Fading Amber Read online

  Caleb never had much shame when it came to flirting, and waking up from a coma only three days prior hadn’t weakened his game. However, that talent was getting me out of the hot seat right now, so I kept quiet.

  With a blink, Linda looked at me as if surprised I was still there. “Well, go on, Sam. Don’t be later than you need to be.”

  I slid by Caleb while our eyes locked for an eternal second. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  “No problem,” he replied, and our fingertips connected for the briefest touch.

  Though I saw Caleb yesterday, it felt like much longer, maybe due to all that had happened during the turkey day of doom. Things were tense between us now because of obligations and secrets we had to keep, and being this close to each other was nothing short of sweet torture.

  Our empathic link had turned us into a pair of conjoined twins, moving in sync to a beat the beings inside us orchestrated. We were even beginning to dress alike, or maybe that was due to the employee dress code at our job.

  By the time I reached the café, I was past the respectable limit of tardy, and Alicia Holloway, fellow serving wench and classmate, had no qualms about telling me about it. She had every reason to be stressed out. Our very pregnant café manager only showed up to work every lunar eclipse, leaving us baristas to man the battle stations on our own.

  Angry as Alicia was, it was hard to take a person seriously who looked like a brown Precious Moments doll. Not that I had room to talk, but I just wanted to pinch her cheeks and play with her twisty braids.

  I’d been acting suspect to everyone and I needed to make amends somehow, so I might as well start with her. She recently got her learner’s permit and I used that fact to my advantage. Promising her driving lessons smoothed back some of her ruffled feathers, and we were able to work in civil harmony.

  “You know Malik Davis ran away from home,” she prompted, pulling gingerbread cookies out of the oven.

  “I heard,” I grumbled.

  “I saw the police come by the school, but no one’s seen him,” she added.

  In actuality, no one had seen the real Malik Davis in over three months, but that was something only Caleb, Tobias, and I knew about. I doubted anyone would find Malik’s body—Tobias was good at making things disappear, including himself.

  Thinking of Tobias made me thankful for the memory loss. Just for a few glorious minutes, I could forget the Big Bad who hid in the shadows, namely a shape-shifting incubus with a score to settle. I hadn’t seen Tobias in hours, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t around. He could be anywhere, become anyone, what with being the ultimate master of disguise and manipulation and all. If he could go so far as to disguise himself as my dead classmate and live with his family, then nothing was off limits.

  “I’m sure he’ll show up eventually,” I assured as I chugged down a shot of espresso.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked. “I mean, I know you and Malik were close and all that.”

  I almost spat out my drink. “What? No we weren’t. Malik was always pushing up on me, not the other way around. If you haven’t noticed, I already have a boyfriend.” I pointed in the direction of the music department.

  “I’ve noticed, but have you?” she asked, and I didn’t ignore the venom in her tone. It threw me off guard to have this usually happy little cherub catch an attitude, so I called her on it.

  “Don’t tell me you have a crush on Malik, do you?”

  “No!” she said a little too quickly.

  I gasped. “Omigod, you do!”

  “Shut up. I do not.” Her face bunched in an adorable pout as she continued wiping down the work area.

  Oh, Tobias was gonna pay for this. Not only had he been masquerading as one of the biggest man-whores on campus, he managed to enchant every female in school, including the trusting sophomore who was now giving me the side-eye. At least I knew the root of the problem wasn’t entirely my fault, so I could work with a clear conscience.

  After we shut down, the employees piled up at the entrance while Linda did the last minute sweep of the store.

  We huddled in the vestibule, watching the lights in each department go out one by one. My eyes stayed glued to Caleb who spoke to me in code without moving his lips. I understood every word; I could feel the energy, the unexpressed emotion rushing off his body in waves, and being in cramped quarters with a dozen other people made the vibe that much more naughty.

  His hands rested at his sides, clenching and unclenching in a strange rhythm. Color drenched his eyes, the sentient being behind them adding his two cents in our nonverbal conversation. Caleb was having a time making Capone behave, if the constant fidgeting was anything to go by. My own sentient being was eager as well, and if Lilith had her way, Caleb and I would be mated officially by now instead of this song and dance we had going on.

  When Linda returned, we all filed out into the cold night. The crew scattered to their cars as I stood under the awning, waiting for the blue Chrysler that wasn’t there. Julie Marshall was a bona fide soccer mom, but her chauffeuring duties were getting rusty these days.

  Soft flurries fell at a slant across my vision and the world blurred into patches of gray. It wasn’t cold enough for the snow to really stick, but a thin overlay of white covered the empty parking lot.

  Alicia’s dad waited in his SUV by the curb and the engine revved to life when he spotted her.

  “Remember, driving lessons!” Alicia yelled, or rather threatened, as she climbed into the passenger’s side. The van pulled away and more cars fled the premises before I could ask for a ride.

  As I was on the brink of losing all feeling in my toes, Caleb drifted next to me. Flurries speckled his hair and his ears and cheeks were glowing bright red. Tall and lanky as he was, Caleb was a cutie, although a few minutes inside a tanning bed wouldn’t kill him. If I squinted, I’d lose him in the snow.

  “You coming or what?” he asked.

  “I’m waiting for my mom,” I answered.

  “She’s not coming.”

  I flinched, and not from the cold. “What?”

  “I called her an hour ago and told her I was taking you home.”

  “Did you now? And she agreed?” That didn’t sound like Mom at all.

  “Yep. She trusts me with you. She knows I won’t do anything reckless. Plus, she’s got us clocked.” He pulled up his coat sleeve and checked his watch. “We have fifteen—no, thirteen minutes before she’s coming after me with a pair of hedge clippers and a can of kerosene. ‘Homemade birth control,’ she says.”

  Now that sounded more like Mom.

  “Come on. It’s cold out here. Second-guess all this in the car.” He led me to his Jeep, which sat in the far end of the shopping center. His hand slipped over mine; his thumb working the circulation back into my fingers.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I glanced up to a pair of violet eyes that spoke of concern. “Not really,” I mumbled. “Did you pick me up from school today?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how I got home.”

  He looked confused. “How did you get to work?”

  “I took a cab,” I said while my mind continued to work in the reverse gear. “I don’t know much before that, because I blacked out again. I woke up in my room, on the ceiling.”

  He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me carefully. “Really? Is Lilith okay?”

  I shrank back, appalled. “Lilith? Shouldn’t you be worried about me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get to that in a minute. Did she tell you what hurt her?” Before I could ask, he continued. “The last time Capone was out on the town, he did the same thing.” To show his point, he pushed the hair out of his face and revealed the bruised lump on his forehead, one of many battle scars from the Thanksgiving demon war. “You know when you’re feeling hurt and vulnerable you curl up in a ball? Well, the spirits tend to climb and do this weird perching thing when they’re really scared. They like being in high p
laces and observing. Gives them a sense of control when something goes wrong. So, I gotta ask, what went wrong with Lilith? What freaked her out?”

  “I don’t know. She won’t tell me.” I rubbed my face in large circles. “Oh, and how about this, my bracelet was cut off. I found it on my front door. Angie’s gonna be so pissed. And Mom is gonna kill me.” I showed Caleb my wrist and the twist-tie I stole from the breadbox to fasten the bracelet back together.

  Caleb appraised my craftwork then centered his attention on me. “What’s the last thing you remember before the blackout?”

  “I remember sitting at my table at lunch then I saw . . . ugh, I can’t remember. It’s like right there on the tip of my tongue.” I scrunched up my face in concentration, almost straining my muscles to get one flash of a memory. Then one hit me. “You put olive oil around my school. When did you do that?”

  “Oh. Yeah, right,” he admitted. “Saturday night. Got my brothers to help me out. I even covered the area around the store so we won’t have to worry about Tobias showing up here. Are you mad?” His plump bottom lip pushed out in a pout, begging me to crush it between my teeth like a ripe grape.

  “No. One less problem for me to worry about.” With that thought in mind, I surveyed the parking lot. Everything seemed fine, but that was always when weird stuff happened. “We have to be careful. Tobias is still out there.”

  While he opened the car door for me, I noticed a huge dent on the side that reached all the way to the front bumper. The curve around the wheel was crushed inward; the black paint had flaked off, exposing the metalwork underneath. “Somebody got you good. That sucks; you just got your car back from the shop.”

  He looked to where I pointed and frowned. “Yeah, I have to take it in for another paint job.”

  “Did this happen today? Do you think Tobias is wrecking cars again?”

  He stared off for a minute, his brows furrowed in deep thought. “No. This time I think it was my fault.”

  “And you want to drive me home?” I joked, but there was nothing funny about his answer, or the lack thereof. I knew his evasive tactic by name; the vague responses, the omission of important information. When he climbed into the driver’s side, I asked, “Were you drunk?”

  “When have you ever seen me drink, Sam?”

  “Then what happened? Stop being so secretive.”

  He put his key into the ignition then stopped. “Your blackout, it was sometime after one o’clock, right?”

  I paused, then replied, “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “It was around the same time I got a weird feeling while driving.” He started the engine then pulled out of the parking space, leaving me staring at his profile with a slacked jaw.

  Sick of the suspense, I blurted out, “What feeling? Did you have a blackout, too? Did you have an accident?”

  “I’m not sure. I was on my way to work, and when I got out of the car, that dent was there. I have no idea how it got there, and it wasn’t there when I left the house. I arrived on time, but something was off, you know?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now, and I’m still freaked out about it, especially after what you told me. You know what this means, don’t you? We’re sharing experiences now. Our link is building, growing stronger, demanding completion. We’ll have to make a decision soon about our future.”

  Whoa! Now was not the time to talk about something so . . . forever. Less than a year ago, the thought of having a steady boyfriend gave me hives, but now I had something far more dangerous to avoid. There would come a time where we would complete the bonding process by mating, but the effects were irreversible. There would be no trial separation for us, no divorce, no irreconcilable differences. Caleb and I were in it ’til death or demonic madness, whichever came first.

  “Do we have to do this now?” I asked.

  “No, not now, or tomorrow, or next week. Just letting you know that the topic will be coming up again very soon and we need to address it. I need to know where your head’s at.”

  “My head?” He was the one acting sketchy with his repetitive, “It’s dangerous to be near you, but I’ll drive you home” nonsense. Duplicity, thy name is Caleb.

  “It’s not about you anymore and it’s not about me,” he said. “It’s a plural thing now. Every decision has to be for the benefit of both of us. We may not like it, it may not be what we want, but it’s what we need.”

  “Stability,” I said.

  “Stability,” he parroted. That was the one thing he craved more than food, more than human energy, more than me. He never had it growing up and attaining a semblance of it was now his life’s mission. After everything that’s happened between us, I couldn’t blame him one bit.

  Keeping in the spirit of stability, I caught him up on the three weeks he missed while he was in the hospital. I rambled on about school, the Malik scandal, and how everyone, including my best friend hated me and Caleb listened attentively. The tension melted away and we behaved like a normal couple again with no outside interferences. When he pulled into my neighborhood, I wished I lived farther away from work, maybe out of state. I wasn’t ready to let him go.

  Christmas blossomed to life on my street. Flashing lights outlined houses, and plastic ornaments populated the lawns. It would only be a matter of time before my mom turned from the loving and somewhat paranoid guardian into the holiday-crazed psycho who came with the season. I could see the beginning signs of the transformation as we pulled up to my house.

  Phase one: the door.

  The wreath over our door was a hand-crafted monstrosity that she ordered from one of those home shopping channels. The thing was the size of a life raft with enough lights on it to cause seizures. Staring at that blinking eyesore from the street, I knew that the fever was quickly setting in.

  A black sedan parked in front of my house. We recognized the make and model, and the tinted windows and New York license plate were a dead giveaway.

  Caleb and I groaned simultaneously, and our joint reaction would’ve been cute if it weren’t for such an ugly circumstance. David Ruiz had been sent by the higher ups in the Cambion world to keep tabs on Caleb and his brothers. His presence reminded me of the conflict we would soon face with that powerful family.

  Caleb focused straight ahead, drilling a hole into Ruiz’s car with his embittered glare. As unhappy as Caleb was to have a run-in with the private eye, I was even less enthused to see him snuggling up to my mom. No wonder she agreed to let Caleb pick me up. She got a little distracted when a guy was in her life, a rare occasion, but one that had proven dangerous in the past.

  Caleb parked behind Ruiz’s car and cut off the engine, leaving an overwhelming silence between us.

  He checked his watch. “Forty seconds to spare,” he said with forced humor.

  “Good. Let’s use our time wisely.” I removed my seat belt, leaned in and kissed him before he could stop me.

  “Sam,” he moaned, but I could tell he was enjoying the affection. He needed something to take the edge off, too. Soon, he gave up the fight and placed his hand on the back of my head and pulled me closer.

  The kiss deepened and with each caress of his lips, hot electricity sizzled on my tongue like Pop Rocks. Words could never properly describe the act of feeding. Our lip-locks alone were atomic, but the transfer of our energy made each kiss straight supernova. I could feel its current pass from his mouth to mine, the give-and-take; the dizziness of being drained and the high of drawing new life into my system.

  I didn’t understand the consumption process, nor could I understand how I could now see events that Caleb was too young to remember. I simply enjoyed the ride and watched his past flash behind my eyelids in a highlight reel. It came in no particular order, but I understood them all, because Caleb knew what each moment meant to him when they happened. There were some memories that I could’ve done without, like the faces of girls who shared his company . . . and his bed. I tried not to dwel
l on those moments and allowed them to pass once the energy burned off. However, the ones of him taking a shower were forever in my secret stash.

  Just before the windows began to fog up, he pulled me away. “Okay, Sam. That’s enough for now.”

  “Sorry. I’m just . . .”

  “Hungry?” he guessed.

  I nodded. I hadn’t consumed energy in who knew how long and I didn’t want to feed on any strangers tonight. Caleb was a safe food source, equipped with an intimacy reserved only for me. Munching on random males still made me feel grimy, so I only did that in emergencies.

  “Come on then. Our time is up.” He unhooked his seat belt and climbed out of the car.

  I did the same and we walked side by side across the crunchy grass to my door. When we made it to the porch the door flew open and Mom stood on the other side, wearing a pair of old sweats. Her brown curls stuck to her face, blood rushed to her pale, freckled cheeks, and she sounded out of breath as if she ran to the door. My stomach lurched at what she could’ve been doing, especially with Ruiz inside. And she thought I needed supervision.

  “Right on time. I’m impressed. Come on in. You can give me a hand.” Mom waved us inside and hurried to the dining room to our right.

  Caleb and I stared at each other for a brief moment, shrugged, then stepped inside. The foyer was flooded with boxes in various sizes, no doubt taken from the spare room that doubled as a storage shed. Words like fragile, outside lights, and garland were etched across each box in black marker.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’m getting the house ready for company. Need to make sure everything is set.”

  “Christmas isn’t for another couple of weeks,” I argued.

  “I know, but I’m feeling the itch. I want a whole new look this year and I’m going for something more traditional. A Norman Rockwell theme.”

  I wasn’t sure why the change bothered me, but it did. We always had the same theme every year, a constant I could rely on. “No Santa’s workshop?”

  “Nope. I figured it’s time for a change. It was nice when you were a baby, but I want something a bit more sophisticated. Also, I want the house to look presentable for Evangeline when she comes to town. I spoke to her this afternoon, and she says she’s coming to see you and was thinking about staying for the holiday. You know how flashy she is.”