Cursed (The Brookehaven Vampires #4) (31 page)

Seriously, under a shady tree with some cupcakes. If Oliver and I ever got married, that was my plan.

Next, we got to stuff and address envelop
es.

Excuse me while I contain my excitement…

While doing this delightful task, Kiera informed Zoey and me that we would be attending a small bridal expo that was going on at the fairgrounds the following weekend.

When Zoey saw the look on my face at this expo news, she coughed to cover her laughter. I hid my smile.

Other than thinking
Super!
with two sarcastic thumbs up, I recalled the last time I was out at the fairgrounds. It had not gone so well. You know, vampires chasing us and crap like that. Let’s just hope this would be a better experience… Well, I guess I could at least hope for no insane vampires. That would be a bonus.

While Zoey and I continued to address envelopes, Kiera showed off the wedding announcement she had submitted to the paper. It was a cute photo of her and Carter. I wondered when it had been taken. I didn’t ask, but
I couldn’t imagine them going to an actual photographer… I figured his mom or hers had taken it. Or Zoey, she was pretty handy with a camera. Yeah, it had probably been Zoey.

Then, while still filling out the invites, Kiera informed me that the wedding party was all set. “Carter spoke to Tate and asked him to be his best man, so we’re all set.” She beamed.

I froze at Tate’s name. “Tate’s going to be Carter’s best man?” I questioned.

She nodded and smiled big.

“Oh.” I glanced to Zoey. She understood my distress. Tate was really the only other guy I had ever liked. Avery (gag) had stolen him away, twice. Tate and I secretly dated for a short period of time. It was after he and Avery dated, well, in between the two times they dated.

Tate was one of the main reasons Avery and I were no longer friends. You know, other than the fact she was a rumor-spreading slut. She had enough running against her, I didn’t need to add any of her recent escapades.

Tate had broken my heart. I never let him know that, and I never would. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, you know, since he ditched me at the prom to hook back up with Avery. Kind of hard to let something like that slide.

I wondered how Oliver would react to me having to walk down the aisle with this guy, especially if he found out Tate and I had a past. That might not go so well
…

I was suddenly torn between telling Oliver beforehand, and not telling him at all. Then I got a text.

It was Oliver:

Coming back to me yet?

On my way.

I smiled down at my phone as I watched my response send, then I slipped it back into my purse.

I told Kiera and Zoey that I needed to get going. We then began cleaning up the wedding mess we’d made on Zoey’s kitchen table.

The whole process of wedding planning was torturous, but if this was the worst
thing to happen back here in “Treeville,” I’d take it.

“How are you and Rudy doing?” I asked Zoey as I helped her toss the unwanted wedding ideas. They were Kiera’s over-the-top, crazy ideas. The ones Zoey and I had to put a stop to.

“We’re great!” she said, smiling big. She then updated me on their relationship a bit. Nothing too exciting, just moving forward and getting more serious. Then she said, “But enough about me, tell us about this wonderful getaway you and Oliver went on.” They both stopped what they were doing and stared at me, suddenly dreamy-eyed.

“I already did,” I said as I shouldered my purse.

“So…,” Zoey encouraged, “did you guys finally…?”

I felt my cheeks warm. I said nothing and turned for the door. They had their answer, and I was not about to stick around and discuss it.

I hurried down the steps that led from Zoey’s apartment over the antique store down to the street. Once in my car, I rushed back to the apartment.

I found Oliver waiting on one of the bottom steps as I pulled into my spot next to his car. He stood as I got out of my car, and he smiled crookedly as I hurried into his arms.

“I missed you,” I whispered.

“I guarantee I missed you more.”

I looked up at him and smiled wickedly. “Prove it.”

That perfectly crooked smile picked at the corner of his mouth. “You have no idea how badly I would like to do that.”
He kissed me, his cool lips fitting perfectly to mine as if they were made to find each other.

After the
much needed kiss, we headed upstairs. I thought maybe he was giving me a sneak peek of what was to come, but Carter was due home soon, so the kiss was all that I got.

Carter was home soon after we had settled in upstairs. We
were about to watch a movie and cuddle on the couch. I was thinking that maybe once Oliver was distracted by the movie, I could turn his distraction on to me, and entice him into the bedroom. However, I had not anticipated the fact Carter was kind of lonely with Kiera being so involved with wedding stuff. Like Levi had been, Carter was glued to us, and just as badly.

Oliver was right, we needed our own place.

An Avery Issue

Early the next morning, Oliver ran out to get his blood tested. He returned as soon as he was finished, and he forwarded the results to Felix as soon as they arrived in his email.

About an hour later, Felix
showed up with an ointment he’d made for my hand. As long as I kept a bandage over Zane’s “gift,” it didn’t really bother me. However, the cream Felix gave me numbed it completely. It was a welcomed relief to the constant reminder that it was there, no matter how faint.

Unfortunately, Felix also had some rather vomit-inducing news.

“We have a situation,” he said, taking a seat on the couch, causing it to creak under his weight.

“What
is it?” Oliver asked. He took a seat in the chair beside the sofa. It was the swivel chair that had been brought over from my apartment when I’d moved in with Carter.

I sat on the arm of the chair. Oliver held my hand as if our lives depended on it. That scared me.

Felix glanced to me for a moment before his eyes settled on Oliver. “We need to speak in private,” he said.

I frowned at him.

“No,” Oliver told him, squeezing my hand a little tighter.

“You sure?” Felix questioned, his deep voice low and booming.

“Spit it out!” Oliver snapped.

It was my turn to squeeze his hand.

“Avery claims to be pregnant,” Felix said, and I instantly felt myself get sick to my stomach.

“Ok, so?” Oliver responded.

Felix took in a deep breath and exhaled loudly before answering. “She claims you are the father.”

My whole world crumbled in that very moment. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was tight and my stomach was ready to show everyone what I’d had for breakfast. This could not be happening.

“No,” Oliver adamantly protested. “That’s not even possible!”

I was shaking, almost convulsively, while I tried to drag air into my lungs. Oliver turned to me, his hand still tight on mine.

“Laney, it’s not possible,” he said, trying to reassure me. “Even if I had slept with her, which I did
not
, it wouldn’t be possible. Only bonded males can reproduce, and only with their mate.”

My eyes met his. I knew he was feeling the terror
that was ripping through me. I knew he felt my trust slipping, and I knew he felt my pain.

“There is no way it could be mine,” he said, his voice beginning to quaver. “Do you understand me?” His eyes pleaded with me.

I stared at him, trying my hardest to believe that he was telling me the truth.

“I did not have sex with her,” his tone lowered. “I
can’t reproduce with anyone but you. Understand?”

I nodded even though my heart was hurting. I believed him, I truly did, but a part of me feared I could be wrong.

Carter emerged from his room just then, sleepy-eyed and messy hair sticking up everywhere. He was wearing an old pair of basketball shorts, and that’s it.

“What’s going on?” he said as he yawned.

“Avery’s saying she’s carrying Oliver’s baby,” I blurted out.

Carter’s eyes
just about bulged out of his head.

Oliver groaned and leaned forward, resting his elbow on his knee. He covered his face with his free hand.

Felix told me to calm down.

I glared at Felix.

Felix then informed Carter that it was not possible for Oliver to have impregnated Avery.

Exactly in those words.

My stomach turned. I felt breakfast making its way back up, especially when Felix proceeded to update Carter on this big gigantic mess that was now my life.

Carter came over and took a seat on the arm of the couch. “She confronted me the other day. She looked awful. I was having lunch at the brewery with Tate, and she just showed up and—”

“Whoa, wait,” I said. “Tate was here?”

Oliver peeked sideways at me from behind his hand.

“Yeah,” Carter said, eyeing me curiously. “We were having lunch, like I said, and she showed up. She pretended Tate didn’t exist.”

“She didn’t speak to him?” I questioned.

“No, she ignored him. Why?”

I shook my head to let him know I didn’t have a response. I don’t know why, but something didn’t seem right…

“Anyway,” Carter continued, “she asked me if I’d seen Oliver.”

“What did you tell her?” Oliver asked, dropping his hand from his face.

“I told her it was none of her business.”

Felix cleared his throat. “This isn’t the worst of it,” he said.

“How the hell can this be any worse?” I snapped. “Avery’s going around claiming my boyfriend is the father of her baby! Unless it’s true, I don’t see how it can get worse!”

Felix gave me a l
evel stare that clearly told me I needed to calm myself.

I glared at him again.

He ignored me and turned his attention to Oliver. “The levels in your blood indicate our previous troubles are not yet over.”

Okay, shit just got worse.

“What?” Oliver and I said in unison.

“Well, first off, Avery has a bite-connection to you,” Felix told Oliver.

I truly thought I was going to be sick. I mean, holding my stomach and doubling over. A bite-connection pretty much meant Avery was addicted to my boyfriend because he had bitten her, and fed from her. I shuddered. Yeah, breakfast was on its way up.

“Our troubles with Avery have only just begun,” Felix continued. “There is more. The element that
was mixed in with your food supply which caused you to lose yourself and put Delaney at risk, well, those magical properties are back in your system.”

Oliver’s hand slipped from mine. He stared forward with a blank expression. “What does this mean?” he asked, very quietly.

“I do not want to wait to find out,” Felix responded. “I have already made arrangements to have the connection between you and Avery severed. I believe, once the bite-connection is broken, our Avery troubles may disappear, and the traces of the magic should fade, in time. What I would like to know is where they came from.”

I heard what Felix said, but I was focused on only one thing. “How will you sever their connection?” I asked.

“Witches,” Felix responded flatly.

“But I thought witches were the cause. How can they fix it?” I asked.

His sky-blue eyes met mine. “These are Brookehaven Enchantresses, not rogue troublemakers.”

“Why?” Oliver asked before I could say any more. “Why is it back? What caused it?
” He straightened, sitting upright beside me. “There was nothing there before we left, nothing there before…I got that headache.” His deep-green eyes flicked to mine.

“Did you come into contact with anyone
who gave you an unusual feeling?” Felix asked Oliver. Felix rested his forearms across his knees, getting level with Oliver, looking at him directly and very seriously.

“No,” Oliver said, thinking very hard. “I’ve been so focused on Laney that I didn’t pay much attention…” He stared down at the floor. He
also had his forearms resting on his knees, and his hands were clasped. “We encountered so many people… Beverley?” He looked up at Felix. “Beverley wasn’t happy when she discovered that I had bonded.”

“That was after your headache,” I said, finally speaking.

“Perhaps it was something you consumed,” Felix told him.

Oliver went over what he had eaten the day leading up to his headache and where the food had come from. He went over every moment of that day. Well, almost every moment…

“What about the hostess from the restaurant at the hotel?” I asked. They both looked to me. “She was the only person in the entire hotel that wasn’t polite,” I said. “She didn’t smile at all.”

They turned back to each other for a moment, and then Oliver asked as he returned his eyes to mine, “Do you remember her name?”

I shook my head. I could remember the name of the lady from the front desk, and a few of the other employees we’d encountered, but I could not remember the hostess’ name.

In a daze while Felix and Oliver discussed what was going to happen next and when, I stood and walked out the front door of our apartment with my car keys in my hand.

I went down to my car, and I sat there for a while, in the front seat of my Civic, just staring out the windshield.

After some time, Carter lightly knocked on the passenger side window.

I slowly looked over at him as he climbed into the passenger seat and noticed he’d put on a shirt.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his tone low and calm as if he was afraid of my response.

“I don’t know,” I said, staring forward again.

“You going somewhere?” his tone took on a lightness, but I could hear a thread of nervousness.

I was thinking about it. I was thinking about going to Avery’s and killing her. I thought of all the different ways I could go about it, too… “I don’t think so,” I told him.

He nodded and stared straight forward like me.

“Where’s Oliver?” I questioned, my eyes shifting to Carter for a second.

“Upstairs. He’s on the verge of a panic attack. I told him I’d come check on you.”

I nodded. Oliver had to be seriously worried if he was sending Carter after me. And by “worried,” I think he was afraid he would slip up again and hurt me.

Oliver wasn’t capable of hurting me, physically. It was the emotional pain that always frightened me. And this, this crap with Avery, it hurt. Even if it wasn’t true, it still hurt because it was a reminder that he had strayed and wandered into her arms.

I had made myself not think about it. I knew it hadn’t been his doing, but it was always in the back of my mind.

I fought back tears as images of them together tormented me. Even though he was now mine, forever, that crap still hurt. Bad.

The cream Felix had given me was already wearing off. The Demon’s Kiss on the back of my hand was suddenly irritating me, as if it were a reminder that I too was tied to some idiot.

Carter eventually coaxed me out of the car and back upstairs to deal with my fantastic new reality. That was pure sarcasm, in case you were wondering.

Oliver explained what was going to take place and when. Thankfully, Felix had arranged for all of this to end the following afternoon. I was looking forward to any connection any of us had with Avery to be over, but I wasn’t looking forward to the process itself.

“Once the connection is broken, we won’t have to deal with her anymore,” Oliver told me.

My eyes were narrowed on his as he slid his fingers between mine, locking him to me. He brushed his mouth across the backs of my fingers, but it didn’t have its usual result. I was angry, and hurt, and more than anything, regretting that we had come home. This wouldn’t be the end of the issue with Avery, and I knew it, no matter how many times Oliver tried to reassure me otherwise, I knew Avery, and what she was capable of.

That night I had a dream that I caught Oliver and Avery in bed together. I mean full on naked and doing it
!

Needless to say,
I woke with a start.

I glared over at Oliver who was sitting in bed beside me, his laptop in his lap, and the bedside lamp on.

At first he smiled at me, happy to see that I was awake, and then, when I smacked him on the arm, he leaned away from me and yelled, “Hey! What did I do?”

“You did nothing, but I woke up before I could hit you in my dream,” I growled, then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

A Crazed Little Girl

The next afternoon, Oliver drove us across town to a shabby-looking house in a not-so-wonderful area of “Treeville.” His car was
so
out of place. You know, ‘cause it had all of its windows and a solid-color paint job. Oh, and let’s not forget that it had all of its tires, too.

As if dealing with Avery wasn’t going to be enough, I feared the Challenger might be up on blocks by the time we left.

“This will all be over soon,” Oliver said after parking and cutting the engine. The front lawn was dead and the house did not look inviting. “Hey,” Oliver said softly to get my attention.

I turned back to him
, and he leaned across the console and gave me a quick kiss.

I was still hurt and angry,
but I held tight to Oliver’s hand and arm as we walked up the leaf-covered, broken path to the front of the house and up the steps of the front porch.

As he rang the bell at the front door, I held his hand a little tighter. The entire house was a terrible shade of brown, like poop brown, and the front porch housed countless cobwebs and dead potted plants.

The front door opened, and a girl who looked no older than me gave us a very cheery welcome through the tattered screen door.

Oliver opened the creaky screen door, and we entered the house.

“Laney, this is Melody,” Oliver said, introducing me to the girl who had opened the door. “She’s Ezra Morgan’s daughter.”

Melody smiled brightly, her beautiful long red hair sway
ing as she reached for my hand. “It is so nice to meet you, Delaney. My father is very fond of you.”

I took her hand and shook it as I processed the fact Professor Morgan had a daughter,
and
that he was fond of me. That had not been my impression.

I also had no clue why this girl was even there. Yeah, I was confused, to say the least.

“Uh, um, yeah, nice to meet you, too,” I finally said.

Her wide
, green eyes flicked to Oliver for a moment. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You don’t know. Okay, well, my mom was a very powerful enchantress, and she passed her gift along to me. I’m here to help.” She talked kind of fast and smiled brightly when she was finished.

“Oh,” I responded, looking over to Oliver.

Oliver sincerely thanked Melody for helping out with our “situation,” and he appeared almost relieved at the thought of her helping us.

We then followed Melody through the house. Surprisingly, the walls were not the same nasty brown as the outside of the house, but rather a dingy white with dark window coverings—I can’t really say that they were curtains, because I’m pretty sure blankets
aren’t considered curtains. However, the crunchy carpet was definitely the color of poo. Oh, and the house smelled weird. Not like poop, thankfully, but hippie-weird, which, depending on the hippie, I guess might also smell like poo.

We followed Melody down a long hallway. Halfway down that hall, before it disappeared into a creepy darkness, we stopped at a doorway covered by a beaded curtain. The beads only amplified the
hippie-factor.

Oliver held the beads aside so Melody and I could pass through into one of the creepiest and most bizarre scenes I had ever witnessed.

Little did I know, it was going to get a whole lot creepier.

My instincts told me to run, but my boyfriend held tight to my hand and encouraged me to stay. I shot him a look of distress.

“We’ve got to do this,” he whispered.

Yeah, well, we wouldn’t have to if
I’d found the stupid bitch and killed her.

I huffed as we stood just inside the beaded-curtained doorway. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t actually be able to follow through with killing her even if I had been able to hunt the bitch down. But it
was a nice idea while it lasted.

Melody walked right into the room as if it was her home. Maybe it was…

She strolled straight past a round table in the center of the room that was covered by a dark cloth and illuminated by a large flickering candle. There was a round, mat-looking thing in the center of the table that had all kinds of foreign writing and symbols on it. A crystal ball on a gold pedestal sat directly in the center of the “mat.” The crystal ball reminded me of Madam Habitha. I wondered if she would be making an appearance and if she was one of the Brookehaven Enchantresses Felix had spoken of.

There were loose crystals on the table and a bunch of other odd items. Smoke was rising from a bowl on one side of the table, and a large flat stone sat beside the bowl. The stone had a star symbol painted, or maybe carved onto it. The symbol reminded me of something
I’d once seen in a scary movie.

R
ed candles were the only things lighting the room, besides that fat white candle that was sitting on the table and making the crap that it was sitting near even creepier.

The flickering candlelight did nothing to reassure me.

I squeezed Oliver’s hand. He slipped his arm around me and held me closer to him.

A large black circle had been painted on the wood floor just in front of an unlit
, brick fireplace. There was a star painted inside of it, and a bunch of symbols were painted around the inside edge. There were also symbols painted all over the walls and some on the dark window “coverings.”

Wide-eyed, I watched Melody move one of the chairs from the table to the center of the circle near the fireplace. Then she crossed the fairly large room, heading for a door that seemed to lead out to the back.

Natural light filled the room for a moment as she opened the door and stepped outside. She closed the door behind her.

When she was gone, I turned to Oliver. “I don’t like this,” I whispered.

“Neither do I, but I like the idea of Avery having a connection to me even less,” he whispered back.

He had a good point. Before I could respond, screeching erupted from the
back door as Melody came back inside, leading Felix and Avery. Felix had Avery’s hands bound and was carting her into the house, one huge arm around her tiny waist while she kicked and screamed.

Even before I could see that it was her, I knew it was because she had screamed something about her daddy hearing about this. Felix responded to her by telling her that her daddy wanted this just as much as the rest of us
.

I glanced at Oliver. He looked just as baffled as I felt.

Did Avery’s dad know? About everything?

As Felix righted Avery and set her on her feet, she continued to kick at him and scream. She was trying to hit Felix with her hands tied together. He then lifted her and dumped her in the chair
sitting in the center of the circle. She immediately tried to scramble away. With a single, large arm, he grabbed her and tossed her back in the chair.

Melody
moved closer, placing herself just outside the circle. She raised her arm out straight with her wrist bent and her palm facing Avery. Melody muttered something under her breath.

Felix released Avery. He walked away from her and took up a spot near the
back door, where he stood like he was prepared for anything to happen.