over again

Staring at herself in the mirror, Mab scowled and plucked free the leaf caught in her hair. She dropped it into the sink, skimmed hands down the front and sleeves of her jacket. The frown only deepened as small crumbs of dirt and moss tumbled free. At least she hadn’t turn something this time – her closet wasn’t bottomless, especially since most of it was still packed into a suitcase. Twice this week she’d started to unpack it and had then paused. This wasn’t supposed to be permanent, especially not after Enzo St. John had bolted out of her grip – the tenuous one a baby could’ve broken.

She flipped on the faucet, adjusted it so the stream pounded on her hands and began to scrub. There’d been no sign of him since the night he’d gotten the jump on Tobi and Cassie. The sensible thing would’ve been for him to get out of town and away from both her and the Augustines at the very first opportunity – the fact that he’d worked for her great-grandmother in the first place had her questioning the vampire’s sense though. Calls had been made to the local bus stations, to every motel and hotel within a hundred mile radius. None of the lines she’d tossed out there had so much as twitched. That should’ve been enough to send her back out of town, but every morning for weeks she’d woken up in the apartment she absolutely hadn’t needed, stretching a hand out across the sheets like she’d find some reason there to stay, some promising warm patch.

”You’re as crazy as she is,” Mab muttered into her hands. This town, this endless hunt was turning her that way. She shook her head and dipped it, splashing the water up to cool her cheeks. A week ago she’d gone into the bakery, ordering a whole box of cupcakes, like she’d eat more than one of them before they were set aside on the kitchen counter and left to go dry and unappealing. She didn’t even like chocolate that much, but the morning after they’d been there, staring her in the face.

Mab only met her own eye for a moment before she was looking away, flipping off the faucet. She needed to make sure St. John wasn’t here and move on. Enough time had been wasted. Instead of heading for her car and doing just that, Mab headed back to the booth where she’d left her beer and dinner a couple of minutes before. It was Mystic Falls. Of course nobody had taken her spot or her drink. Even the things here had ethics for the most part. A snort rolled out of her as she shuffled back into it. Chiara would have hated it and everybody in it. Maybe it was just her being contrary in an attempt to piss her great-grandmother off, but there was some vague appeal here, one she couldn’t quite put words to yet.

Maybe he’d slipped through the door while she’d been cleaning off the remnants of her dozenth hunt through the woods that surrounded the town, maybe he’d been there all along and she hadn’t noticed him. If the latter was true then she really had started to slip. Tobi appeared at the end of the booth, leaving her flopping back in the booth to stare up at him with her lips pulling back in something that bordered on a sneer. ”You using it for courage or is this a bribe?” To stop her from exacting her revenge for screwing up at Whitmore on him. It had taken everything in her not to just kill him and Cassie for their screw-up. Her chance to break away from her great-grandmother had blurred right out the door because of the two of them.

If he’d asked, she still probably couldn’t have given either one of them a reason why she hadn’t. It wasn’t like there was a heart left in her chest, Chiara had guaranteed that. The bottle of beer was still on the table in front of her, but Mab reached out and slid the glass towards her. She was cackling out a husky laugh before she even got it to her lips and judged if he’d laid out some money for the decent stuff. ”After you screwed everything up you think I’m just gonna turn around and give you a hand out of whatever else you’ve messed up?” Almost sure that the yes was gonna trip right out of his mouth she shook her head and gulped from the glass.

Mock gasping, Mab was about to blow off the idea of him needing help with something magical – of course he did, it wasn’t like he was even a half decent wizard, despite his coven’s reputation. Tobi had to create a hole for her to stumble blindly right into though, one that had her stiffening in her seat like she’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. ”You want me to take on ghostriders in exchange for information about a guy whose name you can’t even get right? Enzo. It’s Enzo St. John and if you tell me the reason I can’t find him is because he got swept up by the wild hunt I’m gonna call bullshit. Hey!” She scowled, reaching out to smack his hand. God, she hated the way the shiver had rolled down her spine at the mention of the wild hunt. Her great-grandmother had always been full of stories, telling the worst of them at bedtime, as though she wanted her to wake up screaming. It was probably some attempt to harden her against what she was going to be dealing with, but with the wild hunt it had never worked. She’d had nightmares every single damn time, the thought that not even the old bitch would remember her tearing at what hope she had left. It felt like a torture, knowing that nobody knew you even existed while you pined for all of them.

Tagged: TOBI PARKER * Word Count: 1000

Tobi was lucky months had passed since he and Cassie had failed to bring her St. John. On the night he had slipped away from them that peace offering would’ve been thrown back at him on a wave of her temper. Her freedom had been right there in their hands and they had fumbled it. The worst they would suffer for the slip was a roasting from her anger, she was the one who would have to continue wearing the shackles her grandmother had placed her in from birth. The one who would continue to pine for a man who had been taken from her far too soon. St John was her only way to get him back and he was beyond her reach again.

If there had been a way for her to go in to the facility herself she wouldn’t have relied upon others, especially a witch and a warlock who were barely out of diapers. She couldn’t have broken through the warding the Augustines had placed upon the place though, her trip in to obtain the uniforms and IDs had proved that. Crawling out of that place had been humiliating, the guilt that had joined the embarrassment all the worse. Her great-grandmother had tasked her with this, not those she had gone and dragged into it afterwards.

Mab studied the glass for just a split second before she took a sip. She probably shouldn’t have put it past him to slip some poison into it, but she doubted Tobi had the balls to try it. He wanted something or he would’ve steered just as clear of her as Cassie had. The girl was still in town, of course, she’d seen her through the window of that junk store on the square. It had been Tobi who’d put his head down afterwards, hiding out somewhere with his tail between his legs.

She raised her brows at him, scoffing lightly as he tried to nudge her accusation aside. ”No? So the two of you just got bested by a weak, half desiccated vampire who’d spent decades in a cell. If I were you I would’ve claimed something other than he ran away and we couldn’t catch him.” Her eyes rolled at his sarcasm, another breath huffing out. ”That’s what your other talents are for. What do you think is faster? Your mouth or his legs?” His brain definitely wasn’t gonna come out top in that equation.

Tobi had obviously been doing his calculations before he’d come to her, weighing up who owed who here. Somewhere along the line he’d gotten them wrong, but that guilt still weighed on her when it shouldn’t have done. Be the bigger person. Don’t drag others into the shit storm of her life. Do people a solid when they actually stuck with you – not that Tobi had. That voice in her ear, the angel perched on one shoulder, did its best and what do you know, it drowned out Chiara’s hissing tones.

If she’d had a mouthful of the wine she’d have been spitting it across the table at him now. Mab tugged her plate back towards herself, propping her forearms in the space it had occupied a moment before. ”That’s an even worse excuse than he can run faster than you. What do the Ghostriders care about a vampire who’s been mouldering away in a cell for eighty years?” She’d have asked what they cared about this town, but that wasn’t exactly their mentality.

Shivering, Mab curled closer around the edge of the table. If Mystic Falls had attracted them then maybe it really was time for her to get out of here. If Tobi had any common sense he’d have been running right after her, trying to break his personal best. ”I know that you’ve got absolutely not hope of getting them back if one of them was taken. Crying over them isn’t gonna bring them back, although, you know, if they wait around here long enough they might have themselves a little reunion wherever it is they’re storing them up.”

Hissing out a breath, Mab shoved her hair back from her face and reached for her glass again. ”The wild hunt’s been mentioned it almost every world mythology. A force that sweeps up humanity, adding them to their numbers, moving on to the next town to clean that out too. Once they’ve got you, that’s it, you might as well have never been born because nobody back home’s gonna remember you. Maybe there are ways out of it, but it’s not like opening up a cell door. Do you honestly think your parents are big enough and bad enough to take on some ancient force like that?” Even Chiara wasn’t that delusional. She had educated her on what else was out there, but she’d stayed hiding behind closed doors and shuttered windows, avoiding anything that might kill her before she got her revenge.

Tagged: TOBI PARKER * Word Count: 822