Marked (Valeterra Series Book 1)

by Jennifer Reynolds

  The rows and stacks of books amazed me. The place was a booklover’s wet dream. I wandered up and down the rows reading genre headings and book spines. A used bookstore sat in the back half of the store.

  “I can’t run all of this by myself,” I said, opening the door to the used book section to see that it had an entrance from the side of the building and a register.

  “You worry too much. We have that covered. Right now, it’ll just be you in the bookstore and a local woman in here. You only have two registers and two computers. You can’t have any more than that, or they interfere with people’s magic. Everything down here runs on solar energy and magic, meaning come about five in the afternoon, you’ll need to start closing down. That won’t be a problem here. People are used to it.

  “You have electricity in your apartment, but please be conscious of it.”

  She led me upstairs to the apartment via a door in the backroom. The place was large and had an open floor plan. The apartment only had four doors other than the one I’d just come through. Two opened into bedrooms, the third into the largest bathroom I’d ever seen, and the fourth led to a back stairway outside of the building.

  “Do you have any questions before I leave you to get settled?” Stephanie asked an hour later after I’d explored the entire building, and Scott showed me how to use the register.

  “You’re leaving?” I was immediately terrified.

  “For the moment, yes. I have to meet with my boss in a few to let him know how things are going. I thought I would come back in a couple of hours to give you a tour of the town.”

  “Good. I mean… Damn it. I sound like a child. I’m just nervous. I think I’ll be all right until then. I’ll make a list of questions as they come to me, so be prepared.”

  “I will.” She laughed and walked out the door, leaving me alone in the large, empty apartment.

  Someone had sparsely furnished the central area with a sofa, coffee table, and a small dining table with four chairs. Both bedrooms had large beds, dressers, and nightstands. There were only three pictures on the walls: one large painting of a forest at night with a wolf prowling the trees in the main room, a sepia-toned picture of the moon in one room, and a pastel one of a single flower bud floating in a sea of grass in the other room. I chose the room with the moon. The kitchen didn’t have any of the conveniences I was used to—no Keurig, no microwave, no toaster, and no electric can opener. I did have a gas stove and a small refrigerator.

  I cried a little as I opened the boxes and suitcases Scott had left in the stock room of the bookstore and slowly made the apartment my home. As long as it took me to sort through my things and pack what I wanted to bring, it took half that time to unpack.

  To keep from getting depressed at the sight of the empty apartment, I went downstairs to explore the store some more. I didn’t bring my Kindle with me, and I swore only to use my cell phone to send my sister messages so that she won’t get worried. Actually, my messages would go to someone at the border who would step across and forward them to her.

  Not having access to my virtual library was going to be hard, as I had more books on the Kindle than I had brought with me.

  I had a feeling that until my sister got here, I was going to have to immerse myself in the books in the store as a way of keeping myself occupied. I told myself that was a good thing. The people who were coming in to get the books wouldn’t know anything about them or their authors. Knowing what I had in stock would help me greatly when trying to sell the novels to people who knew nothing about my world.

  An hour later, Stephanie and Scott came back to the store. A bell over the front door jingled when they came in, and it startled me. I had found a steamy paranormal romance, had settled on one of the sofas in the reading area, and was deep into the story. I jumped up and quickly put down the book at their entrance.

  “Valerie, are you down here?” Stephanie called.

  “Yes… Yes, I’m here.” I got up, put the book behind the counter to get later, and joined them.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “I am, but I don’t have any money.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t have any money?”

  “I mean, you guys were supposed to transfer my funds over here, show me how to access it, and all of that, but...”

  “Oh, yeah, right. I forgot. We’ll take care of that over dinner. My boss is paying for tonight’s meal.”

  “Okay. Let me get my things.” I went upstairs to grab my purse and keys. I locked the building behind us and followed them up the main street.

  Most of the businesses had closed already. The rest were in the process. The shops we passed looked like ones you would see in any small downtown area. There was a toy store, a women’s clothing store, men’s clothing store, a bakery, a jewelry shop. There were things in the windows that I found odd like signs above clothing racks that labeled them tear resistant, flame resistant, and water resistant. Some racks even had a strange symbol on them and a lovely price tag.

  “Those are magic-infused,” Stephanie informed me. “It means that when a hormonal shifter shifts at random and his clothes fall off, they will magically reassemble themselves.”

  At my awed look, she said, “Not indefinitely, but they should last through at least five impromptu shifts. You’ll see it mostly in children and men’s clothes. Male shifters and weres, in particular, tend to have random emotional surges that cause them to shift without warning.”

  “Females don’t?” I asked, looking to Scott to see how he reacted to her statement.

  He didn’t bat an eye.

  “Not as much. Shifter and were females tend only to do it during menstruation, especially when they are young, but during that time of the month, they stay home. Their animals aren’t in heat or anything like that when they first hit puberty. Thankfully, they don’t start that until their human side finds its mate, but the mood swings, cramps, and other symptoms can cause a female to shift three or four times a day. Some change to avoid the bleeding and discomfort, but we’ve found that if a female does that too much or spends their entire menstrual time in animal form, they end up with fertility problems.”

  “I think my head hurts,” I said and laughed. “I’ve taken in too much information today.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll try to stop by regularly until it’s time to get your sister to help you acclimate.”

  We walked the rest of the way to a restaurant called The Grove about two blocks up in silence while I took in the sights. A few people passed us on the street. They stared at me but didn’t say anything to me. I tried not to stare back.

  11.

  ~~~Valerie~~~

  The food at The Grove restaurant wasn’t too different from anything I’d eaten on Earth. The menu reminded me of a meat-and-three restaurant back home. You had a choice between two soups and three different entrees. The food was much better, though. I had a steak, salad, grilled asparagus, and fried squash.

  Most of the restaurant’s seating was outside in a large courtyard behind the building, but there was also some seating inside. I chose to eat outside in the mild weather mostly because there weren’t many people in the courtyard, meaning we were able to get a table where we could speak privately. I didn’t necessarily need privacy. I just didn’t want the people of Greenleaf hearing me ask what they would feel were obvious or stupid questions.

  While we ate, I asked Stephanie and Scott why things were so similar between my world and theirs. I had only half-heartedly taken in everything Stephanie told me about herself on our drive into town; therefore, if she’d told me any of it I hadn’t retained the information. The most important facts that I had absorbed were that she was a fox shifter from this world and that Scott was her mate. I wanted to be mad at her for not telling me that information sooner, as in when we first met, instead of leading me to believe she was from Earth, but I understood her reasons for secrecy.

  As to why the two worlds were alike, she said thousands of yea
rs ago, a powerful seer predicted that our two worlds would eventually join and that it would be prudent for us to have as many similarities as possible. Since there was no way our world could be like theirs, they could try to become as similar to ours as possible.

  “We started out with similar beginnings, though we’ve avoided most of the wars and diverseness your world has faced. We became one people long ago,” Scott said, surprising me by answering one of my questions. He hadn’t said more than a handful of words to me all afternoon.

  “The witch that predicted the meeting of our worlds saw a lot of what was and would happen in your world, and our leaders set out to prevent as much of it as possible from happening.” He continued.

  “We also got lucky in the fact that your biggest wars came about due to racial and religious discrimination. We didn’t have that problem, as our racial differences are the differences between giants, pixies, elves, fairies, and the like, and none of those groups have ever had a problem with each other. There have been small skirmishes and the like between groups amongst each species, but nothing world changing. Also each species has its own gods and goddesses, and no group has ever tried to force theirs on another group,” Stephanie added.

  “You’ve built a utopia here,” I said in awe.

  “I wouldn’t call it that. We’ve avoided some of the issues your world did, but we still have our problems,” Stephanie said.

  Seeing that she wasn’t inclined to go into details about their world’s problems, and I already knew about their largest, the plague, I asked about language similarities.

  “Our reigning language for generations was Greek, and you will still find some scattered Greek and other dead languages in our vocabulary. We didn’t have as many different languages as your world does, mostly again due to our division into species. Aside from a few species that had their own forms of communication or didn’t speak at all, we all had the same basic language. When we discovered that English, a language only spoken by our witches and wizards and their familiars…”

  “Familiars? You mean animals can talk here?”

  Laughing, she shook her head.

  “No, a familiar is a person born amongst the witches and wizards without magical powers. They usually assist with prepping spells and the like, but they can’t cast. A witch or wizard can also draw on their energy to aid in their spells,” she said, when she’d composed herself.

  “I see.” I felt sheepish, but how was I supposed to know.

  “As I was saying, since English was dominant in your world, we voted to switch. Mind you, it wasn’t an easy change, but most saw the need and slowly acquiesced. We don’t have all of the slang sayings you do, but with as much interaction as we’ve had these last ten years, we’ve acquired some.”

  “Did this seer foresee the sickness?” I asked in a quiet whisper.

  “No. The seer knew something was coming that would drastically change our world so much that it would require the need for us to speak your prominent language, but she couldn’t see what it was. She said every time she tried to focus on that all she saw were humans coming here to help us. She couldn’t see in what way. Maybe she did know and just didn’t tell anyone, or maybe the gods didn’t want her to know.”

  The three of us talked for a bit more of nothing of importance. A part of me wanted to ask about Jackson Nichols. I knew he lived in this general area, and that his pack was the closest to Greenleaf and that he was the town’s Achron, but I didn’t know how much time he spent in the area or if I’d see him on any kind of regular basis.

  I didn’t ask any of the questions I wanted to ask about Jackson because I didn’t want anyone suspecting that I found him attractive. The second they did, they would start trying to push us together, and I didn’t want to feel forced on anyone.

  Apparently, sensing what I wanted to know, Stephanie deftly switched subjects to tell me about Jackson. I pretended everything that she told me wasn’t information that I’d been dying to know since I arrived, but absorbed all the information she gave me about him.

  I was a bit shocked to find out that Jackson was also her boss, and the man predominantly fitting the bill for my transition from Earth to Valeterra. The Valeterrian government was paying for some of it, but not the largest part of it, which was the bookstore.

  I was even more surprised to find out that he’d been the one to buy my strip mall and serve me an eviction notice. For a full minute, I was so pissed about that fact that I wanted to demand Stephanie take me home, but I cooled down and decided I wouldn’t react to the information right then. I’d hold onto it for later if things didn’t work out here. I could use it as leverage to force Jackson to reopen my shop back home. I knew I should be angrier than I was about the news, but a part of me had subconsciously wanted to come and was thankful for the reason to do so.

  12.

  ~~~Valerie~~~

  Stephanie and Scott walked me back to the bookstore after dinner. They waited for me to enter the building and lock the door behind me before walking away. I watched them get into their vehicle while fighting the urge to call them back. I hadn’t stayed the night alone in years. My sister was usually with me, and on the rare occasions that she wasn’t, I was babysitting a cousin or a friend’s kid who was staying overnight.

  I locked the door to the bottom of the stairs that led up to my apartment. The building didn’t have an alarm system that I could see. The windows in the front of the building were large, glass, and easily breakable. Upstairs, I paced the apartment for about fifteen minutes, before taking the book I had been reading earlier and going out onto the balcony to read.

  The furniture out there was surprisingly comfortable. In no time, I was deep into the book until a light from an apartment across the street shook me out of my daze.

  Laying the paperback down, I sat up a little straighter in the seat to look across the street. I didn’t want the person to think I was creepy, but I was naturally curious. I had noticed there were other apartments above the shops across the street from me during our drive into town and our walk to The Grove, though none of them had looked occupied. That apartment hadn’t been any different.

  From a distance, and with the curtains pulled closed, all I could make out was a tall, masculine figure moving around the main room. I wasn’t positive as to what the man was doing inside the apartment, but I did tense every time he came close to the window. I guessed that I wasn’t the only person pacing the house that afternoon. I wondered what had him worried. Maybe I could take him a book to read. Books always settled my nerves.

  I was so caught up in imagining who he was and what he was doing, which was an odd thing for me to do and just showed how lonely I was, that I nearly yelped when his curtains and door opened. I scrambled back down into my chair and opened my book, praying he hadn’t noticed me watching him.

  For a long moment, he stood on the porch looking up and down the main strip. There wasn’t anyone moving around down there for him to watch, but his posture said he was keeping watch all the same.

  “How are you enjoying our town so far, Ms. Stutts?” the man asked, startling me so much I dropped the book. His voice sounded so close that I thought he was standing on my patio.

  After a quick look around to make sure I was alone, I picked up the book and sat it closed on the table, not bothering to mark the page. I didn’t have a clue where I was in it anymore. Standing slowly to calm my nerves, I walked over to the railing to look across at him. The night was so dark despite the stars that were out that I couldn’t see him clearly, but in the quiet of the evening, I could hear him plainly.

  “I’m enjoying it very well, thank you. How did you know I was new in town?” Okay, all of Valeterra knew I was new to the entire world, but to make small talk, I asked.

  He chuckled a little at the question and answered, “Everyone knows you’re here, Valerie.”

  The sound of my name coming from that man brought chill bumps to my arms and made my body flush with need at the same
time. Never in my life had a person’s voice turned me on so much so instantaneously. You hear people talk about how they find certain types of voices sexy or erotic, but I’d never understood that until then.

  I gripped the railing tight, breathed slowly, resisted the urge to clench my thighs, and said, “I know,” in a defeated tone.

  He laughed again, and I nearly came. I felt my engorged clit and the wetness between my legs as I shifted slightly in the hopes of relieving some of the pressure. I would most definitely masturbate that night.

  “You don’t sound as if you are thrilled to be here,” he said when I didn’t say anything more.

  “That isn’t it. I’m a bit nervous about it all. I’m still trying to come to grips with the reality of this place. I’m happy to have the bookstore. It’s amazing. I’ve dreamed of owning a bookstore like this all of my life.”

  “I thought I heard a rumor that you had owned one back on Earth.”

  “I did, but it wasn’t anything like this one. Mine was small and packed to the point to make a person feel claustrophobic. This one is full of books, much more than mine, but there’s enough room between the aisles to peruse them without being overwhelmed. Back home, I felt like sometimes my customers weren’t able to enjoy shopping in my store because there were books everywhere. Oh, and this place has a used bookstore as well. The only thing missing is a coffee shop or deli.”