by Linda Welch
He smiled, and sighed. “We have some clearing up to do. I must take the wraiths’ fee to them.”
“One more trip Downside.”
“The last, I hope.”
“I bet Mike’s been trying to touch base. I presume you haven’t checked your phone for irate messages.”
“Not yet.”
“I have to get these damn stitches out my head.”
“I rethought returning you to the hospital. Your surgeon at Clarion General will be confused by your rapid healing.”
I do heal faster than regular people, my only advantage to being Gelpha. My scalp felt a little tender if I pressed it, but not as if my skull had been opened up and put back together with tiny plates and screws.
“A Gelpha surgeon will remove the sutures, no questions asked.”
“Yeah?”
“We will have to go to him, to the clinic in Switzerland.”
So he had that covered; if Clarion General called the clinic Royal wrote on the discharge paperwork, the Gelpha surgeon alibied us. “All the way to Switzerland to get a few stitches removed?”
“We have earned a vacation.”
“Mike, though. . . .”
“Tomorrow.” He dangled something silvery in front of my face. “I think it is time you put this where it belongs.”
My ring and the silver crucifix.
He slipped the ring free and eased it on my finger. I held out my hand to see the faceted diamond reflect all the colors from the Christmas tree lights.
“Now you have seen a real demon, can you refrain from calling me one?” he said with a lilt in his voice.
I smirked. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ll always be my big, snuggly demon lover.”
He hugged me to him with one arm. “Is that a promise?”
“Don’t need to promise. It’s a fact.”
After a blissful silence, he said in a deep, musing voice. “What happened to you made me ponder life and making the most of it. We must broaden our horizons, Tiff, see as much of this world as we can, do all of those things we have talked about doing.”
Before it’s too late. I didn’t say it but the thought saddened me. “So, we go madly dashing about just in case? And what are these adventures we talked about and haven’t done, ’cause I don’t recall any discussion?”
“We were not serious, but we can be. Let us start with the small things.”
“Anything particular you have in mind?”
His eyes turned smoky. “I was thinking of something closer to home. We have often spoken of it but never tried,” he said huskily.
All kinds of delicious scenarios tripped through my mind’s eye. “Mm, interesting. What is it?” I asked breathily.
“It involves my hand and your beautiful derriere.”
After a stunned silence, I hooted. My Royal was back, the sweet, strong, confident man I loved with his wicked sense of humor intact. “Pu-lease. Not the spanking thing again. As if.”
I laughed as his arm snaked around my back and folded me over his knees.
“You wouldn’t dare! Not to an injured woman!”
“You seem fairly chipper to me.” He positioned me back on the couch. “But one of these days, Tiff. One of these days. . . .”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I wanted to go home to be with Mac. I hoped to find Jack and Mel there, though they’d give me hell. When a mother misplaces then finds a child, first she embraces him, then yells at him for wandering off, for the anguish he caused her. I am as much their child as they are mine and I deserved everything they threw at me, though it would make me feel guiltier than I already did.
I also wanted to see Maggie but was barefoot or as good as. Royal reminded me I stuffed an old pair of tennis shoes under his truck’s seat when I changed them for heels for a meeting with a client. Old, stained, the heels worn and split, I meant to throw them out but forgot.
I kept my window open as we drove to Maggie’s house. The snow damped odors and not everything I did smell was pleasant. As always, the dog food factory stank, but I inhaled the smell anyway. Aromas from a bakery were heavenly; I sniffed deeply, and sighed. Home again, absorbing a riot of sensation.
Royal parked and I slid from the cab. Puddles and half-frozen slush made the sidewalk treacherous and traction uncertain, and my shoes were soaked in less than a minute, but I enjoyed every step. I loved the feel of my shoes splatting in the mush. I relished the chilly air and snow falling on my head. I paused and turned my face up to let the white flakes settle on my face, and licked them from my lips.
Maggie’s blue Mini sat outside the garage. I squelched along the path and knocked on the door.
“Yes?” Maggie said as she opened the door, with absolutely no recognition in her eyes; then they got big. “Tiff? Oh my god, you made it!”
She hurtled at me, her arms wrapped my waist, her head thudded on my breastbone. Bemused, I held my arms away from my sides.
“I am so glad to see you,” she said into my chest.
My throat felt tight. I slowly brought my arms in and around her shoulders. I dipped my head so my cheek rested on her hair. I’d never hugged a woman before, never been embraced by one.
With another squeeze, she stepped away and I released her with a curious sense of loss.
“I want to. . . .” I faltered, then continued, “I used you, Maggie, and I apologize. I put you through a lot.”
Moisture made her eyes shine. “I would have done the same. I wish I could remember. Each time I listen to the recording, the more it feels as if I dreamed it up.” She looked down, scuffed her shoe in the snow, looked up again with a shy smile. “I don’t suppose we can go back. Seeing everything I’ve forgotten will be cool.”
I expected the suggestion, although not this soon after her return. “You can’t. You were allowed in because Royal wouldn’t go without you and it wanted Royal to destroy Shan.”
“Did he?”
“Not personally. Rain’s plan worked, she and River killed Shan and Arthemy. But Royal was the catalyst, he made everything happen when he went Downside. It’s the way it works sometimes.”
Her eyes sparkled. “You are going to tell me, aren’t you?”
I cocked my head at the street where Royal’s white truck idled at the curb. “Royal’s waiting and . . . I need to get home.”
Maggie rubbed her hands together and hugged herself as the icy air bit into her. “Then could we, maybe, meet for coffee? Not at Beanz, though.”
I smiled as I said, “I’d like to,” and meant it. “If it includes pastries. We’ll talk then.”
“In a coffee shop? We’ll be heard.”
“Nah. If anyone listens in, they’ll think we’re role playing a fantasy game.”
“If only they knew.” She chuckled in her throat. “I’ll call you.”
“Give me a day to. . . .” I paused before snorting. “I was going to say give me a day or two to settle in my skin.”
She grinned. “You’re a riot, Tiff. See you later.”
“Later, Maggie.”
I walked to Royal’s pickup.
Curiosity did tempt me back to Downside. My head swam with visions: wraiths, a siren, a vampire, strange and amazing creatures for which I had no names, in a world with a red sky. But I also remembered there are people who can shape magic and use it to conjure demons, calculating red eyes watching from the shadows, and the black aurae clinging to so many inhabitants.
I would not return Downside.
Maryanne rushed in the hall when Royal used his key to open the front door. She smiled, saw me and her jaw dropped. I didn’t know her well but she still came at me with a huge smile and open arms.
She stopped herself, no doubt believing she greeted a frail invalid who shouldn’t be squeezed or at all overwhelmed.
“I am so happy to see you, Tiff,” she gushed. “You should rest, but we’ll catch up when you’re feeling better.” She grabbed her coat off the coat-rack and said, “I let Mac outside,” as she went through the door.<
br />
Anticipating a reunion with Mac made me feel light inside. I could have bounced. And that’s when my luck ran out.
“Oh all the thoughtless, uncaring. . . . I can’t find the words.” Jack thrust one shoulder at me and jerked his face aside.
Actually, he had no difficulty finding the words, as he proved during the next few minutes.
Mel didn’t either. “I waited and waited outside the Magnusen house. I thought you passed on so I headed home. Do you know how I felt, thinking that? Have you ever mourned anyone? Really mourned? Felt your whole world come apart?”
Shrunk to two inches tall, I imagined giants Mel and Jack glaring down at me. “Guys.” I began in a weak voice, but their outrage overpowered me.
I hadn’t made it to the kitchen three minutes later. Jack and Mel barred the hall. I was stuck until they finished their tirade, unless I walked through them. I understood Jack and Mel as I never had before. I knew the loneliness and frustration a shade experienced and saw them through new eyes, with a new appreciation. They wanted to rant at me? So be it.
I’d already apologized, when I managed to stutter the words, but they weren’t through by a long way.
“That is enough,” Royal roared.
Jack and Mel started. I almost came out of my shoes.
“Tiff had no choice. She wanted to find you but I did not let her. I refused to spend precious time no doubt explaining what we must do. I have stood here watching as, I am sure, you pour guilt on her head.” He finished by barking, “No more! She has been through enough!”
He took my elbow. “Come, my love.” And whisked me right through Jack and in the kitchen.
I imagined Jack and Mel with their mouths still open, frozen immobile by Royal’s outburst. I was no less shocked. “How did you know?”
“I guessed after a minute or two of seeing you with your feet rooted to the floor and a scolded puppy look in your eyes.”
Royal not only spoke to my roommates who were invisible to him, he surmised what they were doing. It was the ultimate confirmation he acknowledged them as real people who impact my life.
I’d kept my eye on the door to the kitchen all the time my roommates laid into me, expecting my boy to arrive. In the kitchen, I saw why he had not: the pet hatch was down. We interrupted Maryanne when we came home and she forgot to open it.
Royal opened the hatch and in Mac roared, a miniature locomotive, ears flat, an evil look in his squinted eyes.
Then he saw me, stopped, and stared. He gave me a long, disapproving look from under his eyebrows and bumbled across the kitchen to sniff my shoes.
I sat on the kitchen chair and picked him up. “Oof. What has Royal been feeding you?” I call him my little boy, but Mac’s a big Scottie at thirty pounds and I swore he weighed more now. He settled on my knees and didn’t struggle. Not immediately.
I watched my roommates, my heart swelling with gratitude and genuine affection, determined to hold on to the Jack and Mel hidden behind unchanging expressions and whispering voices. “I’m glad I got to see you as you really are,” I told them.
“I’m glad you’re back in your body,” Mel said.
“Yeah. You were one whiny ghost,” Jack said hesitantly with one eye on Royal.
I parodied a whisper. “Guess what, Jack? He can’t hear you.”
“I know!”
“But I can tell him.”
“Go ahead.” Jack twisted away with one hand on his hip. “I’m not afraid of him.”
I sniggered.
“I didn’t think she was all that whiny,” Mel protested.
“You did. She drove you up the wall as much as she did me. Worse than teaching a child with three legs to walk.”
“You’re the expert on whiny, Mister Snarky.”
“Huh. You think so? Then I know what I’m talking about.”
Royal stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder. I put my hand over his and squeezed.
I concentrated. Warmth, and the demon heat from Royal’s hand; its weight and that of my chunky dog. Mac’s hair, wiry with a soft undercoat, as I pushed my fingers through. The firm wood seat under my buttocks, the hard tile floor my feet rested on. Royal’s sandalwood and amber scent, a lingering hint of stale coffee grounds, and MacKlutzy’s moderately stinky odor. Someone needed a bath.
I smiled, stroked my dog and listened to my friends verbally tear each other to shreds.
It was good to be home.
The Muse works in mysterious ways.
When I finished A Conspiracy of Demons, one sentence haunted me: when Gia said, “There are still deep, dark places where Man has never set foot.” I wanted to explore this place as a potential story about the Dark Cousins. Tentatively titled Downside, it was supposed to be about a new character going head-to-head with the Dark Cousins. But the story, and Downside, changed as I wrote. Humans crept in with the many other weird and wonderful creatures which call Downside home. Rain went in her own direction, one which didn’t involve or even include the Cousins. The title became Downside Rain and was published December, 2013, followed by Baelfleur in November, 2014.
I didn’t know whether I’d write another Whisperings book, but the Muse struck again when I received some sad news. My Scottish terrier Duncan was diagnosed with incurable cancer. I sat at my laptop and piled my grief on Tiff’s shoulders. I wrote of her learning Mac was dying, and how her imagination went into overdrive as she thought about taking him to the clinic for the last time and leaving, her eyes swimming with tears.
And a bullet came out of nowhere.
Really, I had no idea why that happened. Naturally I had to investigate Tiff’s shooting, who did it, and why. As the story took shape and the identity of Tiff’s nastiest adversary was revealed, I knew Tiff and Royal would be going Downside, where the Dark Cousins hid. And Whisperings book seven, Dark Demon Rising, was born.
If you want to know more about Downside and its peculiar inhabitants, you’ll find them in Downside Rain and Baelfleur.
Books by Linda Welch
Whisperings Paranormal Mysteries
Along Came a Demon
The Demon Hunters
Dead Demon Walking
Demon Demon Burning Bright
Demon on a Distant Shore
A Conspiracy of Demons
Whisperings Shorts
Tiff Takes on Halloween
The Midnight Choir
Road Trip
Downside Novels
Downside Rain
Baelfeur
Dark Urban Fantasy Short Story Collection
Femme Fatales
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Acknowledgements
You’ve heard it takes a village to raise a child. In a way, the same can be said of writing and publishing a book. Yes, I sat alone at my desk, typing words, struggling to put them together into something readable but this book, the end product, is a community effort. The community which helped me is small but invaluable and I appreciate every one of them.
Bless you, my sweeties: Brandi, LK, Lori, Marcelle, Meagan, Misty, Sharon and Trudy. I could not have done it without you.
Thank you, Whisperings fans, for your encouragement and patience, for hanging in there when I turn into a recluse, and for buying and reading this story.
Meet the Author
Linda Welch was born in Hampshire, England. She lived in Idaho, California and New Mexico before settling in Utah. She and her husband now live in a mountain valley, more or less halfway up the mountainside. She is not tall and silver-haired and does not see dead people. What she does see are moose, deer, fox, raccoon, skunk, wild turkey, a huge bird population and a ridiculous amount of snow. When not writing and depending on the season, she can often be found futilely attacking the weeds in her garden or shoveling out after a snowstorm. You can visit Linda at http://lind
adwelch.com. She looks forward to seeing you there.
Whisperings: Dark Demon Rising
Nordic Valley Books
Cover Credits: Jeffrey Banke; Serban Enache
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Linda Welch
All rights reserved.
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