The Trouble with Fate
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Authors: Leigh Evans
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For those who I call mine—Kevin, Chelsea and J.B.
Acknowledgments
There are so many people who helped me with this book. Deep thanks to Deidre Knight,
agent extraordinaire and dear friend, who saw a faint glow and knew how to make it
shine. A tip of my hat goes to my editor, Holly Blanck, who fearlessly pushed me toward
a trip to Threall. My endless gratitude to Caitlin Sweet, both for her insightful
comments and for the fact that she’ll drink merlot even though she prefers white wine.
A big cheer for Susan Seebeck’s amazing ability to put her slim finger on the exact
thing that’s fouling the scene. A bouquet to Chris Szego who read a draft of Hedi
and had the courage to write “TSTL” beside something that was truly dumb. A heartfelt
hug for the lovely Rebecca Melson who was honest enough to tell me that Trowbridge
needed some work. A smile and a bow to Charlaine Harris whose virtual home was the
birthplace of my writing career. And many thanks to Angela Zoltner, a friend and champion
of the missing word.
But the final hand-over-heart salute goes to my family. Thanks, my darlings, for the
“Go Bear Go,” for the Christmas rescued, for the trips to Creemore, for the Saturday-morning
phone calls, for the notes and story reviews, for every movie missed, and for every
job of mine quietly shouldered. You’re the lights in my sky.
Contents
Prologue
We lived in a long flat bungalow in Creemore. It was a mixture of gray brick and faded
blue aluminum siding. I can remember other things about that house—the pond, a tree
outside, the bush that flowered in the spring with little tiny pink rosebuds that
actually weren’t rosebuds, but opened like them, and smelled sweet. It’s not a common
bush, but I’ve seen it here and there in the springs that have followed, and whenever
I do, I think of that backyard, and the tree, and the little path that wandered between
the bushes and the fence, made not by design, but by the constant patrol of two kids.
I remember using that path to follow my best friend, a boy twelve minutes older than
me, but two inches taller, with blond hair that curled. He was my brother, and I called
him Lexi.
More facts. The ones that hurt. A Werewolf killed my father, and the Fae executed
my mother. They took my brother Lexi with them across a portal I could never breach.
They left me behind.
Chapter One
What do the tree huggers call it? Karma?
No, wait a minute; that’s not right. “Karma” is just a word for what goes around comes
around, isn’t it? And on the surface, Robson Trowbridge’s only crime was to have been
the hot guy in school who was totally oblivious to the bottom dwellers of his world.
Like me, Hedi Peacock, formerly Helen Stronghold, and still, unfortunately, a bottom
dweller.
“Karma” isn’t the word I was looking for. Should someone’s life turn to crap just
because he’s handsome? Even I’m not that bitter. But still, I wish someone would even
it out, make it so that everyone had the same luck and chances. If I created the world,
you could bet there would be a set of natural laws, and one of them would be the Law
of You Can’t Stay Hot Forever. It would be stamped on the forehead of every high school
heartthrob in ink visible only to bottom dwellers, just as an incentive to survive
the ordeal of high school. According to my law, hot guys would age very badly. At
thirty, they’d be thumbing through the yellow pages searching for a hair renewal salon.
I shifted on the back of my heels, and strained to peek over the counter. Ten years
out of high school and Trowbridge still had hair. In fact, more than when he’d been
the to-die-for son of the Alpha of Creemore. Back then, he’d owned a Jeep and had
dibs on a crown. He’d have been considered cute even without the killer smile.
“What are you doing down there?” asked my manager, Mark.
“I thought I dropped something, but I can’t find it.” I stood and reached for the
silver milk container beside my espresso machine. It had been a dumb instinct, dropping
to my knees behind the counter. Most things are better faced when you’re upright.
“You’re slowing down again.” Mark slapped another cup on the order shelf. “Now, you
have four orders to fill.” He lowered his voice. “Hurry. Up.”
I nodded, teeth clenched, and let out a jet of steam to make him back up. He was going
to fire me.
I may have broken a cookie here and there. Everyone knows that broken cookies can’t
be sold. Everyone knows that the person who notices the broken cookie gets to eat
the cookie. These are facts. If people stayed with proven facts, work environments
would be easier. Groundless accusations just stir things up, like the whole “Who hid
the turkey breast sandwich behind the milk?” controversy. Did they think I did it?
Well, prove it. Maybe I did do it, and maybe if you were an anal retentive asshole
who counted cookies and sandwiches, you might feel those were two good reasons to
fire your barista. Maybe.
But I was a goddess behind the machine. Normally, my fingers flew over the knobs,
steam didn’t bother me, and no one, I repeat, no one, made foam like I did. I was
a good barista, who could usually keep up with a stream of empty cups appearing by
her left elbow. I even found it comforting, that monotony of press the button, steam
the milk, empty the shot glass, pass the cup. But lately the familiar routine wasn’t
automatic. Twice today, I’d come out of one of my aunt Lou’s transmitted thought pictures—something
of a trance—with steamed milk running over the lip of the silver container and my
heart jackrabbiting in my chest.
People were giving me plenty of space this afternoon, which was good. Space is a nice
buffer when you work a shift with the idiot tag team of Mark and blonde-from-a-box
Jennifer. They kept batting back and forth answers to the really important question
of “If you could save only one thing from a fire, what would it be?”
Come on, guys. It’s not that hard. There’s only one answer.
Yourself, dimwit.
When fire is chewing through everything you’ve ever cared about, and there is no
one left to rescue beyond yourself, the decision is simple: forget your charm bracelet
and find the door. I’d point that out, but that would mean getting cozy with a human,
and I don’t do cozy with the humans, which is providential, because as it happens,
none of them have ever offered to extend the relationship beyond work hours. They
keep their distance. Which is good, and bad, and maybe a little sad.
I can’t say I blame them. If I had to share a shift with me, I might be leery of getting
in too close. Even full-blooded Fae need sleep, and my lack of quality time spent
with a pillow was starting to show. But as long as I had a choice between an acid
stomach or dream-plagued sleep?
Pass the espresso.
At least when I was mostly awake, I could fight the sickening tentacles of Lou’s wandering
mind reaching for mine. And if I failed, I could say to myself,
Okay, take a deep breath, you’re all right, you’re just seeing her dreams through
her eyes, but you’re still Hedi. You’re just stuck in your mad aunt’s head for a bit,
witnessing how truly fucked up her brain is.
But when I was asleep? Different. Scary different.
And now I had Weres in my Starbucks; my stomach gave a disapproving gurgle.
When Trowbridge had opened the coffee shop door—the second Were to enter in ten minutes—I’d
dropped to my knees, stricken with the fear that I’d slipped into a hallucination
of my own, and had done so without experiencing the usual shit-here-I-go slide that
happens before Lou pulls me into one of hers. Then, just as quickly as it had swamped
me, my fear eased. I don’t detect scents when I’m dreaming and my nose had picked
up an aroma over the brewed coffee that was Trowbridge’s alone. Ten years ago, when
I’d been a lovesick twelve-year-old, I hadn’t been able to put my finger on that unique
thing in his personal scent signature that my hormones interpreted as “Yum, Robson
Trowbridge.”
Even now, older and a hell of a lot more bitter, I couldn’t find a word for it. It
was just a truth, as tiresome and hard to deny as the notion that chocolate bypasses
your stomach and goes straight to your hips. Trowbridge smelled different than the
other Creemore Weres. He always had.
He was still pretty, if a bit unkempt. His jaw hadn’t seen a razor in a good week.
And his hair was different. Now it was long, dark rumpled curls that brushed his shoulders.
The type of curls that say, “I just got out of bed after a night of really hot sex.”
Curls that don’t need a brush, just some sated female to finger-comb them.
Annoying. A girl couldn’t look at Robson Trowbridge without thinking about sex, even
if she had reason to hate him. To keep myself sharp on that point, I checked out his
neck, and sure enough, he had a gold chain hanging from it. He’d hidden the rest of
the amulet under his shirt, but I knew it was there. Fae gold calls to my kind. I
could feel its siren song, even from where I stood, half hidden behind the coffee
machine.
Old history, and yet not.
“Double decaf, tall, no-foam latte.” I placed the coffee on the bar and scowled at
the man who reached out for it before I finished centering it on the tray. There’s
protocol, even at a Starbucks. You don’t reach for it, you wait for it. I snatched
my fingers back before his could brush mine. All this pent-up fear was making me cranky.
It had snuck up on me, this yearning for Trowbridge, around puberty. I’d taken one
glance at his Were abs, and gone from kid to preteen so fast that Mum had gotten whiplash.
Worse, it had clung to me, that desire. Even though I try not to think of him, I still
call up his face for every dark-haired hero found in one of those romance novels I
boost from Bob, the blind bookseller.
Yes, I steal books from a blind bookseller.
How screwed up is that? Imagining Trowbridge as Lord Worthington, complete with the
spotless Hessians?
I really wanted to rub my eyes. Behind my glasses’ magicked lenses, my eyes were sparking
so badly it felt like a squad of Boy Scouts were competing to see who could start
a fire with a flint and steel. But if you have a disguise, you wear it, even if it’s
inconvenient, even if part of you wants to do a pirouette on top of the bar and sing,
“Hah, I didn’t die after all, you scum-sucking dog.”
As I reached for a new gallon of skim milk, Trowbridge moved from the doorway toward
a white-haired Were who’d come in a few minutes earlier. Geezer-Were had looked as
benign as an old Were could, but I’d been keeping tabs on him anyhow, ready to bolt
if he looked at me sideways. By my rulebook, Gramps shouldn’t have been there in the
first place, not if he was a regular Were, doing regular things. Why? Because, basically,
the stench of coffee is akin to the best doggone wolf repellent available. It won’t
stop the motivated, but will deter the average Were.