Marnie turned toward the familiar voice and smiled. Speaking of more important things. She was so glad to see Clint coming toward her. When he’d walked away this morning she’d honestly wondered if she’d see him again. And here he was, tall and rugged and normal, and carrying a cloth tote bag with celery poking out of the top.
“He’s in the woods, looking for poop.”
“You didn’t want to join him?”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s not really my idea of fun.”
He lifted the bag. “Do you like gumbo?”
She smiled. “I do. Who doesn’t?” She cocked her head to one side. “I thought you had other plans tonight.”
“Changed them,” he said simply. “I’m going to put this stuff in your fridge.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” Clint said as he turned toward the house. “You stay here, while I get the gumbo started. You wouldn’t want to miss a momentous crap discovery.”
She watched him walk through her back door, and what could only be relief washed through her. Marnie didn’t know how a man, any man, could become so necessary to her in such a short period of time, but Clint had. He was back. Whatever had annoyed him earlier in the day, he’d gotten past it and come back to her.
Everything was going to be ok.
Clint was more important than any supposedly mythical creature. She had meaningful things to take care of, and she was looking at one of them right now.
If Bigfoot would leave her alone, she’d return the favor.
If Alice had hidden her Brigadoon formula in an obvious place, Susan — or someone else — would’ve found it by now. The vegetables for the gumbo sat on the kitchen counter. It would take a while to prep them all, and he couldn’t leave the room while he was making the roux. If he was going to search the house it had to be now, while Marnie was outside and occupied with her Bigfoot hunter.
Clint grumbled as he searched. He was a writer, not a spy. While he, by necessity, had to hide the truth about a part of himself from those outside Mystic Springs, he was otherwise up front and open. He didn’t hold back, hated lying or being lied to, so sneaking around someone else’s home searching for a hidden formula wasn’t exactly his idea of fun. Why had he agreed to take this job, and how far would go? Would he sleep with Marnie again and search her house while she slept? Could he hide the fact that he was still angry?
No, not angry, not really. He was disappointed. He’d expected more from her. His response was illogical, since he’d only known her for a few days. Yes, they’d had sex, but that didn’t mean he knew her as well as he should. Marnie didn’t know, couldn’t possibly know, that what she’d seen on the road and again in the woods was him, in his other form. Illogical or not, he could not forgive her.
He searched the house not because he was disappointed in Marnie, and not because Susan had asked him to. He did it because he didn’t want the town he loved to be removed from the map. The death of the town would still come, if they were completely isolated, it would just be slower and more painful. Springers and Non-Springers alike would have no place to go. The spell would effectively make Mystic Springs a prison.
There was no guarantee that the formula Susan wanted to destroy was even in this house. She said she felt it here, but that was far from an exact science. Alice might’ve written it down here then hidden a single piece of paper at the library, or buried it in the garden, or secreted it at a friend’s house. She could’ve stashed a note card in one of the vacant storefronts on Main Street.
But it was likely here. Alice would’ve wanted to keep it close. It was possible she hadn’t written it down at all, but had only memorized what she needed to erase Mystic Springs from the map. If that was the case, they would never know. They would always wonder if it was out there, waiting to be found.
Alice was more cautious than that, and since this was something she’d wanted for years, she’d obviously tried before without success. In that case, she’d definitely want the ingredients to her Brigadoon potion saved in writing. Somewhere.
He didn’t have time to climb into the attic. That would have to be a search for another day. But he looked quickly and carefully through the bookcase in the parlor. Some of the books there were Marnie’s, but others were those Alice had left behind. A single sheet of paper tucked in a book could take a long time to find.
Especially if she’d tucked that paper into one of the books in the Mystic Springs Library.
Just a few minutes in, and he knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task. Why him? Why hadn’t Susan asked someone with a different kind of magic to have a look around? Because he was the one sleeping with Marnie, that was why. Because he had a reason to be here.
Besides, she didn’t want everyone to know what Alice had found and hidden here. If they did Marnie would not be safe. No one would be safe if Springers went to war with one another.
Clint gave up, for the moment, and returned to the kitchen to wash and chop the vegetables. He’d made gumbo many times, it was his favorite food, and he had the prep down to an art. He made quick work of the onions, celery, and bell pepper. Through the kitchen window he saw Marnie and that asshat Lovell walking toward the back porch.
The hairs on the back of Clint’s neck stood up. Maybe he wasn’t close to a lot of people, but if he had a natural enemy, it was that man and those like him.
As they came in through the kitchen door, Clint slowed his movements considerably. Let them think he’d taken all this time chopping vegetables.
Lovell spoke up, his British accent grating on Clint’s nerves. “Marnie tells me you’re making gumbo for supper.”
Clint turned his head to look at the man and grin. It was likely not a friendly grin at all. “I am. Too bad you can’t join us.”
“Clint!” Marnie said in a censuring tone of voice.
Lovell help up one hand. “No, no, it’s Saturday night and this is a date, I imagine. Though I’m almost positive I heard you cancel your plans for the evening.” He glanced around the room, making a bitter face when he saw the sausage sitting on the counter. “Besides, I don’t eat meat of any kind, and spicy foods give me terrible indigestion.”
“Good to know,” Clint growled.
Marnie walked Lovell to the door, while Clint stayed in the kitchen. He’d seen quite enough of the Bigfoot hunter already. Still, he listened closely. Marnie offered Lovell a ride to his car, but he said he would walk. Apparently, he already knew where he was going. Mystic Springs was so small, nothing was particularly difficult to find.
Marnie was back in minutes. She stood in the doorway, still and quiet. He felt her there, smelled her. Without looking back, Clint said, “I don’t like him.”
“That’s obvious.”
“Lovell grates on my nerves, and I swear, he comes off as so damned phony.” He grabbed the shrimp from the fridge, where he’d stashed it before starting his quick and fruitless search. He waited for Marnie to defend the Bigfoot hunter, but that defense never came.
“I can’t argue with that,” she said.
“He’s…”
“I don’t want to talk about Nelson Lovell,” she interrupted.
Neither did he, but what choice did he have? “What do you want to talk about?”
She moved into the room, came closer, sighed in a slow and easy way that both saddened and soothed him. “I want to talk about why you ran today and cancelled our date. You did show up after all, but for a while there you looked spooked and angry and… I don’t know. But you did run, and I don’t understand why.”
Clint turned, leaning back against the counter so he could look down at her. “This is happening fast.”
“It is.”
“I’m not a man who’s accustomed to fast.” Not for a very long time. As an adult he’d learned to be cautious, to be suspicious. He hadn’t been suspicious enough where Marnie was concerned.
“I wasn’t in your plans,” she said. “I get that. Trust me, you weren’t in mine
, either.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him. He would’ve grabbed her, he wanted to grab her, but he didn’t. It was nice, a simple kiss.
“I’m going to shower and put on something comfortable,” she said as she backed away.
He was relieved to hear she’d be washing the stink of Lovell off her body. His sense of smell was acute whether he was man or beast, and the stench of the Bigfoot hunter lingered. Had Lovell touched her? He didn’t think so. The stink was faint, as if they’d done no more than share air. Even that was enough to taint her.
“We can talk when I’m done,” Marnie said as she left the kitchen.
Clint didn’t say so, but he didn’t think they’d be doing a lot of talking tonight.
Chapter 14
Marnie couldn’t believe she’d ever thought she wanted a Mr. Darcy. What she really wanted, what she’d always wanted, was this.
The connection she had with Clint was unexpected. It was raw and powerful. There was nothing sophisticated about him. He was real. Solid. Down-to-earth. A waistcoat wouldn’t suit him at all.
What they shared was sex, and the sex was great, but somehow it went beyond the physical. It was love, love that came too fast and unexpected. Somehow what they’d found was also more than love. Clint was quickly becoming as necessary as the air she breathed, as if she’d been incomplete before she’d met him.
She’d never been so aware of the sensation of skin to skin, or of the special scent that was created when they touched. She’d never needed anyone or anything the way she needed him. No kiss had ever rocked her the way his did.
Her brain had definitely been clouded by sex.
Lying in bed, at an early morning hour when she should be sleeping, she cuddled against him. Heavens, he was warm. Wonderfully warm. She liked it. “I’m glad you changed your plans for the evening.”
“So am I.”
“I can’t imagine anything better than this.”
His answering grunt sounded like an agreement.
Marnie rose up a little so she could look Clint in the eye. “You’re right, though. This is happening too fast.”
The growl that followed was so soft, she felt rather than heard it. “Want me to go?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I should, but I don’t.” She rested her chin on his chest. There was something special about the way her bare body fit against his. “What should we do tomorrow? I have the whole day off.”
He caught her eye and held it. “I say we stay right here all day. There’s leftover gumbo so we won’t starve.”
It was a lovely idea. Sex and gumbo. “Sounds like a plan. I just have to see Nelson for a little while, in the afternoon. He wanted me to help him find places for his camera crew to stay while they’re here, and…”
“Camera crew?” Clint interrupted.
“Yeah, he’s filming a cable show about hunting Bigfoot. Sounds lame to me, but he’s very excited.”
With a quick flip she was on her back and Clint hovered above her. He was big, hard, and those eyes… she couldn’t see them well enough in the dim light, but they were always intense. Alive.
“Get rid of him,” he whispered. “Tell him you made it up. Tell him you lied about what you saw.”
His intensity should’ve frightened her, but it didn’t. She rested a hand on his side, rubbed her thumb over a muscle there. “But I didn’t lie. What’s the big deal?”
“Trust me, it’s a…” His voice deepened a little, his eyes flashed in what seemed to be anger.
And then he was gone, leaping from the bed in a flash and stalking toward the door. “I’m going for a walk,” he mumbled.
Marnie sat up in the bed. “Don’t you want your pants?”
He just growled, as he sometimes did, leaving the room and his pants behind, so she assumed… no.
Midnight naked jogging. Yeah, he was definitely not Mr. Darcy.
Clint had not intended to run all night, but he was so spun up he’d had no choice. His life was normally so well ordered, so controlled. In the past week it had been anything but. Marnie had gotten too close too fast. Alice’s formula could spell disaster for Mystic Springs. Nelson Lovell was bad enough, but a camera crew? A damn TV show about Bigfoot? He could avoid them all, but it would mean being very careful.
He hated being careful.
Nothing and no one made him lose control, but Marnie had pushed him to a breaking point. Could he have tamped down the urge to shift and run? Yes. Did he want to? No.
Would it be easy? Again, no.
As Dyn Gwallt he ran from Marnie’s house to the river, then turned and ran along the bank. It was still dark. No Non-Springer boater or fisherman from beyond Mystic Springs would see. If anyone was out there, making their way down the Chattahoochee, he would be nothing more than a shadow lost in other, deeper shadows.
As the skies began to turn gray and birds sang, he turned into the forest that was as much his home as any cabin. He wove his way through the thick brush. Normally he took care not to leave a trail of destruction, but at the moment he didn’t care about the bushes he trampled, the limbs he broke. As he neared home he climbed an old oak tree, one of his favorites, almost to the top. There he whooped, not in joy as he normally did, but in frustration.
After a short while he shimmied down the tree, but instead of heading for home or directly back to Marnie’s he turned in another direction and ran, attempting to burn off or tamp down the turmoil inside him.
He was free, but he was also trapped. He had allowed a woman to turn his life upside down in a matter of days.
In the pre-dawn hours, Dyn Gwallt stood just beyond Marnie’s back fence and looked at the garden, the back porch, the window of her bedroom. This had been Alice’s house for a long time, but already it felt more like Marnie’s. In short order she’d made it a home, she’d claimed it as her own.
She’d claimed him.
He should go home and hide there, let Susan handle her own problem. He could leave Marnie to the Springers and whatever they decided to do with her.
Could he do that?
The scream took him by surprise. Without thinking, he vaulted over the fence and into Marnie’s back yard, and ran for the door.
Tired of constantly waking up wondering if Clint had returned and finding his side of the bed empty, Marnie finally gave up on a good night’s sleep. Her mind was firmly on the kitchen and a big cup of coffee. Maybe a cookie. She’d pulled on a bathrobe — in case she found Clint sleeping on the couch or sitting in the kitchen — and stepped into the hallway as quietly as possible. Again, in case Clint was sleeping somewhere.
At first she thought what she saw out of the corner of her eye was a weird shadow, but then the shadow — which was shaped like a tall, thin man — turned and looked at her.
The shadowman had removed a painting from the wall in the small dining room between the parlor and the kitchen. The landscape had been hanging there when she’d moved in. It was too dark for her taste, but since she had nothing to hang in its place, it remained. Her eyes were not on the painting, at the moment; it was on the shadow that held the framed painting in one hand and a wicked looking curved knife in the other.
Her initial scream was weaker than she’d like; terror had stolen some of her voice. Like in a dream. A nightmare. She screamed again, louder this time. The shadow calmly set the painting aside. It did not set aside the knife. Heart pounding far too hard, Marnie found her survival instinct and bolted. The shadowman stood between her and the parlor, so she ran toward the back door. Too afraid to look back, she sprinted through the kitchen to the screened-in porch. She pushed through the screen door and vaulted into the back yard.
Where she found herself running straight toward Bigfoot.
It was a nightmare. She was caught between a hairy monster and a menacing shadowman wielding a very real knife. Yes, nightmare, had to be.
No, somehow this was all real.
She couldn’t turn back. The shadowman had follow
ed her, she just knew it. Not that she was about to take the time to look back and make sure.
Bigfoot barreled toward her, long strides eating up the distance between them in a hurry. Marnie held her breath. Where could she turn, where could she go? Up close, Bigfoot was even bigger than he’d seemed at a distance. He was also hairier, if that was possible. His eyes met hers; they were surprisingly human. And kind. He had kind eyes. That was unexpected.
All this went through her mind in a split second, before the creature cut to the side and ran past her, toward…
Finally, Marnie stopped and looked back. The shadowman had indeed followed her. He vaulted down the back steps with that curved knife in his hand. That blade had to be eight inches long, and an insubstantial black hand gripped the very real handle as if it knew what to do with that weapon. The thing stopped when it saw Bigfoot. Stopped and took a step back.
The sun was rising. There was light here, plenty of it. She could see the hair on Bigfoot, the flowers in her garden, every detail of her house. She could no longer blame nighttime shadows, stress, or the heat for what she saw.
Bigfoot was very clear, but the shadowman was not. Why couldn’t she see that thing’s face? Even by the light of day, it remained a dark, indistinct blob.
Instead of running back the way he’d come, the shadow thief ran around the corner of the house. Bigfoot gave chase. In seconds they were both gone.
Marnie considered sitting down right where she stood. Her knees were weak, her heart pounded too hard. Only the prospect of sitting on grass wet with morning dew kept her from plopping to the ground.
She hurried toward the safety of her house, which to be honest didn’t feel particularly safe at the moment. As she reached the porch she took the time to lock the screen door. For all the good that would do her. She didn’t think that mesh screen would slow Bigfoot or the shadowman man. Still, a locked door made her feel a bit safer.
Marnie made her way into the kitchen on shaky legs. Instead of falling into a kitchen chair or grabbing her cell from the bedroom to call 9-1-1, she went to the coffee maker and started the process of brewing a morning pot. As she waited for it to dispense coffee, her heart slowed. Her knees stopped shaking.
Bigfoot and the Librarian Page 13
