“You made yourself a bed,” I said, marveling at the way the earth responded.
“I made this for us, Calli.” Tanner stretched out on his back and invited me to lie beside him. I didn’t hesitate. Every time I exhaled, more of my weight settled against him. I used each breath to ease more of the nerves fluttering along my limbs.
Tanner touched the arm I draped across his chest. He closed his eyes as he stroked me from my shoulder, to my ribs, waist, and hip.
“I’m sorry, Calliope,” he whispered. “I’m sorry she followed me here. I’m sorry she’s harassing you.” He shuddered. “I’m sorry I gave in.”
My eyes closed. I stretched my arm until my fingertips touched base with the foundation of my house. If Tanner felt the need to speak, I was there to listen, and as words tumbled from his mouth, I opened the front of my chest and sank my awareness deeper and deeper into his body.
I didn’t know intimacy could be like this, skin cells parting to make way for bones singing to bones. While Tanner spoke of his guilt and everything he was running away from, my skin, bones, and blood invited him to find a home inside me.
My usually overactive brain hung out on the sidelines, kicking back on a lawn chair and sipping lemonade, a straw hat pulled over its face. I nestled my nose into Tanner’s armpit. His pulse beat against my cheek while his voice created rock slides of my remaining resistance.
And his. I knew the moment he dropped more of his guard. He stopped talking and took more of me in. The stone at my fingertips warmed in reaction to our progress and shifted. A chunk of the plaster overlay fell off, revealing the perfect hiding spot for the pouch.
Druids welcome.
I swiped at an ant crawling across Tanner’s collarbones and came up on my elbow. Slipping the dual cords over my head, I stuffed the pouch into the crack and wedged the fallen bit of plaster over the opening. Pressing my palm over the area, I asked the house to keep my secret safe.
The stone shifted.
Tanner’s embrace tightened in response to my movements. Fanning his fingers over the dip in my waist, he whispered, “You okay?”
“I’m okay. Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m better. Thank you for listening.” He started to shift. I slid my knee up his thigh and pressed down to stop him getting up. I wanted to see his eyes.
They glowed, a deep amber hue. We weren’t anywhere near direct sunlight, yet flecks of gold danced along the planes of his face and through the grass around his head.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
Tanner stared hard into my eyes, his gaze flicking from one eye to the other and back. “Oh, you mean the special effects?”
I giggled. “Yeah, we can call the golden sparkles ‘special effects,’ sure.”
“They show up when I feel light, feel the light,” he said, not a trace of irony in his voice. “We all have access to the elements, Calli. When I’m in balance, I can manipulate those elements.”
“Like what you did with the rocks and using them to smash Meribah?”
He nodded. “Yes. I used her momentum and my connection to you to work with the rocks and get them to do what I wanted.”
“Can you manipulate people in the same way?”
“Only under extreme circumstances would I do that,” he said. “Say, if my life—or the life of someone I care about—was threatened.”
I let that sink in then poked at his words. “Are you saying that you care about me, Tanner Didier Marechal?”
“I’m saying, yes, I care about you, Calliope Jones, and one of these days you’re going to tell me your middle name.”
I giggled and lowered my face to his chest. “First I have to figure out what it is.”
Chapter 6
Between Tanner and myself, I was dressed and on the front porch first, watching the trio of men surrounding the crabapple tree, deep in a discussion about something likely portal-related. They did not appear to have noticed our extended absence.
“Wes, Kaz, you two ready?” I yelled, waving my arm and gesturing toward the lineup of cars. The day was marching on, and the latest text from River included no news on Cliff and Abi.
“Two minutes.”
I toed off my boots and tiptoed up to the second-floor landing. Thatch’s bedroom door was ajar. He was reading on his phone. Sallie was next to him, asleep on top of the covers, and Rowan was curled into the orange-and-white-striped beanbag chair, her hands tucked under her cheek. I blew a kiss into the room and made my way downstairs.
At the last step, I was overcome with uncertainty. Maybe I should be staying at home, getting one-on-one time with my grandfather, possibly with Rowan. Or maybe the universe would smile on me more kindly if I headed into my office and caught up with Kerry on the status of our ongoing investigations, complaints, and certifications.
None of those options got me any closer to finding Abi and Cliff, and I wanted to meet my first necromancer. Lucky for me, someone had remembered to plug in my car. The battery was full.
The three druids piled into Kaz’s sedan. Before buckling in, I dialed Kerry, put her on speaker phone, and made my apologies.
“If I wasn’t driving right now, I would be on my knees,” I joked.
“Calliope, I am all for us taking days off in the summer. Rainy season will be here in another month,” she said. “Besides, you know if anything really important was happening, I would call.”
“I know you would, but I feel badly for not even leaving you a message.”
“You can make it up to me by giving me a day off next week.”
I laughed. “You got it. Hopefully it won’t coincide with me forgetting to come in.”
Hanging up, I felt the tiniest bit lighter.
Spotting Kaz’s car ahead of me, I followed him the
