Chapter 16
Life never did quite settle back to normal for me. Between my brother’s death and the information dump my parents had laid on us, I couldn’t concentrate on school. I lasted another three semesters at CU Boulder, but just couldn’t do it anymore. The grief and anger inside me continued to bubble and brew. I even tried grief counseling with a licensed therapist, and it did me absolutely no good. I couldn’t come clean about what exactly was angering me. The human therapist wanted to know how my brother had died and telling her the same story Aden and I had told the Park Rangers and police—that some animal had torn his head off—made her suspicious. Telling her my parents had lied to me my whole life about something made her ask what the secret was, stating I’d never move forward until I spoke it aloud. I had no problem speaking it aloud, just not to her. And guess what? Speaking it aloud, in the privacy of my own home to Sanja did not help me move forward. So I had stopped going to that ‘therapist’. What was the point?
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Sanja said sadly, pulling away from our embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. She would be the one person I missed.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
I shifted the backpack over my shoulder and smiled sweetly at her. “I’ve got a job answering phones for a big company downtown Denver, and a small apartment.”
“You’re better than that,” she said in a scolding manner, frowning.
I nodded. “I know, but I can’t stay here, going to school, barely passing, pretending everything is okay. I need to hunt, I need to kill vampires. I need to find my birth father.”
“That’s the grief talking,” she supplied.
I nodded. “I know. But I tried the normal-college-student thing. I can’t do it anymore. I have an itch that cannot be scratched by late-night cram sessions and football games.”
She sighed, still holding my hand. “I have some essential oils, and have been practicing a spell—”
I smiled and cut her off. “I don’t want oils or spells. I want revenge. I want to feel like Austyn’s life mattered. I want my birth father to pay for what he did to my mother.” This wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. She had been my rock, my confidant when I had returned from a two-week stay at my parents’ house after the funeral. I felt like a broken record at times, and she never once acted bothered by my crying, having to console me after a nightmare, or my countless childhood stories about my brothers and me.
“Revenge won’t make you feel better. It won’t bring Austyn or your birth mom back,” she said for the hundredth time.
“I know it won’t, but I disagree with you on the feeling better part.” I brushed a lock of black hair from in front of her beautiful chocolate eyes with my fingertips. “I will feel so much better after I rid the world of evil.”
She looked at me in the eyes, hers bouncing back and forth between mine. “Is that where it will end? Killing those two?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll let you know.”
I kissed her on the cheek, wrapped her in a tight hug, and whispered, “Thank you,” into her ear.
“Love you, girl,” she said back.
“Love you, too,” I replied. And with that, I turned and walked out the house I’d lived in for two years, happy my parents had allowed her to keep renting it (it was probably a witch thing), and that she’d found a roommate to share the rent.
* * *
I looked around dismally at the studio apartment on the sixth floor I’d rented in Lo-Do—Lower Downtown Denver, as it was nicknamed. I set my suitcase and backpack down and they echoed in the empty space. Leaving them on the floor, I walked over to the large bank of windows that took up the west wall of the tiny space. I had a perfect view of the Rocky Mountains, but that was the only thing nice about the view. The rest was all buildings, cars, and streets as I looked down.
I looked up, thankful that the previous owners had left a curtain rod, and made a mental note to go and get some curtains from somewhere so people couldn’t look in at night.
A knock on the door had me turning and heading toward it.
Ryder stood on the other side and greeted me with a smile. “Hi, beautiful.”
“Hi,” I said, reaching up to plant a kiss on his lips.
He snaked his arms around my waist and kissed me back. We stood in the doorway kissing for what seemed like a few long minutes before I eventually pulled back and smiled up at him.
“Your stuff is on the street, piled into the back of my truck. Aden’s waiting down there for us to bring it up,” he said quietly, smiling down at me.
“Thank you. Guess we better get to it,” I replied.
“I can’t believe you dropped out of school,” he said suddenly, as if he hadn’t meant to.
With a sigh, I replied, “I had to, Ryder. My head nor my heart were in it.”
“You should have just finished, then decided what you wanted to do,” he came back as if he’d been holding it in.
Ryder hadn’t said much when I had told him I was dropping out and moving downtown. I could tell by the look on his face he didn’t approve, but I couldn’t muster up enough fucks to give at the time. I didn’t want to hurt him, and I had hoped we could continue our relationship while he finished college on his football scholarship, but I was determined to do this, and if he wasn’t onboard, I wasn’t going to let him bring me down. I loved him, but my quest for vengeance was driving me to do what I needed to do… for me… for my birthmother, Amy… for Austyn.
Ryder had proved he still loved me and supported me, as he was here now. And hand in hand, we took the elevator down to the ground floor and began the painstaking task of bringing what little furniture and belongings I owned up to my sixth floor apartment.
* * *
“Thank you for calling Carter Homes, how may I direct your call?” I answered the switchboard with the most cheerful voice I could.
“I need to speak to Louis Carter immediately!” an angry voice greeted me.
“Yes, sir, let me put you through—”
Before I could finish my sentence, let alone push a button, his voice came again, “Don’t you dare put me through to his voicemail! I need to speak to Louis himself!”
I gritted my teeth. “Of course, sir, just one moment.” Before the angry caller could retort, I put him on hold and dialed Louis’s extension.
“What?” he answered.
“I have someone who wants to speak to you,” I said timidly.
“Well, who is it?” he asked, seeming annoyed. It was only my third week and I already hated this guy.
“Not sure, but he sounds angry, and instructed me not to put you through to his voicemail.”
“Well, do it anyway, I’m busy,” he came back.
“Do what?” I asked, incredulous.
“Put him through to my goddamn voicemail. God, are you dense or what?” he asked before huffing in annoyance and hanging up.
I pushed the hold button. “I will transfer you now,” and with that, I patched him through to Louis’s extension, hoping he’d actually answer and not let it go to his voicemail, but I wasn’t very optimistic at this point.
In the three weeks I’d had this job, I had gotten more calls from angry homebuyers than anything else. Carter Homes apparently was a shoddy homebuilder at best, and taking calls from the angry homeowners was about all I did all day. It made me exhausted by the end of the day. The twelve bucks an hour they were paying me sure wasn’t worth getting screamed at for eight hours a day.
As I left work on a particularly average Friday, I walked the six blocks to my apartment, happy I had a couple of days off from this idiotic job. I had no plans for the weekend, as Ryder was hitting the football practice hardcore—some NFL scouts were coming to the college to see if they wanted to recruit him. He had asked me to come to the college for his game, and I was considering it, but still hadn’t committed. I loved watching him play, but Friday nights were a hotbed of vampiric activity around here, and I needed to be around to see if I could spot that asshole who had killed my brother.
Ya know, priorities.
I went into my apartment’s front door and took the stairs to the sixth floor. I never took the elevator—ever. The last time I’d ridden in that thing was when I was moving in.
After making a quick salad and scarfing it down, I took a shower and proceeded to paste my face with makeup, and make my blonde hair as big and sexy as I could. Through a shitload of research, I had learned that vampires were horny assholes, and I intended to use every asset I had to lure one.
With my eyes lined in black and looking smoky as could be, and a skintight black mini-skirt pasted on my body, matched with a chunky pair of black heels and a red top, I left my apartment and headed toward the streets where the bars and clubs were.