by Nova Nelson
I understood what she was saying all too well. After my parents were murdered, I’d returned to my house only once to collect my things. I’d wanted to take my mother’s favorite pair of diamond earrings with me—not because of the value, but because of the significance—but I couldn’t bring myself to remove them from the small jewelry bowl she kept next to her bathroom sink. What if she came home and couldn’t find them? They needed to stay exactly where they were, everything did, so my parents could pick up right where they left off. So my life could pick up right where it left off.
“I hear what you’re saying,” I told her, “and I don’t disagree. But like I said, you don’t understand. Tanner’s not gone forever.” I hesitated before saying the rest. But if I could tell a stranger’s ghost about it, I could muster the courage to tell my best friend. “There’s another portal to my old world. Count Malavic just showed me yesterday.”
Her hand dropped from my arm and her mouth fell open. “Mother Moon,” she breathed. “That changes everything, doesn’t it?”
“Yep.”
She scrunched her nose then asked, “What are you going to do?”
I wanted to stick to my guns, to say I was definitely staying in Eastwind, that this new development didn’t change anything.
But instead, I told the truth. “I don’t know.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I wouldn’t know what to do either. You have an impossible choice to make, I think.”
I sighed and sat back down, and she grabbed another chair from the wall and pulled it over to sit across from me.
“What do you think I should do?”
She held up her hands. “Noooo, no, no. I’m not telling you what I think, because then if you do it and it blows up in your face, you’ll be able to blame me.” Then she added, “But I will say that if you decide to go find Tanner and Eva, I’ll come along.”
My eyes shot open. I had not been expecting that. Although, maybe I should have been. “Come along? Like, through the portal?”
“Yeah. I’m not scared of portals. And your world sounds pretty tame. Remember, I’ve been to Wisconsin and lived to tell the tale. I think I can handle… what were those things you mentioned once that put holes in people?”
“Guns?”
“Right. I think I can handle guns. Sound safer than the wands these lunatic witches wave around.”
Jane’s offer was almost enough to convince me that we should close Medium Rare for the night and venture into Louisiana right that second. She was literally the most dangerous bitch (her word, not mine) that I knew. Tracking down our lost friends seemed all but done if I had Jane with me.
But it still presented the problem of having Tanner back in my life.
“I’ll let you know if I decide to go,” I said, “but don’t hold your breath. I think I’d be better off just figuring out how to close the thing and moving on with my life.”
She patted my knee and got to her feet. “My offer stands.”
I got up from my seat, too. “What about Ansel?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “What about him?”
“Will he be okay with you going?”
“We’d find out as soon as I came back, I’m sure. Most likely, he’ll be glad for a little alone time with his bestie Darius.”
I followed her out into the hall, and before she headed to the kitchen and I left out the back, she said, “I don’t think there’s a right answer to your dilemma. But maybe that means there’s not a wrong answer either.”
While I appreciated the sentiment behind the idea, I said, “If there is a wrong answer, you can count on me to pick it.”
She chuckled. “No one’s ever said you weren’t dependable.”
Chapter Fifteen
Donovan and I had snagged a table along the wall farthest from the entrance to Franco’s, halfway between the bar and the front windows, and we held hands across the table while he refilled my glass of red wine from the bottle.
How could the moment be so divine and so full of dread all at once?
“And Trinity didn’t mind you kicking him out?” I asked in response to the story he’d just told.
He grinned. “Not at all. One flick of the wand and he was out the door. Trinity slipped me a silver for it. Don’t let the fairy fool you, she seems sweet, but there’s a reason she was made manager after Jane left. She’s just as fierce as a werewolf bitch.”
“No way,” I said. “There’s no way she’s as terrifying as Jane, no matter how hard she tries.”
I felt a chill run down my spine that had nothing to do with Donovan stroking the inside of my palm, and I shot a quick sideways glance to find—yep—there was Dmitri.
“Can you not?” I said to the spirit.
Donovan looked around for who I was talking to, then nodded. “Spirit?”
“Yep. Sorry. One sec.” I returned my attention to the ghost. “I’m on a date.”
“Exactly. And it looks like it’s going well. You should break the news to him now.”
“Not a chance.”
“You said you would.”
“Please, just… I’ll talk to you later.”
Dmitri disappeared and I turned to find Donovan looking a little less cheerful than before. “Another admirer?” he asked.
“What? Oh… No. Not like that at all.”
“Would you tell me if it was?”
“Of course,” I lied. “You knew about Roland.”
“Only because he appeared out of thin air behind Sheehan’s.”
Good point. “Even still, you knew about him.”
Light from the tea candle on the table between us danced across his features as he squinted at me. “Are there more?”
“More what?”
“More past-life boyfriends hunting you down.”
I groaned. If he was insecure about that, just wait until he heard what else I had to tell him. “If there are, I don’t know about them. Why are you so worried about it all of the sudden?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, but he’d stopped stroking the inside of my palm. “Not worried. Just curious. After all, you kept me on the side for a long time while you were still with Tanner. How can I know that you don’t have someone else on the side while you’re with me?”
You bet your hide I yanked my hand out of his. “First of all, screw you. And second, you weren’t ‘on the side.’ That makes it sound like I wasn’t doing everything in my power to turn you down left and right.”
“Whoa, whoa. I didn’t mean to get you all riled up.”
“Okay, fine. I can play this game, too. How do I know you’re not currently trying to break up another one of your best friends’ relationships to get his girl while we’re together, like you were doing while you were with Eva?”
Rather than admitting I had an equally valid point, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t have done all that for anyone but you.”
“Would you listen to yourself?” I grabbed the napkin off my lap and tossed it on the table. “It was Dmitri Flint. That’s who just interrupted our date that was going great until you decided to accuse me of cheating on you with… what, ghosts? For fang’s sake!”
Though it was clear I was about five seconds from leaving, Donovan didn’t back down. “Dmitri was single. And it’s been almost a week since he died. Why is he sticking around unless feelings for someone are keeping him here?” He raised his eyebrows like he’d just put me in checkmate.
“I love you, Donovan, but you’re such an idiot.” I stood and made for the exit.
“You— Hey, wait, Nora!”
I could hear his heavy footsteps behind me and had a perverse impulse to laugh. How many women had Donovan been forced to chase after as they stormed out of Franco’s Pizza? At least two that I knew of now, and that was just in the time since I’d been in Eastwind.
I was only a few yards out the door when I realized how insane I was being. How did this always happen with us? I wasn’t usually emoti
onal, but when it came to Donovan things could go from zero to sixty in a second flat.
This didn’t have to happen. This night could still turn out just fine if I apologized and set my mind to making things better.
But the moment I turned around, we collided. His mouth was on mine in a heartbeat. I wove my fingers into his tangle of dark hair, pulling him closer. I was so tired of fighting, of these little things that tried to drive us apart. I didn’t care about them anymore. I just wanted it to be the two of us. I wanted everything else in this world to leave us alone so we could have this all the time. No more suspicions, no more spirits, no more memories of the past.
He broke the kiss, his mouth a tantalizing inch from mine. “You said you love me in there. Did you mean it?”
I swallowed hard. Uh, had I really said that?
I replayed the moment in my mind. Yep, I had.
And had I really meant it in that way?
“I guess so,” I said. “If I didn’t, there’s no way I would tolerate all your unicorn swirls.”
“Goddess, Nora. I love—”
I touched a finger to his lips to stop him. “I know you do. You don’t even have to say it. Because if you didn’t love me, you would never put up with my unicorn swirls.”
He kissed my finger and then took that hand in his. “Nothing you ever do could drive me away. And Heaven knows you’ve tried.”
Every atom in my body wanted to kiss him again then tell him to take me back to his place. Our night would no doubt unfold in a glorious tangle of warm skin and promises…
But it wasn’t my atoms that ran the show, no matter how much things would have been different—perhaps better—if they did.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” The words were out before I could think twice. My Insight had forced them out, I was sure. Cursed Insight!
“Anything,” he said, still holding my body against his. “Whatever it is, I don’t care. So get on with it. The sooner you tell me, the sooner we can go back to my place.” He hooked a finger underneath the neckline of my shirt, moving it to reveal more of my shoulder. “You have far too many clothes on.”
Whoa, okay. I needed some space if I was going to get these words out. I stepped away from him, feeling my face rage with heat and not from the summer air. “I visited the count yesterday.”
He tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at me. “Okay?”
“I visited him in his castle, and he showed me something.”
He continued to stare down at me, but now his dark brows pinched together. “O-kay…?”
Oh, just spit it out!
“There’s a portal. He has a private portal.”
Donovan’s voice sounded weak as he asked, “Where does it lead?”
I could tell he already knew, but I spelled it out for him anyway. “My old world.”
For a moment, his expression remained unchanged, and I thought this might not be as big of a deal as I’d made it out to be. He would react like a mature adult, remain calm, and explore my thoughts on the matter before jumping to any conclusions.
But then he collapsed into a cross-legged sit in the middle of the street, his hands falling limply into his lap. “Swirls.”
I knelt in front of him, grabbing his shoulders. “I’ve already made my decision.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me. I guess part of me knew it couldn’t last.”
I shook him gently. “Goddess, you’re an idiot.” That snapped him out of it. “I made my decision to stay here. With you.”
He hurried to his feet, pulling me up with him. “You’re not going to look for him?”
“No.” I paused. “Are you going to look for her?”
To his credit, he seemed to consider it before saying, “No.”
“Then we’re staying here.” I leaned in and kissed him, and he returned it, though not as enthusiastically as I would have hoped. Okay, so maybe we wouldn’t be sprinting off to his house, but perhaps we could still order our main entree and have an okay evening.
He stepped back. “It’s not going to work, Nora.”
“What?”
“When did you find out about it?”
“Yesterday. I’ve had time to sleep on it, and my decision hasn’t changed.”
He nodded. “You made the decision yesterday. And you’re still here, so you made it again today. Maybe you’ll even make the same one again tomorrow. But what about the day after that? With the portal there, you’ll have to make the same decision every single day. And one of these days, you’re going to miss him too much, and you won’t choose me.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Then maybe I’ll miss her too much and choose her!”
His flash of intensity caught me by surprise, and I took a quick step back. “Donovan, what are you saying?”
“I don’t know. I just… How many days in a row will you choose me? Even one day of choosing him… it would break me, Nora. I was sorry about what happened to him, but I thought that maybe with time you’d be able to move on completely.” He shook his head. “So long as that portal is open, you won’t ever move on.”
“Then we’ll shut it!” I said. “We’ll figure out how to close it and—”
“And what? Tell Sebastian Malavic that he has to let us? Not a chance. He would never do what we ask unless he thought it would cause us even more pain.”
He was probably right about that. “Then we’ll sneak in. Damnation, Donovan! I don’t know what you want me to say! I’m staying here with you. I choose you!”
He closed the space between us, but only lifted one of my hands to his lips, kissing my palm. “I know. I just… It’s a lot.”
I remembered my reaction when I’d found out. “It is.”
He let go of my hand. “I think I need some space to sleep on it.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” The question sounded so lame, but it was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“Never.” He smiled softly, mournfully. “I’ll never break up with you, Nora Ashcroft. If you want to get rid of me, you’ll have to be the one to end it.”
He tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, rubbing his thumb over my cheek as he did, and then he turned and walked away.
I watched him go, his words swirling in my mind.
From behind me: “That went better than I thought it would.”
I sighed and turned to face Dmitri. “Better than I thought it would, too… I think.”
“Yeah, it was a bit confusing,” he admitted. “Probably best not to think too hard about it tonight.”
“What do you suggest instead? Alcohol?”
“No, no. There are other ways to self-medicate. Sleep is good. Pasta is better.”
And so I took his advice and shuffled back into Franco’s Pizza, one dead witch richer and one alive witch poorer.
Chapter Sixteen
The pasta did help, and so did the wine. Mostly the wine aided me in not giving two licks what people thought of me sitting at a table by myself, overindulging, and talking to someone no one else could see.
“I can already tell you won’t let it go,” he said. “You never will. That portal is literally an open door leading you back to him.”
“You don’t know anything,” I said, noticeably slurring my speech. Whoops. “Okay, maybe you do. Maybe you’re one hundred percent correct. So what?”
Dmitri was hovering in a sitting position on the chair where Donovan had been until, well, you know. “So, I think you did the right thing telling him.”
“Shows what you know. Did you see his face? I did that to him.” I gathered up a forkful of lasagna flotsam and shoveled it into my mouth, doing my best to talk around it. “I made him feel that way.”
“I did see his face. And I’ve been in his shoes. It hurts. But it’s necessary.”
I went to wave down our server because it was half past tiramisu o’clock (yeah, dessert was happening), but paused and said, “What do
you mean, you’ve been in his shoes?”
“Sasha Fontaine.”
Tiramisu would have to wait. “Hold up. What?”
“Ansel’s sister.”
“I know who she is. But what do you mean that you— did you two have a thing?”
He nodded. “She was the one who got away.”
“You mean when you were a kid? The one you commemorated with that tattoo?”
He nodded again.
“No,” I said, “It’s not the same thing.”
He leaned forward so far parts of his chest disappeared into the edge of the table. “It’s exactly the same.” He leaned back again. “And I might have exaggerated with the kid thing. I was nineteen, and she was eighteen when it started. And Darius Pine was twenty.”
“Darius Pine? What’s he got to do with it? Actually, wait a second. I need dessert for this, then you can unload on me.”
Once the order was in, I turned back to him again. “Okay, back in the game. What does Darius Pine have to do with this?”
“He was the other point in our love triangle. He stole her from me.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Now, let’s not start with that. She has a mind of her own. Maybe she just liked him better.”
He chuckled. “You got me. Maybe so.”
“So, which one were you?”
“What do you mean?”
I thanked our server as she dropped off the pick-me-up and I didn’t hesitate to dive in after thanking her. “I mean, obviously I’m Sasha in this scenario. So are you Donovan or Tanner?”
“Donovan. Mostly.”
“So you’re telling me that Sasha was dating Darius, and then you and she performed a connection ritual that triggered a latent attraction that led to the two of you carrying on behind her boyfriend’s back until she dropped you completely, and then Darius sprinted like an idiot through a portal, leaving you and her together finally, but then she found out that there was another portal and—”
“Not that direct of a correlation. And I was with her first.”