I had no idea what to say to that.
After a few more moments of staring at one another, he bowed to me. Which I found extremely odd but pleasant. “I must take my leave but first if you would grant me your name.”
“It’s Nina Decker.”
“Nina.”
The way he said my name made me think of someone sampling a delicacy and finding it extremely pleasant. My belly and lower clenched in response.
“Stay safe.” With a last nod, he turned and walked back across the street toward the shadows along one old building.
I had to admit I watched every swagger of his tight ass.
Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “I hope to see you again, but this time under different circumstances.”
Speechless, I remained glued to the spot and watched as he disappeared into the night. I don’t know how long I stood there, but by the time I turned and got back on my bike, my legs were sore from standing in one spot on the pavement for too long.
***
Chapter 3
On the drive home, I thought about Severin. It was difficult not to—the man was unforgettable. And I had to admit I knew more about him than probably was normal…or safe. I’d spent a good two hours Googling him after the first time I’d seen him on TV. For curiosity sake, of course.
I managed to find an article he’d written for the Scientific Journal about the evolution of wolves. He’d discovered a recessive gene in one of the species—a gene closely related to humans. In response came a few articles debunking his theories and work. I kept those too.
The man was a triple threat—intelligent, ambitious and devastatingly gorgeous. And probably not someone I should be thinking, or daydreaming, about. Or anything else of the kind. He was of a different species. One I knew nothing about. It was one thing to get into a relationship with a man you didn’t know, but with a werewolf…
Who knew what came with that.
And speaking of alternate species, I thought about how my hands had seemed to glow earlier in the lamp light. I glanced in my side mirror at my face. Moving right and left, I examined the skin. It didn’t appear as if I was glowing. I was certainly pale, like fine-boned porcelain, someone had once told me, and add the fact that my hair was as black as ink. Despite that I didn’t think I was actually glowing. At least, I hope I wasn’t. Now that we were a brave new paranormal world, something that bizarre would make someone want to do tests on me. If werewolves existed, what other legends were true? I had no doubt plenty of people wanted to find that out. I was not prepared for that to happen. Ever.
A half hour later, after parking my bike in my garage at home, I flipped on the light in my kitchen, tossing keys and my canvas bag onto the granite counter. In the sink were a dirty plate and a pot half-submersed in greasy water. Shaking my head, I pulled them out, rinsed them off and put them in the dishwasher.
I hadn’t even closed the dishwasher door when the sound of footsteps brought my head around.
“Kinda late to be coming home, don’t you think?”
Instantly, I relaxed. “I had a twelve-hour shift.” I finished closing the door, latched it and turned the knob. “Would you like some tea?” I opened the cupboard and took out two tea cups knowing he would say yes.
Nodding, he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and lowered his frail frame into it.
As I filled the teapot with water and set it on the stove, I looked at him, my heart breaking every time.
He was tall and gangly, all long thin limbs with no substance. I remembered a time when he wasn’t like that. He’d been strapping and handsome, full of vigor, up for anything at any time. We had some good times together, laughing, and playing. Jason Decker, my father, had always been one for games.
Now he was old and withered, looking and feeling ancient beyond his sixty-two years. And there was nothing I could do but watch him slowly fade. My mother was to blame. She’d sucked the life and joy out of him, and left without a second thought to his welfare. She cared only for herself and her own selfish pleasure.
“What did you do tonight, Da?” I asked as I put chamomile tea bags into our cups.
“Sat by the garden.”
He did that just about every day. All his days consisted of now were napping, sitting in the garden, and painting. He had a little studio off the living room where he spent hours creating portraits of my mother. Whether he used charcoal, oil-based paint, or watercolor, every single painting was of her in some form.
Some paintings were lovely, with exquisite attention to detail and eye-appealing color, and some were so dark, so violent and twisted, I even had trouble looking at them. And I knew that was what his soul looked like, a mixture of beauty and darkness, twisted together. Light and dark in conflict. Always in conflict.
That was what being fae-struck did to a person. Made them fractured, disjointed, with a mind barely able to hold onto reality. And an aging withered body to match.
That was my legacy, my secret and my curse. My mother was from the realm of the dark fae, a place steeped in darkness and mystery. I was born to it, but would never see it. Never wanted to either.
The fae were an ancient race of people cloaked in magic and mayhem. Some had even been worshipped as gods and goddesses during the time of the Celtic people. Fairy tales had been invented to describe them, but in reality, there was nothing whimsical about them. They were a dark and dangerous species that I had worked all my life to forget existed.
Fae blood may have flowed through my veins, but I was human—mind, body and soul.
The teapot whistled and I poured the hot water into our cups, taking them both to the table. I set his in front of him with a spoon. “I hope you wore a sweater. The air was a little cool earlier.”
“I saw some pixies playing in the lavender.”
I dunked the teabag up and down in my cup, trying not to look into his expectant face, set it on a napkin on the table, then picked up my spoon to stir. “Da, I told you to ignore them.”
He banged his fist on the table, rattling his spoon. “I don’t want to ignore them, Nina. I like to watch them. One even talked to me for a spell.”
I rubbed at my forehead where a headache was starting to take hold. I really didn’t want to have another conversation like this, not at one in the morning. “Why don’t you take your tea to bed with you? You should get some sleep.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, A’lona.”
Sighing, I reached across the table and squeezed his withered hand. “I’m not her, Da. I’m not A’lona. I’m your daughter, Nina, remember?”
At first, his eyes were clouded over when he looked at me, but after a turn, they seemed to clear and he smiled as if truly seeing me for the first time.
I returned his smile, overjoyed that he was lucid. He had days where he had no idea where he was. It wasn’t Alzheimer’s. We’d had all the tests. I knew what it was but he didn’t want to admit the truth. He didn’t want to accept that my mother had done this to him.
“I know who you are, my darling.” He squeezed my hand tight. “You just look so much like her, so much like your mother.”
I know he was paying me a compliment. My mother, A’lona, had been breathtakingly beautiful with lustrous dark hair, spring green eyes, and luminous pale flawless complexion. But because of my anger toward her, I hated being compared to her in any way. I hoped and I prayed that I wasn’t anything like her and would never be, no matter what life threw at me.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately I can’t seem to help that. Genetics and all.” I gave him a quick sardonic smile and sipped my tea.
“One day you’ll have to forgive her.”
“Why?”
Picking up his cup, he sat back in his chair and regarded me. “Because some day you may need her.”
“I can’t see that day ever coming, Da. Not when I have you.”
He sipped his drink then set it down on the table. “I won’t always be here, Nina. You know that. Your mother will be around a lot longer.”
“Yeah, well, that can’t be helped either.” Standing, I took my tea to the sink and dumped it. I was no longer in the mood for a nice cup of soothing tea. Talking about my mother had that affect. Anything that comforting or joyful faded when I thought about her.
She had abandoned me when I was ten and I had yet to forgive her. Nor did I see that ever happening. In the past seventeen years, I’d seen her only twice--both times on my birthday, once when I was turning sixteen and the other time when I was turning twenty-one. She’d arrived unexpectedly on the doorstep, bearing gifts for both Da and I. As if expensive presents could make up for her abandonment.
For my sweet sixteenth, she gave me a glass globe. Inside was a tiny village made out of porcelain nestled in a wooded glen beside a tall mountain. When you shook the globe, tiny glowing stars would dance around. Quite beautiful. She told me it was the realm of Nightfall where she had been born, the place she had left us for. Every time I shook it, she said, she would know that I was thinking of her.
Without thanking her for it, I had smashed it into a thousand pieces on the hard wood floor in our living room.
Da had yelled at me and told me how ungrateful I had been. All the while, I glared at A’lona, wishing her to vanish into mist. She had just returned my look, but there had been no anger in her gaze or malice. Just understanding. That had angered me the most. Because if she had truly understood, she wouldn’t have left me in the first place.
I remembered spending the rest of the day in the room, crying and tearing apart all my pretty things. Later, tired and hungry, I had snuck out of my room to the kitchen to snag a piece of my birthday cake. As I crept past my father’s room, I had heard them together. The realization had angered and disgusted me, and I had almost burst into the room to drag her out of the house by her hair. But I didn’t. I couldn’t do that to my father.
After only a day, A’lona had once again disappeared, and my father sunk into a depression, sobbing until his throat was hoarse. For days after, he’d refuse to eat or go to work. A week later, the depression broke and he was back to his normal happy self.