Never After

2

As the steel gray Lexus pulled to a stop in front of the house, with a Jeep Wrangler right behind it, I sucked in a deep breath. Camille and Delilah were here. I glanced back at the phone. Mitch was supposed to call. He was due home late and he always called to let me know how long he would be. His crew had gotten wrapped up in the restoration of an original fireplace and they wanted to finish it before the week was over. Which meant that he wouldn’t walk in on our conversation.

I smoothed my dress and looked around the house. We hadn’t even had our official housewarming, and I’d hoped to put off entertaining guests until after the Pod priestess came to bless our new home, but this was too important. Besides, the girls would never bring anything evil with them—at least not wittingly. They were fighting a group of demons trying to break through the portals to take over both Earth and Otherworld, and I was content to sit back and let them handle it.

The doorbell rang and I let them in, motioning to the living room.

“I don’t know how much time I have before Mitch gets home,” I said. “He’s going to be late, but I want to take care of this before he gets here, if you don’t mind.” I rubbed my arms, feeling chilly even though I’d turned up the heat.

“What’s shaking, babe?” Camille, the oldest, looked like a raven-haired cross between a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and an S and M bar’s madame. A real vixen. Delilah, a six-one lean, athletic, golden blond werecat, followed her in. Their sister Menolly couldn’t make it, though. She was a vampire and wasn’t up before sunset.

“How do I begin?” I turned to them, biting my lip. How was I going to stand here and tell my good friends that I’d lied to them from the begi

Delilah stared at me, a dumbfounded look on her face. She slowly leaned forward, her motorcycle boots heavy on the floor as she rested her elbows on the denim covering her knees. “You mean you weren’t sent over to the United States because of inbreeding?”

“Not really.” I shook my head. “I ran away. I spent the entire trip terrified that someone had slipped on board behind me and would drag me over the side and back home. But nothing happened. By the time I got to Ellis Island, I realized that I’d actually done it. I escaped.”

“And your parents were going to marry you off to a rapist? How sick can you get? Although…” Camille glanced at Delilah and snorted, “It sure sounds like some of the families back in Otherworld. We’ve got no use for people like that. You were brave to run away.”

“Brave? Maybe. But not wise enough to cover my tracks once I set out for the West Coast. Hell, some of the states were still barely coming to grips with being states. The cities here were rough-and-tumble, unlike the cities back east. I didn’t think anybody would ever be able to find me and as the years wore on, I grew careless.” I jumped up and paced, too nervous to sit. “But now Terrance has found me and I’m terrified.”

“Try to remember everything he said on the phone. I take it you don’t have his number?”

I shook my head. “He has call block.”

“Great. Okay, so we go from there.” Camille motioned to Delilah, who pulled out her laptop and fired it up so she could take notes. “We need to know everything about Terrance. About you ru

“No, but if he looks the same as he did back then, I can describe him. I look close to what I looked like back then, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t as well. Though I do dye my hair because I like this color, and I wear makeup now. That was a big no no back then.”

“Okay, ready. Give me a description of what he looked like the last time you saw him,” Delilah said, her fingers poised over the keys.

I closed my eyes and thought back to the last time I’d seen Terry. It had been the day before our wedding, and he’d been angry. Very angry.

“What do you mean, you want to move back the wedding date?” Terry’s eyes flickered, his black hair gleaming under the early-morning sun. The mist was burning off the cove and it looked like we were in for a nice day.

“I thought we could hold off. At least until the solstice. I’d like to be married on a holiday,” I said, striving for some reasonable explanation. My goal: Put him off long enough to gather the money I needed for the boat ticket.

“Not going to happen,” he said. “Tomorrow we marry, and then you’re mine. All mine. Your family will move out of that shack, and you’ll move into my house. Into my bed,” he added, leering.

A goose walked over my grave and I shivered, wrapping my arms around my shoulders. “Terry, it’s just another couple of weeks. Why are you so angry? You’re going to get what you want, so why deny me this? Consider it a wedding present.” I forced myself to look compliant and lowered my eyes so he couldn’t read what I was really thinking.

But he reached out and placed his finger under my chin, tipping my head up to look me square in the face.

“I don’t believe you,” he said softly, leaning close. “I don’t believe you for a second. I know how you feel about me and what you think of marrying me. What you don’t seem to understand is that your feelings don’t matter. I want you and I’m going to have you. You’ll adjust, and in the meantime, I’ll make sure you enjoy yourself. Trust me,” he whispered, his lips bare inches from mine. “You’ll love every moment of every night.”

I pulled away, trying to keep my balance, but he was a tall man and broad-shouldered, with a narrow waist. As was the nature of the roane, his hair was jet-black, wavy and curling around his ears. A scar was the one blemish he had—a jagged cut on his throat that had come from when a shark had caught him by the neck. His kinsmen had swum in to save him, one of them losing his life in the process. But Terry had survived and healed up, with just the scar to remind him. Seal or human, it remained in both his forms.

I drank in the sight of him, wanting to remember his face when I was long gone and this was all like a bad dream. Terrance would be my reminder that evil sometimes wore a very pleasant body.

“Fine. We wed tomorrow,” I said and pulled away. “Now leave me be. I have to start my preparations for the handfasting.”

As I walked away, I forced myself to focus on the fact that I’d never have to look at him again. Never have to talk to him, listen to him, endure his touch. But to escape, I’d have to steal the money. I’d hoped to put off the wedding until I could sell a few things to earn my passage fare, but there wasn’t time.

By the time I reached our house, everyone was gone. Like a common thief, I raided the secret stashes where my parents and brothers kept their money, ending up with a handful of change above and beyond the cost of my ticket.

I packed two satchels. The journey would be lean and cold until I found a home and a job, so most of what I took were clothes, food, and a few toiletries. I stopped, though, when I came to my mother’s photo box. The pictures were expensive, but my mother had managed to afford a photograph of the entire family, and she had three copies of it. I pressed the photograph to my lips, kissing it gently, then slid the picture inside my satchel, in between two small books to keep it flat and unharmed.

After that, I tucked a small vial of sand from the Orkney’s shores into my handbag, along with my seal skin. I’d brought the sand with me to Queenstown, and I’d take it with me to America.