She’d tried to fill the tense void by showing him many things within the cabin and how they worked. The ringing of the phone brought a sigh of relief from her that had chastened his heart. He was supposed to be protecting her—easing her burdens, not adding to them.
Erin answered the phone in the kitchen, and Emerald’s distinctive voice filtered through to Jared’s ears. “I’ve made a stew and bread pudding for dinner. And a bit of a warning to you. The dragon is here. So I can bring you two plates and you can stay there or you can come join us here.”
“We’ll be more than glad to come there,” Erin said. She hung up the phone and returned to the great room.
“Jared, we’re—”
“I heard,” he said softly.
“Your hearing is that sensitive?” she asked, sitting next to him, her gold eyes wide with wonder and a softness that was a gentle as her touch.
“Yes.” He inhaled deeply, drinking in every nuance of her scent. Something was different about him tonight. He could sense more, smell better, and hear more acutely than he remembered since coming to the mortal world. “The noise within the tent was too loud to bear.”
“I didn’t know. Do you want to stay here and rest while I go eat? I have questions I’m hoping to find answers to. I want to know if Emerald, the sheriff, or Dr. Batista have any other connection to Sno-Med than what we’ve seen so far, and I want to know exactly how Emerald knew we were coming to the Sacred Stones.”
“We will stay together.” He, too, had questions.
The sheriff arrived to take them to Emerald’s. His harsh manner scraped Jared’s nerves as much as the tight space in the pickup, making Jared even more uncomfortable. He couldn’t figure out why he felt such unease, or why it was growing with the shadows.
It worsened when he neared the cottage. The little house was set so low and deep beneath the boughs of thick trees that Jared felt an oppressive weight settle on his shoulders. He immediately missed the open freedom of the mountain crest where the cabin sat.
The sheriff clamped a hand on Jared’s shoulder at the door to the cottage. Jared shrugged it off sharply, turning to face the man who stood just half a foot shorter. Whether the man thought he was protecting those he cared about or not, Jared wasn’t going to give the guy any more room than he had to. Jared barely had room to breathe himself. “Have you got something to say?” Jared demanded.
Erin touched Jared’s arm lightly, trying to soothe him, and Jared drew a breath, feeling a deep urge to run through the woods until this tension inside him eased.
The sheriff kept his gaze on Jared as he spoke to Erin. “So far you’ve checked out, Morgan, but I’m waiting for more to come tomorrow. Then we’re going to locate your car on Spirit Wind Mountain, and we’ll see about you staying in Twilight at all. Em insists on your being here tonight. I don’t like it, and I’m not going to pretend to like it. Say or do anything to upset her, her daughter Megan, or Annette, and your accommodations will get bars faster than you can blink.”
The sheriff shoved open the door. “Have you got a problem with that, Em or Annette?”
Emerald and Dr. Batista stood just inside the doorway, eavesdropping.
“You’re too serious, Sam.” Emerald smiled, motioning them in with a wave of her arm. “Watch yourself now. My humble digs are a wee bit small.”
Jared had to duck low, and once inside he felt the full force of a strong magic, something much greater than the enchantment at Silver Moon. His gaze shot immediately to Emerald and studied her as she welcomed Erin into her home as well. When they finished, he caught Erin’s hand and urged her to his side. Magic this strong was not to be trusted very far. Logos never aligned himself with magic, for though magic wasn’t evil in itself, through the ages Heldon had become very adept in twisting the power of the mortal ground to his destructive purposes.
Erin tightened her grip on Jared’s hand as she glanced about Emerald s home, wondering what bothered him. She could feel him winding tighter and tighter, like a spring ready to burst, and she didn’t know how to help him. He seemed to be withdrawing from her, yet needing to keep her close as well.
Given how their first hours in the cabin this morning had gone, she’d thought they’d crossed barriers that had made them closer than she’d ever been to another. She still felt that way inside, but Jared’s actions were telling her he didn’t. Old hurt tried to well up in her, but she firmly stamped on it. She had to believe that when he was ready, he’d tell her what had upset him. It had to do with the Sno-Med fair and their discoveries there. That’s when he’d started to change.
“We’re all set to eat. Megan has the table ready, so I hope you’re hungry.”
“Very,” Erin said, forcing a smile. Before falling asleep on the couch, she and Jared had finished eating the peaches, cheese, and crackers that she’d fixed for a snack after their shared shower. But that snack was long gone, and she was very hungry.
Emerald’s home was the Better Homes and Gardens version of magical comfort. The rooms, though small, were filled with a treasure trove of diminutive art. Cabinets burst with figures of ethereal fairies and graceful, winged angels no larger than Erin’s thumb. The walls, though painted in dark tones of burgundy, green, and blue, sparkled with light as if dusted with glitter.
The heavenly smells of beef stew and fresh bread made a mouthwatering invitation that everyone accepted despite their reservations. The great food bridged a gap the initial lack of conversation had left. Compliments went to Emerald and Megan for the delicious dinner. Erin noted that Jared watched what others did before acting himself. For a man just introduced to the physical world, he functioned remarkably well and learned fast.
“What is happening with Sheriff Slater, Sam? You said earlier that he had trouble his way.” Dr. Batista spoke as she lightly buttered a piece of bread. She’d changed from her lab coat to an attractive outfit of brown pants with a shirt that matched the soft lights in her eyes, but she’d kept her hair tightly knotted and her shoulders stiff. “I didn’t catch wind of it at the health expo today. Usually if something is up, everybody is talking about it.”
The sheriff followed his spoonful of stew with a sip of water before answering. “I think Slater is trying to keep the situation quiet until he can figure it out. It’s a puzzle that is only getting worse.” He glanced at Megan, who listened intently to his every word as only ten-year-olds who think they’re all grown up can. “I’ll have to tell you the details later,” he said, making Megan frown before he continued. “But the man they found on the side of the road came up with a print match in the computer. Unfortunately, there’s an obvious glitch in the system.”
“What?” Dr. Batista bit into her bread.
“According to his fingerprints, the man was on death row for a number of years and had been executed in South Carolina two years ago.”
“For real, Sam Sheridan!” Emerald exclaimed, brows rising. “The body of a man who’s already dead.”
“Mum, will you be doing a reading of it?” Megan asked, her green eyes wide with interest.
“No. You know readings are special. Can’t be doing them on everything.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “So your crystal ball can identify dead men now?”
“Sam.” Dr. Batista glared at him.
“I’ve wrangled with fiercer dragons, Nettie.” Emerald set her cool gaze on the sheriff. “I don’t know what my crystal will reveal or won’t reveal. The Druids are rarely kind in the secrets they give up, but I could tell you something if I wanted to.”
Dr. Batista nodded. “It’d be better than the report they got today. Sometimes I think the system is useless. They’ve yet to determine whose prints were on Stef’s—” Her voice broke.
Dr. Batista had mentioned her sister’s connection to Sno-Med at the fair, and something bad had happened. “I’m sorry. You spoke of your sister earlier as if something is wrong. I can’t help but ask what.”
Dr. Batista took a deep breath. “She disappea
red six months ago.”
“How? From where?” Erin asked.
Emerald sighed. “I found her backpack at the Sacred Stones.”
Dr. Batista softly added, “Stef, who worked in Sno-med’s labs, was to meet a group of her coworkers at the Sacred Stones for a Saturday morning hike. She’d called me Friday and left a message on my cell to call her back that night. She said she had something important to ask me, and she sounded more concerned than usual about it, but not especially upset. There was an emergency at the hospital. I’d been in surgery for hours, and when I got her message, I didn’t call. It was late, and I was tired. She didn’t answer my call in the morning. Several hours later, I received a call from Emerald.”
Erin shifted her gaze to Emerald’s. “You worked for Sno-Med?”
“Mother Mary. Whatever gave you that idea? No. I’d gone to the stones at dawn looking for you two and found the backpack. Stef’s information was inside, along with Annette’s as an emergency contact.”
It took Erin a second to absorb this new fact. “You were out looking for Jared and me six months ago?”
“It’s a story,” Emerald said.
The phone rang, and Jared started. Erin set her hand over his, remembering his sensitivity to sound.
“It’s Bethy ringing,” Megan said as she jumped up and ran to the phone. She picked up the receiver, totally assured that she knew who was calling. “Bethy!” She listened to what Bethy had to say, then squealed with delight. “Hold on.” She pressed the receiver to her chest, eyes shining. “Mum, can I go to Bethy’s tonight? She just got Fairy’s Fantasy X, and her mum’s said we can have a marathon until we best the Dark Lord. Can I? Sarah, Susan, Barb, Mel, Beanie, Mish, and Carrie are all going to be there. It might take us days!”
Erin recognized the newest game craze for the younger set of video maniacs, where a force of tiny fairies managed to defeat all foes in their quest to save the world.
Emerald sighed. “It’s Sunday. We’ve not done your reading for tomorrow yet. You can’t be going tonight.”
“But Mum!” Megan’s eyes grew mistier with tears. “It’s just Bethy’s! Please. We did two for today. Can’t it wait a day or two—”
“Meggie—”
“Just once, please. Can’t I be like everyone else just once, Mum? Please.”
Emerald inhaled as if she was facing a foe she didn’t know how to fight. “Tomorrow, then. You need to come home tomorrow night for your reading. I’ll delay no longer.”
“Yes,” Megan squealed into the phone. “Mum will run me over in a jiffy.”
“After we’ve finished,” Emerald cautioned.
Megan dashed back to the table, kissed her mother’s cheek happily, and sat to finish her meal. She bubbled with so much excitement that Erin thought she’d float to the ceiling before it was over with. Emerald seemed distracted for the rest of the meal and through dessert.
Jared commented on the sweet bread pudding. It was the only thing he’d said since speaking to Emerald when they first arrived. “Peaches,” he said. “Peaches would be good with this.”
The heat of his thumb caressing the inside of her wrist told Erin he hadn’t made an idle comment. Her pulse raced back through the memory of him and peaches and juicy kisses.
Dr. Batista gave Jared a puzzled look that soon turned to compassion. “Peaches are good, Jared,” she said, as one might to a small child. “You like peaches? I like peaches too.”
Emerald sputtered her coffee and shook her head. “Nett, both you and Sam are going to be eating a load of crow.
Erin frowned, then realized Dr. Batista had come to the conclusion that Jared was mentally handicapped. And from the look in the sheriff’s eyes, he was reaching the same conclusion.
Hell, Erin thought, deciding not to disabuse them of the notion. Having them think Jared was impaired would go a long way to avoid having to explain anything. The silver-bell sound Erin associated with Emerald’s cell phone tinkled, and Emerald quickly rose up to attend to it.
“I’ll get my stuff ready to go to Bethy’s,” Megan said, jumping up and dashing away with a big smile on her face.
Sam shook his head as he spoke to Dr. Batista. “Em’s so married to her cell phone that she can’t have a life of her own.”
Dr. Batista glared at him. “You wouldn’t be saying that if I’d gotten a call for emergency surgery.”
“That’s different.”
“No. It’s not.”
“What good can she do? Tell them to go to page sixty-nine now?”
“You are impossible. Have you ever even read her book? Do you even know what is on that page?”
“I don’t have to,” Sam grumbled.
“What book?” Erin asked.
“Sexual Synergy” Dr. Batista said. “Emerald is a sex therapist known as Dr. Em in Dublin.”
“An online sex therapist,” Sam said. “I bet her clients e-mail her from bed. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘you’ve got—’ ”
“Don’t you dare say it.” Dr. Batista groaned.
“Male,” said the sheriff.
Emerald returned, and the meal soon ended on a more congenial note than it had begun. The sheriff returned Erin and Jared to the cabin with an “I’ll see you in the morning” good-bye.
Erin stood for a moment next to Jared, looking at the soft fingers of moonlight bathing the cabin in a silvery glow. It appeared almost mystical amid the dark shadowy trees and black edge of the rugged earth. Honeysuckle scented the humid air, bringing childhood memories of plucking the nectar from the hearts of the delicate blooms and dipping the droplets onto her tongue. More fireflies than Erin had ever seen at one time flickered like a carpet of fairy dust about them, blanketing the area in beauty and quietly reminding Erin that Twilight was different than other places. Just the fact that Emerald, Dr. Batista, and Jared had all ended up there told her that, even if her sixth sense hadn’t.
The sound of a wolf howling cut through the magic of the night and made Erin shiver.
“Hurry,” Jared said, taking her arm and urging her into the cabin. Once inside, she turned to find him stripping his clothes off in the doorway.
“Jared, we need to talk. We can’t let what almost happened happen.”
He stood naked in the doorway, powerful and hungry. He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring. His eyes glittered an eerie blue in the moon’s silver light.
He walked to her, sending her heart fleeing places her feet didn’t have the sense to run to. Her breath caught, her lips parted, and her insides clenched, already heated with the memory of the pleasure he alone had branded upon her.
He shoved the clothes into her arms. “I have to run,” he said harshly. “Lock the doors, and whatever you do, do not leave the cabin.” He turned and ran into the dark of the night.
Chapter Fifteen
“You don’t look as if you are feeling well, Manolo,” Cinatas said holding up a bottle of Chateau Petrus merlot to the intense surgical light he kept beside his seat while dining. He examined everything for impurities. Manolo stood subserviently in the doorway, his body shivering from fever, which Cinatas knew would become very painful shortly. Marburg virus, or as Cinatas liked to call it, Marvel virus, for it miraculously wiped any nuisance from his life within a week’s time, purged the host of all impurities before his very painful death.
Almost as painfully as his dinner was progressing, Cinatas thought. Shashur had decided to join him, and the tedious affair had become a pissing contest. One that Shashur couldn’t even dream of winning.
Cinatas smiled at the secret progress he’d made in locating Morgan and her not quite mortal friend. Erin had to be traveling with someone not of this world; nothing else could explain Morgan’s ability to evade capture.
Shashur reached over and snatched the bottle from Cinatas. “If you’re going to fraternize with your idiots, I’m at least going to have a drink.” He sank his dentally altered fangs into the cork and twisted it free of the bottle.
&nbs
p; Cinatas shuddered at the violence of the act. His manicured nails cracked to the quick as he dug them into the arm of his Louis XIV chair, carved by André-Charles Boulle himself. Shards of pain ripped up Cinatas’s arm, and he silently vowed that Shashur would fall subject to the same hemorrhagic fever as Manolo. It would be interesting to see what its purging effects would do for the damned.
“I’m fine, sir,” Manolo said, answering Cinatas’s query. “Reports are that Sheriff Sheridan ran a check on Erin Morgan today. She’s in Twilight. We’ve ears in his office and a man on his tail. We should know at any minute where Morgan and—”
“You’ve got a team ready to act, right? Then keep up the excellent work,” Cinatas hissed through his pain, interrupting Manolo before he could say anything more about the man with Morgan.
Manolo disappeared, and Shashur drained his wineglass then poured another. “You’ve no cause to feel smug,” he said. “The damned found them on that god-forsaken spirit-ridden mountain. It was an easy deduction to know they’d surface in the nearest town.”
“Of course,” Cinatas said. “I’m sure incompetence had nothing to do with your inability to secure Morgan. What can the damned do when a few Blood Hunters from the spirit world bare their teeth?”
Shashur stood, shoving his chair back from the table. “I’m bringing your insolence and this whole incident up for review before the Vladarian Order. Pathos found you, and he can replace you.”
Cinatas only smiled. Shashur would be dead before that meeting in three weeks.
Jared ran from the cabin into the woods with the Tsara bite burning as if he were being branded anew. The poison in him roiled, scraping the insides of his chest like a beast clawing to be free. When he’d exited the sheriff’s vehicle just minutes ago, something had told him to run as far from Erin as he could. Whether it was the full light of the moon shining on him, pulling the evil in him to the surface, or if the sudden release from the magic of Emerald’s cottage caused an eruption of evil, the bloodlust had reared its head.
Modern Magic Page 160
