B004K6MHSI EBOK

by Daniels, Valmore

  Neil winked at me before he left, and I could feel my face flush when Uncle Edward harrumphed at me.

  * * *

  Once my afternoon duties were finished, I headed into the back office to use the microwave. Aunt Martha had left me a plate of spaghetti wrapped in plastic. I cooked it too long, and it was steaming hot. My stomach rumbled as I watched it cool.

  When I took my first bite, the front door chimed. Wiping my mouth with a paper napkin, I hurried to the front office, a curse on my lips. I was surprised to see both Aunt Martha and Uncle Edward standing there.

  “Evening, Darcy,” Aunt Martha said, her tone sounding unusually formal. “My, you certainly have cleaned this place up and organized it.”

  “Wasn’t so bad before,” Uncle Edward began to protest, but shut his mouth when his wife shot him a dirty look.

  “Thank you,” was all I could think to say.

  “No,” Aunt Martha said. “I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given us this past week.”

  I blushed. “I’m just glad to have a place to call home.”

  “Oh, pish-posh. Anyway, I think you deserve an extra night off, at least a few hours extra. Your uncle and I are used to trading shifts, so what’s one more evening, hey?”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I looked back and forth between the two. “Thank you. But really, it’s no problem. I’m glad you two have more time for each other now.” I saw Uncle Edward’s frown at that last statement, but politely ignored it.

  “Here,” said Aunt Martha, “let me take over for the rest of the night.”

  “Aunt Martha, I couldn’t, really.”

  But she had already maneuvered her way behind the counter and pushed me out.

  She added, “Before you go, your uncle has something he’d like to say to you.”

  Uncle Edward and I stood a few paces apart, like gunslingers waiting for the other to flinch. Then he finally cleared his throat and spoke in a rasp. “Yeah. Uhm, I think you’re fitting in here real nice.”

  That was all?“Oh, no problem,” I said. “I’m just happy to—”

  He frowned. “Shut up a minute and let me finish, would you?”

  “Shutting up, sir.”

  Avoiding the daggers Aunt Martha shot at him with her eyes, Uncle Edward dropped his voice again and said what he had to say:

  “Well, your aunt thinks we should offer you a stake in the business.”

  That took me by surprise. “A stake? You mean—?”

  “Just a small bit to start with,” he added. “You know, so you have some ownership.”

  “A … partnership?”

  “Junior partnership,” he corrected me.

  Aunt Martha harrumphed, and Uncle Edward nodded to her.“Yes, yes,” he said, and waved his hand at her.

  He turned to me. “We’re no spring chickens. And this is a young man’s game—er, woman’s. Whatever. I mean to say, we’ll start slow and, maybe, over time, you can build your stake in the motel until one day…” He glanced up at me. “We’d like to retire one day. You know.”

  I put my hands together. “Oh, Aunt Martha! Uncle Edward! I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t possibly take the motel away from you!”

  “I won’t hear another word,” Aunt Martha said. “We’ve made up our minds. Tomorrow, we’ll go down to Jenkins Law Office and make you the beneficiary on our insurance policy for starters.”

  Overwhelmed by the gesture, I went around the counter to give Aunt Martha a fierce hug. When I finally released her and tried to hug Uncle Edward, he dodged my awkward attempt and instead held out his hand.

  We shook to being future partners, and for the first time in ten years, I knew deep in my heart I was home.

  Against his feeble protest, I hugged Uncle Edward anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I could barely contain myself. After Aunt Martha shooed me out of the office, I practically flounced down the walkway along the row of doors until I reached Neil’s room and knocked. It was early, and I figured he would still be awake.

  “Neil? You there?”

  There was no reply, so I tried to peek through the windows, but the room was black. Maybe he’d gone out.

  My joy ebbed more than a notch. What good was happy news if you didn’t have someone to share it with? I knocked again, this time with more urgency.

  “Neil?”

  Once more I knocked, and when I didn’t get a response, I tried the door handle. It was unlocked. I swung the door wide open. The room was pitch black.

  I stepped inside and flicked on the light.

  No one was there.

  Disappointed, I took a step back out of the room, but something blocked my exit. Startled, I let out a little yelp and turned around.

  Neil stood there, a big grin on his face. In his hand he held a bouquet of half a dozen roses.

  “You scared the life out of me!” I told him, eyeing the flowers.

  He laughed. “Sorry about that. I just stepped out to get these for you.”

  “For me?” I could barely breathe out the question. “What for?”

  He gestured to the inside of the room. “Mind if I come in?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s your room. Of course.” We went in and he closed the door. I took the flowers when he offered them to me and smelled them.

  “They’re wonderful. Thank you.”“Your aunt mentioned that you might have the evening off, if I wanted to spend some time with you. I thought we might go out to a late dinner or something. Just us.”

  I gave him an uncertain glance. “I don’t know what to say. I thought—”

  “Thought what?”

  “Maybe you didn’t want to be—I mean—with me.”

  A troubled look settled over his features. “I’m really sorry if I’ve been acting like an ass.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but you have been getting more and more distant the last day or so. I thought we’d made a connection on Sunday, and more than just through the power.”

  He stood up. “It’s because of the power that I’m so distracted. It’s not you.”

  “Oh?” I sat on the edge of the bed while Neil paced, searching for the words.

  “I told you about this intuition which I’ve slowly developed over the past few years?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, yesterday I got one of those … feelings. It wasn’t a good one. My gut cramped and I thought I was going to throw up.”

  I asked, “Does that happen every time?”

  “No. For example, when I heard about the job here in Middleton, there was a kind of tugging sensation low in my chest. It’s usually more subtle; like when I’m playing cards I get a tingling on my neck behind my ears when I should bluff, a tightening in my throat when I should fold.”

  I asked, “So what does being sick to your stomach mean?”

  “Nothing good,” he said, his voice low with foreboding. “I’ve never been that violently ill before. I don’t know, maybe something very bad is going to happen. I mean, there’s got to be a reason we have this power; you’ve asked me this exact question.”

  I nodded. “We can find out together.”

  He flashed me a smile, but I could tell he was still very concerned.“I would love that,” he admitted. “But what is bothering me is that whatever it is that’s supposed to happen might come faster than we realize.”

  He let out a hollow laugh. “Listen to me, carrying on like some old soothsayer. Next thing you know, I’ll be reading fortunes in tea leaves.”

  I laughed politely, but I didn’t find his joke very comforting. There had been enough adversity in my life. I just wanted to live as a normal person. Power? Curse? Gift? Whatever it was, I would trade it in a heartbeat if I could go back in time and erase all the heartache and pain. If Neil’s intuition was to be trusted, if there was something dreadful on the horizon, I wasn’t sure I wanted to face it.

  Neil sat down beside me on the bed and put one arm around me. �
��I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Maybe it’s really just nothing. You know … a false alarm. Maybe those eggs I had for breakfast yesterday just didn’t agree with me.”

  I looked up at him. “Yeah, maybe.” But I knew, somewhere deep inside me, that his initial gut instinct was probably right. There was some reason that we had these powers, and I knew I wasn’t ready for it … whatever it was.

  “Hey, listen. Whatever happens, I want you to know that I plan on sticking around,” he said.

  “Really?”

  Neil nodded. “Of course. It feels right, being here. Like I belong.”

  “With me?” I asked slowly, tentatively. Hopefully.

  He looked into my eyes and nodded. “Yes.” Then, as if confirming it again for himself, he repeated, “Yes,” and held me tighter.

  “I wasn’t sure you felt anything like that for me,” I admitted, putting my hand on his chest.

  Gently, he put his hand on top of mine. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Well, at the lake the other day, when I kissed you…”

  With a sheepish grin, he cast his eyes down. “Oh, that. I have a confession to make, I guess.”

  I pulled back. “What?”

  “Well, it’s been a long time.” He looked away, as if he didn’t want to meet my eyes. “A really long time, if you know what I mean, and I didn’t want to … you know, rush into anything.”

  When he looked back up at me, he had a hopeful look on his face, as if wanting me to understand him. I did.

  He said, “I just got a little self-conscious about everything. I didn’t want you to think I was that kind of guy.” He squeezed my hand, as if I would run away from him if he didn’t hold on tight enough.

  After a moment, he said, “I like you, Darcy.”

  My heart fluttered. “You do?”

  It was more than I had hoped for. I almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth.

  “Of course I do. A lot. I’d be crazy not to. You’re beautiful, smart, kind—”

  I was so overjoyed to hear him say it, that I didn’t wait for him to finish. I grabbed the side of his face with my hand and pulled him closer.

  We kissed, and I felt an electric thrill run up my spine. The desire I’d felt for him over the past few days was nearly overpowering, and I could sense him reacting to that.

  “Why don’t we just skip dinner and stay in tonight,” I suggested to him as I ran my hand down his muscular back through his shirt. It had also been a very long time for me, and I felt dizzy with need.

  “Yeah,” he said, tugging my shirt up out of my jeans.

  Like two love-struck teenagers, we fumbled at each other’s clothes and fell to the bed together.

  I had always been faithful to Barry, even through the periods where we had broken up. Never having anything to compare with, I never understood until that night what lovemaking really was.

  I gasped at first contact, and bit my lip against the brief discomfort. Soon though, as we moved in tandem, I could feel the tide of passion rising within me.

  I held out as long as I could, but when I felt his urgency and his movements become quicker and more intense, I rocked against him harder and harder. My eyes rolled back in my head and my fingers dug into the skin of his back when the sudden wave of release hit me. I cried out and sucked in my breath as Neil’s rhythm also reached its peak.

  He shuddered and then collapsed on top of me, and we lay there together for an unimaginable length of time, both of us completely spent and drunk on the afterglow.

  * * *

  At first, I thought it was simply an effect of the physical intensity between me and Neil, but the growing heat in the room was not the result of our intimacy.

  I opened one eye and cried out when I saw the window of the room behind the curtain brighten, as if the sun had risen and was beating down.

  “What?” Neil asked sleepily when I shook him by the shoulder.

  “Look!”

  Neil turned his head toward the window, and immediately sprung out of bed, grabbing his jeans.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I was still disoriented and my mind just wouldn’t make the connection.

  “Get dressed,” Neil ordered. “Fire.”

  “Fire?” For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Fire? A thought hit me: was it me? The power in me emerged whenever I experienced extreme anger or fear, or when my life was in danger. What if the opposite emotion had sparked the curse and, when I had come, I had released some of the power and inadvertently set the motel on fire? I would never be able to forgive myself.

  Neil’s training kicked in and he didn’t hesitate for a moment. He raced to the door and checked it with his hand. I could tell from the grimace on his face that the fire was right there, too hot to risk opening it. He darted to the window and drew back the curtains. Our entire view was filled with flames and smoke.

  Something snapped me out of my paralysis and I yanked my clothes on. I went to the phone on the dresser and held the receiver to my ear. No dial tone. Frantically, I smacked the cradle a few times, but the line was dead.

  The light in the room grew brighter and the glass on the window cracked as the wooden awning running along the walkway outside the rooms caught fire.

  “Can you put it out?” I yelled, even though he was only a few steps away. “Maybe run the water from the bathroom and direct it out there?”

  Neil measured the distance. “I don’t think there would be enough pressure even from both the tub and the sink. We need to get outside. There’s a hydrant on the other side of the parking lot. If I can get to that, maybe I can do something.”

  He stepped toward the front door again, but it cracked and flames licked through the gap.

  “The bathroom window,” I said, and we both raced out of the main room.

  I was the first one to the small window above the toilet. I threw my weight against it but it wouldn’t budge.

  “What?” I cried in exasperation, but then Neil spotted the problem immediately. He set his jaw and pointed.

  There was a screwdriver wedged between the window and the sill.

  Two realizations struck me in quick succession: first, I hadn’t been the one to start the fire; second, someone else had. It wasn’t an accident. Someone had intentionally set fire to the motel and tried to trap us so we would burn to death in the blaze.

  “Can we break the glass?” I suggested. “Maybe I can wiggle through.”

  Neil wrapped a towel around his hand and, after making sure I was back far enough, smashed the window.

  Once he had knocked as many glass shards out of the sill as he could, he helped me stand on the toilet seat. I stuck my head out of the window, but my shoulders scraped against a splinter of glass and I yelped.

  “You won’t fit,” Neil said needlessly.

  I tried a different tactic, and extended one arm out first, to make myself smaller, but I couldn’t get my torso through the opening.

  “Argh!” I yelled in frustration, and pulled back. Before I got all the way inside, I saw movement across the field, no more than fifty feet away. Car lights on the highway flashed over the silhouetted figure and for a moment, I saw his face.

  It was Frank! He threw an arm up in a feeble attempt to hide his identity, and scrambled off into the night. I knew if Frank was involved, that if he had been the one to jam the window, then Barry and Troy had to be near. Was Barry truly that crazed that he wanted to see me dead? Was this his warped sense of justice, to burn me to death as he imagined I had tried to do to him years ago?

  I was so enraged when I extracted myself from the window, I didn’t even notice that I was bleeding from half a dozen cuts on my shoulders and chest until Neil asked me if I was all right.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  As if sensing that my anger had nothing to do with my physical wounds, he glanced around, searching for ideas.“Listen,” he said. “I think I hear sirens. They should be on site within minutes. We just
need to hold out until then—”

  The front window exploded and the roar of the fire intensified as it found new territory to explore. Flames danced up the wall and blackened the ceiling.

  “We won’t last a few minutes,” I said. “We need to get outside.”

  An idea came to me, and I stood as close to the inferno as I could without my clothes setting on fire. The heat was suffocating. I held my breath, centered myself, and tried to relax.

  “What are you doing?” Neil demanded.

  “Fighting fire with fire.”

  “We’ll be burned alive!” he argued.

  “No. I can’t be burned.” But then I realized that even if I sent a wave of fire outwards, there was a good chance Neil would be caught in the blast.

  I took a step back and coiled myself like a spring.

  “Darcy?” he asked in a strained voice.

  “If I can’t blast the fire out, then I’m going through the door. It’s half incinerated already; I’ll run through first and then you follow.”

  “All right. Wait,” Neil said, and ripped the blankets off the bed. He raced back into the bathroom and ran the shower. After throwing the blankets in to get them soaked, he pulled one of them out, heavy and sopping, and thrust it at me.

  He said. “Wrap this around you.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “It’ll just trip me up. You use them.”

  He didn’t argue, and threw the blanket around his shoulders and over his head.

  We stepped back into the main room. “Are you ready?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Right behind you.”

  Facing the flames, I prepared myself. I might have been immune to the burning of fire, but I was pretty sure I could break an arm if I hit the remains of the door the wrong way.

  I took a deep breath. You can do this, I told myself, and charged.

  Before I hit it, my instinct kicked in, and without having to get myself in the mindset, I summoned the power and used it to blast a small wave of fire at the door, which completely disintegrated in a shower of splinters and sparks.

  I overbalanced as I ran through and fell to the pavement in the parking lot. A sopping wet mass hit me and completely smothered me—Neil. My shirt had caught fire and he was trying to put out the flames.