by Kat Turner
Because, with Brian, she had found love in a hopeless place.
She kissed his chin and stepped back. He cradled her face in both hands.
“You,” he whispered into her hair in a voice low and reverent. “You saved my life. Again. And you came back to me. I thought you were gone.”
“No way. Not gonna let the bastards get me down. How did they get you in here?”
“Someone came up from behind me and stuck me with some drug during the evacuation. I blacked out, then I woke up in here, tied down. The crap they injected me with sure came in handy.”
“What do you want to do about them?” Helen glanced askance at the passed-out cultists.
“Call the authorities. I’m guessing this trio is only the beginning, and that their group has plenty of secrets ready to be exposed.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
They bolted from the chamber and down a hall. Outside, a sea of evacuees stood on the sidewalks and in the parking lot, some with phones pressed to ears.
Stacy and a few other women hung around by a pickup, talking with some security guards and the crew people who’d been smoking by the garage. Fyre music played through the truck’s rolled-down window, radio tunes livening up the night with a makeshift show.
Sirens wailed emergency whoops as police cars and fire trucks arrived. In short order, cops and firefighters hopped out of their vehicles and jogged into the arena, several of them retracing the steps Brian and Helen crossed on their route to the exit.
In a flurry of calls and texts, Brian checked in with his bandmates and Tilly. Everyone was okay. From the looks of things, they didn’t need to tip anyone off about what awaited them in the secret room. The first responders would find the aftermath of the thwarted ritual and go from there.
“I’m fine. Going to leave town for a bit, mate,” Brian told someone on the other line. “Gather up Tilly and take a break. A vacation. I’ll see the three of you in a few months.”
After he hung up, Helen took his hand. “Where are you going?”
He met her gaze, wrapping her with tenderness. Red and blue lights from the cruisers skittered over his face, heightening dramatic effect. “If it’s alright, I’d like to spend some time in Minneapolis with you. Get to know your home.”
“Brian?”
“Yes, my love?”
“Wherever we go, wherever we are, will be my home. As long as you’re with me.”
“Likewise. Now how about we head to my place, gather up what we need, and go stay in a fancy hotel for the night before we set off to Minneapolis?”
“Make it so.”
“Your wish is my command.” He pushed a button on his phone, and in a minute a white Lexus pulled up. Brian ushered her inside with a hand on the small of her back, the chivalrous yet territorial gesture absolute perfection.
She snuggled into him, losing herself in the essence of her great love. Though she’d saved him, he’d saved her. And he would continue to protect her, and she him.
They were a unit, their bond forged in battle-tested steel. They’d gone to war together, fought for each other and for their love, and emerged from the trenches.
“You’re granting wishes now? Don’t give me any ideas.” Helen nibbled his neck, enjoying his body but in no hurry to expedite the progression of their play. They had the rest of their lives ahead for sexy time.
“We still have some catching up to do,” Brian said. He directed the car to his home, and the Lexus got rolling.
“True. Should I start, or do you want to?”
“You. Tell me some Helen Britney trivia.”
“Let’s see. Okay. I’ve tried to go vegan a few times, but I love cheese too much. My favorite move is Young Adult, I’m not a pet person, and I won’t watch spectator sports because it makes me too antsy. Oh, and I can’t cook for squat, but I have found some success with those meal kit services.”
Brian played with her hair. “Why does watching sports make you antsy?”
They travelled down a stretch of Interstate. A muted, mellow song played on the car stereo, complementing the cabin’s tasteful powder scent and enhancing the effects of hard-fought relaxation.
“I guess I feel self-conscious about sitting there on my butt, often eating something unhealthy like nachos, while watching others work out. Makes me feel guilty, like I should get off the couch and go play tennis.”
He laughed, understated and toasty. “Fair.”
“Your turn.”
“I run six miles every morning, cook a mean green curry, and read every night before bed. And I can get behind Young Adult. It’s rather brilliant, actually.”
“Whoa. I thought everyone but me hated that movie. No love for the female anti-hero, yet people fell all over themselves for Dexter and House.”
Brian plucked a fallen strand of her hair from her jeans, an endearing mammalian gesture of care. “I suppose I related to a theme of what I interpreted as writer’s block. Though I’m glad to say I don’t have that issue anymore. Thanks to you.”
“You’re sweet.”
“I’m being honest.”
“Stop it before I cry. Now give me a wacky anecdote about life on the road.”
His good-natured murmur held decades of memories and stories, a treasure trove of Brian-related things she looked forward to learning bit by bit. “I have some choice cuts. What do you want to know?”
“Tell me the story of the weirdest person you’ve ever met on tour.”
“I have it at my fingertips. You’re in luck. So a bunch of us are playing poker in a hotel room one night, and this man strolls in like he’s a crime boss. A real rough character, about seven feet tall with a black beard and size-fourteen motorcycle boots. He stank like an ashtray and had scars on his face. He sits down at the card table and starts talking himself up. Says he works in the black market as a mafia fixer, and that his main job is making guns disappear. Then he’s on about about how he lived in Israel and trained in Krav Maga and has killed dozens of men. Etcetera.”
“I call bullshit. An authentic mob goon wouldn’t blab about it to strangers at the first opportunity.”
“You’d think,” Brian whispered in a theatrical voice. “But his eyes, Helen. They were as dead as doll eyes.”
“So you let him win?”
“Hell no. I cleaned him out. He was rather daft, but terrifying at the same time. I made my bodyguard sleep in front of my door that night. In case What’s-His-Name tried to break into my hotel room and kill me with his Krav Maga.”
“If that was for real, wouldn’t he have killed everyone at the card table with his Krav Maga and taken all of your money?”
“She’s too smart. Yet another reason I love her.”
Chit-chat and banter went on for awhile like this, and the more they talked, enjoyed an easy and looping rapport in the car, the deeper she fell in love with Brian. She learned about his early life on a rural farm in the English Midlands, how destabilizing it was for him to move to London at thirteen. He talked about his cold, unloving grandmother and his struggles to fit in at the elite school he attended to refine his musical talents. The story of how he met the other Fyre guys, and how the ragtag bunch of outsiders found themselves through friendship and music.
Brian started out on the violin and showed great academic promise, but to the disappointment of his teachers and grandmother, he dropped out of Cambridge after a year to focus on Fyre. He admitted to some regrets, but emphasized that he would not go back and live his life any other way if given the choice. He’d been shy and clumsy with girls ever since puberty and never quite took to the hedonistic groupie scene throbbing at the sweaty core of rock and roll. Sure, he tried to get into the parties because everyone was doing it, but figured out quickly that shallow sex and excess weren’t his preference.
Helen told him her life story while he listened, attentive, reassuring her with nonverbal cues and touches.
The
conversation reached a comfortable lull, at which point Brian broke into a delicious rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” Every word in his rich, deep voice was heartfelt and trippy, the stuff of transcendental dreams.
While he sang of crystal visions, loneliness, and thunder happening only during the rain, Helen knew that she was exactly where she needed to be. Her dreams had come true.
She looked up at Brian. Though he was above her, height-wise, he looked up at her as well.
In that moment, tiny yet massive, the cosmos showered blessings upon Helen, and she allowed herself to receive them with gratitude.
She’d found not only her forever person on her crazy magical journey, she’d found her purpose. Her passion. Her place. She’d conquered her demons—figuratively and literally.
With her man beside her, it was time to get back to Minneapolis and run a rockin’ business. Expand. Teach workshops. Be the best guide and mentor she could be.
For the first time in years, maybe ever, Helen looked forward to the future. Her world stretched before her, a meadow to skip through instead of a graveyard full of zombies ready to rip her flesh.
She didn’t have to run from one unstable domicile to the next in search of that elusive home. She was there.
As if reading her, Brian leaned in and claimed her in the softest, sweetest, most swoon-worthy kiss.
Lost in a cloud of love and positivity and endless possibility, Helen gave thanks. To everyone and everything as she embraced her inner beauty.
Talk about awesome magic.
THE END
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And don’t miss more paranormal romance like FORGOTTEN MAGIC by City Owl Author, Eden Butler. Turn the page for a sneak peek!
Sneak Peek of Forgotten Magic
Magic is elemental. It’s a full-bodied thread in all that we are. To me, to all my folk—witches and wizards of every make and the other supernatural creatures that co-exist in our ley line-loving world—magic simply is.
It was magic that lived deep inside me, hidden beneath the wretch of who I’d been, of what I’d done ten years ago at age eighteen. My father would call me a hypocrite— if we were still talking. He’d tell me that keeping myself from the covens in New York and from my family back in Crimson Cove, keeping myself from the life he taught me to be proud of, was a coward’s way.
I was a witch only when it served my purposes.
Like now, slipping inside the dreams of such a talented writer. My client, Ivanna Ride (pseudonym, of course), was the hottest thing in erotic romance. She outsold and out published even the most popular authors and she did it on her own. There was no major house working behind her. Just Ivanna, her clever English-nerd husband, and me, Janiver Benoit, graphic artist extraordinaire. Well, that might be pushing it. It was magic that made me extraordinary and it was my gifts that helped me slip inside Ivanna’s mind and discover the theme, the vibe, the truly disturbing imagery she saw when she dreamt of her characters.
This time around it was Kjel, the 1050 A.D. Viking warrior in love with an enemy clan leader’s daughter. Blood and war and lots of sex. That’s what I had to make come to life on the cover of her book.
Walking inside Ivanna’s mind was like taking a stroll through a Renaissance Fair—on acid. The mist around me as I stepped into her dream was thick, a clotting smell that stuck in the back of my throat and choked me with the heavy scent of lavender. It hung in my sinuses, made my dry mouth collect with saliva. But on the back of that scent was something I recognized only vaguely as sweat. In Ivanna’s dreams, there was sex. It became apparent that’s what she had in mind, literally, when her REM cycle kicked into high gear.
Kjel—or who I took for Kjel—stood barefoot atop a bear skin rug in a rugged stone hut, glaring down at some whimpering, silly girl who looked more turned on than frightened. She was the enemy’s daughter knocking on the door of womanhood, looking at Kjel like she wanted him to guide her way through it.
With a shudder of sound and the shift of light, the scene changed and the small room with its dirt floor became a boudoir with fine, cerise linens and a massive four-poster bed. The girl’s face transformed to mimic something like Ivanna’s. At least, how she’d looked this afternoon when I listened to her babble on and on about the pending Kjel series and her vision for the rest of her books, her promo graphics, and the blog tours she wanted to organize.
I’d listened to her politely, nodding where appropriate as this mid-forties woman tucked strands of curly brown hair behind her ear. Damn. Was it petty of me to notice that there was gray flirting in those strands near her temples? She guzzled on an iced coffee as she talked, never once asking for my opinion or curious about what ideas might have come to me when I’d read the manuscript. That didn’t bother me, though, not really. My clients typically didn’t want to know what I thought. They just wanted to make sure I made magic happen on their covers and their promo materials.
Funny how close that was to the truth.
I’d listened to Ivanna for nearly an hour, sipping my own Venti English Breakfast Tea, more interested in the chipping black paint on my fingernails and the wadded napkin Ivanna had used to wipe her mouth. That would be the souvenir I’d take to give me access to her dreams.
Magic, no matter what fantasy authors or Renaissance vendors tell you, is just an old school name for the things mortals want proof of to believe. Everything we do has to be logical, must have an explanation.
It is true that there has to be basis for every spell or hex. There has to be something elemental that connects our target or, in my case, client, to the magic we twist. It isn’t simply supernatural. It’s dependent on the natural. Magic elevates it. That’s why I needed Ivanna’s napkin. It was something she’d held, something that she’d left a bit of herself behind on, and it was the element I needed to slip into her dreams.
But I didn’t like doing it—dreamwalking. Not like this. It was an invasion that made me feel cheap and simple. Intruding into someone else’s private dreams? Seeing the things they’d never freely admit to desiring? I was like some kind of perv trying to make my clients happy by copying their own imaginations.
Still, it paid the bills. So I stalked in the shadows in my client’s dreamworld. Kjel and dream Ivanna were starting to go at it. Bleaching my eyeballs was the first order of business when I woke up, which needed to happen right now. I had work to do.
I started that slow awakening, the controlled transition that would bring me out of Ivanna’s mind and back to the “real” world. It was a simple enough process—a little focus on my breathing, on the things around me. I drew upon a picture in my mind’s eye of my tiny apartment, of myself lying in only a black tank and red boy shorts, my dark hair covering my face, tattoos and runes dotting around my ankles, thighs, up the side of one bicep. The black ink was shaped in ancient languages, looping around my arm, connected to a black and gray rose on my left shoulder.
Things were calm, my mind working effortlessly to bring me back safely, away from Ivanna’s Viking wet dream and her saccharine world. I was nearly there, watching myself sleep, turn beneath my white sheets, knocking over an empty tumbler on my bedside table—not the bourbon, thank God—and then, the alert of a video chat on my laptop blasted across the room.
Jani! Jani! The alarming scream of my brother’s voice shot through the slow retreat my mind made. Sam’s voice became a grating, loud yelp that made my chest constrict as my heart sped.
Jani! Jani, for the gods’ sake, wake up!
And I did, jerking from my sheets, sending my pillows shooting onto the floor and the thick gasp of air in my lungs coming out like a yelp.
“Shit!”
The bell alert from my laptop lying on the floor next to my bed kept ringing, that low, constant loop that a
nnounced an incoming video call. Sam hadn’t actually spoken to me, but still had a way of scaring the hell out me, nineteen hundred miles away. My brother could call to me, unannounced, whenever he wanted, but especially when I was unconscious. The annoying sibling connection was a nuisance I’d never be rid of.
“Stupid, intrusive…” My laptop flopped against the mattress when I picked it up and jammed my finger on the surface to accept the call. I didn’t bother letting my big brother explain a damn thing. “You asshole, I was in someone’s dream.”
“Well hey to you too, little sister.”
A quick glance at my cell phone to cut off the insistent text I knew Sam had sent me and I caught the time. Shit, someone was probably dead.
“Who died?” My brother’s small chuckle was the only thing that made me relax enough to leave the bed and tug on my jeans.
“No one yet, though I’m pretty close to killing your brother-in-law.” My brother always blamed me when shit hit the fan, and from his tone, I’d guessed that this time the shit had slammed into the proverbial fan in buckets.
Still, that wasn’t my fault. “Ronan is your brother-in-law too, Samedi.”
“Yeah.” The frustration was heavy in his voice at my using his full name. “Well Mai is your twin, Janiver, and since it’s her husband that started all this shit, it should be you that gets us out of it.”
Mai was younger than me by only four minutes, but somehow we were years apart. I always picked up the pieces when she let her world fall apart—like it was now, with her in the middle of a bad breakup with her lazy, perpetually cheating husband. Still, it wasn’t my fight.
“You’ve got the wrong twin.”
I cut Sam off from whatever excuse I knew he was going to use when he cleared his throat by shaking my head and reaching out to grab the bottle of bourbon that had been sitting on the table beside my bed. I took a deep pull on the bottle, despite the glare my brother gave me. “Ask Mai to work out this mess.”