Cheat the Grave (23 page)

“Oh, hell no.” The syllables scratched the air like stencils.

“That's what you get for flinging around a prayer wheel,” I muttered, standing cautiously and trying to blink away the reality before me. But there was no blinking it away.

I was in Midheaven. Again.

I couldn't tell who'd called me. Between the whirring of the prayer wheel's chain cutting air like newly sharpened shears, it had been a fractured sound, like a computer getting a hard boot. But at least I knew where I was.

Another elemental room, I thought, glancing about, my breath echoing hollowly in the tinny air. What else could it be? It was both as shockingly ornate as the odd water room, and as mysterious as Solange's fire room, yet singularly different than both. Weighed down beneath the scents of verdant foliage and humidity, it would have also been as dim as a late-lying sunset were it not for the twinkling lights strung across drooping boughs by the hundreds. A tentative, almost playful breeze pressed against me, and I shivered as I glanced up at a ceiling hidden by viny whips and a cover of evergreen and pine. More lights winked like stars between the branches, and I shivered again, recalling Solange's sky of soul-encrusted stars.

But how the hell did I get here? Shen had told me on my last go-round with the elemental rooms that drugs were what allowed incorporeal passage into this world.

Apparently incense and a prayer wheel counted.

And what about calling forth the world in my mind? I hadn't called Midheaven to me; I hadn't even been thinking about it.

No. Just about someone living here.
Rolling my eyes at my own stupidity, I searched for some other sort of exit while trying to forget Diana's helpful addendum: that I needed someone to pull me back out of the world in case Solange found me here.

Flat, stone-topped lanterns were tucked amid the greenery, while topiaries and pyramid-shaped shrubs popped up like the heads of curious gnomes. Centered was a small lawn with a gravel pathway cutting the middle, while a small pond sparkling with refracted light sat to my right. Moss in every shade of green climbed boulders slick with algae, and a cluster of wild roses burst brightly from verdant thistle where berries also glistened with dew.

Yet all was not nature and silva. Curving chaises and concrete lounge chairs dotted the small space, and baroque chandeliers swung from the lowermost branches of the accommodating pines. Seductive statues cast inquisitive glances my way, and wrought-iron side tables were layered in lace and pastel spun silk.

The coup de grace was the giant stone table tucked beneath a Japanese cherry tree caught in full bloom. A tiered tray held finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, quiche, and tiny pastel petit fours tucked between slivers of white cake. A mirrored side buffet sported crystal goblets and flutes, and a perfect mismatching of gorgeous bone china.

“A fucking tea party.” My metallic mutter skipped sound waves like a rock.

“You'd prefer a latte from the drive-through, I suppose?”

I'd been anticipating an appearance by the dangerous rulers of this pretty little world, and whirled to run smack into the chest of an all-too-real, and apparently bemused,
Hunter Lorenzo. He quirked a brow, and steadied me with one hand.

“Of course.” I pulled away, trying to hide my shock, my alarm. My
pleasure
. “I'm American.”

He merely motioned to the tea set. I looked around, waiting for ambush or at least to wake up. Nothing happened, so I inched past a fern floor and moved farther into the garden. “Tricked-out pad,” I said lightly, though my heart was pounding, making my throat tight.

“The earth room,” he said, confirming my prior suspicions. His voice was as leaden as mine. “Whatever you used to induce the dream state must have been from the dust.”

I'd been right about the incense then, I thought, frowning. And the drugs Carlos had given me the first time were disguised in drink…thus calling forth the water room. I didn't even want to know what I needed to bring on fire.

I tried to meet Hunter's gaze, but after working so hard to push even the thought of him away, his sudden appearance was jarring. His eyes were warmly intense, destroying the illusion that I'd let go of this man emotionally. I hadn't. Not even a bit.

As usual, I covered my discomfort with attitude. “So why are you here?” I asked, crossing my arms.

He took in my body language, blinking fast like he too was making a mental adjustment, and lifted his chin. “We're both a part of this world now,” he said softly.

“So that means what? I'm at your mercy? I'm trapped and have to wait until you and your
wife
decide to let me go.”

He tilted his head. “Don't you have an anchor grounding you back home?”

“I didn't mean to come here.”

“No wonder she's so angry.” His brow furrowed, and for the first time he looked unreal, as if the expression was pressed upon his face like putty, altering a moment
after he willed it. Did I look the same? “We really are connected …”

His gaze flitted to my lips, then back to my eyes. I thought about the way he'd strung me along, pulling me in until the very end. Even in the moments before forever leaving Las Vegas for Midheaven proper, when trapped in a tunnel before the rushlight that would ferry him to Solange—his wife, his grail—he'd played on our intimacy.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with you. Not even in the darkest corner of that beautiful soul.

No, I thought now. There's not. But there's something wrong with someone who could equally want, love, two women. I didn't believe that was possible, and getting my life back meant letting go of every impossibility. If friends were the family we choose, then it was time to let Hunter go completely. He'd been no friend to me.

“No, Hunter,” I said coldly. “We're not even from the same world.”

His jaw clenched at that. His nostrils flared. It was a wonderful display of masculine pique. “Who's Carlos?”

I drew back. “What?”

“Carlos. You called out his name the last time you were here. You called for him to help you.” His voice was so strained it almost made me laugh. Was he jealous? While biding in another world, locked in his new/old lover's embrace?

“Carlos is a friend.” A real one.

“How—” He broke off and cleared his throat. I thought he was going to ask how long I'd known Carlos, but he switched it up on me. “How long have I been gone?”

“Ten weeks.” And three days.

A shudder moved through his entire body.

“Over here?” I asked, because time passed differently in Midheaven. It ran backward or sideways…by some other means than that which flipped the earth around its axis.

“I've counted only two days.” And the strain in his voice meant he'd been counting hard, almost as if the loss of his
life on the other side of the tunnel system—the one he'd so freely left behind—pained him. It made me frown.

It made him irritable. When he opened his eyes again, the worry had already been shuttered. “Ten weeks, huh? Shit, the weather probably hasn't even changed, and you've already found a new ‘friend.'”

“Well, I'm just like the weather,
Jaden.
You just don't know when it's going to change.”

“So what's the forecast now?”

“Cloudy,” I said. “With a good chance of fuck you.”

“So, the usual,” he said dryly.

It made me want to smile, so I bit my lip against it.

Hunter stared a moment longer before his expression cleared, and then he strode to the table…and poured me some tea.

O-kay, I thought, still casting glances into the surrounding rain forest as I followed and lowered myself to the stone bench opposite him. Inhaling deeply, I scented cloves and leaves and flowers, pressed and steamed into a pulpy death, and realized my sense of smell was still powerful over here. The strong mixture was almost as relaxing as chanting.

“Don't you have to ask permission to enter the earth room? Get a hall pass or something from the wifey?”

His face hardened as much as it could in its strange putty state. “I stole your gem from Solange's planetarium. All I had to do then was wait for your return.”

I gave him the same look I would have had he told me Santa was real. He'd stolen from a woman even the other matriarchs in this world feared? “And what would be worth that risk?” I asked coolly.

His returned gaze was funeral sad. It made me feel like I'd been the one to trample what was between us underfoot, which was ridiculous. I should have blurted out then what had happened to me in the time since he'd left, but for some reason I didn't yet want to confess to him my mortal state. Maybe I'd just have some tea first.

Hunter returned his attention to his cup, but instead of pouring black tea as he had in mine, the same pot spit out a hot, sugary brew of cardamom and ginger and creamy milk. One side of his mouth quirked at my astonished stare as he returned the pot to the table's center. “You can have anything you wish when you're dreaming, right?”

“Is that why you look like you?” I asked suddenly, lowering my cup. He was the Hunter I'd known, lithe and coiled strength beneath burnished skin, glossy black hair pulled into a low, blunt club. Jaden Jacks was more imposing, with his shock of bleached hair above a frame so large it almost burst. He was more like what you'd think a superhero would look like. Except, I thought, for those sun-spun eyes. Those hadn't changed at all.

“In dreams you become as you wish to be.”

I didn't know what that meant, and it made it sound like this was as much his dream as mine. So I concentrated on what I did know.

“You should have told me who you were,” I said, setting down my cup so suddenly it clattered against its saucer.

“I told you what truth I could.”

“Which part was truth, Hunter?” The part where he made love to me but was thinking of Solange? When he claimed he could tell me apart from any other woman by touch alone? Or was it when he told me the Light inside me was magnified because of the Shadow?

I waved my hand in the air, dismissing the subject before he could answer. It no longer mattered.

Not looking at me, Hunter took a deep breath, then paused. A moment later he tried again. “I once told you drinking almost killed me a decade ago, remember?”

I nodded, but didn't tell him that I'd read the manual called
Dark Matters.
That I already knew about the night Solange nearly drove a tomahawk through his chest.

Solange then. Solange
now
.

“Well, it was really only three years past my metamor
phosis. I was twenty-eight, in my prime. I was seduced, blindsided by…
her
.”

He shot me a meaningful glance, which told me he didn't want to say Solange's name. Names had power no matter what realm you inhabited. They could call a person to you, and alert them to your presence. Since he'd stolen a gem from her sky of stars, and was now having tea with the woman whose soul he held, I didn't blame him.

My own voice fell to a whisper. “And why couldn't you tell me that much?”

“Warren forbade it. And no one else in the troop knew. Warren wiped the memory of what I'd done from all minds but mine.” Eyes unfocused, he ran a hand over his head, pulling loose a few strands. “That was my punishment for succumbing to a Shadow.”

I believed that. On the night I'd given up all my powers, Warren told me he'd known Hunter would be attracted to me. He said that I, a half Shadow, was just Hunter's type. Saying nothing, I glanced around the garden—the strange amalgamation of English Victorian and Asian chic—and sighed.

“Does it help at all to know I'd have told you the truth if possible?”

I jerked my head. “It only makes me wonder what else you were lying about.”

He bit his lower lip, eyes saying,
Not us
.

To refute, I motioned around the room.

Hunter leaned on his forearms and closed his eyes. Opening them again, he looked resigned. “I need to tell you about…it. About that night. I have to tell you all of it.”

“Over scones?” I asked acidly before shaking my head.

“I must. I—”

“I saw it!” I pounded the pretty stone table with my fist. “I read the manual. I saw the way you met in the bar, the fight”—the
lovemaking
—“atop the car. Everything! It was all there.”

“It's recorded now?” He winced, the expressive cringe a half second behind the impulse creating it. It made me wince in return. “Of course it is.”

The events were over, and the open knowledge wouldn't affect either the Shadow or the Light. Thus Hunter had no more secrets to hide, though somehow it made him look vulnerable. He ducked his head, nodding to himself, then dared a glance up. “And what about…the rest?”

Slowly, I licked my lips. “What do you mean?”

“Doesn't it make even a little difference?”

“I didn't read the whole fucking manual, Hunter.” He opened his mouth to protest and I held up a palm. “I don't want to know what happened, okay? I don't care about your reasons.”

“But—”

“I don't need to know why you left me, only that you did!” It was out of my mouth so fast I jerked backward. Damn it!

Hunter's gaze softened. “Jo—”

“No!” My turn to shake my head, and I did so. Hard. “We had another conversation once. After you kept me from slaying Regan in front of Ben.”

I stared down at the dark warm liquid cupped in my palms, remembering Regan, dead and harmless now, though she certainly hadn't been then. She'd taken on an appearance similar to mine in order to seduce my childhood love. She'd known their lovemaking would kill me. Yet the only way to stop her would have been to put an arrow through her chest during the act…and that would have destroyed Ben. Hunter saved me from the decision by spiriting me away. And that night was the first that we'd made love.

I glanced back up at him, knowing we were remembering the same thing. “I told you then that I hoped someone, someday, would feel as strongly toward you as I did for Ben.”