Keep Me Close

by Elizabeth Cole

  She wriggled, feeling heat between her legs. “You know it does.”

  Dom pulled her close again, his mouth on hers. Vinny rocked against him, her body waking up with every little touch of his hands and his mouth.

  Judging by the bulge in his jeans, he was enjoying this too. “So much for staying out of your way,” he said.

  She remembered telling him that. She’d been so sure that her thing for him was just a momentary madness. That now that she was here, she’d be able to get back to her own life and forget about him.

  Yeah, right.

  “Let me get my shirt all the way off,” she said. “Or get yours all the way off. Come on, Dom.”

  He shook his head. “Not here.”

  “Why not?” God, she wanted to see all of him. “Just so I can see all your tattoos again.”

  “All? Then you’ll need to get me naked.”

  “Really?” That was a very interesting bit of info.

  “Yeah. But trust me, Vin. When we get all our clothes off, we are going to fuck, and talented as I’m sure you are at piano, I do not want to fuck you on one. I prefer a bed. And a whole night to spend in it.”

  Vinny rolled her eyes. “Traditionalist.”

  “Traditions get to be traditions for a reason.”

  He kissed her again, slowly this time. Then he murmured, “You know what. I could forget about tradition. You tell me, Vin.”

  Go for it. The words were on the tip of her tongue, a command for herself as much as him.

  Then something caught in her peripheral vision. At first she thought it was a shadow, or something dark. But when she turned her head and looked harder, she saw what must have distracted her. A little blinking red light.

  “Cheese and crackers,” she muttered.

  Dom paused. “What is it?”

  “Um, don’t freak out. I think there’s a security camera. I can see the recording light.”

  “Are you freaking out?” he asked quietly.

  “Little bit, yeah.” She hated getting her picture taken, and she hated cameras in general, even when she was wearing all her clothes.

  He went still for a long moment, then sighed and pulled her shirt back down. Vin saw the frustration on his face, and she completely understood.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Not your fault.” Dom glanced around, his gaze locking onto the red light. “Your friends are serious about security, huh?”

  “I guess. Side effect of having money. You worry people will steal it.”

  He looked back at her, his hands resting on her hips. His touch was grounding now, not tantalizing. “Maybe the cameras are why you’ve been feeling watched.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, they sure work to kill the mood.” She wriggled off him and stood up. “I gotta get out of here for a bit. I’m going to take a walk.” Anything to work off the sexual frustration she was feeling.

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  Vinny nodded, glad he asked.

  The moment they got outside, Vinny felt better. Well, on one level. She was still feeling worked up after a couple of minutes alone with Dom. Maybe she should be grateful for the stupid security camera. It stopped her from making what was probably a terrible decision. Getting attached to Dom would be pointless, and if she slept with him, she’d get attached. Vinny knew herself well enough to know that. Relationships always turned sour. They were best avoided completely.

  Meanwhile, Dom was looking around, taking in the scene. It was an amazing scene. Emma had selected the property very carefully, and she chose it because the view was gorgeous from every direction.

  Especially gorgeous in Dom’s direction.

  Stop that, Vinny told herself. God, she was turning into an idiot.

  Dom said, “Hard to believe a place this pretty can have such bad energy. But then, looks aren’t everything.”

  “You sense energy? Like auras?”

  “I’m not great at auras. I know some people who are astonishing. It’s not mind-reading, but it’s the next best thing. A little scary, really.” Dom looked around. “I just recognize the more basic levels of energy, especially anything that leads from this world into the otherworlds, or a place of power, or some spot that has some unusual concentration of energy—like a grave, or a doorway.”

  “That sounds pretty astonishing to me,” Vinny said.

  “It’s just practice.” Dom sounded a little embarrassed, and Vinny got the impression he was playing it down a bit. He clearly had gifts. It couldn’t be just practice. Then he said, “It’s a mental technique, really. We use it to see what’s happening around us more clearly. It’s like being able to see several layers of reality at once. It tends to blur out what doesn’t matter, and make what does matter stand out more.”

  Vinny asked, “Are you special? Is it like a superpower that only you have?”

  “No. Anyone can if they know how. It just takes training.”

  “Then train me.”

  “Training takes a little longer than that. Months. Years.”

  “Come on, Dom. Something. I want to help.”

  He thought about it. “You can’t walk into the otherworlds, but there’s something else you could try that might help. This is a bit easier to do if you can be surrounded by nature, so we may as well do it here.”

  “Do what?”

  “Do you meditate?”

  “Never got the hang of it. Are we meditating?”

  “Not exactly. We call it centering. It’s a really useful trick when things are getting complicated and overwhelming in a supernatural way. Centering helps a person kind of pull themselves back into one place, shake off psychic angst.”

  “I’m all for that.”

  He stopped when they were out of sight of the house and among a stand of pine trees. “Here’s a good spot. Sit down. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths.”

  She did all that, then waited for his next instructions.

  He sat near her, saying, “Keep your eyes closed. Try to empty yourself out of your surface thoughts. Oh, crap. I forgot that it helps to have a focus when you’re just learning this.”

  “A focus?”

  “Like a totem. Something to ground you.”

  She looked down at her necklaces, then selected one, an enameled oval of a female saint. “How about Cecilia here?”

  “Patron saint of music. Perfect,” Dom said happily. “So close your eyes, hold onto St. Cecilia, and take a few deep breaths. Keep calm, and try to let go of all the stuff that’s been happening.”

  “That sounds impossible.”

  “That’s the hard part,” Dom agreed. “But try your best. Now, you’re going to open your eyes in a second, but here’s the key. Don’t use your regular eyes. Use your firefly eyes.”

  Vinny opened what she assumed were her regular eyes. “You said what?”

  Dom looked a bit shy as he repeated, “Your firefly eyes.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Have you ever watched for fireflies at night, when you were a kid?”

  Vinny nodded slowly. Dom’s questions were bringing up long-forgotten memories of childhood evenings when she waited for fireflies to come out, anticipating the magic of that brief time just after sunset. A time when no matter what else was happening with her life, no matter how her parents fought, Vinny could see a little glimmer of magic in the world.

  “Do you remember how you looked for them?” he went on.

  And then she remembered the trick of seeing fireflies. You couldn’t search for a particular lightning bug, or try to find their dark bodies against the shadows. You had to unfocus a bit, wait for the next moment, and not look for anything. Then you’d see hundreds of fireflies, blinking madly in the night.

  “I got it,” she said.

  “Okay. Start with that sort of seeing. Close your actual eyes, open your firefly eyes, and go from there. Don’t try to see anything in particular. Just concentrate on your own breathing, and your own sense of self
.”

  She took a few deep breaths on Dom’s recommendation, and closed her eyes again.

  At first, it was just…her sitting there with closed eyes. Vinny hoped for some magical revelation. But evidently, magic didn’t work like that. It was just this dull place of black and white. And more black and white. And more.

  She realized she was standing up, looking at her feet. She stood on a path of black and white stripes. Wide white stripe, a slightly shorter black stripe. Then white, then black.

  A piano keyboard. Well, that just figured. Centering brought her directly to music. She used to live and breathe piano, and her subconscious must still have it locked in. It was like she was still twelve years old.

  She took a step, and another, walking the striped path into a landscape that otherwise looked just like the real world she’d left. Pine trees everywhere, and thick mists hanging in the highest branches, the suggestion of mountains beyond. Somewhere, she heard a faint roaring sound…a river.

  It was all quite pretty and peaceful. Vinny resolved to give meditation a try, if it was like this.

  Looking around, she became conscious of thin, shimmering threads in the air, almost like spidersilk or those long threads some little green caterpillars used to sail through summer. But when she reached out, her hand passed right through them. They weren’t tangible. They weren’t anything she could grab. But her skin tingled with a sort of vibration when it made contact with each thread. Like a harp string vibrating under her fingers.

  Emma.

  Vinny touched the last thread again, curious as to how it seemed to want to draw her toward her friend. Then she noticed how this particular thread actually emanated from her own self. This thread connects me to Emma, she thought. It was thin, but strong and tight, and it glimmered brightly, as if the sun shone on it, despite all the mist around.

  Vin saw another thread, thinner and wispier. Jonas.

  Then another, one that led back where she’d walked from. Dom. Vinny was a little alarmed at how tough the thread looked. For something that only existed a few days, it seemed awfully…real. She passed her hand through it, and her whole body resonated with the hum of energy it sent through her, leaving a warm glow she would have called golden if she were a more poetic person.

  Firefly eyes, she told herself, willing herself to lose focus on the thread leading to Dom. A moment later, she realized the misty air was concealing hundreds of thin, silvery threads running out from her to…everywhere. Vinny had always thought that connections mattered. But this was the first time she’d actually seen it. No wonder she always felt so weird about relationships everyone else seemed to charge into without thinking.

  She paused on the path, and heard an odd sound behind her, as if something had been matching her pace, and got caught out when she stopped.

  She turned, looking around. The mists that seemed charmingly mysterious before now seemed menacing, hiding something within.

  Vinny was not going to call out hello like a horror movie victim, but she kept turning in a circle, hoping to catch whatever was out there. She no longer felt centered, if she ever had been.

  She couldn’t see anything, but the sense of being watched made her shoulders bunch up. She told herself to calm down, to stop freaking out.

  Then she felt it. A hot breath on the back of her neck.

  She jumped, turning a full 180, ready to punch whatever it was in the face.

  Nothing there. But she heard an odd hissing noise, like a far away, staticky radio.

  It was still just Vinny, standing alone in the mist. She noticed, though, that in her hand was a knife, one that looked a lot like Dom’s knife. She took a breath. She could do some damage with that.

  The second she started to feel better, the hot breath returned, joined by a lick of a tongue across her neck.

  Delicious.

  Vinny screamed.

  Arms wrapped around her from behind. Vinny strained hard, trying to free herself.

  “It’s me,” Dom said, still holding her tight as he shifted around to face her. “You’re okay. Vin, what happened?”

  She felt like she had a fever, and her heart raced as if she’d run a mile. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know, Vin. Centering is supposed to be peaceful.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” she snapped. “There’s nothing peaceful about being stalked in some creepy shadow world. There was something…behind my eyes. Like it was hiding inside my brain.”

  He frowned. “Shadow world?”

  “It looked like here, but black and white, like a keyboard, on the ground.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  Dom was staring at her like she’d grown an extra head. “I think…Jesus.” He pulled out his phone. “I gotta ask Lex about this.”

  “About what?”

  “I think you walked into the otherworlds.”

  What was an otherworld? Vinny asked, “Is that bad?”

  “Not inherently,” he said as he texted a message to his brother. “But it is dangerous, and it’s not easy to do.”

  “So probably that’s not what happened,” she said quickly.

  He still looked concerned, and Vinny could tell she wouldn’t be getting out this easily. He said, “Tell me how it felt. Or smelled. Anything that comes to mind.”

  Vinny squeezed her eyes shut, trying to put words to what just happened to her. Dom’s arms still circled her.

  “It was fine in the beginning. I was just noticing all the threads.”

  “Threads?” he echoed. “You’ve mentioned something like that before.”

  “Yeah, but this time, I could really see the threads. You know, all the threads that go from person to person. I saw the ones to Emma and Jonas…and you. And a hundred others.”

  She noticed a tiny shift in Dom’s eyes. He was surprised.

  “You don’t know about the threads?” she asked nervously.

  “I do know about them,” he replied, his words slow. “But most people don’t see them, even in the otherworlds.”

  “Oh, I’ve always known about them. Since I was like eleven or twelve. I tried to explain it to my therapist once. She convinced me I was being too literal about how my parents were each tugging at me. My dad would pull his thread, then my mom would pull hers, and I always felt it, even when they were talking with each other and I wasn’t supposed to know.” Vin paused. “I think I would have felt better if I’d known those threads were really there.”

  “They were,” Dom said. “It was unusual that you saw them, but they’re real.” He leaned in a little, then said in a low voice, “Now you have to tell me about the other thing you saw.”

  Her shoulders tightened up instantly.

  “It’s okay, Vin,” he said quietly. “Just talking about it can’t summon it back.”

  She swallowed hard before bile could rise in her throat. “What if it never left?” she asked. “What if it’s still here?” She was shaking, her muscles reacting to the anxiety she felt.

  “It’s not here,” Dom said, his voice steady. He released her. “It’s not in the real world, at least. It’s in the otherworlds. I promise. It might still feel close but it’s not here. Tell me whatever you remember, Vin. That will help me fight it the next time it shows up.”

  The idea of a next time made her woozy. “No.”

  “Yes, Vin. Start with something simple. Was there a smell at all?”

  She took a few breaths, remembering. “Um, yes. Sort of…hot. But not fire. Like hot asphalt? Hot, but…dark. Tar. It was tar.”

  “Good. Keep going. Did you hear anything?”

  Vinny shuddered. “Oh, yes.” She didn’t have to try to remember that. “There was this growling sound. Like an animal.” A big, scary animal. “A slobbery growl. I thought it was about to eat me. Do demons eat people?”

  “Some do. Did you hear words? Did it speak to you?”

  Vinny frowned. “Maybe? There was something I heard that I almost understood
. Or like when someone is talking on the other side of a wall and you know it’s words but you can’t make them out. Or maybe it wasn’t talking to me. I’m sorry. None of this is useful.”

  “Let me decide that,” Dom said. “I thought centering would be good for you, and it never occurred to me that you might be able to see an otherworld. Sorry. That had to scare you.”

  Vinny bowed her head. “Scared doesn’t begin…that was terrifying. It was nice at first, and then it wasn’t. It was like a trap. I don’t like your stupid otherworlds.”

  “Most people don’t,” he said, turning his head. “Oh, hey. Look who’s here.”

  Vinny looked over to see Piewicket approaching. Dom stepped away to give her space. Vinny picked the cat up and held her, craving the normalcy and warmth of a little cuddly being. Pie tolerated it for a minute, then wiggled.

  Vin put her back down. Pie meowed, then looked at Dom.

  “Yeah, I was teaching her how to center, and by accident, she sort of walked into an otherworld.” He paused, evidently listening to something Piewicket was telling him. “Not sure,” Dom said after a minute. “Vinny didn’t really get a visual sense. More the usual creeping dread sort of thing.”

  “Not creeping,” Vin corrected, ignoring the fact that Dom was having a conversation with a cat. “There was nothing creeping about it. It wasn’t there, and then it was. It was a rushing dread. A pile-on of dread.”

  “Okay.” Dom squeezed her shoulder, then looked toward Pie again.

  The cat’s tail lashed once.

  “Pie, she doesn’t know how to describe a demon. She’s got no training.” Dom sounded angry. Then his expression changed. “Oh.”

  “What?” Vinny asked anxiously.

  Dom shook his head. “This is bad. When I got here, everyone said it had to be a ghost. But this proves we’re dealing with a demon.”

  Chapter 19

  Piewicket hissed. The cat looked directly at Vinny, then back to Dom, who was still trying to fit everything together in his mind. Vinny accidentally strolled right into an otherworld. And that meant a doorway, which meant a demon.

  He said, “Pie thinks you would be safer if you leave. I think she’s right.”