Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (8 page)

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Chapter Five

The card aisle at the grocery store offered Sadie zero help. Get well soons, sympathies, puppies in grotesque costumes. None of them worked. She needed a gift of some sort. A thanks
-
for
-
having
-
me
-
for
-
dinner
,
but
-
please
-
stop
-
treating
-
me
-
like
-
an invalid gesture for Heather and Remy. Wine? No. Heather didn't drink and Remy did, but really, for the sake of mankind and stand-up comedians the world over, shouldn't.

Cookies? Cake? Flowers. She pictured Heather gushing, smelling a bunch of wildflowers. It made her gag a little. She couldn't show up for dinner empty
-
handed
,
though. If she had less time, not to mention a healthier sibling relationship, this wouldn't be so flipping difficult. But she had over an hour to kill before she was expected. Sadie wandered through each aisle, ignoring the nagging sense she was being followed. She wasn't, in truth, being followed. She knew that. Still, she couldn't stop looking past her shoulder every so often.

“
Still no one there, Sadie,” she said to herself.

Paranoia. Not good. Paranoia came with crazy. Not that there wasn’t plenty to blame her sensitivity on. Last week’s crash into Elijah, worry over her appointment next week, scaling her own dosage down. A mental shift was completely understandable. Add in the last dream and voila. Feelings of being followed.

She left the aisle, glancing over her shoulder. A mother and her toddler wheeled past.

Jen wanted her to go dancing tonight. Sadie had claimed she couldn't go out with Jen after dinner at Heather’s. But when her cousin had asked why not, she hadn’t found a decent answer. Fatigue? As it was, she'd slept a handful of hours each night this week. Heavy sleep. No dreams. Dinner would be tiring. True or not, blaming being exhausted sounded lame.

Really lame.

Sadie found herself staring at rows upon rows of ice cream. What flavor would her sister like? What brand? The expensive celebrity stuff or plain ol' generic vanilla? Sadie groaned. “This shouldn’t be difficult, Sadie. You should know this. She’s your sister.” Used to be more like friends. Too much for Heather to handle back then, though. Mom's suicide. Then Sadie’s freak
-
out, the hospital. Shaking her head, she shoved her focus on the flavors, ignoring the prickle of awareness creeping up her neck.

Maybe she'd break down and take an Ambien later. But if she took a pill, she was certain not to remember her dreams. After a week without dreaming
of
him and his not showing at the library today, she wanted to. Badly. Not good. Her craving for dreamland went beyond her crush on Elijah, too. The real likelihood that she’d never see him again didn’t help matters, but her longing went beyond that annoying fact. She felt an unreasonable anticipation growing within her. Like something important, something life
-
altering, was about to happen.

“
Sadie,” a voice whispered behind her. She spun around, a shiver racing over her skin.

An older gentleman eyed her warily, a shaky smile on his face. He certainly hadn’t said her name. That wary look said as much.

The look sent ‘Sadie’s straightjacket’ list into mind. Paranoia, check. Trouble sleeping, headaches, check. Imagined voices, check. Delusions of grandeur a la secret messages in your dreams? Check. Sadie was one melting face hallucination away from graduating that list.

The shiver was becoming a familiar sensation, too. She sighed, exasperated with herself and with her indecision. It was ice cream. Not life and death.

Why did she keep hoping Elijah was here? Him following her, whispering her name? But the whisper wasn’t his deep, melodic tone. Which she would recognize? Sheesh. Talk about obsessed. If Elijah was following her, she should be scared, not excited! She should not want to ever see him again. He’d given her the rudest look she’d ever seen, let alone received. Her old self would never have allowed such a look. Not without verbally smacking the giver’s ego flat on its ass.

She yanked open a freezer door and grabbed Chunky Husband or something to that effect. She navigated to the
self-checkout
cash register and did not look behind her, though she swore she had heard it again. “Sadie.” This time in his voice.

If her brain collapsed after all, how long did she have? Another hospital stay, a new arsenal of medications, tweaked to establish that perfect combination that buried who she was completely. Starting all over. She didn't want to start over. Worse, what if it meant her sister and the doctors were right? What if this wasn’t her brain adjusting to being free of chemicals? White walls and squeaking nurses, a void of numb days and nights for the rest of her mindless existence. Nice, tidy hell.

Just like her mother's.

The checkout machine blipped and beeped at her like she was any ordinary person. She felt people staring at her. She wanted to yell out at someone. As though everyone was in on an elaborate joke. At least the scanner wasn't in on it. It took her money, spit out a receipt and thanked her.

“
Sadie, wait.” Elijah's voice, soft and somewhere in the distance. Sadie ignored it. She scanned the store for glimpses of dark hair, his signature dark jacket, deep slits up the back.

Longing for the sight of his face swelled through her.

The only black was a magazine rack. Gum was on sale. She left, grateful for the concealing growing darkness. The autumn air smelled like rain. Sadie breathed it in, fighting to steady her rabid heartbeat. It must be raining somewhere close. Arizona storms moved with unpredictable force, a life of their own. Perhaps the rain would follow her and wash away her fears.

She twisted the bag dangling from her wrist and walked. Heading south, she had three blocks to cover in her sister's quiet suburban neighborhood. Tree lined streets, gas lamp style lampposts. Not a cactus or palm tree in sight. She felt transported. How oddly lucky that the bus route brought her so close. Heather and Remy’s last home, an apartment, had to be driven to. Heather would pick her up, drop her off.

The darkening night cloaked her, making her feel free and invisible. Normal people took for granted how freeing blending in could be. Sadie certainly had back then, two years, which now felt like a lifetime, ago. Sometimes, she doubted her memories of before were real. Graduating high school, going to clubs with Jen, cramming for a test an hour before class, all seemed like fantasies now.

And Elijah seemed real.

She had lived through seven days without seeing him. She couldn’t be certain if he had or had not been there on any of her scheduled days. Progress. Soon, it would get easier. If it didn’t, well, she doubted she had more than a handful of months to suffer getting past her crush
.

Once again, the question loomed: If she didn't have much time left of this near normal, what was it she meant to make of it?

One thing for certain, she would take Jen up on her next offer for any normal social function, be it coffee and donuts or a rave. She would keep her sister in the dark for as long as possible, she would buy new clothes and cut her hair. She would do the things she missed most about the normal days.

Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. Sadie jerked, hurrying across the empty street. She inhaled the scent of wetness in the air, closed her eyes against the breeze so she could feel it on her eyelids.
Let there be rain.

Tonight’s dinner would be nice. She would do everything she could to make sure of it. No arguing, no defensiveness. Eat, chat, laugh. Like everything was going to be just fine.

Another bark startled her enough that she jumped. She peered at the darkness, searching the nighttime shadows. Trepidation returned, pricking her skin. “Don’t panic. It’s just a dog.”

She increased her pace, nearly jogging. Two more blocks and she would reach Heather’s. She considered cutting across the wide expanse of park
,
but the playground equipment and trees’ looming shadows turned her stomach. A howl this time, closer. Sadie gulped, trotting faster.

The wind picked up, fingering through her hair, chilling her bare arms. A growling sound. Sadie glanced furtively around her, behind her. Someone was following her. Something, somewhere in those shadows, stalked her. She gained another block but her feet couldn’t move fast enough.

She heard a snarl, sharp and gnashing.

Her panic vibrated in her throat, shook her hands. Fear.

“
Sadie, wait,” the voice hissed and seemed so close, louder and him
,
but not him and real
,
but not real. Not possible. She didn’t know what to trust, what was real and what was imagined.

Her throat tightened as she rounded the final block. A fresh round of vicious barking snarling threw her into a run. She wasn’t going to make it. The dog was close. The collar jangled, she could hear his claws scraping the concrete for traction. She was a moving target and Heather’s house was too far away.

She looked back. Nothing was there. But she felt it and heard it and kept running.

She swung the bagged ice cream behind her as she fought to run faster. The tub thudded to the ground. The snarling changed. It quieted. In its place, a low giggle chipped at her senses. Her panic shot into terror. A scream clogged her throat, threatening to suffocate her. Heather’s house stood like a beacon forty yards away. Her vision zeroed on the door.

She had to make it to the door before the thing got her.

A sob choked out of her, a scream building, pressing on her chest. Her legs moved woodenly, clumsily. Her mind’s eye created a vision of gleaming pointy teeth gnashing closer, glowing yellow eyes, a dog that was no dog. She was so close. Only a few more yards.

Then her breath knocked out of her chest and her body propelled forward. Within a blink, she found herself staring at Heather’s door. She spun about, stunned to see nothing but quiet homes and empty street. Silence. A shudder swept over her, of relief or of despair, she couldn’t be sure.

Whatever had been there, imagined or not, was gone. She was safe. In the low lamplight, her white grocery bag shone, stark against the asphalt where she’d thrown it. Part of her wanted to laugh at the absurd sight she must have been. How ridiculous. A grown woman, afraid of the dark.

The white bag ruffled under the soft wind. So much for not showing up empty handed. Imagined or not, the expanse of street may as well have been lava. No way in hell was she going back for it.

Was she losing her mind?

Thankfully, Remy answered the door. “Hey, you. Come on in. I think you beat the storm.”

Her brother-in-law’s warm smiles made it that much easier to breathe and pretend the scare away.

“
You’re early,” Heather said brightly and took her by the hand to the kitchen. “I am making the best meatballs ever! Here, I’ll show you how.”

No mention of last week’s appointment. No agendas.

One thing for sure, if her mind was going, Sadie didn’t know how much time she would have left and that meant no time to waste. In between salad and pasta, Sadie texted Jen: “Still want company tonight?”

She didn’t need to see the reply to know Jen had said yes. Her cousin had been hounding her for weeks to come out and play. So she would. Tonight.

*

Elijah released his hold on the shifter and pushed off, putting yards of empty desert between them. A cloud of pale dust rose under her boots as she whipped about, facing him.

“
Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded. “State your purpose, seeker.”

Elijah stalked forward, ready to unleash his fury. The shifter stumbled, righted herself and squared her shoulders. She visibly gauged both his visage and her new surroundings, a flat stretch of sagebrush
-
scabbed Nevada dessert.

Elijah chuckled. “My purpose?” He’d give her this much
;
being propelled into a new place by a winged stranger wasn’t phasing her. Most immortals preferred more traditional means of travel. “Try again. How about we start with why you’re hunting an innocent human?”

She kept her stance wide but her limbs loose, ready for battle. “Either you’re an Enforcer, or trying hard to act like one. My guess is the latter,” she spat.

Judging by her antics, following Sadie
,
then chasing her in wolf form, he seriously doubted she’d sensed him all week. Hell, she looked too young to have enough sense to. The hint of lilac in her coloring marked her as different from any shifters he’d ever known. And she nearly glittered with malevolence.

“
No Enforcer here. But I’ll be happy to take you to one.”