Where Winter Finds You

Heading into the bathroom, she—

Stopped in front of the mirror over the sink.

Leaning into the glass, she stared at her reflection, and not because she had forgotten what she looked like. Instead, she was mining what was staring back at her for information about Trez’s mate… as if the composite of her own eyes and nose, mouth and chin would tell her anything at all about what he had shared with his shellan, how much they had loved, how hard it had been for them to be parted by destiny.

But of course, there was nothing to be gleaned. And that was the point, wasn’t it.

She had not been who he had thought she was, and that truth had come out as soon as he had met her parents and her brother. After that, there was no more pretending, no way of making the disjointed reality fit with his grief-relief fantasy.

And speaking of fantasies? She had no idea why she had convinced herself he was her shadow lover. In that regard, she supposed she had done a bit of the same to him. Not that the implications were in any way comparable. Besides, she had probably made all that up. Seduced by the sex, her brain had created a connection between him and her dreams.

After all, she’d had the best sex of her life with him—so she’d put it in the only context that had fit. Her shadow mate.

Man, it would be so much easier if she could just hate him, she thought as she looked away from herself.

As she reemerged with her toothbrush and her toothpaste—because she didn’t want to linger in front of the mirror even long enough to use them—her keen vampire ears picked up on an argument across the hall. And then there were the two TVs on either side of her with their sound turned up high.

So it was business as usual in the rooming house.

Taking out her old phone, she triggered the screen and stared at the notifications. There was one from her brother. A random meme. It was funny. Another from her dad, reminding her to take it slow. Two from cousins who had heard about what was going on and had ascribed Therese’s radio silence to worry over her parents. Which had been partially true—

The argument across the hall transitioned up a level, the voices, a man’s and a woman’s, increasing in volume, rising to the level of yelling. As Therese went over and grabbed a change of clothes from the duffel bag that served as her bureau, she knew that the banging and the crashing were going to start next. That was the way things seemed to go, no matter whether it was a couple, a set of roommates, or an entire floor. A lot of it was the drinking and the drugs, the desperation of so many shattered lives being burned off in any direction that was presented.

In that regard, she was no different from the others. In spite of everything, she was utterly depressed at the idea of never seeing Trez again—

As the smell of burning food reached her nose, she told herself to get with the program. She didn’t belong here—and she didn’t belong in Caldwell, either.

So screw just packing up for an over-day. She needed to get all her stuff and move the hell out. Right now.

 

* * *

 

Trez’s head blew up about two hours before shAdoWs’s closing.

Which, considering the stress he was under and his history of migraines, was pretty much inevitable.

Unable to stay up in his office alone, because all he’d done was mentally beat the crap out of himself, he’d gone down to the dance floor and stuck to the periphery, watching the humans grind on each other, and wishing… well, wishing all kinds of shit that wasn’t going to happen. He’d also been thinking about Therese. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, it seemed, although he was going to have to get over that. She didn’t want to ever see him again, and he did not blame her.

Standing in the lasers, squinting in the darkness, he hadn’t envied the lost souls before him. So many of the men and women were regulars who routinely got drunk and drugged up and made bad choices, and you didn’t do that if you had your shit together. You did that because you were running from something even as you stayed in one place, the toxic swill trapped inside your skin too much for you to handle, the outlet and distraction of the clubbing a Band-Aid made out of arsenic.

But at least they were getting a break from their problems, he supposed.

It was just as this thought was occurring to him that he abruptly noticed that the lasers had changed from piercing purple beams to multicolored sparkles. As he wondered who had ordered the new light show, and what kind of equipment must have been brought in without his approval, he realized that he was only seeing the fireworks in his right eye.

An aura. He was having an aura.

“Motherfucker.”

Glancing around, he motioned to one of the security staff. As the guy came over, Trez said, “I’ve gotta go crash upstairs. Tell Alex to close up tonight.”

“You okay, Mr. Latimer?” the human asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“Migraine. It happens.”

“My sister gets ’em. I’ll tell the boss. You need anything?”

Trez shook his head. “Thanks, man. Just gonna go lie down.”

“Okay, Mr. Latimer.”

As Trez walked over to the stairs to the second floor, he was grateful for the twenty-minute, quiet-before-the-storm part of the headaches. After the light show started, he had just enough time to get himself situated somewhere dark and quiet before the pain came. Of course, since he knew what was coming, his heart always pounded with adrenaline overload, his body’s flight-or-fight response having no real options for expression.

There was nothing to fight, and as for the run-away side of things? Since everywhere you went, there you were, it wasn’t like that was going to help.

Plus, hello, he was going to be throwing up soon, and a brisk jog was not going to be fun with that symptom.

Back up in his office, it was a relief to get out of the paths of all those lasers and away from the pounding music. He didn’t waste time as he shut himself in. Kicking his shoes off, he shucked out of his slacks, and got the little trash can from the bathroom. Stretching out on his leather sofa, he propped his head up with a throw pillow, crossed his ankles, and put his hands over his chest like he was a corpse. He could still see the aura even after he closed his eyes, and he watched it transition from a spot to a less-than sign… after which the bifurcated, sparkling angles flattened out and moved off to the side before disappearing.

Maybe this time the headache wouldn’t hit. The nausea wouldn’t cripple him. The floaty disassociation wouldn’t pull him away.

In the eerie no-man’s-land between the prodromal and the party time, an image came to him. It was of Therese looking up at him in the hospital corridor, anger and hurt darkening her pale eyes.

He had a feeling that memory of her was going to haunt him like a ghost. But before he could dwell on that, a thunderclap of pain lit off in one half of his skull, and—

As he wrenched to the side, and started to throw up that snack he’d had an hour ago, he decided he deserved this.

On so many levels.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 



It was hard to know exactly how long it took Therese to realize something was wrong in her apartment building—and not just minorly wrong. Eventually, though, she stopped shoving things in her duffel bag and frowned. Sniffed the air. Looked to the door to the outside hall.