Quest (Shifter Island Book 4) Page 2

  As if somebody had died. Or was dying.

  Allison stepped carefully back. “I’m really gonna need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Oh, Allie.”

  “Jules. For heaven’s sake.”

  Julie hung her head. “I thought it was gonna be you,” she said rapidly, to her shoes rather than to Allison. “I always thought it was gonna be you. You know—first. That you were gonna be first.”

  “First what?”

  “To get married.”

  Julie’s head bobbed up, and she peered earnestly at Allison as if to say, There. Now it’s all out in the open. And as if she expected Allison to haul off and clock her—hit her so hard she’d go flying through the changing room’s flimsy door, out into the middle of the salon, a scene worthy of a reality show. A scene that would appear in all the promos for next week’s episode.

  “Marry who?” Allison asked, bewildered.

  Tears started to flood down Julie’s cheeks. “Oh, Allie…”

  I’ve lost my mind, Allison thought. Or everyone else has. Or maybe I’m imagining all this. Maybe it’s all just…

  She began to wish that her bosses had said “no” to her vacation request. That they’d pointed to the growing pile of work she needed to do, the meetings she needed to attend, the clients she needed to contact. That they’d told her there was no way they could let her leave town for a week.

  Back home, things made sense. And people very seldom cried big crocodile tears, unless they were four years old.

  “I-I should—” she stammered.

  “When I first met Matt,” Julie whispered, “you already knew him. Mr. Fantastic. You guys—you were so perfect for each other. And I just… I thought Matt was nice. Remember, I told you he seemed nice? Our first date didn’t go too great, but I said I’d go out with him again. I thought it was nothing huge. But you and him—that was huge.”

  Him.

  Luca.

  The gorgeous guy she’d bumped into at her favorite sandwich shop near campus. The one she’d felt magnetically drawn to, the one who’d prompted her to skip the rest of that day’s classes—and a lot of classes during the weeks that followed—because she couldn’t bear to walk away from him.

  The one who’d wanted her to go live on an island somewhere, away from her family and friends.

  “Jules, that was four years ago,” Allison said quietly. “I haven’t even heard from him since then.”

  “But you were so right for each other.”

  “Julie—”

  Suddenly, Allison was glad for the changing room’s lack of mirrors, which meant she didn’t have to look at her own face, that she couldn’t see how she’d responded to Julie’s statement.

  All the mirrors were outside, in the main room of the salon. In here, the lights were a little dimmer, and the walls were a soft, soothing shade of pale blue. The same blue as the sky outside, Allison thought. Washed out a little by the late-summer heat.

  She forced herself to think of the sky as she pushed her bare feet into her shoes. To forget what Julie had just said. She didn’t want to think about what had happened with Luca four years ago, no matter how completely right being with him had seemed at the time.

  That was then, and this was now.

  Her companion for the wedding would be a cousin of the groom, a nice, outgoing guy she’d met only briefly. Evan? No, Ernie.

  No doubt people would gossip about them, ask if they were a couple.

  SKY, she told herself. Think sky. Birds. Big fluffy clouds.

  But visions of thunderstorms started to intrude. Lightning, thunder, maybe some hail.

  Golf-ball-sized hail. High winds. Roads being flooded out, power lines falling. Maybe a tornado.

  “Ohhhhhh, Allllllisonnnnnn,” Julie moaned.

  A tornado—one that would sweep her away, to somewhere else, like Dorothy—seemed like a good idea.

  She wasn’t able to break away to her hotel room until almost an hour later, after Julie and the bridesmaids had all agreed to go their separate ways for a while so they could catch up on “real life” before dinner.

  Julie had managed to wipe away her tears, and although she went on looking mournful, she didn’t mention Four Years Ago to the others; all she did was send Allison a series of increasingly regretful looks.

  Dinner? Dinner was going to be a real treat.

  Allison felt wiped out as she walked through the lobby of the little all-suites hotel five minutes’ drive from Julie and Matt’s new townhouse. There was a knot in her stomach, a mini-black hole that seemed to be sucking all the energy out of her.

  Matt’s cousin Ernie was part of it. He seemed nice enough, definitely someone she wasn’t cringing at being paired with, but he wasn’t someone she’d choose, either from a dating site or, say, out at a bar. He was just… wrong.

  They were all just… wrong.

  It’d been almost a year since her last attempt at a serious relationship, the latest in a line of crash-and-burns. She worked too hard, those guys had all told her. She ought to kick back more, give herself a chance to relax.

  But she couldn’t do that, not if she hoped to become a partner at RhodesJanisCo, the state’s most talked-about PR agency, one that—although it was less than ten years old—was on the fast track to national attention. Allison was one of their Hot Half-Dozen, the junior members of the team who could guarantee impressive results: new contracts, more media attention, happy clients.

  She jabbed the elevator button impatiently, then stepped back to wait.

  Partner by the time she turned 30—that was her goal. Her own loyal stable of clients.

  There was no place in that formula for someone else.

  Even though she ached to be able to walk through the front door of her home at the end of a long day and find someone waiting for her. Someone who was delighted to see her, and would greet her with warm, passionate kisses.

  Someone who’d smile at her across the dinner table, snuggle with her on the couch to watch some TV, then sweep her into his arms and carry her off to bed.

  Not only wasn’t there anyone waiting for her in the hotel room, it smelled a little of disinfectant, some lemon-scented, bleachy kind of thing—bathroom cleanser, no doubt.

  Frowning, Allison pulled the curtains aside to see if she could open the window, but it was set in place. The room was already too cool for her to crank up the AC. For a moment she was tempted to break the window—to grab one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs and throw it through the glass, like she’d seen people do in the movies.

  Then she had a vision of the chair bouncing off the window and smacking her in the head.

  She’d have an enormous purple bruise to go along with that Not Pale Daffodil dress. Or maybe a concussion.

  Swell.

  Glad, at least, for the temporary peace and quiet, the respite from her friends’ giggling and squealing and fretting and big dime-sized tears, she hurried to take off her stiff, crisp (and now kind of wrinkled) outfit. She thought about the jeans and t-shirt, then went for the battered sweats she’d brought to sleep in if the room’s AC was too uncooperative.

  They felt good against her skin, warm and soothing, so she was finally content and at ease when she sat down cross-legged on the bed and reached for her laptop.

  Mostly content, anyway.

  Now, there was a different sensation deep inside her, one that was both very strange… and somehow familiar.

  It made her lift her head and look around.

  Then she groaned at herself, squirmed a little to get more comfortable, and settled down to work.

  Three

  Luca had only been in the city for a few minutes when he began to wish that it had rained—and not just a mild shower; he had in mind a cloudburst that would wash away all the bad smells that turned his stomach more and more the farther he walked. Exhaust from the many cars and trucks, rotting garbage, asphalt baking under the summer sun…

  How these people could stand to
live here, he had never understood. And this wasn’t even a particularly large city. There were many that were far bigger, far more crowded.

  He tried to distract himself with bits of pleasure here and there. The window of a florist’s shop, full of blossoms of every possible color. The aroma of… yes, it was pizza, something he’d enjoyed very much during his time of Involvement.

  A young woman in a pretty dress walking along with a pigtailed little girl who was fascinated by everything she saw.

  Handsome dogs of many breeds.

  The sky overhead.

  A number of people turned to smile at him as he walked along in front of a row of shops, and some of them slowed down for a longer look. He’d forgotten how humans tended to do that—how they found him unusually attractive and tried to flirt with him even when he gave them no encouraging response. Even women well past mating age would watch him walk, or eat, or rest. A few men, too.

  As a young wolf, here for a few months for his Involvement with the humans, he had basked in all that attention. He’d been interested in mating with only a few of the females who spent so much time gazing at him, but it had amused him to think he could collect a whole harem of admirers with very little effort.

  Now?

  None of these women was Allison.

  He knew it was easy—most of the time—to locate someone with the help of a computer, provided you knew how to use one. He did not. During his few months here, he had wandered through an electronics store a couple of times, and had stood watching other people play games, tinker with photographs, listen to music, and read messages, but he had never actually put his hands on a computer. Such things were a lure, the elders (and his father) had told him. They drew wolves away from what was important.

  Allison.

  In this case, the computer would bring him closer to what was important. He could think of no other way to find her, other than going from door to door throughout the city, a process that might well take months, or even years. He couldn’t afford to take months to find her; the wolf inside him was struggling even now, desperate to find its mate. Luca had to find her quickly, before the animal became frantic enough to break free—something that might well get them both killed.

  There.

  Not Allison herself, but a library. There, he could find someone who would help him. Someone who knew how to use a computer and would show him where to find an old friend he’d lost contact with, a friend he hoped to see again.

  It would be an older female, he hoped. The older females were always happy to help him.

  He could see the question in the librarian’s eyes: How is it that you don’t know how to use a computer?

  But she didn’t ask.

  He’d been fairly sure she wouldn’t, if he let his wolf lean a little closer to the surface. The animal knew how to lure females far better than Luca himself did—whether it was someone ripe for mating, or someone who could simply offer some help. He had only to demonstrate that he was strong and smart… and that he looked and smelled good.

  “Over here,” the librarian said, her voice squeaking a little.

  She was entranced, as the human females so often seemed to be. Eager to help him, just to keep him here.

  He let her sit in front of the computer, then pulled a wooden chair up close and straddled it. It was an old chair with an open back, exactly the right kind. Four years ago, he’d learned by accident that females liked it very much when he sat this way, because it spread his legs and gave them an enticing view.

  This female—Lynda, according to her nametag—was so enticed that for a moment she forgot to breathe.

  Then she recovered herself and turned to the computer screen. Very quickly and ably, she opened a program that would search the residents of the city. “Not everyone is listed,” she explained. “You won’t find many students. Or people who rent and haven’t been in town very long. Or children. They need to be in some sort of database that the program can search.”

  “She’s not a child,” Luca said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s good.”

  Now she was trying not to look at him. Her scent was becoming a little stronger, her pulse more rapid.

  “Allison Hayes,” Luca said.

  Dutifully, Lynda typed the name, and Luca watched it appear on the screen one letter at a time. Just letters, just symbols—but they made the picture of Allison that had been drifting through his mind for weeks become clearer and more vivid. He could almost see her standing in front of him, smiling.

  “Is that the correct spelling?” Lynda asked.

  Luca peered at it, trying to remember if he had ever seen Allison’s name written down. The wolves wrote down almost nothing; there was no need to. But here, among the humans, records were important—and standing out in a crowd even more so. There might be dozens of women named Allison Hayes, with that name spelled in dozens of different ways.

  “Yes,” he guessed.

  “Do you remember her address?”

  He remembered the apartment, a collection of rooms Allison had shared with another girl, another student. It was close to the college campus, on the top floor of an old, rambling house surrounded by trees.

  He remembered the stairs he’d had to climb to reach those rooms, and how it had sometimes gotten very warm up there. He remembered Allison’s old blue couch and how her refrigerator had always been full of bottles of spring water.

  But an address?

  “I don’t think she’d live there now,” he said. “She was in college then. I’m sure she’s not in college now.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “She may not live in this city at all.”

  And how many Allison Hayeses would there be (spelled in many different ways), if Lynda searched the entire country?

  Hundreds? Thousands?

  You never should have left, he thought. You should have made the sacrifice and remained here with her.

  His hands were wrapped around the top rail of the back of the chair. Lynda patted one of them with a hand that was very warm and a little damp—then she pulled her hand back and returned it to the computer keyboard.

  “Let’s see what we can find,” she said quickly.

  There were three results: an Alyson Hays, an Alice Hayes Brown, and an Allison Hanes. Lynda checked each one, only to discover that their ages were wrong. In fact, Alice Hayes Brown had died two years ago at the age of 91. Alyson Hays was a high school student who had won a poetry contest. And Allison Hanes was married; Hanes was her husband’s name.

  “She has red hair,” Luca said.

  Long, soft red hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. Brown eyes. A sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

  “Let me try something else,” Lynda offered.

  But nothing she tried produced any results. There were many, many Allison Hayeses (of many spellings) listed in what Lynda called “social media,” but none of the pictures she was able to bring onto the screen were of the right person.

  Too young, too old, blonde, brunette…

  The wolf had begun to huddle into a ball, crooning its disappointment.

  It was time to eat, Luca told himself. Time to rest for a while and gather his thoughts. He remembered the city well enough to know there were several places he could rest for a few hours without being bothered, and some more where he could burrow in overnight.

  Food, then sleep. Then he would decide what to do next.

  “Thank you for trying,” he told Lynda, and began to stand up from the old chair, which wobbled a little as he took his weight away from it.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

  She wasn’t flirting now. A part of Luca wished she would; that wild, simple part of him wouldn’t mind a swift, careless mating, and then several hours of sleep in a warm bed.

  But that wouldn’t be fair to her. She wasn’t a wolf; wasn’t a young human who’d be interested in a quick coupling.

  He had to go… somewhere that wasn’t here.


  “Thank you,” he said again, then hurried out of the library.

  Four

  Allison woke up feeling disoriented and a little dizzy. For a moment, she had no idea where she was—then that unpleasant bleachy smell got through to her brain and she thought, Oh.

  She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, hadn’t even thought she was tired.

  Still a little muzzy-headed, she crawled off the bed and padded into the bathroom. When her bare feet hit the cold tile floor, she wished she’d put on a pair of socks—heck, that she’d brought a pair of socks, or some slippers. But it’d been unusually warm at home, and she’d still been walking around barefoot inside the house.

  That made her think of her little house, with its almost 360-degree view of the mountains. The hammock out back, the sun porch, the miles of hiking trails nearby. She’d been furnishing it carefully, one piece at a time, making it truly hers—a place where anywhere she looked, she’d find something that made her smile.

  Unlike this ugly, too cold, bleachy-smelling, cookie-cutter room.

  When she walked back toward the bed and spotted her phone lying on the duvet, she realized with a start that it was probably already dinnertime, if not later. The clock on the night table said it was only 4:32, but that didn’t seem right. She felt like she’d been asleep for hours.

  Really, she felt like she’d been unconscious, like someone had hit her and knocked her out.

  Shower.

  That would help. It would ease her awake, freshen her up. And the hot water would feel good.

  That the hotel had decent water pressure and enough hot water didn’t seem like a safe bet, so she was surprised when the spray came out strong and quickly got steamy. Grinning, she stripped out of her sweats and underwear, stepped into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed.

  Ahhhh.

  Honestly, there was nothing better than a good hot shower. For a minute she simply stood there and let the water cascade down over her body, then dipped her head under the spray and slicked back her hair. The water felt like a caress, like the soothing hand of a gentle lover.