by Nova Nelson
Our table was along their path, and when Liberty’s eyes landed on Tanner, he flashed that wide, white grin and nodded, diverting from his path to make a pit stop at our table. “Hey man,” he said, shaking Tanner’s hand.
“Hi,” Tanner said hoarsely, his eyes locked onto the woman.
“Nora,” Liberty said warmly, leaning over and wrapping me in a hug where I sat. He smelled different than usual. It was intoxicating and blurred my thoughts. Genie cologne? Was that a thing?
“How’s it going?” I said as he released me. The awkward angle of the hug had spared me his usual vise grip.
“Great.” He stepped to the side and presented his date. “This is Emagine. Emagine, this is Nora and Tanner. They’re good people. Tanner is a deputy, and Nora is a …” He squinted at me. “Do you prefer restaurant owner or Fifth Wind?”
“Either,” I said.
“A Fifth Wind?” said Emagine. Her voice was deep and rich. “Really?”
“Yep.”
She nodded approvingly. “Nice to know Eastwind has one of those. Where I come from, every Fifth Wind was rounded up and murdered hundreds of years ago.”
“Uh …” I looked from Emagine to Liberty. “Where do you come from? I’ll be sure never to visit.”
“She’s from Zatrian,” said Liberty.
“Isn’t that where you were from?” I asked, and he nodded. “Old friends?”
“Not exactly,” said Emagine. “Former enemies.” She laughed. “Things change, though. Not always for the best, but in this case, I’m very satisfied.”
“I’ll take credit for that,” said Liberty, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her close to his side.
Tanner was still unable to form words, probably more so now with his proximity to Emagine, so I was in charge of small-talk. “When’d you get into town?”
“Just today,” she said.
“Staying long?”
She gazed up at Liberty. “As long as he’s willing to keep me around.”
Liberty, it seemed, wasn’t immune to her looks and presence, either. I was tempted to suggest they forgo dinner and head straight to whatever private destination they had planned. “Baby,” Liberty said, gazing down at her, “you may not be a slave anymore, but I plan on keeping you here as long as I can.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to cut through the sexual tension so we didn’t have some sort of powerful, magical PDA situation on our hands. “Are you a genie as well?”
That did the trick, thankfully. Emagine turned away from Liberty to respond. “Yes. We’ll see how long it takes before they try to run me out of town. From what I’ve heard, one genie is one too many for most Eastwinders.”
“Huh?” I said. “Everyone loves Liberty.”
“Nuh-uh,” he said. “Some people love me, and the rest are scared not to love me. There’s a difference. Doesn’t matter, though. They might not like Emagine here, but who’s going to have the guts to make her leave?”
“Not me,” Tanner said, finally breaking the silence. “I think she should stay for as long as she wants.”
Liberty laughed. “I bet you do, Culpepper. Well, we better let you two finish your meal. See you around?”
“Yes, please,” Tanner mumbled as the genies left.
I reached across the table and snapped to get his attention. “Hey, show’s over.”
He blinked a few times and seemed to remember where he was. “Right. I’d better get going. You got the check, right?”
I rolled my eyes, but not because of the money; I was the richer of the two now that he’d chosen a life in public service and had taken a hit on his earnings from the diner. “Your shift doesn’t start for another hour. Come on and finish your dinner.”
He grimaced then relented. “Okay, fine.” He leaned forward so as not to be overheard. “It’s just that I still get a little anxious before a shift. Now that I’ve switched to nights, it takes a good ten minutes to psych myself up before I send Stu home.”
“That means ten minutes to psych yourself up, ten minutes to walk to your place to grab your uniform, and five minutes from your house to the sheriff’s office. By my calculation that still leaves you twenty-five minutes to hang out and enjoy your meal.”
“Or,” he said, “Five minutes to enjoy my meal and twenty minutes to enjoy something else.” Sly smile lines appeared around his eyes.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out way too many coins, and tossed them on the table before standing. “Make it twenty-four minutes to enjoy something else.”
“Now we’re talking.”
He shoveled as much salad as he could fit into his mouth, then jumped up and grabbed my hand, dragging me out of Stews and Brews without looking back.
Chapter Three
“Always, Nora,” he whispered. “There’s no woman but you for me.” He brushed the hair back from my shoulder as he brushed kisses down my neck. “Anything you want, I’ll give it to you. Anything at all.”
I knew what I wanted. It wasn’t complicated. A small voice in my head nagged at me that I shouldn’t want it from him, though. I couldn’t pinpoint why that might be.
The wind howled against the window of this large and expensively furnished bedroom as he pressed me to the door. I didn’t fight him. Memories began to return to me in flashes.
The two of us riding horses across endless green fields in a hurry to get as far from everyone we knew as possible. Everyone except each other.
The time his neighbors berated me for being poor and he stepped in, appearing almost out of nowhere to stand up for me, and the way he held me afterward and assured me there was nothing wrong with who I was.
One after the next, the memories rushed into my bloodstream. And I knew he meant what he said.
“You know what I want, Roland.”
“Aye, I do.” His breath on my neck made me shiver. “But I need to hear you say the words. I need to be sure this isn’t another false alarm. Because once we cross this line, Diana, I won’t be able to hold back any longer.”
I swallowed hard. The words were right there on my tongue, and I imagined what would come next: he’d carry me over to his four-poster and buttons would go flying in our frantic scramble, driven by hundreds of years of separation.
The passion inside me was more than I knew a body could contain.
I opened my mouth, summoning up the words, trying to find the right ones, the ones that had been locked away inside me for so long.
“Yes, I—”
I snapped awake to the sound of a deep bark. Pushing myself up in bed, I squinted though the dark bedroom in Ruby True’s house as two realities swirled together in my head. On his doggy bed in the corner, Grim lay on his side, running in place and barking in his sleep. “For fang’s sake,” I moaned, running a hand over my face.
My heart raced and my skin tingled all over. Where had that dream come from?
I’d thought my previous dreams with Roland had been realistic, but none held a candle to what had just happened. This was something new. Something more powerful than a simple dream. And, goddess help me, in that moment, I wanted more.
I flopped onto my back and shut my eyes, trying to steady my breathing.
“You’re remembering,” he said.
I pushed up onto my elbows quickly. Roland beamed at me from his spot at the end of my bed. “I am.”
“There’s so much more to remember, my love. Why don’t you go back to sleep and we can pick up where we left off?”
Yeah, why didn’t I? There was probably a reason, even if my groggy mind was unable to pinpoint it.
Oh right. Tanner.
The guilt hit before I remembered what he’d said earlier that night. If I slipped up, I should forgive myself, so long as I still chose him.
And I did. I still chose Tanner. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to remember.”
“Be that as it may, it will feel good to remember.”
Sweet baby jackalope. Every second I managed to resist
Roland O’Neill’s sculpted jaw and plump lips should have earned me a freaking award. “No.”
“Ah,” he said, not at all deterred. “Suit yourself. But you have to go to sleep sometime.” That devilish grin. Good golem. It was like I’d never before realized just how dead sexy it was. But now I did.
“Stay out of my dreams,” I barked.
“Stop inviting me into them.”
“I didn’t invite you in!”
“Keep it down, you two. I was just having the most amazing dream about this hellcat I used to hunt. I almost had her this time!”
“Ah, but you did invite me in,” Roland said. “Dreams don’t call out with the voice, love. They call out with the heart. And yours is calling out to mine.”
I groaned. “Can’t you just refuse the call?”
“Never have, never will.”
“I thought you said you’d do anything for me.”
He nodded. “I will. But I’d be doing that for Tanner, not for you.”
I flopped back down again, staring up at the ceiling and willing my eyes to stay open. Of course I couldn’t stay awake forever, but if I could just make it through this especially trying night, I might have more resolve tomorrow. I had to push through. I didn’t understand why tonight was different—probably just hormones—but maybe it was just a one-time thing I could conquer.
At some point, I lost the battle.
“I knew you’d be back,” he said. We were on his bed now, still fully clothed, thankfully. We would’ve crossed into some iffy territory, consent-wise, if I’d found myself undressed without remembering it.
His legs ran alongside mine, as he braced himself above me. I stared into his eyes, those beautiful turquoise gems that I’d found comfort in so many times …
“Ahh,” he said, softly. “There you are, Diana. I can always tell when you return.” His lips met mine, and I was toast. I reached up, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, pulling him against me, savoring the weight of his body on mine. I slipped my hands between us, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt before growing frustrated with the slow progress and taking hold of each side, yanking it open as hard as I could. I heard the snapping of threads, and with it, the snapping of any self-control I had left.
A knock on the door snapped me awake again.
“Son of a banshee!” I said, sitting up in bed with a start. It wasn’t Roland’s bedroom door, or even my own where the sound originated, though. I pressed my palms into my eyes to try to get my bearings. When I removed them, Roland was nowhere to be seen, which was a small victory.
I glanced at Grim, also awake.
“Was that three times or four times?” my familiar asked.
I replayed it in my memory. “I think it was five times.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What? What does five knocks mean?”
“It means whoever it is has their mind set on being heard, and I won’t be able to go back to sleep until it’s dealt with.”
“Who knows? Maybe they’ll go away.”
I waited, listening through the darkness. Yes, it was good that I’d been woken up when I had, but that didn’t stop me from being incredibly annoyed.
“Sounds like they went a—”
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.
“They’re even more impatient now,” Grim said.
“What do you think the odds are that Ruby gets it instead?”
“Probably the same odds as her answering it and then chewing you out for not getting it first.”
I swung my feet around and shuffled downstairs, Grim following behind me, likely out of morbid curiosity rather than any altruistic impulse.
Whoever was on the porch was in the middle of another burst of knocks when I flung open the door and squinted out into the night. “Jane? Ansel? What’s wrong?”
Each had arms crossed over their chest, annoyance twisting down the corners of their lips.
“We need your help,” Jane said.
“Of course,” I said, still trying to figure out what would cause my best friend and her husband to show up like this in the middle of the night. “What can I do?”
“Can you see them?” she asked.
“See who?”
Both Jane and Ansel looked back over their shoulders, and as they did, I notice the floating figures behind them, glowing like soft moonlight.
“Siren’s … song,” Grim said from behind me. “There are two faces I never wanted to see again.”
“Hi, Nora,” said the ghost of Bruce Saxon. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Same here,” said Heather Lovelace. “I really don’t see any reason to bring you into this.”
Didn’t see the reason? I couldn’t see a way the return of two supposedly at-peace spirits could avoid dragging the town’s only working Fifth Wind into it.
I opened the door wide. “Why don’t the four of you come inside?”
Chapter Four
“Does it usually take this long?” Jane asked impatiently.
I finished the anchoring spell for Bruce and shot her a glare that I might not have risked had it been later than two forty-five in the morning, when my survival instincts were firing on all cylinders.
“There. Done. You know magic takes a bit,” I said.
Her arms remained crossed tightly over her chest. “I thought the whole point of it was so things didn’t take as long.”
Ansel stood a few feet to his wife’s side, not saying a word and looking more sheepish than usual. I addressed him. “Any idea why Heather Lovelace is haunting you two?”
A split-second’s surprise darkened his face like a cloud passing in front of a full moon. “Is that who it is? I wasn’t sure.” He shook his head, and the shock was gone. “Nope. I figured she just rode in on the same unicorn as Bruce. Maybe you sent them to the same place?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t have to know,” Jane said impatiently, “because you can talk to them.”
“Oh, right.” I addressed Bruce first. “Why are you here?”
His eyes were glued to Jane, and I knew that look—not from him, but from others. The soft eyes, the gently parted lips, the ever-so-slightly raised brows. I was tempted to remind him that she was a happily married woman now, and if Ansel knew the way another man was looking at his wife, Bruce would likely wish he had stayed far away on the other side of the veil.
“I couldn’t stand another minute of it,” said Bruce. “I had to be with her.”
“But where were you?” It seemed a prudent question. Roland had explained that once spirits crossed over, they were often ushered into another body via reincarnation. He’d offered up other nebulous clues about what lay beyond death, but he often didn’t know the answers to many of my more specific questions. For example, he wasn’t sure how much time existed between death and rebirth. Time was an iffy thing in that plane.
Only the slightest hint of concern wrinkled at the corners of Bruce’s eyes. “I don’t remember. Nowhere. Everywhere. It’s hard to say. It doesn’t matter anyway, now that I get to be close to her again. All the good times we had, all those moments lying next to her as the morning sun streamed in our bedroom window, all the fights we had that led to passionate apologies … it filled every inch of my mind, then suddenly, the veil thinned, and I found myself by her side.”
I swallowed hard, trying to steady my expression. Bruce’s description of the memories sounded just a little too much like what I’d experienced in my dream only a short time before. Was Roland behind this? I wouldn’t put it past him, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
I addressed Heather next. “And you? What’s your excuse?”
The fact that she stared at Ansel much the same way that Bruce stared at Jane was perhaps the biggest puzzle out of all of this. Shouldn’t she be haunting Lucent’s cell in Ironhelm Penitentiary rather than bugging some random werebear? The only association I knew between the two of them was that Ansel had worked with Heathe
r’s husband at Whirligig’s Garden Center before her death by silver poisoning.
“The same thing happened to me,” she said. “I was … well, I can’t remember where. Then suddenly all these memories returned. The times we snuck off into the Deadwoods so no one would know we were together. The days we spent roaming Fluke Mountain, cliff diving into Widow Lake. The more I remembered, the thinner the veil became, until finally I could see through it, and there he was.”
Heather had stopped talking, but I didn’t know where to begin. This was all news to me. Did Jane know about Ansel’s history with Heather?
From the floor by the unlit fireplace, Grim chuckled.
“Did you know about this?” I asked. Since he and Ansel used to run in the Deadwoods together, it was possible.
“No, I didn’t. But this sure leaves you in an awkward position.” He chuckled some more.
“Is he okay?” Ansel asked, nodding at Grim. “It sounds like he’s gagging.”
“He’s fine,” I said hurriedly. “Why don’t you two go home and get some sleep? Heather and Bruce are anchored here, so I’ll talk more with them and let you know what I find out. No point in you losing sleep.”
I forced a smile, and Jane was happy to agree without an argument.
Ansel, on the other hand, looked uncertain. “You sure you don’t need me here?” I knew that wasn’t the question he was actually asking.
“Nope,” I replied, moving toward the door. I held it open and Jane passed through first, not waiting up for Ansel as she made for their home.
Ansel paused on the porch. “If she says anything that, you know, doesn’t add up—”
“Like I said, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
He nodded, getting the message, and hurried after his wife.
Once I shut the door and turned back toward the parlor, there were no longer two ghosts; there were three.
“Did you have something to do with this?” I asked Roland.
He feigned offense. “Don’t know why you’d think that.”
