CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‡
“I can’t hold it long enough,” Tammy wailed as she popped back into her own vision in the conference room in the office wing of The Breakers, exhausted. “She was just going to get a report on some…some generals or something.”
“I saw,” Kemble said, thoughtfully. “And heard. Edgar has remarkably sharp senses. The fact that he can sense ultraviolet light is a bit of a surprise. Reminds me of some dorm rooms at Harvard. Didn’t Thomas say the helicopter he stowed away on was carrying generals?” he asked. “What is she doing?” Kemble turned to Tammy. “Can you get back there?”
She nodded. “I’ll try.”
She closed her eyes and reached inside. In the last hours she’d gotten surer of her power. It seemed to be located right below her heart. Which was a funny place for vision. And hearing. There didn’t seem to be much power left after so many dips in the pool, but she imagined shoving her fist down deep and wrenching out what was left. She thought about Edgar. Who knew Morgan had a thing for Poe? Morgan was very old. Maybe she’d known the famous writer.
The room she’d seen before popped into view as the raven eyed his surroundings. Edgar was still sitting on Morgan’s shoulder. Kemble clasped Tammy’s forearm to share her experience.
“That’s good. I knew he’d gain position quickly.” Morgan was talking to the tall, gaunt man she’d called Hardwick during the attack on The Breakers. The papers in Hardwick’s hands were purple-white, his shirt a glowing blue. “Now how is Nero doing?”
Nero?
“The meds have calmed some of his…volatility, but I’m not sure he’ll be useful to us. He couldn’t pass as modern without a lot more training, and he’s not exactly a person whose ego wants to admit he needs to learn.”
Morgan chuckled, bouncing Edgar a bit. That chuckle was the coldest, most frightening laugh Tammy had ever heard. “He’s a different kind of weapon.” Her expression hardened. “Now where is Jason? I want a full report on the search for Thomas.”
Then Tammy lost it. The vision faded into the brightly lighted conference room again. “I’m sorry, Kemble,” she sighed, with barely the strength to hold her head up.
“Come on,” he said. “Time for a lie down. You’ve been an incredible help, Tamsen.” He helped her up, concern on his face, probably both for her and for what they had heard in the last hours, incomplete as it was.
“Who is this Nero?” she muttered. “Who’d take the name of an insane Roman Emperor in this day and age?”
“I don’t think we’re talking about this day and age, Tammy.” Kemble’s face was grim.
Oh, my, God. “You think she’s bringing people like Nero back to life? Can she do that?”
Kemble was obviously thinking furiously. “She’d need a body.”
“We’ve only seen her revive people who were just killed,” Tammy muttered. “Nero’s been dead for two thousand years. He’d be bone chips and dust, if there were anything left at all. Is she that powerful?”
“I don’t think we know the limits of her power anymore.” Kemble’s face was ashen. Even Kemble thought they had no chance to stop her.
*
Tammy rubbed Thomas’s shoulder. He felt the sensation shoot down to his penis, but he tamped down the fire of the kiln in his gut and closed the door, breathing slowly and regularly.
“Good job, guy,” Tris said.
“All this practice is paying off.” Lan looked around at the black splotches on the driveway that marked Thomas’s failures. But he hadn’t had a failure in almost two hours now.
Tammy smiled up at him. She’d taken a nap during the early afternoon and had just come out to help test his control. It wasn’t actually a sunny smile. It was maybe…needy? He’d never seen her look exactly like that. What did it mean? His penis seemed to know, because it strained at his jeans. Thomas grew worried. What if he wasn’t up to being with Tammy? Would he set her on fire?
A small burst of flame bloomed on the cement to his left.
“Breathe,” Tris yelled. “Ooops. Breathe,” he whispered.
Thomas tried to get his panicked breathing to slow as Lan took the canister he called a fire extinguisher and put out the flame, leaving a new black smudge on the driveway. “Sorry,” he said to Tammy. “I…I was just worried.”
She squeezed his biceps. “Don’t worry about Morgan,” she urged. “That’s far away right now. It’s just you and me.”
“Correct,” he said. But that was just the problem. What he was worried about was Tammy. And what she might expect of him. Because he had no idea. He didn’t even know if he had kissed her right. Shakespeare talked about kissing and bussing, and all sorts of other things that probably meant kissing. But he didn’t say how to do it. Did you just brush your lips across her forehead, as he had? Or did you press your lips together?
“I think he needs a rest,” Tammy said to her brothers.
They headed into the house. It was late afternoon, about vespers, Thomas reckoned. He didn’t like the glances Tris and Lan were exchanging. They didn’t think he could control himself. He’d never be able to trust himself alone with Tammy. He wanted to be with her more than anything.
“Hey.”
Michael stood under the arch to the wing of the house the family called the Bay of Pigs, though Thomas had not seen any porcine creatures on the grounds at all, let alone in the house. Michael looked uncomfortable. He held a book in such a way that you couldn’t see the cover or the title. But Lan and Tris seemed to know it.
“Good idea,” Tris said, his voice dripping relief. “Uh, Thomas, I think Michael wants to have a talk with you.”
“What about?” Tammy asked suspiciously.
“Never you mind,” Lan said. “We’re going to have a glass of wine. You should join us.”
“I’m thinking maybe about twelve shots of tequila for me,” Tris muttered as they took Tammy forcibly over to a little cabinet with multi-colored bottles in it in the living room.
“Don’t bully him, Michael,” Tammy shot over her shoulder.
Thomas followed Michael down the hall. He hoped Michael wasn’t going to tell him to leave the estate after his failure in the driveway. The mere thought of leaving made his stomach roll. He’d have to find a way to stay near Tammy in spite of her family. To his surprise, Michael went out the door at the far end of the hallway. A little brick terrace to one side looked north over the big bay, all the way to the airport where he had landed and to the hills beyond.
“Nobody will bother us out here,” Michael said. He pointed to one of two chairs with bright cushions next to a small table. The terrace was surrounded by bushes and flowers, which made it quite secluded. Thomas sat as Michael took a large breath and sat opposite him. Michael looked very ill at ease. Whatever he had to say, it would be bad.
“Now,” Michael began after clearing his throat a couple of times, “I know you don’t know, uh, much about women.”
True, but Thomas was puzzled. Was he or was he not getting kicked out of The Breakers?
“And we, uh, got the impression you’d never had sex.” Michael rushed on. “I’m not talking about night emissions or kissing. Everybody does that. But that’s not sex.”
“Oh.” Thomas said. Well, that cleared that up. He had an idea. “Is sex like “knowing” a woman in the Biblical sense?” Michael nodded, looking relived. If only Thomas knew what that actually meant.
“You’re going to, uh, want to have sex with Tammy. That’s why you have erections.”
They’d noticed. He could feel himself flush. He adjusted himself in the chair as though that could conceal his problem.
“It’s okay,” Michael said hastily. Then he gave a little chuckle. “We can’t help it when we’re around the one who is our Destiny. And being around your Destiny, loving each other, can be really good.” His eyes softened. “It’s good for Drew and me.” He jerked himself back to their conversation. “But you have to know what you’re doing to make sure you don’t hurt Tammy, I mean besides starting fires. You’ll get control of your power sooner or later, and…and maybe Maggie can help. But, uh, well, anyway I thought I’d help out in the sex department.”
Michael thought Thomas could hurt Tammy through his ignorance? Besides setting her on fire? That was awful. And if having sex was knowing a woman in the Biblical sense, it meant she’d lose her purity. She would be a social pariah, a fallen woman. He’d read enough to know that. Her parents would hate him. They would never let him be with her. He wanted to marry Tammy, so that everyone would know they must be together for the rest of their lives.
“Calm down,” Michael ordered. “This is for Tammy.”
Thomas tried to breathe. Very well. Michael must be talking about having sex after they were married. Maybe he had found a way to make her parents agree. Why else would he help Thomas? In any case, Thomas didn’t want to be ignorant. And if he ever did get to have sex with Tammy, he surely did not want to hurt her. “I am calm. You will tell me about sex?”
Michael looked like he was girding his loins. “Yep. Me and this little book here. All the Tremaine boys read it. You can tell—it’s a little, uh, dog-eared.” He shrugged apologetically. “I figured you were used to studying, and you’d want to have something you could take back to your room and commit to memory.” He pushed the book forward. Its title was, “A Field Guide to Human Sexuality.” The cover had a picture of two fruits, one of which was half of a ripe oval with yellow-orange flesh and black seeds in the middle. Thomas didn’t recognize that one, but he knew the banana. He’d seen them in fruit bowls at the airport lounge. The paper cover over the hardbound book was tattered, and there were unidentifiable stains on it in several places. “This will give you the science and the anatomy and what goes where,” Michael continued, clearing his throat. “But you’re going to need some, uh, tips too.”
“Oh, thank you, Michael,” Thomas, said sitting forward in his chair. “Skip nothing.” This was more than generous.
Michael took a big breath and let it out. “Okay. We’re going to work on a way for you to stop worrying about starting things on fire.” Michael examined his face. “It worries you, right?”
“Very much,” Thomas admitted. “But I also worry that you and the rest of Tammy’s family will not allow me to be near her. I am not worthy of her, after all. I am ignorant and useless. I don’t have a purpose anymore. How will I be worthy of Tammy and earn their trust?” The pain of that made the kiln at his core begin to heat again.
Michael looked a little shocked. “You’ve got to calm down, kid,” he said hastily.
Thomas tried to breathe. Burning Michael to cinders was unlikely to help his cause with the family. He blinked, focusing inward, and managed to shut down the flare in the kiln.
“Look,” Michael said. “There are many ways to be worthy. You and Tammy…” He thought for a minute. “Well, you two are much alike. Tammy hasn’t had a normal teenage life with friends and parties and doing stupid things like drinking too much. She’s been locked up here at the estate with her family. Almost like you were locked away at the monastery. And Tammy’s been looking for a purpose too, though she may not have realized it.”
“So both of us are lost,” Thomas sighed. “And someone who is also lost can be of no value to her. Tammy’s parents can’t want that for her.”
“No,” Michael said slowly. “You aren’t both lost. Tammy’s grown up since you came into her life, Thomas. She’s done something courageous by leaving her home when she was in danger. She also took charge for the first time because she wanted to be with you. Just like you took charge of your life when you came to find her. You’re both becoming adults. You’re perfect for each other in ways that people might not recognize right away.”
Thomas examined Michael’s brown eyes for signs of deception, but he saw only concern, sympathy. This man really was on his side. “Will Tammy’s parents make me go away? I can see that her brothers do not like me. And her father…. They will not want me to marry her.”
“They don’t have much choice. You are her Destiny.”
That wasn’t an enthusiastic endorsement, but at least Michael might think it was possible. Then there was the question of his fire. “If I don’t burn us both to death.”
“Well, maybe there’s an answer to that and to your question about your purpose too.”
Thomas held his breath. Did Michael have the key to his future?
“Your answer is Tammy. Instead of worrying, during sex you focus on what Tammy wants. She comes first.” He looked apologetic. “In more ways than one, as we’ll discuss. That will keep you from releasing your power by mistake. She’s your purpose now, too. Treasure her. Keep her safe. Please her. That’s what you focus on. Don’t worry about anything else.”
“And you will show me how to please her? I am so ignorant….”
“No worries. That’s your new mantra. I’m gonna tell you the works.” Michael assured him. “We’ll start with kissing. I think you don’t get that part. I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it. And it’s not only for lips….”
*
Jason didn’t relish making this report. Shit. He was skating on thin ice here.
He opened the door to Morgan’s center of operations. She was sitting in front of a computer screen with a view of the hangar. It was a hive of activity as they prepared for the ceremony. Her yellow eyes jerked up to his face as he entered. Then they narrowed.
“Tell me you’ve got him,” she said softly. That was not a good tone.
Jason shook his head. “If he got to Anza, he could have hitched a ride. That’s all I can think.”
“All you can think?” She surged out of her chair, the raven on her shoulder cawing and flapping in surprise. “How about one of our supply trucks?”
Jason shook his head. “Only one. Driver said it was empty when he got back to his distribution center.”
Morgan began to pace. “The driver could be lying.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Well, ask him a little more persuasively,” Morgan snapped as she whirled to face him.
“He’s dead.”
That stopped her. “Oh. And you believe him.”
“Yeah. If the kid was on the truck, he didn’t know it.” Before she could attack again, he added, “Yes, he could have hopped off of a moving vehicle. We’re checking any gas station or habitation in Anza and all the way over to Palm Springs. So far no sightings.”
Morgan chewed her lip. “Damn,” she whispered. Then, fixing him with her stare, she said, “Keep looking.”
He knew what was good for him. But they both knew he didn’t have much time left to find the kid. He had one more idea. There’d been a fire in the hangar the night the kid disappeared. In the confusion, he might just have stowed away. Time to have a talk with the pilot.
*
Tammy realized she’d just set Kemble’s place at the table with three forks and no knife or spoon. She just couldn’t concentrate with the acute sense of Thomas down in the Bay of Pigs washing over her constantly. She was throbbing between her legs and practically trembling. What was he doing down there? He’d been locked in his room ever since he and Michael came inside. Michael was saying nothing. Wild thoughts careened through her head. She could open his door a crack and let Bagheera into his room then look through Bagheera’s eyes. She could march down there and demand that he come out and talk to her. She tossed the napkins into a pile in the center of the table and ran her hand through her bangs. She was really losing it.
The family began to appear. The dinner crew had set out the fixings for a taco bar in the kitchen and everyone began to collect plates. Jesse had already eaten his dinner since he had an early bedtime, and Maggie had finished cleaning pureed prunes off the floor. Elizabeth was now snoozing in her cradle.
Tammy felt Thomas come out of his room. She turned as though pulled by a magnet. There he was, crossing the tile path next to the sunken living room, looking like a tousled god. He was still buttoning a fresh shirt. She wished he wouldn’t.
The moment his eyes met hers, their gazes locked. His were burning with intent. Gone was the hesitancy that had hung around him. He knew what he wanted and she had a good idea what that was. Coincidentally, she wanted that too. But he hadn’t been too reliable this afternoon with flame. And neither of them knew what to do in the bedroom. Well, she’d read a lot of romance books. Some had sex scenes even, after she was able to download off the Internet without any questions from The Parents. But she had a feeling that romance novels weren’t enough of a preparation for sex with a guy who’d been in a monastery all his life.
She went to meet him. She had no choice.
“Tammy,” he whispered, leaning in toward her. She might just spontaneously combust, without any help from his gift. “Come with me.”
God, but that sounded good. She managed to wrench her head into a negative shake. “We can’t. Dinner is going to be a powwow.”
“What is ‘powwow?’”
“We’re going to discuss what we should do. I found some new information when I saw through Edgar’s eyes this morning.”
“Should I wait in my room?” The hesitancy was back.
“Of course not. Like it or not, this whole situation is your problem too, now.”
She expected a frown, of regret or rejection of that truth, but a ghost of a smile quirked his lips, hardly there. He nodded shyly. She reached out and took his calloused hand, reveling in the familiar shock of desire. “Come on,” she said, and led him into the crowd at the kitchen bar.
Lan and Greta were over near the stove patting and pressing homemade tortillas in a little assembly line, though Lan kept nuzzling Greta’s neck until she bumped him away with her hips in mock severity. Jane was flipping the yummy rounds on the griddle and off into stacks that Kemble brought to the bar. Kee arranged bowls of cilantro, avocado, lettuce, a cabbage slaw, lime quarters, salsa fresca and several different hot sauces in a line. Michael had made margaritas, and the hiss of ice in the shaker was a staccato background to the chatter. Everybody in the family was of drinking age now. Only Jane was abstaining, since she was pregnant. Drew sat quietly near Michael’s drinks station, reaching out to touch his thigh as though to steady herself from time to time. The family showed Thomas how to build tacos from the plates of carnitas and shredded beef and chicken and grilled fish. The place smelled like cooked meat, chilies, and lime juice.
Jane shooshed Bagheera away from the taco bar. The cat thudded to the ground with a complaining sound. Lance and Sophie, Jane and Kemble’s dogs, were circling as well. “You had your dinner,” Jane scolded. Outside with you, all of you.” The animals ignored her.
But underneath the feigned cheerfulness, a current of tension told a different story. The sun was setting into the Pacific outside the French doors. Soon the comet would appear in the sky. And then the dipper. They were nearly touching now. There was so little time until the worst happened. What could they do about it?
Kemble took a call on his cell as the others arranged themselves around the long table in the dining room. “You coming in?” Pause. “At least get back to Hemet and lay low.” Pause again. “Right.” He picked up his plate and joined the stream into the dining room.
“Luc didn’t f-find anything?” Daddy asked. He was sitting at the head of the table again. Kemble took his old place on Daddy’s right.
“No. He’s staying out there so he can start again before sunrise.”
That put an additional damper on their spirits. Tammy sat next to Thomas, opposite Lan and Greta. Mom was on Thomas’s right at the foot of the table. Already she could feel the tightening in her loins in response to Thomas’s nearness.
“I don’t know what we’d do if we knew where the compound was,” Kee said crossly, spreading her napkin on her lap. “We’re no match for Morgan and her crew.”
“And I doubt we’ll be going to the army and saying, ‘Oh, there are these real bad guys who are going to ruin the world, so why don’t you just wipe them out?’” Lan had a point there. “We’ve got no proof. Even if we did have proof, they’d want to investigate and then get permission, and mount an operation….” He trailed off, his frustration palpable. Greta leaned her shoulder in and he put his arm around her.
Kemble looked tired. Jane thought so, too, for she had her hand on Kemble’s knee under the table, just to show support. “Tamsen’s vision today showed us some clues,” Kemble said. “The compound is big, modern, vertical, to judge from the elevators, and made of steel. Looks like the inside of a very large submarine.”
“That sounds pretty invincible,” Dev observed doubtfully, reaching for one of the bottles of hot sauce and shaking it over his tacos.
“You can blow up anything if you’ve got enough explosives. But it does sound formidable.” Michael stared at the tacos on his plate. “And it’s going to be well-guarded.”
“Somebody built this,” Kemble said. “It had to be a huge project. There must be contractors and workman who could lead us to it.”
“Morgan isn’t that stupid,” Tris noted, before he shoveled in a bite of fat taco.
Kemble’s jaw worked. “Maybe they just think they haven’t left a trail. I’ll start checking right after dinner. Somebody knows where this place is.”
“Good deduction,” Daddy said. Kemble looked pleased at his father’s praise.
“I hate to be Negative Nelly,” Kee said, “but even if we find it, I still don’t see us storming the castle successfully. Not with Clan who have ramped up powers inside.”
They thought about that as they dug in to their tacos. Thomas watched the other men before he took up his stuffed tortilla with his hands. Drew pushed the contents of her tortilla around with her fork but she didn’t seem to have much interest in eating. Tammy had lost her appetite too. She wished she could also lose the feeling of need that resulted from being this close to Thomas. She sure hoped no one else at the table could tell she and Thomas were both aroused, because she could feel the tension in his body, and he squirmed to adjust himself. She pulled herself away from her fascination with him. She had a report to make.
“There’s something else, though.” Tammy hated to add to the bad news. “She was talking about generals, and Thomas said he came over with some generals to LAX.” She looked to Kemble. But she couldn’t leave the bad news to him. It was time she started owning her rightful place in the family. Even when it was a difficult place. “She inferred that they were being taught to seem modern. I know it sounds crazy, but Kemble and I think she’s bringing long-dead warriors back to life and sending them into the world.”
The faces around the huge dining table were shocked or appalled. Then they all started talking at once.
“I thought she needed a body to reanimate.”
“Could she do it from just dust and bones?”
“Which generals do you think she resurrected?”
“What does she want them to do?”
It was Daddy who held up a hand. The table quieted. “We know she means to forcibly control the world. We thought she’d accomplish it by blackmail. ‘Pay tribute or I’ll flood your coastal cities, or bring down your banks.’ But maybe she has something more direct in mind.”
Tammy was amazed that her father made that speech without a single stutter.
“Thomas, did you recognize the generals?” Kemble asked.
“She introduced Temujin the Genghis Khan and Alexander III of Macedonia. Also, Leonidas of Sparta, William Wallace, Scipio Africanus and Hannibal. I recognized Napoleon Bonaparte, but not someone called Wellington,” Thomas explained. “There were others.”
There was complete silence around the table as everyone had an oh-my-God moment.
“I heard they discovered the tomb of Genghis Khan recently.” Drew trailed off. “The remains of Wallace were said to be in four different Abbeys in Scotland…”
Had Morgan’s power ramped up so much as that?
“Where were they going?” Lan asked no one and everyone.
“If I were her,” Michael said, with a hard voice, “I’d be deploying them inside the world’s secondary military powers. It would take them no time to rise in the ranks to control, assuming they could pass for modern. It would be easier than infiltrating the bigger military bureaucracies. And from there they could create havoc. Steal nuclear weapons…or just generate the chaos of regional wars.”
“She’s been training them in ways of the modern world,” Tammy said. “All except Nero, who is, apparently, un-trainable.”
“Nero!” her mother exclaimed. “Oh, dear.”
“Worse, she said he was another kind of weapon.” Kemble chuffed a bitter laugh.
“None of that matters if we don’t stop her from gaining power at the time of the Pentacle,” Daddy said firmly. “Let’s focus on that.” He turned to Drew. “Any new visions?”
Everyone turned to Drew, who went ominously white. “Nothing new,” she whispered.
Everyone froze. That was not a good reaction. But Daddy turned back to Tammy, after eyeing Drew for a moment. “What else did you see through the raven’s eyes, honey?”
“Well, we saw a big room with the three Talismans arrayed in lighted boxes behind a big stone slab they were lowering into place on top of two stone supports. I’m not sure what that’s all about.” Tammy remembered the ominous feel of the whole setting. “Maybe an altar?”
“It had channels carved into it.” Kemble’s voice was flat and hard. He glanced to Thomas, then away. Thomas looked curious. The others frowned. Drew went one shade whiter still. Her fork clattered to her plate.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, and fumbled to pick it up.
“Do you think it’s for the ceremony?” Tammy asked slowly. Something on the edge of her brain tickled her with a realization that refused to come.
“Yeah,” Tris said, his mouth a grim line. “I think, if we do find the place, and if we do decide to hit it, both Thomas and Tammy ought to stay here.”
Tammy frowned. “Why would you…?”
“Kemble,” Daddy interrupted, “can you keep up with the chaos the Clan is causing?”
“It’s a tough slog,” Kemble admitted. “Their power is already increasing just with the influence of the three existing Talismans. Weather Girl is ramping up typhoon season in the Far East. It’s bad, especially in the Philippines right now. And somebody is draining money out of Eastern European countries. I stopped that little plot, but nobody can stop the weather. You just pick up after it. Oh, and the NRC found accelerated degradation in the drums storing nuclear waste in Nevada. That was today.”
“Morgan’s followers are doing this?” Everyone turned at Thomas’s horrified tone.
There were nods around the table.
“She’s probably working up demonstrations of how bad things can get for any country that wants to stand in her way,” Michael said. “Show them they don’t have much choice but to cede power to her. When her power is augmented by this ceremony at the moment of the Pentacle, nobody may be able to stop her.”
“This is her purpose?” Thomas whispered.
No one knew what to say to that. It was left to Daddy to say, “Yes, son.”
“But people are dying and losing their livelihoods.” His eyes were wild as his glance shot from face to face. “I might have been complicit in her plans if I had not escaped.”
Kemble nodded. “Tremaine Enterprises does what it can to stop the schemes or mitigate the effects….”
No wonder Kemble looked exhausted.
“Enough of this depressing talk,” Brina interrupted. “Everybody eat up. Especially you two.” She placed a hand over Thomas’s and her wise eyes included Tammy. “You’ve had a rough couple of days, and I have a feeling you are going to need your strength.” She cast a glance around the table before she landed back on Thomas’s pained expression. “How did your control exercises go today?”
Thomas shook his head, his expression suffused with shame.
“He’s better,” Lan said, trying to keep it positive.
“I lost control twenty-nine times today,” Thomas said. “You can count the black smudges in your driveway. Lan and Tris tried to help me, and Michael has a plan, but what if I…?”
Tammy blinked. God. She had to stop herself from making love to Thomas if she wanted to live. How awful was that?
“Aww, honey, you just need to keep Calm,” Maggie said. “Betcha I can give you a tip or two on that.” She gave a wink and a grin at Thomas, but her eyes were on Tammy. “Tammy knows I’m good at that, right?”
OMG. Her family was taking over. This was just why she hadn’t wanted to come home at all. She stood up, her taco half-eaten. Her chair screeched back across the old tile floor. “You will not put anyone to sleep, Maggie,” she said, through clenched jaws.
“Honey, I’m better at aiming these days. Damn accurate, in fact,” Maggie protested.
“Ugggghhhh!” Tammy clenched her fists and looked around at faces shocked by her outburst. “And no guard duty, all right? Can’t you just…just let us work this out on our own? I’m not a baby anymore, in case any of you haven’t noticed.”
It took Daddy’s hesitant smile to break her façade of invincibility. “We know that, Tamsen. Families just get protective of their own, that’s all.”
“And he does start fires,” Tris muttered.
Tammy glanced to Thomas, who looked concerned for her and a little confused. He took her hand, with predictable results. “What is upsetting you, Tammy?” he asked.
All the fight went out of her. She didn’t even know how to explain it.
“Sit down, Tamsen,” her mother said kindly. To Thomas, she said, “Families can be difficult.” She gave a rueful chuckle. “Ours more than most.”
Reluctantly, Tammy sat.
Thomas glanced around the table. “I’ve never had a family. But it appears to me that you have only care and concern for one another, even though these times are so difficult. That is a precious gift. I wish I could have that.”
Wow. That put it all in perspective. Around the table the guys, except for Daddy, stared at their plates. Drew and Kee frowned in concern. Maggie and Greta, who had such horrible family lives before they became Tremaines, actually teared up.
It was Mom who reached out to Thomas, though, and took his other hand. She smiled. “You can,” she said softly. “You do. You belong here with us now, Thomas. Whatever else happens, you’re part of the family.”
“You say this, even though you don’t know me,” he said, almost to himself. “You ask nothing of me, yet offer me a home.” He looked guilty.
“Oh, don’t say we ask nothing, young man.” Daddy belied his stern tone with twinkling eyes. Tammy hoped Thomas knew Daddy didn’t mean to be severe. “We’re a lot to put up with.”
Distress crossed Thomas’s face. “But am I enough? So ignorant. So small of spirit…” He drew himself up to sit even straighter. “I can only promise that I will strive to be more. I will work to be worthy of this family, if you will allow it, Sir. You have helped me escape Morgan. You have tried to show me how to…to go on. I will find a way to help you in return.”
Tammy’s eyes widened as murmurs of approval circled the table. It was like he was making a monk’s vow to her family. She began to panic. She’d been worried that they wouldn’t approve of Thomas, but that wasn’t the problem at all! He had just committed to them and they accepted him. This was all moving way too fast.
“We all work to be worthy,” Tris snorted. “And I tell you, it’s a pain in the ass sometimes.” He squeezed Maggie’s hand, even as she swatted his shoulder.
But Tammy didn’t smile. Her family had each found love and settled into a relationship. They had time to do that. But the Pentacle would form in only three nights. Who knew what would happen then? If Morgan and the Clan grew exponentially in power, how long would she allow the Tremaines to live? And for all the talk of how fruitless it would be to attack the Clan compound if they found it, it wasn’t lost on her that the men were still trying to find it, and she could practically see Michael calculating explosive requirements behind his eyes.
Maybe her relationship with Thomas wasn’t moving fast enough.
She looked over at him. She might have only known him three days, yet she wanted forever with him. She wanted to know what he thought, his favorite color, whether he woke up slowly in the morning, whether he liked anchovies on his pizza.
His eyes turned up toward her. There was heat in those eyes. Had he been as aroused by her proximity as she was by his?
God, how she wanted him! But the whole estate wasn’t safe if he got too excited or anxious, including her family, and she didn’t trust Maggie not to just put him to sleep with her Calm. Plus, she didn’t want the whole family finding ways to “help” them. What to do?
The one thing she was sure of was that she couldn’t sit here anymore. They didn’t have to make love. Maybe they could just talk. Try to figure out how to proceed. She tore her eyes away from his. Everyone else was studiously ignoring them.
Good. She rose. “Uh, excuse us.” She turned to Thomas. “I have something I want to show you.” The family all thought they knew what would happen. But they’d be wrong.
Maggie started to get up.
“You stay where you are,” Tammy ordered. “I mean, thank you for your concern, but Thomas and I are just going to talk and get to know each other, and we don’t need any help.”
Maggie sat, reluctantly. Drew waved an insouciant hand, dismissing them, and continued talking to Kemble, almost like the old Drew. So why did Tammy have the feeling she was pretending? “Can you draw the slab you saw? Did you see the channels clearly? I saw it in a vision but not from a good angle. Its origin might tell us something about the ceremony.”
Something niggled at Tammy’s mind as she drew Thomas out into the living room. Where to go? She wasn’t taking him to her room—or his. The family would be clustered outside the door with Maggie cascading Calm all over the entire house in no time. Kemble had installed cameras in the gazebo after Lan and Greta made love there and then slipped out the back and down to the beach, worrying everyone to death. Where weren’t there security cameras? Kemble could see everywhere.
Except the barn.
He’d see them going in and there were cameras over the arena. But not in the hayloft.
Perfect.
“Come on. I know where we can talk.” She led him out through the Bay of Pigs, down the path and around the dressage ring to the stables. His callused hand was warm in hers even as it sent shocks of sensation to her female parts. It felt as though she’d always held it. Thomas followed her wordlessly as they went down to the barn. The smell of hay and wood shavings, oiled leather and manure always felt like coming home. Calley and Gwen and the goats, Napoleon and Josephine all rustled in their stalls. She rubbed a few noses on her way by, but she couldn’t stop for an extended visit. She was a woman on a mission. When she came to the ladder at the far end, she motioned Thomas up it.
“No, you first, Tammy. I will be below you in case you fall.”
Sweet. Unnecessary, but sweet.
Lance gamboled through the door, tail waving. “You,” Tammy said. “Guard.” Lance practically stood to attention. As a sheepdog, he loved to have a job, and he knew that command. He lay down, facing the barn doors.
Thomas looked around and grabbed a serape she sometimes folded and used as an extra cushion for Cally under the saddle pad. Tammy climbed. The smell of hay surrounded her, baled in neat stacks by the huge open door at the end of the loft. Piles of shavings for the stalls were heaped everywhere. It smelled of summer. The light was dim—just the lights from the house above them drifting in from the loft door. She scraped big armfuls of shavings from the pile and Thomas joined her, until they had a soft place to sit. He flapped out the serape.
What am I thinking? “Thomas, you have to keep calm. A loft filled with hay and wood shavings is a super bad place for a Firestarter, but it’s the only place we can be private.”
“Michael told me how to keep calm. His ideas might work, even though I failed in the driveway.” Thomas pulled her down beside him. The heat was still in his eyes.
“We can’t do it, Thomas,” she said severely. “Especially not here.”
“Do what?”
Tammy rolled her eyes. “Have sex. It’s too dangerous.”
He sighed. “Your father would not forgive me for defiling you and taking your virginity.”
At the word “virginity” the thought that had been niggling at her jumped out. The tiles started dropping into place like the Tetris game she’d played so obsessively as a child.
Morgan groomed Thomas for a purpose that had to do with the ceremony. She made sure he was a virgin. She brought a stone to be the altar for the ceremony that had channels cut in it.
Shock suffused her as she realized what all that meant.
Why had she thought Morgan wanted Thomas a virgin just so she could deflower him? Morgan meant to sacrifice Thomas as part of the ceremony at the time of the Pentacle.
Her eyes filled. And her family knew. That’s why Tris said she and Thomas couldn’t go along if the family went to the compound. Because she was a virgin too. Her blood could also serve Morgan’s purpose.
“What?” Thomas asked, concerned. When she didn’t answer he took her by the shoulders. “Are you not well, Tammy?”
Tammy’s brain churned. She blinked twice. There was only one way to protect him.
It didn’t matter how dangerous it was. She’d try to help him keep some control. Go slow. Have him breathe, and pray that was enough to keep him from burning down the barn.