Under the Moon (32 page)

Marley’s brows knit together. “I don’t have anyone out there with a gun.”

“Sure. As evidenced by the quick response of the ones inside the house.”

“I mean it. I’ve had guests. I’m not going to have amateurs with rifles roaming around in the common areas.”

“Why do you have amateurs with rifles at all?”

Marley didn’t answer right away. Quinn pressed a clean gauze pad coated with antibacterial ointment against the wound. Nick hissed and his hand jerked toward hers as if to pull it away, but he stopped himself.

“Damn, that hurts.”

“Sorry.” She raised her eyebrows at him, silently offering, once again, to heal the wound. He shook his head, but she couldn’t let him go on hurting. It was her fault the wound had reopened. She closed her eyes and covered his calf with her hand, drawing on the limited pool of energy available to her, and focused on filling in the tissues, sealing blood vessels. His muscles relaxed, and she checked the hole. It looked as if it had happened weeks ago instead of yesterday, but it wasn’t healed completely.

She took a deep breath but before she could try again, Nick folded his hand around hers. “Thanks.” His look said
that’s enough
, and Quinn was weak enough now to obey. She taped fresh gauze over the area to keep it clean and rested her hand on Nick’s shin before turning her attention to her sister. “Well?”

Marley nibbled on her lower lip. “It’s a long story.”

“We’re here for a long story,” Sam said from behind Quinn. “You can start at the beginning. Like how long you’ve known about your sister.”

Marley nodded. “I guess that’s as good a place as any to start. I’ve known since I was ten.”

Quinn absorbed the shock of that. So long, and Marley had never contacted her? She would have been about seventeen, a senior in high school. She’d decided by then that she didn’t care about her “other” family and was focused on the future, but that would have changed in an instant if she’d learned she had a little sister.

“How did you find out?”

“I heard Mom and Dad talking. Nothing major. Dad said something about ‘the baby,’ and whatever else he said—I don’t actually remember—made it clear he wasn’t talking about me. I was nosy and went digging. I found a copy of your birth certificate and adoption papers in the safe in the back of their closet.”

“Pretty good for a ten-year-old,” Nick said. Quinn considered ripping off a few more hairs. Then she saw his face and she realized he wasn’t impressed, but encouraging the conversation.

“Did you confront them?” Quinn didn’t like the idea that Tess had lied to her. None of them could change the past, but how they acted now would affect any potential future relationships.

“Nope. My curiosity was satisfied. You were a lot older, and I figured you wouldn’t be interested in me. Then a couple of years later Mom taught me more about the goddess thing, and that was a
lot
more interesting than a long-lost sister who couldn’t be bothered to find out I exist.”

Quinn suppressed a smile. “I never had a clue until about two weeks ago.”

Hurt passed over Marley’s face. “And you’re just now finding me?”

“You knew, and you never came to find me! There’s also the matter of a ‘family ties’ issue with the board of the Society.”

Hurt turned to guilt. Marley was either terrible at hiding her emotions or wasn’t trying. “Okay. We’ll get to that. If you want this in order.” She glanced up at Sam, who nodded.

“When I turned twenty-one I joined the Society. I didn’t know if you were a goddess, but that was the first thing I checked when I got my directory. And there you were. Not only a goddess, but already a prominent member of an organization our mother wanted nothing to do with.”

“Why not?” Tess hadn’t seemed like the kind of person to remove herself from the structure and support of the Society.

“That’s another long story.”

“Marley, this is important. Tell me why Tess isn’t part of the Society.”

“She’s part of it, kind of. She maintains her membership and adheres to its tenets. But she hates those women and isn’t friends with any other goddesses. I found out that when she first joined, someone learned she’d been a teen mother and gave you up for adoption. The elders were appalled that she would remove a potential goddess from their midst.”

“But I was adopted by a goddess.”

“They didn’t know that at the time.” Marley stood and walked to her bowl of dough. She checked it, then dumped it onto the floured butcher-block surface and began kneading again. “She wouldn’t talk about it at all. They treated her badly, so she removed herself from them.”

“What about you? Is that why you’re a rebel, too?”

She beat down the dough and folded it over. “The word fits me more than our mother. She conformed to Fairfield society so well, she could be a selectman’s wife. Might still, if Dad runs again next year. Anyway, no, that’s not why I retreated.” She put the dough back in the bowl and washed her hands, then resumed her story when she returned to the table.

“The only thing I wanted to do at my first quarterly meeting was find you. You were on some committee, and everyone was talking about your business, Under the Moon. Some people were horrified that you’d taken over your father’s bar. Others thought it was the perfect setup for your”—she made air quotes—“‘real’ job, using your powers as a goddess to help people.”

Quinn had heard the murmurs. She’d had the bar for three years by then, but as she honed her control and her power “grew,” for want of a better word, so had her business. Some people—like the goddess at the chapter meeting who’d made the snide remarks yesterday—hadn’t hidden their jealousy.

“Did we meet?” Quinn couldn’t remember if they had, but it wasn’t like she was keeping an eye out for someone who looked like her.

“No. I hung out with a few other neophytes. I told myself my peers were more important, and that you wouldn’t be interested in me and my fledgling, difficult powers. In reality, I was scared to try. So I did what I assume our parents did and put it off until it became too hard to even consider.”

A few weeks ago, hearing her sister’s story, Quinn would have lamented lost time and missed opportunities. Now, though, she dispassionately considered whether things would have been different if Marley had found the courage to contact her. If their relationship could have prevented any of this from happening.

“Why were your powers difficult?” she asked. Nick shifted his leg and winced. Quinn guessed he had some residual pain, even though he gave every appearance of being as interested in Marley’s story as she was. She dug in the first-aid kit and found a packet of painkillers. Tearing it open, she poured the tablets into Nick’s palm. He glanced down, then up at her with gratitude. Sam set a glass of water on the table next to him, and he murmured thanks and slapped the pills into his mouth.

Quinn realized Marley was watching them. Her smile was sad.

“You guys are quite a team.”

“Yeah.” Quinn didn’t want Marley getting any ideas about joining that team. “So, why were your powers difficult?”

“I had a hard time figuring out my source. Mom had some of everything in the house, and we tried it all. But if I had, say, a hunk of amethyst in the room and tried herbs, and it was strong, and then later I was outside and tried the herbs again, it would be weak. It took months to figure out the crystals. After that, it got easier. More fun, anyway.” She smiled and looked like the kid she would have been then, playing with her power. “What I focus through depends on what I want to do.”

“Like flip a car?” Sam asked.

Marley looked stricken. “What?”

“You flipped my car, didn’t you? And it was your men who abducted Quinn.”

Marley shifted on her chair and avoided their eyes. Her fingers plucked at the fringe of a plaid placemat. She wasn’t acting like someone who wanted to hurt them, and Quinn tried to keep her anger out of her voice, more concerned with getting answers than lashing out.

“Is Sam right?”

“I wanted us to know each other better before we got to that.” Marley’s voice shook. “I have very good reasons for both.”

Even though she’d expected this, Quinn’s heart sank into a disappointment unlike any she’d ever known. Some part of her had still wanted Marley to deny it all. At the least, she’d wanted her sister not to be a criminal.

“I’d really like to hear this.” Nick dropped the foot of his injured leg to the floor and twisted in his chair to face Marley full on. His expression sarcastic, he said, “Do tell.”

“I will but…I need to know what you know first.” She looked at Quinn when she said it.

Quinn wasn’t inclined to help her out. “About what, in particular?”

“Can you tell me what led you here? Why you found me?”

They ran through the basics of what they’d learned, ending with Alana’s reference to family ties and their search for records that revealed their relationship.

“You’re the most logical family she could be referring to. And the only thing that would make our relationship such a big deal to the board is the leech. So you have to be connected to him,” she concluded, avoiding a direct accusation.

Marley’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know that I am. I don’t want it to be true.”

Quinn couldn’t tell if Marley’s distress was real or an attempt to play on her empathy. Not that she had any right now. “But it is.”

Marley nodded. “It’s got to be. Anson Tournado is my fiancé.”

Fury surged and Quinn held herself very still against the urge to punish. Sam placed his hand on Quinn’s shoulder, and Nick’s head angled her way when Marley used the present tense—that he
is
her fiancé, not
was
. They hardly moved, but she felt them closing in around her. It was enough for her to control herself, though Marley shrank back at the look in her eyes.

“And?” She dreaded what came next, but what Marley said was no surprise now.

“I imbued him with the power of a goddess. And now someone’s leeched three other goddesses.”

“Four.” Nick’s voice was hard.

“I didn’t know,” Marley whispered. Her tears spilled over in silvery trails down her cheeks. “I don’t want it to be him. It
can’t
be him, but…”

“But who else could it be,” Nick finished for her, tone granite-hard.

Marley nodded. “And if it
is
him, he isn’t even close to done. I think he’s coming after you, Quinn. I have no evidence or anything. I just feel it.” Her tears flowed faster. “You’re running out of time.”

“Why?” Nick barked.

But Quinn knew. “Tomorrow’s the full moon.”

…

“Tell us everything you know about Anson,” Nick demanded. “Everything.”

“Wait.” Sam’s hand tightened on Quinn’s shoulder. “Let her collect herself. There’s time. He doesn’t know where we are.”

“Oh, no?” Nick’s green eyes had darkened to emerald. “If Marley’s guys didn’t shoot me, who do you think did?”

Quinn pushed to her feet, knocking Sam’s hand away. She was tired of good cop/bad cop, of coaxing Marley’s story along. The closer they got to Anson, the more at risk her friends were. “If your boyfriend tried to kill my protector—”

“You don’t know that he did!” Marley protested, leaning away to look up at Quinn. Her pale eyes were wide. “It could have been a hunter…or…or…anyone!”

“Hardly. That bullet was infused with a drug that induced intense pain.” She didn’t describe the demons thing. It was too personal.

Her sister slumped and nodded miserably. “That’s a power he was interested in. He wants some of everything, but he has his favorites.”

“Why would you do this?” Sam asked. “Why would you create the biggest threat to goddesses in a hundred years?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Marley sobbed. “I didn’t think— I didn’t believe— He said it was just a transfer of power. That all the stories were fake, because powerful women didn’t want powerful men.”

“Where is he?” Quinn demanded. “Are you hiding him? So help me god…” She reached for Marley, the rage building so high she was only dimly aware of the energy following it, carving a path through her and coalescing in her hand, ready for use. But when Marley jerked away, Quinn froze. She took in her sister’s extreme paleness, the terror in her eyes. Saw the white glow over her own skin, realized she could have hurt her, actually hurt her, and felt sick.