Tricia paused, waiting a long moment, savoring the heat and weight of his body against hers.
"Promise?" she said, the word barely a whisper.
He nuzzled against her shoulder and didn't answer, but he didn't need to. She could feel his desire for her as he pulled her back tighter against his body. There was an unmistakable hardness between his legs, pressing against her thighs. That was promise enough. And it kept her heart racing, long after her body had recovered from the climb.
14
Tula looked flushed when Kennick, her cousin, opened the door. A thin sheen of sweat stood out on her forehead, her eyes were bleary.
"Where's Damon?" she asked. Ricky appeared behind Kennick in the doorway, and Tula's eyes gravitated towards her, deepened slightly. The whole tribe – Cristov, Kennick, Ricky, and Kim – had gathered in the trailer to discuss where Damon was going, and why. There had been no word from him, and only the vaguest of "it's fine" texts from Tricia. Two days later, everyone's nerves were well on their way to frazzled.
"Damon … we don't know where Damon is," Kennick said, immediately concerned by the crazed, fevered look in Tula's face.
"Shit," Tula hissed, running a hand through her dark hair. Now, Cristov and Kim crowded in the doorway behind Ricky.
"Come in," Kim offered, when it became apparent that everyone else had forgotten how to act like a human. "Sit down. Let me get you some water."
There was a moment of general confusion as the four figures in the doorway navigated their way back into the small kitchen, bumping into each other, each overcome with their worst nightmares unfolding in their imaginations. Kim poured some water into a glass and handed it to Tula, whose hands were shaking. Tula slid into the counter at the kitchen table; everyone else remained standing.
"I had a dream," Tula said. "About Damon."
Cristov and Kennick exchanged a glance. Tula was a drabarni, a psychic of sorts. For most people, gypsy fortune-tellers were scam artists. Tula was the real thing, inheriting her powers from the grandmother she shared with the Volanis siblings. Ricky and Kim exchanged a glance, too. Unlike their men, they were less convinced of Tula's powers. They weren't raised to respect things they didn't understand. To the Romani, Tula's powers weren't magic mumbo-jumbo. They were a fact of life, a sense as strong as sight or smell, but only granted to some.
"What happened?" Cristov said.
"Blood," Tula said, looking up at the group from her seat at the table. "Damon was speaking to me, but I couldn't hear any of it. And then blood came; from his eyes, his mouth, his nose, his ears. More blood than a body can hold. He's in danger."
"Where is he?" Kennick asked, even though that was the exact question Tula had asked when he answered the door. She shook her head, looking down into the glass.
"I don't know," she said. "I didn't … I didn't see that. I'll try to see it. I'll do everything I know to do … "
"Wait," Ricky said, holding out her hand with her palm out. "It was a dream. I mean, not every dream means something, right?"
Tula's glare betrayed her emotions as she looked at Ricky.
"Do you think I don't know the difference between dreams that mean and dreams that don't?" she snapped. Ricky recoiled, knowing that she was in the minority in the room – even Kim had more faith in Tula than Ricky. "I'm telling you, my cousin is in trouble."
Tula drank deeply of the water, then looked around.
"Where's Mina?" she asked.
"She's with Ana," Cristov said. "At the store."
"You'll need her, when you find him," Tula said, leaning back, looking exhausted. "You know she's the only one who can talk to him."
Kennick bristled, but Tula shot him a withering look.
"You might be rom baro, but Damon … "
"Is Damon," Kennick finished, shoulders slumping.
"Well, what the hell is it that we have to stop him from doing?" Cristov said, and Ricky could tell how hard he was working to keep his voice from rising to a yell. Cristov had no patience, not like his brothers. If it were up to Cristov, they would jump in their cars and drive in random directions – chasing their tails.
"Hurting himself," Tula said, voice flat. "Your brother, our Damon, is a violent man. But he's most dangerous to himself."
"He's not a violent man," Kim said softly, drawing all the attention in the room to her. "He's not violent."
"You don't know him like we do … " Kennick started to say, a gentle correction.
"No, I don't," Kim said. "But I know him. He may be a fighter. He may have done violent things. But he's not a violent man."
Kennick held his wife in his gaze, trying to seek out her meaning. She wouldn't make such a claim, especially in the company of those who knew Damon as intimately as they, without a reason. She met his eyes.
"He's a protector," she said. "He wants to keep everyone safe."
"What the fuck are you talking about, Kim?" Cristov erupted, tearing the charged moment in two. "You and Nick need to stop staring at each other like you're in the middle of a tantric fuck marathon. Who gives a shit whether Damon's violent or protective or whatever. He can be a secret Nazi for all I care, I'm not letting him get hurt or killed! Not before he … "
Now, it was Ricky's turn to look at Cristov, wordless meaning passing between them.
"Not before he lets me finish that stupid-ass lighthouse he wanted on his abs," Cristov finished. Tula raised an eyebrow.
They ended the conversation there; Kim went to pick up Mina so they could discuss it further, and Tula returned to her own trailer, where she would try her most potent – and dangerous – methods to draw out some concrete meaning from her dream. Later, she returned to the Volanis trailer with a bloody nose and nothing more to offer.
"What are we going to do?" Mina asked, sitting between her brothers at the small kitchen table. In the silence that followed, you could hear the clock ticking.
15
Camped out in Ocracoke, near the Atlantic waves, Tricia and Damon moved in surprising synchronization, considering it was only their second night together. She set up camp, he gathered wood. She built the fire, he played guitar. When the fire was small and hot, Damon prepared dinner. Tricia did most of the work since Damon did all the driving; though she offered, again and again, to drive for a few hours each day, he always refused.
"I like driving," he would say. "And I don't let anyone touch my baby."
That "baby" was a twenty-year-old Crown Victoria. It was, admittedly, well kept, and Damon had made customizations that made it feel modern, like the CD player and new, leather seats. Tricia wondered, though, what made it so special to Damon that he'd rather constantly pay for repairs and upgrades, which would surely cost more in the long run than just buying a new car.
"It was my father's," he said when she finally asked, and understanding bloomed in her like a lotus. "Kennick inherited the title of rom baro. I inherited the car."
"What did Cristov get?" she asked.
"His ring," Damon answered. Tricia looked out the window and thought about Ricky, who was, arguably, the least likely to get married. But Cristov had clearly done some major work on Ricky's cynicism. Just like Kennick had done work on Kim's battered self-image. And Damon …
She wouldn't let her mind wander there. Not yet. It was too new to start dreaming of a future beyond the next campsite. Though it seemed that they'd known each other for ages, they'd only been on the trip for two days. And she didn't want Damon "fixing" her, anyway. She would fix herself. Sometimes, though, when she looked at him, seeing a deep and hardened strangeness – something wrong – inside his face, she wondered if he was the one who needed fixing.
That night, they dined on fresh fish from a local market, dressed with lemon and sage and parsley, fried up over the fire with spinach and arugula. Crusty French bread sopped up salty, herbaceous runoff, melting in their mouths at first bite. Damon turned a packet of instant mashed potatoes into a delicacy, mixing in well-aged parmesan, fresh garlic, green onions and more herbs.
Without thinking, Tricia sucked her fingertips into her mouth after the meal to clean them of oil and herbs – when she opened her eyes and saw Damon watching, she blushed.
"Shit," he said, smiling through the veneer of lust. "Nothing like watching a girl enjoy her meal. Makes you feel like you done real good."
"Well, you did," she crooned. "That was the best fish I ever had."