angry. His brown eyes narrow, his breathing heavy, his entire body stiff, a slight tremor running through him every few seconds. And all while he gazed down at Billy.
Searching the crowd and seeing no friends, Billy shook his head and raised his hands, palms out.
“Wait a second, I didn’t . . . it wasn’t me!”
But with his hands raised like that, all anyone could see was the blood dripping between his fingers and slowly pouring down his wrist.
Desperate, Billy pointed at the middle girl. “It was her!”
As one, the adults all looked at the little Asian girl holding onto her baby sister. And, for a split second, Betsey saw the middle girl’s face harden in a way that was a little too adult for a kid so young. The adults never saw it, though, because the youngest girl placed her sobbing face right in front of her sister’s. Done on purpose? Betsey wouldn’t have thought so. She seemed too young, but after everything that had happened . . .
“It was!” Billy insisted. “It was her! I would never hit a kid! I wouldn’t!”
With a nasty snarl from the back of his throat, Charles reached down, grabbed Billy by his leather jacket, and yanked him off the bench.
The adults dragged Billy out, leaving the girls alone.
The oldest pulled the youngest girl onto her lap, her arms loose around her waist. The middle girl moved closer, finally resting her head against her sister’s arm. For a brief moment, the girls looked their age, but they also looked weathered. Life had been hard on them already and the oldest didn’t even look thirteen yet.
Charles returned to the backyard. He was scowling and now there was blood on him. He walked up to the girls and glowered down at them as was his way. Betsey was sure he had no idea how he must look to people who didn’t know what was going on in his head. But the three sisters gazed back at him without flinching.
Sighing, he started to turn away, and Betsey knew he was trying to figure out what to do next. What to do about the two girls who were not his blood. Not related to him in any way except that his daughter had made them her own. But before he could walk away, the youngest girl reached out and gripped his forefinger with her hand, small fingers squeezing tight.
And like that . . . Charles suddenly had three granddaughters instead of one.
He reached down and picked up the youngest in his arms.
“Let’s get you a room and something to eat,” he suggested, although it sounded like the orders from a drill sergeant.
The eldest grabbed her grandfather’s forearm and the middle girl, not as tall as her elder sister yet, grabbed the chain that attached his wallet to his jeans.
Together, in silence, they headed back to the house.
Betsey waited a few minutes before she crept down the tree trunk and shifted back to human. She put on her clothes and went around the side of the house, so she could enter through the front door.
As she came around the garage, the middle girl was waiting for her. And Betsey knew she was waiting for her.
Betsey froze in mid-step, gazing down at the kid with her mouth slightly open.
The kid stared up at her for what felt like forever and then, with a little smile, she placed her forefinger against her lips and said, “Shhhhh.”
Without another word, she turned and walked away . . . and Betsey wondered if it was possible for her to take some more AP classes so she could get into college even earlier than she’d planned. Like, maybe next week . . .
chapter ONE
Sixteen years later . . .
What had she been thinking? Using the “Ride of the Valkyries” as a ringtone? Because that shit waking a person up at six in the morning was just cruel. Really cruel.
And, as always, she’d done it to herself. Forgoing her anxiety meds so she could get drunk with a couple of cute Italian guys that she dumped as soon as the first one’s head hit the table.
Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan slapped her hand against the bedside table next to the bed, blindly searching for her damn phone. When she touched it, she was relieved. She had no plan to actually get out of bed anytime soon. Not as hungover as she currently was. But she really wanted that damn ringtone to stop.
Somehow, without even lifting her head from the pillow she had her face buried in, or opening her eyes, Charlie managed to touch the right thing on her phone screen so that she actually answered it.
“What?” she growled.
“Get out,” was the reply. “Get out now.”
Hangover forgotten, Charlie was halfway across the room when they kicked the door open. She turned and ran toward the sliding glass doors she’d left open the night before. She’d just made it to the balcony outside when something hot rammed into her shoulder, tearing past flesh and muscle and burrowing into bone. The power of it sent her flipping headfirst over the railing.
* * *
“What do you think?” the jackal shifter asked.
Sitting in a club chair in his Milan, Italy, hotel suite, Berg Dunn gazed at the man holding up a black jacket.
“What do I think about what?” Berg asked.
“The jacket. For my show tonight.”
Berg shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You must have an opinion.”
“I don’t. I happily have no opinion on what a grown man who is not me should wear.”
The jackal sighed. “You’re useless.”
“I have one job. Keeping your crazed fans from tracking you down and stripping the flesh from your bones. That’s it. That’s all I’m supposed to do. I, at no time, said that I would ever help you with your fashion sense.”
Rolling his eyes, the jackal laid the jacket on the bed and then stared at it. Like he expected it to tell him something. To actually speak to him.
Berg wanted to complain about this ridiculous job, but how could he when it was the best one he’d had in years? Following a very rich, very polite jackal around so that he could play piano for screaming fans in foreign countries was the coolest gig ever.
First class everything. Jets. Food. Women. Not that Berg took advantage of the women thing too often. He knew most were just trying to use him to get to Cooper Jean-Louis Parker. Coop was the one out there every night, banging away at those Steinway pianos, doing things with his fingers that even Berg found fascinating, and wooing all those lovely females with his handsome jackal looks.
Berg was just the guy to get through so they could get to the musical genius. And, unlike some of his friends, being used by beautiful women wasn’t one of his favorite things.
It was a tolerable thing, but not his favorite.
“I
