Under the Moon (21 page)

Nick’s door opened. He carried a pile of folded clothes and had a towel slung over his shoulder. “Sam’s right. Going in powerless is stupid.”

“Waiting two weeks could be stupider.” It was just new moon now. “The leech could strike how many times by then.” And she didn’t want to wait anymore, dammit. After twelve years of being alone, she wanted to meet her family
now
. Answer all the questions crowding into her, including whether her parents were her enemies or if she could maybe start relationships that weren’t freaking hopeless and painful.

But all the guys cared about was her physical safety.

“You think seeing your parents won’t threaten Marley?” Nick shook his head. “You can’t be objective about this. Let us—” He cut himself off, and he was lucky, because Quinn knew his words would have been arrogant and pissed her off. She took a deep breath and gave in. They had to compromise.

“We’ll wait a few days, then drive. It will be first quarter by the time we get to Connecticut, and I’ll start to have a feed.”

“Only when the moon is up,” Sam cautioned, “and it’ll deplete quickly.”

She pushed to her feet, annoyed again. “I know my limits better than you do, Samuel. Don’t patronize me. And you.” She pointed at Nick. “Get your ass in the shower so I can take my turn. I’m filthy.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” the men said in unison. Quinn took a turn slamming the door of her bedroom, but amusement slowly overcame anger.

“God.” She sighed and threw herself on her bed, the little room’s walls tilting toward her, feeding her urgency to leave, to surge forward. As frightening as it was to face her birth family, it was going to be more difficult to stay here.

As soon as she closed her eyes, she was up against that tiny cabin door again, Nick’s entire body touching hers. His skin smooth and hot under her hands, his scent filling her up, lifting her to joy independent of the desire he’d ignited in a scant second. Quinn would have let him take her up against the door and rejoiced in it—again, not because of uncontrollable moon lust, but because of passion driven by the love she’d buried for so long.

She rolled to press her face into her mother’s old quilt, her fist closing around the cool fabric. Damn him for breaking open that vault! Sam’s revelation about Marley had given Quinn something to focus on, but now they had a plan in place and no action to take for several days. The need to go to Nick, to make him talk to her, twisted with the fear that he’d reject her again, this time blatantly and maybe even forever. After all this time, after so much mutual denial and silent, deep growth of their friendship, why had he crossed that line? Protectors were loyal to the powerless goddesses they protected but committed to none. What would have happened if they hadn’t stopped and someone found out? Would he be barred from the Protectorate? It was all he’d known his whole life. If he was stripped of it…she wasn’t worth that loss, and whatever relationship they might salvage in the aftermath wouldn’t last for long.

How could she survive losing Nick, especially when she also faced losing Sam? Their relationship had already changed. She could tell he’d finally accepted it, and it was only a matter of time before he moved on. Either the way she wanted him to, by finding someone to love who could love him the way he deserved, or because he couldn’t work for her anymore, knowing he couldn’t have her. In the meantime, she didn’t want Sam to know what had happened between her and Nick. That would be salting the wound, even if it had begun to heal.

If Sam did decide to quit, Quinn could hire another assistant, maybe even someone who’d run her business as well as he did. But no one would understand her like Sam or be the kind of friend he was. He was her rock, her only family, even if best-case scenario brought parents and a sister into her life. They’d stay friends, no matter what he decided to do.

But Nick had infiltrated her soul. If he left, he’d rip a hole in her so dark and deep it could never be repaired.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift into random memories. Sam working at his desk, a groove carved between his eyebrows when he concentrated. Nick shooting the shit with Quinn’s waitresses, who flirted while Nick kept a subtle eye on everyone in the bar. Shooting pool with the guys after hours, Quinn cleaning their clocks. Nick, very young, lounging on her couch, complaining about the romantic drama she’d put in the DVD player, a movie she couldn’t remember because all she knew was her racing heart and the press of his shoulder against hers.

Then Sam, interrupting her negotiations with one of the bar regulars, leading her upstairs to one of the empty rooms, and encouraging her to recharge with him because it was safer and easier.

Nick, cold and hard, erecting the wall that had always been impenetrable. Instead of shutting down, Quinn’s feelings had intensified behind that wall, concentrated and simmered until two nights ago, when he’d unlocked a door she’d never known was there.

Hard knuckles rapped her bedroom door. Quinn’s eyes flew open. Her breath rasped at the abrupt leap from deep in her thoughts to full consciousness. She had to clear her throat before she said, “Yeah.”

“Your turn.” Nick’s voice was normal, but it still scraped across all Quinn’s nerve endings.

She rolled to her side and stared at the door. “Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She gave Nick time to retreat to his bedroom, but Sam would still be out there. A few minutes later, her door rattled under another knock.

“Quinn?” Sam sounded tentative.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to the store for supplies for the next few days. You want anything in particular?”

“No, thanks. You know what I like. Ask Nick, though.”

“Already did.”

“Thanks.”

His boots thumped across the floorboards. The front door creaked open and closed. There was silence for a few seconds before the rental car door thudded and the engine whined down the driveway. Quinn figured it was safe to flee into the bathroom now.

But she had no idea how she was going to get through the next few days.

…

She slept a lot. The new moon didn’t do anything to her but make her as normal as any non-goddess, but she still used it as an excuse to go to bed early, sleep late, and take naps. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until a few days of that routine, and she felt better than she had in months.

Nick enlisted Sam’s help in cleaning weapons and working on the car, and when they weren’t doing that, Sam helped Quinn with research. It ensured Nick and Quinn were never alone together, a fact Sam clearly noticed but never commented on. Quinn caught him eyeing them speculatively more than once, but he kept his mouth shut. At least, around her. She had no idea what he said to Nick when they were beyond her hearing.

The research gave them a solid base of information. Quinn’s mother, Tess, was a member of the Society but like Marley, not a very active one. Quinn checked all the records the organization posted online, and meeting minutes and lists of attendees never mentioned her mother or sister. Neither did newsletters or e-mail loops, regional chapter notes and websites, or individual goddess sites.

But normal records did, and Sam was a whiz at digging into those. Tess and her husband Ned lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, a top-dollar suburb on Long Island Sound, where Ned was an executive for a software company. Tess ran a greenhouse, which Quinn found ironic, considering her adoptive mother’s power source was plants. But the database listed Tess’s source as mineral, and a lot of minerals were found in soil, so the affinity for gardening made sense.

Marley was their only other child. She’d lived her whole life from birth to college in Fairfield and attended Fairfield University before moving to Maine seven years ago, when she was twenty-three.

That part bothered Quinn. Her sister was thirty now, only eight years younger than Quinn. Which meant the last time she saw her birth parents, when she was eight years old, Marley had been either on the way or an infant. Their parents had been willing, or able, to keep her. But they hadn’t wanted Quinn, even then.

It was unfair to cast blame. Her adoptive parents had already given her a good home for eight years, and undoing that would be a legal mess. And of course Quinn would have resented Tess and Ned and longed to be back with Mom and Dad. That long ago, adoptions weren’t open the way they were now. Birth parents didn’t stay in touch with the kids they’d given away. There was no way to make everything “right.” That was life. Except logic rarely had an effect on emotion. Quinn could spin it all day long, and she still wouldn’t banish that eight-year-old’s sense of abandonment.

Tess did modest business in the greenhouse but appeared to have a significant income from personal consultation. It took Sam a while, but eventually he figured out that she made subtle adjustments to a person’s appearance. She didn’t seem able to do major changes, like underlying bone structure or body sculpting. Or at least, she chose not to. But frizzy hair—like Quinn’s had been—acne, eyes that were maybe a bit too hooded or lashes that were sparse and thin, spider veins and blemishes and unsightly growths were all fair game. Quinn wondered what drove Tess—vanity or a desire to help people. Or greed, since she charged a lot of money for what she did.

Ned was, on the surface, a typical executive. The local newspaper featured him regularly. He won golf tournaments, dined with members of the board of selectmen, was a past trustee of the university and associated prep school, and was photographed with his wife at country club events every few months.

They came from a world Quinn had never been a part of, but one she understood. Her adopted father had preferred not to climb so high on the corporate ladder in the years he’d worked for someone else before opening the bar when she was a preteen. He hadn’t been willing to make family sacrifices to get ahead professionally. So they’d lived modestly and out of the public eye, and they’d been happy. All in all, Quinn couldn’t regret the life she’d lived, despite that stubborn ache over the fork in her road and the one she hadn’t been given a chance to take. She hoped things would feel different once she met them and could get out of this never-ending circle of thoughts.

One afternoon the boys clattered into the cabin, shirtless and gleaming with sweat from doing chin-ups on the tree outside. Her mouth went dry over Nick’s sculpted torso, narrow waist, and powerful arms.

“I did six more than you!” Nick shoved Sam, who stumbled sideways, laughing.

“This time. But that’s only because I was tired from doing ten more than you yesterday.” He shoved Nick back and pulled his shirt on.

“Bullshit. You only did ten more because your feet touch the ground, you freak.”

They spotted Quinn at the table and sauntered over. Nick caught her eyeing his abs and slapped his shirt onto his shoulder with a grin.

“Hey, bright eyes. What’re you up to?” He spun a chair and straddled it. He flexed the arm closest to her, and she burst out laughing.

“You guys are unbelievable. Macho men with teenage maturity.”

“What?” Nick pretended to be affronted, and when Sam laughed, he threw his shirt at him. “She’s talking about you, too, bozo. Now seriously.” He sobered and motioned to her pad. “You’ve been planning.”

“Yep.” She pulled off the top page and stood. “It’s a day past first quarter, and it’s time to go.”

…

“You’re sure this is the place?” Nick peered through the Charger’s windshield at the one-story Cape-style house across the winding road. He’d pulled off as far as he could, but the almost nonexistent shoulder and semideep ditch next to it discouraged on-street parking. The houses in this neighborhood all sat on huge lots, with great distances and tall tree lines between them.

“Positive,” Sam answered. “This is the address listed in public records as the residence of Tess and Ned Canton.”

Quinn didn’t share Nick’s skepticism. Though the house was on the small side, with a two-car garage and a sunroom visible at the back, the land was vast. Wide lawns had been carved out of the surrounding woods, a few maples towering on either side of the house. She spotted embedded wires in the long driveway, the kind that heated it in the winter so snow blowing or plowing was mostly unnecessary. That took money. And peeking over the top of the house was the unmistakable roofline of a greenhouse. It wasn’t where Tess did her work—she had a separate site for that—but it was evidence enough for Quinn.

And now that she was here, she couldn’t wait another minute. “I have to see her,” she said.

“That wasn’t the plan.” Sam, in the backseat, put his hand on her shoulder.

She smiled, unable to curb her anticipation. “I know I said I’d call and schedule a meeting, but that doesn’t feel right now. I want to meet my mother.”