Exile: Sídhí Summer Camp #3 (19 page)

“What happened?” Sarah demanded, clenching
her hand around the thick rope handle.

Glancing to the north, Emily swallowed.

Sarah followed Emily’s unspoken hint and
watched Nick’s back disappear between the trees. He wasn’t
alone.

^____________

Nick hit the ball over the net, but his mind
wasn’t on the game. Over the previous few months, he had considered
a dozen scenarios of why Sarah acted the way she did. None of them
came close to the truth. He couldn’t go on the way he was, not with
the truth beating at his brain.

They needed to talk, but he was not looking
forward to the discussion.

Finishing the game, he switched out with a
boy from their sister cabin. The big shapeshifter introduced
himself as Derek and smiled nastily at Mitch.

Nick chuckled. The next game should prove
entertaining. He glanced toward the cabin, wondering what was
taking so long. When he turned back to the beach, Shelby was
kneeling on the beach towel in front of him.

“Shelby,” Nick said, clenching his jaw. He
didn’t want to hurt the girl. “We have a lot of good memories,
leave it at that.”

“She’s not your mate,” Shelby said, her eyes
filling with unshed tears. “Please, you’ve got to listen to
me.”

“Sarah is my other half. She completes my
soul,” he said, hoping his other half wouldn’t show up and kill the
innocent girl in front of him. Once again, it struck him that his
mate was Chi’Kehra, the vampire’s worst enemy. “She’s also very
territorial. You need to leave.”

“Nick, have I ever lied to you?” she asked
desperately. Not waiting for an answer she quickly added, “There is
no way someone like you could ever mate with Lady Sarah, the Horror
of Trellick Valley. Have you heard some of the stories about her?
She is evil.”

“Enough,” Nick said, snarling at the girl.
“My synth sang for her.”

At his words, her mouth dropped open. She
looked stunned. “How? I just don’t understand. There was no one
else around. A Sídhí can only mate with one person and my synth
sang for you on the beach.” Her eyes filled with horror and a
delicate hand slapped over her mouth. “Oh, no, I just told you. Oh,
crap!”

Telling a destined mated, one whose synth had
not yet sang, was a serious breach. Horror stories abounded through
every valley about mates who spoke too soon and ended up losing
their mate.

“Calm down,” he said gently.

Emotion filled him. He had known some girl’s
synth would sing for him, but that nameless girl had been a
stranger without a face. Shelby lived three blocks from his house.
In frustration, he rubbed a hand down his face. What a screwed-up
mess. He did not want to destroy her life.

“No,” she groaned, “it’s not okay. If the
other half of the mating doesn’t hear the synth sing, we aren’t
supposed to tell them. Horrible things happen!”

In the distance, he heard the whack of a
screen door slam shut with the force of a gunshot. Ignoring her
wail of despair, he grabbed her arm and scrambled to his feet.
Adding Sarah to the mix was so not happening.

“Nick!” Emily snapped at him. His younger
cousin’s eyes flashed sparks of fire as she blocked his path to the
forest. “Don’t do this.”

“Tell Sarah I’ll be back in a while,” he
said, pulling an unresisting Shelby behind him.

Sunset
came and went, Nick did not return. Still, Sarah waited for him.
She considered calling Mac, but refused to be
that
girl, a
girl that didn’t trust her boyfriend to talk with another girl.

Still as a marble statue, she sat unmoving on
the edge of the beach under a large furble tree. The ticking
minutes turned into hours. It was late, nearly midnight, but she
couldn’t sleep, not with Nick out with another girl. She wanted to
trust him. She was trying so hard to trust him, but the flickers of
doubt had started eating at her.

He said he loved her. That he wanted forever.
He had promised.

Like a tuneless chant, she repeated the three
little sentences. Eyes unseeing, she stared toward the lake like
the Stone Maiden of Sídhí legend, wishing to the depths of her soul
that he would walk out of the trees.

A familiar scent circled behind her. A twig
broke. She snorted to herself. The great outdoors was not kind to
Mitch. He was like a giant moose in a china shop.

Twenty feet in front of her, Brianna walked
across the moonlit sand. Short, blonde hair swung, nearly touching
her shoulders. She must’ve gotten it cut, because the blonde cap of
fine, straight hair looked a bit shorter than it normally did.

“I haven’t forgotten our conversation that
was cut short,” Sarah said, as a form of greeting.

“Yeah, well, that’s not why I’m here,” the
girl said smugly.

Sarah waited, not caring one way or
another.

A sour look pinched the girl’s lips. “How
much for a hit?”

Sarah’s eyebrow rose in shock as the girl
spouted gangster-like jargon. When Brianna didn’t react, Sarah
assumed the girl was still in her puberty cycle and couldn’t see
very well through the darkness. “A hit? Exactly what kind of
hit?”

“An assassination,” she snarled. “How
much?”

“I charge on a case-by-case basis,” she said
icily, not telling the girl she had never accepted payment for any
assassination. The majority of her targets were sadistic pricks
that came to her notice. Most people who tried to hire her,
ended-up as the target, not her employer. “Before I will consider
the assignment I’ll need to know who it is.”

“Consider? What do you mean? You’re an
assassin. If I pay you, you’ll kill who I want,” she said, curling
her lip in a snarl of distaste.

“And that person is?” Sarah asked, casually
leaning against the spongy, blue tree as she waited for an
answer.

“First, tell me how much it’ll cost,” the
girl snapped.

“Five million down, ten million upon
completion,” Sarah said with ice-cold finality.

The girl said quickly, “Fine, but you can’t
kill her if I’m anywhere near her. I have to have a solid alibi.”
The girl’s suddenly anxious voice hinted at the target.

Repulsed, Sarah’s eyes narrowed. If the girl
wanted to kill her best friend, Sarah might conveniently forget she
owed the young phoenix. Remaining silent, she let the girl
stew.

“Well?” Brianna demanded.

“You haven’t named the target,” Sarah said,
glancing to her right as leaves rustled. If he leaned-out much
farther, Mitch would be visible.

“Beth, Alpha Prime of Haven Valley. You’ll
kill her without witnesses and you won’t discuss this with me
unless I start the conversation.”

Sarah caught herself just as she started to
shake her head in disbelief. The girl was a piece of work in
progress, and not a good one.

“I’ll consider it,” she said, waiting for the
explosion she knew was coming. Something about the girl was off,
but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Consider it?” she shrieked in a hiss of
disbelief. “Fifteen million and you’ll consider it? Exactly when
will I have an answer?”

When you end-up hog-tied and delivered to
Phoenix Valley. That will be your answer
, Sarah silently
promised the girl. She couldn’t kill the girl, not after Brianna
helped save Nick’s life, but she certainly wasn’t going to kill
Beth. The shifter was a snarly, pain-in-the-backside, but that
wasn’t a good enough reason to kill her.

“One week,” Sarah answered. Standing, she
disappeared into the dark forest leaving the girl sputtering in
anger.

She had more important things to do than talk
with the little traitor, namely finding Nick. It had been hours
since he disappeared into the forest with Shelby.

She’d waited long enough. If talking was all
Nick and Shelby had been doing, he would’ve returned to the cabin
by then. She refused to dwell on what they might have been doing,
because if his synth sang for his ex-girlfriend, anything could
have happened.

She picked up his rich, intoxicating scent.
Within fifty feet, his scent trail stopped. It didn’t dissipate
slowly; it stopped cold in the middle of a small clearing. Concern
lashed at her.

Well, hell’s bells, she should have checked
on him sooner. There had been hundreds of people on the beach, each
of them witness to her status as Nick’s girlfriend, a girlfriend
that gazed at him with hunger in her eyes.

With sinking clarity, she clenched her fist
tight. She’d put him at risk. She had enemies by the bucketful, not
to mention the camp’s resident terrorist group who had tried to
kidnap Nick just yesterday. She’d let her girlish concern over his
reaction sway her better judgment.

With a snarl curling her lips, she gave up
her self-imposed promise not to mentally check-up on him.
“Nick?”

Silence answered her call.

“
Mac?”
she called.

No answer.

Pausing, she took a deep breath, inhaling
through her nose she smelled hundreds of various scents. The sharp
bite of ticked-off lightning combined with the smell of Nick’s
anger and pain. Now, that she thought to look for them, the stench
of volatile emotions filled the air. She also caught the faintest
hint of the seashore, and more importantly, she smelled a woman,
the female dragon that had shadowed Shelby two nights before.

At least she assumed the cabin parent
masquerading as human was dragon. Most of the adults in camp
smelled human, but had the distinct energy glow of a Sídhí
shapeshifter. For all she knew, the woman could turn into a khatt
or werewolf. She needed to remember dragons weren’t the only race
of shapeshifters.

She circled the clearing, but there was not
another trail leading away from the area. Under a small bush, she
found two discarded bracelets. The dragon must have removed Nick
and Shelby’s silver, before porting them away.

She reached for the lingering pulse of power,
an echo of energy that surrounded all teleports, but it had already
melted into the surrounding environment. Turning her search to the
ground, she hunted for additional clues.

A sprinkle of white glinted on an exposed
rock. Kneeling, she rubbed a bit of dried silver off the rough
surface. The substance smeared under her finger. Cautiously, she
sniffed the silver powder, smelling the tang of metal and the
bitter odor of mite poison.

Sarah rocked back on her heels. She knew
exactly what the silver powder was, and it was not a good sign.
Fairy enhanced silver-water mixed with mite poison was a nasty
combination. It wasn’t anything like the mundane version of
silver-water.

The correct dosage would knock most victims
unconscious nearly instantly. From the angry overtones covering
Mac’s storm-laced scent, the tranquilizer had shut him up as well,
but the mixture had not been strong enough to knock him out
immediately. There were a few advantages of having a
six-thousand-year old body.

She halfway pitied the kidnapper. Being
phoenix, Mac’s system would burn through nearly any drug at a rapid
pace. A ticked-off phoenix was beyond dangerous.

“
Mac?”
she tried once more, pushing a
surge of power behind the mental call. No answer. With that push of
power, Mac should’ve heard her at the North Pole.

Opening her mental senses wide, the crystal
springs within each valley lit up like a beacon, millions of
smaller sources scattered across hundreds of valleys like stars in
the sky. Waiting a moment, she allowed the pulse and ebb of energy
to settle into a rhythm that she could follow.

She frowned. The feel of synth energy, as it
flowed through the valleys, seemed different yet eerily the same.
She shook off the odd feeling and arrowed in on a single source, a
tiny speck of living crystal, no larger than a grain of sand.

She smiled. That tiny speck of crystal was
her own version of tracker ID.

^____________

With every beat of his heart, pain throbbed
through Nick’s skull. Cotton filled his mouth. Phantom stabs of
pain lingered through his body, none too gently suggesting he’d
received another dose of powerful mite poison. He hated the
stuff.

Cracking his eyes open, he surveyed his
surroundings. On the opposite wall, Shelby hung in tarnished
manacles. Mac lay sprawled in the far corner. Nick supposed the
man’s large wings made chaining him to the wall difficult. Instead,
several chains crossed over his body, pinning him to the stone
floor.

Tugging on his own silver restraints, he
tested their strength. They didn’t budge. His growl rumbled through
the open space of the cell.

His ex-girlfriend lifted her head, looking at
him in desperation. Before she could speak, voices appeared,
echoing down the outer passageway.

“Why bring the girl?” a woman snarled.

“She’s a work in process,” said a
high-pitched voice that sounded like she had her nose pinched
shut.

Shelby’s eyes grew big. No doubt, it was due
to recognizing the voice of Eve, her cabin mother. She opened her
mouth then quickly snapped it shut. Her skin flushed deep red. If
steam could have rolled from her ears, it would have.

“Work?” demanded a gruff voice, adding a male
to the group approaching the bright cell of whitewashed stone.

They stopped a few feet from the entrance. A
curvaceous blonde-haired woman stood ramrod straight, focused on
someone just out of Nick’s line of sight. “Eve is from the
Dyrst’Lye Clan.”

“I am aware of that,” the male grunted.

“She’s been manipulating the girl’s synth
crystal.”

“Not her synth, her lifeBud. The girl is
unique. Her lifeBud was already coming to life when I touched her.
The organ must have been sending out signals to her real mate for
days, if not weeks. As sensitive as it was, I’d bet she had mate
dreams with her destined mate and didn’t even realize it,” Eve said
enthusiastically.