“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Jo said before shaking her head. “Oh, beans…never mind.”
“Yeah, go ahead. Just remember I can always kill off your character if you make me mad enough,” Amie teased. Faye gave several mock protests before hugging them all again and returning to her party.
Jo’s eyes met Amie’s. The small blonde spoke first. “I think I’ll stay back here with y’all.”
Amie could only hope the shrewder of the two sisters was planning on dropping the subject of tall, dark and handsome strangers at the present.
…
Hours later found the center of the old barn turned into a makeshift dance floor where a few lingering guests swayed to the music. Jo looked tiny wrapped securely in James’ arms and together, beneath the dim golden lantern light, they appeared as though they had stepped from the pages of Amie’s imagination.
Comfortable once more behind the dessert table, Amie had struggled through rounds of hellos with Faye’s guests. She smiled through tired eyes as Faye, beneath the brightest lantern at the center of the floor, leaned her chin upon Ben’s shoulder. The air could have crackled with the chemistry those two sparked.
Brad Paisley crooned over the stereo. She thought she might throw up. Country music had never been her forte, or relationships for that matter. For once she felt forgiving of the Southern twang but not the sting of seeming to be the only single gal in the crowd. She didn’t ponder the mystery behind her lack of true love. Nor did she ask herself how she’d managed to avoid men in general the last three years, because it was then Amie caught sight of a familiar face among a dwindling sea of strangers. And this time she had the patience to actually look at him.
He must have spent the evening hidden in the shadows, for had he been a part of the party he would have certainly been noticed. His hair was cut short though unkempt, surrounding a square and unreadable, unremarkable face, though he stood easily a head above most of the gathering. It was his eyes, she decided, black as his hair and now trained upon her, which refused to be ignored. So different were they now than on the street before, with fresh intensity and sorrow. There was something almost familiar about this strange man’s face, veiled to her memories.
The Brit on the street…
How could she not have seen it sooner? Such a blend of indignation and surprise stole her ability to move. A good angry part of her would have liked nothing better than to stalk up to the man and give him a piece of her mind. Yet the longer she stared the more she found herself thinking of things she would rather not…of her dead parents, of mysterious letters and interweaving Celtic knots. She felt the pain of past wounds she had struggled so long to quench and patch over with stories and success.
Black orbs trained upon her, his expression never wavered but drew her in, moth to flame.
She jumped when a pair of excited hands grasped her shoulders mid-step.
“Amie! Did you see that? Please tell me you saw that!”
In one instant she felt the world shift, then time rush to catch up. The song had ended and people were making their way to their amassed vehicles. Faye’s golden face was smiling before her and the bold familiar eyes had disappeared.
“What?” Amie struggled to focus.
Faye sighed from struggling to rein her excitement in. “Ah, the hotter-than-hot guy who just asked me out on a date tomorrow night?”
Amie grinned and found herself beginning to forget the dark eyes and the unpleasant memories they had stirred. “I always told you you’d end up with a doctor.”
“O-M-G! Amie, don’t joke at a time like this!”
“Are y’all talking about that terrorist again?” James’ tall figure interrupted their feminine babble.
“Shut up, James!” Faye practically roared in her frustration. “He is not a terrorist! He’s English!”
“It’s where the best of them hide out, you know.”
“You better watch yourself when you’re talking about my future husband!”
Amie shook her head, knowing where this old argument was headed. Jo, Amie noted, was already rushing about the old barn to get a head-start on cleanup.
James loved it. “Bring it on, string bean!” Faye began to play-punch the much bigger cowboy between them. James chuckled while holding off Faye’s assault.
Amie watched until her friends started attracting curious eyes. Faye might not mind so much now, but she would later. “Okay, guys, you can fight later,” Amie interrupted. “We should go help Jo.”
Even though Amie was able to keep the rest of their night focused on Faye’s stories of Darfur and other travels, she knew they hadn’t forgotten about the key in her pocket or the stranger. At least, for now, she could pretend she wasn’t the chick whose parents were killed by a mysterious car crash. She could forget the fact her father had owed some serious debts at the time of their deaths. And she could almost pretend life was as simple as it had been when they were little girls and the world seemed full of magic.
Chapter 4
Odd Tidings
The hour before dawn found Amie pulling her car round the back alley. Through the gloom and decades-buried waste behind Pat’s Delights was a narrow strip leading to the back staircase leading up to her flat.
The stranger’s face came unbidden to her as she gathered her things and moved her weary legs. Black eyes set deeply in a shadow-drenched face haunted her, eyes which seemed to accuse and praise, sift and wonder. Now that she knew, she realized she must have seen him before today, maybe even in the past she had tried to forget.
The faded yellowing parchment marked with heavy black ink, with words too absurd to be true, flashed in her mind. Clutching the key hidden in her jeans pockets while digging through her purse for her keys, she remembered Uncle Henry’s letter. Mulling over the words, she once again recalled how angry she had been ten years ago after reading his first note. So what the cops were uncertain how the accident had happened. So what her father had known some powerful people. Amie had been primped and pushed into the upper-class social sphere through her teens and knew how to handle that sort. She could take care of herself just like she always had. She would tear up the letters and the tickets tonight. The twins and James were her family now.
As she placed her shoe upon the first rickety metal step, two thick and powerful hands grabbed her in the same moment.
It happened so quickly she forgot to scream. Dropping her purse she struggled, kicked and bucked against the crazy person lifting her and pulling her deeper into the shadows of the alley. And the harder she struggled the tighter his choking embrace became against her chest.
She thought at last to cry out, only to feel her face being smashed against a brick wall. She gasped as the figure suddenly pushed her aside, out of his embrace. Amie stumbled back and nearly tripping over a metal pipe. She righted herself only to come face-to-face with the black-masked figure. His brilliant blue eyes blazed into hers, now filled with unmistakable purpose. Too late she realized his intentions as a sickeningly cool object was plunged into her chest and pulled quickly out again.
Her vision swam, then blurred as she slumped against the trash-littered concrete. Her mind began to fade into an ever-deepening sleep though her eyes watched on. The black-garbed man was fighting someone else. Unmasked, this guy was taller, broader in the shoulders than her murderer and wrought by fury.
Pain…she had not known the meaning of the word before now and even this too was fading into the deep sleep. The further she fell the less sense the scene before her made. Her mind didn’t believe that the tall man had really tossed her attacker five feet into the air over his shoulder and into the brick, or a strange light and energy crackled in the suddenly luminous alley.
She was too afraid to hope when a pair of warm hands cradled her in a firm embrace. He pulled her from the muck and fixed his dark eyes on her. Obsidian-cut eyes, familiar eyes, pierced through her gaze and reached deeper. His face, once so indiscernible it could be called plain, was now
twisted as though in agony. Even though she was slipping, falling into a calm quiet darkness, he refused to let her go. His hand moved from her neck to her cheek with the faintest touch. He pushed past and clasped hold of something tearing deep inside of her then. The black of his irises gave way to a strange mix of blue and green flecks gleaming in their depths. She saw…
Fields of brilliant emerald grass and a sun filled with more colors than she knew to name.
Darkness and a dirty cell, where heavy fists punctuated his pain.
Time beyond counting became a lifetime lost.
A green-eyed dark-haired beauty bathed in sunlight stretched out her hand to him.
Someone was screaming. Amie frowned as the woman’s cries grew louder. Pain spiked up in her chest as her lungs constricted and her heart was ripped apart then reformed. The woman’s screams died when she took a breath and realized the voice was hers.
She blinked.
And then she was lying within the narrow strip between two brick buildings, alone.
…
“Are you sure you’re okay? I’m coming over as soon as I get done here. Or maybe you want to stay with us at the ranch for a couple of days? The horses have missed you, especially Jellybean.” Jo’s voice was filled with concern and a twinge of fear. Death had, after all, become a very real thing with Amie’s parents’ deaths ten years before. But not even the temptation of seeing the miniature horses could turn her mind from what happened.
“Honestly, Jo, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not!” the voice from the cell phone blared. Clearly Faye had taken over her sister’s cell.
Amie held the phone away from her now injured ear as Faye continued her sister’s tirade.
“Getting mugged outside your apartment doesn’t come close to being fine! And I thought we taught you better than that! He shouldn’t have got the jump on you!”
Her neighbors had always been big on martial arts. As long as she could remember, they had made Amie be their sparring partner. But whatever hidden mojo their parents taught them wasn’t like any karate or jujitsu she had seen on TV. Plus, she had never cared enough to be as proficient as her friends.
Amie attempted to interrupt. “Faye, I—”
“You should have stayed tonight like we asked you to. Just because you feel safe in that little town square doesn’t mean you are. We should have made you live on the ranch in the first place. I always knew something like this was going to happen. I’m coming to get you now.”
Amie stared at her full-length reflection in the face of her wardrobe. A broad white line of skin practically glowed against her already pale-skinned chest. She hadn’t told the twins everything. If she had come even close to mentioning a knife she wouldn’t be allowed to live alone again.
“Amie?” Faye’s tone was a warning when she didn’t respond.
Blinking numbly at her reflection, she let the blood-soaked shirt fall back against her skin. “I’m fine,” she said. Her words came out more forcefully than she intended. Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “Look, I promise I’ll be over tomorrow, soon as I can, to see your pictures. The whole thing has me shook up. I just need some time alone, okay?”
The long pause on the other line was undoubtedly a brief conference between the twins. At last Jo’s voice took over once more, “Okay. Faye is coming over tomorrow morning to check up on you, and to tell you about her date with Ben.” She paused. “You think you'll be up to it?”
Amie forced a smile into her voice and answered, “Sure. Well, I’m gonna let you go. Been a long night and I need sleep if I’m making this deadline.” After they said their goodbyes, she let her cell fall on the old quilt coverlet her parents once used.
Her fingers retraced the trickle of dried blood on her button-up plaid. Had she dreamed what had happened? The rough hands squeezing the life from her chest, the sharp feel of the knife entering her heart and then the black eyes piercing hers, mending her torn flesh?
She knew a few things for certain. One, she had been mugged and stabbed through the heart by a psycho and two, somehow she was still standing with nothing to show for it but a strange scar. Getting mugged was the sort of thing that happened to people who lived in huge metropolitan cities, not historic city squares. It was the sort of thing that happened in the novels she had devoured as a teenager. This was not real.
She of all people should be attuned to the difference between reality and fantasy. After all, it was how she made her living. And yet her father had once told her stories of a surreal place and it had been home to her fantasies ever since. Silver Hollow was a place she always remembered with trepidation. For Father said the strange society he had been raised in was as terrifying as it was beautiful.
Goosebumps prickled over her arms and raised the hair at the back of her neck. Fear such as she had not known since her parents’ death consumed her so fully, she barely felt her nails digging into the skin of her palms. Her father had gone to such great lengths to flee his home. Yet she had never stopped to wonder why. Why travel as far away as possible, change his name and invent a new life with a backwoods-born wife? What if he had been running from more than simple family responsibilities? What if the dark-eyed stranger, the man who had brought her from the brink of death, hadn’t stopped her murderer?
Plenty of novels and late-night news specials had taught her the sensible thing to do. Contact the police and hole up at AJSS Ranch for the rest of her life. But even if she did move in with her friends and the security they gave her, she could never really know peace. After this night she knew she’d never be the same. No one would believe her story if she gave them the whole truth and nothing but. She had no way of describing her attacker, only the one who somehow saved her.
With his magical powers…right.
She thought deep into the night, until sunlight began to stream through her bedroom curtains. She watched it reflect laced light over her wardrobe mirror, dance upon the dried blood and through the gaping tear in her shirt.
Her bloodstained fingertips picked up the worn yellow parchment once more. Her eyes graced the words.
“... In the beginning I believed I was obeying your father’s wishes, to keep you closeted in the dark. I know now this is folly.
To better understand I ask you to come to my country estate, following the instructions and tickets I have included in this letter.
Travel safely, dear one. Tell no one of your plans.
Love,
Uncle Henry”
Chapter 5
Of English Things
His fingers left bloody streaks upon her perfectly fashioned cheeks, blood yet pouring from the wound in her side. Tears blurred his vision until he could see little, until he could only see flashes of their time together in his mind…Until—
“Richard, you backstabbing coward!” Lord Rupert’s shirt had been torn during their duel hours before. He had been lying dead on the battlefield the last time Richard saw him. Pale as his countenance was, thick chest heaving, how was the blasted devil still alive? Rapier brandished, he cut through the air as he continued his tirade. “How dare you tell me lies when all I ever showed you both was kindness?”
Richard clutched the motionless form of his love even closer, eyes boiling with rage. “Kindness?” Were they back to this again? “You named us as spies to the Emperor! We’ve been running for our lives ever since! How can you still name us your friends?”
Rupert towered over them both, ominous, spittle coating his words. “She never loved you! Have you not realized yet your precious Mary is the Lady Desdemona? That she lured you to her, making you all believe she wanted to betray her own countrymen, when she has been my wife these two-and-ten years?”
Richard trembled, shook as a beast roared inside of him. His voice sounded with the distant cannon yet overpowered it. “LIES!”
“Bah!” Lord Rupert spat. “Lies indeed! You only wish to believe she cared for you! It is all a game, my friend. Desdemona could care less for
you than she could I! She is nothing but a backstabbing whore for the highest bidder. Were it not for me she would have turned you in long ago!” Triumph gleamed in Rupert’s red eyes.
Were it not for Mary’s defenseless form in his arms Richard would have already cut the dastardly villain in two.
Lord—”
Ding!
The signal for the captain’s final announcements followed the click of seatbelts and her concentration was broken again. Until this most recent interruption, Amie had found her words finally beginning to freely flow. After a solid three weeks of writing worthless garbage it was like a breath of fresh air to write so easily again. It was laughable really. Of all times, of all places, her writer’s block had to end in the middle of a very early mid-life crisis.
“Thank you for flying British Airways. Please keep your seatbelts locked until the sign goes off. Place all rubbish in the receptacle as your flight attendant passes your isle…”
Amie silently grumbled as she packed away her laptop, ignoring the amused smirks from the stodgy business suit beside her. The balding Brit had attempted more than one conversation during their purgatory of a ten-hour flight. She popped peanuts instead, wishing it were a hefty dose of her prescription sleep meds.
“Hope it’s not too damp out,” the middle-aged Brit grumbled, peering past her through the half closed window she had propped against.
With a roll of her eyes at his obvious request she slid the plastic screen up to uncover their view outside. Following his gaze, she gaped at the source of their turbulence.
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