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“Yello’,” I said as the call connected, immediately smashing the speakerphone button.
“Jaide? We are waiting for you! Where are you?” Lilly’s high whine echoed through the receiver and I jumped again, calling attention to even more of the Fae fanatics.
“Where am--? Oh shit!” Reality hit me full in the face and Lilly sighed in the overdramatic way that was so her.
Lilly had been Jett and I’s next door neighbor for about three years, and it was only after Jett left that I actually got to know her. Mostly because Jett wasn’t there to call her a ‘bad influence’ and keep her at arm’s length. The way he talked about her you would think Lilly was knocking over banks.
Which she didn’t.
Lilly liked to knock over other things.
Lilly ran what she liked to call a co-op. It really was a theft ring that knocked over grocery stores and redistributed the food to the poor. Like Robin Hood, if he had a gun and a vagina.
“Jaide, don’t tell me you forgot again?” Her whine was gone, she was all business now.
Shit. Shit. This little supermarket spree was not only supposed to feed me for the next week, but Lilly had said she would help me get some descenter I helped her. Something I desperately needed seeing as I couldn’t just waltz into the black market myself. First because I didn’t think it was a real place, and second because that would end with me dumped under a bridge somewhere. I maybe had a day’s worth left, and now I had gone ahead and screwed myself out of getting more.
I needed to be there and I forgot. For the second time. Like an idiot. It had taken me forever just to convince her to let me come along, and for good reason. It was risky to have even an unmated Omega with you in the first place, but I took that one step further into doom. I had no fighting skills and was about as graceful as a giraffe with a rocket strapped to its ass.
“I didn’t forget! I’m on my way!” I was lying, and she knew it. The universe knew it too, which is probably why it decided to give me a big middle finger and send my car grinding loudly as I tried to turn it on.
Her responding growl made it clear she had heard that.
“Jaide. This isn’t funny. We trusted you, and you… you’re sitting there again aren’t you?” I didn’t miss the accusation, mostly because she was right. “He’s not coming back, Jaide. He’s gone. Just like the rest of them. You are becoming about as addicted as the Covenless.”
I cringed. I hadn’t seen any of them since the night Jett had walked through that door, but I never forgot their faces. I never forgot the way they stared at the door with a weird obsessive longing… Goddamnit, she was right.
“I can’t give up on him, Lilly,” I whispered as I stared at the note again. Thankfully the zealots had gone back to screaming at the commuters who were more interested in rushing through the rain.
“You can. You have to. You’ve got two choices, Jaide. Go in, or stay out.”
“That’s what she said,” I said without thinking, as was my usual.
“By the moon, Jaide,” she swore. I could practically see the scowl she had taken to giving me through the phone. “I’m serious. You’re an Omega. You cannot keep taking risks like this if you want to stay alive. Stop pining and get out of there.”
I knew she was trying to help, but just hearing that was sending me into a panic. I clutched the phone, my knuckles white as I stared at the door again.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll make it easy for you. Be here in ten minutes and I’ll get you to where you need to be. If you aren’t here… well, then the only safe place for you will be through that door.”
“Lilly, I--”
“Ten minutes.” She cut me off before the line went dead, leaving me with the chanting crowd and the sound of the rain.
She was right. Sitting here was pointless, and stupid, and was going to get me killed. I needed to get out of here. I turned the key in the ignition again, and this time the engine flared to life, only to cut out a second later.
I tried it again.
Nothing but clicks.
“Okay, what is it universe? You gonna give me away for lying, but then won’t let me get out of here? What do you want?” I yelled that last one to the sky, as if whatever magical sky being up there could hear me. The only response I got was a clunking from the car so loud it sounded like something had broken off it. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to get myself more gas, or even figure out how to fix it.
“Awesome.” Slamming my head into the worn and cracked steering wheel, I exhaled, looking from the phone, to the note, to the stake that wasn’t so much a stake as a piece of my mother’s cedar chest I had broken off for this purpose. You could still see the carving of roses on the side.
Go in, or stay out.
Before I thought any better of it, I reached back for the last of my descenter, dumping it on me as though it would mask more than the pungent aroma of an Omega looking for her mate. I hadn’t showered in a few days, so I was sure I smelled like a walking, talking, Omega vagina. Grabbing the note, I wrapped it around the stake and tried to shove it in my pocket.
It didn’t fit.
