by Nova Nelson
He said the words and then kissed me, and when the kiss ended, I said the words back.
And I need you to understand that I meant them. I truly meant them. Because what happens next might make you doubt that.
I opened the door, and he stepped forward to follow me in.
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “No, I, um. I thought you were just going to go home.”
“Oh.” He blinked and nodded minutely. “Yeah, sure, I just figured you’d want me to come up. Not, you know, do anything. But maybe just to be with you.”
In other circumstances, I would have taken him up on that offer, and I trusted that when Tanner said he wouldn’t push it, he would stick to his word, rather than trying to pressure me into anything.
“I think I just need some space.”
Oh yeah, it was the absolute worst way to say it. I just need some space? That’s what you tell someone you’re breaking up with, for fang’s sake!
“I mean, not from you specifically,” I added hastily, “just in general.”
“Ah,” he said, holding his hands in front of him and bowing slightly. “Makes perfect sense. The energy, right? You’re a little sensitive to it after the channeling?”
Totally not the case, but sure. “Exactly. I just need to recharge.”
“Right. Got it. Definitely not rejection. Noted.” He forced a smile and, slightly hunched, turned as he said, “See you at work in the morning.”
“Tanner…”
But he was already down the porch stairs and on his way back home.
I closed the door with a sigh and headed to the bathroom to clean up before bed. After all, rolling around on the floor of Franco’s Pizza wasn’t much of a step up from rolling around on the floor of Sheehan’s Pub, which even Grim wouldn’t do.
The magical shower washed away the grime on my body, cleansed my hair, and fixed my wrinkled clothing, but as I stared at myself in the mirror, I still felt covered in residue from the evening.
The mystery was solved. I’d assured Stu Manchester of that when he arrived at the restaurant before Tanner and I had left. He seemed to believe me, but he did demand that I explain it to him more fully in the morning, once I’d gotten some rest.
Only problem was that I didn’t know how to explain it. So much of it still didn’t make sense to me, but I knew I was at the center of it. Well, not me so much, but Diana.
And Roland.
My body shivered just thinking of his perfect face on the edge of the coast. Was it a vision, or something else? At the time, it had felt more like home to me than anywhere. Maybe he had a point. Maybe my need for reality was meaningless. Maybe wherever we felt best could be our reality. If that were the case, then Eastwind was no more a reality than Texas had been.
The thought left me unsettled, the fantasy I was haphazardly building even more so.
As I made my way up the stairs, I paused outside my bedroom door. Would he be there where I could see him? Or would I have to summon him?
I pushed open my door and knew it was a dumb question. After so many lifetimes apart, I would never need to summon him again.
“We need to talk.” Grim was lying on his doggy bed, his eyelids at half-staff and his hackles up as Roland sat in the upholstered chair at the corner of the room. It was deja vu. That was right where Bruce Saxon had appeared to me the night I came to Eastwind and learned about my ability as a Fifth Wind.
Spirits didn’t need to sit, of course, but they often prefer to keep up the charade.
“Diana,” Roland said, standing. “Who is this hound? Is he supposed to be indoors?”
“That’s Grim. He’s my familiar.”
Roland’s eyes opened wide. “The two of you are … familiar?”
“Huh? Oh. Ooh! No, no, no. Not like that.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” said Grim.
“It’s a witch thing, Roland. We have animals that are bound to us and we can speak with them through our thoughts.”
His relief was obvious, even in his semi-transparent ghost form. “Thank Earth for that.”
“You don’t know about this?” I asked. “You’re not a witch?”
A hint of a smile appeared on his lips. “No, my love. It appears I’m a ghost.”
“My love?” Grim hollered. “Seriously. Who the hellhound is this guy?”
“Can you give us a minute?”
“I absolutely cannot.”
“What if I move your bed out onto the landing?”
“Then I probably could give you a bunch of minutes. But first, I need to know who this jackalope thinks he is, coming up in my bedroom and setting off a pheromone explosion in my familiar.”
“Not your bedroom. And this is Roland.”
“Gonna need more info.”
“Are you speaking with him right now?” Roland asked. “Through your thoughts?”
“Huh?” I looked at him. “Yes.”
“Fascinating. Is it quite difficult to do? You get this little crease between your eyebrows as if it requires intense concentration.”
“That’s probably more a response to what Grim says rather than the process itself.”
“Can he see me?”
I nodded quickly. “Oh yeah.”
“And can he understand my words?”
“Yep.”
Roland turned to Grim. “Your master and I were lovers many lifetimes ago.”
“What’s Gaelic for TMI?” Grim said, standing from his bed before turning to grab it in his strong jaws then dragging it toward the door. As he passed me, he added, “You better not break Tanner’s heart. I’m starting to like that guy.”
Shocked, I straightened up. “Whose side are you on?”
“His. Do you know how much bacon he feeds me on a daily basis?”
So much for loyalty. “Fine. It’s not like anything can happen between me and a ghost anyway.”
“You sure about that?”
I blinked. “Not anymore, I guess. I’ll … I’ll take care of this. Don’t worry.”
I closed the door behind him and turned to the room, where I found myself alone with a man who I’d loved for eons and who I now couldn’t touch. “I need more explanation,” I said.
He nodded placatingly. “I have all the time in this world and the next for you. Ask me anything you wish. But you look tired. Why not get into bed?”
“I have a boyfriend,” I said. It wasn’t quite a direct reply, but he got the message all the same.
“That’s expected. You forgot about me, and of course you would move on. And of course another man would fall for you. If you wish me to maintain a distance from you while we discuss your concerns, I am happy to oblige.”
I crossed the room to the bed, feeling ridiculously self-conscious as his eyes followed me. “Would you turn around until I’m under the covers?”
“Of course.”
Once I’d slipped off my pants, and removed my bra, I crawled underneath the covers, wishing I’d bothered to buy proper pajamas the last time (and only time) I’d gone shopping in Eastwind. “Okay, you can turn around.”
He did, and for a moment, he said nothing, simply stared distantly at me where I lay with the old quilt pulled up under my armpits as I reclined against the headboard. He made to sit in the old chair, but I said, “You can sit at the end of the bed if you’d like.”
Roland didn’t say a word but did as I suggested. Without even thinking about it, I touched a hand to the staurolite pendant beneath my shirt. I could feel the roughness of the stone even through the fabric. I reached down my collar and pulled out the amulet, slipping it over my head and setting it on the nightstand.
“Ask your questions, my love,” he said.
I asked the first one that came to mind. “Why should I trust you?”
It was as if he’d been expecting it. “You shouldn’t. I should like to earn your trust over a period of time.”
“You possessed my friends. I can’t even begin to understand the how of it while you were un
able to officially cross over, but I would like for you to explain how you justified it.”
He laughed sadly. “Diana, don’t you get it? I would do anything to be with you. And as your memory of our time together returns, I believe you’ll understand that you were once willing to do the same. I had no intention of taking any lives in the process of leading you to me, but if it happened, I understood from my time on the other side and my enduring search for you that the end of a single life is simply the closing of a chapter, not the end of the book. What we have, though, you and I, it outlasts any single life.”
His presence at the end of the bed was making my toes chilly, so I bent my knees, pulling my feet closer to my body. “I’m struggling to share your perspective on this, Roland. All I do is speak with the spirits of the dead, the ones that don’t want to move on. Their existence is full of pain, and their death sends shockwaves of suffering out to the ones that loved them. How can you think that’s such a small thing?”
He looked down quickly at the quilt. “Every death is a wave crashing violently against jagged rocks, splashing saltwater into the eyes of those who stand too close. But from the view of a person on the edge of a towering cliff, looking down into the raging waters below, it becomes clear just how many waves there are, just how many waves there have been, and just how many waves are yet to come. There’s no stopping it, my love. A man may stand waist deep in the ocean, diverting the currents ever so slightly, but does that mean the waves that crash behind him are his doing?”
“Still,” I said. “I don’t know why I, Nora, should trust you. And I, Nora, am in love with another man.”
“You speak sense, my love, and if you wish me to call you by your new name, I shall. I vow not to hurt anyone you love ever again. And I believe I’ve proven that I fulfill a vow once I make it. I’ve searched a long time to find you. I can wait a bit longer and simply hope that this love you feel for another man fades. Otherwise, I’ll have to wait for you to pass on and hope I can find your flame in the dark when it reignites once again.”
As someone who was too impatient to wait for a bag of popcorn to finish popping before I pulled it out of the microwave, I found Roland’s willingness to wait for me mind boggling.
And really freaking romantic.
I had more questions, but they seemed like nitpicks not worth delving into after such a long day. I was clear on the main points: I was in love with Tanner. And I was in love with Roland. But Roland was willing to wait.
There was only one obvious course of action to take, then.
“I think I need some rest,” I said.
“Of course. Would you prefer I leave while you sleep?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I mean, you don’t have to. If you’d prefer to stay—”
“You know I would.”
“—then stay.”
I switched off the lamp and the cool breeze of his presence brushed against my cheek as he whispered softly, “Always.”
Chapter Fifteen
Medium Rare was silent when I entered through the back the next morning. My head was buzzing. The dreams about Roland had stopped, but when I’d awoken, there he was, more real than a dream, at least to me. I wasn’t ready to explain his presence to Ruby, so I’d asked him to stay in the bedroom until I returned home later.
And, of course, he’d said something about waiting for me as long as I needed, and, also of course, it’d made my heart flutter in my chest.
Boy, oh boy, was I in trouble.
As I walked down the hall toward the kitchen, a figure lunged out of the manager’s office, pinning me to the wall opposite. I recognized his delicious scent before I even made out his features.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you all night, Nora,” Tanner said, holding my wrists to the wall as he leaned forward and kissed my neck. “I don’t think the point of you sending me away was to drive me crazy, but if it was, it worked.”
I closed my eyes, and when the feel of his lips just below my jawline brought an entirely different face to mind, I cleared my throat and slipped free, heavy with guilt. “Keep it together,” I said. “We’re at work.”
He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “What, you think Anton’s going to catch us? We’re both his boss. What’s he going to do?”
“You’re too much of a distraction,” I said, shoving him playfully in the shoulder. “If we don’t keep it professional, I’m going to mess up every order I take today.”
“Ah, true,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And then I wouldn’t love you anymore.”
“Exactly. I knew you only loved me for my low meal comp rate.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m hard to please.”
I snuck a quick peck on his lips. “Sounds like a challenge for later.” Then I scurried off before my words had a chance to sink in and he chased me down and pinned me against another wall.
“Morning, Anton!”
Anton grunted, cracked a raw egg into a juice glass, then chugged it as I headed into the dining room.
Hendrix Hardy was already there, which was no shocker, but so was Ted. That was a bit of a surprise. He usually didn’t come in for an hour or two.
I spotted Bryant, the tall, scrawny nightshift server. He leaned over the countertop, doodling on a napkin. “You’re off the hook,” I said.
He hadn’t heard me enter from the back, apparently, and he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of my voice. “Whoa! Hey there, Nora. You scared me.” Bryant was a werewolf, but not an especially fierce one. We were close in age, but his hair was already entirely gray. So maybe we weren’t close in age after all. I could never tell in Eastwind.
“Go home,” I said.
“You sure you don’t need me to stay over? We’re relatively swamped.” He motioned to Hendrix and Ted, who occupied booths on opposite sides of the diner from one another.
I sucked in air. “Yeah, it’s gonna be tough, but I’ll do my best.”
He chuckled and then his tone shifted, and he tilted his head as he asked, “You doing alright this morning?”
“Yeah,” I said, caught off guard. “Doing just fine.”
“I heard about what happened at Franco’s last night. Sounds pretty intense. And to be honest, none of what I heard made a lot of sense.”
Looked like the gossip channels of Eastwind were burning the candle on both ends. “That’s because none of what happened made a lot of sense.”
He looked like he was on the verge of follow-up questions, but before he could pry any further, I added, “Go get some sleep. I’m sure the Eastwind Watch will have comprehensive, albeit tragically inaccurate, coverage of it. They might even release a special edition.”
Bryant took the not-so-subtle hint to kick rocks and headed to the back to cash out with Tanner.
When my attention turned to Ted again, I remembered what Ruby had said, about him being the most irrelevant person in Eastwind. I wondered if he knew it. Probably on some level he did.
Cue guilt for all the times I put him off when he wanted to hang out.
Refilling ketchup bottles could wait. I marched around the counter and plopped myself in the booth opposite the grim reaper. “You’re here early.”
He looked up from his book and leaned back in his seat. “Yes. Couldn’t sleep again.”
“Winds of Change?”
He bowed his hooded head. “Yep. They’re getting stronger.”
“Should I be concerned?”
He shrugged, the points of his shoulders jabbing at his dark robes like tent poles. “If you want to be. Not much of a point, though. Change is coming whether we want it or not. And of course most people fall into the latter category. Just like with death, a bit futile to fight it. Heh.”
“Any possibility the change will, you know, stay in the Deadwoods?”
“There’s always a possibility. But I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“What about the whole ‘What happens in the Deadwoods stays in the Deadwoods’ t
hing?”
He lifted the coffee cup to his hooded face, and not for the first time I wondered where the coffee and food went once it passed between his lips. Also, did Ted have lips? “That usually holds true. But take, for instance, you. You first appeared in the Deadwoods, but you sure didn’t stay there.”
“Back at ya. You live in the Deadwoods, and yet here you are, morning after morning.” I slid out of the booth. “And you know what? I’m glad you are.” I smiled down at him, and I assume he returned the look.
Then he said, “You sure do know how to make a reaper’s morning,” Ted said. And if he had left it at that, I would have considered my decision to chat him up a good one, and I would have gone about the rest of my day feeling optimistic and slightly better about myself. But then he added, “It’s going to be a sad day when I get the call to clean up your dead body.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. Thanks. I’d better go refill the ketchup bottles.”
“Morning, Ms. Ashcroft.”
“Morning, Stu.”
The deputy looked a little worse for the wear as he rocked onto the stool at the counter and adjusted his belt for comfort. “I had quite an interesting night.”
“Is that so?” I set coffee and pie down in front of him.
“Indeed, Ms. Ashcroft. Would you like to hear about it?”
“Absolutely.”
He took his time unwrapping his silverware, placing the napkin ceremoniously over one thigh, and stirring sugar into his coffee. “The trouble started with a report of a bunch of folks choking over at Franco’s Pizza. I hurried over only to find everyone was breathing again, and in the middle of it, one young woman and her boyfriend—owners of a local diner—were openly expressing their love for one another on the tile floor.”
“In their defense,” I said, “I heard that one had almost died and the other had just risked her life to perform dangerous magic. And they were both fully clothed, so I don’t see the problem.”
He nodded patiently. “Yes, Public Display of Affection is still legal in this town. That’s not the troubling part.”
“What is?”
“Well, that occurred upon speaking with one of the witnesses. A young North Wind witch.”