Page 123 of Run Wild Omega

“Eat your pancakes,” he says, grabbing his jacket from the chair.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

He shoots me a look that promises retribution, presses one last kiss to my temple, and walks out the door. The truck turns over, tires crunching on the gravel driveway until the sound fades into the trees.

I sit on the edge of the table, skin humming, pulse racing.

“Saturday cannot come fast enough,” I mutter to the quiet room.

I eat my pancakes without tasting a single bite. Then I wash the dishes, dry them, and wipe down the counters, doing everything I can to burn off the energy crackling through me.

Mara shows up thirty minutes later, her cheeks pink from the cold, her arms loaded with a bag of yarn and a project folder from the Lodge.

“Mrs. Lacey needs help with the common room setup for the winter festival,” she announces, dumping everything on the kitchen table. “She wants new cushion covers, new curtains, and a quote on refinishing the mantelpiece. I told her we’d be there by noon.”

I stare at her. “Right now?”

“Right now. She’s making us lunch, Tess. The woman makes a pot roast that could bring the dead back to life. We’re going.”

“I’m in sweatpants.”

“You’re in jeans. I can see them. Let’s go.”

She grabs my crutches from the wall and hands them to me. I take one look at myself in the hallway mirror. Bite marks on my neck. Hair still damp. Cheeks flushed. I smell like all three of them and want.

I grab a scarf on the way out and wrap it around my neck. Mara gives me a look but doesn’t ask.

We climb into her car, and she pulls out of the driveway, the mountain road stretching out ahead of us, white and wide beneath the morning sun.

“You’re glowing,” she says after a mile of silence.

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are. You’re practically radioactive.”

“It’s the cold.”

“It’s sixty degrees in here.”

I turn my face toward the window and say nothing.

She laughs, and the sound fills the car with a warmth that has nothing to do with the heater.

At the Lodge, Mrs. Lacey has us stripping old cushion covers and measuring windows for new curtains. She’s in her sixties, her silver braid swinging between her shoulder blades as she moves through the common room with a brisk efficiency that makes my mother look relaxed.

“These ones are trash,” she announces, tossing a mildewed cushion cover onto the growing pile. “Burn them. I won’t have mildew in my lodge.”

“Yes, Mrs. Lacey,” Mara and I say in unison.

We work through the afternoon. Mara measures, I cut fabric, and Mrs. Lacey supervises from a ladder, reorganizing the high shelves with a ferocity that suggests the previous arrangement personally offended her.

At two o’clock, the Lodge phone rings.

Mrs. Lacey picks it up, listens for three seconds, and her face hardens into something formidable.

“No,” she says into the receiver. “She’s not available. No, I won’t take a message. No, you may not call back. This is a private residence, and you’re not welcome here.”

She hangs up, turns to me, and her expression is pure granite.