He leaned toward me. I felt the wards flare up on my skin, but I clenched my fists and willed them down, long enough for Duncan Laird to place a chaste kiss on my cheek. “See,” he said, leaning back, “you’re stronger than you think.”
*
I was expecting the dream that night. Liam was there beneath the willow tree wearing nothing but leaf shadow and honeyed sunlight, but I was dressed in a magnificent gown embroidered with a thousand golden spirals.
“Ah,” he said, reaching for my hand. “You’ve found them!”
I snatched my hand away from him. “You branded me!” I hissed. Coils unwound from my sleeve like long supple snakes and hissed with me.
“It’s not a brand,” he said holding up his hand to the rippling coils. “It’s the history of our lovemaking written on your skin.” The coils approached his hand tentatively, as if sniffing, and then slipped onto his hand and wound themselves around his wrist and forearm, twining themselves into golden patterns on his skin. As they travelled up his arm I felt a corresponding tug on my arm pulling me toward him.
“You bound me to you!” I cried, pulling back, even in a dream determined not to give into his seduction.
“I am equally bound,” he replied, looping his arm in the air and wrapping a long skein of twisted thread around his arm. The dress made of coils unraveled as I fell to my knees by his side. The threads spread across his chest and I felt a corresponding tug in my own chest, a tightness coiling around my heart and tickling my bare breasts. My dress had vanished. Golden coils writhed on my bare skin. I knelt naked on the mossy bank beside Liam, entwined with him in a shimmering net of desire.
“Our desire,” he whispered, crouching beside me, our knees touching. “When we make love, we create friction.” He lifted his hand and held it, palm out, an inch above my skin. Gold tendrils quivered in the air between us. My nipples tingled and hardened. He lowered his hand to my navel and twirled his fingers. The spirals coiled back on themselves and formed a knot. There was a tightening in my core, a small knot of tension that felt … good.
“We can shape that heat and tension …” He moved his fingers and the spiral knot began to revolve. The warmth expanded and spread. I moaned. It felt delicious … so what if he was binding me to him …
“No!” I cried, grabbing his hand. As soon as our hands touched, the golden coils tightened, taut as violin strings. His eyes locked onto mine. He squeezed my hand and the knot inside me exploded. I came, gasping at the suddenness and force of the orgasm. Liam cried out at the same instant, his face suffused with golden light. The spirals around us unwound and snapped in the air, sputtering and sparking like loose electrical cables. As their energy rippled outward the air buckled and cracked with thunder and lightning.
“You are mine!” he cried.
“But you aren’t really here,” I sobbed, collapsing onto his chest, wanting the contact now as the heat from the coils began to fade.
“Aren’t I?” he murmured into my neck. “Listen. Do you hear that?”
I heard thunder in the distance, the last reverberations of our stormy lovemaking. It was fading just as he was fading; vanishing in my arms just as he had when I’d banished him.
“That’s me,” he whispered, his voice now no more than a faint stir of the honeyed air. “I’m here.”
My eyes flicked open. I was in my bed, alone, naked in a tangle of sundrenched sheets. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw the golden spirals fading from my skin. My heart was pounding as if I’d just run a race … or made love all night to my incubus lover. It was so loud I thought I could hear it …
I’m here, he had said.
I sat up and listened. The pounding seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. From the air itself. I felt it deep inside, matching the beat of my heart.
I’m here, it said.
Where? I threw the sheets to the floor and stood up. My bare feet felt the pounding in the floorboards. It came from below. From the front door …
I nearly ran out of the room naked, but grabbed my damp and twisted nightgown off the floor and wrestled it over my head as I ran down the stairs.
I’m here! I’m here! The pounding was definitely coming from the front door. I stumbled into the foyer and lifted a trembling hand to the doorknob … and then hesitated.
If it really was Liam, did I want to let him in?
Yes! Every inch of my skin screamed. Yes!
I turned the cold iron knob and flung open the door. Duncan Laird stood in the doorway. When he saw me in my thin nightgown, my hair wild, my skin glowing, his blue eyes widened and he smiled a slow, silky smile.
“It’s you!” I cried.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“Um … I …”
“Should I come back later?” His eyes were amused at my confusion.
“No! I just didn’t expect you quite so early.”
“I had something to tell you that I didn’t think could wait, but … I can’t really tell you out here.”
“Oh!” I said. “Come in. I’m sorry. I was having a dream …”
“Was I trying to drown you again?” he asked as he came inside.
“No,” I said, blushing. The heat on my skin made me aware of how close to naked I was. I grabbed a sweater from the hall closet and pulled it on over my nightgown. “You weren’t in it.”
Or had he been? I’m here, Liam had said in the dream, and then Duncan had appeared at the door. But Duncan couldn’t be my incubus. Liz had carefully vetted him …
“… and I thought you should know.”
“Thought I should know what?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t heard a thing he’d said.
“Grove members are arriving today in Fairwick.”
“They’re here early,” I said. “The meeting isn’t until Monday. We still have two days.”
“I suppose they wanted to make a weekend of it.” Duncan smiled wryly at the idea of anyone choosing to spend anymore time in Fairwick than they had to. I had felt the same ten months ago, but now I was offended for my town. Perhaps sensing that, Duncan’s smile faded. “Or maybe they know you’re trying to increase your power and they’re worried.”
“Good,” I said, “they should be worried.”
Duncan smiled again, but guardedly. “I just don’t want them to force you into a conflict prematurely. I thought I should warn you that they’re here.”
He touched my arm and I felt the gold spirals tightening inside me. Wasn’t this what I had felt in my dream with Liam? Perhaps the dream had been sent as a message telling me that Duncan was really my incubus come in a new form. I studied his face. The high cheekbones and strong jaw, the aquamarine eyes, skin the color of honey … yes, he looked like a creature from another world, but was he my creature? Shouldn’t I be able to look into his eyes and recognize him?
But I didn’t. And when he dipped his head to mine and brushed his lips against my cheek the spirals flared up in the air between us and singed the lock of hair that was always falling over his eyes.
“Damn,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why …”
Duncan smiled, his jaw tight. “I think I do,” he said. “As long as you’re still bound to the incubus no mortal man will be able to come close to you. It’s your decision, Callie. I’ll be here when you make it.”
He turned and left then through the open door. I watched him walk down the porch steps and toward the driveway where I now noticed Bill’s truck was parked. Had he just arrived …? But then I spotted the ladder leaning against the side of the house and saw Bill climbing down from it. He reached the ground just as Duncan walked past him. As the two men nodded at each other I thought I saw the air between them sizzle, but it might have been a trick of sunlight. Bill, cap pulled low over his eyes, looked from Duncan to me. I was suddenly aware of what the scene looked like: Duncan leaving my house early in the morning, me standing in my flimsy nightgown and sweater in the doorway. I blushed.
I closed th
e front door – slammed it, really, in my frustration at myself. The panes of glass in the fanlight trembled with the impact. I looked up – into the stained glass face that so resembled my incubus lover. His full lips and almond-shaped eyes seemed to mock me. You are bound to me, they seemed to say. You will be mine forever. I will keep you in this house for all time.
“Like Lura,” I muttered as I stomped up the stairs, taking my anger out on the old worn and bowed stair treads, which creaked and groaned as if personally offended. Like Lura who was moldering away in her decaying house because she’d been jilted by her fiancé. I’d live alone in this house while it fell apart around me, bound to a fantasy lover.
At the top of the stairs I turned to go down the hall to my room, but paused outside of the door to the room that had been Liam’s study in the brief time he’d lived here. I’d never cleaned his stuff out of my house. I had thought I’d recovered, but I’d never even gotten up the nerve to go into his room. If I really was over him, I should be able to.
I turned the doorknob, steeling myself for the sight of his desk where he used to sit looking out the window to the street.
I paused, the door half open. I recalled my dream from last night – the way Liam had made me come by just grasping my hand – and felt my knees go weak at the memory.
I opened the door … and froze on the threshold, stunned. The room was empty. The antique desk and chair Liam and I had bought together at an antiques market in the country were gone. The windowsill, which he’d lined with stones and birds’ nests and pieces of wood, was bare. For a moment I suffered the vertiginous sensation that maybe Liam had never existed at all. I’d made him up. An incubus indeed! It sounded like the delusion of a crazy person.
But then another explanation occurred to me. In the weeks I’d raved in the shadows while my friends sat watching me, someone had decided it would be a good idea to remove all trace of Liam from the house. So they had emptied the study. They probably told themselves that they were sparing poor hapless Callie any further heartache.
I felt so overcome with rage that my vision blurred and I thought I might faint. I clenched the doorframe to steady myself and noticed that my arm was glowing. Spirals and knots moved beneath my skin like a nest of angry snakes. My bonds, but also my protection. They were made out of my own power. I could let them control me or I could control them.
I straightened myself up and stepped back into the hall. I held up both arms and splayed my fingers, willing the energy inside me – all the hurt and anger, the disappointment and fear – out. Sparks sizzled off my fingertips; gold rays shot out of my hands. The spirals and knots inside me uncoiled. I felt them stretching out within the boundaries of the house, from attic to basement. No one would ever take something from my home again, I swore. I closed my eyes and pulled the spirals back inside. Or from me again. The wards snapped back through my fingertips like a rubber band and coiled up inside me, hotter and more powerful for their walk on the outside. I felt like I’d swallowed the universe. It felt good.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TEN MINUTES LATER I left my house, dressed in tight black jeans, snug white t-shirt and motorcycle boots, the Aelvestone tucked into my jeans pocket. I was going to rock that spell circle and bring back Brock. Then I was going to tell the Grove to go to hell. I was the doorkeeper. They weren’t going to close my door. I was ready to take names and kick ass …
“Cal … leack?”
A voice from above calling my name stopped me short halfway across my lawn. I whirled around, prepared to face an avenging god ready to smite me for my hubris, but it was just Bill sitting on the edge of my roof. Of course, I chided myself, an avenging God would have known how to pronounce my name. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look up at him. He sat with the sun at his back, his face under the brim of his cap in shadow so I couldn’t see his expression, but his voice had sounded concerned.
“Yes, Bill, is something wrong?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. There was a lot of banging coming from inside.”
I’d forgotten about Bill up on the roof while I was throwing around my wards. Thank God he hadn’t gotten knocked off.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just … um … rearranging some old furniture.”
“It sounded like you were throwing around the furniture,” he said. “Was it that man who left before who you were angry at? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
I felt a flush of embarrassment, followed by anger at being made to feel embarrassed, but then Bill leaned forward, took his cap off, and I could make out deep brown eyes the color of warm chocolate without a smidgen of judgment or censure in them, just concern.
“No, it wasn’t Duncan. It’s just I had a bad break-up a few months ago,” I said, not sure why I was confiding in Bill. “And I haven’t been able to … move on. So I thought I’d clean the house, so to speak.”
“Oh,” Bill said, his brown eyes looking thoughtful. “So you were angry because of how this ex-boyfriend treated you? Was he that bad?”
“He lied to me,” I told Bill, compelled to honesty by the concern – and pain – in his eyes. I was betting that Bill had a bad break-up in his history too. “And I was idiot enough to believe his lies. It’s hard to trust anyone after that – it’s hard to even trust myself.”
“You weren’t an idiot,” Bill asserted with surprising conviction. “Your ex-boyfriend was. He’d have to have been to hurt you like that.” He ducked his head back into the shadows, looking embarrassed, and put his baseball cap back on.
“It was a bit more complicated than that,” I said, smiling up at Bill. “But thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Any time,” he said. “If there’s anything else …”
“Just be careful up there, Bill. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
As I turned to go I heard Bill say, “You too. Be careful.”
*
I drove out of town, my fiery mood tempered by a few kind words from Bill. I’d left Brock’s iPod plugged into the sound system so I turned it on. Kate Bush’s voice filled the car, singing about something trapped beneath the ice. I’d always found the song haunting, but now it made me think of Brock’s spirit struggling through the icy fogs of Niflheim. I hoped that today’s circle would finally release him.
As I drove up the long drive to the Olsen farm, I noticed how the house sat high on a hill above the surrounding countryside. When I got out of my car, I turned to admire the view. Fields of hay, corn, and fenced grassy pastureland spread out north as far as the outskirts of the village and south to a neighboring, smaller farm. I’d always thought of Brock and Ike as small businessmen, running the Valhalla nursery and doing odd jobs in town for extra money. I hadn’t realized that they came from such a prosperous farming family. The Olsen farm must be one of the largest in the valley. It felt, standing here, as if it commanded the whole valley – not just the fields and pastures that belonged to it, but the other small farms dotting the valley, the village to the north, and the dense woods that lay to the east.
I blinked and looked harder at the view. At the golden hay waving in the breeze and the deep emerald pastures. At the neat white fences and bright red barn. All glowing in the summer sunshine. But it wasn’t the sun that made them glow. Everything, from each blade of grass in the meadows to the red paint on the barn, was glowing with golden light. And when I looked even harder I saw rays of light coming from the fields and fences – delicate gold lines that formed an intricate pattern over the Olsen farm like a foil overlay on a book cover. A pattern that extended over all the farms in the valley, crossed Trask Road, but stopped at the edge of the woods.
“We can spin wards of protection across the farms and village, but not into the woods.”
I turned around. Ike stood behind me, in jeans and ubiquitous flannel shirt.
“How did you know I wasn’t just admiring your farming techniques?”
“You’ve got so much Aelvesgold in you you’re disru
pting the patterns. Look …”
I turned back, raising my hand to shield my eyes … and saw the net of golden threads ripple over the fields.
“You couldn’t have that much Aelvesgold in you and not see the wards,” he said.
“Am I hurting your … wards?”
“They’re pretty resilient. The Norns reinforce them once a year, always the week leading up to the solstice. That’s when all magic is at its strongest.”
I looked again at the acres of intricate patterns. “It must be a lot of work.”
“It is, but it’s necessary. If not for the wards, the farms and the village would be open to the woods. Anything could come out of them.”
Or get lost in them, I thought, thinking of the fishermen who had gone missing in the woods. “How’s Brock?” I asked.
A shadow passed over Ike’s deeply furrowed brow. “I’m beginning to fear he’ll never wake up. It’s been four days. I don’t know what we’ll do if he’s still unconscious when … I mean if … the door closes.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know whether I should bring him to Faerie or not. I don’t know his wishes. He’s very attached to Fairwick. Since we came here, he’s seen himself as the guardian of the town. And I know he won’t want to leave you here unprotected. But then, if Dory goes …”
“Dory is planning to go?” I asked, shocked and dismayed that she would think of leaving Fairwick. She was such a fixture of the town – a member of the Rotary Club and head of the library board. What would the town do without her? What would I do without her and all the other good neighbors? I felt a tug at my chest, as if someone had tightened a knot there.
Ike gasped. Looking out at the fields I saw that the gold patterns were quivering like live electrical wires.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s your pain at the thought of your friends leaving.” He looked at me strangely. “You’re part of the pattern of Fairwick now. You feel the loss of all our good friends.”
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