Tales of the Otherworld (10 page)

Another shake of his head. “Pretty words, Miss Levine, but if you truly believed them, you’d leave this table and catch the next bus out of Los Angeles. Your very existence threatens them and their future. Stay with you, and their father will be ruined, and they’ll be ruined with him. I won’t let that happen. My son may be a grown man, able to make his own mistakes. His sons don’t have that choice. They need someone to protect them. That someone will be me.”

My hands clenched under the table. I knew what was coming. I told myself I was wrong—he wouldn’t dare—but when he opened his mouth, I knew what would come out.

“If my son wants to be with you, so be it. He can leave. But he won’t take his sons with him. Kristof will be given a choice. His sons or you.”

“And to hell with what Kristof wants.”

He met my gaze. “Yes, Miss Levine. To hell with what Kristof wants.
I love my son. His happiness, though, must come second to the future of this company and of my family, and I will protect that, even if it costs me my son.”

He stood. “If you’re still in Los Angeles by the end of the week, I’ll tell my son that I know about the affair. I’ll give him his choice.”

I wanted to fight. God, how I wanted to. I’ve spent my whole life fighting, yet the fire never burned as hot as it did that day. Fight for what I wanted. Fight for what I needed. Only I couldn’t. Thomas Nast had cornered me.

I couldn’t let Kristof make that choice. He’d pick his sons. He had to. That’s the man I’d fallen in love with and I expected no less. But he wouldn’t accept it. He
would
fight, with everything he had, but it wouldn’t be enough, and eventually he’d lose, and all he could hope for then would be to salvage the very option he’d been given in the first place. Take his sons. Let me go.

He’d never forgive himself for losing that battle, so I couldn’t let him wage it. I had to do the honorable thing.

Had I ever thought that running away could
be
the honorable choice? Yet it was. If there was one thing I admired about Kristof above everything else, it was his relationship with his sons. He was the kind of parent I’d dreamed of having, and I’d never take that from his boys.

I had to let Kristof keep his sons, his family, his job, everything that mattered to him and take away what he could most afford to lose. Me.

Don’t let him know what his father did. Don’t let him know there ever was a choice. And, above all, don’t let him know I was carrying his child.

We’d thought this baby would be the solution. Now I realized just how blind we’d been. There was no way Thomas Nast would accept a grandchild with a witch mother. If he found out, he’d make sure I suffered a fatal accident before I could give birth.

For Kristof’s sake and for the sake of his children—all three of them—I had to go. Just go.

It wasn’t that easy, of course. I had to let him know. I spent hours writing a note, over and over, saying everything I wanted to say. Telling him how much he meant to me. Telling him how much it was killing me to leave.

I wanted to thank him, too. For everything he’d done. I wasn’t the same person he’d met a year ago. I was stronger, wiser,
deeper
, and I owed that to him.

But I couldn’t say any of that, because then he’d know I hadn’t left of my own will. He’d come after me and we’d be right back in this position, facing that choice. If I truly loved him, then I had to let him think I’d left because I wanted to. I had to be willing to let him hate me.

The only thing I could keep was the memories. No, that wasn’t the only thing. I let my hand rest on my stomach. I’d been allowed to keep one small part of him, and I was grateful for that. More grateful than I ever could have imagined.

So I wrote my note. Only two words.
Thank you.
Then I folded the page, left it where he’d find it, picked up my bag, and walked out.

L
OGAN PEERED OUT THE CAR WINDOW AT THE
long wooded drive. Then he lifted the sheet of paper and double-checked the address. He didn’t need to check. He’d already memorized the entire note. Easy enough—there were only ten words, including the address.

The first contact he’d ever had with his father, and this was all he got. Ten words.

The note had arrived on Logan’s eighteenth birthday, couriered to his college dorm room. He’d thought it was from his mother, a birthday check tucked inside a generic “for my son” card. He didn’t mind the check—he always needed money—and it was better than the equally generic gifts she bought when she made the effort. Susanna Jonsen didn’t know her children well enough to guess what they’d like. Some women just aren’t cut out to be mothers, and unfortunately it had taken Susanna three kids to realize she was one of them.

Logan considered himself the luckiest of the three. When he was two, his mother had met his stepfather, who hadn’t wanted a stepson of questionable parentage, so Logan had gone to live with his maternal grandparents. He’d grown up, if not with much money, with the kind of love and stability his mother couldn’t offer.

He’d opened the envelope only to find another one inside. On it, written in barely legible black strokes: “For my son—important medical information.” It wasn’t his mother’s spidery, precise writing, so it had to
be from his father, a man Logan had never met. He only knew that he’d been dark-skinned—probably African American—and that only because it was obvious that Logan’s brown skin didn’t come from his Norwegian mother. As for details, his mother refused to elaborate.

“He wasn’t nothing but a sperm donor,” she’d say. “Took off the day I told him you were coming. Don’t spend another minute thinking about him, because he doesn’t deserve it.”

Of course, Logan did think about his father, and for the past two years he’d had cause to think about him more and more. Something was wrong with him, medically wrong—something his doctor laughed off with a slap on the back, saying, “It’s puberty, boy, you’re supposed to be changing.”

When Logan saw that envelope, he knew he’d been right. Whatever condition he had, it was the legacy of his long-vanished father.

Then he’d paused a moment, envelope in hand, as the implications hit. His father knew where he was. Not only remembered him, but knew his birthday, knew he was here, at college.

Logan had ripped open the envelope, reached inside, and plucked out a piece of note paper. On it, a name and address. That’s it—just someone’s address.

This address.

He let the car roll forward and craned to peer through the thick evergreens, but if there was a house at the end of that winding laneway, he couldn’t see it.

He knew this was the right place. Passing through the town of Bear Valley, he’d stopped at the doughnut shop, ostensibly for coffee, but really to learn what he could about Jeremy Danvers.

They hadn’t been able to tell him much, just that Danvers lived with his cousin and the two “kept to themselves,” but that Danvers was “good folk,” whatever that meant around here.

The only reason he was still in the car, at the end of the lane, was that he was stalling. He was afraid of what he’d find at the top of this drive—or what he wouldn’t find. The most obvious answer was that this Jeremy Danvers
was
his father. Logan didn’t know how he’d handle that. Worse, though, he didn’t know how he’d handle the disappointment if it
wasn’t
him.

He took a deep breath, then slammed the car into reverse and hit the gas. Dust billowed up as he zoomed backward on the dirt shoulder. One more deep breath, then he roared into the driveway.

The first thing Logan noticed as he stepped from the car was the smell of trees. A year ago, if anyone had told him trees had a smell, he’d have laughed and said, “I’ve never gotten close enough to sniff one.”

He’d been raised in the city, with no interest in things like hiking, camping, or fishing. He’d never even gone to summer camp. Then, almost a year ago, he’d been cutting across campus and picked up a smell as alluring as Gramma’s cinnamon rolls. He’d followed it and found himself in a stand of trees.

He’d stood there, drinking in the sharp tang of greenery and the loamy smell of damp earth, and he’d known this was what a forest smelled like. He recognized the scent from his dreams, the ones he’d started having almost two years ago. Dreams of the forest, of running.

Sometimes in the dreams he was being chased, heart pounding, feet pounding, blood pounding as he ran, knowing he couldn’t stop, if he did stop they’d—

That’s where the dream always ended. He never knew who they were or what they’d do, only that he had to be prepared, he had to take shelter, and that shelter wasn’t just a “where”—it was a “who.” He chalked it up to anxiety. His last year of high school, then his first of college, of course he was stressed, and some days it felt like the whole world was against him, determined to keep his ambitions in check.

In the other forest dreams, the more common ones, he was just running. Barreling through the forest, wind in his hair, ground flying by in a blur under his feet, heart tripping with exhilaration. A strange feeling for a guy whose idea of strenuous exercise was a weekly game of basketball. Not only that, but he’d never been better at his weekly game. He could jump better, react better, move better, and even his friends had started to notice.

Now, as he walked to the front door, he had the sense of being watched, but when he listened and sniffed, no one was there. Yes,
sniffed
—something he’d never admit to doing. Forests weren’t the only thing
that had a scent, he’d learned. Sometimes he could smell his friends coming long before he saw them. His hearing had improved, too. So when he listened and smelled, and detected no one, he knew no one was there.

He stepped onto the front porch and lifted his hand. Then he stopped. Behind this door could be his father. Was he ready? What would he say?

“Looking for someone?” drawled a voice behind him.

Logan wheeled to see a young man step onto the porch. He was around Logan’s age, maybe a couple of years older, well built, with curly blond hair and blue eyes, his strong jaw the only thing keeping him from tipping over into pretty-boy.

“You looking for someone?” the guy repeated.

Logan squared his shoulders.

“Jeremy Danvers.”

The guy’s eyes went from cool to icy. “Yeah?”

“Yes. Is he home?”

“You think this is a good idea?”

“Huh?”

“I’m asking if you want to reconsider. Maybe you made a mistake.”

Logan met the guy’s stare. “If Jeremy Danvers is here, I want to see him.”

The guy gave a slow nod. Then his fist shot out, plowing into Logan’s jaw. Logan slammed into the stone wall and everything went dark.

Logan’s face sank into something soft and warm, and he inhaled the faintest scent of laundry detergent. He lifted his head. Pain throbbed through his skull and he let out a soft moan, then dropped back onto the pillow. A few more minutes of sleep, and then he’d—

His eyes snapped open as he remembered what had happened.

He lay on a twin bed covered with a clean bottom sheet, but no top sheet or blankets. In front of him was a bare wall. He picked up the slight scent of dampness. A basement. He rolled over and saw…He blinked. Bars.

Logan started jumping up, but the pain forced him down, and he bit back a wave of nausea. Jail? Oh, God, what had he gotten himself into?

He’d heard rumors of college kids venturing into a backwater town and winding up in jail. Well, if that was the case, these yokels would be in for a shock. He was a law student…well, prelaw anyway.

At the rustle of the page turning, Logan looked to see the guy who’d decked him. He sat on a folding chair outside the cell and was reading a textbook, with a pencil between his fingers. He jotted something in the margin, then continued reading.

A student? Logan looked around. He wasn’t in jail; he was in someone’s basement, with an older student standing guard. Now it made sense.

“It was a setup, wasn’t it?” Logan said.

The guy lifted a finger, telling Logan to wait, as if he’d known he was awake.

“The letter, the address, it was all part of it,” Logan continued.

A soft sound, almost like a growl, and the guy slapped his textbook shut.

“Part of what?” he said.

“The hazing.”

“Hazing?”

“For Pi Kappa Beta. I told Mike I didn’t want to join, but he signed me up as a pledge, didn’t he?”

The guy met Logan’s gaze with a steady stare. “Do I look like a frat brat?”

Logan sized him up. Blond, blue-eyed, ridiculously good-looking, athletic …

“Yeah, you do.”

The guy snorted and shook his head. “You want to get out of this alive, you’re going to need a better story than that.”

“A—alive?”

“Dumb kid,” he muttered. “You’re lucky you
are
just a kid. Otherwise I’d be digging your grave out back, not babysitting you.”

Logan lowered his eyelids so the guy wouldn’t see the flash of fear.
Get a grip
, he told himself. It’s a hazing. Bury me in the backyard? Please. Couldn’t Pi Kappa Beta come up with something more believable than that?

“Did you really think you’d get away with it?” the guy continued.
“Barely Changed, and you’re going to challenge the Alpha? That first Change addle your brain?” He met Logan’s eyes. “Or was it so bad that this seemed like an honorable way out? Suicide by Pack?”

Logan blinked, struggling to make sense of what the young man was saying, and fighting against the dawning possibility that he’d been taken captive by a madman.

A distant door clicked open. “Clayton?”

“Down here,” the guy—Clayton—called. “We have a problem.”

“So I smelled,” a deep voice murmured as light footsteps sounded on the stairs.

A man rounded the corner. He was tall and slender, dark-haired with a close-trimmed beard and dark eyes. He couldn’t have been much older than the other guy, and wore a polo shirt and trousers. Logan let out a soft breath of relief. Definitely a frat hazing.