Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) (10 page)

T
heo
and I made our exit before the last dominance battle ended thanks to a perfectly timed flight leaving from the local airport. I didn’t get to say goodbye to Graeson. I spotted him walking, his stride fluid and gait easy, with a bruised and battered Moore, and decided a quick mental touch would have to suffice.

Over the years, I had experienced many types and several degrees of loss. Lori vanished in the blink of an eye, her death a rock skipped across the smooth surface of my life, its ripples echoing to this day. The severing of ties to my parents had been more gradual. I felt them withdraw, little by little, until one day they dropped me off for a weekend visit with Aunt Dot and postponed my pick up in weekly increments until I was eighteen. Isaac and Aunt Dot’s disappearance stung, a raw nerve exposed by the uncertainty of their situation. But stepping into the cab Theo had called and watching the campground grow smaller in the rearview mirror, that scooped out my heart and made me feel like I’d left a piece of my soul under a plastic tarp in the woods.

I must have bought a ticket at the counter, and I got on the plane at some point, but the first moment of clarity I experienced after putting Chattanooga behind me was stepping into the lobby at Tri-Cities Regional Airport. Theo set to work securing a rental car, but I was a million miles away. Not until we arrived in the town of Butler, and I stepped out of the car, did the fog vanish.

“I’ve been here before,” I murmured as nostalgia teased at hazy memories. An old plywood sign stood across the street, its faded paint a welcome message. Block letters across the bottom spelled out their motto. I read it out loud. “The town that wouldn’t drown.”

“We used to pass through here on the way to Cherokee National Forest.” Theo nodded at the ancient general store. “Mom used to buy us all Cokes in glass bottles from there. We always grabbed rock candy and those old pencils with bark still on them.”

Rock candy. One of Harlow’s clues.

Vertigo swept through me, as if all the answers I sought whirled tornado-quick around me, the debris clicking together like puzzle pieces that formed brief glimpses of the total devastation before swirling apart.

I crossed to the store in a daze and pushed inside under a tinkling bell strung over the door. A gust of air smelling of fudge and leather hit me in the face. No one greeted me, and it lent an eerie quality to an already bizarre experience. Wandering the aisles, I spotted strange and unusual tourist-trap trinkets that echoed with the memory of childhood summers. How I would beg for redneck pencils or try to convince Dad he needed a corncob pipe when he didn’t even smoke.

When I turned down the last aisle, a glare on the picture window caught my eye. Beyond it, Theo leaned against the car, legs crossed in front of him while he tapped away on his phone’s screen. Behind him huddled a two-pump gas station that used to be painted green and gold but now boasted the red-and-white logo of a national brand. An elderly man sat on a rumpled shirt out front, his head tilted back and his mouth wide open as he dozed in the shade of the portico. A brown bag sat between his feet, and a short row of six inch tall hammers lined the wall beside him.

Leaving the general store behind, I crossed the street and approached the man. A torn cardboard scrap read:
Crack your own geodes. Two for ten dollars. Hammers five dollars each.

Geodes. Another clue.

I had been right to come here. Maybe. At the very least I had been right that Charybdis wanted me here.

This close I smelled alcohol on the man’s breath and backed away before I disturbed him. I returned to Theo, who remained consumed by the screen in front of him.

“Well?” He glanced up from whatever he was doing and quirked an eyebrow at me. “Did you find anything?”

Ghosts from our past, but that’s not what he meant. “This is too perfect.” I leaned against the car beside him. “Charybdis was here. He had to be. How else could he know those items from my childhood would still be relevant?”

“Tourist towns don’t change much,” he argued. “It could have been a gamble on his part.”

“Maybe.” It didn’t feel that way, though.

Twisting around to glance behind us, Theo frowned. “What’s up with the old man?”

“This is where Dad bought those geodes.” Hard to believe the same guy was still peddling them all these years later. “I don’t see much point in questioning him. He seems pretty out of it.”

“Smells like he stays that way.” Theo fanned his nose. “I can’t imagine he does much business.”

“He does well enough if he’s still here.” I eyed his darkened screen. “Any luck with your contacts?”

“None yet.” He brought it to life. “From what I can tell, your folks went off-grid in the Gemini community about five years ago. No one’s heard from them. I located one person with recent contact. About six months ago, your mom showed up at Pix Yourself, an herbalist shop run by pixies in South Carolina. She ordered three dozen tubes of a cream used to treat diaper rash and bedsores and a dozen bottles of that peppery-mint shampoo she used to hoard.”

My ears rang as the clues kept stacking higher and higher, a compass point still spinning, but I got the feeling this town, this area, was its true north.

“Do they have an address for her?” I battled the sense of vertigo. “Any contact information?”

“None.” He scrolled down the message screen. “Your mom places the same order annually. She holds it by name only, pays cash, picks it up alone and in person.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “Clotilde, the shop owner, mentioned the truck was the same the last two years. Both times she noticed the Tennessee license plate. Before that, it was a different vehicle, different plates each time.”

“A truck sounds right for a personal vehicle.” They were a favorite among Geminis for a reason. When you towed your home everywhere you went, you needed power to make the ride as smooth as possible. “The others must have been rentals.”

“Why let her guard down? You don’t erase yourself unless you don’t want to be tracked.” He gazed across the street. “None of this explains why they vanished themselves in the first place.” His phone buzzed, and he dismissed it without checking. “I wish Mom were here to ask. She got postcards and the occasional phone call at least. She might have had some idea of where or why they were hiding.”

Fresh guilt hammered at me. Since becoming an agent with the Earthen Conclave, I’d had ample opportunities and resources to hunt them down. I hadn’t been tempted, not once. They had abandoned me, and I had been more than happy to return the favor.

“I wonder where Dad is?” The cream bothered me. More kids were out of the question. Mom was past her childbearing years. But bedsores? That could mean any number of things considering my parents weren’t spring chickens. One of them might have had an accident and required prolonged bedrest. It might not be serious. It didn’t have to be life-threatening or life-altering. But suddenly not knowing how my folks had fared over the years ate at me. “Mom would tell us, right? If Dad… If something was wrong… She would call, wouldn’t she?”

“Yeah.” His gaze dipped to the ground. “I’m sure she would.”

Even without my heightened warg senses, I could hear the lie.

“Come on.” I shoved off the car and started back toward the gas station, the side entrance this time. “We need maps.”

“I have my phone.” He tilted it back and forth. “We don’t need paper.”

Tech boys and their toys. “Do you want me drawing on your phone with a marker?”

“What would you…?” Horror made his eyes go round. “I have a
stylus
.”

“Forget it.” Like Isaac, Theo didn’t share my hang up with paper. When I needed the big picture brought into focus, I wanted a tangible object to really
see
what I was looking at. “I’ll give you two some privacy.” I left Theo cradling his cell like a babe to his breast and raided the store for snacks and maps of the area.

Charybdis had sent Ayer here. Why? What was the connection between her and me and this place? There was only one way to find out. We had to search every store and every square inch of the surrounding wilderness until we stumbled across whatever Charybdis meant us to find.

“Afternoon, ma’am.” A young man with ruddy cheeks manned the register. “Is this all for you?”

“Yes.” Arms loaded with maps and junk food, I dumped it all on the counter. “This is it.”

He rang me up, I paid my bill and returned to the car.

“Did you find what you needed?” Theo asked, inching away from me, like I might tackle his phone with a Sharpie.

“Yes.” I spread out my loot and began skimming the maps. I stood there long enough my stomach growled a friendly warning I hadn’t eaten in too many hours to count. Shifting so often required serious calories, and I had to feed my wolf to keep her strong. I had snacks to take the edge off, but what I craved was meat. “We should grab something to eat then work our way through the stores.” I kept eyeballing Carden’s Bluff on the map, rolling the name around in my head. It rang familiar. A past campsite perhaps? “I’m going to ask the attendant a question.”

“Mmm-kay.” The aforementioned stylus was out, and he was flicking it like an orchestral conductor across the screen.

I pushed inside, map in hand, and pulled up short as the teen raised full-black eyes to mine.

“Camille Ellis,” he said in a whisper-soft voice. “You might be smarter than you look after all.”

“You set up the dominos.” I kept an aisle of candy bars between us. “Are you frightened now that they’re falling?”

“Afraid? Me?” His borrowed voice cracked on a laugh. “Of you?”

“I’m right here.” I spread my arms. “Why don’t we settle this right now?”

“You always rush the sweetest parts.” He shook his head. “I could have had you at any time. You would have given yourself to me had I asked. You would now. I see it in your face, the desperation to bargain with me as though I could be bought.” He straightened a lighter display beside the register. “There is no delight in being honorable. There is no flavor in sacrifice. There is no savor in redemption.” He bared his human teeth. “I
hunger
as all the old ones do. I want that which will sustain me, that which will fill the ache in my middle, that which I have never tasted.”

“Where is my family?”

“You won’t find them here.” A sly grin twisted his features. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“No offense, but I don’t trust you.” I studied his avatar, the two-year service pin on his vest. “You took that man knowing I would follow the breadcrumbs Harlow left to this place.”

“Or perhaps Marshal Ayer brushed fingers with him collecting her change when she passed through.” He straightened his T-shirt. “Perhaps this Sean Taylor is an accidental pawn.”

“Is that all it takes?” I cocked my head. “A touch?”

Amusement danced at the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t answer.

“You kept tabs on this boy.” Sarcasm dripped from my words. “You leapt into him the second I got in range. That’s as much of an accident as the sun setting.”

“Touché.” He leaned his elbows on the counter. “I was hasty last night. I harmed your wolf, and it angered you in a way I hadn’t anticipated.”

“He’s my mate.” Hardly breaking news since Charybdis had access to Bianca’s memories.

“The thought of losing him wrecked you.” He wet his lips as if tasting the panic wafting off my skin. “More than even the loss of your family.”

Startled, I barked, “No.” Even though I wasn’t sure it was true.

“Yes.” He tilted his head, studying me at his leisure. “You strategized when Harlow vanished. You allowed an investigation to take its natural course when your aunt and cousin vanished. Your parents, well, there’s so much resentment and childish hurt there.” A visible shiver racked him. “Gods how much you feel. Is it a product of living among humans I wonder? Fae in my world are cold, hard, like frost-crusted diamonds. Here you’re flesh and blood, real.” He licked his lips. “Delicious.”

“Why did you bring me here?” I pressed. “What do you want me to see?”

The salacious grin melted from the cashier’s face. He blinked rapidly, eyes lightening until the only black remaining was contained in his pupils, and he startled to notice me. “Did you forget something?”

Just like that, Charybdis was gone.

How could I outsmart an ancient fae who could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone? How did he manage it? The surveillance video Thierry shared with me clearly showed a man stepping from the portal. He vanished. Into thin air. So was the man an avatar Charybdis used for traveling through the portal? No. That made no sense. No physical body dropped on screen, and the angle was wrong for it to happen off-camera. Maybe the magic involved had ripped him from his host. Maybe the portal had been keyed to recognize him and wearing someone else’s skin wasn’t an option. Maybe he required a body native to this realm to inhabit. Or maybe I was talking myself in circles, because the truth was
we just don’t know
.

“I forgot this earlier.” I grabbed a packet of gum from the nearest rack and slapped a dollar on the counter on my way out, too shaken to risk touching him. “Keep the change.”

Outside, I strode toward the rental and climbed in the passenger seat. Theo joined me with an arched eyebrow.

“Charybdis knows we’re here.” I glanced back at the store and found the clerk staring at me through the glass. He gave an awkward wave. “I think… He’s been waiting on me.”