Stone stood directly beside me. At 6’3, he was still a full head taller than I was, even when I wore heels.
“Professor Draper…” I started but he frowned. “Stone,” I corrected myself.
He wore a black suit. The jacket was pushed back, so he could keep his hands in his pocket. A tie hung around his neck but he somehow still managed to appear… casual.
“Chaperoning the dance?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes, I am.”
“And, um, are you having a good time?” God, I sound like an idiot.
“Seems like everyone is.” Stone’s thoughtful gaze went to the romantic sway-fest occupying the dance floor. “Almost everyone, anyway.”
Stone turned his smile back on me, gentle and sweet. My knees felt a little weak.
Someone must’ve spiked the punch, I rationalized. Yeah, that’s why I feel like my heart’s about to explode—tequila in the Kool-Aid.
He rounded the table, came around to my side and held out his hand to me. A new song was starting, even slower than the one before.
“May I have this dance, Miss Balfour?”
“Um...”
“Emma?”
“Huh?”
I was a deer. He was a pair of blinding headlights. I couldn’t have moved under his gaze to save my own life. Stone had the kindest eyes, open and caring with mystery swimming in their darker depths....
Think that heart explosion is coming right around the corner.
Without knowing what I was doing, I reached out, and placed my hand in his. He backed away, towing me by the hand and waist, until we were a short distance away from the refreshment table. A sizable marble column blocked most of the others.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, a teacher dancing with a student might look…”
“I’m not bothered about how it looks,” Stone said, eyes steadfast on mine. “I’m more interested in how it feels. And I feel like dancing with you.”
Suddenly, Stone moved against me. The strong lines of his body shifted gently, in time with the music. I was encircled in his arms, along for the ride. He was a good dancer, commanding control without sacrificing flexibility, but I could no longer gage our rhythm.
I couldn’t hear the music over my pulse.
“Where’d you learn to dance?” I asked, meeting his eyes as the subtle motion continued.
He looked hungrily into mine. Large hands clasped my hips, pulled me closer. Stone’s strong, muscled body pressed tight against me. Arms closed around me. Reflexively, my own wound themselves around his neck.
His arms tightened, keeping me against him. I nuzzled further into his jacket. My heart pounded almost out of my chest. Slowly, his hands slid down my back. One trailed up my arm, shoulder, neck, and gently grasped my chin, guiding my eyes to his.
His deep blue gaze was so intense. The closer he got, the more I felt like I was drowning in a pure blue sky…
And that was when I realized I was dancing with my professor, in the center of the dance floor and all eyes were on us. I hated nothing more than being the center of attention, so I pulled away and cleared my throat.
“I have to go to the restroom.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, but turned and sped out of the ballroom, down the long, curving hallway, and into a small bay-windowed alcove. I didn’t bother going into the restroom because I hadn’t really needed to go.
I just needed to catch my breath.
Just needed to ask myself why my professor had asked me to dance. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he was just being nice. Maybe…
Fuck! I shook my head.
“Emma.”
It was Stone’s voice.
I spun around and met his eyes. I tried to smile, but my heart was pounding through my ears and I felt more like passing out.
“Oh. Hi.”
“You seemed upset, or... are you all right?”
I wasn’t, not by a long shot.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m fine, but, you know, it’s getting late…”
He smiled at me and crinkled his nose a little. “It’s not late. You just got here.”
How did he know that? He must have seen Clark and me when we first walked in?
“Right,” I said.
“Everything’s okay?” he asked and took a step closer to me.
I froze. I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or throw myself into his arms. Or maybe both.
“I… I should probably get back to my date…”
Before he could respond, I started to run. Yes, I ran away. Like an imbecile.
Well, I tried to run away. But my heel snagged, and then I started to fall and Stone grabbed my arms to keep my upright. My necklace flopped across his wrist.
Suddenly, a vision overtook me...
Naked flesh, hot breath on my skin, frenzied kisses on my neck. A hand rubbing against the slickness between my thighs. Eyes blue enough to put the ocean to shame. Running my fingers through thick, golden brown hair... his lips, so sweet against mine, pressing hard enough that I could taste a hint of blood. Still, I clung to his body, and he to mine, neither of us had enough of each other.
Stone released me instantly, and the vision stopped.
He looked down at me with wide eyes.
I looked back up at him with wider ones.
The images and sensations faded like chalk on a sidewalk.
“Did you,” he started.
I couldn’t look him in the eyes any longer. Instead, I stared at my hands, unable to meet the truth in his gaze. The feelings were still alive in my skin, but I couldn’t make sense of them.
Stone was the one to break the gut-wrenching silence.
“Your necklace,” he said, forcing my gaze back to his. His face was as blank as a repenting monk.
“My necklace?” I repeated as I glanced down at it.
“The sapphire in your necklace.” Stone looked at the gem rather than me. His features were tight, giving nothing away, but there was a dark intensity in his eyes that set my blood buzzing. “I didn’t recognize it right away, but you’re wearing a stone of second sight. That’s why... um…”
“Then... you saw it, too?”
The second I asked, I almost died of embarrassment. Heat flooded my cheeks, but Stone didn’t seem to notice. He just stared daggers into the sapphire.
“Yes.” He swallowed hard.
“How? I don’t understand.”
“That amulet gives the wearer access to certain information. It can let you into someone’s subconscious and show you their... manifested desires... it’s a very… unique gem.”
“So... it lets me see people’s dreams?” I was processing very slowly.
“Or their futures,” he said after a moment. “Quite the versatile trinket.”
I had to remind myself to breathe. The air between us was thick with a charge I didn’t understand.
“Dreams and premonitions,” he continued.
“Dreams and premonitions,” I repeated, losing myself to his beautiful gaze once more. “Which one was that?”
Those deep blue orbs were charged with so much emotion, I almost gasped aloud when I saw them. There was shame, pain, and beneath it all, a longing so potent, I could feel it behind my own eyes.
“Both,” he answered, his voice low. Too low.
“Stone…” His name left my lips in a breathless whisper, and before I knew what was happening, he pulled me into his arms. I was powerless to stop myself from returning his embrace. He wrapped his arms around me and then he dropped his head and I lifted mine and before I could talk myself out of it, his lips were on mine. I opened my mouth, and his tongue explored me, mating with mine in a tempestuous dance.
My body responded to him the way fire responds to gasoline. I couldn’t stop the spread if I’d wanted to.
And I didn’t want to...
The clock struck twelve.
Stone wound his fingers through my hair, deepening our kiss, p
ressing closer.
I melted against him and listened to the blissful bells ring.
ELEVEN
DUINE
I’d been a warrior all my adult life, but the forest still set my nerves on edge. The black trunks seemed to close in around me, while the leafless branches knitted above my head to shut out all light. I had been in dense forests before, but this one, in the heart of Eastern Europe, was more than claustrophobic. For a moment I looked back and did not recognize the path behind me. When I turned back to face front, the trees had moved. Was I even in the same place that I had been moments before? Were the trees themselves conspiring against me? Or was it all in my head? These last few months, it had seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against me.
Try as I might, the dark thoughts that threatened to consume my life kept coming. I tried to be strong, to push them away, to focus on the good things; my friends, my home, my family…
That was why I had come to this terrible place, against all the advice I had been given.
“Hello?” I heard sounds from up ahead; muttering or movement. Maybe it had just been the wind in the trees, but I felt no wind. The air here was still, dank and heavy, like the inside of a tomb. There was something about this place, something to do with death.
But I had come this far, and I would not turn back now. Maybe it was stupid, maybe I would regret it for the rest of my life, maybe I would never leave this forest, but I could not go on living like this.
It is possible to love a person so much that when you lose them, a part of you dies, and you go on dragging that dead part around with you, feeling the agony as it rots, spreading through you like the gangrene of despair.
Somewhere in this forest was a person who could amputate that dead part of me, who could erase the memories that caused me so much pain and anguish. Somewhere in this forest was someone who could free me to live the rest of my life in peace. This freedom would come at a cost, of course, but at least I would be free of the neverending pain, the neverending memories that haunted me all hours of the day and night.
When this was over I could be whole again. Everything would be better.
“Welcome.”
I spun around, and behind me, the trees, through which I had just passed, were now gone. In their place was a clearing with one large tree at its center, casting thick shadows beneath its canopy. To one side of the tree, a fire smoked, and hunched over it was a collection of dark rags more or less in the shape of a person. The hunched shape looked up as I took a step forward, and I caught a glimpse of dirty skin stretched over prominent bones, and filmy eyes.
“Come closer.” A scrawny hand extended from the rags to beckon me.
As I walked cautiously into the clearing, I had to choke back nausea at the scent of death. Hung about me, like clothes on a washing line, were dead animals; squirrels, rats, birds, snakes and frogs, dangling as they rotted. As I inspected the tree, I saw there was a door carved into it. Large though the trunk was, I could not imagine there was much space inside. Clearly, there was magic at work here. Beyond the tree, on the far side of the fire, I saw… something. It was a collection of twigs, bound together into roughly the size and shape of a man. Various other objects hung from it, or were stuffed into the twigs, but I decided not to look too closely. Flies buzzed everywhere.
Maybe this whole enterprise had been a bad idea.
But, no, I was determined. I had to end this constant pain. I had to do something…
Reaching the fire, I stopped, looking through the haze of smoke at the hag who remained squatted on the far side, staring into the fire with her white eyes.
“My name is…” I began.
“I know who you are. And I know why you are here.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Can you help me?”
She looked up and I suppressed a shudder as I saw the unholy face beneath the ragged hood, lit from below by what little light came from that smoky fire. The face was human, but it was degraded into something that resembled a creature of the dead.
“Help you?” she parroted back at me.
“You said you know why I am here; can you help me?”
“Oh, yes.” The creature’s body shifted in what might have been a shrug. “I can do what you want me to. But doing so is not necessarily the same as helping you.” Her voice was a guttural gurgle, as if coming from a drain rather than a throat.
“But you can take the memories from me?” I couldn’t live with them anymore. With the memories of her gone, then the pain would go too. I would be able to breathe again.
“Naturally. But the past will not come away so easily.” She cackled; a sound like wet twigs being snapped. “Everything comes at a price.”
“I can pay.”
“I do not speak of money.”
I swallowed hard. If she did not desire money, what did she desire? “What do you want?”
“Love.”
A cold shudder ran through me at just the thought. Love? What did that even mean? Did the hideous creature expect me to bed her? To remain with her? How far was I prepared to go? How far was I even physically capable of going when the sight and stench of this woman made me physically ill?
The hag screamed with laughter as she saw the look of revulsion on my face. “Not that type of love, you fool. You think a man like you has any appeal to me?” She cackled again. “You are nothing to me. I would break you like a china doll.”
Not the reaction I had expected and a little insulting, but still a great relief, all the same.
“How else can I give you… love?” I asked, completely baffled.
“You loved this woman.” A horridly pink tongue emerged to lick her blackened lips. “I can taste your feelings for her on the air like hot copper.”
“Yes,” I answered with a firm nod.
“You radiate it as you radiate grief, the one fueling the other. Inextricable. The memories too. You are a rat’s nest of memory, sadness and deep, deep love.”
“And? What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I cannot remove one without the others.”
“One without the others…” I still didn’t understand.
“You wish for me to remove your memories, but your memories are combined with your love, your ability to love.”
I hesitated. “If you take the memories away, you also take…”
“Your ability to love. Your capacity for it.”
I suddenly felt light-headed as my heart began to pound in earnest.
“That is the price.” She licked her lips again. “I have long sought a love like yours. One unbreakable by time and death. It will suit me very well.”
I remained quiet as her words soured my stomach.
“Do we have a deal?”
What use was love to me? When the memories of my lost wife were gone, perhaps I would be able to love again—though the idea seemed impossible to me at that moment—and I could not think of anything worse. I did not want to love again, to do so would be an insult to her, to her memory.
But, then there was this empty hole within me. This expanding, demanding sadness that threatened to destroy me…
Perhaps I was foolish and shortsighted, perhaps I was too blinded by unspeakable grief to see clearly how this event might play out in time, but right then, it seemed very logical. In fact, it seemed desirable. I never wanted to love again; and here was a way to stop it from ever happening. If this hag took from me my ability to love, I would never disgrace her memory by loving another woman.
At that moment, it did not seem like a sacrifice, more like a two for one offer; lose your memories and your love at no extra cost.
I looked at the old witch and nodded. “We have a deal.”
The hag smiled thinly. “Take off your shirt.”
I did not question her, but began to strip to the waist. The old hag wheezed her way up onto her feet and shuffled over to the door in the tree. I could not tell if it was her or the door creaking. As she went through i
t, I caught a glimpse of a very homely room beyond, lit by oil lamps. It appeared small, but quite comfortable.
When the hag re-emerged, she carried a small jar and a length of twine.
“Against the tree. Facing me.”
I walked to the place where I was told, my back to the tree, and the hag began to tie my hands around the trunk.
“What are you doing?”
“Precaution.”
“Precaution for what?”
“To stop you thrashing around.”
“Thrashing around?”
She grinned at me, revealing a ghastly toothless mouth. “You didn’t imagine this would be painless, did you?”
Truthfully; no. But I was sure it would hurt less than what I already felt every second of every day. “I can tolerate the pain.”
“I’m sure you think you can.”
I looked at the thin twine. “That won’t hold me.”
“I’m sure you think it won’t.”
Once my hands and feet were tied about her tree, the hag smoothed her greasy fingers across the muscles of my torso.
“Very nice. A shame in many ways that you are only human.”
“I’m a warlock,” I corrected, somewhat affronted.
But the old woman shrugged. “All the same to me; you are powerless.” Her fingers traced my abs. “Yet not unattractive, in a brutish sort of a way. Smoke.”
The last word was spoken to her fire and it began to belch thick, black and acrid smoke. It burned my eyes, stung my lungs.
“Now…” She unscrewed the top of the jar and plunged her fingers in to scoop up a glob of lime green ointment. “Here.” She smeared the ointment on my chest and I felt a slight tingle as she drew magic symbols onto my skin, some of which I recognized, others not. Some seemed to shift when I tried to look at them, as if they did not want to be read.
“Does it burn?” She asked.
“The ointment? No.”
“It will.”
She was right. I grit my teeth against the pain as the ointment seared my skin, feeling like molten lava sinking into me.
“Strong, weak one,” chuckled the old woman. “Most would be screaming by now. But you just swallow the pain into that void at your center. Nothing but darkness in you. A big, black hole that consumes suffering.”
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