7
ADDIE
Irefused to tell Maddox that this, all these rotting creatures who’d dug their way out of the ground, had been my fault. I’d let him believe that the killer had done this in their effort to reach me. It was easier than explaining that my arcana sapped the life from things around me in order to put it into dead bodies.
I didn’t even like thinking about it. If Maddox knew, he would never come near me again. He would know that I’d started pulling on his lifeforce the other night. He would accuse me of trying to kill him, which I didn’t want to do.
In fact, I liked him. Maybe he was a bit of a mess and could be gruff, but he was steady and soft in ways that surprised me. Earlier, when he’d found me crying to myself, he hadn’t hesitated to comfort me. That had been his first priority, not the crime scene or the killer who’d been getting away.
He’d thought of me, first.
I wasn’t used to that kind of care, and it made me feel for him. Not in a way that was romantic. I knew better. Only my friends would get mates. They had shifter partners. Neither I nor Maddox was a shifter. The mate bond would never bind us together.
There was no point in yearning for something I didn’t know if I would ever get. As a non-shifter, Vi had gotten lucky. I had no way of knowing if that same luck would strike me. As far as I could tell, lightning didn’t land in the same place twice unless there was a supernatural behind it.
Maddox returned with his brows knitted together and his gaze firmly on me. I swallowed and turned back to disassembling my tent even though the clanking poles gave away my shaking hands.
Had he realized that I’d summoned the undead animals? I really hoped he hadn’t. What was I going to tell him? That I had no idea how to control this monstrous power that my mother had given to me? It wasn’t like she’d stuck around to tell me how to use it. She’d left me with a couple of ways to deal with it and a rosary that’d supposedly been passed down from parent to child for generations.
“W-what did you find?” I couldn’t help the quake of my voice.
I could have kicked myself with how frustrated I was. I should have kept my mouth quiet. Maddox surely would have noticed my shaking nerves. He likely had questions, and I didn’t know how I was going to answer them.
“I didn’t find anything,” Maddox said.
He looked back over the field. I thought his attention would fall on the corpses again, but his gaze seemed to be somewhere far off. I followed his line of sight and realized that he was looking to where the figure had been.
“Nothing?” I asked.
His upper lip curled.
The figure had brought an undead creature with them. I remembered seeing it move among the dead grass and brush. There had to be some remnants of the creature…but it was all lost among the things that I’d raised. And I couldn’t tell Maddox what to look for without outing myself.
Tent packed away, I stood and asked Maddox if he was ready to leave. This meant that I would have to go home alone, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that. However, I didn’t want to stay here a moment longer.
My arcana slithered like cold smoke inside me. It asked if I could put the creatures back into the earth, but if I did that, I would give away my secret. It was bad enough that Maddox wanted to pin this crime on me. If I gave him any more reason to suspect me, then I would never see the light of day again.
It would be orange jumpsuits and metal bars for me. I didn’t really like orange all that much. It looked okay on me, but I preferred to blend into the background…I guess I would blend in if everyone else was wearing orange. That wasn’t a future I wanted to think about.
Maddox put a hand on my shoulder and gently led me away from the field. As we walked, I reached into my pocket and pulled out Mom’s rosary. I pulled the beads between my fingers, pinching them one by one until my stomach settled.
Were my ancestors watching over me? Was that what this meant? It seemed unlikely. I would have caught sight of one of them by now. Instead, my life was filled with ghosts who were killed by their dominatrices.
Back at the parking lot, I stared at my car. Maddox stood beside me. I thought he was waiting for me to leave first, so he could keep an eye on me until the very last minute.
“I’m coming home with you tonight,” Maddox said.
I recoiled. “Excuse me. What? This isn’t a date. I didn’t invite you back to my place.”
To my surprise, a soft flush reached Maddox’s cheeks. He turned his gaze away from me when he spoke.
“It’s obvious now that you’re being targeted. I should stick around. I’ll be able to catch this asshole next time they come for you.”
I spun to face him. “Nowyou believe me?”
His lips twisted to the side as he glared down at me. I didn’t back down. Though his eyes were intense, the darkness emanating from them, I wasn’t going to let him live this down. He’d made a mistake, and he needed to apologize for it.
But that wasn’t Maddox’s style. I would have to get used to that. He brushed past me and climbed into his Lincoln. The roar of the ancient car’s engine drowned out anything I would have said in argument. He knew that, too. He’d planned on shutting me up with that rust-bucket he called a car.
That was fine. I would make him pay for it later.