A Little Night Muse

by Jessa Slade

  She packed the next morning—he hadn’t tried that hard to stop her, had he?—and he signed the divorce papers, postmarked California, without another word being exchanged. Still, Danielle had lasted longer than his brother, Cole, who had ditched the valley a week after graduation.

  “This place is crushing me, like it crushed Mom,” he’d said as he folded the bus tickets labeled New York into the back pocket of his jeans.

  Josh had protested. “The sky goes on forever here.”

  “Yeah, that’s even worse.”

  Watching them leave—first his mother, then Cole, then Danielle—had torn at Josh like the spring snowmelt undermined the willows along the stream. But nothing could uproot him. As his father had said often enough before dying (another kind of leaving) some people just wouldn’t see the wonders of the valley. They would always want more, and it was best to let them go.

  Josh wished he could let go of the memories as easily as they had forgotten him.

  Grateful for the distraction ahead, he focused on the homestead. Vaile and Imogene Hunter had built a beautiful place. The huge timbers of the cabin had been harvested seemingly without touching the surrounding old growth, and a three-story picture window flawlessly reflected the valley beyond. The house emerged like a dream from its surroundings.

  Vaile had said they might have a few guests, but they had come to the mountain valley to “get away from it all.” Josh’s impression—though they hadn’t been specific—was the Hunters had left some strangeness of their own behind. Hollywood, he guessed, or some other foreign land. They were both stunning enough to be movie stars, though the exotic lilt in their accents suggested maybe their country of origin was farther off. Regardless, they were here now and obviously loved it.

  Other than some coyote tracks and the harsh calls of scrub jays, the homestead was untouched, quiet. Josh circled Bunco around back, Wolly at heel. Behind the house, tall blackjack pines created a sheltered space without snow. When both Bunco and Wolly lifted their heads to focus on the porch, Josh thumbed off the rifle safety.

  “Okay then, you come on out now, whatever you are.” He kept his tone steady. “I ain’t fond of surprises.”

  Bears and cougars, even wolves, prowled the valleys, but Vaile didn’t keep any lunchable livestock. Still, even something as small as a porcupine could do serious damage if it set up a woodshop in the log cabin.

  Josh dismounted, stepping on a circle of toadstools that sprouted out of the pine duff. A dry snake skin wound between the rounded caps, which was odd. Too cold for snakes.

  He ground tied Bunco and gave Wolly the stay signal. No sense setting himself up for a dog bath if the intruder was a skunk.

  He took two steps toward the porch and the door opened.

  A woman.

  His jaw dropped. No, not a woman. An angel. A porn star. Some baffling mix of the three. His heart slammed against his ribs, as hard as if he accidentally shot himself through the chest. Which would be embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as standing here with his jaw hanging loose, staring.

  A dress of long scarves bound her from neck to foot. The shifting edges only emphasized her curves. Breasts and hips in widespread, man-hand-sized glory, with a sloping dip at the waist like a welcoming pass between summits. Against the pale veils, her hair spilled in a midnight waterfall, dark and shining.

  And her eyes...Oregon was known for its greenery, but every hue was captured in her brilliant eyes.

  Damn, his mouth was still hanging open. His neighbors hadn’t mentioned they’d be hosting Arabian princesses. His mind drifted to a thousand and one nights.

  “Miss.” He swept the hat off his head and clutched it between his hands.

  “I’m wet,” she said. “Come inside.”

  His heart stopped. “Wet?” She didn’t mean...

  She stepped back. “Come.” Her voice—soft and husky—was like a velvet hook set in his stupid open mouth. But if she wanted to play catch and release, he was willing game.

  His boot hit the bottom step before he realized he was moving. The snake skin stuck to his heel, and it rustled across the plank. He paused to kick it free. “Damn snakes,” he muttered. He propped the rifle and his hat by the porch railing as she backed into the house.

  “It’s wet everywhere,” she said. “And cold.”

  Cold sort of snapped him out of his daze. That and the splash of water under his foot spreading across the slate tile.

  “Well, hell.” Distracted by the plumbing problem, he glanced around. “Busted pipe. I warned Vaile about insulating.”

  She stiffened. “The Hunter is here?”

  Josh shook his head. “The Hunters are away. Not sure when to expect them back.” Now that he thought about it, seemed odd they hadn’t mentioned a return date. Now that he thought about that, seemed odd he hadn’t questioned it before.

  First things first. “I need to find that pipe.”

  He edged past the woman. The scent of her—lush and mysterious and dark, like the tiny seep springs in the woods, trickling from rocks and roots—swirled around him. He inhaled, and his boots angled to follow her without his conscious effort.

  In the kitchen, the mini flood washed away his distraction. “Shit.” He dragged one hand through his hair, trying to get his head on straight. “The freeze last night must have broke a pipe.” He crouched by the sink and opened the cabinet underneath. There, right at the wall. “Best to turn off the whole house until we check the rest. Vaile will kill the contractor.” When he turned and straightened, the woman’s face was drawn tight. “Hey there. You okay?”

  He put his hand on her arm. Through the silky fabric, she was cold to his touch. But the spark that leapt between them was hot. Crazy-hot scorching, like his nerves had turned to electrified fence.

  She flinched. When she pulled away, the edges of the veils separated, revealing bloody streaks.

  The water, the spark, everything faded as he took her arm again. “Miss, are you hurt? Where did this blood come from?” Fuck, now that he thought about it, where had she come from? His head seemed all hazy, but he forced himself to concentrate.

  Without touching her again, Josh used the mass of his body to steer her out of the kitchen mess. In the adjoining living room, an overstuffed leather couch faced the valley view. Bunco’s hoof prints had melted into dark circles in the snow, the only sign of life. No tire marks, no ski tracks, no sweep of helicopter blades pushing up snow. How had she gotten here?

  He herded her toward the couch. “Sit.”

  She did and when he took a half step back, she looked up at him, green eyes sparkling. Tears? God, he hoped not.

  Though she had recoiled from his touch before, she reached out and flattened her palm on his groin, just off center from the stamped bronze of his belt buckle. It was his turn to jump. “What—?”

  The intensity of her gaze pinned him as effectively as her hand. “Where is the Hunter?”

  Distracted again—hoo boy, was he distracted—by her hand so close to his fly, he shook his head and tried to pretend she wasn’t touching him. “Vaile and Imogene said they were going...somewhere. For...awhile.” Everything seemed vague lately. His body was reacting to the woman’s innocent touch as if he’d been alone forever...

  “What do you know of the Hunter?” Though her hand trembled, her tone held an irresistible insistence.

  But he reacted more to the fear she tried to hide—and the bloody bandages wrapped under the sleeve of her flimsy dress—than the demand in her voice. “Vaile is a good guy,” Josh said gently. “If you need a safe place to stay, he’ll give it to you.”

  She shook her head, and the smooth darkness of her hair slid forward over her shoulders. “There is only one place for me, and I can’t go back.”

  From his standing position, Josh looked down—inadvertently, helplessly—at the upper curves of her breasts and the shadow between revealed by the shifting veils. Only one fragile lacing seemed to hold the thing together. He stepped back befor
e her hand on his thigh triggered greater embarrassment for them both.

  The woman’s gaze arrowed up to him. “I need to find the Hunter.”

  “You can wait until they get home, but you won’t have any water except what you pump from the well. And you’ll be cold as a witch’s...” His face heated, and the words popped out of him. “You can wait for them at my place.”

  Her eyes widened—so did his; he couldn’t believe he just offered this gorgeous creature a bunk—then narrowed with judgment. He knew he’d be found wanting. He always was.

  “Very well.” She pushed to her feet—was she wearing gold slippers?—which put the top of her dark head below his chin, but she never dropped her gaze. “Take me there.”

  Imperious little thing. Misgivings nipped at him. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t leave her there alone. Really, taking her back with him was the neighborly thing, the only thing he could do.

  Chapter 3

  Adelyn stood between the strange beings known as Bunco and Wolly while the human known as Josh Reimer—he had given her this information freely, as if he didn’t know that names carried their own secret force—went to find what he called the main water valve turnoff. Maybe in the sunlit world, giving words to everything diluted the power of naming.

  The dog and horse stared at her suspiciously. She knew Wolly was just a dog because she had tried to impose the verita luna—the Second Truth—on him. Even in her weariness, her musetta powers should have roused him to his alternate shape had he been a wereling, but he only sneezed. And the mere horse—sadly lacking both a spiraling horn and wings—sidled from her, putting one big hoof in the middle of her phae gate.

  Adelyn scowled at the ruined mushroom ring. She had used up all her spoors getting this far. She had jumped from the coastal side of this place known as Oregon, to the pointy mountain in the middle, following the signs of fleeing phae. While the ocean and the mountain had a certain rough charm, this place was just desolate, cold and stark and ugly. The memory of the phaedrealii’s intricate dances and sumptuous feasts made her eyes prickle with frustrated tears that threatened to freeze on her cheeks.

  She lifted one ruined slipper to kick the last standing mushroom, but stopped herself. She had no way to return to the phaedrealii—no way to get word to Raze—until the mushrooms released more spores. Just as well, the Hunter and his sylfana hadn’t been here. She needed a few days to get her harvest and her bearings.

  The human—Josh, she reminded herself—reappeared from around the house. He retrieved the gun from beside the door where he had left it and came toward her.

  She swallowed hard.

  Not that she feared his gun. It was steel, not iron. And he was no Hunter that she should fear him, gun or no. But something about his steady gaze and unfaltering step made her heart double its pace. She was too tired from her ordeals to maintain a thick glamour and had only blurred the preternatural edge of her beauty. She wanted him to tell her about the missing phae, not contemplate odes to her eyeballs. She’d had entirely enough of odes.

  Still, she had the sense he was seeing more than she might like. That muddy-colored gaze of his—neither blue nor green nor brown under the shadowing brim of his hat—seemed too perceptive for a mere mortal, despite the faint clouding of a scar in his right eye. Perhaps he had a trickle of phae blood in him. That would explain the strands of gold in his sandy hair, seeming to beckon her fingers to run through the thick, ragged locks. And that would also explain why the missing phae were comfortable in this land of small, bitter, ugly valleys.

  She supposed the Hunter and his paramour weren’t exactly missing. They had fled. And she had been sent to return them. The reminder of the vizier’s charge made her shift uncomfortably, her feet cold in the thin slippers on the icy ground. Every phae should want to be back with the court. Even if some—musetta among them—might occasionally venture into the sunlit world, they belonged in the phaedrealii, not wandering among sharp-eyed humans like this Josh who might bring the iron back.

  He reached around her to slide the gun behind the horse’s saddle. “You ready to go?” When Wolly barked, he smiled at the dog before returning his gaze to her. “Where are your things?”

  She resisted looking down at the remaining mushroom and lifted her satchel in mute explanation.

  “No boots even?” Josh shook his head. “Never seen a woman travel so light.”

  If only he knew.

  He swung up onto the horse in a fluid move she didn’t quite follow. Then he reached a hand down to her and waggled his fingers. “C’mon.”

  She stared at his big, wide palm and those long, strong fingers. With a reluctant sigh, she slid her hand into his.

  The shock of her musetta powers seeking a target rattled through her again, weakening her bones. But he hauled her up with the strength in just one arm and sat her across his lap. The front hump of the saddle pressed her close to the human. To Josh.

  Oh, he was so warm. She hadn’t realized how the cold had sunk in until his radiant heat surrounded her. For days now, she had been loosing her powers in this world that seemed endlessly hungry for the touch of her magic. She longed for the phaedrealii where—she couldn’t believe she was willing to admit—she was nothing special. Her head bobbed wearily, the warmth and the rocking of the mere horse lulling her.

  “You never told me your name.” His voice rumbled through his chest, intimate with their forced proximity.

  “Adelyn.” The truth escaped her lips before she could censor it. A sliver of shock pierced her. Why had she told him that? Did his voice have a power over her?

  No, he was a simple human. He couldn’t use her name against her.

  “Adelyn.” His tone was soft, soothing. “Pretty. Does it mean something?”

  “No.” Agitation made her twist upright. “And I ask you not to share it with others. I prefer not to be known.”

  “Fine by me. This is a good place for people who want to get away.”

  So Vaile and Imogene and the other escaped phae must have discovered. Adelyn had never wanted to get away. Fleeing had been forced on her unfairly.

  “I meant to ask you,” Josh said. “How did you get here? I didn’t see a car.”

  “Oh, I just...dropped in.” Adelyn gestured randomly, using the misdirection of her hand to pull a bit of the swirling mist around them to cloud his mind.

  “Just dropped in,” Josh echoed obediently. A fleeting note of disbelief canted his tone upward, and she cursed her lack of experience with stubborn human males.

  She needed to occupy him with other things. “Have many more like me come here?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen a few of the Hunters’ friends when I run stock through here. Vaile says he’s happy not to mow.”

  Adelyn forced herself not to scoff. So the Hunter disguised himself as a good neighbor by letting cows tromp through his fields? How...worldly of him. “Where do these friends go, after they leave here?”

  “Back to Hollywood, I suppose.”

  The phae had their own holy woods, but none of the runaways would be welcomed there. Not anymore. Was Josh hiding more than he was saying? Out here in the world, she was uncertain of the strength of her musetta power to inspire him. Maybe she just hadn’t found the right incentive to unlock his secrets. She had to find it and, through Josh, find the Hunter, if she wanted Raze to lift her exile.

  Josh was scanning the valley—as if there was anything interesting to see—so she used the moment to study his face.

  Even the ugliest phae had a certain undeniable intensity that compelled the eye. Josh had none of that. And yet...

  Maybe the simplicity of him stunned her. What sort of man rescued a damsel in distress without expectation of...Ah. Speaking of simple. Inspiration was about passion. And buried passion had a special power.

  “Thank you for taking me.” She let her voice thrum in her throat.

  His arm, looped behind her back to hold the horse’s reins, flexed against her shoulder
s. “It was nothing. I couldn’t leave you there alone.”

  She resisted the urge to huff in exasperation. She didn’t want him thinking it was nothing; she wanted him to want payback.

  To want her.

  “Still, I’m imposing on you.” She gazed up into his muddy-agate eyes. “As you said, people come to get away. Yet here I am, intruding on you with my needs.”

  A ruddy flush brightened his cheeks, highlighting a thin scar that arrowed up his right cheekbone to a point below his clouded eye. “Vaile would want me to watch out for you.”

  Vaile would kill her, and maybe Josh too, if the Hunter discovered her task.

  She tried to stifle the thought of the deadly phae, but the tremble in her hand wasn’t feigned when she reached up to lay her palm against Josh’s jaw. She let her fingertips brush the old scar on his cheek. “I could have died there.”

  He snorted. “It’s not that cold.”

  Adelyn blinked. Raze had said Vaile would take her in because of her helplessness. Musetta weren’t celebrated for their sturdiness and survival skills, after all. But this man thought she would have been fine. Wasn’t she obviously useless? Except for one use, of course.

  He wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled her hand down to rest in her lap. He patted her thigh with as much lustfulness as he patted Wolly’s head. Which was to say, exactly none.

  “Look.” He pointed toward the clouds. “An eagle. Headed down to the river to fish.”

  She blindly followed his pointing finger. Eagle? Fish? This is what she inspired in him, a nature show narrative?

  True, she didn’t know much about humans, but she had gleaned enough from gossip of other phae who played in the world. Humans like William who had found their way—or been tricked—into the phaedrealii never seemed particularly complicated. Josh seemed simpler yet. And yet his core eluded her.

  A musetta had to get to the core.

  “You love this place,” she said slowly.