Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  My lungs struggled for air as my regular vision came back. I choked and gasped as I tried to catch my breath. My heart pounded too fast within my chest, and my skin broke out in a cold sweat. The symbols faded away into nothing as I continued to stare at them. What the heck had that been?

  I found my phone and called the one person who would know what that crazy powder had been and why it had been placed there—Kace. He didn’t pick up. Instead, I got his voicemail. I left him a message telling him I was working at Spellbinding Reads today, but that I needed to talk to him about something later. My heart was still pounding from what I’d seen, and I recoiled away from the trash can.

  ***

  “Here, these just came in. Can you put them over there on display somehow?” Admer paused in what he was saying and gestured to the mess that was the front desk. “That way they’re easily found. I promised a friend of mine I’d sell her odd Celtic music.”

  “Umm, sure,” I said, taking the stack of CDs from his hands and glancing around. “I think I’ll start with organizing the desk first, though. Then I’ll find a place to put these. And why are you calling it odd, isn’t that what we’re listening to now?”

  Admer smirked at me. The expression seemed out of place on his normally serious face. “Tis true.”

  ***

  I spent nearly two hours riffling through everything that had been scattered across the front desk, weeding out the trash and creating folders for all of the receipts that had been tossed around. I was just getting ready to start placing things neatly back on the desk the way they should be, when my cell vibrated in my back pocket. It was a text from Vera. I smiled when I realized it was her, glad things hadn’t been too weird between us since she’d left.

  Hey, girly, how’s it goin’?

  I glanced around to see where Admer was—he stood near the coffee machine helping an elderly woman create a drink of some sort—before I responded back.

  All right. First day on the job.

  Oh no, are you bored to death yet?

  I chuckled and shook my head.

  Not in the least.

  Well, call me later or something.

  I will.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and glanced over at Admer once more to see if I’d been busted texting on my first day. He was casually sipping some tea while showing another old lady the wooden puzzles for preschoolers we’d apparently gotten in yesterday.

  I started to stack things back on the desk, but couldn’t stand all the dust covering it. I remembered Admer telling me about a storage closet in the back. I left the front desk and headed to the back office for a dust rag and some Pledge.

  The office desk was just as messy as the front desk. For being so calm and smooth seeming all the time, sophisticated even, Admer sure was a slob. Papers covered the desk here too, as well as old Styrofoam cups of tea and cookie wrappers I recognized from Paisley’s. Obviously he’d fallen prey to the spells of their delicious offerings too. Sage, the large black cat of the place, lay curled in a fluffy ball right in the center of everything.

  I spotted the closet in the back and retrieved pieces of an old T-shirt that had been cut into rags and a fairly new can of lemon-scented Pledge. Heading back out to put it all to good use, I noticed a picture that hung on the wall just beside Admer’s desk. As I walked over for a closer look, my cell vibrated in my back pocket once more. I made a mental note to leave it in my Jeep the next time I worked. I didn’t want to be reprimanded for being on my phone the entire time I was supposed to be working. Glancing at the screen, expecting to see another text from Vera, I realized it was Kace calling.

  “Hello?” I answered in a whisper, shifting to look out the office door, making sure Admer was still with the puzzle woman. He was.

  “Woo, hey, sexy,” Kace whispered in a low tone that nearly took my breath away. “How’s it goin’?”

  I chuckled. “It’s going. I’m still at work.”

  “I figured as much, I got your message, but I wanted to hear a little more of your voice. Glad I called when I did, cuz I like the tone you answered in.” His voice took on the same low, rumbling tone as before, and it sent shivers along my spine.

  “Psh, whatever.” I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t suppress the grin that twisted my lips.

  “I hear the grin in your voice, and now that I’ve mentioned it, I’ve got you smiling, don’t I?”

  I grinned even wider. “Sure do.” No point in denying it.

  “Awesome, my job is done. So, what time do you want me to pick you up?”

  “Pick me up?”

  “Yeah. You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about. I can only assume what it’s in reference to, and there’s no better way to talk about that stuff than face-to-face.”

  His words seemed to trickle through the phone and caress my skin the same way that I knew his fingertips would if he were here with me, and a tingling sensation slid through me. “Sounds good then.”

  “So, what time?” he asked again, and I felt my face catch fire because I hadn’t answered him the first time.

  Instead, I’d been thinking of what his touch felt like and how it was the best part of being face-to-face with him.

  “Umm, I get off at four. How about then?”

  “I’ll be there. Later, sexy,” he said, and I melted a little more.

  Sexy was so much better than babe. Ryan had always called me babe, and I hated it. It had never sounded right coming from his mouth. He tried too hard, that was the problem.

  “Later,” I said and hung up, grin still in place. I walked out of the office and back to the front desk.

  “Well, this is a first,” Admer said as I sprayed the front desk with Pledge.

  “What is, dusting this desk?”

  Admer chuckled slightly. “No, a person cleaning with a smile on their face.”

  “Oh, well it’s not because of the cleaning. I don’t enjoy it that much,” I assured him.

  “Either way, it’s nice to see you smile.”

  I glanced up, not because of his words, but because of his tone. It was off. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was genuinely happy to see me happy, even though he hardly knew me, or if he was being sarcastic. Either way, something about the entire situation gave me the creeps for a spilt second.

  “Right,” I said as he turned away and tossed his cup in the trash.

  ***

  I continued to clean and organize the desk. When I was finished, Admer asked me to do the same for the desk in his office. While removing stuff so I could dust there too, I remembered the picture I’d seen hanging on the wall and took a closer look to see what it was of. An old woman with a walking cane stood in front of the store holding out a set of keys to a slightly younger version of Admer. He must have bought Spellbinding Reads from someone else—that lady in the picture.

  Admer came into the office carrying a large box. He sat it along the back wall of the room beside two others that had been there since this morning.

  “Books, some new arrivals. I don’t think this one is supposed to go on the shelves until Wednesday though,” he said, his face all serious as he opened the paper that was attached to the front of the box.

  “Who’s the lady in the picture?” I asked, pointing to the one on the wall I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes off of.

  There was something about the woman that seemed familiar to me.

  “Amelia Avery. She’s who I got the shop from.”

  He said this so absentmindedly and yet I was floored.

  “Amelia Avery?” I repeated.

  There was that name again, my name—Avery.

  Admer looked up at me then. “Yes. That’s who I bought the shop from.” Realization dawned in his eyes, but it seemed phony somehow. “Oh, right. She was your grandmother, wasn’t she? I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed you knew this store had belonged to her.”

  “I didn’t,” I said simply. How could he have assumed I’d known that?

&nbs
p; “I bought it from her after she’d grown too old to maintain it herself. She’d waited for her daughter, Angela, to come back so she could take over, but she never did.” Admer’s jaw tightened at his words, and I wondered if he was thinking of how distraught my grandmother must have been when her daughter never returned.

  I swallowed hard. “I can’t believe she owned this place.”

  “For years,” Admer said. “Everything is still the way it was when it was under her ownership. The only thing I added was the coffee and tea bar.”

  We lapsed into silence while I pondered this new bit of information, and Admer continued to gaze at me in a strange way, almost as though he enjoyed boggling my mind.

  The bell above the front door chimed, alerting us to a new customer, and Admer exited the office, leaving me to my thoughts.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - An Elemental

  Come four o’clock I had so much to talk with Kace about, I couldn’t wait for him to get here. When he entered the store I felt it, even though I was in the back of the store gathering a few more packets of tea to replace the ones Admer had drank during the day. I bolted from the back room, eager to see him. The excitement must have been on my face, because as soon as I locked eyes with his, he grinned knowingly.

  I cleared my throat and smoothed my hair in an attempt to contain my emotions before I spoke. “Hey.” I went for indifferent, but it came out sounding strangled.

  Kace sauntered toward me. “Hey, sexy,” he whispered. “Thought you were getting off at four?”

  “I am. I just need to restock this before I go,” I said, ignoring the incredible sensation that coursed through me due to his presence as best I could while I stuffed the tea bags into their place. “Done.”

  “All right, let’s get out of here then.”

  “I’ll see you on Wednesday, Admer,” I called to the shelves at the right of the store where I’d seen him disappear last with a stack of books in his arms.

  “All right, thank you for coming in. Today went well, I think.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I replied, my eyes never wavering from Kace’s steady ones.

  Kace’s hand slipped into mine, and I sighed at the sensation his touch stirred within me. He flashed me a wicked grin in response to my sigh and pulled me toward the door. The warmth within me surged to life at the feel of his skin pressed against mine. All I could think of was what it would feel like to have every part of him pressed against me and not just the skin of his hand.

  We bypassed his car and my Jeep, heading down a sidewalk. I had no idea where he was taking me, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I was with him right now. We continued walking, my hand held firmly in his, the warmth from my Fire being flamed by his Air for a while.

  We came to a set of crumpled wooden steps made from old railroad ties. Kace led me down them, his grip tightening on my hand as he paused after each step and turned to help me due to the considerable distance etched between each. There was a grassy area at the bottom as well as a swampy marsh, which stretched out for as far as I could see.

  “This is another one of my favorite places,” Kace said, breaking the long, drawn-out silence that had encompassed us on our walk. “It’s quiet here. We can talk with no interruptions.” His eyebrows wiggled, and I slapped at his chest playfully due to his insinuation of what he thought we could do without being caught here.

  Standing at the bottom of the steps, I stared out at the land stretched before me. It was marshy, but also like a river. Water snaked and bent around itself surrounded by light and dark blades of grass. Some taller than me, some not. It was the short grassy area before us that Kace plopped down on with more elegance than I’d thought possible for a guy his size.

  “This is your favorite outdoor place?” I asked, scrunching up my nose.

  He glanced at me with a boyish gleam twinkling in his strangely blue eyes. “What, you don’t like it?” The one dimple that he had deepened and I smiled at him.

  I shook my head. “It’s not that I don’t like it—it’s gorgeous—I just figured the beach would be your favorite place.”

  “The beach is everyone’s favorite place, which means sometimes it can be a little crowded. No one ever comes here, though.” Reaching out, he took my hand and twined our fingers together, igniting the warmth within me once more.

  He tugged me down to sit beside him in the grass. Flopping down, I tucked my legs beneath me and enjoyed the sensation of his touch mixed with the beautiful surroundings. His other hand found my bare thigh and began tracing lazy patterns across the sensitive skin there.

  “I get that, I guess,” I said in response, but a tad too late.

  My blood warmed from his touch. It rushed through my veins and every cell in my body became more alert, more sensitive to him and his nearness the more his fingers traced over my skin.

  “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” he whispered, leaning closer, his voice as smooth as silk, his breath barely brushing my skin.

  It was the same tone he’d used on the phone with me earlier, but the effect it had on me this time, in person, was overwhelming.

  “I, umm …” I couldn’t think. Not with him touching me. Not with him staring at me like that.

  Kace gave me a mischievous look that was wickedly sexy on his handsome face, and I felt my bones begin to melt. He knew what he was doing to me. What the hell had I wanted to talk to him about? I couldn’t remember. This guy was like an all-consuming drug. He clouded my mind and forced away all reality.

  One of his eyebrows shot up and a sinful grin twisted his full lips. He leaned over and began brushing light kisses along my jawbone, making my eyes drift shut and my mind become completely delirious from the flowing of magick that swirled within me.

  “It’s all right. You can talk to me about it later. We have all the time in the world,” Kace whispered against my skin. “What you really want is revealing itself to me right now …”

  “Revealing itself to you …” The words flowed from my lips in a breathy whisper as they seemed to jog something from my memory.

  I jerked back and pushed Kace away with my palms at the same time, suddenly remembering what it was I was doing here and why I’d wanted to talk to him.

  Kace put his hands up between us and laughed. “What?”

  “Behave,” I said, faking an ill-tempered voice to get my point across that we needed to stop.

  For the time being, at least.

  His dimple deepened with his smile. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll try my best, but I didn’t hear you complain until just now.”

  “I’m not complaining,” I said as I straightened out my shirt and ran my fingers through my hair. “I just can’t get sidetracked by you again.”

  “I sidetrack you, do I?” Kace asked with a smirk, smoothing my hair away from my face.

  I glared at him from under my lashes as I batted his hand away. “You know you do.”

  “And the feeling’s mutual.”

  An involuntary shiver of pleasure crept up my spine at his admittance of how I made him feel.

  “What do you know about Spellbinding Reads?” I asked before I lost myself in him once more.

  He leaned back, tucking his arms beneath his head, and stared up at the sky. His light-colored eyes glittered like crystals in the catch of the sun.

  “What do I know about Spellbinding Reads … ?” he repeated. “Nothing really. It’s a bookstore.”

  “Do you know who owned it before Admer?”

  “Mrs. Avery did.” He shifted his eyes to mine, catching where I was going with this and understanding what I was trying to learn more about. “He bought it from her when she didn’t want to run the place anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t think about that until now. It’s been so long since it happened.”

  “He didn’t mention anything to me about it either. Not even when I gave him the address of my grandmother’s house for the application,” I said, realizing how odd the situation really was. “Was he friends with her or
something?”

  “I don’t know; I guess.” Kace shrugged one shoulder. He pulled a long strand of grass from the ground and began toying with it between his fingers.

  “Do you think he knew my mom too?”

  “Yeah, of course, he was part of their group.”

  Admer was an Elemental? Why hadn’t he said anything to me? He’d obviously known who I was—what I was—upon hiring me. Why keep all that information to yourself?

  “I don’t understand why he didn’t say something to me about all this before,” I said.

  “He’s a little odd. At least that’s what my parents always say about him. He kind of keeps to himself, you know?”

  I could see that. It was the impression I got from him as well. Still, I began to think of reasons why he would keep this all to himself and nothing seemed to add up. I wondered if maybe he was just shy and didn’t know how to broach the subject? No, Admer definitely didn’t seem shy at all. In fact, he seemed sophisticated and put together—almost powerful in a sense.

  “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about, or can we get back to what I’d rather be doing with you right now?” Kace’s hand stroked my bare arm, sending sparks of warmth shooting beneath my skin.

  I jerked my arm away with a smile. God, this guy really knew how to seduce a girl with his good looks and touch, especially this girl. “Actually, there is.”

  He frowned. His bottom lip poked out and all I could think about was how much I wanted to nibble at it with my teeth … just a little. “All right, fun time can’t begin yet. I get it, I’ll behave, but only until you tell me I can do otherwise.” He cocked an eyebrow at me and grinned sinfully.

  My heart pounded with want. I glanced out at the swampy marsh to distract myself before I gave in to him. “What do you know about revealing spells?”

  He sat up on his elbows. “Not much, why?”

  “Because I cast one last night.” Cast, was that even the right word? God, I sounded like an idiot.

  I could feel his eyes on one me now. I’d captured his full attention with my words. Finally.