Refuge (32 page)

Tristan frowned. “I’m not sure how Nikolas
will feel about this. Have you told him?”

“No, but why should he mind? He’s only
training me because you asked him to.”

He let out a chuckle. “I’d like to think I
have more compassion for my trainees than to appoint Nikolas as a
teacher. He asked to train you, and I thought it was a good idea,
considering your history.”

Nikolas had asked to train me? “You wouldn’t
let him train the others, but you let him work with me?”

“I was pretty confident you could hold your
own against him.”

Until he kissed me.

“So about Callum?”

Tristan nodded, but he did not look happy.
“If you really want to go back to him, you can.” He glanced at his
watch. “And if you are going to a party in a few hours, you
probably should go get ready. I haven’t spent much time around
teenage girls, but I hear it takes a while to prepare to go
out.”

I laughed. “It doesn’t take long to find a
pair of jeans to wear. Although, Jordan might be another
story.”

“Have fun, but not too much fun.”

“Now you sound like Nate,” I chided, and he
looked pleased by the comparison.

I started to rise from the couch. “I guess I
should
go
tell Jordan the good news.”

“Wait. Before you go, I’d like to ask you
something.”

“Okay.” I sank slowly back to the couch.
He can’t know about
me and Nikolas. Can he?

“I had dinner with Desmund last night. We try
to visit every week for a drink and a game of chess. Did I tell you
that?”

“No.” I knew they were friends with the way
they spoke of each other, but I’d assumed Desmund kept pretty much
to himself. I wasn’t sure why Tristan was bringing him up now, and
it worried me. Desmund was unpredictable. Had he told Tristan he no
longer wanted me to visit him?

“Desmund usually likes to talk about the
past, about his life before his affliction.” He leaned forward
slightly in his chair. “Do you know what we talked about last
night?”

I shook my head, and a small knot formed in
my stomach.

“You.”

“Me?” I squeaked.

Tristan’s smile caught me off guard. “He is
quite taken with you. I haven’t seen him warm to someone in a very
long time. He is like a different person since you started visiting
him.”

“Oh.” My body relaxed. “I like him, too. He
took a little getting used to, but he’s really sweet when he wants
to be. I wish I could go back and meet him before he got sick.”

“That’s the thing. The Desmund I saw last
night was very much like the one I used to know. When I say he’s a
different person, I mean he is almost like his old self again. It’s
as if he has been miraculously cured.” Tristan’s shrewd stare made
me fidget. “
You
did this, didn’t you?”

“I – ” I broke off, uncertain how to proceed.
If I told him what I’d done, would he be angry with me? I’d healed
hundreds of creatures over the years, but using my power on a
person was not the same and neither was dealing with magic. No one
had ever healed a Hale witch victim, and here I was thinking I
could do it because I’d battled a single witch and won. Just
because I succeeded did not mean I’d had the right to take that
risk with Desmund in the first place.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He ran his hand
through his hair. “You don’t have to talk about it now, but we will
have to discuss it soon. What you’ve done . . . do you know what it
could mean for others like Desmund?”

Until that moment, all I’d cared about was
helping Desmund; I never thought about what it would mean if it
actually worked. The idea that I could help other warriors
suffering from the same fate made me feel like I might have a
purpose here after all.

Tristan stood and waved at the door. “Go on;
get ready for your party. We’ll talk more about this later.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved he was not angry
with me.

“Sara,” he called as I opened the door. “I
don’t think Desmund realizes what has happened or what you’ve done
for him. I want to thank you on his behalf.”

Tears pricked my eyes. “You don’t have to
thank me. He’s my friend, too.”

I tugged on the hem of the borrowed white
shirt that hugged my body a little tighter than I was used to.
Maybe
borrowed
was not the right word.
Coerced
was probably a better
one. I almost shook my head in disgust. I could command hellhounds,
but I could not stand up to a teenage girl when she got it into her
head that I needed a party outfit. The jeans weren’t too bad
though, even if they hung a bit low on my hips. I still couldn’t
believe Jordan had ordered them online for me days ago along with
the cute brown leather boots I was wearing. She was pushy
and
sneaky. I
wished I could take her to New Hastings and introduce her to Faith
Perry and the other mean girls at my old school. They wouldn’t know
what hit them.

“Any of you girls want a beer?” called our
host, Derek, over the music as he approached with two unopened
beers in his hands.

I held up my bottle of water. “I’m good,
thanks.” When we got here two hours ago, I’d had a couple of beers,
but I wasn’t much of a drinker.

“I’ll have one of those.” Jordan took one of
the offered beers with a smile that made the good-looking
twenty-three-year-old grin like a teenage boy. I hid my smile
behind my water bottle. I had been a little worried about being
around human men again, especially now that my elemental powers
were growing. At first, some of the guys, including Derek, showed
interest, but after I gently deflected their flirting, they moved
on. They didn’t go too far. Half of them were falling over
themselves for Jordan who looked amazing and had a sexy, confident
air men couldn’t resist. She loved their attention, and I was happy
to stay back in the shadows and enjoy the party.

“How about you?” Derek offered the second
beer to Olivia.

“Mark is getting me something,” she told him,
pointing at Mark, who was talking to Terrence and Josh on the other
side of the room.

Jordan said something to Derek, and I took
the opportunity to nudge Olivia and confirm a suspicion I’d had all
evening. “Hey, what’s up with you and Mark? You two have barely
left each other’s sight tonight.” I knew they had been best friends
for years, but it was obvious there was something else going on
between them.

Olivia blushed and her eyes sparkled. “We
finally decided to start going out. We’ve been joking about it for
a while and last night we just . . . kissed. My first kiss and it
was amazing. I’ve been crazy about him forever, and I never
realized he felt the same way.”

“That’s awesome, Olivia.”

She sighed blissfully, her eyes following
Mark. “I still can’t believe it.”

When Mark joined us a minute later, I watched
the warm looks that passed between them as he pulled her out for a
dance. An ache formed in my chest. It wasn’t that I was jealous of
them or even wanted a boyfriend right now. I just couldn’t help
thinking how different my first kiss was from Olivia’s and how
happy she was, while I was . . . I wasn’t quite sure how I felt.
Rejected? Confused? Hurt?

Geez, it was just a stupid kiss. Get over it
already.

“You girls having fun?” Derek asked, and I
nodded. The crowd here was a little older than the high school set,
but they seemed nice enough and not too wild.

“Your place is great,” I told him. “Did you
really do all this yourself?”

Derek’s face lit up when I mentioned his
beautifully restored turn-of-the-century farmhouse. He had
inherited the place on the outskirts of town from his grandmother
three years ago, and he had turned the old house into a modern home
that still retained its country charm.

“Yep, with help from a few of my buddies. I’m
not done yet. I’m working on the barn now, gonna make it into
garage and a workshop. You want a tour?”

“Sure.” I looked at Jordan, who nodded. We
went to grab our coats and followed Derek through the back door. As
soon as the door closed behind us, the noise level dropped
considerably, and I let out a sigh. I was never going to be a
partier. God knows Roland had tried to make me into one. I
preferred fresh air to the cloying heat of a crowded room.

The barn was a good fifty yards from the
house, but the full moon made the night so bright it was easy to
make it out. As Derek pointed out his planned renovations, he told
us he had studied art in college and, luckily, his grandmother had
left him enough money to pursue art instead of having to get a
nine-to-five job to support himself. His other passion was classic
cars, and he was currently restoring a nineteen sixty-nine GTO in
his friend’s garage until he got his own garage finished. I thought
about Roland, who would die for a GTO and didn’t even have his old
Chevy truck anymore because of me.

“I already have a room at the house for my
art, but I can’t wait to finish the studio,” Derek was saying, and
my ears perked up at the mention of an art studio.

“Sara draws, but she keeps her sketches
hidden in her room,” Jordan said, and Derek looked at me with new
interest.

“What do you like to draw? Do you paint,
too?”

“Mostly people and animals. I tried painting
a few years ago, but I like drawing more, and it’s a lot less
mess.”

Derek laughed. “My parents said the same
thing when I lived with them. If you want I’ll show you some of my
work when we go back to the house. But right now I want to show you
the loft. That’s where my new studio is going.”

Derek grabbed a battery operated lantern from
a hook by the door and led us to a ladder at the back of the barn.
“My buddy, Seth, is going to help me build the studio; he said it
only seems right since it was our fort when we were kids. He and
his girlfriend, Dana, are in Vegas now, but when he gets back we
might do some work on it before it gets too cold.”

“Lead the way,” I told him and started
following him up the ladder with Jordan behind me. At the top, I
stepped into the loft that was wide enough that the beam from
Derek’s lantern barely reached the dark corners. The loft smelled
faintly of old hay, and it was empty except for a few crates and a
small square table with some rolled-up papers on top.

Derek hung the lantern on a post in the
middle of the room and went to push open the wide shutters at the
front of the barn. Moonlight and crisp night air flowed in along
with the distant sounds of the party. He went to the table and
unrolled one of the papers to reveal a detailed blueprint of the
barn.

“It pays to have a best friend who’s studying
to become an architect,” he confided with a wink. “Seth drew these
up for me at school.” He pointed to some long rectangular markings
on the walls and explained that they were going to put in windows
on all sides for maximum natural light. “Plus the view up here in
the daytime is amazing.”

“This is pretty cool,” Jordan said, walking
around the loft. “You’ll have to show us when it’s finished.”

“Absolutely,” Derek declared, and I raised an
eyebrow at Jordan, who gave me a small shrug when Derek wasn’t
looking. Was she more interested in him than she let on? “You girls
are welcome whenever you want to come over. Maybe Sara and I can
draw together sometime?”

“Maybe.” I’d never had someone to draw with
before, and it might be fun, especially in a real studio.

“I guess we should be getting back to the
party before Terrence and Josh come looking for us.” Derek held up
the lantern and waved at the hatch. “After you. I’ll hold the light
while you climb down.”

I barely took a step before coldness punched
through my chest, making me double over.
Not now!
If my elemental powers
started acting up here, there was no way I’d be able to explain it
away. Derek, I might be able to fool, but Jordan was way too sharp
to fall for a simple explanation, especially after what I’d done to
the lamprey demon.

“Sara, are you okay?” Jordan rushed to my
side and laid her hand on my back.

“Is she sick?” Derek asked. “I didn’t see her
drink much.”

It took some effort, but I straightened up
and smiled to let them know I was okay. The cold was still there,
worse than it had ever been, but it was more uncomfortable than
painful. And thankfully, there was no sign of the strange static
power to give away my secret. “I’m fine. I felt a bit woozy there
for a second. Probably should have eaten more at dinner.”

Derek smiled in relief. “I can fix that. I
have plenty of food at the house.” He held the lantern out to
Jordan. “Jordan, why don’t you take this and I’ll help Sara down
the ladder.”

I almost laughed at the look on Jordan’s face
as she took the lantern. We both knew she was stronger than three
men and could carry me down on her back, but we couldn’t tell Derek
that.

“A damsel in distress? Looks like I got here
just in time.”

The three of us swung around to the man
stepping off the ladder. Jordan raised the lantern and illuminated
a smiling blond man who looked to be Derek’s age.

“Seth!” Derek smiled broadly. “When did you
get back?”

“Got in a few hours ago. We had to take care
of some things at home and thought we’d check out the action here
tonight. I figured you’d have a bash going on and lots of goodies
here to eat.” Seth’s eyes slid slowly over me, and the hair rose up
on the back of my neck. How could someone as nice as Derek have a
creep for a best friend?

“We were just heading back to the house. I
have enough beer and food to keep even you happy. Is Dana with
you?”

“She’s on her way with a friend we brought
back with us. We can have our own little party out here.”

Something about Seth’s leering smile seemed
eerily familiar, and my mind suddenly conjured an image of Eli
staring at me with the same hungry expression. Alarm bells went off
in my head.
It can’t
be,
I thought even as my hand slowly reached for the dagger
tucked in the inside pocket of my coat. After Boise, I’d decided to
err on the side of caution and start carrying a weapon again. I
really
hoped
I did not have to use it.