Chapter 34: Chapter Thirty

Don’t die. That was the last thing Fitz said to me, three weeks ago today. Three weeks! He told me that he would come and find me, right before he kissed me like he thought I would actually die. It was also after he saved me from a life of being a lab rat. He killed a man just so that I could run. I had been waiting for him ever since.

Just waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

“That son of a bitch!” I slammed my hand down on the hotel bed I was pouting on.

Ferris patted my shoulder comfortingly. “Cool it, honey bunny.”

I glared at him and crossed my arms.

I spent the last few weeks doing nothing but waiting. Phin, my brother, Juliet, his ex and a vampire, and Pepper, the demon, were holed up with us in this hotel room like we had been for a full week now. We moved once a week, just in case. This one was by the beach. We were all used to gross motel rooms, but we had enough money now to give ourselves a break from the misery.

Ferris smiled at my glare like the sweetheart he was. I kind of kidnapped him when I escaped the facility that had been trying to find me for the past twenty years. He was the one to help me, but that didn’t matter to them. They didn’t even know. I ran into him as I was leaving, and he was nice enough to help me get out. It was to spite his father, Felix. Who also happened to be the leader of the facility and Fitz’s adoptive father. Ferris was a secret to everyone there. Including Fitz.

Oh, Fitz… I just didn’t know what to think of that man. He was unkind and evil most of the time. Unthinking and selfish. Then there were those times— few and far between —that he was amazingly gentle. Like after I got my throat slit. He found me and he nursed me back to health. Then he went and did something to make me hate him again. He always did. Every single time, without fail, he undid whatever affection I could ever have for him. He did something cruel for no reason, or he poked at me for fun.

“Yeah,” Juliet laughed. “It’s getting a little weird. You keep yelling that out of nowhere, and it’s making me think you’re a mental case.”

“Hey,” Phin said. “Give her a break. She’s stressing.”

“I’m aware. I’d be stressed too if I was Blood Linked with a psycho.”

I blinked. Ah. The other thing. For reasons I couldn’t understand, Fitz tricked me into an ancient and sacred thing that apparently linked our blood and souls together until we both died. And I hated him again. See? I had been stabbed and he made it seem like it was something that would be good for me. He didn’t mention that it made us part of each other. I could feel him even now. He wasn’t close.

“Bite me,” I said. “If I knew, then I wouldn’t have done it.”

“I know,” she said. “I just don’t get why we’re still here. I know he said he was coming back for you, but that shouldn’t make us sit here, in danger. Even if he was actually coming back, that’s no reason to stay so close.”

“I agree,” Phin said. “We should leave that bastard behind. He won’t do a thing for us.”

“Hey,” Pepper stepped in. She crawled in between Ferris and me in my bed. “If Willow says we stay, then we stay. She’s the leader here, and she gets final say.”

“Indeed,” Ferris nodded, “but I feel horrible. I kinda fucked you over. Since I’m with you, if any of the men that I know are sweeping the state find us, they’ll shoot to kill. I should leave.”

Pepper tensed as her chipmunk, Twix, climbed out of her jacket to check on her.

“No,” I said with authority. “I told you that you’re part of our family now. You stay with us and that’s final.”

He looked at me with broken gratefulness. “Thank you.”

“So we stay,” I said. “Until Fitz finds me.”

Juliet sighed. “Willow. He can feel you like you feel him. If he wanted to find you, he’d track you.”

I couldn’t deny it. We were linked, body and soul.

Pepper patted my knee. “Why are we still waiting, Willow? I know he helped you out in the eleventh hour, but does that make up for all the other stuff?”

Should it? No. But I couldn’t help but think of Mom. She would be upset if she knew she could have had Fitz back, and I left him behind. Especially when everything changed. I think he finally understood that that place wasn’t what he thought.

“He said he’d come for me,” I said like it was an answer.

I heard Ferris sigh as he stood up. “I think we should all go out to the beach. We need to get out of this room.”

Everyone but me got up and got ready. They were putting their shoes on while I stared at the wall.

“You coming, Willow?” Ferris asked as they started leaving. The door closed and we were alone.

“I should stay just in case he comes.”

His face sank. “He can find you at the beach too. And you’ve got his phone. He can call if he wants to.”

“But…” I guess he was right. “Am I doing the wrong thing here? I don’t want us in danger.”

He sat next to me. “I don’t know what the right thing is. Fitz is a dick, but he saved you. He must have a reason for not coming. Why are you so torn up about this? I hate to say it, but odds are that he hasn’t given you a second thought since you left.”

I sighed. “Can I tell you something? No one else knows, and I need it to stay that way.”

“Oh course, Mama Bear. I’m good at keeping secrets. Not just because no one ever talked to me either. I’m just good at it.”

“Right before I left, when Fitz was telling me to go, he kissed me.”

“Huh. Well that confuses things up things a little bit.”

“How?”

“For starters, it makes it a whole lot harder to tell how he feels about you. He Blood Linked with you. That’s such a big deal, and he knows it. You don’t do it for nothing. It could have been a big fuck you to the whole thing on his part, but I really doubt he’d do something so permanent for that.” He paused for a breath. “This is a little personal, but what kind of kiss was it?”

I was a little hesitant to answer. “Intense. It was right after he gave me his car key. He grabbed me and kissed me. Then afterwards, he pressed his forehead against mine. He kissed me again, but it was different. He just put his lips over mine. Then he told me not to die.”

“Uh oh.”

“What?” I asked in a squeaky and panicked tone.

“It would seem my calculations were off a tad. You don’t just give someone a chaste kiss for no reason. It was a terrified goodbye on his part.”

“What does that mean?”

Deep breath. “I think it means he has a thing for you. It could be a sense of responsibility, or it could be something else. One kiss or the other would have made it clear. But both…it muddies the waters.”

Super-duper. So now I had to deal with this.

“Given what I told you, do you think I should keep waiting?”

He looked at me with sympathy. “Do you want to keep waiting? Be honest, don’t think about what your answer should be. Think about what it really is.”

“I want him to come find me.”

He put his head on my shoulder. “Then we wait.”

“Oh god, am I a moron? I am. He kissed me once and now I’m waiting for him like I’m a puppy.”

“You guys went through a lot together. Not everything is black and white. Do you have feelings for him?”

I stiffened. “No! No way. He’s awful. Any feelings I might have for him are from the Blood Link.”

He smiled. “That’s not how it works. It doesn’t change how you feel about someone.”

What did I do with that? I knew what Fitz was. A bad man. Like he told me a million times, and showed me a million and one times. A few instances of kindness didn’t change that. I was waiting for him for my mom and her alone. Because when she eventually found us, she would be happy to see him again.

It was another reason we were staying in one place. Mom and Dad were in search of a demon who knew how to track people. If we moved around, it would make it harder to find us. This wasn’t so much a choice as a need. If we wanted to see Mom and Dad again, I needed to stay here. It had been weeks. They had to be close. Right?

“Come on.” I stood up. “Let’s go to the beach.”

We didn’t even need to drive, since it was so close. It was an overcast day, so we didn’t even have to worry about Juliet dying in the sun. Normally we’d have a few hours since she was an undead vampire, but Washington was a good place for her.

Pepper sat in the sand with Twix as she tried to build a sandcastle. I was a few feet from her with Ferris, and I half watched Pepper and half watched Juliet and Phin play in the water.

Ferris shook his head. “They’re still not back together? They sure act like they are.”

I sighed. “It’s a little complicated. She betrayed us and we thought she got our parents killed.”

“But they clearly love each other.” Ferris gestured out with his hand. “And they sleep in the same room every night.”

True. I’d been sharing a bed with Pepper while Ferris slept in the other, because no one wants to sleep in the same room as Juliet and Phin. They had…an odd relationship. She’d been feeding off of him and him alone. I didn’t know how feeding was for other vampires, but I knew how it was for me. My stomach warmed as I thought about Fitz’s blood. Sweet and addicting. And how it felt to drink from him. I fought off shivers thinking about it. I had a tendency to lose it when I was feeding from Fitz. Him too, if I remembered right. I was on his lap when I did it, and he got a little…excited. But that was when we were Linking. So it could be different for us. All I knew was that I was never touching him again. Familiar or not, he wasn’t coming near me.

“And you are king.” Pepper smiled as she placed Twix atop her castle. He sniffed around as his paws sank into the sand.

Ferris laughed. “He doesn’t seem to like it, Peps.”

She glared hard at him. “You don’t know.”

“Look at him.” He threw his hand lazily in the air.

Pepper plucked Twix from his kingdom, and took him over near the water to make a sturdier castle.

“Hmm,” Ferris sighed. “I don’t think she likes me very much. She never looks me in the eye and she gets all twitchy when I’m next to her.”

“That’s just Pepper. She can’t help it. She’s only okay when chaos is happening. The only time her hands don’t shake.” I noticed that one a little while after I brought Ferris back. When we started having more down time. She couldn’t stay still when things were even a little calm. I figured it was PTSD from her time at the asylum. She still won’t talk about what happened to her. “Just give her a little time to get used to you.”

“S’okay. Nothing I’m not used to.”

“We all love you, Ferris.” I tried to communicate my seriousness with my eyes. “I’m so glad I accidentally smashed your tater tots and then kidnapped you.”

He smiled. “Aww. Love you too, Mama Bear.” He hugged me.

“You’re such a sweetheart. It makes me want to murder everyone who was ever mean to you.”

“Long list,” he sighed.

“Doesn’t matter. I’d still do it. Especially Fitz. I’d kill him double for you.”

He shook his head. “No you wouldn’t. He’s your friend. A terrible one, but still your friend.”

I groaned. “I don’t want him to be my friend. It’s bad enough I kissed him. I’m trying to forget.” Even though it was…so good. I could still smell the rainwater scent that followed him everywhere. Sometimes I could still taste him and it made me miss him. Then I remember all of the bad things he did to me. How he hurt me. Then I’m glad he’s gone.

Everyone came back to us and we all sat in a circle as Pepper worked on a sand snowman. The sun was setting, and it was almost dinner time. I couldn’t imagine we’d be here much longer.

The conversation turned, as it always did, back to the facility. Ferris was talking about how shady everyone was when his mom came up. “I’m telling you, the older ones know something I don’t. Vampire’s don’t just up and die. They have to get killed. Something happened, and I want to know why. And I want to know why Felix lied about me being his son for so long.”

Juliet looked at him. “There could be a lot of reasons. Maybe he thought it was keeping you safe. Since I can remember, he told me and the others to leave you alone. He never said why, but every time one of us went to talk to you and he was there, he’d stop us. He wasn’t mean about it, he just told us not to talk to you.”

Ferris wasn’t pleased with that one. He grew up without a friend in the world because of it. But I could see why Felix would want people to leave him be if he was his son. He might have been doing it to keep him safe. But it backfired, and made the boy almost kill himself. The one good thing Felix had ever done was stopping him.

“I heard he met her so long ago that it was in the other facility. The one that they abandoned because their numbers grew. It was a century ago.” Ferris waved his hand. “But I heard that she grew up there and he took a liking to her.”

Gross.

“Gross,” Juliet said for me.

I rolled my eyes at her and talked to Ferris. “We can help you try and figure this out,” I told him. “I don’t know how, but there’s always a way.”

When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, we stood up, and headed back to the hotel. We stopped off in the dining area to get something to eat. We decided it was a bad idea to eat out too much. Hiding was our best option until it was time to move again. I guessed we had a couple days before we needed to change hotels.

We got to my room, and sat on the two beds. Pepper, Ferris and I on one, and Phin with Juliet on the other. Pepper started feeding Twix some of her fries, and he happily took them. He sat on her knee while she ate her burger.

“I think we should start heading south,” Juliet said. “We should try and find that tracker demon Jemma and Leo are after.”

I stared at her. “But we’re waiting for Fitz.”

“It’s too dangerous to keep waiting. It’s been almost a month and you haven’t heard a word from him. If he wants to, he can always find you. Even far away. It’s better to not stick around anymore. We’re putting our lives in danger for a bastard.”

“I know,” I sighed. Maybe she was right. He wasn’t coming for me. I don’t know why he made the promise, but it didn’t matter anymore. He was a liar and he hurt me more times than I could count. So I made a decision.

He didn’t matter anymore.