Page 26 of Bane of Hate and Silver (Primordial Inheritance #1)

“Jules has got you doing the hard work I see.” Mr. Martin winked at Jules.

Jules left her spot near the front of the booth and walked to the corner closest to the middle-aged couple. “Oh yes.” Jules smiled. “He’s my least favorite student, you see.”

“I am not!” Ethan said, most likely not as offended as he sounded.

“How is it going sweetie?” the woman asked, but she wasn’t talking to her son. She was addressing Jules. This had to be Ethan’s, clearly human, family that Jules, the vampire, practically lived with.

“Pretty good,” Jules replied.

“Are you behaving?” Ethan’s mother asked her son, who had walked up next to Jules’s shoulder.

“Yes,” he said.

His mother looked at him skeptically.

“That’s half true,” Jules told her.

“Traitor,” Ethan grumbled.

Ricky heard a pop which indicated that someone had hit their intended target. He turned and watched a girl hit two more in a row.

“Great job!” Tasha praised.

Without comment, Ricky walked over, returned the darts, and stapled three more balloons over the empty rubber carcasses of the last. As he did so, he continued to watch Jules and the humans from the corner of his eye.

“You should probably know that I’m coming over tonight,” the pretty woman, Ethan’s sister he guessed, said to Jules. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever. I mean, I see you in the mornings, but I haven’t actually spent time with you since…”

“Monica, really,” her father chided.

“What?” Monica shrugged.

“Inviting yourself over to other people’s homes whenever you want. Where did we go wrong?” The man asked his wife, but it sounded like a joke.

“It’s Jules,” Monica said as if this was an obvious exception to propriety.

Ricky was watching this family’s interaction sadly.

Last week, that was him. Happy family, loving parents, snarky teenager who they loved and adored.

It was very different now. His mother wasn’t the same person she’d been last week.

He assumed she was upset about his father’s murder somewhere deep inside, not that she had shown that to him.

But it was his dad, not his mom, who had always been the one to let Ricky in on the inner workings of his mind and emotions.

“You okay, Ricky?”

Ricky turned, expecting it to be Tasha who’d inquired, but she was making some grand gesture, calling people over to the booth to take their chances. It was Jules who had momentarily turned away from the human family and spoken to him.

Ricky scrubbed a tear from his cheek that he hadn’t realized he had shed. Instead of answering her question directly, he said, “so, does she know what you are?”.

“Who? Monica?”

Ricky nodded.

Jules hesitated for a moment as if deciding how much to say. “She does.”

“And she’s okay with it?” he asked, astonished.

Jules looked him dead in the eyes as she spoke. “I don’t hurt people.”

“I believe you.” Ricky turned at another set of multiple popping sounds.

“That’s the best round so far!” Tasha said, congratulating the man standing in front of her. “For that, you get a bunny.” Ricky handed Tasha a blue, stuffed rabbit, who passed it to the victorious customer.

“Luca!”

Ricky’s attention was jerked to the next booth over. Luca, along with the couple whose wedding reception he’d skipped out on last night, approached the booth next to theirs. Between the hunt and the reception, Ricky had put together that Amy, Landon, and the newly-wed wife were siblings.

“Kyle, I didn’t know you knew Hayley Reynolds,” Tai said, looking from one werewolf to the other.

“That’s Hayley Reynolds-Cooper to you,” Kyle said, putting an arm over Hayley’s shoulders.

“You’re married?” Tai asked astonished.

Ricky saw a scowl cross Landon’s face from the next booth over, but he remained silent.

“Look who it is,” Monica whispered to Jules. “I know you like him.”

“Don’t,” Jules said.

“Luc…” Monica began to shout in his direction.

Jules grabbed her waving arm. They exchanged a weird glance and then Jules shook her head minutely. But it was too late, Luca had already turned in their direction. His eyes met Jules’s for the briefest of moments and then he turned his back, stepping between Jules and the other werewolves.

“I’ll explain later,” Jules whispered so lowly to Monica that Ricky almost missed it, even with wolf hearing.

Monica nodded and stepped away from the balloon pop booth. “Mom, Dad. This is Tai’s friend Luca Cain,” Monica introduced, drawing all nearby attention. “And Hayley Reynolds, she was on cheer squad with me a couple years ago and, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name?” she said to Kyle.

While the newly-arrived werewolves were distracted, Ricky saw Jules discreetly take a few steps farther into the booth.

Ricky decided belatedly to be helpful and stepped in front of Jules, obscuring her from the view of the others.

There was another pop.

“That’s a turtle,” Tasha said. Ricky didn’t move to hand her the prize. Tasha looked around confused, but Ricky pretended not to notice. Tasha rolled her eyes and walked over to retrieve the small turtle shaped bag of beans herself.

Ricky looked behind him. To his surprise, Jules was gone.

Jules walked from her booth to the back entrance of Gabriel’s. There could not be an altercation here, so preemptively warning Gabriel seemed like the preemptive choice.

He spun at her call and then turned back to his three students.

Of course, Gabriel had picked three with the most behavioral issues.

He could always see the best in humans others overlooked.

“Missy, you’re in charge until I get back,” he said to the only girl in his booth.

The boys groaned. He ignored them and joined Jules on the other side of the tent flap. “What is it? You look startled.”

“Werewolves. I’m fine,” Jules whispered, peaking around the edge of the tent. “You’ll leave them alone, right?”

“You think I’m going to make a scene in front of my students?” He seemed more than a little offended by her question. He had severely overreacted at the Promenade and had been on constant edge about it since. She felt it was a fair question.

“No, of course not. But…” She back peddled, not wanting to start yet another fight.

“I’ll be sure to avoid them and, no, I won’t make a scene,” Gabriel interrupted. “I would never risk the safety of my students that way.”

“Okay. Fine.” She felt foolish for being concerned, but she wasn’t sure why.

He sighed, exasperatedly. “Thank you for warning me, Jules.” Gabriel squeezed her arm.

They exchanged a smile and then he left her, returning to the inside of his booth. “Terry, give that back right now!” Gabriel said sternly. “You have customers.”

Jules was about to walk back to her own booth when Gabriel’s head appeared through the tent flaps once more.

She turned toward him at his call.

“Can you check in with the other booths? Leaving these three doesn’t appear to be possible.”

“Sure,” Jules replied. “My kids will be fine for a little while.”

“Yeah, you got some easy ones.”

“You totally did that,” Jules pointed toward his booth, “to yourself.”

“What can I say? These are the ones who need me,” he said with a shrug and a smile. Just then, more shouting came from Gabriel’s booth. “What now?” he muttered, then disappeared once more.

Jules was moving to step back through the flap in the back of her booth when she discovered that the entrance was being blocked.

What on earth? But as she peered in the small opening she could see Ricky standing in the entrance, holding the flaps of heavy plastic together discreetly.

“Bye Mom, bye Carson!” he shouted a little louder than was necessary and stuck his hand through the flap, palm out.

Probably signaling that she should wait there.

After a few more moments, Ricky stepped aside.

“Sorry about that,” Ricky said quietly.

“Thanks, you didn’t have to do that,” she said. Understanding that he’d just put himself between her and the Alpha.

Ricky shrugged.

“Dude, your stepfather is a beast,” Tasha said once both Jules and Ricky had joined her closer to the front of the booth. “He popped like eight balloons in a row.”

“He’s not my stepfather,” Ricky said flatly.

“But he is a beast.”

“You have no idea.” Ricky said this under his breath, but Jules heard it clearly.

“Was that really your mom?” Ethan asked.

Jules cut him off. “Listen up guys…”

Tasha rolled her eyes and groaned.

“And girl,” Jules added. “I need to make a run to the other booths. Tasha’s in charge until I get back.”

Tasha smiled widely at this.

“Why is she in charge?” Ethan asked incredulously.

“Because she’s the girl,” Jules teased, raising her eyebrows at Ethan. “If you need anything, Mr. Prentiss is right over there,” she told Tasha.

Tasha nodded.

Jules left them to their own devices and walked by Landon’s booth. Silently, she asked the question of ‘how’s it going’ by moving her thumb sideways and up.

Landon gave her a thumbs-up and she moved on down the long row of booths.

She was just about to check in with the fourth booth when her phone beeped in her pocket.

She stopped in the middle of the humans meandering the strip and retrieved it.

The message was from Luca. It read, meet me at the funhouse.

She knew that she shouldn’t go but hesitated only a moment before replying and changing directions, heading toward the midway.

This section of the carnival was far busier than her own.

The humans were more crammed together and much louder.

She passed the ticket booth, which was being overseen by the administration staff.

Then dodged around the Ferris Wheel, and approached a small, colorful building that was adorned with a creepy-looking clown.

She looked around for Luca but didn’t see him standing outside or anywhere near the funhouse. Shrugging, Jules entered through the clown’s open mouth to see if he was somewhere inside.