Will protectively draped his arm around Kal’s shoulder. Instinctively, she leaned into him.
“Yeah,” Will said, looking at Kal. “Everything’s good.”
She nodded, trying not to lose herself in his steady gaze.
Aidan relaxed and broadly smiled, obviously relieved. “You guys coming in tomorrow?” Tomorrow was Wednesday. Kal didn’t say anything, waiting for Will to answer.
His eyes never drifted from hers. “Yeah, we’ll be here.”
* * * *
Kal wondered if Will would go to the cemetery but decided not to ask him. He spent the night at her apartment. In the morning after breakfast, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her in a way that made her want to up and die right there because it felt so perfect.
“Do you mind going ahead alone?” he asked.
She shook her head. If he wanted to tell her, he would.
“I know Aidan took you there. It’s okay. I’m not upset. You should know about my past.”
“I don’t mind if you go see her. It doesn’t bother me.”
He hugged her tightly. Before she could tell if he was crying, he kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you in a while at the office,” he said, his voice sounding tight. Then he was gone. The air shifted and popped at his departure. She assumed that phenomenon had something to do with the air displacement.
Will appeared at the office about an hour after Kal arrived. He looked like he’d been crying. She dragged him into the edit room and locked the door, curling up in his lap with her arms around him while he buried his head against her shoulder. Kal didn’t break the silence. He didn’t cry but she felt he was close to it.
After twenty minutes he lifted his head from her shoulder and looked at her. “This has nothing to do with you. You understand that, right?”
“You were together a lot of years. I think it would bother me more if you were pretty blasé about it.”
They shared a comfortable silence. They sat there for another ten minutes with Kal enjoying the feel of one of Will’s hands on her thigh, the other gently stroking her back.
He let out a long, deep sigh and relaxed. She knew he felt at least a little better.
“Why do you even work?” she asked, trying to distract him.
“Something to do. Photography, and then videography fascinated me. Aidan pulled me into doing the show. I didn’t know Ryan was behind that. It’s just fun, a way to stay fairly normal.”
“Isn’t it risky, being in such a high-profile profession?”
“Not really. In a few years the show would end or be passed on to other people, and Aidan and I would fade from the spotlight.” His face clouded. “Of course, I wasn’t planning on being around that long.”
“How long have you known Purson and Gery?”
He shrugged. A strand of hair had escaped her ponytail holder. He brushed it from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “A long time. We’ve always been a good team, work well together.”
“What happens to me? How will I change?”
He kissed her, tasting her, savoring her. “Because I’m so strong and you’re my soul mate, you’ll pick up a few powers incidentally. Longevity, of course. Healing. You can read my thoughts, and a few other people, but not all of them. I honestly can’t tell you what you’ll be able to do because I don’t know. Most likely basic things, heightened senses—sight, scent, hearing. Might feel like you have more energy, better reflexes.”
Her hand slipped between his legs. “Reflexes like that?”
He hardened in response. “Yeah,” he hoarsely whispered. “Like that.” He smiled.
* * * *
They did a lot of talking in between hot sessions in bed. Plenty of talking while in bed, too. They loved to cuddle, each absorbing the feel of the other. Kal knew she had an eternity to get to know Will, but she craved to understand him the way he seemed to understand her.
“You told Ryan that Abby picked the name Hellenboek just to make him mad,” she noted.
Will smiled, a wistful look on his face. “Not mad, really. Just to irritate him. Busting his balls. She had a playful streak.”
“How often did you change names?”
He shrugged. “Not very often. Just depended on where we lived and the times. That last one was…” He thought about it. “We were in Great Britain back then. Several hundred years ago.”
“How did she pick her new name?”
“I picked it. It described her perfectly. And she picked mine.”
“At least she didn’t name you something like Biff.”
He laughed. “No.”
“What did her name mean?”
“AnnaBelinda means beautiful. Just like yours is Sanskrit for beautiful.”
“No freaking way. You speak Sanskrit? That’s sort of creepy.”
“I speak a lot of languages.”
“How many?”
He smiled. “All of them.”
Before she could utter her shocked disbelief, he clarified. “It’s a mental thing. Another one of the powers we’ve got.”
“Bet you’d be handy at the UN.”
He smiled. “No, they’re a pretty vicious, cutthroat group of people. Not sure I’d want to deal with them. That’s more Ryan’s territory.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kal found adjusting to life with Will quite easy.
Having an eternally sexy stud muffin isn’t so bad.
If she could only get past the mood swings that made PMS feel like a walk in the park. Kal tried to hide it from Will, but she still sometimes resented the manner in which Ryan handled things despite not seeing him since the night she became Will’s soul mate. She’d want to kill Ryan over how he manipulated them, would feel like ripping his head off. Then, after a particularly hot session in bed with Will, she’d want to thank Ryan and send the jerk flowers.
Mind trip didn’t come close to describing it. She wondered if it was a side effect of whatever happened between Will and her. She didn’t know how much to ask Will either, not wanting to hurt his feelings or make him feel guilty. This wasn’t his fault, and not an ounce of her anger was at him.
Will sat on the bed next to her one morning. They were at his condo, and he’d already stripped for the shower. She fought the urge to drop her head to his lap and suck him. Whatever magic passed between them was strong and deep. Did normal people feel like this when they were in love? The inability to keep their hands off each other?
Another mood swing struck. Kal internally raged once again that Ryan had taken that knowledge from her and denied her those experiences. She’d never have the thrill of a first date with Will, of feeling that zing of attraction that took its natural course through subtle discovery, working their way through the stages of courtship until that magic night when he proposed, the sweet agony of counting down the days until they could…
Well, okay, she’d had that zing of attraction. In a thermonuclear way. It would be a damnable lie of campaign-promise proportions to say she wasn’t attracted to Will at first sight. Not that she was complaining about her eternal stud muffin, but she would have preferred a choice in the matter. Or at least the illusion of one.
She studied the amulet around Will’s neck. She’d love to give Ryan a freaking piece of her mind. Heck, she’d love to punch him in the nose. Poor Will. No, he wouldn’t die now, but his choice had been taken from him, too, even though he no longer seemed to mind.
At least Will was out of pain. Aidan told her he’d seen Will smile and heard him laugh more in the past several days than he had in the past two and a half decades.
Then again, maybe she’d hug Ryan the next time she saw him. He saved Will’s life and brought her a man who could not only make her happy, but who would never betray her. And she’d been able to at least alleviate the worst of the pain in Will’s soul.
Forcing herself not to kiss Will’s chest, she stroked it instead. Her fingers traced the amulet. “How was it created?”
He shrugge
d. “I don’t know. It was given to me years ago.”
“How many years?”
“I don’t know. Eons.”
Kal’s fingers slipped from the amulet to his chest and traced some of the twisted scars crossing his flesh. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know. I quit counting.”
“And Abby…”
He nodded. Kal still had trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she wouldn’t age. Then again, an eternity with this man would still feel short.
“How many years were you together?”
* * * *
“I don’t know. In some ways it felt like we were always together.” Will looked away, unable to meet her gaze any longer. “I remember when I met her, but I couldn’t tell you how long ago it was.”
Will didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to risk revealing anything to Kal. He was still trying to cope with his powers returning and was afraid to think about Abby for fear of Kal learning—
“Hundreds of years?”
He shook his head.
“Thousands?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “Let’s just say there wasn’t an accurate calendar when I met her.”
Kal’s pendulum of emotion for Ryan immediately swung back to hatred. She loved Will, yes, but the fact that Ryan put him through this emotional agony just to get him back under his thumb made her hate Ryan with a desperate passion. Even if she benefitted by getting to love Will for eternity.
“We need to take our shower and get to the office,” she said. He stood and she hesitated, an idea forming. “I’ll be there in a minute, I need more coffee. Can I look at that for a minute, hold it?” She pointed to the amulet.
He studied her. “Why?”
“If we’re going to be together that long, I’d at least like a closer look at it.”
He eventually slipped it over his head, handed it to her, then headed for the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
“I’ll be right in,” she called. When she heard the shower start, she slipped the leather cord over her neck, closed her eyes, and gripped the amulet in her hand.
If a goofball like Aidan could do it without screwing it up and turning his skin inside out, how hard could it be? For a very brief moment, the thought that this might a horribly bad idea tried to push its way through to her brain. She successfully suppressed it, determined to confront Ryan without any interference.
Something instinctive took over, a surge of power as the amulet warmed in her hand. Kal envisioned Ryan’s face and sent her mind on ahead.
Take me to Ryan.
The world shifted and loosened around her, much like it had when they went to Ryan’s condo and when Aidan took her to the cemetery.
Kal opened her eyes.
* * * *
Will stepped under the spray once the water warmed. That’s when he felt the air unmistakably pop. “Kal?”
He stepped out again and looked into the bedroom. No Kal.
“Kal? Where are you?” He couldn’t feel her, but he didn’t know if that was because his powers weren’t back up to full strength or because she was gone.
He fought the urge to panic.
Dammit, I never should have let her hold the amulet!
Will wrapped a towel around his waist and dripped water through the bedroom to the kitchen. Kal was nowhere to be seen.
Now panicking, he screamed, “Aidan, appareo!”
His cousin immediately materialized. Dressed only in Scooby Doo boxers, with toothbrush in hand and a foaming mouth, he wore a frantic look. “What?”
Before Aidan could ask anything else, Will grabbed Aidan’s amulet, held on, closed his eyes, and said, “Reperio meus alius dimidium.” Normally he wouldn’t need Aidan to go to her, even without an amulet, but he wasn’t back to full strength yet.
They appeared in Ryan’s Atlanta condo.
Ryan was laughing and holding his hands up, trying to defend himself against Kal’s enraged attack. She slapped at him like a kid in a playground, screaming practically random, nonsensical epithets in her fury. For a fleetingly brief moment the thought she hits like a girl struggled to escape Will’s lips with an accompanying burst of laughter, but he clamped down on it.
Then reality struck home—she had no idea who she was fucking with. Lucky for her Ryan only looked amused, not upset.
Losing his towel in the process, Will raced across the room, grabbed her, and pulled her away from Ryan. She kicked and screamed at Ryan even as Will kept a tight grip around her waist. Damn, she was strong.
Then, finally, a coherent sentence of words strung together in the proper order erupted from her mouth like a spewing volcano. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you motherfucking, cocksucking, son-of-a-bitch dickhead!” she shrieked.
That almost shocked Will into releasing her. He struggled to spin her around and face him, trying to calm her down.
Ryan laughed loud and hearty. “That’s a live one you have there, Will. Looks like she’s starting to get the hang of things. Well done, Kal. Certainly in possession of a colorful vocabulary now. She’ll give you a run for your money over the years, no doubt.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ryan,” Will snarled at him. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders, gently shaking her. “Kal, what do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to fucking kill that shithead bastard, that’s what I’m going to do! I’m going to rip his balls off!”
Aidan stood there in shock, his mouth covered with toothpaste.
She lunged for Ryan again. Will tackled her, bringing her to the floor as Ryan laughed. “How dare he do this!” she screamed. “He took my life from me and stuck me in this mess, the cocksucker screwed with you, and he’s a fucking asshole! I’m going to let some hot air out of that motherfucking head of his!”
In a single breath, she’d gone from Winnie the Pooh to checking off most of George Carlin’s list of words you couldn’t say. Will hooked his legs around hers, trying to hold her as she thrashed in his arms.
* * * *
“Kal,” he whispered in her ear, “babe, let it go. Please. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
She finally relaxed against him, breathing heavy, then sobbing and turning to bury her face against him as the stress melted from her and her adrenaline crash hit.
Ryan lounged against the counter. He started to say something, but Aidan, his mouth still covered with toothpaste, pointed his toothbrush at him. “I wouldn’t if I were you. Quit while you’re ahead, dude.”
Ryan smirked and sauntered out of the room.
Kal finally sniffled and sat up. She realized Will was wet and naked, and Aidan less than decent and looking like a rabid dog. If she wasn’t so upset she’d laugh at Aidan and boink Will silly. “I’m sorry,” she softly said.
Aidan tossed Will the towel from where it had fallen. He tucked it around his hips. “I need that back, Kal,” Will said quietly, pointing to the amulet. “You can’t do that. Especially can’t go after Ryan like that. He’s giving you a lot of leeway but he could kill you, literally, with a blink of his eye.”
* * * *
He took my life from me, she’d said. She wasn’t dealing with this nearly as well as she pretended, wasn’t nearly as happy with him as she claimed to be.
The bottom line? She was forced to be with him. He couldn’t blame her for being upset. She got the short end of the stick in this deal, without a doubt.
Kal returned the amulet, and Will looked up at Aidan. “Thank you. I’m sorry I yanked you away like that.”
He nodded. “It’s okay. Want me to hang?”
“No, I’ve got it from here. Thanks.”
Aidan disappeared. Will looked at Kal and caressed her cheek, wishing he could turn back time and walk away from the show so the wraith never attacked her. This was unfair to her, no matter what he felt for her now.
“I’m sorry, Kal,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry you’ve been dragged into this.” He wrapped his arms around her
, holding her, his chin resting on her head. “Send us home, Ryan,” he called out. “I’m not strong enough to do two by myself yet.”
Ryan heard, from wherever he was. They reappeared in Will’s bedroom. He held her for another moment, then kissed her on the top of her head, and untangled himself from her. He left her sitting on the bed while he returned to the shower. The whole incident had taken minutes.
As his pulse settled into a normal rhythm, Will realized she was a lot stronger than he first realized. She’d managed to not only materialize alone with the amulet, without any instructions on how to do it, but also accurately appeared in Ryan’s apartment.
Amazing. Abby couldn’t even do that. She could call other archdemons to her, even ones she wasn’t close to, sometimes summon them to take her to wherever they were, but never materialize without help. What she could do had taken her centuries to master.
On the heels of his amazement, the realization that Kal felt truly miserable. Whatever should have happened when they bonded, she was still upset and unhappy.
With him.
The bathroom door opened. “Will, can I come in?” Her voice sounded quiet and sad.
“Yeah, of course.”
He felt the cool draft and heard the door shut again. A moment later she stepped into the shower with him and wrapped her arms around him from behind, resting her head against his back.
He felt her lips against his skin. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He patted her hands. “It’s okay. You don’t owe me any apologies. I know you were dragged into this.”
They stood like that for several minutes before she spoke again. “I’m not miserable with you.”
“You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t realize until after I said all that how it must have sounded to you. I felt really dang mad at Ryan and wanted to give him a piece of my mind. It’s just that I finally realized my whole life has been under his control. Everything.”
Good Will Ghost Hunting: Demon Seed [Good Will Ghost Hunting 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 18
