  His arm slid down around my waist, so smoothly it shouldn’t have been possible, and he walked me to the room near the end of the hall, reaching inside and flipping on the light switch. The sudden brightness to my dilated pupils was like needles stabbing through my retinas, and I almost hissed at it like a movie vampire.

  Gavin let go of me and I stepped into the now tolerable light, seeing that there were already several towels and a variety of soaps and shampoos and whatnot inside. I turned to look back at him and he was leaned casually against the door frame, one arm above his head like he was posing for a photo shoot. All those cherry red curls fell fetchingly around his face, in such stark contrast to his skin that was as white as Jynxx’s. If demons were models, then sinners would ride.

  “Can I help you? Or are you gonna scram so I can get this blood off of me?”

  “You sure you don’t want me to wash your back?” he teased, no longer threatening but still trying to get a rise out of me.

  “Positive,” I said simply, and closed the door in his face.

  It was silent in the bathroom as I went to the tub, cranking the faucet over to as hot as I thought I could bear. Sighing, I wriggled and shimmied out of my grossly saturated and sticky clothes. There probably wasn't any saving them, and I realized I should have asked someone for something to wear once I got out. Defeated the purpose and seemed a bit counter-productive if all I did was get clean and change back into disgustingly filthy clothes.

  "What the hell ever..." I murmured to myself, listening anxiously to the water spattering against the tile of the rather fancy shower. It was done in some darkly green stone with red flecks running through it. Pretty.

  Finally out of the clothes, feeling a bit dismayed that they were likely going to make a mess of the floor - which would then require more clean up - I pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the spray of almost scorching hot water. Steam curled up from my cold skin in clouds and I turned the temperature down just a little. I stood under the stream of water long enough for my hair to be fully saturated before I even bothered investigating the soap I had to choose from. Unfortunately, everything belonged to the boys. My luck didn't stretch far enough that I could have happened upon the bathroom Elomina used and not have to smell like a dude... But beggars couldn't be choosers, so I grabbed some shampoo and lathered up. The smell was sharp and woodsy, heady but not so thick that it was overwhelming. Trying to place whose it was, I finally concluded that it must have been Conner's. Rinsing it out, I pulled a few chunks of things I didn't care to identify from my hair, grimacing a little as they swirled down the drain with a gross squelching noise.

  My skin was finally starting to look like I wasn't an extra in a horror movie, so I ignored the nastiness of having pieces of two guys I knew all over me and investigated the other soaps and conditioners on the wells inside the stall. Because I'm picky about scents, I grabbed the same type of conditioner and body wash. When it was finally all done, I stood under the water for a few more moments, just letting the shower pelt my skin like a heavy rain storm. I knew that it wasn't necessary, and I really couldn't get any cleaner than I already was, but the shower had always been a place to de-stress for me.

  With a reluctant sigh, I shut the shower off and stood there dripping while water ran down my body in rivulets, watching steam still rising from me now that my skin was warmer than the air around me. I wrung the water from my hair, having to twist it several times before reaching out blindly in the direction of where I'd seen the towel bar before climbing in. After a few vain attempts at snagging something to dry off with, a towel jumped into my grip and my fingers brushed against the cooler flesh of someone else’s hand.

  I froze for a moment, the towel suspended between us. My heart leapt into my throat as my pulse pounded, ready to beat the ever loving hell out of someone if I had to. More specifically, if it was Gavin… Grabbing the curtain with my free hand, I peeked around the plastic sheet and exhaled loudly with relief. Relief led to suspicion and mild embarrassment as a pair of amber eyes that were fast becoming very familiar looked to me curiously.

  He held his hands up to show that he wasn’t trying anything weird, doing his best to be non-threatening. “You’ve been up here a while. Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Conner said, his voice soft with sympathy and a touch of worry.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, having noticed something glittering in his mouth while he was talking, and leaned forward a bit while pulling the towel behind the curtain. “Stick out your tongue, would ya?”

  He quirked a brow at me, tilting his head to the side as if I’d grown a second head out of my neck or something equally strange. “That’s gotta be the weirdest thing I’ve ever had a girl ask me to do.” Conner said with a little laugh before complying. As I’d noticed before, he had his tongue pierced. The silver colored stud sparkled from the overhead light.

  I ducked behind the curtain and started drying myself off, still talking to him. “So, does that mean that silver can’t actually hurt a werewolf?”

  He laughed then, a full throaty laugh that made my belly fill with a heat I purposely ignored. “Silver does hurt us. Wounds don’t heal as quickly, if at all, when silver’s involved. But this bar bell is only sterling silver. It’s an alloy, not just silver. So, it burns a little, but it’s not full on agony like with fine silver.” Interesting… And disturbing. But before I could voice that aloud, he spoke up. “I did tell you I liked pain, didn’t I?”

  It made my eye twitch and I leaned forward to towel some of the water from my hair so it was only damp and no longer dripping. I wrapped myself in the towel, securing it with a knot tucked in under my arm pit. “Indeed you did. And that’s just…” I stopped talking as I stepped out of the shower and saw him standing there, lightly bronzed and perfectly sculpted. But it was more the expression on his face that made me pause. His face was lifted slightly, as if he was scenting the air. Like he was smelling… Me. His eyes narrowed a little and I noticed he started breathing as casually as possible through his mouth rather than his nose, those slightly canine teeth a bit more apparent than they should have been.

  Finally he covered his nose and mouth with his hand, seeming to relax a little. “I brought you some of Mina’s clothes to change in to. Yours are already in the washer. You were up here for an hour, so I figured I might as well get them cleaned for you. I, uh…”

  It was my turn to be curious. “What’s the matter, Conner?”

  He shook his head. “It’s… It’s the way you smell right now. Just the scent of you under all the soap that’s mine… Jesus.” He looked away from me then and walked to the door. “I’m going to head downstairs. Holler if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Alrighty!” I called after him as he quickly retreated, the door closing behind him shutting off my reply. I shrugged it off, not knowing what could have freaked him out like that. Must have been a guy thing.

  I looked at the clothes on the floor before me, squatting down to inspect them. The jeans would fit easily. Apparently Elomina and I were the same size in that department. The top, however… I picked it up and grimaced. The girls were gonna have a little trouble being comfortable there. And without a bra, it was so much worse. I pulled the tank top on and noticed that Conner had been conscientious enough to grab an over shirt for me as well. A long sleeved black thermal, perfect for this time of year. It was still snug in all the wrong places, but it covered enough
that I could deal until my clothes were dry.

  I combed through the thick wet strands of my hair, finally weaving all those long black tresses into a braid that came to a stop just below my rib cage in the back. Looking in the mirror, I finger combed my bangs so they fell around my face properly, just to my jaw. Without a flat iron to straighten my bangs, they were going to curl and wave and do whatever they damn well pleased, but all things considered…. Having curly bangs wasn’t very high on my list of life threatening things that needed to be addressed at the moment. I hung the towel back up and flipped the light off on my way out of the bathroom, going back downstairs to join the rest of the gang.

  Seven pairs of eyes fell on me as I came into the living room and I looked to Elomina, seeing that Jimmy was awake and not knowing what I should say. She nodded at me and I shrugged, feeling what she was trying to tell me without either of us needing words to convey it. I'd been gone long enough, so Jynxx must have decided to fill Jimmy in on what was going on. What was happening, and what he may end up having to worry about becoming sometime in the near future. One less thing for my already stressed brain to have to worry about, I suppose. And Jimmy seemed horribly Zen about the whole thing, besides.

  I sat down on the couch between Jynxx and Conner, since it was the only available space other than the floor. And although the carpet was fairly comfy, I was much more tired physically than I was expecting from the mental strain I'd put myself through. Forcing the both of them to shift had kicked my ass, and I was absolutely starving like I'd just been in a triathlon and come out in the top five.

  Conner seemed to share my sentiment, saying aloud. "I am sooooo hungry! I could eat a horse."