Celia Lamplighter pressed her forehead to the cool glass and watched blindly as the highway whipped past. She could not believe, after everything that had happened, she was back in this familiar position. She felt as if, in many ways, she’d spent her entire childhood in the farthest back row of an airless van filled with people. She was one of eleven kids and though she’d been raised in Brooklyn, her parents had loved cross-country trips. Carsickness was life for her. Tough cookies, her father used to call back to her from the driver’s seat. That’s what barf bags are for!
She prayed, with every fiber of her being, that she wasn’t going to barf today. Because she wasn’t on a car ride with her family. No, she was on a car ride with six of the coolest people she’d ever met in her life and she really, really would have loved to metamorphose out of her younger sibling chrysalis. She was so freaking done being the forgettable one, the boring one, the carsick one who got stuck in the back seat.
Plus, she really, really didn’t want to puke because it just so happened that a famous, gorgeous, swoon-worthy, former NFL quarterback for the New York Empire was currently driving this van. And Celia would rather have gouged her eyeballs out with a rusty spoon than puke in front of him. As much as she’d fought it over the last few weeks, she had to admit the truth to herself. She had a crush on him.
She hated herself for the cliché. The geek with a crush on the quarterback. Ugh. Gross. Predictable. Embarrassing.
And of course, being her, she didn’t just have a tragic crush on any old quarterback. No, it had to be on Jean Luc LaTour. Greatest of all time. National Treasure. Talent in spades and muscles on muscles. Women across the country had to change their panties at halftime whenever he was playing. The man was true blue H.O.T.
It would have been nice if he could have helped her out and at least been a dick about it. He would have been so much easier to get over if he was cocky. But she’d personally known him for a few weeks now and all signs pointed to him being a very private recluse who never used his fame or good looks to his advantage. She’d seen him flirt with a few women, enjoying their attention, sure. But she definitely wouldn’t have classified him as a ladies’ man.
It really pissed her off. Because that was exactly the kind of thing that made her think—in the back of her mind somewhere buried so deep it would see the light of hell before it ever saw the light of day—that she maybe, kinda, sorta had a chance with him. He obviously wasn’t out there chasing conventional tail.
…so maybe he’d want unconventional tail?
Celia Lamplighter definitely qualified as unconventional tail. She was just a hair over five feet tall, with a dyed-silver fade haircut, dark on the sides and at the root. She had a septum piercing and tattoos over her collarbones. Her face was fine, she supposed. If you didn’t mind a big nose and goldfish eyes.
She got hit on when she went out. But never by guys like Jean Luc. Never by All-American perfection.
No, Celia usually got hit on by guys like Tre, who was currently snoozing in the seat in front of her, mouth open and glasses askew. Tre Sullivan was kind of a nerdy hottie. A bad-ass hacker/computer geek with bright red hair and tattoos up the waz. He was exactly the kind of guy who’d approach her in a bar, trying to talk her ear off about whatever bands or tattoo artists he imagined she’d be into. And then he’d be inevitably disappointed when he found out that she was actually into classic Russian literature and took her job as a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library seriously enough to leave the bar at a reasonable hour for bed. Alone.
Of course, she wasn’t actually talking about Tre. Who’d never hit on her, and didn’t make assumptions about her based on her looks. But the point was that Johnny Apple Pie up there driving the van was not the kind of man whose head Celia turned.
It was so dumb to even be thinking about this, she reminded herself, knocking her head against the glass again. The sun had set an hour ago, leaving them drenched in that ethereal, underwater light of dusk. The trees on either side of the highway speared their arms into the night sky, looking beautiful and menacing all at once.
She had more pressing matters to think about than her unrequited crush on the football star in the driver’s seat.
Like, uh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that there is a literal demon out to eat one of our souls. She shook her head. Shouldn’t she be thinking about that right now? But the truth was, she wasn’t sure how much more thinking she could really do about it. She’d done nothing but think about it for the last few weeks. And even before this whole thing had started, she’d been pretty consumed by the map.
Oh, the map. Even though she’d done the exact same thing ten minutes before, Celia leaned forward and checked in the bag between her feet. Yup, there it was, still there, safe and sound.
Each one of the seven people in the car had a map identical to hers. Some of them had inherited theirs, some of them had stolen them. Celia had found hers pressed between the pages of a book on cartography in the rarely visited reference section at the Central branch of the library. And those maps had led these seven strangers to the same place at the same time where they’d all met. That had been about two and half weeks ago.
Part of her couldn’t believe she’d only known these people for, like, 18 days. In a way, she was already closer to them than she was to her own family. Sitting up front, next to Jean Luc, was Caroline Clifton. She was a pretty little rich thing from New England, and so sweet she could give you cavities if you weren’t careful. She slept curled in the shotgun seat, her chestnut hair catching the passing highway lights in a rhythmic pattern. Celia had felt envious of her effortless cheer and simple beauty when she’d first met her, but it didn’t take long for the envy to dissolve into genuine affection. Caroline was seriously the nicest person on the planet. Plus, she was going through a divorce that Celia didn’t know a lot about, but she knew enough to be firmly planted on Caroline’s side of the matter.
Behind Caroline, next to Tre, was the biggest question mark of the group. Martine West. She was fierce-looking, even in her sleep. Copper blonde hair like a Viking queen, knives lashed to her ankles and wrists, and that femme fatale black stretchy clothing. Yeah. She was literally a character that Celia would have pretended to be as a kid when she was trying not to get caught playing make-believe in the tiny backyard of her parents’ brownstone in Brooklyn.
And in the back seat, sandwiched in next to Celia, were Thea Redgrave and Jack Warren, sleeping against one another. They made one ridiculously cool couple, Celia had to admit. Thea was confident and freaking tall. Jack was confident and had major swag. He was a hustler, she was steady and hardworking. Celia didn’t know exactly why, but for some reason, they just fit together.
They were such a hodge-podge of people, brought together for no other reason than the maps they’d all had and followed.
The maps had had an intriguing message on the back of them that had led them right to one another.
On the seventh day
Of the seventh month
when the seventh moon
falls dark,
You, the seventh soul,
will find what you seek.
When Celia had followed her map to the marked star on July 7th, when there was a scheduled total lunar eclipse, she hadn’t been under the illusion that she was the actual seventh soul, considering she’d found the map completely out of the blue. But she’d followed the map to Northern Michigan anyways. For many reasons.
She’d expected it to be a solitary journey, never suspecting that there would be six other people with six other maps and reasons of their own.
She’d never forget that night as long as she lived. Earth’s blood-red shadow pulling over the moon, a sudden chill in the air, and then the man who would change all of their lives. They hadn’t even all exchanged names yet when Arturo, dark and handsome and bone-chillingly creepy, had stepped from the shadows of the woods and attempted to steal one of their souls, apparently what the map had been luring them there for in the first place.
Stealing souls.
She shook her head again. Whose life was this?!
A wave of nausea made her palms sweat as Jean Luc smoothly switched lanes and eased the van off an exit.
“Gotta find a place to rest,” he grumbled in that gravel-deep voice of his. That was the kind of voice that could only be described as a panty-rumbler. She realized, looking around, that she was the only passenger awake in the car, and therefore, was probably the person he was speaking to.
“Yeah, okay!” she called back in a breathy, high voice that made her want to face-palm herself all the way under the covers of a very large bed that she’d never have to get out of. He caught her eyes in the rearview mirror in a moment of surprise. Oh. He’d been talking to himself. He hadn’t even realized she’d been awake. Cool. Yeah. No problem.
Without another word between them, Jean Luc pulled into the parking lot of a Radisson. The other members of the car stretched and yawned and started to come awake and file out of the car.
“Need a place to rest for the night,” Jean Luc told the group, stretching those giant arms of his over his head and exposing an inch or two of skin over the top of his jeans.
Celia quickly turned away from him. The idea of being caught ogling him was mortifying to the nth degree. Good thing her memory was near photogenic and she could ponder that inch of tan skin on her own time. Not to mention the V of muscle so defined she was pretty sure she was now pregnant with triplets just from looking at it. And that dusting of light brown hair below his navel and—breathe, Celia!
“No wonder you need a rest,” Tre said, checking the time on his phone. “You’ve been driving for twelve hours, with only, like, two ten-minute breaks.”
“I could drive for a while,” Jack offered.
“No,” Jean Luc said quickly enough for it to have been a little strange. “Ah, yeah, I prefer to drive. I know we’d get there faster if someone else drove while the rest of us slept in the car, but look, the hotel’s on me. We can get a good night’s sleep and start again in the morning.”
Most of the world knew about the car accident that had ended Jean Luc’s career and taken his brother’s life. He’d been in the passenger seat when it happened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why he wasn’t exactly a huge fan of being driven around.
“I love sleeping in hotels!” Caroline said, by way of an answer. She clapped her hands together and ran to get her bag from the trunk of the van.
“Is there anything she doesn’t love?” Tre mused, shaking his head and going to retrieve his own bag.
Jean Luc got them checked in and everyone filed off to the two rooms he’d booked. Celia, realizing she’d forgotten her sweatshirt, ran back to the van and grabbed it. When she got up to their floor, she ducked her head in the first room.
Jack and Thea were lounging on one bed and Caroline was on the other, chattering and flipping through the television channels. Celia realized that Martine was in the bathroom. Which left no vacancy for her in that room.
“Goodnight, you guys,” she called and pulled the door closed behind her. She pushed into the next room and tossed her bag on the floor. It was dark in there, just the moonlight coming through a crack in the blinds, but there was enough light for her to see the long line of Jean Luc’s fantastically ripped back as he lay across the far bed. The sheets were around his hips and she saw, with no little admiration, that he’d already fallen asleep. Wow.
Gulping, Celia turned her back on Jean Luc and sat down on the other bed to take off her boots.
“Oh,” Tre said when he came out of the bathroom. “You’re sharing with us?”
“Seven people, four beds,” she replied.
“Right. Math.” Tre grinned at her but his smile dimmed. “I don’t suppose you would mind if I slept in the bed with you?”
Celia looked over at Jean Luc sprawled across the Queen-sized bed that was almost comically too small for him. He was 6’6” and both of his feet were a good foot off the end of the bed. He wasn’t sprawled out by any means, but even so, there was barely a foot of space on the far end for another body to go.
“What?” she asked Tre. “You don’t want to spend the night cuddling with Gigantus Maximus over there?”
They both laughed. “Is that his official species name, you think?”
“Either he’s not human or he ran afoul of some sort of radioactive waste as a kid.”
That made Tre laugh harder. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind cuddling with him, it’s just that I’m trying this new thing where I don’t directly compare myself to Hercules. It’s not good for my self-esteem.”
They were laughing still, but Tre’s words surprised Celia. She hadn’t really thought that Jean Luc would have been as intimidating to the guys as he’d been to her.
“Fair enough,” she said to Tre and nodded to the side of the bed closest to Jean Luc. “All yours.”
Being one of eleven kids, Celia was very used to sharing a bed with somebody or other. And Tre didn’t make her nervous in the least. He was a respectful guy. She changed into her pajamas in the bathroom and by the time she came out, Tre was already shirtless, in some green plaid pajama pants and crawling into bed. “Do you, uh, want me to put a shirt on?” he asked her.
Sweet of him. “Nah, you’re fine, sailor. Unless you’re planning on any night moves.”
He laughed and punched at his pillow. “Night moves? You sound like my Aunt Helen.”
Celia chuckled to herself and slid under the covers, rolling to face the wall. It usually took her a long time to fall asleep, but hearing the two deep, even breaths of the men in the room with her, the ambient roar of cars out on the highway, and the even hum of the air conditioner, Celia found herself drifting away.
***
Jean Luc sat up on the edge of the bed and rearranged his junk in his briefs, the same way he did every single morning. He immediately stopped rearranging his junk the second he remembered that he was not alone in this hotel room. Nope. Not even a little bit.
He could see two sleeping bodies in the other bed in the darkened room. There was sun peeking through the drapes but the room was still pretty dim in that depressing way that most hotel rooms had. Like you could close blinds, put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and lose all track of the days as they rolled past. He hated that feeling.
He glanced at the clock and saw that he’d slept for a solid seven hours. Good. That would be enough to get through the second 12-hour driving day they’d all have to endure. Northern Michigan was a hell of a long way away from the Everglades. Which was exactly where those damn maps were taking them next.
Jean Luc shook the cobwebs out of his head and stood up and stretched. He hated that his brain switched on so fast in the morning. He wished sometimes that he could press the pause button on his anxieties, or at the very least, the mute button. He used to be able to do that. But then Hugo had died and part of Jean Luc had died as well. He knew he’d never be the man he used to be. He had never been carefree, exactly—he’d had too much determination, too much of a competitive spirit to good and truly relax, but at least he’d been lighter. He’d been happy once, he reminded himself.
His shoulders cracked against the stretch and then his bad knee did as well. He let out a long breath. That was just the way it went these days. Jean Luc had endured a terrible injury in the car accident that had killed his brother. And he was just plain getting older. He had 34 years and six NFL seasons under his belt. That was enough to make anyone’s joints crack when they stretched in the morning.
Wanting to hit the road sooner than later, Jean Luc padded toward the shower, glancing at the other bed in the room. He froze stock-still. He’d recognized Tre’s red hair and tattooed torso from across the room, and he’d automatically filled in the other bedfellow as being Jack. So maybe it made him a little bit of a prude, but when he’d rented the two rooms, he’d assumed they’d split into a boys’ room and a girls’ room. But of course not, he realized now. Jack and Thea were together. Of course they’d share. Which automatically mixed up the rooms and had somehow landed… Celia in the bed next to Tre.
He frowned at the two of them. They were both on their sides facing one another, practically breathing each other’s air. Tre was shirtless! The sheet was up to Celia’s neck and it dipped down and touched the bed in between their bodies, like it hadn’t been disturbed much in the night. Tre started to shift and Jean Luc immediately strode into the bathroom, flicking on the annoyingly bright light and immediately stepping into the shower, not even caring that it spit freezing water onto him for a good twenty seconds before it warmed up.
Jean Luc was pretty sure that there was nothing going on between Tre and Celia the whole time they’d been in Michigan. They were friendly, but not flirty. But things changed. People changed. Circumstances changed.
Had something happened last night between them? Had he slept like a giant dope in the other bed while something had changed between them? It mortified him to think that maybe they’d kissed or touched while he’d sawn logs in the other bed. Damn! He should never have fallen asleep that quickly. If he hadn’t been so tired he would have realized that at least one girl was going to sleep in that room and that he’d been hogging an entire bed. If he’d been awake when they came in, he could have slept on his side, taken up less space, at least given Celia a choice about where she was going to sleep.
He took the bar of soap and scrubbed it over his short hair and over his face, working it into his beard. He scrubbed at every bit of his skin. He felt like such an ass. It had been really rude for him to fall asleep like that. What if she’d been uncomfortable with the sleeping arrangements last night and it had been all his fault?
Or what if she’d been thrilled with the sleeping arrangements last night and that had been all his fault, too?
Jean Luc suddenly couldn’t decide which alternative was worse and that confused the heck out of him. He liked Celia. She was bite-sized and interesting to look at and funny and smart. He thought she was an interesting mix of spunky and shy. But he wasn’t interested in her. He just liked being around her.
Jack and Thea had already gotten together, in what seemed like a pretty permanent way. He figured that the idea of Celia and Tre together made him feel sick because he didn’t like the idea of the group pairing off. There was an odd number of people. Yeah. That was it. They shouldn’t pair off because somebody was gonna get left out.
Jean Luc did one last rinse and stepped out of the shower, scrubbing himself down with the towel as aggressively as he had with the soap. He realized he hadn’t thought to bring any clothes in with him so he just slapped the towel around his waist. He almost hesitated going back out into the main room. God forbid he… interrupt anything.
The thought made his stomach turn. But he couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever. He settled on rattling the door handle around for a second so if they were in flagrante delicto they’d have an extra half second or so to get decent.
He stepped out into the main room and saw, to his immense, sweeping relief, that Tre wasn’t in bed at all. He was standing at the window, pulling back the drapes and peering out, one hand scratching at his belly.
“Hey, man,” Tre said in a lowered voice. One glance told Jean Luc that Celia was still sleeping.
Tre watched Jean Luc stride over to his bag and zip it open.
“Whoa,” Tre said, dropping into the swivel chair at the desk/TV stand in the corner. His eyes stayed on Jean Luc. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”
Jean Luc sighed. Of course Tre would know that he was over here all mortified and mad and uncomfortable. He and Tre and Jack were all psychically in tune with each other’s emotions. Yet another lovely side effect of that fateful night in Northern Michigan. Another gift from Arturo. And now Jean Luc couldn’t keep a lid on his feelings and Tre was reading them loud and clear. Just like Jean Luc was reading Tre’s confusion loud and clear.
Jean Luc cleared his throat. “Nothing. Just wanna get on the road is all.”
“Yeah. Okay. You’re lying.”
Jean Luc snapped his head up to stare at Tre and Tre immediately lifted his hands palms out. He was a smart guy and he knew better than to rile up a 260-pound former professional athlete who was currently bubbling like a pot about to boil over. But still. It had to be said. They were all still figuring out how this connection between the three of them actually worked and Tre wanted to be clear on the fact that he could tell Jean Luc was lying.
“I’m not saying you have to tell me why you’re lying. I just wanted you to know that I could sense it, alright?”
A little of the steel went out of Jean Luc’s glare. He opened his mouth to reply, but across the room Celia hummed a little bit, coming out of sleep. She sat up, her silver hair sticking up in a hundred directions. The sheets fell away from her shoulders and pooled at her hips. She’d worn a tank top to sleep in and though it was covering all the essentials, her essentials were doing their best to break free and live their best lives. Even in the dim morning light, Jean Luc could see the dark shadow of her deep cleavage. His eyes couldn’t help but be drawn.
“Oh,” Tre said, like something had just started to make sense to him. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Morning, C.”
“Morning,” she yawned, turning her back to the men and slipping out of bed. “Everybody sleep okay?”
Jean Luc saw that she wore what looked like a pair of men’s boxers on her bottom half, though they were tight around her peachy ass in a way that made them anything but mannish. He frowned. Hard. Tre had been shirtless and she’d been wearing a Kleenex for a shirt and some dude’s boxers? He forced his jaw to unclench before he loosened his molars.
Tre’s eyes bounced back and forth between them almost gleefully. Jean Luc’s hard glare at her back, her pink cheeks as she rummaged through her bag for another layer to quickly put on. Yeah, things were definitely clicking into place for Tre. So why not stir the pot a little? He’d always had just a touch of bastard in him.
“Best night of sleep I’ve had in a very long time,” Tre said, barely able to contain the shit-eating grin on his face.
Jean Luc turned to him, glacier-slow, and the look on the big man’s face could have frozen the Sahara. Tre could feel the fury seeping off of Jean Luc. But he could also feel the confusion. Tre realized, with no small amount of confusion himself, that he could see something about Jean Luc that Jean Luc couldn’t see for himself.
Damn. Feelings were weird.
Celia grabbed some clothes and slipped into the bathroom. A moment later the shower came on. Tre’s joy at having teased Jean Luc into a reaction dimmed when he realized that he might actually be making things awkward between him and Jean Luc.
He cleared his throat. “Next time let’s get King-sized.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s spring for King-sized beds so one of us doesn’t have to sleep on top of one of the girls.” Tre nodded his head toward the bathroom door. He wasn’t exactly saying that there was nothing going on between him and Celia, but he was pretty much saying it. To directly say it would be a little too, ah, direct, in Tre’s mind. If they didn’t have this psychic emotional thing going on, then Tre would never have known there was a reason to say anything in the first place. He didn’t think it was his place to push too far.
Some of the tension left Jean Luc’s shoulders. “Shouldn’t have crashed so fast last night. Sorry if it put you two in an awkward position.”
“Not awkward,” Tre shrugged. “We’re friends. And she’s cool. Nothing’s ever awkward with C.”
Jean Luc turned back to his bag and rooted through it for clothes. He wondered for a second if that meant that he wasn’t friends with Celia. Because pretty much everything was awkward with her. He knew that she was smart and funny with the others. But basically every time they talked, the two of them misunderstood one another or ended up tongue-tied. It was annoying. He just wanted things to be easy and drama-free with everyone.
Jean Luc nodded and pulled his clothes on. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. The last dregs of his mortification were still slowly receding and he knew it wouldn’t take much for it to return full force. He wanted to get the hell out of this hotel room and on the road. “You gonna shower before we hit the road?”
“I’ll be fast,” Tre nodded.
“I’m gonna find breakfast for us so that we can get going.”
Jean Luc was up, dressed, and tossing his bag over his shoulder before Tre could say anything else.