CHAPTER TEN

 

JUST LIKE HE always did when he went away, Clay called as often as he could. The first time he called me was the night after he left, when they were just about to board their flight to Anchorage. He called once more when they landed. I wasn’t sure if he was calling for my benefit or his own.

His calls always left me with the impression that he’d rather be home, but whenever he was home for more than a few days, he seemed to grow anxious to go back on the hunt again. We were still trying to find a balance that worked for both of us, and I was confident we’d get there one day. I just wished we didn’t have to fight for that balance while I was six months pregnant and overrun with hormones and fear.

Despite being on my own for so many years, it was amazing how quickly I’d become dependent on Clay for companionship. I knew that even though our days had primarily consisted of survival training and self-defense lessons, Sweden had given me false expectations. I’d grown accustomed to having him hold me while we fell asleep each night and waking by his side every morning. When he first started leaving on the trips, I’d assumed I would develop coping strategies over time, but I hadn’t and was beginning to wonder if I ever would. It was the same after every goodbye.

In those first few hours, the absolute stillness of the house would echo in my ears louder than a freight train. I would wallow until the moment that Fiona or Aiden came to visit, and then I’d have to put on a brave face. Ostensibly they both came simply to spend some time with me, but I knew better. Although no one admitted to it, I had long held the suspicion that Clay had come to an agreement with both of them that either one or the other would check on me every day whenever he was away.

The moment my visitors left was always the time when the loneliness hit me the hardest. Being alone that first night was always the most difficult. It took hours to finally force my eyes closed and turn off my mind enough to stop reacting to every sound.

When I finally did sleep, the nightmares would be relentless in their assault. The events of each dream were different with every night that passed. I had a seemingly endless supply of horrendous events for my mind to twist and offer up as frightening visions. Sometimes I was back in the forest in Germany, other times I’d be watching Zarita’s death, I’d even been back in the warehouse in Charlotte once or twice, but there was always one constant—Clay. In every dream, he was either forcibly absent or hurt. Every night, I searched for him or tried to save him until I woke with a scream reverberating through whatever room I’d been able to fall asleep in.

Over the months, I’d tried a number of methods to fight off the night terrors, but nothing I’d tried was half as effective as having Clay by my side. Usually, by the third night, I didn’t even bother trying to sleep. I’d just curl into a ball on the sofa with the TV on; the lights and sound keeping me awake, keeping me company, and most importantly keeping me sane.

Each time Clay called, I clung to the phone like a lovesick teenager, pining away for one more minute and refusing to hang up until the last possible second. The instant we did disconnect, a wave of melancholy settled over me that was impossible to shake for hours.

For some reason this particular trip was more reminiscent of his earlier ones, when I just wanted him home. The combination of it being the longest trip he’d taken so far and being so close to my due date was making me extra anxious. Whenever I spoke with him, the baby would become more active, kicking and fluttering, and I worried that she would arrive long before he came home. I was certain she’d pick the worst time, when I was completely alone, to make her entrance, and the thought terrified me.

“Where are you now?” My hand was tight around the receiver as I waited for Clay’s response. I was asking because I was supposed to ask, but it didn’t really matter because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be—here at home.

“Brooks Camp,” he said. “In the Katmai National Park. We just got in just a few minutes ago.”

My heart gave a little flutter at his words, a reminder that his first task when he landed was always to call me. In truth, the place names washed over me because I didn’t care about the where or why as much as the when—when he was coming home. That was all that mattered to me.

“Did you have a good flight?” It was small talk, and it was meaningless, but it would keep him on the phone with me for a little while longer. When he and Ethan had first started taking the longer assignments, I’d assumed they’d use the network of fairy rings. However, the fae had made it clear that if it didn’t involve others in New York, it didn’t involve them, and that the fairy rings were off limits for Rain use. I could understand Fiona’s logic because for the Rain to access the network, the fae were allowing themselves to become vulnerable—everyone would know the exact location of their court. It didn’t make it easier to deal with the missions taking that much longer because of travel time though.

He sighed. “It doesn’t really matter. I called to say that I miss you already.”

I grabbed the phone with both hands and closed my eyes to stop tears from welling in my eyes. “I miss you too.”

The silence between us stretched out into an endless, yawning maw that exaggerated every mile between us. For my part, I was usually happy to just listen to the sound of his breathing because it proved that he was safe, but now it just reminded me exactly how far away he was.

“I won’t be able to stay on the phone for long; Eth wants to go soon. It’s a three day hike into the valley, and he wants to get a jump on it while we still have the energy.”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want him to get off the phone, that I wanted him to come home. If I was selfish, I would have told him about my nightmares, but it could easily backfire. It might not send him rushing back to my arms, and would only cause him to go into the mission with his mind full of concern over me. “What’s the plan then?”

In the rush of him coming home and then heading out again so quickly, I hadn’t asked him any of the vital information that I needed to know, like what he was hunting. Clay spent the next few minutes running through the details of their agenda. The instant we finished our phone call, he and Ethan were going to be heading on foot into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes where they would begin their hunt for whatever it was that had been terrorizing the area and attacking the hikers. There had been no deaths yet, but a few people had been scared witless. They planned on getting a bus back once they were done. He said they could have taken the bus in, but they didn’t want to risk missing an opportunity to search for tracks or clues as to the creature they were hunting for, whatever that was.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a while before I’ll be able to call you again,” he said as he finished. “It’ll be at least a week.”

Instead of focusing on the time he’d be out of range and uncontactable, my mind was stuck on what he’d said just before that. A knot of unease began to twist in my stomach. Neither of them really knew the specifics of the creature they were dealing with. “You don’t know what you’re hunting?”

The words Clay had said to me months earlier, in response to my charge toward the Slender, rushed into my mind. “Some things can’t be killed by bullets or by knives, or by any man-made object. There are creatures that are impervious to all manner of weapons. Others would even laugh in the face of your fire. You have to know what you are fighting.”

“We’ll be okay,” Clay replied.

“But what about what you said in Germany?” I reminded him of the words that were running through my head on a panicked loop. “You can’t just run into these things blindly.”

“This isn’t the same thing. We’re not going in completely blind; we’ve got a few ideas about what it could be, and we’re prepared for each of those eventualities.”

The baby twisted suddenly, somersaulting in my stomach. I carried the phone away from where I’d been standing against the kitchen bench and sat on the sofa, giving the baby a gentle rub through my stomach to try to calm her down.

“Like what?”

“A shapeshifter,”

After listening to Clay’s assurances and guesses as to what they might be facing for a few more minutes, I asked to speak to Ethan.

“How’s my niece doing?” he asked.

Because I was already stressed enough from Clay’s admissions, I couldn’t hold back my anger at Ethan’s disregard for me and my needs. I was more than a breathing baby maker, and it was his fault that Clay had believed it necessary to leave us. “She’d be doing a lot better if her Daddy was home to be with her,” I snapped.

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Although his words could have been sufficient for an apology, he didn’t sound guilty enough to my ears for me to accept it as such.

“Just promise me that this is the last one, and that you’ll bring him home in one piece,” I stated in a non-too-pleasant tone.

“What’s up? It’s not like you to be quite so . . .”

“So . . . what exactly?” It was impossible for him to miss the danger in my tone.

“So paranoid.” He said the word with such flippant ease, which only served to ramp up my irritation.

Once upon a time, I’d used the word to describe my father. As an expectant mother, I was really beginning to understand the stress he must have lived with every day, especially when he’d let me go to school knowing what he did about my secrets.

“I guess it runs in my family,” I said. “Add in a whole bunch of hormones and it doesn’t make for a very happy wife or mommy or sister-in-law.”

“Well, I promise he’ll have all his bits when I return him to you, safe and sound.” Ethan’s voice was dripping with innuendo as he spoke, and then he guffawed as Clay said something in return before grabbing the phone back.

“Please promise me you’ll stop stressing, Evie,” he said. “It’s not good for our daughter.”

I sighed but before I could respond there was a commotion on the other end of the line and Clay issued a muffled curse. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as we’re done. Love you.”

He didn’t even give me a chance to respond before hanging up.

“I’ll stop stressing when you’re home,” I murmured into an empty phone line.

I hated being such a hostage to the hormones, but nothing I did seemed to change how readily my moods shifted. The fact that the one person I wanted to comfort me was thousands of miles away and I wouldn’t be able to speak to him for a week only made my mental state more unstable.

Glancing at the clock, I realized that Aiden was due for his visit in a little over an hour and I still had to shower and get ready. I tried to push the tears and tantrums away to concentrate on the visit, which was, to be fair to Aiden, an almost bright spot in my otherwise bleak day.

Stop stressing, I thought. Clay’s right. It isn’t good for our daughter.

It won’t hurt to know that he’ll be safe though.

By the time I finished my shower, I was determined to be in a better mood before Aiden arrived.

 

AIDEN KNOCKED on the door to signal his arrival. When I pulled it open, he was holding a slice of cake and an iced-mocha in his hand.

“Ooh, gimme!” I said with a grateful clap.

We were both well aware that my enthusiasm was a little forced, but neither of us acknowledged it. His little treat for me showed just how well he knew me and how readily we’d fallen into a near-perfect routine for Clay’s absences. Well, near-perfect for me at least.

Day one usually consisted of me sitting around either doing nothing or maniacally cleaning.

Day two was always the opposite of day one.

By day three, I usually had some sort of beverage in hand and was sitting at the breakfast bar in my tiny kitchen by the time Aiden dropped around to see me. It was the day I usually opened up and allowed myself to feel—the good and the bad. Usually, I whined about Clay, then gushed about him, and just generally talked around in circles for hours. Through it all, Aiden sat like a saint and listened to me.

“Do you not agree that it would be considerably more polite to allow me to enter through the front door before you snatch at my goods?”

“Nope!” I popped the “p” and then raked my tongue through the cream on the top of the iced-mocha before grinning at him through my creamy, white moustache. I turned around and walked to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, taking my treats with me. It was all part of our routine. Aiden always stood on the kitchen side while I sat in the dining area across from him as we talked through Clay’s latest exploits. More often than not, he didn’t care whether or not I had any real information for him; he just wanted to keep me talking so that I didn’t sink into myself. It had been years since he’d first pulled me from melancholy and saved my life, and he was still doing it.

“I’m glad that you appear to be feeling better than you did yesterday.”

“I am,” I said as I got out a plate and some cutlery for the slice of cake Aiden had brought. As usual, I offered him half and, as always, he declined. I think he assumed, correctly, that I didn’t always eat properly when I had my bad days. “Clay called me again this morning and they’re almost there. Which means he’ll be home soon.” I ignored the fact that he’d only been gone for three days out of a possible fourteen—or more. The way I saw it though, the sooner he arrived, the sooner he’d be headed home.

Thankfully, Aiden was willing to overlook it too. “What was their destination this time?”

As usual, Clay hadn’t told Fiona and Aiden where he and Ethan were going, or what they were hunting, only how long he was expecting to be away.

“Alaska,” I said. “A national park or something somewhere near King Salmon.” The place name came out as more of a question than a statement. “They had to catch a float plane in and then they were hiking from there.”

Aiden sat forward and stared at me intently. It was the most interested he’d ever appeared in Ethan’s and Clay’s whereabouts. “Do you know the name of the national park?”

Unable to recall the exact name, I shook my head. “Cat something.”

He frowned. “Do you know what they are searching for?”

I shrugged and took another mouthful of the iced-mocha he’d brought me. “They don’t know. I think they were hoping to get more information from the base camp when they get there. When he called this morning, he mentioned something about a shapeshifter, but that’s all I know really.”

My words reminded me of the fact that the phone call was likely to be the last contact I’d have for almost a week—and that was assuming things went well. I went from enjoying the cake Aiden had brought me to pushing it around on the plate.

“Where did your mind travel to just now?” Aiden asked.

I explained about the upcoming lack of communication.

“You should return to the court with me, at least temporarily,” he said. Concern and pity clung to his voice like static, causing me to shift in my seat with discomfort.

I didn’t need pity, I just needed company. I just need Clay.

“Or did it slip your mind that there was a room available for you there. It is available for yourself and Clay forever. You are always more than welcome to stay. I know there are concerns about the safety of the enchantment long term, but I do not believe a handful of nights will significantly alter the outcome of the pregnancy or the health of your daughter.”

“I know it’s there, but I don’t know about staying there.” I thought about the expansive bedroom Clay and I shared at the court; the space that practically burst with our shared personalities. When we’d left, we hadn’t taken any of the personal items that had lined the walls and covered most surfaces during our months-long stay, so it was still all perfectly in situ. The photos of Mom and Dad and Dad and me, the giant photo of Clay and me, the mural-style artwork made with all of his notes were all right where we’d left them. I could go stay in that room, but it felt wrong to be there without Clay.

“Please understand that this is not a one-time offer,” Aiden said. “The invitation is always open to yourself and Clay to return.”

“I know and I appreciate that. I really do. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without your support while Clay’s been on his missions. You’re a good friend.”

“Lynnie, we are not friends. We are family. You are part of the court, and not simply because of Clay’s relationship with Fiona.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I feel the same. But I want to stay at home, at least for now.”