by Jes Young
“I don’t want to have to make him tell me. I want him to tell me because he believes me when I say I need to know, which he would probably if he didn’t hate me.”
“He can’t stay mad at you forever.”
“Of course he can,” I said. “And for an Elf forever is like what? A million years?”
He looked at me and smiled. “Not quite a million.”
“But close.” I sighed.
I heard him say, “Maybe George knows something about her?” just before the glass I was holding slipped from my hand and shattered against the floor.
“Tab?” he asked. “Are you ok?”
My vision clouded and I closed my eyes, reaching out to steady myself against the counter. I could feel myself being yanked away, pulled out of my body toward the place where someone I loved was dying.
When I opened my eyes I was lying in a field of sunflowers under a cloudless blue sky. I looked around slowly, taking in the beauty around me in small sips so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed. I knew where I was even though I’d never seen it before. Even though the descriptions I’d been given did it no justice at all. You’re Home, the enchantment whispered. With Alex – exactly where you belong.
The colors were intense, saturated. The petals on the sunflowers were the most perfect yellow; the grass was an unreal green. The mountains in the distance were capped with dazzling white snow that glittered and shimmered in the golden light. Across the meadow, trees danced gracefully in the breeze.
When I turned, he was next to me. My heart swelled at the sight of him, so still and beautiful cradled by the sweet green grass. The longing I always felt for him was even more intense, irresistible. I reached out to touch him, resting my hand on his chest.
He smiled at my touch. “I was hoping you’d come,” he whispered.
I bent to kiss him and his lips felt cold. There was blood on my hand when I lifted it. There was blood everywhere – nothing but sunflowers and blood all around.
When I opened my eyes I was back in the kitchen at Witchwood Manor. I was dimly aware that the thing I was struggling against was Robbin, that he was holding me up so I wouldn’t crack my head against the countertop or floor.
“Let me go. Alex needs me.” I pushed away from him, fighting back the panic and tears rising up inside of me. “We have to hurry. Hurry. Please.”
“Calm down,” he said. “Tell me what you saw.”
I felt hollow, joyless – like the possibility for joy had gone out of the world. And the more Robbin tried to calm me down so I could tell him what was going on, the more frenzied I became. I couldn’t be soothed. I batted his hands away. My cousins arrived from different parts of the house in seconds.
“Is she hurt?” Francis asked.
“She had a vision,” Robbin explained. Even through my panic, I felt the mood in the room change. Matt put down the sword he was holding.
“Pop?” he asked.
Robbin shook his head. “Alexander. She’s pretty freaked out.”
George knelt down in front of me. The determined set of his jaw and his voice, so strong and steady, reminded me of Pop. I took a deep breath and said, “Alex is dying in a field of sunflowers. He needs help. Please save him, George. Please.”
“I’m going to but first you have to tell us what you saw.” He nodded. “Be specific, anything you remember might help us reach him in time.”
That was the closest anyone came to mentioning that this was something we’d never done successfully before, that usually by the time I had the vision it was already too late. I was thinking it and I’m sure all of them were too but I pushed that thought out of my mind, concentrating on telling them everything I could remember.
“I’m going to bring him home to you,” Francis said, his face determined and serious. “I swear.”
“Be careful,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “And please let me know the minute you find him.”
“One of us will come back with word as soon as we can.”
Matt took my hand and squeezed it very gently. “Take care of her brother,” he said to George.
“I will. Now go.”
We watched them jump over the stone wall and then disappear in a spill of light so bright it lit up the entire yard, turning the night to day.
“They’re going to find him,” I said.
“Of course they will,” George said. “Why don’t we go to the study? We’ll wait there.”
I agreed but didn’t move. I was so exhausted by the vision, so completely drained of energy once the initial surge of adrenaline was gone I wasn’t sure I could.
“Come here, babe,” Robbin said as he bent down to lift me up. “I’ll carry you.”
“No, that’s ok,” I said, forcing myself to stand.
Chapter Twelve
Three hours had passed since my vision of Alex lying in a pool of blood and his pale, shaken face was still all I could see. With my head resting on the cool leather of the ink blotter on Pop’s desk, I listened to George and Robbin whispering back and forth, their heads close as they tried to piece together a reasonable scenario from the little I’d seen. Neither of them could believe someone had gotten the better of Alex in a fair fight.
From the description I’d given them, they knew he was someplace called the Flats of Yamarrow when he was attacked. That had both of them worried too; Yamarrow was very close to the Center, the city at the heart of the Inbetween. They of the Dark shouldn’t have been able to get that close to it which meant They’d found a way around the enchantments meant to keep them out. Obviously that wasn’t good news. The fact that They’d beaten Alex was worse.
I lifted my head when Robbin placed his hand lightly on my shoulder. “How’s your head?”
“OK.” The truth was it hurt so much I almost missed the mini-coma that usually followed my visions. I say almost because I was sure that not having to wait for me to wake up was going to make all the difference. I was happy to suffer if it meant Francis would find Alex in time.
Robbin handed me two aspirin and a glass of water. He sat on the edge of Pop’s desk so I had to crane my neck to look up at him.
“He’s fine. I know him and trust me he’s practically invincible.” Robbin was working pretty hard to convince me, which is how I knew he wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying was true. “You’ll see. Someone is going to appear here any second and tell us that he’s safe.”
I nodded and swallowed the two small pills he’d given me.
“Good girl.” He took the glass of water from my hand.
It’s a lucky thing he did or I would have broken that glass too. A second later, I felt the world shifting away, the pull of somewhere else, and the dizzy swaying feeling that was becoming sickeningly familiar.
I heard Robbin say, “I think she’s doing it again,” just before I opened my eyes in a pitch-black room. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized I was in a cave. I could hear a small stream trickling somewhere nearby by and a faint shushing sound in the distance that I thought might be the ocean. Alex was lying on the ground, as pale as milk. He didn’t stir when I said his name; only his shallow breathing gave any indication that he was still alive.
“Hold on,” I said. “They’re coming for you.”
I looked for something, anything that I could give Francis as a clue but one cave looks a lot like the other to the untrained eye.
Alex reached out and whispered one word, “Turnbough….” and then he was gone and I was back in the study, sitting at Pop’s desk with my head on the leather blotter. When I looked up Robbin and George were both staring at me.
“Alex needs you,” I said, pointing at Robbin. “You have to go to the Inbetween to save him.”
“Absolutely not,” Robbin said. “Francis and Matt will find him.”
“He asked for you.”
“Who’ll protect you if I go? I can’t leave you here alone.”
George cleared his throat, offended. “I’ll be here,” he said indignantl
y.
Robbin ignored him. “If I leave you and something happens to you ….” He shook his head, unwilling to consider the idea. “This is a plan to separate us, to thin out the guard around you so They can get to you easier. I’m staying right here. There’s already an army looking for Alexander, they don’t need me too.”
I took a deep breath, trying to hold onto my patience even as the enchantment pushed and forced inside of me. “George will be here. And you can appear in an instant if there’s trouble.”
“And also, I’ll be here,” George said again.
“They need you,” I said.
Robbin looked at both of us, obviously suspicious of our ability to handle a crisis.
“Jesus, Turnbough. Just go.”
“I don’t know,” Robbin said. “It doesn’t feel right…”
I grabbed Robbin’s hand, bringing his attention back to me. “If you’re so worried about leaving me here, take me with you.”
“No,” Robbin and George said together.
“You won’t have to worry about me if I’m with you,” I reasoned. “And I will be there when he opens his eyes.” The enchantment bubbled with excitement at the thought of seeing Alex again. It didn’t care about the look in Robbin’s eyes – it didn’t care about him at all. “I want to be there.”
He shook his head. “I said no.”
“Well I said yes and my vote counts more than yours does.”
He turned to George. “Will you give us a second? I need to have a private word with the Princess.”
“Sure,” George said. He didn’t run from the room but I can only assume he wanted to. The atmosphere was getting kind of tense.
“We don’t have time to waste,” I said when the door clicked shut behind George.
“Well this will only take a minute.”
I pictured Alex in my head, bleeding. Dying. He needed me and nothing Robbin could say would keep me from him. I was through messing around.
“I’ll say it if I have to, Robbin. I don’t want to, but I will.” There it was. The threat. We both knew I could make him do whatever I wanted him to do. All I had to do was say the right words.
“What happened to your respect for free will? A couple of hours ago when I suggested you use this Gift on Matt….”
“That was completely different. This is literally a life and death situation and you are being ridiculous. What do you want me to do? Because I’m not going to stand here and argue with you until it’s too late to save him.”
“You’re going to have to say it if you want it done, Princess, because unless it’s an order there’s no way in nine hells I’m taking you with me.”
I knew he meant it but I also knew it was the only way. He’d hate me after, maybe forever, but none of that mattered to me. The enchantment twittered inside my head, encouraging me, giving me bad advice, pushing and pushing me to give it what it wanted.
“I’m asking you to do this for me as your princess, as your queen.”
“If that’s your will,” he replied stiffly.
Under the enchantment, all it’s pushing and demands, I could feel – very faintly – just the tip of the iceberg of regret I’d be left with. I said it anyway.
“I’m sorry, Robbin. It is my will.”
His face was still and cold.
“Then let’s go.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along behind him, outside, across the lawn, to the edge of the deep forest. He didn’t say a word to me as we moved through the dark. I hurried to keep up; certain he’d drag me if I fell.
“Climb over the wall,” he growled. I did my best to do it with some grace (Robbin hopped over effortlessly) but ended up falling, ass over teakettle, onto the cold ground on the other side. Feeling the loose earth under my hands, I realized that Rivers had been buried – had breathed out the last minutes of her life – somewhere near where I was sitting. I jumped up and hurried to follow Robbin a few feet further into the woods.
“We’re far enough from the house now,” he said. “We’ll go from here.”
The trees rose above us, twisting in the darkness over our heads. I heard noises, the crackling and calling of blackbirds. Suddenly I was afraid.
“What do I do?” I asked, unsure of what would happen next.
Fuck things up, Robbin thought. Destroy everything you touch.
I did my best to keep my expression even, not to register the pain his thoughts caused me. I’d hurt him – so much and so often – he deserved to have a turn to hurt me back.
“What do I do?” I asked again.
“Put your arms around me.” I must have looked as uncertain as I felt because he said, “You have to get close to me, as close as you can, if you want to go. That’s the only way I know to get you to there.”
When he reached for me, I didn’t push him away. He tangled his hands in my hair and held me close to him, pressing my body against the length of his.
I felt the light before I saw it, a small spot of warmth rising from the center of his body. It was like a lover’s caress, like the moment right before your orgasm shakes the world apart. I closed my eyes and let it take me, giving myself to it completely. Robbin was cradling my body against his, his fingers pressing into my flesh so hard it almost hurt. I looked up at him, into the swirling brown and gold of his eyes. His light grew around us – swelling to encircle us both. It grew and grew until we were covered by it, wrapped in it.
“You owe me,” he rasped.
He loosened his hold on my hair but it was just so his hands could explore my body, my breasts, the tender place between my legs. I moaned as he pressed closer, his fingers caressing me through the soft denim of my jeans. I pressed back, eager for him. His hand slipped under my shirt teasing and cupping my bare breast, squeezing. He cried out but I don’t know if it was from pleasure or the pain of touching me. Between the intensity of light’s caress and the feeling of his hands moving across my body, I was too far gone to care. I heard myself moan, felt his hips rush against me; felt him pressing hot and hard between my legs.
His name, when I said it, was a whisperer, less, but Robbin and I both heard it as clear as if I’d yelled it into a bullhorn. “Alex,” I purred. “Make love to me, Alex.”
I felt him stiffen – and not in a good way – as he pushed himself away from me.
“It’s Robbin,” he said.
Of course it is.
Then he disappeared, leaving me alone and shaking on the edge of the deep forest.
**********
“What the hell were you thinking?” George yelled in what I thought was a truly stellar imitation of Francis. “What the hell was he thinking?”
He had been rushing down the front steps of the Manor just as I – achingly out of breath from running all the way back in terror of dark elves and black birds – reached him. He started yelling at me immediately. Half an hour later, he was finally running out of energy.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“I’m beginning to,” I said.
He shook his head. “So what happened then? He just disappeared?” I nodded my head, purposely leaving out the part about the jolt of sexual tension that had gripped Robbin and me just before that. “Is that bad?”
“He was holding you? Close?”
“At first he was.” I sighed, remembering the feeling of his erection pressing against my stomach. “But he kind of shoved me away at the last minute.”
“That explains it.” George looked incredibly relieved. “That’s why you got left behind. There are two things you need to take a passenger with you when you appear or disappear. The first thing is physical closeness. He had to be right up against you for the magic to hold you both.”
“What’s the other thing?” I was honestly a little bit afraid to find out.
“An emotional bond – friendship, love, empathy. Almost any positive feeling will do.”
I didn’t even let myself consider what that meant. I couldn’t.
“Now what
?” I asked.
“Now we wait,” George said.
“I’m so tired of waiting. I want to help.”
He shrugged. “You could try not to leave the Manor without telling me anymore, I would find that tremendously helpful.”
