Reach for You

by Pat Esden

  Fear, sadness, and utter helplessness overtook me, drowned me in their dark tidal force. Shivering, I rolled onto my side and pulled my knees to my chest. I filled my mind with the satellite images of the King’s Pine Yacht Club. I pictured Selena’s new pixie cut, the pink bow ties, the tuxes, Lotli, Newt, Myles, Dad. Step by step, I went back through tomorrow’s rescue plans. In the morning we’d pick up a rental van and the clothes . . . I even wondered about Taj. It was interesting that he was visiting Maine on the same weekend that the Sons were gathering.

  Finally, my mind surrendered and I drifted into sleep.

  * * *

  I woke to the press of lips against mine. The whole room sparkled with diamond-cut shards of blue light. I reached up, cupping the glimmering image of Chase’s face, bringing his lips back to mine. I opened my mouth, ecstasy, a slow dance of warm breath and tongues. His chest pressed against my breasts, and electric streaks of pleasure sizzled and seethed inside me, settling into a warm pulse between my thighs.

  My fingertips moved up his stomach, exploring, enjoying the warmth and silky skin, hard ropes of muscles. No blood. Not a trace. A rough scar. Had it been there before?

  My eyes met his in a silent question.

  His fingers barred my lips. Saying it wasn’t important. That we didn’t have much time.

  Somewhere deep within the fog of sleep, I asked him why? Why didn’t we have time? Another voice whispered inside me. Hush. Don’t worry. This isn’t real. Just a dream. Enjoy.

  His fingers swept down my shoulders, trailing tingles in their wake. His tongue circled my nipple. A nibble. A suck. I arched. Chase. The ache inside me exploded into reckless need. I pulled his head against me. My body thrummed—

  “No!” I screamed, shoving him back. “We can’t. You can’t. Go away, now!” My voice was husky with emotion. Tears burned in my eyes. I had to stop him. He’d change. Go berserk. I had to sacrifice tonight or risk losing him forever. If this was even real.

  The blue diamond light shattered. A chill settled over me.

  I sat upright in bed.

  The room was filled with nothing, except darkness and empty moonlight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Connect the dots across the world and migration routes appear. Routes that mirror the lines of Ophiuchus. This is no coincidence. This is the treasure map to prolonged existence.

  —Discovery, Mystery, and Truth

  www.SerpentWrestler.com

  King’s Pine Yacht Club was essentially a large boathouse and historic inn that sat on the shore of a sheltered bay. According to Olya’s last-minute round of scrying, at some point during the night the magic fence had been moved out of the boathouse. It now shielded something on the inn’s second floor. This meant that the wedding reception, the Sons of Ophiuchus meeting, and Lotli all were in the same building. However, since the wedding was on the beach at five and the meeting wasn’t until six-thirty, we did have a window when anyone who might recognize us would be away from the inn, at least for a while.

  It seemed like the perfect timing. Except midafternoon an unexpected storm blew in and Selena found out from Newt that the ceremony location had changed to the inn’s veranda, much closer to Lotli’s location than Dad and I would have preferred. It didn’t seem to faze Selena, though. All she cared about was that she’d been allowed to come with us.

  Promptly at four-fifty we pulled into the inn’s parking lot in our rented van. The place was a mess, rain still slicing down. Fog had rolled in off the ocean, cloaking everything in a thick, wet haze. It was hard to even see the other cars, let alone the inn’s front door.

  Dad got out. Fighting the rain, he opened a giant umbrella and held it for Selena and me as we dashed around the puddles to the back of the van and retrieved two giant cellophane-wrapped gift baskets. One was packed with miniature cheesecakes, coffeecakes, and pink macaroons. The other was weighed down with little bottles of champagne, juice, and sodas. The baskets were Tibbs and his mother Laura’s contribution to our plan. They’d come up with the idea of us pretending to be delivery people, bearing custom treats for the after-reception partiers. The plan was for us to stride in the front door of the inn. Once inside, we’d ditch the baskets on the gift table and blend in with the employees and vendors.

  Dad closed the van doors, but as we turned to start for the inn, Selena raised her hand to stop us. “We’ve got trouble,” she whispered.

  A black limousine was pulling up to the curb. The groom and his ushers most likely—aka the groom, plus Newt and Myles.

  Dad gestured for us to retreat. “Back in the van, quick.”

  I took a fresh grip on my basket and squinted against the rain. On one end of the inn there was a glassed-in porch. No doubt there was a side door there. But there was a white picket fence between it and us. My gaze went to the other end of the inn. Despite the haze, I could make out what appeared to be the shape of a Dumpster. Perfect! The delivery entry had worked yesterday, so why not today?

  “Come on,” I said to Dad. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Like I was swaggering into a high-end auction with a million dollars in my pocket instead of slogging through pouring rain, I strode away from the van, past the fog-shrouded limo and the front walk, and down a short service road.

  Next to me, Selena matched my stride, rain and muddy water slinging up onto her raspberry-pink spikes, her new pixie-cut tossing with each step. Dad followed, the perfect tuxedoed gentleman, holding the umbrella over the baskets and us.

  “You better be sure about this,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I am.” I led them past the Dumpster and up a ramp to the service entry. I shouldered it open and stepped into a kitchen—

  And came to a screeching halt.

  The room was steamy hot and loud: a madhouse, people running everywhere with trays of hors d’oeuvres or pitchers of iced water, pots banged, a dishwasher growled, someone swore.

  “You there!” A man in chef’s whites pointed a spoon at us. He clapped it down on an empty spot on a counter. “Put those here.”

  I raised my chin and met his beady eyes. “We can’t. We’re supposed to”—my mind staggered, struggling to come up with an excuse. We couldn’t leave the baskets in the kitchen. We needed to get farther into the inn where we could blend in. I glanced over my shoulder at Dad. He was still outside, wrestling with the umbrella. The rain had barely touched me or Selena. But he looked like a drowned rat, if wet rats dressed in tuxes and had shoulder-holster-shaped lumps on their sides. Mortified, I wheeled back and flashed a smile at the chef. “We were told to leave them—”

  He cut me off. “I’ll make sure the wedding coordinator gets them.”

  “We can’t just leave them,” Selena chimed in. “This isn’t grocery-store champagne, you know. Those tiny bottles cost fifty bucks each.”

  A woman rushed up to the chef, her voice bordering on hysteria. “The cake. The florist bumped the table. It slid. Oh my God. When the bride sees it.”

  “That”—the chef snarled—“is not my fucking problem. Tell the wedding coordinator. She hired the hoity-toity cake-maker. She can deal with it.”

  I leaned toward Selena. “This isn’t working,” I whispered.

  She nodded. “We should just ask him where the meeting room is.”

  I blinked at her. She was right. I raised my voice louder than the chef. “Excuse me. We don’t have all day.”

  He pivoted, glaring at me like a deranged rhinoceros.

  I glared back. “The baskets aren’t for the wedding. They’re for a meeting at six-thirty. We were told to deliver them upstairs.”

  His expression dropped. “Oh.” He gave Selena and me another once-over and then glanced out the door toward Dad.

  I held my breath, hoping we’d pass whatever inspection he was currently doing in his head.

  Finally, he pointed the spoon out the door and motioned to the right. “Take the deck stairs. At the top there’s sliding glass doors. They should be unlocked. Straight ahead i
s a hallway. That meeting’s scheduled for the Commodore Boardroom. Leave them on the sideboard.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Dad left his umbrella beside the kitchen door, his hand resting inside his jacket as we set off with the baskets up a set of roofed stairs to the enclosed deck. From there, we went through the sliding glass doors and into a dimly lit reception hall.

  The room had an overpowering new-carpet smell. And it was eerily quiet, so much so that for a heartbeat I wondered if there was a soundproofing spell on it, like the one I’d encountered in Malphic’s harem.

  “Wait here,” Dad said. He crept toward an open set of double doors that led into a hallway.

  The loud ding of an elevator chime broke the silence.

  Adrenaline shot into my veins. I scanned the room for a place to hide. Tables. Chairs. Plastic trees. A folding screen stood in one corner.

  “Pssst,” I said to get Dad and Selena’s attention. I gestured at the screen and we all sprinted for it, the thud of our steps quiet, but still too loud in the silent room.

  “You think they heard us?” Selena whispered, as we scrunched into a narrow space between the back of the screen and a stack of extra chairs.

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  The whine of a vacuum cleaner started up in the hallway, growing louder as it moved back and forth, down the hall closer and closer toward our room. Shit. The last thing we needed was to be discovered by a cleaning crew, or spend what little time we had holed up in a corner. But we couldn’t exactly snoop around while a bunch of employees were watching either.

  “We can’t just wait for them to finish,” I said, leaning close to Dad.

  Selena crowded in. “I could scry now to save time.”

  I let go of my basket with one hand and clamped her wrist, stopping her from reaching for the mirrored compact she used for scrying. “We’re probably still outside the fence. You’d get hurt.”

  “It’s better than doing nothing.”

  “Shush.” Dad lowered his voice even more. “Be patient. Annie’s right. The only reason they’d have for moving Lotli from the boathouse to up here is if they want her at their meeting. I’m willing to bet the fence is around the Commodore Boardroom and maybe a private room attached to it.”

  The vacuum cleaner’s whine became deafeningly loud, moving in the hallway right in front of our room. Sweat trickled down my sides. The basket seemed to get heavier and heavier, as I waited and waited for the sound to pass. But it didn’t. For a long moment it approached and retreated. Approached and retreated—

  The whine stopped.

  A clatter of wheels and a man’s tuneless whistle moved away from our room. The elevator dinged. Then silence.

  Dad stepped toward the edge of the screen. “Wait here. I’ll double-check.”

  He snuck across the dark room to a doorway and then motioned for us to join him. When we got there, he nodded across the hallway to a carved-oak door. Above it, COMMODORE was etched into a brass plaque. The inn might have been historic, but my eyes went right to the latch on the door. It was modern with a slot for a keycard in it.

  “Let’s hope it’s not locked,” I said, though it didn’t seem like the chef would send us to a room we couldn’t get into.

  Turned out, he hadn’t. Still, I let out a relieved breath once we were all inside the boardroom with the door closed behind us.

  It was a narrow room. Straight ahead of us, an exquisite Federal-style table and chairs occupied the center of the room. Little more than a yard beyond it was a wall of sheer glass. A glimpse of the bay appeared and vanished in the deluge of rain and mist.

  A sense of vertigo washed over me. I took a breath and looked away from the view. To my left was a built-in bar and leather-topped stools. Behind me sat a sideboard as valuable as the table. Above it hung oil paintings of clipper ships and race horses.

  “Without a keycard we can’t lock the door, so we need to work fast,” Dad whispered. He made straight for another door on the other end of the room. “Bathroom,” he announced, stepping inside.

  Selena and I set our baskets on the bar. I tried a nondescript door next to it. A coat closet, half-full of trench coats and jackets. I moved them aside. No hidden doorway or secret room appeared to exist.

  The sound of organ music echoed up from the floor below.

  “Shit,” Selena said. “It sounds like they’ve moved the wedding inside.”

  Thump. A dull noise sounded right outside the boardroom door.

  “Watch where you’re going,” a man said sharply.

  “Sorry. I thought I left the door open,” another man answered.

  Crap. They were coming in here!

  I raced for the coat closet and yanked the door open. Dad got there a heartbeat later. Selena was—

  I glanced behind me and let out a panicked yelp. Where the hell was she?

  Fast as I could, I surveyed the room. She was at the bar, fussing with the cellophane wrap on one of the gift baskets.

  “Selena,” I whispered, my voice rising with hysteria. “Get in here, now!”

  She snatched something from the basket, then flew toward the closet. We all piled inside and I shut the door, just as the door to the hallway opened.

  My heart banged against my rib cage. I slid off my spikes and wriggled noiselessly between the coats, positioning myself against the back wall between Dad and Selena. The closet reeked of wet coats and stale cigar smoke. It was also dark. Pitch-black, except for a wedge of light slicing in along the bottom of the door. Black as the space under a bed. Black as death.

  Clutching the mud-splattered shoes against my chest, I swallowed my fear. This wasn’t the time to lose my cool. Besides, I’d made peace with darkness. It was my friend, especially right now.

  One of the men’s voices came from inside the room. “Put the pitcher and glasses on the table.”

  “They aren’t having a bartender?” the other guy said.

  “No, this is strictly a closed-door meeting.”

  “What’s with all the hush-hush stuff, anyway?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Footsteps scuffed toward the closet, or maybe they were headed for the bar. I held my breath and looked at Dad. He stood, gun in hand.

  One silent second passed. Then another.

  Pfffffst! The hissing noise fizzed out from Selena’s corner of the closet.

  I froze, every muscle in my body bowstring-tight and ready.

  “What was that?” one of the guys said.

  The closet door flew open, light spraying through the line of coats. Selena stood flat against the back wall, her eyes wide, and an open can of cola in her hand. Why hadn’t she done that before?

  “Quit screwing around,” the other guy said. “It’s just the damn rats again. You’d think with all the money this place makes, the owners could afford a decent exterminator.”

  The light vanished as the guy shut the door.

  I shot a glare at Selena. She grimaced apologetically, then cautiously settled down cross-legged on the floor. In the wedge of light, I saw her take her mirrored compact out and rest it on her knee. She poured a little cola on the mirror, so she could use it to scry, and set the soda can on the floor.

  Dad’s hand brushed my shoulder. “What’s she doing?”

  “Scrying,” I said, totally hushed. As dark as it was, I couldn’t imagine how she intended to do it. But scrying did seem to involve seeing with the mind as much as the eyes. We undoubtedly were inside the fence by now.

  THUNK. The sound echoed outward from right in front of me: a wet coat slipping off its hanger and hitting the floor. My heart sank. We were screwed.

  “Rats, my ass,” the guy said. The door flung open, coats shoved aside.

  Dad was ready, his gun pointed at the guy’s chest. “Move a muscle and you’re both dead,” he said, hard as stone.

  The guy’s hands went up. He backed out of the closet.

  Dad followed him. “You,�
� he said to a bigger guy standing near the table with his hands out in surrender, “lock the door. Don’t try anything or I’ll shoot you both.”

  Ignoring the panic inside me, I dropped my shoes beside the closet and went to stand behind Dad, shoulders squared.

  “Take anything you want,” the big guy said, edging to the doors. Of the two guys, the calmness of his voice and the steadiness of his hands told me he was the one we had to watch. “There’s silverware in the sideboard. It’s real. Take it.” With one hand, he pulled out a keycard, slid it in the door’s lock, and withdrew it. Then he moved slowly back toward us and his buddy, his arms away from his sides.

  Dad yanked off his tie and held it out to me. “Gag this one first.” He gestured to the smaller guy directly in front of him. “We need some rope or duct tape.” He glanced to where Selena stood just inside the closet.

  In a flash, the bigger guy rushed at Dad.

  I dove forward, grabbed a bar stool, and swung it at the guy with all my strength. CRACK! The stool caught him in the chest. He stumbled backward, then swiveled toward me, his arm cranking back, his fist aimed at my head. I ducked, snatched a piece of broken stool off the floor, and slammed it into his groin. He dropped and curled up, groaning on the floor. “Bitch. Goddamn, crazy bitch.”

  I stared down at him, stunned. I’d hit him. I’d taken him down. I’d probably broken his ribs. Not to mention his nuts. I could have killed him. Holy crap.

  Dad chuckled. “At least you didn’t use one of the expensive chairs.”

  “I guess,” I said, my voice weak. Sure, I’d knifed a genie before, more than one. But we’d been battling for our lives then. This guy was technically innocent. We’d broken in. Held him at gunpoint.

  Selena appeared with duct tape and a cord she’d found behind the bar. “Do you think anyone heard?”

  “They’d be here by now if they had,” Dad said. “But we don’t have any time to waste.”

  CHAPTER 11

  On the eve of castration I watched the moon, dreaming of scrolls and tablets at my fingertips instead of a sword in my hand. Fear not sacrifice. Fear not reaching for impossible dreams.