by Amber Kell
“Okay, that’s nice and creepy,” Jared said. “Where’s Thor?”
“He’d hate being called that,” I said. “He’s…” I shook my head. Had those things taken Frey down? Was he lying broken in the woods?
“Where’s this summer house?” Miles asked, pulling out his knapsack. He steadied me as I got painfully out of the back of the car.
“On the rocks in front of her place,” I said.
“Okay, you and Jared make for it.”
“What about you?” I didn’t want to leave another person I cared about behind.
Miles didn’t spare me a glance as he headed for the light show in the townhouse. “How can I resist? I’ll catch up.”
Jared and I ran around the side of the house and I felt the fog like wet fingers touching my exposed skin. My side hurt, so I banded an arm around it in support.
“You’ll need to get those ribs wrapped,” Jared said, reminding me he’d played rugby for years.
“Yeah.” The pavillion was dark, in contrast to the spooky main house. It sat on the rock in silhouette, surrounded by starshine and lapping water.
“Looks too easy,” Jared said. “Maybe the drawing isn’t here.”
I shrugged then winced when the movement hurt my sore ribs. “No idea. Only one way to find out.”
We walked carefully over the wooden bridge and climbed the steep rough surface of the granite, poking up like the bones of a long-dead dragon.
The summer house was one of those simple cedar designs made from a kit, round, with pillars and slats and benches, open to the sea breeze. Professor Dunbar had furnished it with wicker that had gone silvery, splotched with lichen. A dried-flower wreath hung from a spotted mirror, reflecting the sleeping sea.
“The benches,” I said, then knelt painfully beside the first. Each one could be raised, with storage under the lid. I found some mouldy needlepoint and a tangle of wool. Jared tossed things from the one he’d taken as I crawled to the next. A heavy silver teapot of Indian design, blackened from lack of use and a couple of chipped Royal Doulton cups.
“Nothing.” And no more benches.
I felt defeat rising in my chest. I was tired, Frey was missing, and I hurt.
I’d hung my hopes on finding something out here.
“Bailey, what if it’s underneath the summer house?” Jared asked.
He shifted the rug and I saw the little trap door that had been underneath it. Likely there wasn’t much under there but wolf spiders and mice, and boy, wasn’t I looking forward to finding out.
Suddenly the house behind us lit up, illuminating the night like an X-Ray.
“I think it knows we’re out here,” Jared said.
Chapter Twelve
“Means we’re on to something.” We lifted the trap door together. It was heavy and rattled against the wood floor after we’d pried it free.
“Me,” I said, before Jared could take point. “I started all this. The drawing is mine.” And I wanted to head into that wet hole under the summer house about as much as I wanted to smash my fingers with a hammer, but I had to do this.
I pulled out a small flashlight, flicked it on. My ribs protested with an exquisite symphony of pain as I wiggled down, feeling the cool damp rock scraping my cheek. Not much room down here, but maybe enough for a small woman to stash something.
I felt a pulse, and my fingertips tingled. Something was here. Something mine. It was the same tie in the gut I’d felt lying under Frey, looking into his eyes for the first time.
But knowing and finding were two different things.
I was caged under the wooden floor, laced with silty cobwebs. Something soft and furry brushed my arm.
“Find it?” Jared yelled impatiently from above me.
“I just got down here,” I grumbled.
“Well, the light show in the house went out. I’m thinking that’s not a good sign,” he said. “So hurry the fuck up.”
I squirmed forward, every movement rubbing my sore ribs painfully together so breathing hurt. Moisture slicked the back of my neck. What if I got trapped down here?
I reached the side of the structure. Nothing. But at least the sea air blew through a shrub and into the space, making me feel less confined.
Above me I heard a heavy thud.
“Jared?” I called. My voice sounded husky to my own ears.
Jared didn’t reply.
Urgency beat in my blood like a war drum. I had to find it. I crawled around the circumference, but still I couldn’t see anything but rock and the stirring weeds.
A shadow blocked the light from the open trap door. “Bailey?” The voice that called wasn’t Jared’s. It was low and crooning, sweet like rotting pastry. “I know you’re down there.”
With nothing to lose, I shoved my hand into the bushes beside me. I didn’t hope to find anything now, but maybe I could pull myself free. Ow! Holly leaves. Great, just great. I sucked on my filthy pricked finger and prepared to move on, find another spot for escape.
But wasn’t holly a natural barrier? I remembered reading about mazes using it to guard the centre and the treasure.
I groped, got another prick from a fallen leaf and then touched something metal.
A chest.
It grated against the rock as I pulled it to me.
“Bailey…” the voice sang, cheerful as a cereal box ad. “Don’t make me come after yooooou.”
The box creaked open and there it was, my burnt graphic, tied in a scroll with black ribbon. I took it, shoving it down my T-shirt as I began to crawl for a gap. I was definitely not going to try to climb back through the trap door with that friendly voice calling for me.
I wiggled through the opening, gasping at the pain in my side. I staggered to my feet and looked for Jared. Right off I saw him. He was lying on his side, blood running from his hairline.
Professor Dunbar stood over him, smiling at me. “Let’s you and I have a talk,” she said, just as if I’d shown up at her office on campus.
“What did you do to him?”
“Oh, I didn’t do that,” she said. “It did.” She pointed to one of the toothy Shadow creatures, which padded out of the tall grass and knelt like a pet at her feet.
“Let me guess, if I open the door, you have to leave this world because you…what? Sold yourself to the Whisperer?”
“Whisperer,” Professor Dunbar scoffed, frosty blue eyes giving me a disapproving look. She certainly seemed more like herself and less like the dripping evil-eyed thing Frey and I had first encountered. And why wasn’t that reassuring? “Very dramatic. The energy cloud has a name that has to be sung.”
“I doubt I could sing right now.”
“No, you couldn’t. But if you got hurt, it’s your own fault, isn’t it?” she snapped. “What do you know about anything? You’re a student. You’re self-absorbed when you aren’t obsessed with sex. You have it all in front of you. You aren’t counting down to sixty without meeting your ambitions.”
“My Mom’s counting down to sixty but she hasn’t swallowed the big evil.”
“Your mother is content to spin and dye wool and spend time in her organic garden when she isn’t travelling. She doesn’t need to be remembered. Do you think it’s easy to teach in a second-rate university when I could have written books, taught in the finest schools?”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I…” She blinked. The thing at her feet never looked away from me, body quivering. “I had plenty of time. I thought—but I was like you, Bailey. I was consumed with the moment.”
“Sounds like you were just like the students you despise.”
“I woke up when I was passed over for something I deserved.” She glared at me. “Even with everything that’s happening, what are you most worried about?” She kicked Jared. “Your little friends. Your virile new boyfriend.”
“He is pretty virile,” I agreed. “He also has an honest heart.”
“Good for him. The powers will find another guardi
an now he’s fallen,” she said. “Oh, you didn’t know? My friends tore him to shreds in the woods.”
I don’t know what my face revealed, but she laughed.
“I don’t believe you.” I couldn’t. The idea of Frey dead… I just couldn’t.
“Whatever, as you students are fond of saying,” she said. “Down to business. You have my graphic. I want it back.”
I reached under my shirt and grabbed hold of it possessively. “No. You may have tricked me into making it. I may be the typical feckless student, but you can’t have it.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You knew it was a formula, whatever you want to call it, to call those creatures to our world, but you didn’t have the gumption to do it yourself. You manipulated me into doing it for you.”
“You were easy to manipulate. You’re ambitious, not that you’ll probably go anywhere. You might end up travelling to India and helping people get rid of toxic dye waste like your mother.”
“It’s important work,” I said. “Maybe it won’t make her famous, but it helps people, the environment.”
“Jesus, you’re just like her.” Professor Dunbar shook her head. “Since you’re such an unexpected do-gooder for a student, I will admit I had some trouble subduing this…alternative personality I’m carrying. But now I’m fine. There’s no need to open the door, send it back. You can let me finish what I’ve started. Let me do that and you and your friends won’t get hurt.”
I looked at the wolverine thing at her feet. “Frey said the Shadow creatures are breeding. To do that, they have to feed, right?”
She gave me a blank look.
“What, it never occurred to you? How long until we read about missing students on campus, or here in town?”
“You are not going to do this, you are not going to screw something up you don’t understand. Life is not shades of black and white,” she snarled.
The scroll in my hand felt warm in the wet chill. My fingertips prickled again. I had an urge to open it, to look at the undulating design.
“Wha—?” Jared lifted his head, shook it.
“Don’t,” I told Professor Dunbar. “If you hurt him—”
Something rattled on the floor in the corner of the summerhouse.
“Oh shit!” I lunged for Jared as the Molotov cocktail Miles had prepared before we left the house burst into flame, shooting up one pillar.
Jared was in my arms, panting. I swiped at the blood on his face. “Well, hell, Miles,” he grumped. “Took you a while.”
Miles stood in silhouette, another bottle held ready. “Just let them go, Professor.”
“Isn’t it sweet, students ganging up against the establishment,” she said. “Although I’m surprised you’re joining in with them, Miles. I always took you as more intelligent than the other algae.”
“Algae? That’s an insult, right?” Jared huffed. “Hey!”
“You can all go if you give me that graphic, Bailey.” She held out her hand for it.
“No!”
I knew that voice. It was strung in my gut, it was locked in my voice.
Frey hobbled into the pool of light from the burning pillar. His face was scratched, one vivid blue eye swollen almost shut. His lean hand covered his stomach, where blood oozed.
“Frey!”
His gaze snapped to mine, burnt me. “I am…well, guide.”
Oh yeah, he was looking really well. I growled under my breath.
“You…are well also?”
“Peachy.”
He looked confused, but I didn’t have time for his literal-minded approach. The graphic was glowing now and when I looked at it, it seemed to float above the paper in 3D.
“Trippy!” Jared whispered.
“Surround the guide,” Frey ordered Miles and Jared. “Protect him with your very existence.”
Miles was already there, having moved while our attention was on Frey. He was a sneaky bastard.
“Our very existence?” Jared repeated. “Dude…”
The drawing began to rotate like a carousel picking up speed.
“Bailey…” Frey’s gaze held mine. “You know what to do.”
Funnily enough I did. It was as weird as a complex answer to a fantastical math problem suddenly popping into my head. I could see the time wind, the probabilities, the actions and reactions playing out.
“I summon you!” I pointed to Professor Dunbar.
“No, I won’t let you—” She was speeding up, colours streaming until she…just wasn’t there anymore. A small stain of black smoke remained, burning my nose.
The Shadow creature leapt. Miles butted it back. “Hurry the fuck up!”
“I summon you!” My voice was stronger but Frey had the thing, jaws snapping as it twisted to try and bite him. I saw the creature blur, saw Frey’s hand begin to dematerialise. “No!”
The matrix was mine. I could write it, I could make it what I wanted. The beast shot into hyperspace, but I held Frey. Sweat dripped down my face. I shook with the effort, feeling as if my gut would rip apart. But I held him.
“Guide…” His voice was heavy with the leaving. “Let me go.”
“No. You…have a choice. You lost your centre, your family, but now you can have it again.” I laid myself bare. I gave myself. “With me. With my friends.”
“The vortex needs a guardian.”
“So you’ll just be a guardian while you live here. With me. My friends can even help out the next time you’re summoned.” I knew he had a choice, if he could let himself. “Listen, you can make a life here. I don’t know what you’ll do, if you’ll build houses or… I don’t care. I want you in my life. Nothing makes sense if I wake up with you one morning, fall for you, and you go away again.”
He reached out for the wavering paper. I wasn’t sure what his choice would be until he took my hand and it fluttered to the ground, discarded.
“You are my centre.”
I grinned, because the way he said it reminded me so much of Arnie-speak. YOU-R-my-CEN-tar. But I was careful not to mention Arnie’s name. Making Frey jealous might be fun sometimes, but not right now.
Anyway, I couldn’t have talked because I was crushed in his arms and he was smeared with dried blood and I couldn’t stop touching him, just touching him.
He kissed me.
And I was his centre.
“Hey, he gets the guy and I get battered and for what?” Jared groused.
“Shut up, dickhead,” Miles said affectionately.
Epilogue
You’d think life would be one smooth happy-ever-after after meeting the man you were destined to love. Most of all, you’d think you could sleep in once in a friggin’ while.
But nooo.
I woke, as I usually woke in my dorm room, under six-feet plus of sleepy golden muscle.
The Johanna Lindsey book we’d re-enacted the night before fell to the floor with a thump.
“Bailey, I will get you coffee.”
I mumbled something, tried to swat him away.
“I will tend to you.”
That had one eye opening. My body woke up quicker than I did and Frey had a handle on where, stroking me. “Mmmm.”
“You have a class this morning.”
“Why are there such things as morning classes?” I moaned, grabbing a pillow and covering my head with it.
“A warrior is eager to meet his day.” Frey swatted my backside. “And I am eager, as always.”
He kissed the knobs of my spine, licking, sucking, so that I forgot it was morning and I was so horny I was ready to hump the bed. “Frey!”
He turned me over and spread my legs and oh, boy, did he tend to me, taking me in his mouth, holding me down as I wiggled, laughing when I begged.
I came, but I didn’t just climax as I had before meeting him. With Frey, I almost blacked out, so intense, colours flashing, warm, ruthless mouth, callused hands holding me, keeping me safe as he shot me high.
I was still panting, recover
ing from what really was the little death, when he pushed lube into me before mounting me.
I groaned as I accommodated him.
“You are well?” he asked, as he always did.
“If I tell you how well I am, you’ll just get smug.”
He grinned and began to move gently. Oh, yeah. It was going to be one of those mornings when he took his time. He lifted my arms above my head, held them there. He was all ‘take charge’ this morning, but when wasn’t he?
Not that I was complaining…
“I’m taking the class with the new prof, the one who replaced Dunbar,” I told him as he set me free long enough so I could score his back tenderly with my nails. He likes to wear my marks. He even shows them off, which is incredibly embarrassing but also makes me weirdly proud.
“You will do well in this class! I will put my energy into you,” he bellowed. And then he stopped playing with me and he took me. Conquered me.
I quivered under him when he was done with me. And he looked smug, damn it.
“What about that coffee you mentioned?” I’d taught him how to make it. He drank it all the time, so it had been a necessity.
“I met another of your former lovers,” Frey said, getting out of bed and opening the door. I watched him, stared at his ass as he made us coffee. Then his words penetrated. Oh shit!
“Frey…” I began carefully. “You didn’t challenge this one to a duel, did you?” I’d have to hide his sword again. I still remembered the first time one of my asshole exes had made a crack about how easy I was to Frey.
“I let him live, my guide,” he said. “Killing him and leaving his guts spread over campus would have been messy, yes?” He looked at me with bright blue eyes.
“Yeah.” Damn, the big lug’s jealousy was not adorable. I cleared my throat. If I got too mushy, Miles and Jared wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. I knew Frey’s bellowing during sex probably had them half awake. “You going into the shop this morning?”
“Yes, I am.” His eyes were even brighter as he brought back perfectly made coffee and we shared from the same mug. “Candy is a wondrous friend to have found me this place of work.”
