A few hours later, they tried a different tack. “You’re lucky no one died,” the officer I’d come to think of as my own personal tormentor said. “Arson is a serious enough crime on its own, but add murder or manslaughter into that mix, and things get exponentially worse.”
He was trying to rattle me, and it worked. Arson. They thought I’d deliberately set fire to the building and used the drug to help cover my tracks. Still, there was a huge amount of relief in knowing that everyone had survived. I’m not sure I could have lived with myself if it had been otherwise.
“Why did you set fire to the church, Grant? Did you have a grudge against the pastor? One of the members? Did you just think it was ugly?” He stared at me for a few moments. “Or are you just covering for the girl, hmm?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I think she’s probably the real one responsible for all of this. Otherwise, she would have shown up by now, don’t you think? Do you love her, Grant? Is that why you’re willing to take the fall for this?”
He had no idea how close he had gotten to the truth with those last couple of questions. So very close, and yet so blindingly far away, as well. Yes, I was covering for Lily. Yes, she was responsible for what had happened. And, yes, Lord help me, I loved her. I kind of hated her, too, right then, but I loved her still. But I was not going to take the fall for her.
From that point onward, I stopped answering questions. As much as they tried— and they tried hard— they got nothing further from me. They probably would have kept me past the first day if my mom and dad had not sent a lawyer in after me. The first thing he did was inform me that my parents had been at the station since I had been brought in but had not been allowed to see me. And then that lawyer, bless him, informed the police that they could either charge me or let me go. And if they did neither, a judge was going to hear about it. I was escorted out of the station shortly later.
After an emotional reunion with my parents— I swear, I cried more in those two days than I had for years before, and I had never, ever seen my dad cry until then— they took me home. They gave me assurances that they were there whenever and for whatever I required, and then they gave me my space because they knew I needed it.
Pierce was also severely shaken up by the whole ordeal. He came to my room the evening I got home. We didn’t talk much. We just sat on the floor together, and I held him while he cried into my shoulder for what felt like hours.
I’d already been upset at Lily, but listening to my brother’s sobs stoked a deep, intense anger toward her that I knew would not burn itself out for a long time. The betrayal I felt was almost absolute. I couldn’t understand why she’d done what she had. I could understand her distress over the eggs— kind of— but after all of the months we’d spent together and everything we’d learned about each other, I couldn’t comprehend why she’d believe that I would let anyone treat a real dragon egg that way or that I would willingly take her somewhere where they so gleefully destroyed them.
Even then, I probably could have talked to her through that misunderstanding if she’d left it at that. But she’d literally unleashed an assault on the people of my grandmother’s church. On my family. On me. I’d been under a cloud of suspicion and in police custody because of her. And she hadn’t had the decency to show her face since.
10
Peace Offerings and Promises
It didn’t take long for the newspapers to start running with the story of what came to be known as the “Rose Street Fire.” And who could blame them? From an objective point of view, it was a fascinating bit of news. A church torched to the ground on Easter Sunday. An entire congregation that claimed to have seen grand, mythical beasts. A man taken into custody for suspicion of arson. A female suspect still at large.
I don’t know where the cult theory first started, but once it took hold, it was everywhere. After all, it was much juicier to believe that the members of the fanatical Resurrection Day Cult— as it came to be known— had willingly drugged themselves and then burned down their own building in a chemically-induced fit. Theories about why they had done this and what they had hoped to accomplish were numerous and varied. I deliberately avoided reading about them.
I considered dropping out of school for the rest of the semester and making up my classes over the summer, but I decided rather quickly that likely the best thing for me was to get back to the things that had always made me happy. And, nerd that I was, school had always been one of those things. It was difficult to leave my parents and Pierce, in particular, but once I got back to campus, it finally felt like I could breathe again. I could walk down the street without getting suspicious glances or fingers pointed at me. Rumors of the Resurrection Day Cult did eventually reach us, even so far away from where it happened, but by then, my name had mostly vanished from the coverage. Thank God.
I did not forgive Lily right away. Not even close. In fact, if the matter had been left entirely up to me, I probably never would have. For a long time, just the thought of her made me angry enough to smash things. Thankfully, I rarely did.
I didn’t see her through the rest of that spring semester or the summer. I had no idea where she was, nor did I care. I effectively shut down the emotional part of me— except anger. Not healthy, I know. But it was so much easier for me to fall back into detached intellectualism than to risk experiencing all of that horror and grief and heartache again. I convinced myself that the joy I’d found was not nearly worth the pain that came after.
It was about two weeks into the fall semester of my sophomore year when I returned to my dorm and found a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting on my desk.
“What’s this?” I asked Jake. We’d requested to be roommates again and had been granted permission.
“I found it outside of our door,” he explained. “It has your name on it.”
I hadn’t noticed that. I picked up the bundle and flipped it over. Indeed, there was writing on it. Diminutive and barely readable writing. I brought it closer and squinted.
Grant-Man.
I put the package back down on the desk.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Jake wondered.
“Not right now. Maybe later.” That was a big maybe. And if I did decide to open it, I’d make sure I was alone when I did.
That little brown parcel sat on my desk for nearly a week. Finally, my stubbornness lost out to my desire to just open it and get it over with. Because as long as it was sitting there unopened, it would be stuck in my brain. I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. And I really wanted to stop thinking about it.
I waited until Jake was at football practice before I tore open the paper. Whatever was in it was rolled up in more paper inside, so I flipped it over a few times before something finally fell out into my hand. And that something was an opal.
Well, not really an opal. Once I got over the shock of seeing it, I realized that what I was holding was, in actuality, a piece of a dragon egg. It looked to be from the same egg Lily and I had watched hatch together. It’s bright red surface had been polished smooth, and then the entire piece had been set with a bail and given a chain so that it could be worn as a pendant.
There was a note in the package, as well, written in the same tiny hand.
A peace offering, it said. I love you, Grant-Man. I am so very sorry. And that was it.
And that was all it needed.
Memories came flooding back. The peace offering of chocolate I had given her way back at the very beginning. The day and night on the hill, anxiously waiting for the baby dragon to join us. Her unspeakable beauty on the day she’d first transformed for me. All the many nights we spent tangled in each other’s embrace.
Was I really willing to give all of that up over something that was in the past and could not be changed? Had I become so cold that I could not offer her another chance?
Walnut, Grant. You’ve been a walnut.
I wouldn’t feel guilty for what I’d felt since Easter, thoug
h. I didn’t believe I was wrong to be angry. What had happened had been very real and very terrifying, and I’d be expecting too much of myself if I thought I should have just gone back to normal like nothing had changed. But I made the decision right then that it was time to let all of it go. I didn’t want to be irritable and miserable for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to be without Lily, either.
I hooked the necklace around my neck and opened the window over my desk. I didn’t know where Lily was, but I bet I knew of someone who did. “Fairy,” I called out of my window. “Flower fairy! I know at least one of you is down there. May I speak to you, please?”
It took a minute, but eventually a little pink fairy poked her head out of the flowers in the bed under my window and looked up at me. She hesitated a moment and then flew up to see me. “What did you wish to speak about, Grant-Man?”
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew my name, but I was. Regardless, I soldiered on. “Do you know where Moonlily is?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t felt my heart leap in excitement like that for a very long time. “Will you give her a message for me?”
“Of course.”
“Please tell her that her peace offering was received. And accepted.”
“I will tell her.”
“Thank you.”
The hours I spent waiting to see if she’d come were some of the longest of my life. But come, she did. She burst through the window as soon as I opened it for her and crashed into my neck, her arms as wide as they would go. I cupped my hand over her, and the two of us held each other as well as we could for a very, very long time. Words felt trite just then, so we didn’t speak. We grew familiar once again to each other’s presence and basked in our togetherness.
“I’m so sorry,” Lily eventually whispered. The hitch in her voice gave away the fact that she was crying. I wasn’t far from it, myself.
“It’s done, Lily,” I told her. “It’s forgiven. We don’t ever have to talk about it again. We have a brand-new beginning, yes?”
She fluttered up to look me at me face to face. “Thank you,” she sniffled. “I was so afraid I’d never get the chance to spend time with you again. I love you too much, Grant-Man. I couldn’t stand being apart. I had to at least try.”
“I’m glad you did. You are stronger than I am, Lily. Thank you for trying for both of us.”
Gently, I took hold of her with both hands and gave her a kiss that not only covered all of her cheek but the entire side of her head. “I love you, Moonlily,” I whispered. “More than you love chocolate.”
She elbowed her way out of my hands. She looked me dead in the eye with an impish glint as she flew up and nipped the end of my nose with her sharp little teeth.
“Walnut,” she declared.
Epilogue
New Possibilities
Do I tell all of this to the interviewers sitting across the table from me?
No. No, I do not. Some of it is much too personal to share with anyone. Still, I tell them enough. Enough that they are staring at me with expressions that range from bewilderment to near hostility.
“Do you expect us to believe all of that?” one of them asks.
I shrug my shoulders. “It’s true,” I answer. “Whether you believe it or not doesn’t change that.”
I probably came off as too much of a smartass with that remark. It doesn’t appear that their dispositions toward me have improved at all.
“You are asking to be considered for entrance into a scientific course of study. Perhaps you should change your focus and go into creative writing, instead.”
I grin at that. So. It appears I’m not the only smartass in the room. “I’ll leave the creative writing to those who are more skilled at making up stories. I’ve always done much better with facts.”
“Do you really believe in dragons?”
“I’ve held one in my hands and watched another raze a building to the ground. Why wouldn’t I believe in them?”
I think it’s the sheer audacity of my tale and my stubbornness in claiming its veracity that keeps me from being dismissed outright. In retrospect, however, I think I may have decided on a less than ideal part of my life to share. Couldn’t have just gone with how many science fairs I won and how fulfilled that made me feel or something moronic like that. Oh, no. That would have been too easy.
“Look,” I begin again. May as well try to salvage something. “I know that I am not the typical student hoping to join your program. My undergraduate background is not in science. I get excited about history and rocks. Could someone be more boring? I tell stories that challenge what everyone believes is true. But may I ask a question?”
They decide to humor me. “Go ahead.”
“Isn’t the primary purpose of science to have an open mind? To doubt? How else will progress be made? Copernicus and Galileo doubted the earth was the center of the solar system. Columbus doubted the popular thought of the day and sailed off because he believed the earth was round.” I hold out my hands. “One thing I learned through my time with Lily is that there is a lot I don’t know. And it would be easy to turn aside and ignore or disbelieve something that does not fit in with my view of the world. But if I don’t— if I’m willing to explore the new possibilities— it makes my life and my experiences so much more diverse and fascinating. Personally, I’ll take the risk of being confronted with something new and keep an open mind.”
There’s a heavy silence for a few moments. Most of them do not appear to appreciate being lectured by a lowly little undergrad. One of them, though, catches my eye and smiles. That’s encouraging. It’s good to see at least one of them understands.
“Thank you, Mr. Harrison. We will be in touch.”
It’s a typical Don’t call us, we’ll call you response, and it doesn’t bode well. I stand up and push in my chair.
“Thank you for your time,” I tell them.
I feel a rustling in my jacket pocket as I turn to leave the room. I look down just in time to see Lily climbing out and flying over to the five members of the interview board. She stops in front of each of them in turn and touches them in some way— either with a hand to the cheek or a dainty foot on the tip of the nose— just so that they can feel the reality of her for themselves. She gives the one who smiled at me a kiss on the cheek, though. It appears I’m not the only one who noticed the reassurance.
No further words are spoken by anyone as Lily flies back to me and lands on my shoulder. She grins at me as we leave the room. It’s very possible she just saved my chances of attending this particular school. I cup my hand around her and she squeezes my thumb in a fierce embrace. Not for the first time, I think that, together, she and I could probably do anything.
God, I love my fairy-girl.
About the Author
Amanda Ruehle was born in Albuquerque, NM, and now resides in the great, green area of the country known as Western Washington. She lived for three years in Sasebo, Japan and has great ambitions to live in Spain or Italy someday. Amanda shares her house with her long-suffering husband (love you, dear!), three boisterous boys, two dogs, a gecko, a bearded dragon, and a turtle. When she isn't writing, she is busy driving a school bus, chasing after her boys, or running her small clay sculpture business. Sleep often seems to be an optional activity. Amanda first started writing creatively in high school, but she didn't really get going until college, when she would write stories in the backs of her notebooks when she got bored taking notes during her biology and chemistry lectures. She currently has two published titles in her Cyan Series, Mystian Dawning and Blazing Sunset, and has the third in the works. She is also branching out into anthologies and is thoroughly enjoying working on common projects with large groups of talented authors!
* * *
Follow Amanda on Social Media:
* * *
www.facebook.com/amandaruehleauthor
www.facebook.com/groups/mystianmenagerie (art/reader group)
&nbs
p; Sent to Me
Rena Marin
Edited
By
Emily Cargile
@
Litmosphere Editing
Introduction
When her life begins to fall apart, Harley Morgan finds herself relying on the help of a food-loving, breathtaking guardian angel by the name of Sebastian. While he watches over her, the two of them find themselves fighting not only dark forces but their feelings for one another. Will Sebastian win the fight and keep Harley safe, or will their feelings for one another tear apart everything they are fighting for?
1
Bolting up, I listened intently. The darkness of my bedroom surrounded me as I attempted to put my finger on exactly what had woken me. It had been a noise. Of that much I was sure. Was it here in the house? Did I have an intruder? Had it been a nightmare that made me think someone was in the house? Truly, I had no idea. Of course, a nightmare would be much easier to deal with—and quite understandable.
After a moment, I lay back, deciding it had been the latter. Another dream-plagued night was underway. One of these days, I will be able to sleep again, I thought as I closed my eyes. Suddenly, I heard the noise again. It sounded like a muffled voice. Then a thud quickly followed.
Throwing off the purple-and-black quilt my grandmother had made me years ago, I threw my feet to the chilled floor, quickly recoiled, and then leaned down to retrieve my bunny slippers that had found their way under the edge of my bed. I swear, sometimes those bunnies have minds of their own, I thought. Once my feet were snug, I hopped up and hurried toward my dresser. Nestled beside the dresser sat my daddy’s twelve-gauge shotgun. It had sat there, loaded and waiting on trouble, since he’d put it there over a year ago. Flipping off the safety as I made my way down the long stairway, I attempted to be as quiet as possible. Thank goodness for the soft bunny slippers on my feet. They muffled the sound my bare feet would have made on the hard, wooden floors.
A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas Page 51