Into the Twilight: a Between the Worlds Novel

by Morgan Daimler

  Candice smiled back, reaching out to pull Allie into a tight hug as soon as Allie was close enough. Allie was overwhelmed by sensory input: the heavy smell of the other woman’s expensive perfume, the feel of the silk blouse against her cheek, the sound of Candice’s voice loud in her ear. “It’s good to see you again Allie. I’ve been worried.”

  “Worried?” Allie asked, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Liz told me you’ve had some trouble. I’d hate to see you get hurt sweetie,” Candice said. Allie felt even more puzzled as she sensed the other woman’s emotions were both sincere and somehow eager, as if she was telling the truth but also…not. Allie had no idea what to make of that, and she blinked at Candice. The other woman looked as if she’d stopped in on her lunch break, and Allie guessed it must be a slow day at the real estate office. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a stylish twist, her pale pink blouse and darker rose slacks set off her tan nicely, and Allie had to admit that Candice, as usual, looked beautiful and in complete control. And as usual Allie felt like a scruffy puppy next to her, in faded jeans and a plain t-shirt.

  Pushing aside her uncertainty, Allie said, “Well, yeah, there’s been some trouble. But nothing worth worrying anyone over. Really.”

  One perfectly sculpted eyebrow rose cynically, “Liz said your boyfriend moved in because they’re worried about your safety.”

  Allie felt herself blushing. “Well, ahhh, yes, he did, sort of. I mean, yes he moved in, but not entirely because he had to. He wanted to. I know Liz isn’t happy about it….”

  “Oh sweetie,” Candice said, reaching out to pat Allie’s cheek as if she were still a little kid. “Liz worries for you. She doesn’t want to see you taken advantage of by anyone, not romantically or professionally.”

  “I’m not, Candice, Jessilaen loves me,” Allie said. “And it’s important that I help the Guard and the police. They need me.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Candice said, her eyes hardening momentarily, before the gentle older sister look settled back into place. “But it’s not worth it if it gets you hurt. And dating a co-worker is never a good idea honey. Trust me, I’ve been down that road!”

  She laughed and Allie forced a smile, but it was hard to hear all the same things Liz had said being repeated by one of the few other people Allie looked up to. She had admired Candice since high school, envying the easy way the other girl made friends and seemed to succeed at everything she did. As an adult Candice was just as popular and successful, and Allie had never quite gotten over the touch of hero worship she’d had for the older girl as a teenager. She cleared her throat, “I know Candice, and it’s kind of hard to explain. And the last thing I want is to upset Liz. But this is really important, even if it is dangerous I have to try to help. I have to fight back against the bad things that are happening, instead of just letting them happen.”

  She sensed Candice’s emotions swinging from concern to anger, to a cold determination, as the other woman gave her a calculating look. Allie tried not to squirm and looked away. “I’m sorry Candice…”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Candice said, her voice kind. “Listen to me going on about what you should do! Of course you know best Allie. I just worry about Liz. It would kill her if anything happened to you. And that’s all she can talk about, what to do to help you stay safe. So I come in here and start in like a mother hen, but you’re an adult, you make your own decisions.”

  Candice patted Allie’s arm, and Allie sensed something else shifting in the other woman’s emotions, something she couldn’t quite identify. Almost as if Candice was pulling away, distancing herself, from Allie. It was a strange sensation. Unsure what else to do Allie tried to re-focus. “Was there something I could help you find today? While you’re here?”

  “Of course,” Candice said, still smiling. “I need a copy of the Haunted History of Ashwood, if you have it.”

  “I’ve always got several,” Allie said, feeling a rush of relief as she walked over and grabbed a copy of the book off the shelf. “It’s popular with the tourists.”

  “It would be,” Candice said cheerfully, even though her feelings didn’t match her words. “I need it for a client. A couple looking at a house who are just obsessed with the idea of living in a Bordertown and experiencing extra-ordinary things.”

  Allie giggled. “They’ll probably find Ashwood pretty boring.”

  “Probably,” Candice agreed cynically, handing Allie the money for the book. “But as long as they realize it after they’ve bought the house…I thought maybe reading about all of the supernatural history of the town might convince them to settle here and not Linford.”

  “Not a bad plan,” Allie agreed.

  “Well, it was great seeing you sweetie,” Candice said, never glancing at Jason, who was peering at her over the top of his book now. “I have to dash. Tell Liz I’ll catch up to her later.”

  “’Kay,” Allie agreed automatically, before realizing that Liz was still barely speaking to her. It would make delivering a message awkward. Before she could say anything else though Candice had disappeared through the door, and before it could close someone else was slipping in.

  “Bleidd!” Allie said, torn between being glad to see him and worried about him being out so soon after his release form the hospital. She and Jason both hurried around the counter to meet their friend in the open space between the book shelves on the right and loose assortment of seating on the left.

  Jason stopped a few feet away but Allie went up to Bleidd and gave him an enthusiastic hug. She could sense his tension and worry blended with happiness as his arm came up around her shoulders. She also felt the hard corner of what could only be a book jabbing her in the ribs. “What’s that?”

  Bleidd stepped back slightly, his arm sliding reluctantly off her shoulder. “I have brought you a present.”

  “A present?” Allie glanced back at Jason who shrugged. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  Smiling he handed her the book. It was an old copy of Terevelien’s treatise on water magic and weather working. For a second she looked at it, puzzled, and then her eyes flew up to his in shock. “How did you…? Where?”

  He laughed lightly, looking pleased with himself. “I found it in a pawnshop downtown. Since the Guard hadn’t had any luck getting it back for you I took it upon myself to liberate it and return it to its home.”

  “Bleidd,” she threw her arms around him again in a tight hug, “You didn’t need to do that. How much do I owe you?”

  “I wanted to do it, and you owe me nothing,” he said, enjoying the feeling of satisfaction that came with her gratitude.

  “But, it had to have been…”

  “Allie,” he said, reaching up to stroke her hair, making her blush. “I was happy to find it and get it back for you. It is a gift. Don’t question it.”

  She leaned into his hand for the barest moment and then stepped back. “Well, if you insist. Thank you so much. Oh, hey we were just about to get lunch, would you like some?”

  She turned to Jason who was giving the two of them a strange look. He nodded, “Yeah, hang out for a bit and eat with us.”

  Bleidd hesitated but then nodded. “Alright. I can spare some time.”

  As they headed back towards the counter she could feel his eyes on her back, like an itch between her shoulder blades. “What is it?”

  “Hmmm?” Bleidd said, distracted. “Oh, nothing. Your shields are different.”

  Allie felt herself beaming, reveling in the joy of having functional shields again. “By which you mean I have shields again and they are actually decent.”

  “Well,” he said, a smile in his voice, “if you want to put it that way. It’s been so many weeks since you had strong shields, I must admit I’m relieved to see them back. It’s a different method than you used before, yes?”

  “Yes,” Allie agreed, reaching under the counter to pull out the small stack of take-out menus she kept there for the occasions when she decided to splurge and order food.
She dropped the pile of menus on the counter and then set the book down next to them. “The mage who works with the police department offered to hook me up with his great-aunt for some training and I decided to take him up on it. Don’t give me that look Bleidd, I’m not naive enough to jump into something like that without thinking it through.”

  “And the cost?” he asked, his tone as ambivalent as his feelings.

  “For the same amount of time that she teaches me each day I stay and tell her stories or sing,” Allie said feeling a bit self-conscious. Her voice was a low alto and she wasn’t a terrible singer but this was definitely the first time anyone had asked her to sing for them. “She doesn’t speak Elvish, but she likes to hear it spoken, so I go back and forth between the two languages.”

  “Hmmmm,” he made another thoughtful noise. “She is very old, this woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she live in the great house with the iron fence around it?”

  Allie looked at him, wide eyed. “You know her?”

  “I did years ago, when I first came to Ashwood, but I have not seen her in many years. In truth I assumed she would have died by now,” he said thoughtfully. “She was a very skilled mage when I knew her; some called her a sorceress because of her knowledge of Elven magics. She could be an ideal teacher for you.”

  Allie bit her lip, unaccountably disturbed that Bleidd knew Miss Amelia. Then she had the truly unsettling thought that maybe he had been the elven lover she’d spoken of, until she reminded herself that he couldn’t have been. From what the old woman had said that affair had happened long before Bleidd was Outcast, and so before he’d come to Ashwood. Jason watched both of them, his eyes darting between their faces as he pretended to read the menu for the closest pizza restaurant.

  Bleidd was also watching Allie’s face and she felt his emotions through her new shields shifting from nostalgic to amused. “Do not be jealous Allie. We were never lovers, she and I – she was already very old when I knew her and uninterested in male attention. As far as I knew anyway.”

  Allie blushed furiously, but couldn’t deny that she was relieved. She decided to try to make a joke of it. “Well it’s reassuring to know there’s at least one woman in town you haven’t slept with.”

  Bleidd grinned widely, giving Allie a pointed look, before retorting. “More than one.”

  Jason snorted loudly. Allie was sure her face was probably crimson. She cleared her throat loudly. “Right, well. She taught me a way to shield that protects me fully but doesn’t block me from sensing emotions.”

  “Ummm, isn’t part of the point of shielding to block those emotions out?” Jason asked.

  “You know I thought so too, but she said that’s why my old shields were so erratic, because subconsciously I kept trying to read things through them and knocking my shields down myself,” Allie said shrugging.

  “Huh. That actually kind of makes sense,” Jason said as Bleidd nodded.

  “Yeah and it works really well,” Allie agreed. “My shields are strong now, and I can feel the emotions but they don’t hit me the way they used to. Now it’s like sensing something outside myself instead of feeling it with the person.”

  “That is surely an asset,” Bleidd said smiling at her eagerness. Through the new shields she could sense his genuine happiness for her and that brought a smile to her own lips. “It should give you an enormous advantage in dealing with others.”

  “Yeah,” Jason agreed. “It’ll turn a weakness into a strength. Hey does this mean that now you won’t need to touch someone else to ground yourself when things get really overwhelming?”

  Allie looked down, embarrassed. He was, of course, referring to the fact that during the investigation so far whenever she ran across the emotional trail of the killer it sent her into a sort of semi-trance state that forced her to follow the emotions back to their source. The most recent time it had happened she’d been with Jason and he’d had to forcibly restrain her to keep her from walking up to the killer’s door, and then on Jess’s advice via cell phone had ended up cheek to cheek with her to get her to snap out of it. It was not one of her best moments and she was keenly aware that if not for Jason she’d probably have gotten herself killed. She tried to keep her voice nonchalant when she answered. “Well, I guess there’s no way to know for sure until I’m in that situation, but that’s the hope. I mean in theory yes. These shields should keep any outside emotion from controlling me, but still let me sense them. I was able to visit a crime scene yesterday without a problem at least.”

  “Then let us all hope the reality follows the theory,” Bleidd said more seriously.

  She shrugged, then decided to change the subject. “So what are we getting? I’m hungry enough that anything is fine by me. Anything but anchovies or mushrooms anyway.”

  “What do you have against mushrooms?” Jason groaned. “They’re delicious.”

  “They’re fungus.” Allie shot back. Bleidd looked from one to the other with the same disbelief that Jason had been giving himself and Allie earlier, which made Allie giggle. For the second time that day she found that once she started she couldn’t stop and soon Jason joined her. Bleidd’s look turned from disbelief to displeasure as he tried to decide if they were laughing at him.

  “You two are worse than children,” he said finally.

  “I thought in your opinion we were children?” Jason said between snorting laughs. Allie giggled harder.

  “Your ages aren’t usually indicative of your maturity, but I’m starting to wonder,” Bleidd sniffed.

  “So tell me, how did you get on with that nurse when we weren’t around? Stay nice and passive?” Jason asked. Allie’s mind immediately jumped back to the nurse’s comments after finding her kissing him in the hospital bed and she lost it entirely. She ended up kneeling on the floor laughing so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. Jason was barely more coherent than she was. At first Bleidd stood and glowered, annoyed at being the butt of anyone’s joke, but his decades living among humans had given him a much better sense of humor than most elves. Eventually he gave in and cracked a smile.

  “I don’t think that one would know what to do with me if she had me,” Bleidd said, trying to turn the joke around in his own favor.

  Allie had recovered slightly, but that almost sent her back onto the floor. She managed to gasp out, “Oh don’t underestimate her. You have to watch out for those quite ones.”

  Jason kept laughing but Bleidd sobered a bit, his eyes fixed on her. She sensed his longing, and the sadness that went with it and that wiped away the last of her own humor. Straightening up and clearing her throat loudly she said, “Well, okay. I have to get this book back into inventory. You guys order whatever you want.”

  “Allie,” Bleidd said softly, reaching out and grabbing her wrist, while Jason struggled to compose himself, for once oblivious to what was going on with his roommates.

  “I’m sorry,” she said meaning it, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was sorry for. There was so much at this point that she could apologize for, she decided he could pick what to apply it to. “But I really do appreciate you finding this book. Maybe it’s a sign that things are finally turning around.”

  He opened his mouth to say something and she could almost see him change his mind. He hesitated, then said, “Yes, perhaps things are turning in our favor now with all the things that have been going on.”

  She slipped out of his grasp and headed back into the shelves, leaving the two men to discuss pizza toppings. As she looked for the section she kept her small collection of elven books in she turned his words over and over in her head. What did he mean by that? Did he just mean looking for the killer? Or was he implying things with him and me? She thought chewing her lip. Because that hasn’t changed, if anything there’s even less chance now because I’m not just with Jess I’ve agreed to marry him. She felt a predictable surge of panic at the thought of marriage.

  Finding the spot where Terevelien�
��s treatise went on the shelf she shoved it back between its previous shelf-mates with more force than necessary. But if he is implying that, why? It’s not like he’s worn me down at all in my choice to go with human monogamy over elven polyamory. I mean sure I admitted I love him too, but he’s known that. And I did kiss him, but that was just to pay back a debt. Even if I did enjoy it…

  At that thought her mind wandered off, remembering the feel of his mouth on hers, his hand holding her head, his body pressed hard and ready against hers as they lay together in the hospital bed. She leaned back against the bookshelf, trembling, fantasizing about what might have happened if the nurse hadn’t come in….She only stopped when she realized how aroused she was getting and the embarrassment of knowing the subject of her fantasy was only a few dozen feet away ruined it. Knowing that he would be thrilled if he knew what she was thinking only made it worse. Gods damn it! I feel like I did when we’d just met, before he made it clear he wasn’t interested. Back then Bleidd had been the almost obsessive focus of her sexual fantasies, as she’d lusted after him before she’d gotten to know him well enough to call it love. She covered her mouth with her hand to smother her groaning. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I do want to sleep with him. But I can’t. Even if I was willing to, Jess has made it really clear he doesn’t want me with anyone else, but especially Bleidd. Gods! This is such a mess.

  Thinking of Jess made her feel a surge of guilt, but then offered the perfect distraction, as she realized she should let him know the book had been recovered. Needing to hear the sound of his voice, even if it was just in her head, and to feel like she was still a loyal girlfriend despite her traitorous thoughts of someone else she reached out carefully to his mind. “Jess? Are you busy?”

  “Allie? No, I am not busy. Sitting in a quiet place enjoying my lunch,” he replied, his words colored by his pleasure at hearing from her.