That was, until a thunderous rapping sounded at the door. “Emma!” an equally loud voice shouted through it. “Let me in! If that little girl who’s got a hard on for you is in there, he’s going to catch a beating.”
Emma went stone stiff, her face blanching. I wasn’t sure what she was so terrified of, but it seemed her boyfriend almost catching her playing around with her, eh-hmm,
friend
didn’t warrant a quarter of the emotion flashing over her face.
“What do you want me to do?” I whispered, hoping she’d tell me to open the door, deck the loser in his face, and then get back to what we were doing.
“Just pretend we’re not here,” she whispered back, her eyes darting back at the door.
“Emma, dammit. Open the door. I know you’re in there.” Ty was in the boiling over stage—I didn’t need to see his red face to ascertain this. The door took another beating as he attacked it with both fists. “You’ve got ten seconds to open this door or else I’m taking it down.”
“Like hell he is,” I said, shoving to a stand, my fists balled as I headed towards the door, ready to show this redneck how to show a woman some respect.
“No,” Emma hissed, grabbing me by the hand and whipping me around. “Please, you promised you’d behave.”
I closed my eyes, focusing on unclenching my jaw. “I promised I’d
try
to behave myself. This”—I tilted my head back at the door where Ty continued his assault on it—“is making good behavior impossible.”
Making another attempt at the door, she stalled me again, coming into the area that was all personal space. Her warmth crept across the sheet of air separating us, making its way against my skin. Looking up at me, she rested a trembling hand on my cheek.
“Be the man I know you are,” she whispered, her eyes begging me to find whatever restraint she was sure I had, although I was anything but. Restraint wouldn’t be something I’d say I had in vast amounts, or any amounts for that matter.
Feeling like it was going against every natural fiber in my body, I sighed. “Does that window open?” I glanced at the window above the desk.
She nodded her head, giving me a look like she couldn’t understand what that had to do with anything.
Rushing in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go, I lifted the lock and whooshed the window open.
“We’re three floors up!” Emma whisper shouted. “Don’t you dare.”
Crouching over her desk, I sent a playful smile her way before launching myself out the window.
At least most of the way. My fingers still curled over the sill, not able to resist the expression on her face when she rushed to the window. Raw terror was probably the best way to describe the flattened planes of her face.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” she gasped, glancing from the hard ground below us back to me.
Managing to shrug in my hanging position, I answered her, “Being the man you believe I am.”
Shaking her head, a tiny smile formed. “Of course. You’ve finally become him two seconds before you break your neck.”
“Three floors? I got this,” I assured her, the entire world gone again when she looked at me the way she was now. “I’ve leapt out of many a maiden’s chambers floors higher I’ll have you know.”
She shook her head like she couldn’t believe I was making jokes at a time like this. “I do have to say, if it wasn’t for the extenuating circumstances,” she said, her head tilting back at the door, “I’d probably find this whole hanging out of my window, making sweet little looks at me thing rather romantic.” She ran her fingers over mine. “It’s got Shakespeare written all over it.” Taking another look at the ground, she cast an anxious look my way. “Are you sure you’ll be all right? That’s a long ways down.”
“I promise.”
She gave me a look I didn’t need clarified.
“That’s a promise I can keep,” I said, answering her silent question. “See you in class Wednesday?”
She nodded, looking like she wanted to say something more, but she leaned back, already resolved to moving on from us to soothe Ty’s delicate sensibilities.
“Hey, Em,” I called out right before dropping. “He hurts you, I’ll kill him. Maybe those should be the first words out of your mouth when you open what’s left of your door.”
“Thanks for the tip,” she said, looking away before I jumped. Like she couldn’t stand by helpless while I fell.
I got it, though. I’d never been one to be able to stand by and watch someone else crash to the ground without a net in place.
I’d had two tireless days and two sleepless nights by the time I stepped into class Wednesday afternoon. I’d waited to run into her on campus yesterday, expected I’d at least catch a glimpse of her, and hoped for a call letting me know she was all right.
I received none. Three strikes—I’m out.
I could have teleported into her room last night, but that seemed like cheating. I couldn’t carry on a one sided relationship by using supernatural gifts that she wasn’t aware of. Of course I could have knocked on her door at anytime to check on her too, and I almost did a hundred different times, but some egging thing that felt a lot like instinct told me showing up unannounced at her door could make things worse. I’d never gone against my instincts yet, and for my acquiescence, they’d rewarded me by saving my butt on at least a semi-annual basis for a couple centuries.
Maybe she needed time, maybe she was crazy busy catching up from her day of playing hooky, or maybe she didn’t feel like there was any need to check in with me, but whatever it was, if my gut was telling me to lay low, that’s just what I was going to do.
It was the single most difficult thing for me to follow through on.
Diving into my front and center seat in Psych, it felt like I was breaking through the finish line at the end of a marathon. I’d obeyed my internal compass, did my time, and now it was time to reap the reward of seeing Emma.
My stomach did a twist when I realized she might pull a repeat of Monday’s no-show. If that was the case, guts be damned, I was going find her and harass her until I got my Emma fix.
Professor Camp was already a few snide comments into his lecture when the auditorium door screeched open. I didn’t need to look to know it was her—I felt her an instant before the door opened, and while I probably didn’t have to look to see if Ty was leeched to her side, I did.
They were sliding into the last two seats of the back row when I turned in my seat to steal a glimpse. Emma was dressed like she was ready for winter in Montana instead of a cloudless Indian summer day in California. If that wasn’t cause enough for concern, her face was a tomb. It wasn’t just expressionless, it was dead. Like an emotion would never play over it again.
Sagging a meat-hook arm around her shoulders, Ty’s eyes shifted my way. His face was so lined with smugness it might get stuck that way. Well, stuck that way more than it was most of the time, at least.
I knew he was waiting for me to be the first to look away, but I didn’t want it on my permanent record that I’d been the first to tap out to Ty Steel in anything. I returned his stare, holding it long enough several of the other students took notice.
The attention increasing, Ty flipped me his favorite finger as his stare left mine to settle over Emma. Giving her a head to toe, he managed to convey ownership, supremacy, and downright creepiness with one once over.
Emma stayed zombie-fied, ignorant of the guy molesting her with his eyes next to her and the guy down in front staring at her like she was everything he wanted and could never have. The poor girl didn’t deserve either stare.
I turned forward in my seat to relieve her of one.
Class was hell. A solid fifty minutes of gibberish of which I didn’t process a lick.
Every student in class would have a strong opinions that I had a serious tick after today’s class. I tried to keep my head forward, eyes locked on some arbitrary point, but as soon as I’d find it, they’d head off target and boomerang to the back corner of the room.
My eye seizures were bad, but Emma’s state of stone nothingness was far worse. I was half convinced Ty had arrived with a mannequin look alike until I detected her pencil moving across that ratty spiral notebook she loved so much.
She never once looked my way.
“All right, everyone. Time to wake up now that class is almost over,” Camp hollered, clapping his hands like a cymbal monkey. “As there are no classes this Friday, I want to remind everyone that the big second date for the Love Project is scheduled for this weekend. I don’t care what day or time you choose, but as last week was guy’s pick, this week it’s girl’s choice. Choose well, ladies, but make sure you make him pay.”
The soprano grade laughter was drowned out by the baritone wave of groaning.
“Have a groovy long weekend. Work easy and play hard,” he continued on, but the roar of laptops snapping shut and backpacks zipping close muffled his closing comments.
Shouldering my bag, I took quite possibly the thousandth glance towards the back of the room, not sure what I was going to say or do. Just knowing I had to say or do
something.
Turns out, I wouldn’t be able to do anything because the formerly occupied seats in the back corner were empty.
He was clever, I had to give him that, but that was about all I would give him. However, his grand scheme of arriving late and skipping out early would only keep me away from Emma for so long. About another ten minutes, I figured, or however long it took me to walk across campus to her dorm where I was banking on the theory that Ty hadn’t moved her to some undisclosed location.
I didn’t put it past him to do just that.
I jogged my way across campus, not able to shake the feeling that I’d find myself knocking on the door of an empty dorm room. Shuffling through a stream of bodies bounding down the stairs off to their next classes, I took the stairs by twos as I headed to the third floor.
Halfway down the hall and I had my answer. I didn’t need to knock on the door to know it wouldn’t open.
But I did anyways.
No answer. Big surprise. Like the good stalker in love I was, I’d memorized her schedule days ago, so I knew she didn’t have another class after Psych and volleyball practice didn’t start for another couple hours, which led to one conclusion.
Ty was making sure he kept her away from me or, I guess the truer way of putting it, is he was trying to keep
me
away from
her
. I didn’t want to admit that, after a half-day of Patrick dodging, Ty had unsettled me, but he had.
If keeping the girl I had it bad for just out of my reach when I’d waited forty-eight hours wasn’t enough, seeing the shadow of nothing on Emma’s face had been more than enough to unhinge me. I couldn’t imagine anything less than the death of a close member could twist the joy that had been Emma on Monday afternoon to the shell of herself she was today.
Whatever it was though, I was going to find out. Ty and his covert ops couldn’t foil me. I’d uncovered rogue Inheritors halfway around the world—I could find a beautiful woman on the Stanford campus.
Maybe I couldn’t. My confidence, along with my sanity, had hit empty late last night after a second night of sitting in the shadows outside her dorm, watching, hoping, and praying she’d pass by. She never had.
After a second night of staking out, I was expecting campus security or even the police to pay me a visit and possibly slap me with a warning or a restraining order to stay away. Of course, I would have heeded neither, but no one seemed to pay me any attention, like I was invisible or unworthy of their attention. Or maybe pathetic, lovesick guys hanging outside the dorm halls of the girls they loved was a regular thing here at Stanford.
Cutting the Mustang’s engine in the black saturated night, I knew I couldn’t stand by as an inactive party another night. I was knocking on that door until someone answered—I’d teleport in if I grew really desperate, although that was a last resort.
Ever notice how desperate men tend to go with their last resort as Plan A? I was hoping I’d gained enough mental fortitude and sheer willpower over generations of walking the earth to at least save teleporting for Plan B.
It was easy enough getting in the building, despite the outside doors locking after dark. Everyone was either on their way to get drunk or already there, so no one noticed or cared who dodged inside when the door opened.
I don’t know how I ended up in front of her door so quickly, but I knew I hadn’t used teleportation only because I’d ended up outside her door. I would have put myself dead center in her room if I’d employed any supernatural powers, no question about it.
My heart was in my throat; I finally got what people meant when they said that, and it wasn’t a figurative use of the expression. I was certain if I reached a finger past my tongue, I’d find a beating organ blocking my esophagus.
I rapped on the door, but in the silence it echoed through the empty hall like I was pounding on it.
Soft footsteps padded towards the door, and my senses were on such high alert I could sense the air being disturbed as a form cut through it. I was so focused on these minute details, I didn’t process that the person twisting the doorknob open was not the one I’d come searching for.
Opening the door a sliver width and a half, Julia’s nuclear green eye popped through the space. I took an involuntary step back, which was rude I knew, but it was better than lunging back like I’d wanted to do when that unsettling eye latched onto me.
“You,” she said, heaving the door open the rest of the way.
Typical Julia greeting: succinct, sharp, and psychotic.
“Me,” I answered back cryptically.
She nodded once, like I’d just given her an answer to a silent question.
“Is that a good or bad thing?” I asked, not even about to guess what she was thinking.
“Depends,” she answered, lifting a shoulder as she turned and headed towards the back of the room.
Taking her not slamming the door on my face as an invitation to come in, I took a few steps inside, but since this was a dorm room we were talking about, I was already halfway inside when Julia’s head got lost behind a mini-fridge. “You want a sparkling water?” she asked, already pitching one my way.
“Eh, sure,” I said, snatching the green bottle somersaulting through the air. “Thanks?”
Tilting the bottle she was holding at me in acknowledgement, she took a chug.
“And here I thought I was the goth,” she said, surveying me toe to head before taking another swig. “You look like you’ve been dead for the past hundred years.”
I came close to spewing the sip of water I’d just taken. Despite knowing Julia was attempting to be amusing, the trueness of her statement wasn’t lost on me. Knowing her, I could tell her every last nitty gritty detail of my world and she’d shrug an unimpressed shoulder and get back to sacrificing small animals or brewing vex potions or whatever else she did on a Friday night.
“Keep the compliments coming,” I mumbled, twisting the cap back on the water of nasty bubbly origins.
“You’re a misogynist pig,” she said, like it was on the tip of her tongue, relieving me of the disgrace-to-water bottle.
“Now that actually hurts. Why would you say that?” I asked, making myself comfortable on the edge of Emma’s bed. I wasn’t sure what the antonym of misogyny was, but that’s what I was. I was possibly the most devote lover of woman out there.
“Because if you cared anything for Emma’s peace of mind, you wouldn’t be here right now,” she answered, leaning into the mini-fridge and appraising me with those nutty eyes.
“I just needed to know if she was all right,” I admitted, transparency coming naturally in Julia’s presence, or maybe she was a bonafied witch and was forcing me to spill my guts. Not that I’d come across an actual witch in my existence, but as a being of supernatural quality, it seemed hypocritical to believe Immortals had the market cornered on all things paranormal.
“I don’t think
all right
are words I’d ever use to describe Emma’s state of being,” she said, talking into her bottle. “But she’s still breathing.”
I smiled humorously. “Where’s she been? I’ve been looking for her.”
“Really? I haven’t noticed you lurking like a creeper in the shadows the past couple nights.” Julia had perfected the tone of sarcasm. You see, anyone could season their statements with it, but it took a true pro to be able to make each word burrow itself under your skin. “She’s holed up at jerkwad’s bar and brothel. Also known as his frat house,” Julia finished, curling her nose.
I put the lid on the shot of pain that was blooming into a grimace. I knew Emma wasn’t the frat house cockroach type, so either she was doing her best to avoid me or doing her best to cater to Ty’s overbearing ways. It made me feel like a bit of a dirt-bag to hope for the latter.
“You know,” Julia said, shifting her eyes at me. “You don’t have to hide the way you feel about her with me. I saw amore in your eyes the first night I met you, but I suppose that’s to be expected with someone like Emma.”
“Yeah, she kind of crawled into my heart and stayed there,” I admitted, rolling with this whole transparency with Julia thing.
She nodded. “If I believed in angels, I’d believe she was the bloody gold star one of the bunch,” she said, kicking off one of her purple boots and sailing it into the wall across from her. “She doesn’t deserve to be dicked with.” Another thud against the wall as the other boot landed beside its mate.
“I know, I know,” I said, trying to roll the tension out of my shoulders. “I’m not trying to . . .
dick
”—I wasn’t brought up to use crass language in front of a woman, but Julia transcended the gender into something else entirely—“around with her. I swear my intentions are pure.”
Julia arched an eyebrow.
“Well, ninety-nine percent pure,” I confessed, the implied meaning in Julia’s face and slouching into Emma’s bed forcing a scorching heat to my face.
“Thanks for the confession, my son,” she said, crossing herself theatrically. “But the slime I was referring to ‘dicking with Emma’ was the turd she believes is her boyfriend,” she said, practically snarling before smiling at me for the first time. “You, I like.”
I was stunned stupid by the compliment. Something told me that a girl who believed black wasn’t a color, but a state of mind, didn’t hand out compliments readily.