Sebastian (Bowen Boys) (2 page)

“He called me a hooker because of my tats.”
Corrine nodded. “I can’t help where they are.” She nodded again.

“Well
, of course, you can’t. And he was a silly man to have thought they were tattoos and not a sigil like they actually are.” She looked at her sharply. “We’re not human, dear, in the event you didn’t catch that. I think you might know what we are.”

“Yes.
Panther.” She looked at the computer. “I’ll help you, but you have to keep my secret to yourself. I won’t have people thinking…I won’t have it again.”

“No
, of course not. You can trust us.” Ama nodded, not really sure why but she thought maybe she could. “My son will clear things right up.”

~~~

George watched the young woman talk to the sales clerk. He glanced at Corrine and started to ask her what the hell they were doing. She shook her head before he could ask. When Ama stood up and walked to them, he could see that she was a lot more relaxed than she’d been before.

“It checks out. She said your son was called away on business to help one of your other sons
, but what you said checks out.” She looked around the store and George wondered if he could buy her anything, and wondered where that thought had come from. She looked back at him as if she knew what he’d been thinking.

“I don’t want you to freak out.
Are you going to?” He shook his head at her. “You look like it. If this is going to be too much for you, we can call it quits now. No sweat off me. I don’t need any problems, not from you or anyone else. Especially not from any of your family, because I’m going to help you. What I’m doing is because you asked, not because of anything that might be rolling around in your head.”

“
My head is rolling all right. No, no, it’s not that.” He looked at Corrine again before turning back to her. “It’s just that we thought…you must be the last of your kind.”

He saw her stiffen and regretted his words
, but before he could tell her how sorry he was, she spoke first. George reached for his mate, not sure why, but he needed her contact when Ama looked at him with her dark green eyes.

“
You know nothing of my kind. No one does, and I’d very much like to keep it that way.” He nodded and knew that the sharpness in her voice was his fault. “Do you still need me to show you this computer?”

“Yes.
I would...we would very much like for you to show us how to run this.” He looked at her and then opened his mouth to tell her again how profoundly sorry he was.

“Look
, Mr. Bowen, we’re not going to get through this if you don’t just say you’re sorry once and we move on. I get it, you didn’t mean it. And I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have been so short with you. But I’m a little on edge. I’m unemployed and have no place to live if I don’t find something soon...I’m not asking for a hand out here, but a real job with a real paycheck would be flipping fantastic. Understand?”

“Yes, yes I do. And please call me George.
And Corrine, this is Corrine.” His mate nodded. “I would like to learn how to do a search on things. That’s primarily what we wanted it for. Sebastian said we could do our household budget on it as well.”

She nodded.
“You can do just about anything on this. He’s got it rigged up so that if you wanted to, you could pretty much make a movie, write books and send them out, or even download and watch movies if you wanted. He’s got you set up really nicely.”

“He’s a good boy.
All our sons are.” They walked back out to the car and got in. She played around with the computer for the better part of the hour-long drive back to Khan’s house, where they were staying this week while their house was being built.

“You said you wanted to learn to do some searches.
You mean like on Google and stuff?”

George told her that they did.
“We also want an email account. We’re very new to this. I mean, we’ve only just gotten cell phones in the last few months and learned how to take pictures.”

George looked at Corrine when she laughed.
“We’re not very good at sending pictures on it as yet, but we do have lots of them. We have grandchildren, you see, and we get to sit for them all the time.” Ama nodded and smiled. “Then there is that site that we heard about on the television. Where you can pay all your bills at one time and not have to worry about them getting there on time.”

“You might want to stay clear of them.
Those sites are set up just for people like you. They’ll pay out for you and right into their own account.” She was putting the computer back in the box as she continued. “Most of the sites that you might want to pay online have their own payment programs. I’ll show you how to set them up, but you’ll enter the information if you want to use them. I won’t mess with your credit cards or bank accounts other than to show you how to set them up.”

George nodded. This was much more than he’d hoped for and told her so.
“We thought you’d just show us how to turn it on and then find us Google. We’re ever so grateful for this.”

“I’m sure
your son will be thrilled to death to know you picked a perfect stranger to help you. I know I would be.” She grinned at him. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you? I mean what you think you know about me. What you know about me. I’m not sure how your touch over all the other times I’ve been randomly touched has…you can’t tell anyone about me.”

“No
, of course we won’t. We told you we wouldn’t and we won’t. Not even if we are asked directly by the boys.” He looked over at Corrine as he continued. “We’ll just say we hooked up at the deli and you agreed to help us. Not a lie. We did see you there.”

George listened to his mate tell Ama about their grandkids as he tried to work through what she was.
A faerie. Even as a younger man, he’d heard about them but had never thought to see one, much less meet one. Then as he got older, he’d heard that they’d been all killed. Humans hadn’t understood what they were and had murdered them before they had changed into what this woman was. Nothing in the world was as strong as they were, and now there was one right in front of him that was going to show them how to use a computer.

She was lovely.
Her hair was nearly white it was so blonde, and her eyes the greenest he’d ever seen. Her skin was nearly flawless, if you thought of her sigil as a flaw. But he didn’t. And now that he’d touched her and had been acknowledged by her, George and his mate could see her completely. Humans would never be able to see her the way that he was right now.

The
marks that were covering her eyes weren’t there before. Now they could see the mask that was formed over them that looked like something one would get at Mardi Gras. The way it caught the light and sparkled made him think that she wasn’t just a faerie but something more. He wondered how much more of her was marked when the limo they were riding in came to a smooth stop. She stopped him before they got out.

“You
know that no one but you two can see me, right? I mean, they will see me but not the way you two do. Until I make it known to them, all they see is what everyone else can see, a woman who likes to be tattooed.” George and Corrine both nodded. “If you tell anyone, do you understand what will happen?”

“We die.
”

Chapter 2

“Oh
, and your mom and dad were in, too.” Sebastian looked up from the mountain of notes that Debby, his assistant manager, had given him when he returned. “They had me talk to some woman. I think she said her name was Amazing or something like that. She said that she was giving them lessons. I thought you said they were coming here for them.”

“I
thought so, too.” He reached for the phone to call them as Debby left the office. He’d been gone for less than three hours and had nearly fifty phone messages, and he’d not even checked his email yet. He shook his head, glad for the business, but he was beginning to feel like he needed a vacation—and soon. When someone answered his dad’s cell phone, he asked what she’d said again.

“
I said George Bowen’s phone. Is that who you called?” He was taken aback by her answering it first of all, and by her biting tone. “Are you there?”

“Yes. Where are my
parents? I want you to put them on the phone right fucking now.” She snorted. “What have you done to them?”

“I’ve thrown them in the basement and am right now ransacking their house.
And I was just calling for a cab to come and get me out here in the fucking wilderness when you called. And for a lark, I thought I’d answer and incriminate myself.” He was so startled that he didn’t know what to say. “They’re right here, dumbass.”

“Hello
, dear. Your dad is trying to do a search for raspberry tea, and then it’s my turn. I have to think of something to look up. Do you have any ideas for me?” He said the first thing that popped into his head. “Oh no, Sebastian, I have to look up something I don’t know anything about. I know a great deal about herbs.”

“
Then look up how to put together a jet engine.” He took a deep breath. “Who is that who answered the phone, and why is she answering Dad’s phone in the first place?”

“Her name is Ama. Well that’s not her real name. Her real name is Amarizi.
Amarizi Auburn. She’s been ever so helpful to us. She helped us set up our accounts on line and we have an email account, too.” She sounded so excited that he nearly smiled. But the woman was probably robbing them blind.

“I just bet you are. I was wondering if I may have a few words with her. Just to make sure that she
isn’t steering you in the wrong direction.” He tried to smile to make his voice sound less like he was grinding nails with his teeth. She told him to wait until her turn and then she’d put her on.

Sebastian could hear her speaking but not
exactly what she was saying. There was something muffled about her voice and he wasn’t happy with that. For all he knew she could be setting them up with accounts that led directly to her account, and his parents would be dead by the time he got there. Standing up, he was headed out of the office and to his car when she came on the line. He didn’t wait for her to say any more than hello before he tore into her.

“You hurt my mother and father and you will never be able to hide deep
enough. And if they don’t have every single penny in their account that they had before, I—”

“Listen to me
, you paranoid mother fucking prick. If I wanted them dead, they’d have been so in the back of the limo that we came here in. If I wanted their money, do you think that you threatening me is going to make me give it back? Fuck off.” He heard his dad say something. “Your father wants to talk to you, but I have just one more thing to say. If you ever—and I mean ever—threaten me or accuse me of something you have absolutely no knowledge of again, I will tear you apart.”

Sebastian stumbled to his car.
Terror, not for his parents but for himself, rolled over him. He felt her threat to him as if she’d been standing right in front of him and had delivered it to him face to face. He felt his panther roll away as if she’d been bigger, meaner than him, and now he was curling away from her. His dad saying his name made him think that he’d said it more than once.

“Sebastian?
I think I might have lost him.” He could hear the anger in his dad’s voice and that of his mom. But the woman said nothing.

“I’m here
, Dad. What is she doing there? And did she mean that she’d been in—?”

“You had no right.
None at all to upset her like that. I swear to you if you were here right now, I’d beat you within an inch of your life. She’s been helping us all day. All damned day and we were having so much…I wish you were here. I wish that you were right here so I could paddle your behind. You had no right to talk to our friend like you did.”

“Dad, I’m sorry
, but what do you know about this person? For all you know, she could be—” He realized he was talking to dead air. “Mother fuck.”

He actually had his arm back to throw his phone
, but it rang again. He hoped it was his dad calling back, but the tone told him it was his brother Marc. He answered, wondering if he’d already heard how pissed he’d made Dad.

“I was wondering if you could come by and help me with something. I got a new television today and I’m having trouble hooking up the cable lines.
I don’t have the colored wires that they said—”

“Did you read the fucking instructions?”
He closed his eyes as soon as the words left his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“No shit.
Would you like to start over, or would you like for me to come down there and kick your ass for speaking to me that way? Might make you feel better in the long run. I know it would me.” Marc laughed. “Wanna come by and have a beer with me and Jonny? Well, I’m having a beer, and she’s having a glass of tea. And pizza?”

“Ma
ybe. But first I have to go and tell Dad that I’m sorry, and then apologize to some woman they have helping them play on the Internet.” He got into his car and started it up. “I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be on the shit list for a very long time.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. What did you say to her?”
Sebastian told him. “Christ, buddy, you’ll be lucky if you ever get off it with that. I can see why Dad is mad. Hang on.”

He was put on hold and decided to put in his
earphone and talk and drive. Sebastian didn’t text while driving and he never looked at his phone either. There was a time and place for that, and going sixty miles an hour down a highway wasn’t the time or the place. His brother was laughing when he came back on.

“I wouldn’t go to
Dad right now if I was you. He’s spitting mad and said he’s going to get a switch. Man, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him cuss like that.” Sebastian groaned. “If I were you, I’d give him until tomorrow, and then maybe you might live to tell about it.”

“I think I’ll just get it over with.
They’re all there now and I can just go and take my medicine like a man. I’m pretty sure that whatever he has planned for me is nothing I’ve not thought of doing to myself. I was way out of line.”

He pulled into Khan’s drive and got out
a few minutes after hanging up with Marc, who had told him to come by after he received his punishment. Sebastian told him that he’d think about it. His parents’ car wasn’t in the drive and his mom came out just as he was ready to step on the lowest step.

“I hope you’re very proud of yourself.”
He hung his head in shame. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, young man.”

His head snapped up like she’d jerked it up. “I’m sorry
, Mom. I was having a bad day and I took it out on her. I have no excuse for what I did.”

“No
, you do not.” She didn’t move and he stayed where he was. “You embarrassed us. And her. Do you know that we’d tried to pay her all afternoon and she wouldn’t take a penny from us? Then you call and first off accuse her of theft and all sorts of other things.”

“She told you what I said?”
He dropped his head again when she glared at him. He heard the door open and knew it was his dad. Sebastian could feel his anger as if he was throwing it at him.

“She didn’t say anything other than
that she had to leave. Was going to walk back to the city, but I had to make her ride in with that man you guys have driving us all over. Wouldn’t let me go with her to make sure she got home all right, saying you’d be mad. Well, damn it, boy, I’m mad!” His dad’s voice thundered down at him. “What did you say to her? We heard her all right, but not a thing you were saying.”

“I accused her of stealing your money when she set up the accounts
, and that she was planning to murder you after she got all your money.” He looked up at them both. “What the hell was I supposed to think when I hear my own parents have gone to someone else for help with a computer and not their own son?”

“You’d think that we
were capable of making sound decisions on our own.” That hurt him coming from his mom. “She set up the email account and all the other accounts, but never once put in a single thing that we would call ours. Our passwords...she stepped away when we put them in, as well as the credit card numbers to the accounts that we have that pay our electric and phone bills. She even cautioned us about using one of those sites that can pay them for you, and told us to never save our passwords on the computer but to write them down in a notebook.”

All the things he would have done for him.
He looked up at his dad. He had really hurt him and he knew it. He started up the steps when the limo pulled back into the driveway. His dad walked to the driver without a word to him, and Sebastian knew that his dad would be hard pressed to forgive him.

“Mom, I never meant to make you think that you
couldn’t do all this on our own. I would have helped you.” She shook her head. “I would have.”

“Maybe
, but lately you’ve been…well, short with everyone, and we wanted to surprise you with what we could do. We, your father and I, had so much fun until you called. She was laughing with us and joking with your dad’s choice of sites he wanted to look into. She even told us that she’d had fun.”

“Until I called.”
She nodded. “I’m going to apologize to her. Just tell me when she’ll be back and I’ll be here to tell her how sorry I am.”

“I don’t think she’s coming back.”
He heard the hurt in her voice. “I doubt we’ll see her again. I’m pretty sure that she…I don’t think she’ll come back.”

When she turned her back to him and entered the house
, Sebastian sat on the steps. Pain shot through him as if he’d been stabbed right in his heart. When his dad came toward him, Sebastian thought for sure he was going to go around him without speaking, but he stopped.

“You
embarrassed us. And you hurt your mom. We were having a grand time with her and you messed it up because you don’t trust us.” He couldn’t even deny that. “You should go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Dad, I’m so sorry.”
His dad nodded and went into the house.

Sebastian started for his car but bypassed it for the limo driver.
He walked up to him and asked him where he’d taken the girl.

“She’s got herself a place at the Y
, Mr. Bowen. I didn’t know if I got her back in time for her to be able to get in, but that lady that runs the place said she’d let her in.” Sebastian asked him what she’d looked like. “Looks like? I tried to think on that when I dropped her off. I remember thinking that she was pretty, but right now I couldn’t tell you a thing about her. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”

Strange maybe for someone
else’s family, but not his. He nodded to the driver and walked to his car. He called Marc and told him he was going home, that he was never going to be able to dig himself out of this one.

“Find your mate and knock her up.
I’m telling you, it’s like having a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can’t do anything wrong.”

Sebastian told him he’d work on that and drove home. It was going to be a long night.

~~~

Ama stripped down and
lay on the bed. She was looking up at the light when she thought of the man on the phone. Man, he had one suspicious nature about him. She rolled to her side and smiled at the fun she’d had with the elder Bowens. They had made her laugh all afternoon. And they’d made sure that she was welcome, something she’d not felt in anyone’s home before.

The phone ringing outside her room had her listening to see if anyone would answer it.
Lately it had been for someone named Carol. Ama was pretty sure that Carol had left about two weeks ago owing a great deal of money to the people who ran this place. When it rang five times, it finally stopped. She never answered it, as no one but the Bowen’s driver knew where she was.

Getting up to get the paper
, she wrapped a sheet around her nudity. She didn’t mind being naked, especially when the air was cool like it was now. She felt her sigil hum along her skin but for the most part ignored it. She had to find a job.

Her last job had been great.
She’d worked as a telemarketer for a large cell phone firm. No one had to see her and she could wear pretty much anything she’d wanted, but when the building burned down about four months ago, they’d decided to go to another location to set up business and it was too far for her to walk. She didn’t know how to drive, and couldn’t afford a car anyway. But she’d gotten unemployment and a nice fat bonus check, and that money was still hidden in one of her shoes. She wasn’t going to touch that unless it was an emergency, because she was going to buy a house and grow plants in the backyard.