Not that she heard from him much. She supposed it was because she reminded him of her mother, his Japanese-American bride. The one who’d made him a young widower by dying of a brain aneurysm a few days before Ume’s sixteenth birthday.
She looked over at Julie from the daybed she was confined to, as usual. At least he’d left her with family. Her cousins, especially Julie, had been her angels. They treated her like another sibling, teasing and harassing her and becoming completely tangled in her life. She loved it. She loved them.
But she hated being a burden.
Three years of this. Three years of being waited on. Of looking up at people from hospital beds and couches. No dancing, no running. Just resting and physical therapy. It was enough to drive a normal person crazy. But Ume knew she wasn’t normal. At least, that’s what her mother had always told her.
Special Ume, plum blossom, meant for greatness. Ume looked down at her slender, pale legs and laughed sourly. What greatness could she achieve locked away from the sunlight? From life?
“Oh, I know that face.” Julie plopped her tiny body down beside Ume’s long legs with a sigh. She set the tray of tea and snacks down on the table alongside the daybed and looked at her cousin. “Keep that pout going and I won’t tell you my news.”
Ume dragged herself out of her private pity party and lifted an eyebrow. “What kind of news? Were these baby pictures smoothing the way? Did more happen in Scotland than just dirty inspiration?”
Julie blushed and pushed on Ume’s shoulder playfully. “Ha ha. No babies. But it does have a little to do with my inspiration. My last ebook just became the bestselling paranormal romance of the year. My editor tells me its breaking sales records left and right.”
Ume squealed and Julie blushed deeper, looking down at her hands. Ume rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that good little daughter expression. You deserve to be proud. If your parents didn’t have to be kept in the dark about what you do for a living, I’d shout it from the rooftops. Luckily for you, neither one of them knows how to use a cell phone, let alone a computer.”
Julie giggled. “Which is one of the main reasons I decided to write online.” She glanced up at Ume through her lashes. “It is exciting.”
Ume nodded forcefully. “Yes. It is. And just think, all of this because of your secret obsession with those online webisodes. Now that I’ve read your story, I really wish you’d tell me more about your time up there. I mean, the parts I wasn’t watching live, of course. Did you ever find out how they did it?”
Julie’s brow wrinkled. “How they did what?”
“All those special effects.” Ume waved her hand expressively. “The ghosts, the strange goings on. How did they do all that live?”
“They’re real, Ume. That’s how they did it. I told you that.”
Julie sounded so confident, so certain, that Ume didn’t laugh—though she didn’t, couldn’t believe. There lay a slippery slope, believing that magic was real. A slope her mother had fallen down long before her death.
Julie seemed to have a similar imagination, but she’d made a career out of hers. The hardest part was Ume wanted to believe it too. Wasn’t that why she’d become obsessed with that ridiculous game around the same time Julie had started watching Shifting Reality?
Julie was still studying her. Waiting for her reaction. “So what you’re saying is, that werewolf in your story is real? Cause he was hot.”
Her cousin stood so quickly she almost spilled the drinks in front of her. “You’re changing the subject. But, yes. He’s real too.”
There was something in Julie’s voice. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Julie shrugged, her smile not quite disguising the regret in her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. Because I wasn’t brave enough to take what I wanted. Story of my life.”
Ume reached for he
r cousin’s hand, her heart aching at her words. “Jules, don’t say that. I’ve never known anyone braver than you. You put yourself out there every day. You wanted to write, and you succeeded. You flew to Scotland to be on camera, having no idea what you were letting yourself in for.” She smiled charmingly. “And you’re the only one who can deal with me when I get all maudlin and bitter. If you’re not brave I don’t know who is.”
Julie squeezed her hand. “You are, Ume. If you’d been there, if you’d seen the man you wanted, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would’ve jumped in with both feet and never looked back.”
Ume’s smile wavered. “Yeah. Look where that got me.”
She thought about Julie’s last abusive relationship, the controlling man who’d convinced her family he was the perfect suitor. And Ume had had her own brush with a wild, uncontrollable hellion who loved to drink more than anything. Including her. Ume may have deserved her fate for being so reckless, but Julie didn’t. She deserved to have someone love her passionately. Someone who didn’t want to change her.
Too bad the world was full of jackasses.
A few hours later, she leaned back against her pillows, emotionally worn out. Werewolf or not, it was obvious Julie had feelings about a man she didn’t believe she could have. Ume’s protective instincts had come out full force. If she knew where he lived she would drag him to her cousin’s house herself, and wrap him up for her in a neat little bow, shifter or not.
It boggled Ume’s mind. Julie truly believed in all of it. In shifters and vampires, ghosts and demons.
Oni was the name her mother used for the demons she was constantly trying to protect Ume from. But in her stories the evil spirits never looked like the one from Shifting Reality. Saint.
When she’s seen him on camera, he’d always been looking down at some device, his dark hair swooping across his forehead, concealing his eyes. But from what she could see, he was gorgeous. Nothing like a troll or monster. Nothing that would kill you or steal your soul. The worst that beautiful creature could do was break a heart or twelve.