The Orange Cat & other Cainsville tales (4 page)

“Does it?”

He met her green eyes. “It does.”

She studied him, tilting her head, and he knew his nonchalance didn’t fool her for a second. Not Veronica. But after a moment, she said. “If you think it’s best.”

“I’ll wait until he’s older. Less angsty. More interesting.” He put down his empty glass. “Now, speaking of interesting, let’s see if we can find a way to pass the time before my early morning flight. I have, apparently, agreed to a book tour.”

LADY OF THE LAKE

Prologue

Humans at her swimming hole. There should not be humans at her swimming hole. Did they not know the place was haunted? Cursed? She’d spent nearly a century weaving the legend. Each scenario meticulously crafted—a spine-tingling cry in the forest, a hard tug on a swimmer’s leg, picnic baskets vanished, clothing rent as if by some wild beast.

Hard work. Frustrating work. Endless work it had seemed at the time. Sometimes they would run back to their village, trembling in horror. Other times, they’d laugh it off as too much strong ale and imagination. Worse, some would come in
hopes
of those eerie cries and leg tugs and vanished belongings. But she’d kept at it. One hundred years of effort.

And now?

Now there were humans at her swimming hole. Not simply passing but lingering. Which never happened.

It wasn’t just the stories that kept them away. Those only frightened the locals who heard them. Visitors came, too, wandering past. Yet they’d never stay more than a moment or two, overcome by a sense of unease. A sick feeling in the gut. A voice deep in their heads, whispering to run. Then screaming it. When they reached town, they’d hear of the haunted swimming hole and say, “Yes! I was there,” and tell their stories, adding to the legend.

Yet here were two humans, on the rocks above her swimming hole, laughing and talking, not the least bit fazed.

She crept through the trees and then scaled one for a better look.

They’d come on a motorcycle. A loud one that had warned her of their arrival even before they pulled off the highway a mile over. Then they’d hiked and found her hole.

She could hear a woman talking, but from her hiding spot in the tree, she could see only her back as she stood on the diving rock over the swimming hole.

The man sat in front of his companion. Resting on the ground, leaning against a tree, his legs pulled up. He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt. His hair was a lighter blond than the girl’s. When he pushed it back, she saw his face. A very pretty face on a very pretty boy. That would be enough to catch her interest. She had a weakness for pretty human boys. But this one . . .

There was more to this one. Something that made her feel . . .

Intrigued? Uneasy? Both at once. Something about him that both pulled her closer and warned her back. Like the swimming hole itself when she had first found it.

She shifted for a better look at the boy. He
was
a boy. A young man. And yet he did not
feel
young.

A glamour then? Could these be fae disguised as human?

She narrowed her eyes, looking for the telltale shimmer, but she saw none. Yet they did exude a faint glow.

Fae blood, then. But that would not explain the contradictory aura the boy gave off, of dangerous attraction, of youthful maturity.

She climbed down and slid through the trees, pulling her own glamour tighter in case they glanced over. But they were too engrossed in each other and in their conversation. The girl bounced on the rocks, shedding clothing as the boy said something, and she laughed, and the boy lit up with that laugh, his pretty face glowing.

There’s more here. Much more.

She slipped a little closer and—

The boy turned sharply, not toward her but tracking a soft sound in the forest. Hearing it, her heart began to pound. She shimmered between her glamour and her true form, her nails sharpening to claws, ready for attack if he rose and headed in that direction. Yet even as she thought that, she felt . . .

Fear.

No, not fear.

Terror.

Attack this boy and—

Her heart pounded, that nameless terror whipping through her. She smelled the thick loam of another forest, heard the pounding of hooves, caught the scent of dogs, and she gasped.

No, that was not the answer. Could not be. This was a boy. Just a boy.

That smell came again. That pounding of hooves, once achingly familiar, once enough to make her and her sisters raise their heads from the water, alight in anticipation.

The Hunt comes. The souls come. Souls to be dragged to the Otherworld, souls of those harvested before their time, those who deserved their fate. She and her sisters would—

No. That was another time. Another place. Both long gone.

Even the thought of harming this boy sent an irrational blaze of absolute fear through her, but if she let him investigate the source of that sound, if he found what she had stolen . . .

Hers. It was hers.

Her treasure had gone silent. The girl said something, and the boy turned back with a reply that made her laugh again. Then the girl spun and dove into the water far below. The boy watched her go, grinned, his face alight with the glow that said the girl was no mere trifle. He loved her.

Which meant the fae knew exactly how to get them both out of her forest.

She pulled her glamour tighter and crept toward the swimming hole.

One - Ricky

Ricky watched Liv bounce on the rock high over the swimming hole.

“You’d better not be planning to dive off that,” he said.

“Fully dressed? Of course not.” She shimmied her hips as she pulled up her T-shirt.

“Tease,” he growled.

Her brows arched. “Never. All you gotta do is say the word. No penalty incurred. Just declare me the victor, and anything you want? Yours.”

“Remind me why we’re playing this game?”

“Too much sex.”

He rubbed his ear. “Say that again? I could swear you used the words ‘too much’ and ‘sex’ in the same sentence, but for you, that’s an oxymoron.”

“Normally, yes. But it
has
been a lot, and it’s affecting our travel progress. We have one week to ride the Cabot Trail. It’s been four days . . . and we’re not even at the halfway point. The problem is sex, as much as I hate to say it.”

“No, you
love
to say it. Because you love teasing me.”

“You agreed to the game.”

“I was drunk.”

Yeah, okay, that was a lousy excuse. The truth was that he’d agreed because he’d been so sure how this game would play out. Liv would last about six hours before surrendering. Then he’d tease her for another six, building up the tension until he finally capitulated and then . . . Fuck, yeah.

Which proved that maybe he
had
been a little drunk. Sober, he’d have realized that there was no way Liv would lose a game so easily, and he’d be the one getting teased. Which was not necessarily a bad thing. He watched as she pulled off her T-shirt and let it fall into the bushes below. No, it was not a bad thing at all. And as she’d said, there was no penalty for being the first to fold. He just didn’t like to lose. No more than she did. Which could make things hard. He glanced down at his crotch. Yep, definitely hard.

“So, are you joining me for a swim?” Liv said.

As he watched, she popped the button on her jeans and pushed them down over her hips. Then she stepped out of her jeans, kicked them aside and did a little striptease wiggle.

One might think that after eight days living out of the Harley’s saddlebags, Liv would look a little worse for wear. But then one wouldn’t know Liv. Her ash-blond hair gleamed and bounced as if it hadn’t been under a helmet all day. Half her saddlebag space had probably been allocated to clean lingerie, which may have explained the slow progress of their trip so far.

Hell, no. That was just another excuse. Sexy undergarments were all well and fine, but the only “excuse” for the sex was the fact that it was just the two of them, riding the Harley along empty roads, which even back home was “excuse” enough to pull off for sex. Out here? With no one to stop them, no obligations calling, nothing but endless days of endless riding on endless roads? Yeah, there’d been a lot of sex. Which was fucking awesome but also meant, if they kept it up, they’d have to ride straight through the last few days on the trail with no stops for sex—or hikes or swims or anything else that had made this an amazing trip.

Still, the lingerie was a nice bonus. Very nice. Today it was a pink-and-black set that he didn’t think he’d seen before, though he really had to take a better look to be sure. He tilted his head and watched her breasts bounce over the black lace and . . .

Fuck.

His gaze traveled over the swell of her hips, down her long legs to the boots. She’d tugged them back on after shucking her jeans. Sexy little motorcycle boots, with heels, that somehow didn’t impede her hiking through deep forest. Or keep her from bouncing on that rock, dressed only in those heels and that very tiny bra and panties that barely covered anything at all.

Fuck.

“You go on,” he said, starting to undo his belt. “I’ll just be up here. Amusing myself. Since it’s the only amusement I’m likely to get today.”

“Poor baby. Unfortunately, self-amusement is against the rules. Remember?”

“Drunk. Remember? Whatever I agreed to—”

“It was
your
rule.”

Fuck.

He was about to respond when he heard something in the forest. It sounded like . . .

A baby?

The sound stopped. It’d been just a single cry, as if to say,
I’m awake now.

He listened for fellow hikers but heard only the normal sounds of the forest. Maybe that’s all it’d been. The cry of a bird or animal, and Liv saying, “Poor baby,” had put the association into his head.

“—would allow a slight amendment to the rules,” he heard Liv saying. “Self-amusement is allowable, given that the other is permitted to observe.”

“What?” He turned back fast, the cry half-forgotten . . . and then completely forgotten as he saw her standing on that rock, naked but for the boots.

She kicked off one boot. “That’s a no, then?”

“Wait. What? You were saying . . .”

“Self-amusement is allowable, given that the other is permitted to observe.”

A slow grin spread across his face. “Permitted or required?”

She pursed her lips in mock thought. “
Required
would be better. Party A is required to self-amuse in front of Party B, who is required to watch. Fair enough?”

“Hell, yeah.”

He finished undoing his belt.

“Also,” she said, “there should be a penalty invoked if Party B decides to void the contract during the execution of the exception. How about, if watching you convinces me to surrender, I have to . . .”

She made a suggestion. One hell of a suggestion, which meant he was about to put on one hell of a performance.

“Agreed?” she said.

He grinned in answer.

“Good,” she said. “Now, anytime you want to invoke the self-amusement exception, you need to tell me. Verbal notification is required.”

“Fine. In case you can’t tell . . .” He gestured at his open zipper. “I am officially invoking—”

She jumped backward off the rock and plunged toward the water.

Fuck.

Two - Liv

There is a moment, as you jump from a ledge over a swimming hole, when you may wish to reflect on that decision. That moment is not after you’ve actually made the leap.

In my defense, I didn’t
dive
into the uncharted waters. I knew better. I just jumped. And the waters weren’t entirely uncharted—we’d poked around before climbing to the overhang, and I knew the water was more than a few feet deep. What I did not properly measure was the height of the overhanging rock. It was high. Really high, as I only fully appreciated once I’d stepped off it.

I hit the water with my knees bent, hoping that would help absorb the impact of hitting the bottom. Except I didn’t hit the bottom. I kept plummeting, down to an unreasonable depth considering this was a small body of water on a mountainside.

When it became clear I wasn’t going to strike bottom anytime soon, I stopped my descent with a few strong strokes. Then I looked up and saw darkness. Complete darkness.

A twinge of panic darted through me. I shoved it back. I hadn’t fallen
that
far, and no matter how much Ricky had been grumbling, he wasn’t going to let me swim alone.

I started swimming upward. When the view above didn’t lighten, I squelched a fresh lick of panic. Just keep going and—

My head broke the surface, and I gulped air. But everything stayed dark. Pitch black, no sign of the late afternoon sunshine I’d enjoyed a few minutes ago.

Then I caught a voice. A young woman’s, her laugh carrying a note I recognized as well as my own. Not surprisingly, given it
was
my own, in a way.

I’d fallen into a vision of Matilda.

“Gotcha,” a man’s voice said. Then, “
Cach
,” and a splash as Matilda laughed. A moment later, another splash, as if Matilda had dived and resurfaced.

“If you want me to kiss you, I need to be able to catch you,” the man said.

“No, if you want to kiss me, you need to be able to catch me.”

The man swore in Welsh again. Everything he said would be in Welsh—I just heard English. As for the man, I knew his voice as well as hers.

“Gwynn,” I murmured, and my chest constricted as I heard other voices, these from much more recent memories. Too recent.

“This isn’t true, Olivia. You know it isn’t. You dream of some fairy prince and say I’m him?” A brusque laugh. “I didn’t expect you to fall for romantic nonsense like that—”

“You aren’t my fairy prince, Gabriel,” I said, barely forcing the words out. “Not by any stretch of the imagination. You aren’t Gwynn, and I’m not Matilda.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and banished the voices.
All
the voices.

Sorry, Matilda. Sorry, Gwynn. I don’t want to hear either of you right now. Probably not for a very long time.

To my surprise, the vision went silent. Everything stayed dark, though, and when I strained to listen, I caught the sound of water lapping against rock, the noise echoing as if I was in a chamber.

Or an underwater cave.

I swam carefully, one hand always in front of me. Sure enough, after a few strokes, my fingertips grazed rock. I felt around. Yep, definitely rock. And if I couldn’t see daylight, that meant the exit was underwater. The problem with that? Finding it when everything was, well,
dark
.