Regeneration. The Ability to Heal. By Cassie Greutman. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter Four

Exactly twenty-eight minutes after the phone call, Dan’s black Mercedes pulled into Vince’s.

A small figure flung itself from the passenger seat and hurtled toward the station’s door. Nina was only an inch taller than me, and probably wouldn’t be for long. I’d never been so happy to see her short frame since… well, ever.

“Thanks Vince, for everything,” I called toward the back where he was stocking shelves. Surprisingly, I meant it. He had been good to me, even breaking out a can of Pringles and a bottle of water after I’d gotten off the phone. It must have been the way I was devouring the shelves with my eyes that gave him the idea I might be hungry. He lifted a hand, then went back to stacking Hershey bars. Strange man, but I liked him now that he’d given me food.

I barely made it out the door before Nina grabbed me, crushing me to her and ignoring the partially dried mud. I hissed. Apparently, my ribs hadn’t fully healed after that tumble. Or the gunshot. Whichever. That woman had a lot of strength for her size.

“Honey, I was so worried! What happened?” Nina asked, moving her grip to my shoulders and leaning back to stare straight into my face.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered. Mostly because I still had no idea what had happened. And I really wanted to get out of here. Now. “Can we just go?”

Dan leaned over the passenger seat toward the rolled-down window, his face the proverbial storm. “Did that boy do this to you?” By the tone of Dan’s voice, someone was about to get it. Hopefully that someone wasn’t me.

He hadn’t, of course he hadn’t. The only boy Dan could be talking about was my boyfriend, Wade, and he would never do this. A flash of a memory popped up. I’d left after a huge argument with the fosters about Wade, leaving with him to head to that stupid Halloween party I didn’t really want to go to. Now, this was embarrassing. If he didn’t have anything to do with this, where was he?

“No, no. It was all me.”

Some birthday this had turned out to be. I’d just wanted to spend time with Wade and away from home. Sure, our relationship had started out as just a way to bug the fosters, but it had become something more. Was spending time with my boyfriend really too much to ask for a sixteenth birthday?

Another memory popped into focus, hazy like my mind had filled with too much water. Wade teasing me until I left the party with him. The memory continued with us stepping out on the trail, then far into the trees. This was getting weird, hadn’t we walked far enough?

Especially in these stupid shoes. I told him I might get tired even though I probably wouldn’t. It takes a lot more than a hike to make me tired. His face changed and he leaned in toward me, said something about being sorry, and pulled a gun… A gun. My spine went ramrod straight. Wade had been the one to shoot me!

“Trisha, I want an explanation.” Dan’s voice dragged me back. My palms were sweaty and my stomach rolling again. I looked beyond the car. Wade could still be out there, trying to find my body. Or worse, figured out my body was gone.

“Uh, what?” I asked, still slightly dazed by the memory that had just hit me like a truck. The fosters hadn’t seemed to have noticed that I was about to have a melt-down. Or they were just letting it go.

“I want to know what happened,” Dan said. Uh oh. That tone was not good.

“Later, Dan. First, let’s get her home and out of these clothes.”

“Yeah, can we get out of here, please?”

Dan sighed from the driver’s seat. “Fine. But that’s just delaying this conversation. We will have it. Hop in. Let’s go get something to eat. You have to be hungry.”

I slid into the back seat, wincing at the streak of mud I left across the leather. I hated screwing up like this. The kids at school liked to tell me that Dan and Nina only took me in for the government money that came along with housing a foster kid. I figured that couldn’t be true or they would have sent me back. Maybe asked for an easier kid. No amount of money would have been worth dealing with me those first few months. Things were more settled now, but I still wasn’t sure of their motives.

Mom had warned me a long time ago about people, humans that knew about us and wanted proof. They’d do whatever it took to find it. And even if that wasn’t the case with the Inzas, I could still end up back in a group home for bad behavior. I wouldn’t blame them after this. But I would do anything in my power to keep that from happening. This was the best home I’d been in so far.

A flash of movement outside the car caught my attention, sending my pulse skyrocketing. But it was only Vince, come to watch us leave. He wasn’t as creepy as I’d first thought and he’d given me food, making him a friend for life. “Dan, can I have a ten?” I asked.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He looked at me like I was crazy. I nodded toward Vince. “Ah,” he muttered, grabbed his wallet and pulled out a twenty. “I’ll give it to him.” He got out of the car and walked toward the station. They man-talked for a minute and then Dan came back and got in the driver’s seat.

I lifted a hand and waved goodbye to Vince. He did the same, then headed back into the store. He was probably just lonely, out here away from everyone. No wonder he was worried about the long distance call. It wasn’t like he had a line of customers. Probably just tourists and rangers.

Nina jumped into the front seat and started talking to Dan, sticking her hand in the back to pat my knee, like she was trying to reassure herself that I was okay. I would have felt bad if it had been my fault that she’d been worried. But it wasn’t my fault, not really. It had been Wade. Why? I didn’t buy some weirdo reason, and we’d been getting along really well. Like, seriously well. Like I might have even gone to prom just so I could show him off well. My heart thundered for a second and I pushed the thought away. Later, when I was alone. Dan picked up his phone as he flipped on his turn signal and coasted onto the road.

“Nina, please let Lester know we found her. Just send him a message. He can call everyone else.” Dan handed his cell to Nina.

Lester. The social worker. Why had they called him? This wasn’t the first time I’d run off for a couple of hours. I tuned out Nina’s voice and strained to bring back the piece of memory that had gone through my mind. It wasn’t cooperating. That wasn’t totally a bad thing. My mind must have known I didn’t really want to deal with it right now. But seriously, Wade? And a gun? What had happened? I started to hyperventilate again, doing my best to shove down the fear.

I buried my face in my knees. Now was not the time to go over this, not with Dan and Nina right here.

We drove in sweet silence for a while, but by the way Dan kept looking at me in the rear-view mirror, his expression full of concern and a hint of something else. Every mile we put between us and the gas station, a vise holding my guts loosened just a little.

Dan would keep me safe, even if Wade showed up. Tears leaked onto my ruined dress, but I kept the sobs inaudible. I hadn’t even considered he would ever do something like this. How many times did he have the opportunity? Why had it happened now?

“How did you get all the way out here?” Dan’s later wasn’t very much later. “Do we need to call the police, Trisha? Did Wade do anything to you?”

Here is where I should have been honest, but nice as they were, they were still fosters. When I first heard that Dan worked in government, I almost panicked and ran. The only reason I could figure them taking me in when they obviously didn’t need the money was that they had heard something, maybe from one of the other kids at the home. Maybe someone had seen me heal. Luckily, I still had some scars from back before I healed so quickly. Maybe that threw them off.

No, I wasn’t getting them involved. If Wade had done something, I was going to figure it out on my own. No way I was going to leave him to do it to anyone else, to someone who wouldn’t pop back from almost dead. Or dead even. How far gone had I been? I shivered, but blamed it on still being chilled. The heat blasting out of the vents wasn’t nearly enough.

“I was alone.” I twisted the truth, my gut churning at the deception. As fae, I couldn’t lie, not like I had a strong conscience or anything, but none of us could. I couldn’t lie, but finding ways around the truth came naturally after growing up in the home. Problem was, I was growing a conscience about it since the Inzas took me in and seemed to actually care what went on in my life.

“Then what happened?” Nina asked as she stared into my soul, her brown eyes sad.

“Some people I thought were my friends weren’t.” True. I’d thought Wade was a friend, a great friend. The first real friend I’d had, other than my mom. My real mom. Sure, I’d been close with some of the other kids at the home, but they were in and out. Every time I got close to one, they were moved on. Wade had seemed to understand me, even without knowing all the fae stuff. Somehow he’d always known what I was thinking.

Dan looked back at me, his blue eyes harder than Nina’s. “It didn’t have anything to do with us fighting about Wade before you disappeared, did it?”

I rubbed my arms with my hands, trying to get some of the warmth back. “No, nothing to do with that.” Memory flashed. I screamed something at Dan and ran from the house, slamming the door behind me. I winced. Was that how I always sounded?

So we’d fought, I’d called Wade. He showed up acting like my knight in shining armor and offered to take me away to that party I’d been back and forth about going to.

Then he shot me and left me for dead. I patted for a wound again, now that I didn’t have to worry about being shot from behind. Nothing. I fought back a wave of nausea. Some prince he’d turned out to be.

The real question was why? Wasn’t there supposed to be motive or something? We were getting along great. I’d thought things were getting serious. It had been over a year since we’d met. That was serious in teenager time. I rubbed at my eyes. No way was I going to cry again. That idiot was going to be sorry. Who did that to a person they were supposed to care about? I probed at my chest and found the bullet hole in my dress. Thankfully the mud had covered that along with the blood.

The conversation was still going on in the front seat, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Dan didn’t sound thrilled, though.

Nina squeezed Dan’s arm. It seemed to calm him.

Good thing she was here.

I settled into the heated seat and closed my eyes. Healing always exhausted me, and I’d done more of it in the last few hours than I’d done these last few months combined. Maybe last few years. The darkness outside didn’t help me with the exhaustion. I cracked an eye open and looked at the clock on the dashboard. 1:26 a.m. No wonder Vince’s was empty.

“How long was I gone?” I asked, keeping my eyes closed.

It went quiet up front. I cracked an eye open, enough to see Nina, who looked like she might cry.

“Since we passed midnight, it’s Sunday, Trish,” Dan answered. “You were gone two full days.”

I sat up. Two days? No way! How close to dead had Wade left me? I caught my teeth grinding and had to tell my mouth to stop, letting myself go limp again. Healing didn’t normally take that long. My memory was still hazy.

Had I spent that whole time lying out in the woods? What if a bear had found me? There were bears in the woods, right? Or a hiker. I might have ended up on an autopsy table. Or worse, in the ground. I clenched my teeth again. Now was not the time. I wasn’t going to figure anything out right now. Relax, calm down. Dan and Nina would keep me safe. I settled back into the warmth of the seat, literally telling my muscles to relax. Everything was going to be okay now.

The adults in the front went back to their conversation.

The heat made me sleepy, even through the hunger pains. I half listened to the voices up front, just in case something they said would jog a memory, but it was getting more and more difficult to stay awake. The trees drifted by outside in the dark, nearly mesmerizing. My mind fought hard, trying to figure out what had happened, but my body won and I drifted off into sleep.