I
F she hadn’t seen that flash, whatever it was, Ana could have written the whole experience off as a lesson in weirdness, and yet another lesson in why she shouldn’t go around handing out her money to anybody that appeared as though they might need it.
But she’d seen the flash, and as much as Ana wanted to discount it, she couldn’t. Her skin was tight, hot, itchy, the same way she often felt just before a heavy summer downpour back in Virginia.
That night, instead of going by the Alaska Club for a workout, she headed straight home, catching the bus back out to the apartment she rented in Hillside.
It was a quiet area, close to the bus routes—damn good thing considering she couldn’t afford a car just yet. More important to her, it was quiet and the landlord was a psychic null. She couldn’t get a damn thing off of him unless she actively tried, because he didn’t project.
Even ungifted people tended to project and it was a fricking nuisance for somebody like Ana.
The apartment, located above a garage and complete with Internet access and a small kitchen, was perfect. Quiet, private and hers. She needed the privacy and had been trying to find a place just like this when she stumbled upon the flyer advertising the apartment.
Her landlord, Carter Hoskins, a history professor at UAA, wasn’t home when she got there. The Harley was gone, and if his bike was gone in the summer, it was because he’d taken off for a few days. She was glad. He was a nice guy, but he liked to talk. Even in the best frame of mind, talking was
not
on Ana’s list of things to do. The encounter with Paul earlier definitely put her frame of mind on a downward spiral.
She let herself into the room and automatically lowered her shields, checking to make sure nothing and nobody was around. It was something that had become habit. She did a quick walk-through and then dumped her stuff on the counter. Without putting anything away, without getting herself a sandwich, she sat down and booted up the secondhand laptop she’d bought from Carter a few months earlier.
The model was a little too bulky, but it ran like a dream. As Google’s homepage popped up, she plugged Paul Beasley’s name in the search box. If his girlfriend had disappeared and he was suspected of killing her, something would pop up on a search, she figured.
Something popped up all right.
That icy cold shiver raced down her spine as a familiar image came up under the images Google displayed just above the search results.
It was a book cover.
Unsolved—Mysteries of the Far North.
“Shit,” Ana breathed out, pressing the heels of her hands against her eye sockets. That damn book had been sitting on her bedside table calling to her ever since she’d bought it, but every time she went to pick the book up, she’d shied away from it. Lowering her hands, she stared in the direction of her bedroom.
Slowly, her gaze drifted back to the computer screen, but in the end, she got up and went for the book.
As much as she’d like to, she couldn’t ignore it anymore.
S
LEEP wasn’t coming easily. Duke was edgy, irritable and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear it was the moon. He wasn’t a were, but the full moon still had a way of calling to him, to pretty much all shifters. A siren’s call that wasn’t easily explained.
But the full moon had been last week and there was no way it would still be having an effect on him. So it was something else tugging at him, slipping under his skin and turning his muscles into knots.
Kicking free of the sheet he had pulled up to his waist, he rolled out of bed. Knowing he couldn’t stay in the room, he grabbed his jeans and headed for the door. It was spacious enough, the quarters he used when he was in residence here at Excelsior, but he felt like the walls were closing in on him.
He’d felt like this for weeks, an edgy restlessness that was only getting worse and worse with each passing day.
A run. That was what he needed.
For a shapeshifter, a good, hard run was just about a cure-all. Especially one who had to live confined inside stone walls, stuck in a place he really didn’t want to be, but unable to leave for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He’d left Excelsior nearly a year ago—ironically, only a week after Ana had pulled up stakes and left. He hadn’t planned on coming back anytime soon, but then he had ended up here a little over a month ago and something just wouldn’t let him leave.
Without messing with shoes, he left his rooms and headed for the stairwell. His rooms were on the third floor, and whenever he wandered back to Excelsior, the rooms were ready and waiting. It was the closest thing to home he had.
But Excelsior wasn’t home, and it never would be. Not for him.
Teaching wasn’t his thing, but every once in a while it was a nice break from the random patrols an unassigned Hunter did. He had no Master he’d sworn allegiance to, and that wasn’t anything he saw changing. He had no lands of his own and no responsibilities.
It should be a good thing, but lately, he had to wonder if part of that wasn’t the reason he was so damned restless. So edgy.
So lonely—
“Can’t sleep?”
Brad Morell emerged from the shadows as Duke slipped outside. Scowling, Duke flicked a glance at the night sky and then at the youth. “School night, kid. What are you doing up?”
Brad shrugged. Although it was dark, Duke had no trouble making out the look on Brad’s face. “Same reason as you, I guess. I can’t sleep.”
He kicked at the dirt and then glanced up at Duke, a strange look on his face. Over the past couple of years, Brad had shot up. In the past year, he’d started to fill out as well, finally growing into his arms and legs. He no longer had that long, awkward look. He was just barely fifteen, but it was all too easy to forget his age.
More often than not, he acted too damn old for his years, but in that moment, he looked like the kid he was.
Nervous. Worried.
“What’s up, Brad?” Duke said, suppressing a sigh and leaning his hips against the stone wall at his back.
Brad shrugged and kicked at the dirt again.
“Brad.” Duke folded his arms over his chest.
The boy glanced up at him and Duke said, “Get up here and spill it.”
Brad trudged up the stairs, his hands shoved into the back pockets of a pair of baggy jeans. “You don’t want to hear it,” Brad warned.
Duke didn’t roll his eyes, but he wanted to. He had absolutely no problem believing that he wouldn’t want to hear it, considering who it was coming from. Brad only got down about a few things, and it was just Duke’s luck that he’d be around for this one. “Spill,” he repeated.
Brad heaved out a breath and tucked his chin against his chest. “I’m worried about Ana.”
“This a specific worry or more along the lines of
I want her back here
kind of worry?” Duke asked levelly.
“Both.” He folded his arms defensively across his chest and stared at the stone underneath their feet. “I do miss her. I still don’t get why she couldn’t try to find some place around here.”
“Chances are that’s not something she could explain all that easy, or she would have,” Duke said, jerking a shoulder. “But it’s because she needed something else . . . it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Your sister loves you. I bet leaving you was pure hell on her. But I reckon she did it because she thought it was the best thing for both of you.”
That, at least, he could say honestly. And he had to agree, and not just because he breathed easier when she wasn’t here. Brad had never bothered trying to fit in, but before Ana had left, most people had treated him as an outsider, just because of her.
It wasn’t fair to the kid and it sucked, but Duke knew Brad had to make his own choices, do his thing, without some well-meaning adult stumbling in and trying to make things better.
But since Ana had left, people stopped treating Brad so different, and he’d started making real friends—friends
his
age, too. Not just with the adults who were twice his age. Kids need friends, even special kids like Brad—
especially
special kids like Brad.
Yeah, Ana leaving had done the kid good, even though Brad wouldn’t admit it. If nothing else, Ana adored her younger brother. He was the most important person in her life and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Absently, Duke rubbed his thumb along the scar that bisected his left pec, slashing through his nipple and ending just above his rib cage.
The wound had been caused by a silver blade. Shifters never fully healed a silver-wrought injury. This particular injury had happened while Ana stood by watching in horror, keeping Brad pressed against her so he wouldn’t see.
“I know she loves me,” Brad said with a scowl. Shaking his head, he said, “It’s not her leaving that’s bugging me, Duke. She’s been gone a year. She’s happier up in Alaska, I get that. I’m glad for her, even though I miss her. It’s not that she left . . . it’s . . . it’s something else.”
“Can you elaborate on the something else?” Duke asked.
“I . . . no. No, I can’t.” Brad’s head slumped and he stared once more at his feet. “I can’t. I dunno what it is, but something’s going on.”
Duke’s skin went tight. He kept his voice calm, though, as he asked, “She in trouble?”
“No. I don’t think
she
is in trouble, but somebody is. Or somebody will be.”
His gut sank down toward his feet. Averting his eyes, he hoped Ana hadn’t fallen back into her old mind-set, letting somebody take control and just tell her what to do, how to do it. Ana didn’t much like having to make decisions and having somebody make them for her was just plain easier.
“Stop it.”
Turning his head, he looked at Brad across the porch. Brad’s eyes, a strange purple color, just a little more blue than Ana’s gaze, met his. The worry and doubt had faded from his face and he glared at Duke like he wanted to punch him.
“Ana won’t do that again,” Brad said, his voice low, all but throbbing with intensity.
“I didn’t say she would.”
Brad sneered at him. “Damn it, you don’t have to.” He tapped his forehead with a finger and sarcastically said, “Psychic, hello?”
“Hunter trainee—hello,” Duke said flatly. “You got better shields than that, so use them. I’m entitled to think what I think and I don’t need you probing inside my head while I’m doing it.”
Mutinous, Brad glared at Duke. “She’s my sister. I’m sick and tired of everybody treating her like she was some kind of monster—she fucked up, but she did it to protect me, because she loves me.”
“And if she heard you swearing, she’d wash your mouth out with soap—and have my hide,” Duke said. Shoving off the wall, he dragged his fingers through his hair and then stopped, looked at Brad. “I know she’s your sister. I know you love her. I know you’re tired of people thinking bad shit about her, but she made bad choices. She has to live with them.”
“Nobody being able to let it go is why she can’t live with those choices
here
.” Brad turned away, staring out into the night. “I dunno why I’m even talking to you about this. You seem to get the why of it better than most people, but you can’t forgive her or forget it. If you can’t, they won’t. You’re the one who got hurt so until you let it go, nobody else will try.”
He started down the stairs but on the second to the last one, he looked back at Duke. With those young but ancient eyes, he studied Duke for a long moment. “We all make mistakes and bad choices. We all have to live with consequences. But if you made the best choice you could make, knowing it was wrong, knowing it would have consequences and dealing with those consequences, wouldn’t you want a second chance?”
“Nobody said she wasn’t entitled to a second chance, Brad.” Feeling guilty, hating it, Duke closed the distance between them and caught Brad’s shoulder when the youth would have left. “I don’t have some grudge against your sister. I’m not secretly hiding some hate-on for her. What’s done is done and I can understand
why
even if I think she did it wrong. If you got some idea in your head that I’m responsible for her leaving, then out with it. If that’s the case, I want to know so I can set things straight. I don’t hate your sister and I’m not harboring some grudge.”
Brad smirked. “Yes, that’s the case. You’re responsible for her leaving, but it’s not because you hate her. We both know you don’t. You are holding a grudge and we both know it. If you weren’t, you would have already gone after her.”
Then Brad shrugged Duke’s hand off and headed back to his dorm, his shoulders slumped.
Gone after her
—
Duke scowled. Getting the little psychic away from here had been nothing but one huge relief.
Liar
.
There was no damned reason to go after her.
Self-delusion was a lovely thing. Let a guy keep his pride. Let a guy happily convince himself of his own version of the truth.
Setting his jaw, Duke headed off into the night, taking the opposite direction that Brad had taken. He needed that run, damn it. Now more than ever.
CHAPTER 3
A
NA dreamed.
She dreamed of a pretty young girl, her hair parted down the middle, falling down the back of a soft, gauzy white blouse cut peasant-style and embroidered along the yoke with bright flowers.
The girl had a sweet smile and when she directed it at one young man, she managed to make him blush every single time.
Her name was Marie.
She was nineteen and she was in love with an airman from Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her mother didn’t know, her father didn’t know, but she’d told her older sister, Beverly. Her sister was the one to help cover for her while she slipped out to meet with her boyfriend.
Caught up with the raw, tender emotion of young love, Ana felt herself getting more and more lost in the dream, unable to pull away, and unwilling to do so. It was sweet, watching them together, sweet to vicariously experience pleasure through Marie as Paul kissed her, stripped her clothes away and made love to her for the first time. Sweeter still to see the tears that burned in Paul’s eyes as Marie agreed to marry him. It left a warmth in her heart, but only seconds after Paul pushed a ring onto Marie’s finger, that warmth in Ana’s chest turned to ice, heavy, arctic ice that threatened to push her down, down, down . . .