“No problem,” Denny assured her. “We can get Thorn a whole set of fake I.D. Passport and all. Illegal aliens do it all the time.”
“What?” Nikki shrieked. “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind? Denny, you’re a lawyer, for heaven’s sake, and here you are contemplating something totally unlawful!”
“Shhh! Keep your voice down, will you?” he cautioned. “If it comes to that, we don’t want the entire world to know it, do we? Now, as to my being a lawyer, you can thank your lucky stars that I am, sweet pea. How do you think I know about all these neat little tricks? I’ve defended some of the smartest damned criminals you’d ever care to meet, and I have to admit they’ve taught me a lot. I just never thought I’d ever put any of it to use for personal reasons.”
“And about half of those defendants are behind bars now, serving ten to twenty in the big house!” she hissed. “We could go to jail, Denny. We’re not talking small potatoes here.”
“Just let me take care of everything, Nikki. It will work out fine. Trust me.”
“This from the brother who swore to catch me at the bottom of the slide and left me to skin my knees when Shirley Abbot flashed a mouthful of braces at him?” she scoffed.
“That was Jack,” he reminded her with a mock glower. “I was the one who bloodied Billy Brown’s nose after he pushed you into the mud puddle and ruined your new Easter dress.”
Nikki shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I got that mixed up. Still, I don’t want any of us to get into trouble with the law. Especially you, Denny. You could lose your license, and you have a family to support.”
“Just the birth and marriage certificates for now, then,” he said. “And a passport. We’d need proof of that first, I imagine, for him to allegedly have flown into the country to join his bride. You do have some decent snapshots of him as I recall.”
“In what, a breechcloth?” Nikki threw up her hands. “Oh, God! This is suddenly getting so blasted complicated!”
“Not really,” he claimed. “Jack can do wonders with that computer of his, which is going to make things a whole lot simpler. He’s a master hacker.”
“Now you’re talking about involving Jack, having him break into computer records, I suppose? Where will all this end?”
“With you and Thorn living happily ever after, I hope,” Denny told her. “Now, get out of my office so I can get some work done, will you? I’ll speak to Jack and get the ball rolling. I might even have a nice little chat with your snoopy reporter friend, too. Just to let him know whom he’s dealing with when he tries to screw with our baby sister.”
“In his dreams,” she muttered. “Only in his dreams.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ohio—The Caves—Late November 1813
The Moon of the Beaver, the month the white man called November, was drawing to a close. The winds were cold and brisk from the north, shaking the last of the leaves from the trees. Soon the snows would come, more than a few fluffy flakes now and then, wrapping the earth in a blanket of white. The rivers would freeze. The falls would cease their singing until spring brought warmth to the land again, awakening it from its winter slumber.
Silver Thorn could not wait that long. He must reach Neeake before this happened. If he failed now, as he had in his previous attempts to join her, he would be forced to stay here without her until spring thaw, or perhaps forever. He knew that much of his magic had to do with the time of the year, the position of the moon, the sun, the stars. Perhaps they would never again align in a pattern favorable for traveling to another time. He wasn’t sure, but he feared it might be so.
Already he’d made four attempts to go to her. Each time he remained in his own world. He must succeed soon. Perhaps now, tonight. The moon was full, as it had been when he’d first cast the spell that had brought Neeake to him. Perhaps it would aid in transporting him to her. He prayed that it would be so, for time was short and he was nearly out of spells to try, incantations to sing, and various combinations of the two.
Bracing himself against the chill of the night air and the cold water, which would soon turn his limbs and flesh numb, Silver Thorn divested himself of his shirt and leggings. Clad only in his breechcloth and moccasins, he stepped carefully along the rocky path until he stood at the foot of the rushing falls. Clasping the amulet in his hand, he raised his eyes and arms to the moon, now near its zenith, and began to chant. Though shivers racked his frame, he dared not hasten the ritual.
The moon had passed its highest point when Silver Thorn finally ended his plea to the Spirits. He stood alone, half frozen and desolate on the rocks, knowing he had failed once more. His heart felt as if it were shattering in his chest. Pain filled him.
“No!” His cry bounced back at him, echoing off the barren land. With trembling hands, he opened his spirit bag and brought forth the picture of Neeake, his precious lovely bride. It was slightly tattered now, worn from the many times he had handled it, stared at it. Now, by the bright light of the moon, he peered at her image and wondered if this would be his final remembrance of her—a still face upon a shiny piece of paper.
He rubbed his thumb over it and jerked in surprise when the sharp corner of the photo pricked his skin. A bead of blood fell, staining the picture, and Silver Thorn quickly wiped at it, fearful that it would ruin the photo altogether. He succeeded only in smearing it worse, so badly that he could scarcely discern Neeake’s likeness.
“No!” he shouted again, his grief all the worse. He rubbed at the blotch, his anger and frustration growing, the anguish tearing at him like gnashing teeth. Tears sprang to his eyes, blurring her image all the more. One salty droplet fell, mingling with the blood and Neeake’s fading face, and Silver Thorn fell to his knees, overcome with agonizing sorrow.
That’s when the earth began to spin, setting the moon dancing overhead until it became a whirling white wheel amid a dizzying blur of stars. Stunned, Silver Thorn clung to the rock in an effort to maintain his balance. But his hands slipped. He felt himself falling, reeling, caught up in an ever-tightening spiral that threatened to suck the last breath from his body. Just as the dizziness defeated him, he felt the amulet snag on something. He could not react fast enough to keep it from being ripped from his grasp, along with the treasured photo of Neeake.
His final conscious thought was, “If this is not the path to Neeake, let it then be death, for I do not wish to live without her.”
Ohio—November 1996
It seemed as if Nikki had just gotten to sleep when she awoke with a jolt. Her waterbed, the one guaranteed not to slosh, was weaving back and forth like a ship in a hurricane. In those first moments of disorientation, Nikki wondered if she were experiencing an earthquake, perhaps one of those infrequent-but-not-unheard-of tremors along the New Madrid Fault. If so, this was the first one she’d felt, and all this bobbing about was making her nauseous.
Gradually, the bed rocked to a halt, and Nikki exhaled cautiously. Then, as she lay perfectly still, waiting for her stomach to calm completely, she heard it. Breathing! Heavy breathing! Coming from the other side of the mattress! Right next to her!
Her heart thumped to a halt, then resumed at warp speed. Her mind raced, sifting through all possible explanations. Only a couple popped into her brain, and they vere ridiculous. The cat? Had Her Nibs developed an asthmatic problem? Possible, but not probable. A narcoleptic burglar? Highly unlikely.
Her night visitor moaned, and Nikki, scared out of her wits, let out a shrill shriek even as she clambered clumsily out of bed. Or tried to. Which wasn’t easy for a woman who was nearly six-months pregnant and entrapped in a body-snatching waterbed!
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” she screeched hysterically, grabbing for the side rail and hauling herself over it. As she tumbled to the floor, the man—she was sure it had to be a man’s voice—groaned again. She was fumbling in the dark for the bedside phone when he mumbled something. Her hand halted in mid-movement. She froze in place. Listening. Praying. It came again, that rumble t
hat sounded like her name.
Her breath caught in her throat. Afraid of what she might find, but more afraid of not knowing, Nikki groped for the bed lamp, her eyes trained on the bed all the while. The moment she snapped it on, what she saw had her shrieking anew—this time in soul-consuming jubilation.
“Thorn! Thorn! Oh, dear Lord! Is it really you? Are you truly here? Oh, God! Oh, gosh!” He was still half unconscious, and she was shaking him now, trying to bring him around to full awareness. “Are you all right? Speak to me, Thorn! Wake up, sweetheart! Look at me!”
His eyelids fluttered. “Neeake?”
“Yes! Yes! It’s me, Thorn! Wake up!”
Slowly, afraid he might be dreaming, Silver Thorn opened his eyes—to the most beautiful sight in the world: Neeake. His Neeake. Smiling down at him. Dripping happy tears on his bare chest. Gripping his arm so tightly that he could not doubt that she was real, for her fingernails were piercing his skin.
In the next instant, he had her in his arms, embracing her so hard that both of them could scarcely breathe. Laughing with her. Crying with her. Smothering her with kisses. Wanting to feast on the sight of her, but at the same time reluctant to release her even that briefly.
“Neeake, my love. My sweet, sweet love. How I have missed you!”
“Oh, Thorn, I feared I’d never see you again, never get to hold you close to me. Love me. Oh, darling, love me. It seems like years.”
His soft chuckle was nearly a sob. “It has been, dearest heart.” He kissed her deeply, his hands stroking across her thinly clad body. They came to rest on her rounded belly, and he felt their child move within her. “What of the baby?” he asked.
“He won’t mind, I’m sure.” The baby kicked once more. Nikki smiled. “I think he’s trying to say hello to his papa. Why don’t we give him a closer visit?”
For all the time they’d waited, their lovemaking was slow and tender, a lingering exploration as they savored this glad reunion, this renewal, to the fullest. There was no place on her body he did not touch, no part of him she did not learn again. She filled her senses with him, and he with her, reacquainting themselves with the feel, the taste, the scent of each other.
When he entered her, ever so gently, he filled more than her body. He filled her soul. Her blissful cry echoed his. “Welcome home, my darling,” she sighed.
Her silken warmth surrounded him, bathing him in the dew of her love. “Yes,” he murmured huskily. “I am home. You are and ever will be my home.”
Some time later, when their immediate passion had been satisfied, Silver Thorn kissed the tears from her face. “I pray that these are joyous tears, for I would forfeit a limb before I would hurt you.”
She nodded. “I’m fine. More than fine. My heart is bursting with happiness.”
“As is mine. I also feared that I would never reach you. I tried many times these past days and met only with failure. I knew I had to find a way soon, before the falls froze, for I did not think anything would succeed then.”
“Whatever you did this last time, it worked. Thank God.” Her hands stroked over him, relishing the texture of his bare flesh. She threaded her fingers through his ebony hair only to stop abruptly as she suddenly realized what she was feeling. “Good grief, Thorn! You’re soaking wet! ”
“I was standing at the foot of the falls. I recall kneeling on the rocks when the dizziness came upon me.”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s November, Thorn! It must have been like standing in ice water! And you nearly naked! We’ve got to get you dry, and warm, before you catch your death.”
“I am plenty warm,” he said. “But I have made your blankets wet.”
She hadn’t noticed until now, but they were damp and clammy. Especially where he’d first landed in the bed— sopping moccasins, breechcloth, and all. These had long since been discarded and now lay in a sodden heap on the carpet alongside her nightgown.
“No problem. We can change the sheets. But you really do need to towel-dry your hair. Better yet, you can use my hair blower.”
Nikki squirmed to the edge of the bed and tried to lever herself out of it. Her efforts set the mattress to wobbling again.
Silver Thorn braced himself against the swaying motion. “What manner of bed is this, that moves so? I swear, Neeake, it was like mating in a rocking canoe. Not that we did not manage quite well, but it would have been easier if the bed had remained still.”
She grinned at him. “It’s a waterbed. The mattress, below the covers, is filled with water. I’m still trying to get used to it myself, which is all the more difficult the bigger I get. I don’t think these things were invented with a pregnant woman in mind. If you don’t like it, they make regular, firm mattresses to fit the frame. We can always buy one of those if you prefer.”
Silver Thorn pressed against the mattress with his hand, testing its give. “We shall see. Why does it not feel cold?”
“There is a heater to keep the water warm,” she explained. “I’ll show it to you later. Right now, I think it’s time I introduced you to another marvel of modern technology: The hair dryer.”
She pulled him along with her into the bathroom and switched on the light. He gaped in awe. His fingers reached toward the toggle hers had just left, and he flipped the light off. Then on . . . and off . . . and on again. A slow grin curved his mouth. “This is truly wondrous, to have such light when it is dark outside. How is this possible?”
“I can’t explain the technicalities of it, but it has to do with electrical current running through wires in the walls. This electricity is a source of power to run all kinds of modern appliances, including the lights. See these plugs?” she gestured to a wall outlet. “We’re going to plug the hair dryer into one of these, and it’s going to produce hot air to dry your hair.”
Silver Thorn was less interested in Nikki’s explanation than he was in the vanity lights framing the bathroom mirror. He walked up and touched one, pulling his hand back immediately. “Hot,” he commented. Leaning closer, he examined the bulb. “Is the fire inside this ball?”
“No fire, Thorn. Just wires, filaments, and electricity.”
He glanced down at the shell-shaped sink and its fixtures. “And this?”
“A sink and faucet. Water comes out the spigot when you turn these knobs. The right one for cold water, the left for hot.” She demonstrated how it worked.
“Where does the water come from? How does it get here? How does one side produce hot water?”
This conversation suddenly reminded Nikki of her nephew at age three, when his favorite thing had been to ask questions nonstop. “The water is piped from a reservoir miles from here. The plumbing also runs up the wall. There is a water heater in the basement.”
“Why are there two sinks?”
Nikki frowned. “I don’t understand. There’s only one sink, Thorn.”
He pointed to the tub. “Is that not a sink also? It has a faucet, does it not?”
“That is a bath tub, for bathing. You plug the drain, fill the tub with water, then get into it and bathe. When you’re done, you release the stopper and the dirty water drains out. That gizmo near the top is a shower head. You can make the water come out there, in a spray, instead of the spigot. Most men prefer a shower to a bath, so I’ve heard.”
His attention was already veering toward the only large fixture left. “This is a seat of some sort?”
“That’s the toilet. Remember, I mentioned it to you before, when we had that conversation about indoor outhouses.”
His brows rose as recollection dawned. “Yes, but I wish to see how it works.”
She lifted the lid, showed him how the seat raised on its hinges, and pressed the handle. “The water flows from this tank into the bowl, forcing the waste out through the bottom hole and the plumbing. After you flush, it takes a few minutes for the tank to refill, so you can’t flush twice in the same few seconds. Also, I want to warn you not to leave the seat up when you are done urinating. Always . . .
always . . . put the seat down again, even if you leave the lid open.”
Thorn looked the apparatus over and couldn’t figure out why she was insisting on this, for it seemed to have nothing to do with the operation of the toilet. After a moment, he asked, “Why must the seat always be put down again?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Because women never have to raise the seat to go potty, darling. Therefore, we don’t automatically check each time to make sure the seat is down, especially if we toddle off to the toilet in the middle of the night and half asleep—which I’m doing more often as my pregnancy advances. If, by some chance, I should plunk my bare butt down on cold porcelain and fall through to that cold water, I would not be a happy camper. And then I would want your head served up to me on a platter. Does that answer your question sufficiently?”
He grinned down at her. “I have missed that sassy mouth of yours, wife.”
She flipped the toilet lid down and shoved him onto it. “Sit, you big lunk. Let’s get your hair dry so we can change the sheets and go to bed.”
She took the hair blower from its rack beside the sink, plugged it in, and turned it on. The sudden noise made Thorn give an involuntary start. “It’s okay,” she told him over the mechanical roar. “See?” She aimed the dryer at her own head and then at his hand, letting him feel the rush of warm air. Then she directed it toward his head, ruffling his hair with her free hand to aid the drying process.
A short while later, they were snuggled together beneath dry bedding, as cozy as two peas in a pod. Nikki yawned and reached to turn off the lamp switch. Her gaze fell on the big red numbers of her digital alarm clock. “No wonder I’m so tired. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’m supposed to be up at six-thirty to get ready for school.”
Charmed Page 29