Out of This World (19 page)

“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.

“I
've decided there's something to be said for dull,” I said. “Dull's the new excitement.” My voice wavered. It was all getting to me. My stomach jangled, my knees wobbled. “I really miss dull,” I whispered.

Kel tried to study me in the darkness. “What's going on, Rach?”

“I'm cursing the day I thought I needed adventure and got on a plane. And when I say ‘plane,' I mean airplane, not level of reality. You?”

“I meant, what can you see?”

“Oh.” I sighed, and looked around with my new-and-improved vision. “Well, we're in the attic.”

“Where is everyone else?”

I looked at the floor and saw through it. Nothing on the level beneath us. And nothing on the floor below that. But on the bottom floor…“Omigod.”

“What?”

“Two men in the kitchen, standing in front of the freezer, eating—
Hey!
They're eating the cookies!” Then I saw more, and fear froze me to the very core. “They're armed.”

“Okay.” Kel sounded unhappy about this news. “Where are Axel and Marilee, and William and Serena?”

I searched. “I don't see anyone else. My God, do you think they're all okay?”

“Well, they have the laptop.”

“Yes.” My voice sounded small. “I hope they don't go to the Bahamas without us.”

“I don't know if they can. We have the abilities.” He grimaced. “That's getting easier to say, which scares me.”

“Kel, what's going to happen to us?”

He reached for something tucked into his waistband: the gun he'd taken from Gert's.

“Kel.” I swallowed hard. “Can you actually use that?”

“Maybe not with any finesse, but if it comes right down to it, I'll do what needs to be done.” He said this with just enough grimness that I knew he meant it. “I need you to keep an eye out. If our unwelcome guests start upstairs—”

“Oh my God.”

“Will said they already searched up here. Let's just try the stay-quiet thing.” He tucked the gun back into his waistband and pulled out the Blackberry. “Time to make this thing give us some answers.”

The glow from the small screen lit up the dark. Kel's face became visible, and I looked at him, so familiar, so damn important to me.
I'd
gotten us into this. If we died here…
God.
My throat closed. “Kel.”

“Hang on.” He was working the buttons, oblivious. I could see his fingers, and the cuts on them from putting his fist through two doors now, and I took his hand.

He glanced at me, eyes blind in the dark. “What?”

“Just making sure you're okay.” I ran a finger over his palm.

“It's you I'm worried about.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said softly. “Always have.”

“I know. But that doesn't make it easier.”

“You're not alone in worrying, you know. I do it, too.”

His gaze searched mine in the dark. “Do you?”

I could barely speak past the ball of emotion. “So much, Kel.”

His eyes never wavered. “I'm never sure what you think, when it comes to me. And you and me.”

“I guess that's fair,” I managed to say with a little smile. “Since I've pretty much been confused about that since we got here. You're, um, not my usual type.”

“Yeah, you've dated some real winners.”

I opened my mouth, but at the look on his face, and the knowledge deep down inside that he was right, I shut it again. “So I've had some wild oats to sow.”

“A few.”

“As my friend, you're supposed to give me unsolicited opinions. It's an unspoken pact of our relationship. You could have tried to talk me out of a few of them.”

“Rach, has anyone ever successfully talked you out of anything?”

“Okay, I'm a little stubborn.”

“A little?”

“Kel.” I shook my head. “Sometimes…I'm not sure what it is you want from me.”

His smile faded, his eyes letting the heat shine through, just plain, primitive, raw emotion that told me exactly what he did want: me. On a platter.

The man made my knees wobble without saying a word. “Kel—”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don't want to go there again.”

“But…” I put words to my biggest fear. “If we don't get out of here—”

“We're going to get out. Trust me, you're going to live to torture me another day.”

I'd always been aware of him having a crush on me, but he'd never put it to words, and I certainly never had. I think the truth was, I'd always felt terrified that if he did say anything, it'd mean the end of our relationship, which had always meant everything to me.
Everything.

And now I could lose him anyway. “You want—”

“Nothing. I want nothing from you.”

“No, don't do that. I want to be honest; I need you to be honest. You don't want to have a causal thing with me, and my first instinct is to run, because I haven't done anything deep when it comes to men. The deepest I've ever done is—”

“Cade.”

A fellow painter I'd dated for three months before finding him in bed with his roommate. For me, it'd been a passionate affair, and I'd mistaken lust for love. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. “No.”

“Devlin, then.”

The Harley-driving bartender. I'd met him after I'd painted a mural in his bar. We'd burned hot and cold for a few months, before his intensity had scared me away. Well, that, and his habit of drinking himself into a coma at night. “No.”

“Then—”

“You,” I said, and drew a deep breath at that admission. “You, Kel.”

His startlingly blue eyes didn't waver. “But we never mixed friendship with anything more.”

“But our friendship…it's the deepest, most important relationship with a man I've ever had,” I admitted. “It's why I'm afraid to screw it up by adding…”

“More.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, and turned in a slow, frustrated circle. “So you can't give anything else, and I can't take less. Hell of a place to be.”

Oh God. I was losing him. “Good things don't last, Kel—”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh really?” I put my hands on my hips, not that he could see me. “What was the last relationship you had that lasted?”

“My relationships have all been good ones.”

“But none lasted,” I persisted.

He stared at me. “You're saying what then? That you can sleep with a guy but not get to know him, or you can get to know him but not sleep with him?”

Well, when he put it like that, I sounded as crazy as my great-great-aunt Gertrude. “It's made for some pretty limiting relationships,” I allowed.

“This weekend is a bit of a departure for you then. Sleeping with a good friend.”

“You knew it was.”

“So when I told you this was a bad idea…”

“I know.” I covered my face. “I'm sorry, but…”

“But what? You were just carried away? By my…what did you call it? Animal magnetism?”

He sounded frustrated and hurt, because that was the part of himself that he'd gained here, with the swap. Or so he thought. I was beginning to see he'd had it all along, though I had no way of proving that to him. “Kel—”

“No, it's all right. I get it.” He went back to the Blackberry, jabbing at it a little harder than necessary.

“It has nothing to do with you,” I insisted. “It's me, and my inability—”

“More BS.” He looked up, his eyes dark and full of temper. “You have the ability to do anything you want. Look, let's talk about something that's helpful, like how to access some info—Well. Look at that…”

“What?”

“Did Gert ever e-mail you?”

“No, I doubt she even knew how.”

“Oh, she knew how.” He showed me the screen, which revealed e-mail files for Gert, Marilee and Axel. He opened Axel's.

I stared at it for a moment as the ramifications fell into place. “But Axel said he didn't know how to use a computer.”

“Read,” Kel suggested, and I turned the screen more fully toward me so I could.

Kel pulled up the reply.

A smiley-face emoticon came after this, animated and bouncing up and down.

And he must have, because there were no more e-mail messages in the file. Kel clicked on Gert's file.

“What did Marilee reply?”

Kellan looked, but eventually shook his head. “I don't think she did before Gert died.”

“They all talk about this swap thing like…like it's normal,” I said unevenly. “And what the hell happened? How did we become the unwitting hosts? They can't just do that.”

“But they did. Look at this one.”

I stared at it. “Alt-uni?”

“No idea,” Kellan said, then combed through some other files. “Huh. Look at this. It's labeled Alt-Uni: Rules.”

 

Iron-clad rules, punishable by banishment:

• No swapping with unsuspectings.

• No stealing of abilities.

• No swapping for longer than three days.

• Pirates are to be shot on sight.

 

I gulped hard. “Pirates.”

Kellan scowled. “Unsuspectings.”

“Shot on sight. What the hell is that?”

Kellan slipped an arm around me and shook his head. “Really don't know. And really don't like not knowing.”

“It's like we're in some Harry Potter world. And I want out.”

“Where is everyone? Can you see?”

I focused, then felt my heart kick hard. “I don't see anyone. Nothing moving at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but why?” Panic filled me again. What was happening to the others? Were they okay? Damn, I was so darn tired of the fear. “Kel, maybe we should make a run for it.”