And if he kissed me, I wouldn’t mind at all.
And I really wanted to know why he smelled so good, even after all we’d been through today.
At the top of the stairs, he stopped me. We stood side by side, barely breathing, as we listened. Well, Kellan listened. I admit, I just scooted closer in order to get another sniff of him.
All four rooms on this floor were closed and, when we peeked in, empty. Same on the next floor up.
Marilee and Axel had vanished into thin air.
A little stunned, we made our way back to the kitchen, and stopped in shock.
Marilee and Axel stood at the back door, looking out into the night.
“Hey,” I said behind them, making them both jump, “where did you go?”
They whipped around and stared at us. “Wondering where you two went,” Axel said. “Did you change your minds about sleeping at Gert’s place? Or about being together?”
I felt Kellan glance at me, silently giving me the option to change the sleeping arrangements if I wanted. I knew Gertrude’s space had only one bedroom, but no way did I want to be out there alone.
Nor did I have any desire to be upstairs, where mysterious thumps and bumps ruled the night. I wanted, quite frankly, to be in my own bed, with the traffic blaring in the window, and the smog and the city lights choking out the stars.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
God, I was tired, so tired. I knew we needed to press Axel and Marilee about the house, about the odd noises, but I couldn’t seem to garner the energy it would take to do that.
“In the morning,” I said softly to Kel, who nodded his understanding.
I looked at Axel. “He’s with me.”
If Kellan was surprised at this news, he didn’t show it. He simply hefted our bags over his shoulder. Together we went out the back door and stepped into the black night. I wasn’t afraid of the dark like I was of heights, but it was close. I tried to always paint my murals low to the ground, and in those rare circumstances when I couldn’t, Prozac was my friend. I’d have been much, much happier if I’d managed to swipe a box of cookies from the freezer.
Beside me, Kellan lifted his flashlight. The beam of light didn’t have a chance against the dark night. The air had chilled to a shocking suck-in-your-breath temperature. In L.A., summer nights never cooled down much. Here I could actually see my own breath when I exhaled.
And it was
There were all sorts of sounds out here. A distant howl of some sort that made me think of every horror movie Kellan had ever made me watch. The chirping song of too many crickets to count. A rustle in the bushes that might or might not have been a bear waiting to eat us in the same way I was waiting to eat those Girl Scout Cookies. I couldn’t bring myself to look, and I slipped my hand in Kel’s. He was too good a friend to comment on it. He just lightly squeezed my fingers.
“I’ll make you breakfast in the morning,” Marilee called out after us.
“Now why would you threaten them like that?” we heard Axel ask, and then came a smacking sound, as if Marilee had hit him upside the head.
“Dudette,” Axel said mournfully, and then the door shut, leaving me alone with Kellan and the night.
I stepped up the two tiny concrete steps to Gertrude’s door and took a deep breath, but I couldn’t make myself go in. You’d think after my little woods adventure, I’d be dying to go inside, but no.
“Rach?”
“Yeah.” I let out a heavy breath and opened the door. It creaked and revealed…more blackness.
No ghosts. No goblins. No extraterrestrials.
So why couldn’t I shake the odd sense of fear, or get the hair on the back of my neck to go down? “You want the couch or the bed?” I asked, my voice seeming extremely loud.
He used his flashlight to look at the couch-a short, high-backed Victorian, green with tiny white flowers all over it, overstuffed and undoubtedly as comfortable as a bed of rocks. In silent agreement, we moved to the doorway of the tiny bedroom, and studied the bed there.
It was covered with a prim rose comforter, sported a single pillow and was as narrow as a pencil.
“Maybe we should have tried the guest rooms in the main house,” I said.
“Complete with whatever goes bump in the night?”
I let out a low, disbelieving laugh. “My God, Kellan. What I have gotten us into?”
“Not sure. But I have a feeling we’re going to find out, whether we want to or not.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “This place sucks bear balls.”
He slid me an amused glance. “Bear balls?”
I closed my tired, gritty eyes and pointed to the bed and then the couch. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo-”
“No, don’t. You’re taking the bed.” He dropped the duffle bags to the floor.
“Why is that?”
“Because out of the two of us, you’re the more freaked-out.”
He had a point there. “Do you ever get freaked-out?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just ask me to relive going into that clearing and finding you on the ground, eyes closed, face completely colorless, with your clothes still smoking. You shaved years off my life on that one.”
He’d been scared for me. It was quite possibly the sweetest thing anyone had ever said. “Yeah, sorry.” My throat went tight. “And you don’t know the half of it.”
He was watching me in that quiet way he had. “Why don’t you tell me.”
I let out a laugh that sounded extremely close to hysterical, and clamped my hand over my mouth to stop it. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you should probably be sitting down for this.”
Instead, he pulled me closer and leveled his intensely blue gaze on mine. “Your head? Or something else?”
“I have a headache,” I admitted. “But I think that’s just from the stress. Listen, I was serious about the sitting-down thing. Please sit.”
He pulled me into the living room and sat both of us down on the couch, which was, yep, stiff as predicted. “Go,” he said.
Yeah, only where to start? “Okay, something weird happened out there.”
“You’re not kidding. We are definitely not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
“Kel.” I put my hands on his arms and was immediately distracted by the tough sinew that made up his biceps. Yum.
No, not yum. Stick to the topic, Rachel. “Here’s the thing. I can sorta see through stuff.”
He blinked once, as slowly as an owl. “Okay.”
“Like right now. I can see”-I gestured at his clothes-“through your clothes.”
“Uh-huh. Rach, maybe you should lie down-”
“You’re wearing plaid boxers. Size scrawny-ass thirty-two.”
He blinked again. “Scrawny-ass?”
“Is that the part of this that you want to talk about? Really?”
He sighed. Scrubbed a big hand over his face. “Okay. So you can see through stuff.”
“Yes.” Desperate to sound sane, I twisted my neck, looking for some way to prove it to him. “See that closed case in the corner?” I pointed to a tall antique cabinet, complete with brass knobs and a pretentiousness that made the thing stick out, here in the wilds. “Inside there’s…” I concentrated, looked through the wood, then gasped.
“What?”
I covered my mouth with my hand, which was suddenly shaking. “My God!”
Kellan looked at me oddly, and then got up, walking toward the case.
“Guns,” I whispered, horrified at the row of guns within the closed cabinet. “It’s filled with-”
Kellan opened the door.
Guns.
I don’t know how long we both stared. Finally I stood, then walked toward the cabinet as well, reaching out a hand to touch the butt of a huge, wicked-looking rifle.
“Holy shit,” Kel said again.
“What are these for?”
