Charade (2 page)

It was his turn to sigh. “Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You look happy. You look real good, Hev.”

“So why do you hate Sam?”

He pushed away from the car his chest puffing out, just slightly. His aura burst in deep, bright colors. “I’m not sure you’re safe with that guy.”

“I’m safe with Sam. Trust me.” I was alive because of Sam.

He regarded me seriously for a moment, then hooked his hand around the back of my head and drew me forward. His palm pressed my cheek against his chest and he wrapped his arms around me for a hard hug.

“What’s the matter, Cole?” I mumbled against his chest.

I felt his deep breath and he squeezed me tighter before releasing me. “I don’t know.” He sighed heavily and the color of uncertainty burst around his head. “I just feel like something is going on; I don’t understand it. I can’t help but feel like I need to protect you.”

I didn’t say anything; I didn’t know what to say. Concern marred his features and I could sense he truly was puzzled. The uncertainty nagged at him. I could see the toll that it was beginning to take. Maybe Sam and I weren’t concealing everything that was happening as well as we thought. “Everything is okay with me. I promise.” My stomach cramped at the lie.

He only wanted to protect me. He was sweet. But it was also a tiny bit frustrating because everyone wanted to protect me. No one thought I was capable of protecting myself. Except maybe Kimber. The thought of my best friend had me pulling away from her boyfriend.

“I have to go.”

He nodded and opened the door for me. When I was buckled in and ready to go, he was still standing next to the car. I rolled the window down, he put his forearms on the door and leaned in. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine.” Even as I said it, I checked the rearview mirror, making sure there was no one there. Cole’s eyes followed mine, then snapped back to me. Did he somehow know that I was in danger? The magenta around his head suddenly deepened and spread outward. The color was stunning and mysterious, and strangely, it made me want to comfort him. I put a hand up onto his forearm and squeezed. “Really, I’m going to be fine.”

He nodded and handed my sunglasses back to me. I forgot he even had them. “Thanks,” I murmured, slipping them on.

“Are you working later?”

“No. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Free ice cream?” he asked, grinning.

I laughed. “Sure. Come by.”

“See you later.” He looked like he might say something else, but then he stepped back and motioned for me to drive.

He watched me until I was out of sight.

Where are you?

I smiled.
On my way to see you.

Are you all right? Any problems?

No.
I looked in the rearview once again, just to make sure
.
Looks like for today I was safe.

How long?
I could feel his agitation, his worry. I hated it. I had been out in town all morning and his nerves were stretched thin. Sam didn’t like the thought of me going around alone, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He had to work and I needed to have a life.

Five minutes tops.
My response seemed to take the edge off his nerves and I sighed. Having a Mindbond with Sam was amazing. We could talk whenever we wanted, no matter the distance between us. Even in a room full of people, we could have a private conversation. I thought back to just last week when we were at yet another one of Kimber’s legendary lake parties and I needed to be rescued from a seriously lame conversation. I thought it was cool I didn’t have to invent any kind of eye roll or code word so that he would know I needed saving. I just yelled “Help!” really loud in my head. Then I realized that was NOT the thing to yell when demons from Hell were attacking me at random. The minute I yelled the word, extreme adrenaline and anxiety rushed through my body. I would have stumbled had I not already been used to being overcome by Sam’s emotions.

Sam and I are so closely linked with the Mindbond that when we are in the same space, our strong emotions “bleed” through to each other. He had come barreling through the people and practically knocked everyone in my group down. It had definitely gotten me out of a lame conversation, but it had also gotten us some weird looks. I grinned to myself. We have a code word now for rescuing each other from lame conversations.

I pulled onto the narrow dirt road that led to the boat rental shack where Sam was working this afternoon. My stomach fluttered a bit in anticipation of seeing him. Even though I had just seen him this morning and spent all night in his arms, I was still excited for that first moment that my eyes would meet his. There was no other feeling like it; there were no words to describe it. I smiled at the thought of inventing such a word.

I parked the car on a patch of grass shaded by a large tree and hurried to turn off the engine and shove the keys into my bag. I shut the door behind me and turned to face the little shack, my eyes already seeking Sam’s smile. He was down by the water watching a couple in a boat paddling out of sight. He turned slowly, drawing out my anticipation and making my heart thump unevenly.

We were staring at each other from across the soft expanse of bright green grass. My heart stopped altogether and a delicious warmth curled my toes and spread up, restarting my heart when it reached my chest. I raced forward, desperately wanting to close the distance between us. He was faster of course, reaching me in seconds, picking me up and swinging me around before catching me in a huge bear hug. I laughed. He squeezed harder and I squealed. He chuckled, planted me on my feet, and looked down.

I was nervous that he might not like my new style, but then I realized that
I
did and my nerves fell away. I smiled confidently as he slid his fingers through my locks and tugged at the corner of the side-swept bang. “I didn’t think you could get any prettier.” His voice was deep and raspy and it raised tiny goose flesh along my skin. “But you did.”

I grabbed his wrists and kissed him, standing up on tiptoe to press myself as close as humanly possible.
I missed you this morning.

Me too, Hev. Me too.

Suddenly, he pulled back, breaking off our kiss. I pressed my lips together, trying to make it last just seconds longer. “You were with Cole?”

My eyes shot up to his at his accusatory tone. “Yes… no.” I shook my head trying to banish the haze of fog his lips left in my head.

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me. I glanced just beyond his shoulder, my eyes landing on a fish jumping in the lake. “I wasn’t
with
him. I just ran into him in the parking lot of the hair salon.”

His whiskey-colored eyes narrowed and I felt his anger.

“How did you even know?” I mumbled. I didn’t like when he got mad at me and I looked away again. The water was still rippling with the force of the fish’s jump. Must have been a big one… yet, it hadn’t really looked like a fish, in fact, it looked like…

“You smell like him,” Sam said, his voice hard, drawing me out of my thoughts and tugging my eyes back to his face. “What was Cole doing at the hair salon?”

“Getting a perm and some highlights.” I giggled. Sam didn’t seem amused. I let out an exasperated breath. “He works at the grocery store next door!” I demanded. Who cared anyway? Sam let out a gruff sound and then muttered something about Cole always being around, but I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the water again. Something wasn’t right.

Something was slithering closer to the shore, and the way it moved along the surface of the water half-in, half-out was creepy and odd. I watched as its long tail propelled it faster. Its skin was bumpy and green like a crocodile’s. Except we didn’t have crocodiles in Maine. “Sam,” I whispered, but Sam was still muttering and making noise about Cole.

I watched as the thing rose completely out of the water, standing on two legs, and I gasped. In one fluid motion, Sam turned, tucking me behind him. I thought I heard him sigh before his back went ramrod straight and his body began to quiver.

I peeked around him to look. It was a crocodile. At least half of it was. The other half was a man. From the waist down, the crocodile man was green and scaly with a long, curving tail and wide feet tipped with sharp claws. From the waist up, he had skin that was olive toned and shiny with slime. His fingers were gnarled and crooked, and he didn’t stand straight, but hunched over like his short reptile legs couldn’t support his weight. His face was more disturbing than his half-man, half-reptile body. His nose was overly long and hooked, and his eyes were a flat-black color that stared at me with a surprising amount of hatred, considering how vacant they looked. His skin was not smooth, but rough, suggesting scales where there were none. He had no eyebrows. In fact, he had no hair at all and his aura was white.

All these things had white auras.

The absolute worst color an aura could be.

“Go hide in the office,” Sam told me, not taking his eyes off the advancing creature.

I stifled the urge to argue. He knew how I felt about hiding while he took on all the danger. I splayed my palm along his back, spreading my fingers wide, while I debated my options.

Please, Hev. Don’t make me worry.

I exhaled and stepped out from behind him to run toward the rental shack. Now wasn’t the time to argue. The creature let out a long, loud hiss, planted himself firmly on his short crocodile legs, and tossed his tail in my direction. To my horror, he had a tail like Gumby that stretched with the force of his throw and I stared, frozen, as the thing wrapped around my feet and began to tug me closer.

His scales were slimy like his skin.

With a roar, Sam, now a sleek black hellhound, pounced and used his razor-sharp claws to sever the thing’s tail. The crocodile man screamed in anger or agony, I couldn’t tell, and he fell forward to land on all fours. I watched in horror as it scurried across the ground toward me. I shivered because it moved like a spider. Sam wasn’t having any of it and rushed forward, landing directly on top of him as the demon thrashed about. A long tongue darted out of his mouth and began to wind around Sam’s neck. Panic built up in me as I struggled to escape the tail, which was still wrapped around me amazingly tight. I struggled for what seemed like hours, desperately wanting to be free to help Sam.

I heard a sharp tearing sound and looked up just in time to see the creature’s head splash into the lake.

I stopped struggling.

It was over.

I couldn’t stop the tears that slipped down my face, so I settled for swiping them away quickly, hoping Sam wouldn’t have to see them.

He came to me, his skin slick with sweat and slime from the creature, his pair of running shorts hastily pulled on backwards. I managed to get one foot untangled from the crocodile tail and was fighting with the other. Sam reached down, gently removing my hands and then grabbed the tail and yanked. It gave way, curling around his arm. He made a disgusted sound and jogged to the lake, throwing it out into the center, following the creature’s horrid face, where it sank out of sight.

“Are you all right?” he asked, returning to my side to run his hands over me, checking for injuries that weren’t there.

“I’m fine.”

He kept checking.

“Sam.” I took hold of his hands and squeezed. “I’m not hurt.”

His shoulders slumped as he pulled me close, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I never meant to allow it to touch you,” he said. “It’s tail…”

I shuddered. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said and pulled me along with him into the shack where he pulled a T-shirt out of his backpack and shrugged it on. “Where’s the scroll?” he asked in a clipped tone.

I grimaced and pulled it from my bag.

He groaned. “Heven, I told you to stop carrying it around everywhere with you.”

“I can’t just leave it at home,” I protested. “Gran was home. What if something went there for it?”

“Just give it to me.”

“I can’t.” I felt like it belonged to me.

He groaned again and swiped his hand through his already messy dark-blond hair. It stood out all over his head. “You know I’ll protect it.”

I knew he would protect the scroll. With his life. All the more reason that I couldn’t give it to him. It would put an even bigger target on his back. Then there was the other reason I didn’t want him to have it…

“Heven?” He did a great job disguising the vulnerability in his voice. I would have never known it was there without the Mindbond.

I closed the distance between us, forgetting the conversation and momentarily letting go of my fear for his safety; my only thought was to soothe and reassure him. “I trust you.” I moved forward, cupping his face in my hands. “Of course, I do,” I murmured, lifting my chin until I could reach his lips with mine.

He accepted my kisses and returned them with a fervor that boiled my blood. It was enough to erase away the past few horrible moments.

“Then why won’t you let me have it?” His finger trailed down the length of my nose.

I guess my kissing wasn’t as good as his because he deftly stayed on topic. I sighed and pulled away. “I don’t want you in danger and…”

“And,” he prompted.

“I’m attached to it, okay?” I flung the words at him, exasperated.

His lips lifted in a silent smile.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t stand the thought of not having it.”

It was his turn to sigh. “At least stop wearing the key that opens it, huh?”

I looked down at the bracelet around my wrist and all the keys dangling from it. I guess that wasn’t my smartest move. All a demon would have to do is knock me out, then take the scroll
and
the key to open it. Something told me Airis would not be happy. A giggle escaped me. “Not too smart, am I?”

“Of course you are,” Sam said, hooking me around the waist and towing me toward him.

I wrinkled my nose.
I’ll stop wearing the key around.

Good plan.
Now, if I could only think of a way to keep from being attacked by demons on a daily basis.