by Nara Malone
She nodded. “Just curious, Marcus, why are you giving this to me instead of taking it to Adam yourself?”
He should send her back to Pantheria. He could see a whole host of problems her curiosity was going to cause. “My son isn’t comfortable with my presence. As I said, he’s got enough going on right now.”
Maya studied the bag, her intensity, the slight parting of her lips told him she’d detected the scent. “So who’s watching over the lucky lady we’re analyzing?”
“Jake, and that’s why he’ll be too busy to help me with other projects for a few days.”
“Jake instead of you?”
“Maya, do you know one aspect of apprenticeship that males are particularly good at?”
“Not asking questions about things that are none of their business?”
“Smart girl.”
She placed the bag on the table next to the laptop. “If you and Oliver are done with the bunny pics, I’ll send an email to Adam and see if I can’t keep him and Ean from descending to collect me.”
Oliver put his paws on the counter, sniffed the bag and hopped onto the table. He plopped down on the package, his body blocking Maya from further access.
“Hey, you little fuzz ball, give it back.” When Maya reached to grab him, Oliver thumped a loud warning with his hind foot.
Before Marcus could think too deeply on Oliver’s strange reaction, his jacket pocket chimed. He’d gotten a cell phone from Jake after Allie had questioned why he didn’t have one. He hadn’t gotten instructions as to how to use it. He fished out his phone and passed it to Maya. “Deal with whatever this is about.” Marcus collected Oliver and carried him to his pen in the back of the shop.
“It’s a text from Jake,” she shouted.
“Why does he need a phone to contact me?”
“I think he has a human with him who might be expecting to see communication carried out in the typical fashion. That or there’s some interference.”
Marcus rejoined her. “He’s right here in town. There’s nothing here that would block him.”
“The geolocator says he’s in Washington DC.”
“Where’s that?”
Maya shrugged. “North, I think. Anyway, he said he needs a really nice house with a centerfold-quality garden and get him permission to take photographs.”
“This makes sense to you?”
“Not why he needs it, but I can fix him up.”
“Mmm. Ask Jake who’s with Allie?”
“Crap. Sorry, Marcus. The connection dropped.”
Marcus didn’t know what was going on, but he knew Jake would give Allie the same loyalty and protection he’d always shown Marcus. He assumed Jake had someone keeping watch over her while he did whatever it was he was trying to do now.
“Well, I’ll trust you to manage here by yourself for a while. Ben has been asking me to meet with him in Virginia Beach.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know. I’m not going to try driving. Ben has a mirror portal. I’ll go upstairs and teleport there through Jake’s portal. Keep my phone and call Jake if you need anything.”
Chapter Six
He’d lost her. He should have held back the details of the photo shoot he’d arranged for her until they were safely headed back to Greyville. Now he didn’t know if she was still running or headed home. Jake turned around and surveyed the crowded terminal. He felt like Gulliver in a colony of noisy little people. He could barely tolerate the crush and rush. Without the authority to grab Allie’s hand and hang on to it, it had been easy for her to disappear into the throngs of humans getting on and off buses.
He tried to go by logic. He’d convinced her, he thought, to go back home. She’d need to go to the ticket counter. He didn’t find her there. Being taller than everyone should help him spot her, but Allie was practiced at blending in. She’d made herself invisible here.
The place made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. His long, curly hair fell to his shoulders, so hairs raised against that weight and opposing force were an ominous sign. The whole city had a dirty, brown aura clinging to it. Here in the bus station, at the heart of what humans called civilized, uncivilized undercurrents ran like blood from a cut artery.
He didn’t need telepathy to spot the ones watching for a weakness, an opening. They moved among the passengers and the homeless with a predatory awareness. They measured Jake with their eyes. He sent back the primitive signals that said he was not the weak spot they were looking for. The idea that somewhere nearby Allie would be perused for weakness made his blood simmer.
“Hey, dude, too bad your old lady found a bigger ride.” The cackle and slap on his back grated over nerves already too raw.
Jake spun. He grabbed the street scum behind the wisecrack by his shirt, backed him against a pillar. Thin, greasy hair, a rat-like face, tattoos on nearly every inch of exposed skin. Jake remembered seeing the guy get on the bus in Fredericksburg. “Where is she?” he growled.
The guy squirmed like a fish on a hook. “Back off, man. If she’s that easy to lose maybe you should be glad it happened so fast.”
Jake shook him and the guy’s head bobbled on his skinny neck. “Where?” he asked again.
“She went off with a dude even bigger than you. A dork in a cowboy hat.”
Jake was so startled he almost dropped his only source of information. He let go of the shirt, smoothed the wrinkles with one hand. “Look, give me some details and I’ll give you a couple of bucks.”
“Not much to say. He came up and said he knew her. She recognized him I guess. One of them said something about him being a lawyer. They was both headed the same place so he offered her a ride and she went.”
His suspicions already confirmed, Jake pressed for more. “The dude she left with, what‘d he look like?”
“Like a country singer.” The guy said it like the words tasted bad. “Think the hair was blond, had a bit of beard on the chin, mustache, country-boy drawl.”
“Seth,” Jake said and let the man go. He kept a twenty in his shirt pocket, handy for situations like this. He slapped it into the guy’s greasy hand and thanked him.
Jake knew who had Allie. He didn’t know why he’d missed that someone else was following her. Seth was hard to miss.
All the pieces fit. There was only one Pantherian bigger than Jake—Seth. Lawyer, country drawl—odds were against there being a human fitting the same description that just happened into Allie at a bus station when Jake was following her. There were too many coincidences lately. Seth in the middle of those coincidences had an apocalyptic feel.
Jake had spotted him in town once or twice, had mentioned it to Marcus. Marcus believed Seth was there to earn forgiveness from Jake. Jake didn’t think so. Seth wasn’t stupid. He knew there’d be no forgiveness for what he’d done.
Jake checked the bus schedule and saw that it would be eight hours before the bus could deliver him to a home three hours away.
His phone chimed. Another text from the technologically challenged, Marcus.
* * * * *
It was the first time Allie had ever seen Lila at loss for words. The two stood on the path from the driveway, at the first curve where the house came into view. Allie understood though, she couldn’t think of anything to say either. She felt like a flock of geese was flapping wildly in her stomach and her confidence, that she could take pictures to do justice to whatever the garden might hold, plummeted.
“Some digs, huh?” Lila asked at last.
“I had no idea,” Allie said, her voice hushed with awe. “It belongs to a research scientist, a guy named Adam Kemenev.”
“He married?”
They shared nervous laughter.
“I thought you were hot and heavy with Cliff.”
“Hey, it never hurts to have a backup plan.”
“Well, Dr. Kemenev is married, so he’s not it.”
“So is he the one who designed the garden?”
Allie
didn’t know much about the house or garden. During an hour-long traffic standstill in Northern Virginia, her seatmate on the bus had pried and poked until Allie started talking about wanting to leave her job, start fresh, and how the clean-break plan was looking to turn into a big emotional mess. His story being similar to hers, it made sense when he said maybe they should go back and do some damage control, come up with a more carefully thought-out plan, so that when they did leave—and each was still determined to do so—it would be a clean break.
He told Allie where she could find a garden that would help her smooth over the situation with her boss. Allie told him where one of the women in his life could find a job. After that the conversation turned to his cat. He’d related every escapade from first steps to first mouse before Allie managed to ditch him when the bus doors opened at the DC terminal. She hadn’t thought to ask him, or the assistant she’d called to set the appointment, about the garden’s history. She’d taken Jake’s word that it was unique and stunning. It certainly sounded that way from his brief description. She shared the little she knew with Lila.
“Dr. Kemenev moved his family to a place in the mountains. The house is empty, so we’ll have the place to ourselves while I take the pictures. Whoever writes the article about the garden can do the historical research.”
Lila passed Allie the camera bag. “I bet Elaine writes this one herself. She totally forgave you for being MIA this morning when I told her you were tracking down a connection who would get you into Dr. Kemenev’s garden. There is some sort of legend behind it, and don’t ask because she didn’t furnish details. She let me check out the newest digital SLR for you.”
Allie handed her flashlight to Lila and cradled the precious bag in both hands. “Cliff let me take some shots around the office with it the day this camera came in. I’d love to own one like this.”
“Keep landing shoots like this and Elaine will probably buy you your own. She drove me crazy all morning with reminders of things she wanted you to look for. Apparently this lunar garden is a big deal with the garden club. Oft gossiped about and never seen by any of them. How did you get in?”
“I got lucky, met up with a guy who knew somebody who knew somebody. The garden is supposed to be around back.”
Lila led the way and Allie followed her around the side of the mansion, the moon cast in heavy shadows.
“Thanks for driving me out to do this shoot. With my big raise it shouldn’t be long before I can afford my own car.”
“Not if Franny has anything to say about it. She totally lost it this morning when you went missing, swore your prince charming had murdered you and dumped you in the woods. She called me snarling about how she thought the guy looked guilty of something and she’d even given him free doughnuts. You free to roam the world in a car is going to be too much for her.”
“Brother, I hope she didn’t catch up with Marcus before I called to smooth things over. You’d think a person could do something different once in a while without it upsetting the whole town.”
“I think to get away with that you have to do something different more often than once every two years. If you hadn’t called when you did, I think Franny would’ve had the National Guard out looking for you.”
It felt good, really, when she let her friends fuss. In Eddie’s world girls only mattered when they went missing—if they went missing with something that belonged to him or with information that could cause him problems or if they went missing because they’d embarrassed him. In Eddie’s world girls went missing all the time and no one looked for them. The ones that mattered enough to look for, never came back. If Allie ever became one of the girls that didn’t come back, Eddie would make sure anyone stirring up a fuss about it went missing too. In the end, Allie would have to leave to protect these overprotective friends, she just had to do it in a way that wouldn’t draw attention and lead Eddie right to them.
Lost in thought, Allie nearly bumped into Lila when she stopped just as they stepped from the shadow into the moonlit backyard.
“Oh wow,” Lila said. “Elaine is going to flip when she sees pics of this. A stone circle. Who would have thought you’d find one here?”
They were still a few yards back. The garden was set on a circular mound just at the edge where the yard dropped away toward forest and river. The stone pillars formed a circle inside a perimeter defined by a bubbling stream that ran round the garden like a moat. Gnarled trees between the stones had been trained to grow into the shape of a gazebo.
They crossed into the garden over an arched wooden bridge. Allie felt as if she’d stepped from the real world into a fantasy. Stars winked like jewels through a lacy latticework of branches stretched high above. But there was an opening at the very center and judging by the moon’s track it would be over that opening soon.
A round marble slab was set just below that lunar window, it had an energy, a pull that compelled her to get closer, the way the dark orb of Marcus’ pupils could capture her will, pull her in. Grass swished around her knees with each step closer to the marble centerpiece. Allie dropped to one knee, pressed her hand to the carved swirls on its surface and tried to imagine it as something ordinary. Safe.
But running her fingers over carved runes on the edge, she couldn’t convince herself it was no more than a patio for picnics. The stone against the flat of her palm pulsed with the energy of earth and water, the way the balcony outside Eddie’s bedroom had pulsed with the beat of music from the club below. Cold moved through her fingertips and up her arm. Cold ran fingers across her back and she remembered, more than remembered, felt as if she jumped through time to sit outside in a nightgown, bare toes curled on concrete, her back pressed to a brick wall. She gazed up at the stars wishing for something missing, something lost while she was too young to grasp what it was. A hole opened under her breast bone, a hollow space, as if she were hungry. Only the feeling was located higher up.
She tipped her head back and blinked hard, looking up at the stars to keep the sudden dampness in her eyes from spilling out. The stars winked through a lattice of limbs, the exact same shade of blue-tinged silver she had seen in Marcus’ eyes when he laughed. Fairy dust, she thought. Magic.
God how she wished there was magic. Magic that would wipe out the past. Magic that would make her something other than the daughter of a pimp and murderer. Something other than a forger and accomplice in crimes she barely dared to imagine.
She lifted her hand from the stone toward the glimmering diamonds above, and she wished most of all there was some magic that could make Marcus an ordinary guy.
But guys like Marcus wore trouble like a second skin and Allie had given up believing in magic before she could spell the word.
Lila had stepped to the center of the marble slab and turned in a slow circle. “I wonder what Dr. Kemenev got up to in his little garden. Weren’t circles like this used in fertility rites? I half expect a guy in a black robe to step from behind one of these stones.”
An image of Marcus holding that candle flashed through Allie’s mind, and just behind that, one of the lit tapers between her legs. Trouble. If she let her thoughts go there she’d be melting and dripping.
“Mmm,” was the only thing she could think to say to Lila.
Arousal and fear pressed Allie’s legs together and urged her to her feet.
She grabbed her camera and turned it on, glanced about for anything to get a shot of, anything to push the memories away. A stone pit with fresh wood and kindling laid for a bonfire claimed her first shot. She tried to ignore the images of naked dancers Lila’s comment brought to mind. This was just the sort of place she could imagine Marcus feeling at home.
Spiritual leader he’d called himself. At the time she’d thought something like a televangelist, or modern cult leader. After last night, something older, steeped in knowledge of mysteries that were better left forgotten, came to mind.
The garden was the sort of place that if Allie had seen a fairy flit through the f
lowers, or an elf contemplating life from a perch on a toadstool, it wouldn’t have looked out of place. It felt old, as if it had been there hundreds of years. It looked wild, untamed and unplanned, despite the fact that every element here had probably been aligned to stars and moon.
She moved along a haphazard path of scattered flagstones. Wildflowers in shades of milk and silver flanked the walk, waist high on either side. She thought it too early in the season for flowers. She didn’t know much about gardening, but perhaps sun-warmed stone and the mists drifting up from the water to hover under the dome of ancient trees acted together to create a natural greenhouse. Giant lunar moths fluttered between the blossoms and rode the air currents. Starlight and moonbeams captured in water droplets swirled like glitter around them.
Breathe. Find your center. The memory of his words came wrapped in his voice—as if he were right beside her whispering—and rekindled her desire. She closed her eyes and counted each breath until her mind’s chatter subsided. When she opened them again, she had pushed away magical thinking and desire, turning her entire focus toward light and shadow. She forgot Lila, forgot Marcus, and was caught up in the flow of composing. Here she composed with the black and white of moonlight and shadow instead of ink on a page. She dropped to one knee, framed a shot, clicked the shutter. She followed the slant of moonbeams through foliage, the molding of light to form.
This living, breathing fairyland around her couldn’t be reproduced in the glossy pictures she’d arrange on magazine pages, but Allie tried to capture the atmosphere, a sense of mystery and magic in the soft play of misty light across a moonflower. Lying on her stomach, she caught a shot of the moonbeams spilling over blossoms like a spotlight between two pillars, capturing the sense of power in the height and breadth of stones.
She stepped between the solid bodies of a stone and tree to look down the forest where the yard sloped steeply toward a river, pearly columns of light shimmered between tree trunks. The sounds of night creatures drifted up from the forest. She’d never heard a whippoorwill or an owl, but she recognized the calls instantly. She’d aimed her camera toward the wood, right at that moment a white buck stepped into the meadow. She caught her breath, frozen in awe. That quick, her memories of Marcus found a chink in her mental armor and crept in.