Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (138 page)

Clutching my chest, I stared at the place Bob had seemed to be when Graham was talking to him. It was like looking at that duck-rabbit illusion. I always saw the rabbit and had to force myself to see the duck.

Finally, I saw the duck.

It’s not that he shimmered into view. He was just suddenly there. All eight furry feet of him. I sat there staring at him until I could get enough air in my lungs to speak.

“Wow. Um. Hi, Bob.”

I could also see his not-thereness, which was bizarre. As I thought about him being invisible, he started being more not-there than there. I quickly focused on his thereness, and he came surging back.

He was smiling strangely. I realized he was probably trying to keep his teeth covered.

“Hello, Elizabeth Ryder. You have nothing to fear from me,” he said.

Bob’s face was definitely humanoid — a somewhat flattened nose, red lips, and large, dark eyes. But the whole thing was covered with short, white fur. He didn’t have eyebrows, exactly, but there were large tufts of curly fur above his eyes. Starting on the top and the sides of his head, the hair got longer, blending with the fur on his body to form a thick, shaggy coat. His mouth looked a bit too large for his face. It probably had to be to fit all those teeth inside. Short, sharp horns stuck straight out from the sides of his head. I could imagine him disemboweling a horse with them.

Graham emerged from the dark, grinning broadly.

“Excellent! Great idea, Bob!”

I turned on him. “You guys did that on purpose?”

“Yup,” Graham said. “Bob wondered if needing to see a danger might overcome whatever part of your mind was blocking your sight.”

Graham looked pretty pleased with himself.

“Great. That’s great. Thanks a lot. You can take me home now.”

I stalked back toward the car.

Graham trailed after me. “Hey, don’t be that way. You really did want to see, right?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Elizabeth,” he said, catching my arm.

“Get off me!”

I think my anger surprised both of us. We just stood there, me seething at him, him looking at me with a mystified expression.

“I don’t understand why that upset you so much,” he finally said.

I suppressed the urge to just let fly with something nasty and instead let the silence stretch until I calmed down a little.

“Look, I’ve been getting really scared of nothing all my life, but the last few days have been way worse. Now it’s not nothing that’s scaring me. It’s you people. And you’re doing it on purpose. I’m sick of it. I didn’t have you pegged as someone who was going to do that to me.”

His expression softened, then tightened again in anger.

“Williams.”

I looked away so he wouldn’t see the fear wash across my face.

“It’s unfortunate that he found you. Most unfortunate. He’s not cut out for dealing with emerging talents.”

“Glad to hear you think so,” I said caustically.

Graham looked down. Then he said quietly, “He’s very good at what he’s assigned to do. That’s because he’s a sadist.”

I shuddered. “Yeah.”

“Look,” Graham said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have played that trick on you. I didn’t know you’d been treated so badly.”

He looked very sincere.

“Thanks.” I forced a laugh I didn’t quite feel. “I guess it worked, right?”

“Yeah, but working isn’t everything,” he said with a small, lopsided grin.

My answering smile felt a little more genuine. “I’m glad you think that.”

In truth, I wanted to forgive him. It would help a lot if I could like at least one of these people I’d been thrown in with.

After a few seconds of more companionable silence, he said, “Hey, mind if we go back and chat with Bob a little more? I don’t want to leave on a bad note.”

“Sure, I guess.”

The snowman still made me nervous.

We headed back to the tree. Bob was looking dejected, but he perked back up when he saw us. We spent fifteen minutes making somewhat awkward small talk. He did seem like a nice enough … person? I wasn’t sure how to think of him. Definitely not an animal, though it was beyond weird to converse with something so large and furry. He did have beautiful eyes — big and dark and expressive.

He asked me to come by and talk with him again soon.

“I look forward to getting to know you, Miss Ryder,” he said. “I have lived here a long while, watching but never mingling. Sometimes I grow forlorn.”

“Why don’t you go home?” I asked.

Graham gave my arm a little squeeze, as though I shouldn’t have asked that.

Bob didn’t seem offended, though. He just sighed and said, “There are reasons I cannot.”

Poor guy. He was lonely. The idea of visiting him alone sort of gave me the willies, but I said I would and that I was looking forward to speaking with him again.

We said our goodbyes, and he trundled off into the darkness. Graham and I headed back to the car. He told me I’d handled the conversation well.

“You notice how he didn’t call you by your first name? Seconds tend to be pretty formal, compared to contemporary American manners. It isn’t wise to be impolite when speaking to them, even if it’s a friendly one like Bob.”

Thanks for telling me that beforehand
, I thought to myself.

“If they’re so formal, why is it okay to call him ‘Bob’?”

“We couldn’t possibly pronounce his real name — the ice men are capable of making a number of sounds we can’t. He probably chose an F-Em name that was short and simple out of courtesy to us.”

We got in the car and headed back toward Callie’s.

“Okay,” he said, “I think we can feel pretty darn good about the day’s work. We figured out where your development was stalled, and we got it moving again. Since you’ve probably been blocked for a while, the second stage might come quickly. We’ll have to do some testing to see if that’s the case.”

“What’s the second stage?”

“Actually being able to do cool stuff.”

I smiled, but mostly I just felt scared. Getting a college degree would’ve been cool. Changing the fabric of reality was on another level.

“Before we get into testing, can I ask you something?” I said.

“Sure, what is it?”

I took a deep breath. Graham seemed to be an okay guy, but I didn’t really know that. Still, I got the sense he wasn’t a Williams fan. That might work in my favor.

“Do you think Williams could’ve kidnapped my sister-in-law?”

I could tell I’d taken him completely by surprise. He actually pulled over and turned to face me.

“Why would he have done that?”

“When he first came to talk to me, he told me not to leave town and not to tell anyone about him. But I was so scared that I went to the police, and they arrested him. Then I took off. I was gone about a day. When I came back, my brother’s wife had gone missing. She disappeared just after the police let Williams go. I thought he might’ve taken her to get me to come back here. That’s why I came back, actually — I called my brother from the road and he told me she was gone and that the police suspected me. They were interrogating me about it when Williams came and got me — they think he’s with the FBI.”

Graham stared at me, apparently at a loss for words.

Finally he said, “Well, I’ve never heard of him using quite that kind of tactic. He’s usually more direct. What you’re describing sounds like it would take some planning, and he’s not the brightest bulb. Then again, I don’t think there’s much he’s not capable of.”

He paused for a minute, thinking.

“Let me look into it quietly for a few days. I have some contacts in the organization that don’t care much for Williams. I’ll get in touch and see what I can find out.”

“Thank you,” I said, and really meant it. “I’d like to be able to talk to him soon — my brother, I mean.”

“Of course you can talk to him,” Graham said. “Go see him, if you like. We’ll just have to discuss some basic ground rules beforehand.”

“What ground rules?”

“Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow? It’s certainly too late to call or visit anyone tonight, right?”

He pulled the car back out. It was almost 10:00.

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

W
e went
to check on Callie when we got back to the house. She was resting comfortably in the guest bedroom. Kara didn’t seem to be home, but she’d clearly done more healing. Callie now looked fine. I spent a while standing there marveling at her skin as she slept. It was perfectly restored. In fact, she looked a little younger, as though Kara had taken away some of the years’ wear and tear along with the burn.

The memory of what she’d looked like when Williams carried her in rose up powerfully in my mind. The thought twisted my feelings from wonder to anger.

“What was it that burned Callie?” I asked, when I went to sit down in the living room with Graham.

He glanced up at me but didn’t answer.

“Graham?”

He sighed. “Williams originally came here to deal with an S-Em incursion Callie reported — a large fire nearby.”

“You mean the one at the old mill up at Bilford Crossing?”

I remembered that you could still see the column of smoke on Sunday, more than a day after it had caught fire.

“Yeah, that’s the place.”

“So Callie got burned in that fire?”

“I imagine so.”

“I don’t get it. What does the fire have to do with the other world?”

Graham looked uncomfortable. “There’s no reason for you to worry about that kind of stuff, yet. Let’s just focus on your development, okay?”

It was nice that he was trying to protect me, but it wasn’t going to fly. I needed a better picture of what I was facing.

He must’ve seen my thoughts on my face.

“Okay, okay. You remember how I said that some Seconds can travel from their world to this one?”

I nodded.

“There are several ways that can happen. One way is the opening of a strait. A strait is a place where you can open a passageway between the worlds. Some of them are worked into existence, but most appear spontaneously. You might think of the worlds as having skins that are thicker in some places and thinner in others, and sometimes a connection forms at the thin spots. I’ve also heard it described as rippling, so that in some places the worlds bulge out and can touch, but in others there’s a lot of distance between them.”

That confused me. “Well, which one is it?”

“Neither, really. Those are just metaphors. No one really knows how the worlds coexist, spatially or dimensionally. There are different theories.”

I nodded, feeling a bit dense.

“The mill is built on a strait, which seems to be stuck open. The human firefighters can’t put out the fire because it’s actually coming through the strait from the S-Em. They can’t get at what’s really burning.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It’s actually not too big a deal. It takes a major working to open a strait. You’re supposed to close a strait after you go through it, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. It’s not good to have them sitting open, so closing them manually is something we have to do on occasion.”

“So, Williams came up here to get it closed, and just happened to find out about me because he saw my pictures?”

“Yes, as I understand it.”

So I’d been an added headache from the get-go. And then I’d kept him tied up with the police for hours. No wonder he’d been so monumentally pissed off. Not that I felt bad about that. Well, not so far as he was concerned. I guess I’d feel pretty bad about it if the result was something dangerous coming into our world through the opening.

Then again, he can’t have been working on it too hard, not if he’d been having a leisurely brunch with Callie at Pete’s Eats on Monday.

“If closing one of these things is no biggie, why’d he take Callie? You should’ve seen her when he asked her to go. She was scared. She told me she’s not a fighter, more of a watcher.”

“Absolutely right. He should never have taken her,” Graham said angrily. “It’s ridiculous. Apparently, he very nearly got her killed.”

We lapsed into silence. I realized I still didn’t have a clear sense of what threat the open strait posed.

“So,” I said, “the worry is that something dangerous might come through the opening and start, I don’t know, eating my neighbors, or something?”

Just as Graham started to answer, the front door opened and Williams walked in.

A shudder rippled over me.

He stopped short when he saw us on the couch. There was no mistaking his anger. “You’re finally showing up? I called you a week ago.”

“I expected you to handle the situation on your own,” Graham said evenly. “I’m here to work with Elizabeth, not do your job for you.”

He showed no sign of being afraid of Williams.

The big man looked like he wanted to put his hands around Graham’s neck and squeeze. A tense couple seconds passed before Williams turned and stalked down the hallway.

Graham watched him go, then turned back to me with an expression of patience, as though he often had to deal with difficult underlings.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Elizabeth. It’s getting late, and this must’ve been a tiring day for you.”

I nodded and trundled off to bed, trying to feel smug about having seen Williams get the smack-down. Unfortunately, I was still deeply afraid of him, so my satisfaction was half-hearted.

I
showered
and got in bed. It was after midnight, but since I’d slept until well past noon, I wasn’t all that tired. I lay there, unable to go to sleep.

When Callie woke and went out to the living room to talk to Graham, I heard their voices. I couldn’t quite make out what either was saying. I crept to the bedroom door and cracked it open.

“… has to go,” Callie was saying. “I’m certain.”

“She’s not ready for that, Callie,” Graham answered, “not any more than you were. I don’t want to risk her without more information.”

Was he talking about me? I had to be the most unready person there.

“You say she can see the truth, now. If so, it won’t be dangerous. Not if she pays attention,” Callie said. “If she doesn’t go, things are not going to work out.”

Graham made a frustrated noise. “Why does she have to go? How are things not going to work out? Can’t you be more specific?”

“I assume she’ll be able to see better than I could, but I’m not certain. You know the Lord doesn’t show me everything. He gives what He gives, and it’s up to us to use it for good, with faith that it will be enough.”

There was a pause. Then Graham said, “All right. I’ll think about it.”

“It has to happen,” Callie said more insistently. “She must go. I’ve seen it.”

Graham made an angry sound, but didn’t say anything further.

I eased the door closed. Callie seemed to have some precognition. At least, she thought so, and Graham hadn’t dismissed it.

I quietly got back in bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

I had a bad feeling the place she wanted me to go was the old mill. That thought made sleep a very long time coming. I mean, confronting the new was all well and good; doing something incredibly stupid wasn’t.

I
slept briefly and badly
. When I woke, it was about 9:00 in the morning. The house was quiet, and I wondered if everyone else was asleep. Callie was up, though. I found her in the kitchen, cooking something. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, not sure how to interact with someone who’d basically risen from the dead.

“Hi, Callie. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning and smiling at me. Then her smile faded, and she studied me for a while. Finally she spoke again. “I was wrong about you, Elizabeth. You do the Lord’s work, even though you don’t recognize it.”

I flushed. It was phrased in Callie-speak, but it was a genuine compliment.

“Thanks, Callie. I don’t know that I entirely deserve that, but I appreciate it. And please, call me ‘Beth.’”

“Beth,” she said, as though trying out the name.

We smiled at each other.

“Callie, I heard you talking to Graham last night about me needing to go somewhere. Can you tell me about that?”

She looked a little worried, so I hurried on.

“It’s great that Graham wants to protect me, but I think decisions about where I go and what I do are mine to make. Right? So what is it that you think I need to do, exactly?”

It wasn’t really that I wanted to make a decision. I already knew I didn’t want to go anywhere near that fire. But I did want to get a sense of what these people were planning for me.

Callie still didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes shifted over my right shoulder.

From behind me, Graham said, “Let’s you and I discuss this privately, Elizabeth.”

Damn it. How had he come down the hall so quietly? I turned and looked at him. He was freshly showered and looked rested. He turned and headed back to his room.

I glanced at Callie. She’d been watching me, but her gaze skittered away. She turned back to the stove.

“Come on, let’s talk about it,” Graham said over his shoulder.

I followed him back to the other guest bedroom. I wondered in passing where Williams had slept the night before.

Graham sat down on the edge of his neatly made bed and gestured me toward the armchair in the corner of the room. As I turned around to sit, I noticed his eyes were aimed a bit low. Was he checking out my ass? It really sort of looked like he was. I was so surprised that it took me a few seconds to regroup and get my mouth moving.

“I heard some of what you and Callie were talking about last night. I’d like to get the full story.”

He nodded. “That’s fair enough, Elizabeth.” He paused. “I take it you may have guessed at Callie’s gift.”

“She can see the future?”

“After a fashion. She doesn’t see the future in a specific way. It’s more like a sensation, a feeling about what we should or shouldn’t do. It’s not an exact prescription, and there are generally no details.”

“Thinking I have to go to the mill, if that’s what she was saying — that’s pretty specific.”

“Yes and no. Where exactly are you supposed to go when you get there? And what are you supposed to do there? Exactly how bad will the results be if you don’t go, and how much better will they be if you do? She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me any of that.”

I nodded. That did leave a lot up in the air.

“Worst of all,” he continued, “she doesn’t know what the cost will be to you. I wouldn’t like it if something happened to you.” He paused. “I mean, you’re my responsibility. It’s my job to protect you until you’re really ready for what we do.”

“Does she have any sense of
why
I need to go to the mill? Does it have to do with some ability I might have?”

“She doesn’t know, which is part of the reason I think it’s a bad idea. I think we should wait and see if she can offer any more information before we take you there.”

I nodded. I was still worried, though, because it sounded like Graham was open to the possibility of taking me there later, depending on what Callie came up with.

Graham must’ve seen I wasn’t comfortable with the situation because he added, “The other reason I don’t want you there is that we haven’t prepared you for that kind of encounter with the S-Em. You’ve seen firsthand how dangerous that fire is, right? Let’s keep you away from it, if we can.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, trying not to show how much better that made me feel. I hated to look like a coward, even if that’s what I was.

“Hey,” he said, “you wanted to see your brother, right? Why don’t we do that this morning?”

My mind flew to Ben.

“That’d be wonderful! Also, I should really call my boss. He was expecting me back at work on Thursday.”

“Okay, let’s go. You can use my phone on the way.”

A minute later we were in the car, and I was happily giving him directions to Ben’s house. I was so glad Graham recognized that I had no business going near the mill. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea at all.
Thank god
, I thought to myself,
at least one of these people is sane
.

“
O
kay
, so I said there are ground rules,” Graham said as we turned into Ben’s neighborhood. “They’re pretty simple: don’t tell anyone about the S-Em or about the Seconds living among us. Not anyone, for any reason. No exceptions. Don’t tell anyone about your abilities or about anyone else’s you happen to know about. Don’t talk about essence or workings or anything like that.”

I waited for him to go on, but apparently there wasn’t any more. I was surprised.

“That’s it? I would think rules like that would be common sense. Otherwise you’d all be in mental hospitals, or maybe top-secret government research labs.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” Graham said. “But we take these rules very seriously, so it’s important to make them explicit.”

He gave me a searching look.

“It means you can’t tell your brother, all right? If you get married one day, you can’t tell your spouse. You can’t even tell your priest.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. A small loneliness washed over me. “Sounds like the rules would make marriage and family pretty hard.”

“That might be why we tend to pair off with one another,” he said, and gave me a little smile.

Was he flirting with me? No, he couldn’t possibly be.

“But seriously,” he continued, “you have to be really careful. Don’t keep any images that show Seconds in their true form. Delete them without putting them on your hard drive, and reformat the card they were on. Don’t do internet searches on terms like ‘Second Emanation’ or on the names of any Seconds you get to know. Don’t keep a diary. Not an accurate one, anyway. Always be certain a person is one of us before saying anything incriminating. At least a few governments around the world have suspicions about this stuff, and you don’t want to give information to an undercover agent by accident.”

I nodded. I hadn’t really thought about how many ways there were to slip up. It occurred to me that I’d already broken the rules in a big way by showing the picture of Bob’s foot around Pete’s, but if Graham didn’t bring it up, I sure as heck wasn’t going to.

“So,” he said, “why don’t you make that call to your boss. Let’s think about what you’re going to tell him.”