by R. E. Butler
With a final look around, she tucked the blanket under her arm, inhaled once more the sweet scents of her childhood, and turned to face Hope.
Hope hugged Treasure and sniffled. “I wish I could have met them.”
“They would have loved you.”
“I’m sure I would have loved them.” She leaned back and smiled. “Do you want to stay a little longer?”
“No, it’s time to get home. I’ve got what I need.”
They walked out of the house. Treasure locked the door and replaced the key, then put her hand on the door.
“You can always come back,” Hope said.
“I’m not sure I can.”
“Why?”
“It took a lot of energy to cast the protection spell and open the portal. I’m not sure why, but I feel like if I tried to come here again I might be pressing my luck. My life is in Ashland. I miss my parents terribly, but I love Rhett and Lisa and my mates.”
“I understand. I’m glad I could come with you.”
“Me too.”
They passed through the portal and stepped back into their realm. The moment she came through, she knew immediately that she and Hope weren’t alone anymore.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” Brian said.
Chapter 6
Kevin rolled over in bed and pushed the covers down. He was restless and uncomfortable, and sleep was eluding him. He’d worked on the farm all day, and he’d been exhausted to the core when he’d dropped into bed after a goodnight phone call from Treasure. But here he was, wide awake at two a.m., with a grumbling cat in his head.
“Can’t sleep?” Brian asked.
Kevin sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Nah. You?”
“Nope.”
Both their phones buzzed at the same time. Kevin picked his up and saw Rhett’s name on the screen. He swiped his thumb and answered it, dread suddenly pooling in his stomach. Had something happened to Treasure? Why was Rhett calling in the middle of the night?
“Rhett?”
“Is Treasure with you or Brian?”
“What?” he demanded. “No. She’s not in your house?”
“No. Lisa woke up twenty minutes ago and decided to check on her, and her bed is empty. So is Hope’s.”
“She’s not with me or Brian.” Kevin switched on the lamp and got out of bed, grabbing his jeans off the floor. “You tried calling them?”
“Of course. Their phones are in their rooms.”
“Shit. Could you scent anyone in their rooms? Do you think they were taken?”
“The window in Treasure’s room is wide open. It’s breezy tonight, so I lost their scent once they hit the backyard.”
“We’re on the way. We’ll help look for them.”
“Right. I’m calling James, he’s on duty tonight.”
As the call ended, he looked at Brian, who had just finished speaking to a frantic Lisa. In minutes, they were dressed and Kevin and Brian were knocking on Owen, Nathan, and Ben’s bedroom door.
Nathan opened it, rubbing his eyes. “What’s up?”
“Have you talked to Hope tonight?”
“Not since we dropped her off after our date. Why?”
He hurriedly relayed what Rhett had said and told them to meet them downstairs as fast as possible. Then they knocked on their fathers’ bedroom door. Grant opened it, rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Treasure and Hope are missing. Rhett and Lisa called James at the station. We’re heading over to search.”
“We’re right behind you.”
They arrived at Rhett and Lisa’s house ten minutes later, their parents and cousins right behind them. Kevin’s heart was pounding with worry and his cat was pacing angrily. He didn’t want to think that anything bad had happened to Treasure. He hoped this was all a mistake, and the moment they walked into the house they’d discover that she and Hope had been out for a midnight stroll and nothing sinister had befallen them.
Then he saw Rhett’s face as he stood stoically on the front porch and knew that any hope for a simple misunderstanding was long gone.
“I want to scent her room,” Kevin said as he met his future father-in-law on the porch and shook his hand.
“Go ahead. Maybe I missed something.”
“I’m sure you were thorough, but my cat wants to start there.”
He and Brian headed into the house and up the stairs to Treasure’s room. Her sweet scent was everywhere. The window was wide open, and he stopped in front of it. He was so in tune with her that he could practically see what she’d touched. Her scent was all over the windowsill. He laid his hands on it and leaned out, looking down the trellis to the ground. He and Brian had climbed up that trellis a time or two over the years, and she used it whenever they met at night at their favorite tree. Now, it mocked him. She’d used it to sneak out of the house and without planning to meet either him or his brother, and she hadn’t told them what she was doing. That Hope was with her meant something, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Outside?” Brian asked.
“Yeah. Maybe we can pick up her trail.”
They left the bedroom and hustled outside, walking around to the side of the house where the trellis stood like a ladder under her window.
Treasure’s scent was on the ground. He touched his cat, drawing on its better senses, and crossed the yard. At the edge of the cornfield, her trail had disappeared, the light breeze dispersing it on the night air. But he could see the direction she was heading in if she kept a straight shot – toward the tree.
“Well?” their father asked as he joined them.
“I don’t know what she and Hope are doing, but I think we might get some answers at the tree,” Brian said, pointing toward their favorite place to gather.
“You three and that tree.” He shook his head. “Hope’s with her?”
“Yes,” Kevin said.
“We’re going to search the cornfield with Ben, Nathan, and Owen,” Grant told them.
“We’ll let you know what we find,” Kevin said.
He and Brian made their way into the cornfield, heading to the tree. By the time they reached it, his cat was in full-blown worry mode, because it was very clear that Treasure and Hope weren’t there. He could smell her everywhere, but she was nowhere to be found.
“That’s weird,” Brian said.
Kevin looked where he was shining the flashlight from his cell phone on the ground. Something glittered on the grass, and he bent and picked it up. It looked like a rock shard.
“What the hell?” Kevin muttered, rolling the piece of rock between his finger and thumb. On the ground was a crude circle made of sticks and freshly potted plants.
Brian let out a low growl. “It’s a fairy circle. She fucking went into the fae realm.”
Kevin blew out a breath. The fae realm was a closed realm, meaning it could only be accessed through portals. Fae could create a portal, which was like opening a magical door in the air, and enter the realm. Treasure had talked about her ability to create portals, and she’d practiced them when she was younger, but there had always been the worry that it might be dangerous for her to open one. That creating a portal to the fae realm could possibly allow others in that realm to know someone had entered from the other side. He couldn’t imagine her doing something dangerous to either herself or Hope, but there seemed to be irrefutable evidence that she had.
“The question is why,” Kevin said finally. “Why did she go, and why now?”
“Rhett and Lisa are going to be pissed,” Brian said. “They knew she used the trellis to sneak out to see us at night, but this is a whole different ball game. And I’m a little angry myself. She should have told us.”
Kevin nodded. His gut knotted as he looked down at the twig circle and the glittering rocks and dried flowers he could see on the grass. Where was she?
* * *
After they checked in with the others, Kevin and Brian waited by the tree. Nathan, Ben, and Owen waited with them. Th
e pride members stayed by the house, not wanting to leave until Treasure and Hope were safely home. They were all worried, and, to some degree, angry. It wasn’t like Treasure to hide things from them, so he and his brother were feeling a little out of sorts.
An hour passed, and he thought he’d go crazy. He stood up from where he’d been sitting a few feet from the tree and cracked his neck and knuckles. Nervous energy radiated from him, and his cat was pacing.
There was a strange crackling sound by the tree, like glass shattering. A muted light began to glow, and a large opening appeared out of thin air. Treasure and Hope walked through.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Brian said.
Treasure stared at them in shocked silence. Hope nudged her.
“Let me close the portal and then we can talk,” Treasure said.
“Where were you?” Nathan asked as he pulled Hope to him and he and his brothers surrounded her.
“Safe, I promise.”
Treasure faced the portal and pressed her hand to it. It swiftly turned solid black and then disappeared. She bent and picked up the twigs, tossing them away to break the circle, then pulled the plants out of the ground and put them in the plastic pots stashed near the tree. Brushing off her hands, she turned slowly to face them.
“What are you guys doing here?” she asked.
“Rhett and Lisa called us a couple hours ago, frantic,” Kevin said. He and Brian moved closer and twined their fingers in hers. Her skin was warm, and the same sparkling crystal shards he’d seen on the ground were in her hair and on her clothes. “We grabbed the guys and headed here to search for you.”
Brian cupped her face. “Why the hell did you go to the fae realm? You said it was dangerous.”
“No, I said it might be dangerous,” she corrected. “But I cast a protection spell on the two of us so that we would be undetectable. We were perfectly safe.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell us where you were going?” Kevin asked. “We could have come with you.”
She shook her head. “Hope and I needed to do this alone.”
“What are you talking about?” Owen asked.
“I think we should go to the house and tell the others, too,” Hope said. “There’s no sense repeating the story twice. Plus, this bag is heavy as heck.”
Ben immediately took the backpack from her shoulders and put it on his own. Brian reached for Treasure’s bag and put it on his shoulder. She was holding a rolled-up quilt against her chest.
“We’ll meet you there in a minute,” Kevin said to their cousins.
When it was just the three of them, he and Brian faced her. Her wings were out and fluttering in the breeze.
“What’s going on, Treasure?” Kevin asked.
“I couldn’t take you with me. The protection spell took a lot of energy, and it was hard enough to cast it for me and Hope without also trying to include anyone else.”
“You could have taken one of us instead of her,” Brian said.
“It wasn’t about me going to the fae realm for myself, it was about Hope. I remembered recently that my dad had books in his library about gods and goddesses and their curses.”
“You put yourself in danger because of the curse on the mountain lions? What the ever-loving fuck for?” Brian demanded.
She took a step away from them and her wings snapped outward, making her look like an avenging angel. “Hey! You don’t get to be assholes to me right now. She’s my best friend and she wants to break the curse, so I did what I had to. I didn’t tell you about it because I knew you’d try to go or try to stop me, and it wasn’t your place. I kept us safe.” Her wings drooped, and Kevin smelled saltwater a moment before tears tracked down her cheeks.
He and his brother surrounded her, holding her carefully between them to avoid squishing her wings.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” Brian said. “We were frantic when we couldn’t find you, and realized you’d gone into the fae realm on your own.”
“I understand why you didn’t tell us,” Kevin said, “but it still hurts that you kept us in the dark. What if you’d gotten trapped there? We wouldn’t have known how to help you.”
She pressed her head to his chest and her wings slowly retracted. Brian crowded closer to her back, pushing her more firmly against Kevin. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. The plan was to get the books and spell ingredients and make it home before anyone knew we were gone. It almost went off without a hatch.”
“Hitch,” Kevin corrected.
“Right.” She lifted her head and he brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I got what we needed, plus I was able to get a few special things of my parents.”
“No one saw you?” Brian asked.
“No one was around,” she said. “And even if we’d seen anyone, they wouldn’t have seen us, because of the protection spell.”
“We could see you when you came through the portal,” Brian said.
“The spell only works in the fae realm.”
Kevin glanced toward the farmhouse, which was lit up like noon. “Ready to face the music?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Never,” Brian said.
“Then I’m ready.”
Kevin took her hand, and Brian walked on her other side as they headed toward the farmhouse. Lisa was waiting on the front porch.
“You scared me to pieces,” she said as she hugged Treasure.
“Sorry.”
“Come on, everyone’s inside waiting to hear why you thought it was a good idea to traipse off into the fae realm in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”
Inside the house, the small group was gathered in the family room. Hope was seated with her mates, and Rhett was standing by the fireplace, looking both angry and relieved.
Treasure took the bag that Brian held and opened it, kneeling next to the coffee table and placing the items inside on the wooden surface. Hope took the things out of her bag as well. In minutes, the table was covered with books and containers. The quilt that she’d held so tightly on the walk to the farmhouse was on her lap, and she laid one hand on it as she spoke. No one said anything while she explained how she’d used a protection spell for herself and Hope, then opened a temporary portal into the fae realm, entering a safe distance from her parents’ home. They’d found the books that detailed the goddess’s information and the spell to break the curse and copied them, since the books weren’t able to be brought into the human realm.
“We brought all my mom’s spell-casting ingredients, plus her spell books and several of the books from my dad’s library about dragons and fae. And I got some mementos.”
She held out a framed photo of her and her parents.
Kevin took it and looked down at the smiling family.
“That was the last picture taken of us. It was maybe two months before the fae came for me.”
Rhett rubbed his thumb between his eyes. “I understand why you felt like you needed to go to the realm, but why didn’t you tell us what you were doing? What if you’d been discovered and harmed? We would have had no way to get to the fae realm to help you.”
“I know,” Treasure said. “I’m sorry that you were worried. In truth, I didn’t expect that anyone would know what we were doing, and thought we’d be home before it was discovered we’d left.”
“I’m partly to blame,” Hope said. “I’ve been talking about how to break the curse for years. Treasure did all this for me, because I can’t stand knowing that there could be a way to break the curse but the answer lay in the fae realm.”
“Even so,” Grant said, “the two of you didn’t make good choices tonight. So much could have gone wrong. But you’re back now, and I’ve known Treasure long enough to trust if she says that she did this safely, then it was safe for the two of you. I sincerely hope, however, that you won’t do anything like this again.”
“I promise,” Treasure said. “I won’t need to go back to the fae realm again. There’s nothing there for me any
more but memories. My life is here.” She looked at Brian and Kevin and smiled.
Grant stood and said, “It’s nearly dawn. I’m going to go home and get a few hours’ sleep before I have to show up back here for work.”
“Do you mind if we stay?” Brian asked Rhett. “My cat is going crazy at the thought of leaving Treasure.”
“As long as you’re just sleeping,” Rhett said.
“Of course,” Kevin said.
“I suppose you’d like to stay also?” Lisa asked Ben, Nathan, and Owen.
“If it’s all right with you,” Owen said.
“I promise we’ll sleep, too,” Hope said.
“Then it’s fine,” Rhett said.
Treasure hugged Rhett and Lisa and spoke to them in hushed tones. Kevin knew she was apologizing for making them worry. He was just thankful she was safe. They said goodbye to their dad, and goodnight to Lisa and Rhett. Following Treasure up to her room, they all said goodnight to Hope and their cousins as well, and then shut the bedroom door.
“Promise me something,” Kevin said as he watched Treasure lay the quilt on the bed.
“Anything.” She smoothed it with her hand and then straightened, facing them.
“Don’t keep us in the dark again. Please.”
“I won’t, I swear.”
“This quilt’s special?” Brian asked.
“My mom made it.”
“It’s really pretty,” Kevin said. “Tell us about the trip.”
“I already did.” She frowned, her brow knitting.
“No, I mean, what it was like to be back in your parents’ house?”
He and Brian took off their shirts and shoes and climbed onto the queen-sized bed. Treasure stripped and put a nightshirt on, then joined them, wiggling between them until she was tucked safely in their arms. As the night waned, she told them about walking into the house and how it smelled so much like her parents. She’d wanted to stay longer, but decided that it was best to get back home while it was still dark.
“The spell made us invisible, but with how much power it took, I was worried about being too tired and maybe not having the ability to close the portal. It was hard to leave, even though it wasn’t really home anymore.”