Sydney
The botanical garden is a thirty minute drive from the city and even longer from the castle. Juxtaposed against a sea of silver trees, the glass domed building sticks out as a bright pop of color against ribbons of pure white snow.
I pull my truck to a stop, checking my watch.
Someone opens the front door to the building and steps out, bundled against the biting sub-zero temperature in a pale purple sweater and gray leggings.
Mom’s wine-red hair is pulled in a bun piled on the top of her head. She waves at me, motioning for me to hurry the hell up.
“You said you’d be here at eight!” she says by way of greeting as I hike up the snow-covered steps.
“It’s 8:15,” I reply as she motions me inside, pulling the heavy glass doors closed behind her.
My thick coat and hat are suddenly suffocating inside the humid warmth of the building, but I don’t bother taking them off. Whatever she needed me to come here for at the crack of dawn, I’m sure I’ll hear all about it in a matter of seconds, and then I can go back to my usual day as planned.
We pass through an entry room before reaching the center of the indoor garden. It’s beautiful. I’ve always loved coming here, especially during events and parties. I look up that ceiling, past the thick foliage, and notice the white lights strung back and forth from one end of the dome to the other.
But… that’s about it.
I look down at my mom who's frowning and tapping her foot. She looks completely out of sorts as she runs a hand over her make-up free face and looks up at me through her fingers.
“Don’t you have a party here in three days?”
“Yes, and that’s why I called you.”
I glance around at the undecorated tables and general lack of color, save for the green of the plants at the center of the wide, open space and the snow clinging to the glass panes on the ceiling. “I’m an engineer, not a decorator–”
“I’m not asking you to help me decorate,” she replies with a shake of her head. “My usual florist backed out at the last minute. I’m honestly not surprised. I’ve had to twist her arm the last few times I’ve hired her to get her to do anything on time.” She huffs, still tapping her foot on the shimmering silver tiles. “This place was supposed to look like a beacon of summer. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I have some flowers in my atrium,” I tell her. My atrium flares to life in my mind. It’s similar to this place but on a smaller scale. I don’t pride myself on being able to make things grow, however.
But Mom shakes her head. “I need a professional. Someone who can design arrangements, and fast. I needed this whole place swimming in color. I figured, since your father has had you canvasing every inch of our kingdom, you'd know someone. A few other florists sent bids to me about the Solstice Ball a few weeks ago, but I can’t find the paperwork and I’m running out of time–”
“I know someone,” I say without meaning to speak.
She turns to me, hope welling in her eyes. “Someone who can do this in three days?”
“You just need a few vases filled, right?”
She smacks my arm. “Sydney, seriously–”
“I’ll see what I can do, okay?”
“I can ask Ryan, too. He has more than enough time on his hands–”
“I got it.” I squeeze her arm and practically sprint out of the room.
My heart hammers in my chest as I slide into my truck and punch the gas, skidding in a circle to get back on the narrow highway leading into Crescent City.
It’s a clear, sunny day, which means it’s even colder than yesterday. My truck groans as I kick up the heat, fighting the steadily dropping temperature. I can’t remember a colder winter.
But I don’t even try. Not when I have a reason to go talk to Sarah now. A real reason, not that I just couldn’t get her out of my head and didn’t do anything about it for two months, until it was far too late.
But when I pull my truck into the NZ, my confidence wavers.
She was pregnant last time I saw her. She might have had her baby already.
That baby’s father could be back and…
I can’t think like this. I don’t have feelings for Sarah. She’s just… she’s intriguing, and maybe actually seeing her again, talking to her, and working with her in a more intimate sense while we help keep my mom’s head glued on will clear my head.
The idea of Sarah has been my only distraction from finding the missing Eastonian girl. That, and the fragmented memory of the woman from the ball.
I get out of my truck and tuck my hands in the pockets of my coat to try to keep my fingers from freezing solid as I walk down the main street of the NZ, which is a network of commercial buildings, houses, apartments, shops, bars, and the like.
But the NZ fades into a colorless wasteland a few blocks away from where I parked my truck at the gate to Silverhide.
Windows are boarded against the cold. A few wolves trot by, their eyes scanning mine as they scurry to the other side of the street.
I pass the coffee shop I visited two months ago and find the windows boarded and a “for rent” sign hanging on the door, faded from exposure to the sun and cold.
And across the street, the pink door to Sarah’s shop isn’t nearly as vibrant as I remember it.
I was just here last night, but seeing this place in the daylight sends a ripple of shock and unease coursing through my body.
Snow is piled in front of the door from last night’s storm, and the curtains in the front window are drawn.
I furrow my brow as I cross the street and walk up to the shop, rapping on the door. My knocks echo down the street into the vacuum of silence brought on by the frigid air.
I look up to the second story. More boarded windows.
She didn’t answer the door last night either…. Is she no longer here?
My stomach drops with disappointment, but then a waft of cigarette smoke clouds my senses.
“This must be why she doesn’t have my rent this month,” a male voice clucks somewhere behind me. “Never answering her door for customers.”
I slowly turn. An older man with thick, dark facial hair dotted with crumbs from his last meal raises a brow at me.
“You own this building?”
He nods. “Rupert Foxglove.” He waves at himself before taking a pull of his cigarette once more. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for the owner of this shop–”
“Doubt you’ll find her.”
Something in his voice has adrenaline prickling over my skin like little needles. “Why is that?”
He chuckles darkly, stubbing out his cigarette under a polished, rather expensive looking boot. “Look, it's not my problem that these tenants of mine can’t keep up with their rent. Times are tough after that little skirmish over in Eastonia.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Again, I’m looking for Sarah–”
“And I knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up with her business after that hussy got knocked up during the Mating festival last summer. I knew she was a whore. I should have seen this coming–”
I step toward him, and he retreats, taken off guard. “What did you just say?”
“Sarah Greenly,” he repeats, smirking up at me. “That little whore can’t pay her rent, blames it on the baby. Says she can’t keep her shop open in these conditions.” He waves toward the building. “I thought keeping the heat off would teach that little slut a lesson.”
My hands curl into fists. “You turned the heat to the building off?”
“Two weeks ago,” he says with a shrug, pulling another cigarette out of his pocket. “The pipes froze, you know, and caused some damage. Now she can’t water her precious flowers, and I can’t make the needed repairs because, well, she needed to learn a valuable lesson.”
I grab his coat, lifting him a few inches off the ground. He squeaks in surprise, writhing like the snake I know he is under his fancy, designer clothing. “How much is her rent?”
The number he tells me is so astounding I nearly drop him in the street.
But what he says next has me spiraling.
“You know how these broads are,” he says as I lower him to the ground. He lights his cigarette, totally unfazed. “I offered her an out, you know. All she’d need to do to get a discount on her rent would be to get on her knees. It’d be easy now without that disgusting stomach in her way–”
I grip his throat, pick him up, and toss him across the street so hard he shifts out of pure surprise. He yelps, tangled in his now shredded clothes he probably bought by siphoning money off Sarah.
His eyes gleam in the sunlight as he looks in my direction.
For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to make a move.
But the rat of a man takes off at a full sprint down the street, disappearing from sight.
Fury rips through me. The transformation signal ripples like an electric current through my body, turning my fingers into talons.
They fade back into fingers, and I slowly turn back to the building and pound on the shop door until it nearly comes off its hinges.
No answer.
I rush around the side of the building and yank on the private entrance that I hope leads somewhere, anywhere, that she might be, and I’m met with a poorly maintained staircase cast in near total darkness.
It’s freezing here. Each breath I take burns down my throat. The air smells like smoke as I walk upstairs.
Two doors greet me. One of them is open already, but the room is empty. It’s a studio apartment in horrible shape. A wood stove sends laces of dark, acrid smoke through the air, but the room is empty. The bed is neatly made.
A creaking sound and muffled sob catches my attention. I turn around, eyeing the door just across the hallway.
The scent of honeysuckle clouds my senses, igniting some long forgotten memory that rushes back in severely fragmented pieces I can’t possibly put together.
But I edge toward the door, furious and honestly petrified that I’m about to walk in to find Sarah and her baby frozen to death.
I grab the doorknob and shove my way inside. The lock comes off completely, bouncing to a stop on filthy, frozen floorboards.
She whirls, dressed in a huge coat and hand-knit hat.
Her violet eyes are exactly how I remember them.
“Alpha Sydney?” she breaths in disbelief, her cheeks wet with tears.