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“Hey, Ryan?”
“Mhmm?
“…Remind me why I had that milkshake?” Aleda was in pain. After the cheeseburger, fries, and something purple and foamy that West had called a “Super Duper Very Berry”, it had only made sense to get the chocolate milkshake. And a milkshake at West’s bar was about the best damned milkshake you’d ever be able to get anywhere… unless it was another hunters’ restaurant, of course. Besides, Ryan had insisted on paying for the food.
That had been her logic at the time, anyway. Now she was wishing for a stomach pump.
“You said you were hungry,” Ryan reminded her.
“I take it back,” she whimpered. “Ugh… I need a new stomach.” She leaned forward and let her head hit the table with a loud thunk, wrapping her arms around her midsection as if that would help somehow.
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to be alright?” he asked.
“Eventually. Probably.” She groaned. “And now I have a headache.”
“Silly lass,” he chuckled. She felt his fingers brush against her cheek and tuck a few stray hairs behind her ear.
The headache disappeared.
She opened one eye and looked up at him. “I felt that,” she said reproachfully.
He managed to look halfway innocent. “I have no idea what you mean,” he said. “I think you’re just a fast healer.”
“Yeah, when you’re around,” she muttered into the table. “I should be okay in a few minutes.”
“Take all the time you need,” he said. “The longer we stay here, the longer we have until you go home.”
“Ooh, shit,” she groaned. “Papá. He’s going to kill me.” She whimpered and propped her head back up on one hand.
“He’s not going to kill you.”
“Yes he is. He’s going to kill me. And then he’s going to ground me for the rest of my life.”
“Well, I do have to take you back eventually,” Ryan reminded her. “For one thing, you have school tomorrow.”
“I could get a GED,” Aleda suggested. “There’s gotta be a cousin somewhere that could set me up, right?”
He smiled fondly and leaned forward, brushing her hair back for real this time. “As much as I’d like to keep you forever,” he said, “I don’t want you to keep running from things all the time.”
“Alright, alright. I’ll go back,” she finally conceded. “But I won’t be happy about it!”
“Fair enough.”
“Hey, what time is it, anyway?”
Ryan looked around the room to find a clock. There was one over the façade of a bar, glowing neon blue around the edges. “Six thirty-seven, it looks like,” he told her. “You’ve been gone almost five hours. Are you feeling better, or do you want to stay a little longer?”
Aleda sighed. “I think I’ll live. You are right—I’ve got to get back. Heaven only knows what homework I missed today.”
“You’re sure?” he verified. She nodded.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” she said. She made a face at her empty plate. “Let’s go.”
Ryan left some money on the table and led her out of the bar, waving goodbye to West and a few others as they left. Before they made it the block back to the garage, he pulled her aside into a nearby alley.
“Before we go, there is one last thing I want to do,” he said.
Aleda had to laugh. What on earth could there possibly be left to do? “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “What?”
Instead of answering, he gathered her into his arms and kissed her so hard she could taste the fire on his lips. It took only a moment for the stiffness of her surprise to disappear. She melted and surrendered to the onslaught, wrapping her arms around his neck for support while he pulled her to her toes. It was Ryan who pulled back first, smiling and brushing his thumb across her cheek.
“I’ve been wanting to be able to do that for a long time, now,” he admitted.
“I-… I thought you hated me,” Aleda said, frowning just a little. She ducked her head and smirked. “Well, not recently I guess,” she conceded, “But you were always… mad at me for some reason.”
“Well, you changed my mind,” he told her. He grinned. “And that’s the closest you’ll get to me admitting I’m wrong,” he added. Aleda laughed with him.
“So typical,” she teased. Her smile vanished. “Oh, bloody hell.”
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“…Nate.”
His face instantly darkened, and he pulled back slightly. “Aye. Nate,” he sneered. “You might want to be telling him.”
Aleda made a face. “I’m not so sure I want to…”
“What!?” he erupted. “Don’t tell me you—”
“Oh, no!” she interrupted quickly. “It’s not that. It’s just…” She smiled ruefully at him. “This means he was actually right about something!”
He threw his head back and laughed. “So he was right, was he?” he asked mischievously. “And what was he right about?”
“W-well, you know…” Aleda stuttered and blushed. “And me, being…” she trailed off, embarrassed.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said softly. His hand stroked her hair. “I guess I’ll just have to live with that little imbecile being right about something.”
“Be nice,” Aleda insisted.
“Me? Nice?” Ryan asked, a playful smirk on his lips. “I’m never nice. You know that.”
“Mhm, well, at least behave in front of Papá. I don’t want him killing you, too.”
“No promises.”
“Yuh-huh. Are you taking me home, or what?”
“As you wish, lass,” he said, and took her by the hand, lacing their fingers together possessively.
Unfortunately, whatever spring warmth had been in the air during the day had vanished as the sun started to dip towards the horizon. The colors were very nice, Aleda mused, but the temperature could stand some improvement. Nothing like the first few weeks of spring—warm as anything during the day, and cold as winter as soon as that damned sun set. It was even worse once they got to the family-owned underground garage. Called hunters might not get frostbite, but that grace didn’t extend to her. She shivered a little in the chilly, dank air of the dark garage. She eyed Ryan’s motorcycle balefully.
“You know what?” she said. “I think I’ll take that jacket now.”
“I thought you might,” Ryan said, grinning. He shrugged it off and handed to her. She immediately wrapped it around herself, grateful that it was still warm from him wearing it. “Ready to go?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Now or never,” she said, and strapped on her helmet.
The ride home was, at the same time, one of the longest and the shortest trips she had ever made. Longest, because of all the thoughts and speculations and worries and plans that ran on a constant loop through her head in the hour that it took to drive from Baltimore City to her home in Keeney, Delaware.
Shortest, because it ended too soon. That is to say, it ended at all.
They did make one short stop in Elkton, of course. Aleda was still wearing the clothes that Talia had lent her earlier that day. Her parents would be pissed enough without her leaving her nice outfit at Talia’s apartment. She changed quickly and then they were back on the road.
Before she would have liked, and before she was quite sure she was ready, she recognized her familiar street and saw that house of hers looming up in front of her like the lair of some angry beast. All of the extra cars were gone. Just her parents waiting in there for her. She swallowed nervously and looked up at Ryan when they had pulled to a stop in her driveway.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure whether you’d make it better or worse,” she said, looking at the house again. “I don’t get the feeling he likes you very much right now.”
“It’s his daughter growing up he doesn’t like,” Ryan told her. “Not me personally. I can deal with him.”
“If you say so,” Aleda said doubtfully. “Ha! I can use you as my meat shield! What do you think?”
Ryan smirked. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but okay.” He walked a few steps towards the house and looked back when he realized she wasn’t following him. He raised his eyebrows at her.
Like ripping off a bandaid, right? Well, she had to do it, and better now than later, and make it even worse. It was already worse. She didn’t even want to think about how much worse it could possibly get. She took a deep breath. “Ok. Let’s get this over with.”
Opening that door was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. For a second she almost changed her mind. Almost bolted, running away as fast as she could and who cared what happened after that? At least she wouldn’t have had to face her papá. Ryan might have even helped her. Driven her back to his apartment or maybe just driven and kept on driving. Somehow, that thought—the thought of leaving everything behind so completely—frightened her more than anything else.
Then the moment passed, and she opened the door.
Her knees almost melted with relief when she saw that Seth was there with them, sitting around the dining room table. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t kill her if Seth was there.
“H-hi, Papá,” she said meekly. “Mom. Great-grandpa Seth.”
They turned to look at her. Seth looked a little apprehensive. Papá looked like he had, at one point, been furious beyond words but had since calmed down a little. Mom looked… amused.
“Ah, there you are Aleda,” Seth said quickly, before Papá could get a word in. “ Come have a seat. We were just wondering when you might return. And Ryan, of course. I trust you are well?”
Ryan, who had been eying Alejandro for any sign of outright hostility, glanced up at Seth’s words and nodded.
“I was just telling your parents about our hunt today,” he told Aleda. She flinched and sat in the offered chair. “And how you were able to kill nearly as many as any of the rest of us. It was quite impressive.”
She looked up, startled. “Oh! Um… I guess so,” she said hesitantly. She looked over at her parents. What did they think of all that? But there was no change in their expressions. She waited a few moments. It soon became obvious that she was expected to say something else. “Er, the claws helped,” she added. “That Ryan made me. Nice and, um, sharp.”
This did not please Papá. In the least. “You gave my daughter …claws?” he asked icily.
“Somebody needed to,” Ryan retorted.
“They were only wooden…” Seth interjected, but he was ignored.
“I hope,” Papá said, “That you would remember that I am her father, not you.”
Ryan laughed, a short barking sound. “Trust me,” he said. “That won’t be a problem.”
Only then did Papá notice Ryan’s hand, and saw it resting possessively on Aleda’s shoulder. His face turned scarlet. “What!?” he roared. “No! I will not have this! You are older even than I am, and she is not yet even called!”
“Half-called already,” Mom muttered under her breath.
“How old were you, Uncle Seth, when you met Aunt Rosie?”
“I was sixty-eight, I believe,” Seth said, relieved to at last be of some help.
Ryan smirked at Alejandro. “And that’s your own grandfather. Did you have any real objections?”
Papá stood so abruptly that his chair clattered backwards against the hardwood floor before hitting the wall. He moved as if to leap across the table itself to throttle Ryan. Mom caught him by the sleeve and pulled him back down into his seat.
“Alejandro,” she said soothingly. “Calm down, and look at them.”
Sullenly, he finally looked at the pair of them properly, without the angry red haze that had clouded him before. Looking clearly, there was no mistaking what he could see. No way around it, and no way to deny what had been obvious to all the rest for months. Papá’s face softened, finally, and he sighed.
“Well, at least she didn’t go to New York,” Mom tried to joke into the ensuing silence. Papá glared at her a little.
“She is still grounded,” Papá insisted. “Though I have not yet decided for how long.”
“But, Papá!”
“Alejandro, don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?” Mom asked gently. She rubbed his shoulder.
He frowned and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I do not care how bound they are. She disobeyed me. I told her that she was not to hunt with him, and she did. She defied me.”
“I was hunting on my own by the time I was seventeen,” Mom reminded him. “Even before we met.”
“You had no one to tell you otherwise,” Papá said. “No one to tell you how dangerous it was. Aleda knows better.”
“Do you really think I only hunted because I ‘didn’t know better’?” Mom asked in annoyance. “I hunted because I loved it!”
“If it helps, she had four hunters at her side this afternoon,” Ryan offered. “She was in no danger.”
“And you think you are able to keep her safe from thirty rakshasas!?” Alejandro demanded.
Ryan regarded him mildly. “By the time I’m done with her, Alex, I won’t have to. Your little angel is a born natural. Dare I say she gets it from her mother?”
Mom bit back a grin.
“For that matter,” Ryan continued. “What exactly do you expect to ground Aleda from?”
“Everything.”
“Everything what? No more television? Phone? Or will you simply lock her away in her room until her eighteenth birthday?”
“Er, excu—”
“She will certainly not be permitted to go anywhere with you.”
“I’d like to see you try and stop me.”
Papá went livid at that remark.
“Hey, guys…?” Aleda tried again.
“How dare you!?” Papá shouted. “She is my daughter, and she is still a child! You cannot possibly think that you would—”
“You’d keep her locked up in a damned tower for the rest of her fecking life!” Ryan roared back. “And you call that good parenting!”
“Hey!”
“And you are the expert on good parenting?” Papá shot back. “Your own father left you an orphan while you and your sister were still in high school!”
Ryan shot up from his chair and caught Aleda’s hand, pulling her up with him. His face was a mask of rage.
“We’re leaving,” he growled. Aleda had never seen him so furious.
“Wait, Ryan!” she cried halfway to the door.
He paused. “Yeah?”
“I… I can’t. Not… Not like this,” she said mournfully, gesturing with her free hand.
Ryan glared at Alejandro, still sitting at the dining room table only because of the tight hand Aria had on his arm. “You would rather stay with this man?” he asked, his voice hard.
Aleda shrugged apologetically. “He’s my Papá,” she tried to explain. The look on Ryan’s face twisted her gut and broke her heart. She glanced uncomfortably at the assembled family and pulled him around the corner, between the staircase and the front door. “But I want you, too,” she whispered. “Just… not like this. Please?”
His hand came up to brush against her cheek. “I’m coming back for you,” he said. “I don’t care what your papá says. I’m coming back for you.”
“Saturday morning?”
He nodded.
“It’s just a few more months until I’m eighteen,” she murmered. “Just a few months.”
“I guess I can wait a few more months,” he said with a teasing smirk. “If I have to.” He kissed her lightly on the lips and walked out the front door.
Aleda stared after him for a few moments, listening to his footsteps down the sidewalk and then the roar of his motorcycle. She turned back to the dining room to face her father.
-------------------------
If asked later, Aleda would not have been able to say which part was harder. The confrontation and subsequent arguments with her father were gut-wrenching and horrible, but at least with him she had Seth and Mom to calm him down a bit. Seth stayed at their house that night, then caught a ride with Papá’s boss to the nearest airport. He was going back to Spain with Aunt Fioralba and her companion. Mom, of course, was always around and had a little more influence over Papá. It was enough that Aleda didn’t have to actually worry about her Papá killing her for real.
If all of that was awful, though, she didn’t even know how to describe the next morning.
The next morning was Friday. She had to go to school.
She had to see Nate.
The day started like any other. She got up at a damnable hour, grateful to at least see the light of day when she woke, and took a shower. Got dressed. Ate breakfast. Walked to school. Mara met her at her locker and talked to her for a few minutes about her new lighter before she disappeared to her own homeroom. Aleda was one of the first people in the classroom. She had her pick of seats. She debated, for a minute or two, where to sit. While they didn’t have assigned seating, they did have usual seats. Her usual seat was right next to Nate’s usual seat, far in the back of the classroom.
Merciful heaven, she did not want to have to deal with Nate. She found herself wishing she had just gone ahead and left with Ryan the night before. They could probably be a few states away by now, if not in some other country. Hop an airplane and hide in the luggage and arrive in… Guatemala, maybe. Or Fiji. Although that would be an awfully long flight.
She succumbed to tradition and sat down in her usual place. The quicker she did this, the quicker it would all be over with, right? Except… she really didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of a classroom, in the middle of a whole lot of other kids.
She dropped her head onto the desk and tried to think. It didn’t work.
Nate eventually walked in. Of course. She kept her head down. Maybe she could pretend to be asleep. Maybe she could keep her head down all day and avoid him until after school and then she just wouldn’t have to deal with it. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with it until after school. Tell him to come talk to her in the library. Nobody ever went in there.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, Leda, can we talk?” said Nate’s voice. He didn’t sound too happy. She refused to look up.
“Right now?” she mumbled. Okay, so obviously he had heard about what happened yesterday from his parents. She’d just have to bank on his instinct to keep up appearances in front of people to leave her be until they could talk somewhere less public.
“I guess not,” he replied. “Later, then. Lunch?”
“We have different lunch periods,” she protested to the desk.
“I’ll skip out of Spanish. No biggie.”
“Fine.”
And that was that.
Homeroom didn’t take very long. In first period she tuned out completely—not hard to do, in History. English class took a little longer. Nate went back to where he used to sit, in the back corner in the middle of all his friends. Mara, sitting behind her, immediately demanded to know what was going on and pestered her throughout the period in order to get her to fess up. Aleda finally distracted her with a doodled and unflattering portrait of the pre-calculus teacher.
Chemistry, fortunately, took up all of their combined attention anyway. The solution they were experimenting with that week had Mara completely rapt, and, as always, Aleda spent the entire class making sure that the girl didn’t burn or dump acid on anything important.
Then it was Drawing class.
Then lunch.
She picked at her sandwich nervously. Nate hadn’t actually said where he was going to meet her, although she assumed he’d come to the cafeteria. Val tried to ask her about spring break, but Aleda wasn’t paying her any attention. She just kept looking towards the entrance to the cafeteria. After a couple of minutes she finally saw Nate poke his head around the corner and glance into the large room.
“Hey, Val?” she said, looking at the pink-haired girl at last.
“Yup yup?”
“Do you think you could go distract the proctors for a minute?” she asked. “I gotta duck out of here for a minute.”
“Yeah, sure,” Val said. “No problem. Where’re you headed?”
“I’m… ah… meeting Nate.”
Val grinned knowingly. “Nice,” she said. “Have fun! Just give me a minute…” She got up and walked towards the table where the few unlucky teachers assigned to that duty were watching the cafeteria from one end. Aleda didn’t notice what it was she did to draw their attention. She just got up and walked as quickly as she dared past the table and through the cafeteria door. Nate met her in the hall.
“Want to go to the library?” he asked. “Nobody in there, at least on the second floor.”
“Yeah, sure,” Aleda said.
They walked in awkward silence to the library, ducking in and up the stairs while the librarian was turned away so that they didn’t have to sign in. Nate stopped when he got to ‘S’ and walked all the way down the aisle to the wall.
“So, what happened yesterday?” he asked, quietly so that the librarian wouldn’t hear them.
“I stayed home, for the Spring party,” Aleda said evasively. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but what happened at the party?” Nate asked impatiently.
“Well, geez, there was food, and cousins, and Mom made punch. I got to see Great-grandpa Seth and Aunt Firi, and your parents were there, so they must have told you all about it.” She was feeling a little snappish.
“They told me Seth and Uncle Mike had a huge fight, yeah,” he acknowledged. “And then that bastard Ryan got involved and a bunch of people left the party. Including you.”
“So?”
“So, what did you do?”
Aleda crossed her arms and leaned back against Sn–St. “We went hunting.”
“What!?”
“Shh!” she scolded him. “Do you want us to get in trouble?”
“You went hunting!?” he hissed, dropping to a harsh whisper. “But it was broad daylight!”
“Didn’t stop us,” Aleda said, and shrugged.
“I can’t believe you’d do something so stupid! What were you thinking?” Nate rubbed his eyes, hard. “Uncle Mike is going to be pissed.”
“You sound like my dad,” Aleda sneered. “And here I thought you’d be impressed. Hell, I killed four of the bloody things!”
“What? How?”
Aleda held up her hands and wiggled her fingers at him. “Wooden claws. Custom-made. Nice and sharp, too.”
Nate paused. “Four? Out of how many?”
“Thirty, I think,” Aleda said. “But to be fair there were five of us.”
“…Okay, that’s not bad, I guess. So, what? You hunted… a nest, I guess… and then came home and had to deal with your dad?”
“We-ell… I didn’t go home right away…” Aleda admitted. Nate frowned.
“Well what else did you do?”
Aleda hesitated. She wasn’t sure how good of an idea it would be to tell Nate, of all people, about Ryan’s discussion with Zak. If nothing else, because he was Mike’s grand-nephew. Probably not the best idea to tell him how they went to talk to somebody about getting Mike transferred. “Stopped in Baltimore,” she finally said. “Had dinner.”
“Well, fine. So you went out hunting and had dinner in Baltimore. I guess it’s not the craziest thing anybody’s ever done. Even if you are only seventeen.”
Aleda shrugged.
Nate sighed, and appeared to come to a decision. “You know what? Whatever. These things happen. Let’s just not worry about it anymore. Hey, speaking of dinner, it’s Friday night.”
He crossed to where Aleda was leaning against the bookshelves. She winced imperceptibly.
“Yeah, so?” she asked.
“So do you want to go out tonight? We could get Italian food or something.” He tried to put his hand on her waist but she backed away.
Shit, shit, and shit. Or, as Ryan would say, bloody fecking hell.
She’d known this was coming. That was her whole goal that day. Tell him and get it over with and be done with it. The end.
“Leda?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Nate,” she said. “I don’t think we should go out anymore.”
“What? Why not?”
Aleda looked at him helplessly. How could she explain? His eyes narrowed.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he asked, spitting the word.
She grimaced.
“I knew it! I knew that bastard was going to screw something up! Why did you have to do that stupid training bullshit with him, anyway?”
“Hey! I’ve got to train! You know that! It just… happened.”
Nate shook his head. “You knew from the beginning,” he accused. “I saw the way you looked at him at that stupid birthday party.”
“I did not!”
“Admit it, I was right!”
Aleda threw her hands up. “Fine! Yes! You were right! I hope you and Right are very happy together!” she yelled at him, no longer caring who heard her. She turned and stormed towards the stairs before he could get in another word.
She walked quickly back to the cafeteria. The period wasn’t over yet. With any luck, her lunch and backpack would still be where she’d left them.
