Out of This World

Chapter 17

We escaped the office and made our way through the dark inn, me in front leading the way with my night-vision abilities in order to save Kellan’s toes and shins. I steered us through the living room and into the kitchen. The wood stove was still hot, with embers glowing red. We were halfway across the floor when a creak sounded from above.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Kellan had one hand in mine, and he was so close behind me that I could feel his warm breath brush my temple, blowing bangs into my eyes. He felt big and warm and safe, and right then and there, I experienced a warm fuzzy the likes of which I’d never experienced before.

Or I would have felt warm and fuzzy if I could have shaken off the sense of impending doom.

“What was it?” I asked.

The sound came again.

Someone was moving around quietly, not wanting to be heard.

Kellan squeezed my hip, putting his mouth to my ear. “Can you focus on it? Who is it?”

Damn, I kept forgetting I could tell. I looked up, and sighed. “Marilee. She’s pacing her bedroom.”

“Why?” he wondered.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, but first…” I headed straight for the freezer and grabbed a few cookies, offering one to Kel, who shook his head. Damn, that was probably how he stayed so much leaner than me.

We went out into the night. Again, that odd sense of noisy silence surrounded us-air rustling through the trees, a coyote calling in the distance…

Or some other wild animal that I didn’t want to meet.

The stars scattered across the black-velvet sky lit our way, but I’d have rather been home, with so many city lights, they drowned out the stars.

Inside the guest house, Kel set the laptop and Blackberry on the coffee table, and took me straight to the bedroom, where he pulled back the covers on the prissy, lacy bed and waited until I obediently slipped between the sheets.

“You coming in?” I asked, and batted my eyes.

“Bad idea.”

“I’m cold.”

He pulled the covers up to my chin, tucking them in, as if looking at me would weaken his resolve. “I’m not falling for that one.”

“I am cold.”

He put his hands on his hips, looking tense, rough around the edges and slightly temperamental. “You want me to crawl in there with you and share my body heat.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And other things.”

“You’re quick, Kel.”

“I need to think. And I can’t do that when you’re near me.”

“Ah, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

If possible, he looked even more tense. “I’m not feeling particularly sweet, Rach.”

Well, if that wasn’t arousing. Tossing the covers aside, I came up to my knees on the mattress. I cupped his beautiful face and looked deep into his drown-in-me eyes. “I want you.”

“For now.”

“At the moment, now is all we have.” And besides, thinking ahead to what I’d want tomorrow, or the day after that, wasn’t in my genetic makeup. “Can’t that be enough?”

A shuddery sigh escaped him, and his hands came up to my hips, squeezed. His voice, when he spoke, sounded tortured. “No.”

He said it so gently, it took a moment for it to sink in.

“But-”

His arms came around me, and I felt the softening in him that I needed, even as his body became harder than ever. The hug clogged my throat with emotion, because I knew it was a good-bye hug. I held on, and closed my eyes. “You make me feel so safe, Kel.”

“You are safe. I’ll make sure of it. Even when-or if-I change back.”

I blinked back tears. “Another promise.”

“I mean it.”

No one had ever said such a thing to me before, in a voice so fierce I didn’t doubt he’d keep me safe if it meant his own life.

I’d never wanted anyone to say such a thing. I don’t know if I was ready to want him to.

I wasn’t.

Of course, I wasn’t.

I was young. Twenty-seven. I was a modern woman who could take care of herself. I always had.

But a small part of me stared at him with a bunch of what-ifs suddenly flowing through my head.

But before I could finish processing, a shockingly loud BOOM sounded, shaking the ground beneath us. The shelves rattled, the furniture jumped.

Not to mention us.

With an oath, Kellan grabbed me off the bed and dragged me to the doorway, but as fast and loud and hard as the Earth had rumbled, it stopped.

Everything went completely, almost unnaturally, still. Not a sound, not a remnant shudder, nothing.

And then, from out of the darkness and through the windows, came a high-pitched scream.

“Marilee?” I gasped, reaching for Kellan. “Was that Marilee?”

I’d never seen him so grim. He pushed me back into the bedroom while at the same time flipping off the light, flipping off all the lights. “Wait right here,” he said urgently. “Stay still, and don’t make a sound, all right?”

“Kel-”

“Say you’ll do it.” He pushed me behind the door, thrusting something into my hands.

I stared down through the dark at his flashlight. “I don’t need-”

“Listen to me. This thing is heavy. If you swing it just right-”

“Kel-”

“A nice hit to the head will make an assailant kiss the floor long enough for you to get away.”

“Oh my God.”

“Promise me you’ll use it if you need to.”

“I don’t-”

“Promise me.”

He was so fierce, so serious, and I think that scared me more than anything else had so far. “You think something very bad is happening.”

“Promise me, Rach.”

“I promise,” I said very quietly, instead of clinging, as I really, really wanted to do.

And then he was walking away from me, hands out in front of him, staggering slightly, heading directly for the coffee table instead of the door. “Kel-”

Too late. He tripped right over it, going down flat on his face.

I ran to his side just as he rolled over.

“Out of all the abilities I could have gotten,” he said through clenched teeth as he rocked back and forth holding on to his shins, “I had to get worthless superstrength, when a little grace would have done me.”

“Are you all right?”

“I will be.” He got up, felt around for me and pulled me close for one beat. “Stay here.”

I let him get to the front door, fumbling, limping now, before I called his name softly. When he turned around, blind in the dark, I walked to him and slipped him back the flashlight. “You need this more than me, Superboy. And here’s something else to chew on. I’m going with you.”

“You are not.”

“Am, too.”

“Not.”

“Kel.”

“Rach-”

The front door whipped open, almost slamming into us. In the doorway stood Serena and William, both with their clothes askance, hair mussed, eyes wild, looking as if they’d been interrupted right in the middle of a good time.

“Thank God,” Serena said at the sight of us, and pushed her way inside the dark guest house. “We don’t have a lot of time. I assume you have the laptop. Can I have it, please?”

“No,” Kel said.

“It’s imperative.”

“I’m sorry.” Kel said this with genuine regret as he shook his head forcefully, not looking at me, while I-the only one with clear vision in the dark-very carefully and slowly backed away, slipping the laptop from the coffee table to beneath the couch, out of sight. The Blackberry, being smaller, fit beneath my shirt. I didn’t know why I needed it, but it felt important.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Kel said to Serena and William. “Or whom to trust. Until I do, you’re SOL.”

Serena looked in my direction.

“Shit out of luck,” I translated for her. “And I think he means it.”

“You don’t understand-”

“That would be correct,” Kel agreed. “We don’t understand. A point that pisses me off greatly.”

She sighed, and William shut the door, then locked both the handle and the bolt. “No, no lights,” he said urgently when I reached for the lamp. “We have to hide you. Now.”

“And get the laptop,” Serena said, turning on a small penlight, using it to search around, single-minded in her mission for the computer. “I know you have it.”

“Why do you have to hide us?” I asked.

“You’re going to have to trust us,” William said.

“No, we’re not.” This from Kellan.

“Oh, we don’t have time for this!” Serena pushed her way through the living room toward the kitchenette, searching there as well. “This is serious. You must trust us. Now!”

“Why?” Kellan asked. “Because you’ve been so honest so far?”

Serena had the good grace to look a little ashamed. “I know, it’s hard.”

“What was that loud boom?” I asked. “Who screamed?”

“Now see, that’s what we don’t have time for.” Pressing himself flat against the wall, William craned only his neck and peeked out the window, seeming satisfied with whatever he saw.

Or didn’t see.

He nodded at Serena, who frantically waved for us to follow her into the kitchen.

I looked at Kellan, who stood firm. “Tell us what that loud rumble was.”

“If you hide right now, without further delay,” Serena said without answering, “everything will be okay. I promise you.”

“If you ever answered a question,” Kellan countered, “things would be better.”

“There’s no time for questions,” William said grimly.

“Or answers.” Serena gestured us close. “Please. You must come with us.”

William still had his back to the front wall, silently keeping watch out the window. He turned his head and looked at Serena. “Still clear. But not for long. Cut the flashlight.”

“Please,” Serena begged us, slipping her flashlight into her pocket, then resorting to grabbing first my hand, then Kellan’s. “Just come. It’s your lives that are in jeopardy here.”

It was that, and her palpable fear and undeniable desperation, that ultimately reached me.

Our lives were in jeopardy?

We let her pull us into the tiny kitchen, where she opened the pantry door. Inside the small closet were shelves filled with stock and enough dry goods to last for months, and as a result, there wasn’t room for the four of us to stand.

Serena shoved us all in there anyway, with William taking up the rear. To shut the door meant plastering us all up against each other, which she did. I had my nose in Kellan’s armpit, my elbow in William’s ribs, my butt to Serena’s.

And then I saw what I hadn’t taken the time to see yesterday. What I couldn’t have seen yesterday because I’d been in here before “the swap.”

There was a trap door, similar to the one that led to Gertrude’s hidden office, which led down to a basement that I could already tell I wasn’t going to like because it was dark and cramped and quite possibly filled with spiders.

“In,” Serena said, and opened the door and pushed us onto the stairs landing. She and William followed.

The stairs creaked and trembled beneath our weight, which didn’t make me happy. “I don’t know-”

“In,” Serena repeated firmly.

Once at the bottom, Serena flicked her small flashlight on, and we surveyed our surroundings.

Just as I’d seen from above, the basement was small and cramped, basically empty but for a few crates and boxes. It had a high, narrow window, through which moonlight flitted in. It was a gorgeous night, clear and bright.

“This way,” William said, and pointed to what looked like a paneled wall but was really-

“Great,” Kellan said. “Another door.”

Which opened to a big, yawning tunnel.

“Are there any normal, plain doors in this place?” Kellan asked, but it must have been a rhetorical question, because no one answered.

William gestured for Serena to go first, which she did without hesitation. Then he looked at Kellan and me. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t understand, but this is for your own good, tr-”

“Yeah,” Kellan said grimly. “Trust you.”

The two men looked at each other for a long beat, Kellan’s face steely and pensive, and most definitely not trusting.

“Okay.” William scrubbed his hands over his face. “This is going to sound pretty whacky, and you’re going to think I’ve been sharing some funny tobacco with Axel, but I swear to you, it’s the truth.”

“Just spit it out,” Kellan said. “How exactly are we in danger?”

“This place is…special.”

“Will-”

At Serena’s protest, William took her hand, then continued with his explanation. “It’s special in that people-people who are different-come here because this is the only place they get a break from their lives.”

“Different how?” Kellan asked.

“They have…abilities,” William said. “And when they come here, they’re relieved of these abilities for the duration of their stay. Like a vacation of sorts.”

“And you…you’re special?” I asked, wondering if humoring an obviously insane person could be dangerous to my health.

“Yes,” Serena answered. “We have-had-abilities. William could see, um”-she glanced at him-“everything, and I had a special strength.”

“Past tense,” I said.

Kellan nodded. “Because in the so-called swap, you gave them to us.”

“Yes.”

Kellan looked at me. “Well, take them back. We don’t want them.”

Even as I knew he was right, a part of me wanted to say, Let’s not be hasty…

William shook his head. “Sorry, but we don’t want the abilities back.”

“What?”

He smiled at me with both regret and joy as he took Serena’s hand. “Yeah, we weren’t going to take them back. We planned this. We don’t want the abilities.”

“You planned this,” I repeated.

“Well, not this. Not ever this.”

“And what is this exactly?”

William looked at Serena, who shook her head slightly. “Let’s just say, we didn’t want to go back.” He pulled Serena close, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“We like your plane,” she said to us.

“Plane,” I said weakly. “You mean…”

“Your plane of reality.”

“Uh-huh.” I was not swallowing this. “And how many ‘planes’ are there?”

“Oh, there’s an infinite number of levels,” William said calmly. “None more real than the next, of course. But this one is good.”

Boggling.

“We just want to stay here, but to stay, we have to pass off our abilities.”

I stared at them. “You can’t just do that. I mean, what would you do without them?” Jesus, I really sounded like I was buying all this.

“Oh, you can keep them. But you can’t stay here on this plane if you do.”

“Oh no,” Kellan said before I could respond. “Hell no.”

“We just don’t want to see you killed for them,” Serena said. “So we have to hide you.”

“Yeah, about that killed thing,” Kellan said.

Serena wrung her hands, and looked worriedly over her shoulder. “We’ll get to that. But we really need to get-”

“Let’s discuss the killed thing first,” Kellan said tightly. “And when I say ‘us,’ I mean you. You discuss. Now.”

“Look, this was supposed to be a safe zone,” Serena said quickly. “The in-between. But…” She winced. “Once in a blue moon, pirates get through. They’re tricky bastards.”

Pirates. Pirates? “Is that why Gert had guns?” I asked in horror.

“Yes,” William said, and shuddered. “Though I don’t believe fighting is the answer.”

“Exactly how many safe zones are there?” Kellan asked. “And how fast can we get to another one?”

“There are only two. The other one is brand-new. It’s in the Bahamas. We wanted a warmer climate,” William explained.

“The Bahamas.” Now why couldn’t Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude have owned a B &B in the Bahamas? See, that would have been a location I could have really gotten behind! “Are there…”

“Pirates?” William supplied helpfully.

“Yes.” I swallowed hard, and tried not to let the words take root in my brain for fear I’d start laughing hysterically and never be able to stop. “Are there pirates there, too?”

“Probably not. They don’t know about the new location yet.”

“So none of that killing thing happening there?”

William shook his head.

I nodded as if this all made perfect sense. “Let’s go there then.”

“Okay.” William nodded in relief. “Good. Outside, quickly.”

“Where we’ll call Jack?” I asked. “Radio him back up here? He can get us to the closest airport, and off we’ll go to the Bahamas, right?”

Serena bit her lower lip.

William slowly shook his head.

Ah hell. I didn’t think so. Because nothing was going to be that damn easy.

“We’ll take you, but we need the laptop.”

“Why?” Kel asked.

“That’s the power-source director.”

“Power-source director?” Kel said.

“It’s…like a TV remote,” William explained. “Gets you set up to go right where you want to go. Otherwise, well, there’s some guesswork involved, and that’s never a good thing.”

Okay, this was just getting weirder and weirder. I looked at Kel, who sighed. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Kel, no-” I said.

“I promise, I’ll be right back.” He squeezed my hand, giving me a long look that said to trust him.

While Kel and Serena ran back upstairs, William and I held our breath, not so much as moving, until they returned. Safe.

For now…

Serena held the laptop.

Kel looked at me again, silently telling me it was going to be okay.

Then I saw the bulge at his hip I had no idea how he’d done it, but he’d grabbed a gun.

Oh God. I tried to keep cool and calm, tried to remain normal, but nothing was normal at all…

Then, from far above came the crash of a door slamming open. Serena jumped, and covered her mouth with shaking fingers. “We don’t have time to get outside and make the emergency swap right now,” she whispered. “They’re here. Hurry.”

William looked so grim and frightened that I stepped into the tunnel with Serena, and after a moment’s hesitation, Kellan did the same.

William shut and bolted the tunnel from the inside, and brought up the rear. It seemed like we walked forever, but in reality, it was probably only a minute before we came to another door. We all went through it, to another small landing and a set of stairs going straight up. William locked the door behind us, and we began to climb.

And climb.

At the fourth landing was another door.

“Getting tired of doors,” Kellan said.

William cautiously opened it, peeked, then gestured Kel and me in ahead of them. As I turned to protest, the trapdoor shut in my face.

And then came the sound of the bolt sliding home.

“This door can’t hold up to my strength,” Kellan warned them on the other side. “You know that.”

“Listen to me,” Serena said urgently through the door. “I know you can burst through this, but you mustn’t. We’re hiding you. We’re trying to protect you. Please, please, believe me. Don’t turn on the light. And do not come out this way!”

Kel put his hand on the door as if tempted to break it down regardless.

I put a hand on his back, and felt his hot, damp muscles leap.

“Just don’t make any noise,” William urged through the door. “They’ve already searched up here. They won’t think to come back. They don’t know about the tunnels. They’re not smart enough to think of it on their own.”

“Let me guess,” Kellan said tightly. “The pirates.”

“Trust me, I hope you never meet them. They can’t stay past dawn’s first light. Plus, they don’t have the abilities you have, so if you just remain quiet and wait them out, it’ll be all right. I promise you.”

It was insane, it was all so insane, and I moved closer to Kellan. Through the door, I could see Serena shift closer to William as well, and bury her head in his shoulder. He hugged her tight, as if comforting her, then looked worriedly at the door. At me. “It’s going to be okay,” he said again, as if he knew I was watching. “Just stay quiet and hidden. We’ll be back for you at dawn.” He looked over his shoulder, peering down the stairs, then took Serena’s hand and vanished back the way we’d come.

Leaving us alone, in the dark.

I was able to see through dark, of course. We were in Hideaway now, I realized. In the attic, which was surprisingly large and stuffed with old furniture and boxes, as if Gertrude maybe had never thrown a single thing away in her very long, ninety-year lifetime. Above us hung a heavy light, some sort of glass chandelier, but I left it off.

Kellan sneezed, then turned on his flashlight. Dust danced eerily in the narrow beam of light, and he sneezed again.

Neither Kel’s flashlight nor my vision were able to penetrate the far-reaching corners, where shadows seemed to lurk, and I scooted toward him.

With a sigh, he tugged me close. “What’s this?” He reached beneath my sweatshirt, pulling out the Blackberry. “Ah, good thinking.” He slipped it in his back pocket, and hugged me again. “Never a dull moment with you,” he said, and pressed his cheek to the top of my head.