Strangers of the Night Read online

  “Telekinesis? Stuff like that?”

  “Yes,” Phoenix said, and watched her expression of incredulity. “He and all the people in his cult did their best to create offspring with talents. Mine is the ability to influence people to do things against their will.”

  Willa’s brows rose for a second before her eyes narrowed. “The lady in the grocery store. Brady.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked uncertain. “Me? Oh my god. Did you...did we because you...?”

  “No,” he said. “Not you.”

  Willa shook her head. “How can I believe that? If what you say is true, how would I even know? I mean, not that I can believe you—it’s just crazy.”

  Without saying a word, with no more than a glance in her direction—and only that to show off to Willa what he was doing, since he didn’t need to see the person in order to nudge them, he just needed to be aware of their presence near him—Phoenix had the waitress come to their table.

  “I hate my job,” she said. “I would like to pour this coffee all over the register and walk out. Can I get you something else?”

  “Just the check,” Phoenix said at Willa’s startled expression. “Which you will have comped. Then you’ll forget us both, and if anyone asks, you never saw either one of us.”

  The waitress grinned. “Sure thing, no problem. Here you go, you have a nice night.”

  Phoenix waited until she’d wandered back to the counter, where she pulled out her phone and started tapping away again without so much as a glance toward them. Then he looked at Willa. “Ready to go?”

  * * *

  She’d seen it happen, but that didn’t mean anything. Did it? Willa didn’t even look at him as they crossed the highway to get back to the motel.

  In the Penn’s Grove library, there was an entire section on the occult and paranormal. Willa had acquired titles and shelved them in that section for years and had never once picked one up. She didn’t watch horror movies or read scary books. She didn’t hold on to superstitions. Yet she’d seen the waitress respond to something, and it had clearly not been free will.

  In the room, she excused herself to use the bathroom. A long, hot shower. Tooth brushing. She put on a pair of soft sweatpants and a T-shirt from the go bag since she hadn’t packed pajamas. She swiped away the steam from the mirror to take a long, hard look at her reflection.

  “So who were those men?” she said without preamble when she came out to find Phoenix with his head propped on a pillow and watching something on the TV with the sound turned so low he couldn’t possibly hear the dialogue.

  “They come from a place called Wyrmwood,” he said without pause. He sat, back pressed against the headboard. “It is exactly what I said it was in the diner. They found out about Collins Creek years ago and raided it. They took some of the children.”

  “You?”

  “No. My sister and I got away. We ran. We lived on the streets for years.”

  Willa sat on the edge of the second bed, facing him. “How old were you?”

  “Ten. On the farm, all the children lived in the nursery until they turned five, and then we were tested to see if we had any talents. If we did, we got to move into the dorms.”

  Willa frowned. “If you didn’t?”

  “You went away. I don’t know what happened,” Phoenix said, voice free of inflection. No hint of emotion on his face. He might’ve been talking about the TV show still playing.

  “So you and your sister, at age ten, were on the streets and on the run, after years of mental and physical trauma?”

  Phoenix said nothing. His steady stare didn’t waver. He looked at her, but that was it.

  Without thinking of why, without holding back, Willa got up and knelt on the bed in front of him. She pulled him close, his face pressed to her neck. She stroked the length of his hair. When he tried to resist her by pulling away, she tightened her grip, and he sent still. He sighed against her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered into his ear. She held him tight, not understanding what had pushed her to this offer of comfort. She was not the sort to hug, and while she’d never thought of herself as being unkind, she wasn’t totally a warm and fuzzy personality, either.

  This time when he made to pull away, she let him. He didn’t meet her gaze. Her fingertips rested on his shoulders, no longer holding him, but the connection was still there.

  “It was a long time ago. Decades. And I made it through. I’m fine.”

  Willa had gone through her own hell, but she was sure not one bit of it compared to whatever Phoenix had endured as a child. Being on the streets had to have been awful, too.

  “How did Wyrmwood find you this time?”

  “I called my sister. She’s been...” He paused, then shook his head. “There’s another group, kind of the opposite of Wyrmwood. Run by a dude named Vadim. Group of people, some of them with abilities like mine, most just able to do other stuff like computer hacking or whatever. It’s called the Crew. They research stuff like this, or they’re paid to prove or disprove the existence of this sort of thing. When someone sees a chupacabra, they end up going after it.”

  “A chupa... I don’t even know what that is.” Her fingers curled a bit more on his shoulders until he looked at her face.

  “So why would calling your sister bring down Wyrmwood on you?” she asked, mind whirling, trying hard to put the pieces together.

  Phoenix shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of. The Crew uses encryption and all that shit, I’m sure. But I was on a phone that might’ve been monitored. I don’t know.”

  “All of this is crazy,” she said.

  He smiled and touched a strand of her hair that had curled, damp from the shower. “Totally bat shit.”

  “I don’t like thinking you made me do something,” she said bluntly. “How do I know you haven’t? How do I know that I’m not here right now because of something you forced me into?”

  Phoenix closed his eyes. Said nothing. Beneath her hands, his muscles shifted and bunched, tensing, before he relaxed.

  “I tried with you,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”

  She sat back then, putting distance between them. “What?”

  “It doesn’t work with you,” he repeated, opening his eyes. The pupils had gone wide and dark. “I’ve never met someone I couldn’t nudge, but you just won’t be nudged. I don’t know why.”

  Something twisted inside her at those words. That look. A slow and spiraling heat began low in her belly, spreading upward.

  “You expect me to believe that out of all the people in your life you’ve ever met, I’m different, somehow?”

  Phoenix let his tongue slip out to dent his bottom lip for a second. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I can believe that,” Willa said.

  “I can’t prove it,” he said finally. “You’ll always wonder if I’m making you do something. You’ll never be able to fully trust me, because you won’t be able to trust yourself.”

  It sounded like he’d been down that road before, but she wasn’t going to go there right now. Now she was tired, her stomach full, and at least for the moment it seemed as though they were safe. She stifled a yawn.

  “I need sleep,” she said.

  Phoenix nodded and used the remote to turn off the TV. “Sure. That’s a good idea. I’d like to get out of here first thing in the morning.”

  “It’s already first thing in the morning,” Willa said.

  He smiled. “We don’t have to leave at dawn or anything. You can sleep for a few hours.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. You sleep,” he said, and whether it was because he’d told her to or she could no longer fight the exhaustion, Willa crawled into bed and was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pi