9. Mabel
Chapter 9
We drive a circuitous path through town, taking turns seemingly at random, but to my surprise, we end up at the guys' apartment building.
"You sure we want to come back here?" I ask. "What if they're hunting for you too?"
"Two reasons," Zeb says. "One, nobody followed the car, and two, we have enough security on this place to rival my family compound."
"That's a lot," Huck translates for me.
Zeb smiles. "If any traders try to come after you here, they won't make it past the first floor."
I wonder if we should have brought Tamira with us after all. But then, doing that would still put a target on her back.
If there isn't one already.
Phineas pulls into the covered circle drive at the front of the building. "Get her inside. I'll keep watch out here for a bit."
The others nod, and Huck opens the door.
I don't move. Maybe I'm being silly—he looks like a human mountain and he's a Jekyll besides—but I'm suddenly worried for the somber guy. "Are you going to be okay?"
He glances over his shoulder at me, and there's an unexpected trace of softness in his eyes. "I'll be fine. Go."
A quivery, warm feeling tangles in me, but I try to hide it as I nod and climb from the car. Huck motions fast for me to get into the building, while Zeb is already waiting at the door.
The lobby is far from empty when we go inside. Between the elevator and the door, there's a pair of women chatting about something on their phones, a guy leaning against the door to the stairwell texting, and two more working from laptops in the lounge to my right.
As we pass each of them, their eyes flick to us and they give Zeb a brief nod. The women don't even break the flow of their conversation to do it.
"They're all your security?" I ask Zeb while we get in the elevator.
"Plus more watching the cameras and stationed at various points outside."
"Are they… human?"
He shakes his head. "Supernatural mercenaries on loan from Cerberus."
I blink at the name. "The wolf shifters? You know them?"
"Of them, yes. Enough to make contact with their people." He gives me a reassuring look. "Trust me when I say the folks who work for them all have very vicious opinions about traders. A number of them have lost family to the bastards. We don't have to worry about them selling us out."
"Especially with what Cerberus would do to them if they did," Huck adds.
I swallow hard, hoping they're right. I've never met the three wolf shifters known as Cerberus—I've never even met anyone who has—but gods, the stories are extreme enough.
We ride back up to their floor, and I note yet again how Huck doesn't quite reflect the same as Zeb or I do in the mirrored door. Neither of them says a word about it, though, and when we get to the apartment, Zeb unlocks the door, glances around, and then gives a brief nod to Huck. "Stay with her, yeah? I'm going to make some calls."
"I need to do that too," I tell him. At his questioning look, I debate how much to admit, but at this point, I'm not sure my secrecy will help much. "I have some contacts who work against the traders. Rescue their victims. Stuff like that. They depend on me and my home, and they need to know it's not available."
"You work with the underground?" Zeb pauses. "Wait, you run La Fleur, don't you? That's—" A startled scoff leaves him. "That's what your house… Oh, shit."
I wait for him to finish and then nod. "I need to let my associates know what's going on."
"Of course." Zeb motions for me to go.
I can feel him watching me while I take out my phone, and a moment passes before he disappears into the next room to make his own calls.
No one is happy to hear about the fire, and not just because of the traders. La Fleur is a safe haven for any number of groups passing through.
The traders screwed over more than me and Creepy when they burned it.
After I finally get done reaching out to all my contacts, I call Tamira. She's made it safely to Hattiesburg after following a twisting route north, and she assures me she's going to keep going. She's got family in Nashville who embrace Southern hospitality like it's a religion, and they've already got a room ready for her to stay in for as long as she needs.
I think I take my first deep breath in ages at the sheer relief of knowing she made it out of town okay.
When I get done, Zeb is still in the other room on the phone. Huck has stayed nearby, though, hovering by the front door and keeping an eye on the windows like he's concerned the traders will have learned how to fly.
Or maybe he's just watching for drones.
The thought isn't comforting, and I make a beeline for the curtain nearest to me, tugging it closed tighter.
"Well, that's hardly helpful, isn't it?" Zeb snaps sarcastically in the other room. He paces to the door and shuts it, never glancing our way.
I sink down onto the sofa. It's a stiff seat, all satin fabric and wooden armrests. It probably costs more than my car.
Assuming my car is still intact, anyway.
Creepy shifts in my mind, not liking all the levels of uncertainty we're suddenly facing. Her preference is simply to eat or kill anything that bothers her, and right now, we can't do either.
The stiff cushions give a little beneath me as Huck sits down nearby.
Silence reigns.
It grates on me as the seconds pass, like the stillness is turning into needles that poke at me with knowledge of every damn thing that's gone wrong over the past twelve hours.
"So…" I say, unable to stand the quiet any longer. Ordinarily, it wouldn't bother me.
Today is nothing resembling ordinary.
"You all have a lot of contacts." I glance at Huck, waiting to see what he'll say.
"They do."
My curiosity piques. "But not you?"
He turns to me, those icy-blue eyes still so worried, and I swear the concern is for me. "You liked your home, didn't you? It was nice?"
Fuck, this isn't where I wanted the conversation going.
"Yeah." I shrug and hope he'll drop it.
Huck just nods thoughtfully as he turns back to watch the windows and door. "I grew up in a cage."
Okay, not where I saw that going either. "Um, you did?"
He nods again. "A wealthy man held me in one. He bought me from some traders when I was small. I don't remember a home before the cage."
"I'm sorry."
Huck shrugs like the past doesn't really matter. "It wasn't so bad. Not all the time. There were others. Not Hydes or Jekylls. A snow leopard shifter. A pair of sprites. Rare creatures. He had us locked in a secret room, but when he wasn't there, we could talk and tell jokes and things. The snow leopard—" A fond chuckle escapes him. "She was a bit older than most of us. Besides the sprites, anyway. She liked to tell us stories at night to help us go to sleep. Like a family, you know?" He falls silent for a few moments. "Sometimes he'd bring his friends back to see us, though. He liked to make me change into my Hyde for them. Or do… other things."
Nausea rises and Creepy snarls as the pair of us read every possible horrible implication into those two small words.
Huck doesn't look away from the windows. "Zeb says the man treated us all like carnival attractions."
Gods. I search for absolutely anything to say after all that, and I come up drier than the Sahara.
Suddenly Zeb's earlier words return to me. He said they "picked up" Huck, like they'd just found him somewhere. It'd seemed an odd way to phrase it at the time. "Were Zeb and Phineas the ones who, um…"
Huck nods. "They got me out."
There's a tight quality to the response, and I think I know the answer before I even ask. "And the others? Your—" Gods help me. "Your family?"
Huck is quiet for a long time. "When Zeb and Phineas broke in, the rich man started killing them. He was trying to kill all of us so that no one could take us from him. Phineas tried to save more, but… I was the only one he could heal in time."
I've got no words, but in the back of my mind, Creepy is mumbling about her desire for tasty justice, along with how she wants to snuggle our sad Jekyll who almost died.
Shivers radiate through me. He's not our Jekyll.
But I still reach over, gingerly placing a hand to his. "I'm so sorry."
Huck freezes. I worry suddenly that I've crossed a line. If he's been through half the things I fear he might have been, touch might not be comfortable for him.
I start to pull back. "Sorry. I?—"
His other hand comes to rest on mine, stopping me. For a moment, neither of us moves, like we're frozen on the precipice of something I don't really understand.
"Thank you," he whispers.
Creepy rises up in me like a wave pushing at the flood wall of my control, and in spite of myself, a trace of her green tone tinges my hand while my nails shift until they're partway to being black and sharp like hers.
Huck's breath catches, but a smile tugs at his lips. Icy-white skin lacking any trace of color ghosts around where my hand rests, and his fingers elongate just a bit.
The shivers inside me get stronger. Warmer. Tingly in a way I've never felt. It makes me want to move closer. Maybe to let Creepy come out entirely.
Maybe just to hold him and let him hold me.
Because the tidal wave of this situation is starting to drag me under, and I'm having trouble remembering why it's a bad idea to let that happen.
I force a breath into my lungs, and I pull back. "So you and Zeb…" I tuck my hand into my lap. "You're… together?"
A second passes before Huck gives a small shrug. "He's there when the nightmares wake me. And I… I like touch. And other things. It's nice when it's Zeb. Safe."
Gods, if that rich bastard isn't dead already, I'll find him and gut him without even needing Creepy to show up.
Huck suddenly looks at me, that wary concern back in his eyes. For some reason, though, I swear it's like he's worried I'll draw farther away. "Does your Hyde have a name?"
I hesitate, thrown by the shift in the conversational direction. "Um, yeah. She's, uh…" Self-consciousness pushes at me. It's a family name, and there's no reason it should be strange to me.
But then, I haven't shared it with anyone of my own kind before.
"Creepy," I admit finally. "Creepy Mabel is… well, her name but… my Hyde. You know."
He nods, but he doesn't look like he fully understands.
"What's yours?" I prompt.
"Puck."
I wait, but he doesn't add anything more. "Just Puck? Like… Shakespeare?"
Huck shrugs. "I guess. The rich man called me Huck and called my Hyde Puck. He never said why."
A pained sort of horror sinks over me. Creepy Mabel's full name is a sign of who and what the two of us are to each other. But Huck doesn't know where he comes from. He has no family name. No past. No history rooting him in the world.
Just that secret room and that cage and that bastard I hope is dead.
Aching for all that was taken from him, I want to reach out all over again, but I stop myself. I know what he said about touch, but getting close to Huck—getting close to any of them—is just going to be painful when they all go.
"Do you like that?" I ask instead.
He seems confused. "Like…?"
"Your name. And your Hyde's name. Do you two like them?"
His brow furrows. "No one's ever asked us that."
All of a sudden, I kind of want to smack Zeb and Phineas. For gods' sakes, a monster named their friend. A real monster, not just someone supernatural. And those two never thought to ask if Huck or Puck wanted to choose something different?
Before I can figure out what to say, though, Huck nods to himself. "We do. We… Zeb says our names come from troublemakers, and"—a bright grin flashes across Huck's face—"we like that."
My words still fail me, but now it's for a totally new reason. Seeing him grin like that, all playful and devilish…
Gods, he's beautiful.
"We don't want that for you, though," Huck amends, turning to me.
"What?"
"Trouble." He inches his hand toward me again.
I can't help myself. I let him take mine, even if it just makes the tingling shivers start up all over again. "Why not?"
He looks down, shrugging one shoulder like he's searching for the right words.
"Because you're our fulcrum." Zeb's voice comes from the bedroom doorway, startling me. "Our center to balance us all."
I turn to him, alarmed. "I'm—what?"
His brow rises like he's just waiting for me to agree.
And that's insane. I push away from the sofa, retreating from them both. "You're… I'm not…"
Still sitting on the couch, Huck nods like he's confirming what Zeb said. "You're our mate."
I gape at them, utterly lost for words. It's not that I don't know what they're talking about. Of course I do. Dad always talked about how Mom was the fulcrum for him, and she'd always gotten this secretive, loving smile when he said it. They said they'd been destined for one another, like fated mates among the shifters, but with a quality unique to Jekylls and Hydes.
Because for our kind, finding our mates gives us more than the comfort of not being alone in a world that can't really understand what we are. It stabilizes us, in a way. And at the core of that stabilization is the fulcrum. One member of the mate group who is like the center of a teeter-totter, keeping all sides in balance.
My parents had been rare. Most of our kind were polyamorous and formed bonds with several mates. But Mom and Dad only had each other, and when I was a child, their stories of love at first sight, of just knowing they were meant for one another, had always seemed so romantic. Creepy had practically decorated the inside of my skull with little black hearts every time Mom or Dad told us how they met.
But they'd been the two rational adults who'd raised me. Smart, stable people who never did anything more impulsive than ordering a pizza on a Friday night. As I got older, I never really believed they'd simply known they were meant for each other from day one. Sure, it was a sweet story, but rational people didn't operate that way. They didn't change their career plans and their living situation and fucking everything, all in an instant, just because they met someone.
But this… the way these two are looking at me right now…
Gods help me, it's madness. "You can't seriously believe I'm—" I choke. "For both of you? That… We just met, for the gods' sakes. You can't?—"
"All three of us," Huck corrects me with a nervous smile.
"We felt it from the moment we saw you," Zeb says. "Phineas did from the moment he even picked up your scent. Are you saying you don't feel it too? The pull to us? Like magnets in your skin, making you want to draw closer and closer until there's no space between us at all?"
My mouth moves. I can't make a sound.
But he's not wrong, either. My body aches for them. Creepy wants to wrap herself up in them. I've felt a pull to all three of these men since the instant I saw them at the bar, and that hasn't faded, not for a moment since.
Zeb smiles like he sees something of the truth in my face. "We feel it. But you have to choose it too. You know that's how it goes, whether it's one mate or five or three. It's still up to you, Mabel. You and… Creepy, was it? All you and your Hyde have to do is accept us and, well…" He splays his hands like what he's proposing is as easy as can be.
A choked noise escapes me, and my head shakes of its own accord. "I can't… I don't even know you. You don't know me. We can't just…"
Uproot my life. Change their lives. None of this works or makes sense, and meanwhile, traders attacked me, my house is a charred ruin several miles away, everything I knew might be ash, and…
And I could lose them too. Like my parents. Like everyone. I could open my heart and end up alone just like I've been for… for…
The room is spinning. Fuck, I can't even breathe. I've got to get out of here.
I race for the door.