Haunted (21 page)

“I have a name, asshole. You should try using it some time,” Peyta said snottily. “I don't believe you were on the guest list for this party. Your whore wasn't, either.”

Peyta made her way down off the couch to join me at my side. She reached her tiny hand into mine and looked up at me. She was young, but she knew what Sophie’s presence meant; I'd been passed over, and Peyta didn't like it one bit. I wondered if that was something a sister would do, always have your back, fighting your fight with you.

“Peyta,” Sean said, over-enunciating her name, “I would suggest you take a different tone while addressing—”

“Don't you dare patronize me. I'm no child,” she shouted at him, not allowing him to finish. “You break in here, unwanted, with that hot mess in black, and you expect me to like it? To sit down and listen to you like a good little girl? Who the fuck are you, anyways?”

Sean took a swift lunge towards her and she jumped back a step, still holding my hand. He'd made a point to call her out on her bravado, shutting it down in an instant before addressing her. His eyes had darkened several shades.

“I need no invitation to come here. Ever,” he said, staring down at her. She held her new position, but her fear had my heart racing. “There are things going on here that are far beyond your comprehension, little girl. That 'hot mess' over there is here to try and make sure that your future is secure, so I suggest you show her some respect regardless of what you think her presence implies.”

He shot a barely perceivable look at me before continuing. “As to who I am, that's simple – none of your fucking business. People who try to make it their business meet unenviable fates.”

Peyta sucked in a sharp breath, and Cooper stirred on the other side of the room. His eyes were burning a golden yellow and his breathing was shallow and rapid; he was fighting his Change. Though it would've meant his imminent death, he wanted to attack Sean for threatening Peyta. He was holding on by a very thin thread.

“I'd be very careful if I were you, Cooper,” Sean warned. “Don't give me a reason.”

“Enough!” I yelled, shoving Sean back away from Peyta, who at that point was clutching her stomach, doubled over in pain. “What is it, Peyta?”

“My stomach, it's killing me. Maybe it was the champagne?”

“She needs to lie down immediately,” Sophie commanded. “Take her somewhere now.”

Cooper took that opportunity to escape Sean's wrath and scooped Peyta up in his arms, making his way down the hall to his room.

“What the fuck was all that about?” I asked Sean, in a quiet but angry tone.

“I don't have time to deal with her shit. Sophie needs to make sure this all goes smoothly and we don't have much time; she'll be asleep soon.”

“For once would someone let me know what is going on?” I begged, my head starting to pound as it usually did when trouble arose.

“I second that,” Cooper said as he returned to the living room, coming to stand next to me.

We both stared at Sean, whose gaze momentarily defaulted to Sophie.

“Peyta is coming into—”

“I didn't ask you,” I barked at Sophie cutting her off. “I asked Sean. Speak when spoken to, Bitch.” My final words were delivered with all the venom I could throw in her direction.

Sophie's anger flared before she turned to address Sean. “This would be so much quicker if we could muzzle the mutt, darling. Do you have any tape with you?” she replied with equal sting.

We stared each other down, my look saying I was going to tear her to pieces, and her eyes inviting me to try. If I succeeded I'd be dead; Sean would never be mine.

“We'll see about that,” I muttered under my breath.

Sean took a cleansing breath while clenching his jaw so tightly that I was certain his teeth were going to disintegrate under the pressure. “If you two are quite finished, I'd like to get this started. I'll remind you all again that time is not on our side at the moment. Sophie, go see if she's sleeping.”

As she walked down the hall, I willed her to trip, hoping to ruin her catwalk swagger. She cracked the guest room door open and looked in before giving a nod to Sean. She then disappeared into the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Sean returned his attention to us and started to explain.

“I've had my suspicions about Peyta ever since she saw the ghosts in Cooper's room,” he explained as he sat down on the sofa. “There are many ways to communicate with the dead, and it was clear that Peyta had one. What I found troubling was that by her own admission it had evolved and intensified suddenly and without warning. This is uncommon, as most humans tend to desensitize to their gifts with age. Her ability, however, was rapidly increasing.”

“So?” Cooper asked, sounding annoyed and protective.

“So, that evening I asked her some questions that seemed out of context, do you remember?”

I nodded. He'd asked how old she was and when her birthday was coming next. I'd thought it was weird at the time and sought clarification, but that was the evening that had gone south rapidly when our discussion had become about Cooper and I'd had to keep Sean from killing Coop because of his erratic behavior. I had a flash of panic when I realized that Peyta's behavior may be putting her in the same situation, and I had no idea what Sophie was up to in the other room. I shot out of the chair that I'd just nestled into and sprinted down the hall, only to be accosted by Sean halfway down.

“What are you doing?” he asked, eyes blazing.

“What is she doing?” I growled. “If she hurts Peyta I'll kill her with my bare hands.”

“She's not hurting her,” he grunted as he tried to wrestle me back down the hall. “She's transitioning her.”

“What?” I yelled, abandoning my struggle with him.

“Peyta is a Healer, Ruby, like Sophie. If the ritual isn't performed on the evening of her eighteenth birthday…,” he said, trailing off.

“What? What happens if it isn't performed?” I asked, choking on the panic that was ready to erupt from within me. It never boded well when Sean trailed off mid-sentence.

“She dies.”

I would have fallen if he had not been holding me up. Cooper, who'd been standing the whole time, collapsed into a chair, face blank with astonishment.

“It's not an enviable way to go, either. She'd slowly weaken, both mentally and physically. It would take years,” he explained. “We've only once had a situation like this before. The Healer's bloodlines have always been followed very closely,” he said, sounding defensive. “We still don't know how Peyta went unnoticed. If it weren't for her being here when she was….”

“She'd have died,” I finished. Ronnie would have lost the one thing, the one person, who was most important to her in the whole world. “Can Sophie do it?”

“If anyone can, it's her. It's the reason she came back. I'd mentioned Peyta to the Elders on a call and they must have confided in her; they're the ones who sent her. She recognized the signs, though she said there are still things about Peyta she can't quite explain, but she didn’t elaborate on it.”

I exhaled loudly. Peyta's going to be okay. She has to be…

Something shattered against the wall behind me and I looked up to see Cooper stalking back and forth in the living room barefoot, crunching over the broken glass of the vase he'd just decimated. It didn’t faze him

“So you just misplaced her?” he asked angrily, before picking up a ceramic bowl and heaving it at the front door. He charged Sean, grabbing him by the lapels, and hoisted him up against the wall. They stood nose to nose, both men breathing heavily, eyes murderous. “If she dies….”

“If you don't put me down, you won't live to worry about it anymore,” Sean countered. “I've given you the benefit of the doubt up until now, for Ruby's sake. You're officially out of favors.”

Cooper didn't budge.

“Put me down. Now.”

“If she dies I will find a way to make you pay for it,” Cooper warned, sounding more menacing than ever. “I promise.” He let go of Sean's shirt and stormed out of the apartment.

“You would try,” Sean said under his breath.

“He didn't mean it, Sean,” I said, trying to defend Cooper yet again. For once I wasn't in disagreement with him. “He loves Peyta like a sister. If something happens to her, it'll break him.”

He said nothing and walked away, down the hall to Cooper's room to press his ear to the door. His expression gave nothing away, so I closed my eyes and tried to feel what he was feeling, getting only a muddled mess of emotions: fear, anger and a hint of sadness, none of which boded well.

“How's it going?” I whispered.

“I can't tell. We'll have to wait for Sophie to come out. She'll know the prognosis,” he said, walking back towards me.

“So we wait?” I asked, nervously.

“We wait.”

Fantastic.

Since Cooper's emotions got the best of him, causing him to bail, Sean and I were left all alone in my living room. After leaving things the way we had in Boston, we couldn't have been more awkward around each other. It stayed uncomfortably silent as we tried dutifully to avoid conversing with one another. I cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen and the broken glass from Cooper's outburst. As I disposed of the debris in the trash, I looked up to see the white bakery box sitting on the kitchen island. I opened it up to admire the round, single tier, black fondant-covered cake with Swarovski crystal detailing adorning the top. I gingerly pulled it out of the box and placed it on the counter.

“She'll get to eat it,” I said to myself softly, before the tears started to run down my cheeks. I stared at the cake, thinking about the impact Peyta had already had on my life. I had no siblings, no cousins, in fact, no living family at all. I'd been alone since my parents died, and had to learn to survive on my own, all the while getting a crash course in the seeing world as well as the supernatural one. It was a tall order to say the least.

Sean had been my first real “friend”, but that had become hopelessly complicated after the realization that he was both my opposing force and my gravitational pull. Cooper had made me feel less alone and helped me cope with post-traumatic backlash of Utah, but then almost immediately he started to withdraw. Ronnie and I had developed a deeper friendship over the past few months, but she had Peyta and her shop to tend to, so she didn't have much free time. The time I'd been able to spend with Peyta, both at the shop teaching her about jewelry making, and vegging on the couch watching movies and terrible reality TV, illuminated the void I had in my being. I'd never even known it was there. I cared for her in a way that I didn't understand, and that caring led to a suffering that was nearly unbearable when I thought of the possibility of her death. My mind ran wild with feelings I had no way to process, so I just stared at the cake and cried.

“Ruby?” Sean called to me. He was standing a few feet away in the entrance to the kitchen.

“She can't die, Sean. She just can't,” I told him, turning my tear-soaked face to him. He hesitated for a moment before slowly making his way over to me. He slid the back of his index finger gently down the watery tracks, drying them.

“She should be done soon. Worry once you know there's something to worry about.”

“How did this happen, Sean? I don't understand it. How do you lose a person?”

“We didn't lose her. You can't lose something you never knew you had,” he said, sounding mildly defensive. “Do you know her father?”

“As far as I know, it's always been just Ronnie and Peyta. Neither has ever mentioned her dad,” I told him. “Why?”

“Just thinking out loud. The Healers come from a complicated line. Many factors need to be in play for a child to become one. Being female is the most obvious, but beyond that, it's hard to determine. It's not my area of expertise. One of the Elders is responsible for tracking the lines.”

“So he fucked up?” I asked, feeling disgusted that this person's entire job was to keep track of one thing and one thing only, and his oversight could be the death of Peyta.

I'd like to be in a closed room with him right now.

“So it would appear,” Sean replied dryly. “At some point in time, a child went unrecorded. He will have to go back to try to figure out when this deviation occurred.”

“And you think it could be Peyta's dad?”

“It's a possibility. Time will tell.”

“But that means we'd have to involve Ronnie,” I whispered, worrying about the possible implications that idea held. “How are you going to explain your incessant need to know who Peyta's father is? Maybe she doesn't even know, did you ever think of that?”

“I won't have to explain anything,” he said matter-of-factly. “You'll have to come up with a good reason to ask.”

Is he shitting me?

True to form, my sentiments were plastered across my face. Sean started to go into a long-winded explanation before I shut him down.

“You know what? I don't wanna know,” I said, waving my hands defensively in front of me. “I'll worry about that one later, too.”

I walked away from him, back to the couch, wanting to be left alone to sort everything out in my mind. It seemed I had yet another CF to add to my list; it was growing painfully long. Sean, not picking up on my “leave me alone” vibes, came and sat dangerously near me. He propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his clasped hands, turning his head towards me ever so slightly.