Fairytale (8 page)

“Raze?”

Brigit’s heart jumped into her throat when
there was still no answer. She checked both bedrooms and the
bathroom, panic taking a firm hold.

There was a thud below. Seconds later, a
motor roared and revved like a frustrated bull. Brigit lurched into
motion, racing through the hallway and swinging around the corner
and down the stairs. The front door stood wide open, and she
launched herself through it. “Raze! Where are you? What’s—”

The car’s tires spun on the dry pavement,
sending the stench of hot rubber into the air. She glimpsed two
forms in the front seat, and the one on the passenger side was
stooped. The face silhouetted, the whiskers familiar and dear. The
car sped away, red taillights shrinking rapidly.

“Raze!” Brigit screamed, racing down the
steps, across the front lawn and into the street, running for all
she was worth. As if she stood a chance of overtaking a speeding
car. “No! Nooo!”

Only when the vehicle was no longer visible
did she stop. Her entire body trembled, and her knees were shaking
with the effort of remaining locked. Tears burned twin trails down
her face. God, she had to do something!

She turned, making her way back to the house,
though it was an effort with the dizziness of shock and the way her
body seemed to want to turn to liquid. Looking up from the bottom
of the front steps, she stopped in her tracks.

There, on the door, was Raze’s Mets cap,
pinned to the wood by the blade of a knife. A small square of white
paper fluttered there, too, like a butterfly trying to escape the
pin. It was held over the cap by the same blade. Sinking slowly to
her knees, trembling all over, Brigit realized what was happening.
She didn’t even need to see words scrawled carelessly across that
slip of paper. But she leaned closer, and read them anyway. Two
words.

Do it!

Nothing more. But what more was needed?

***

Adam paced the admissions office like a
prisoner awaiting a parole board decision. Maxine, at the desk, was
in no such nervous state. She seemed to derive incredible amounts
of pleasure from the slow dipping of her doughnut into her coffee.
Getting it just soggy enough. Then snatching it up to her mouth to
catch the moist end before it fell into a blob on her desk.

So far she was two for three.

And in between bites, she glanced into her
huge black book, where everything that went on in this office was
recorded.

“Well?”

“No record of a new student signing up for
your class yesterday, Adam. Sorry.” She moved the doughnut to the
cup again.

“She
didn’t
sign up,” he snapped, then
regretted it when her hand froze in mid-dunk, and a large portion
of doughnut dissolved and disappeared into the murky black depths
of her coffee. “Sorry. But I told you that once. She came to ask
about signing up and I told her I was out of room.”

Maxine lifted the doughnut from the cup,
shaking her head and clucking her tongue as she surveyed the
damage. She peered into the cup, brows furrowing. “Well, what did
you tell her that for? You’re not, are you?” One finger plumbed the
coffee sea, in search of survivors, he figured.

“I thought I was, but then I checked my
roster last night and realized I have room after all.” Bald-faced
lie, yes, but he was desperate.

Desperate, and damned if he knew why, to see
that woman again. He hadn’t slept. Instead he’d tossed and turned
in his bed all night, alternately sweating and shivering, seeing
her face every time he closed his eyes.

Something about the woman had grabbed him by
the throat and wouldn’t let go. And if he didn’t get to the bottom
of this he was going to go insane!

“Adam?”

He cleared his throat, straightened his tie.
“I was hoping she left her name or an address or something. She
must have had to sign in somewhere. All visitors do, don’t
they?”

Maxine’s forefinger emerged from her coffee
cup at last, with a globule of doughnut mush coating it. She popped
it into her mouth. And when she pulled her now clean finger out
again, it was with a loud smacking sound.

“Well, there’s nothing in my notes. What did
you say she looked like?”

What did she look like? Adam lowered his
head, picturing her again in his mind. It was easy. Because her
face wasn’t strange to him. It was eerily familiar, and that was
part of what was driving him nuts about this. He knew he knew her.
He just couldn’t place her. “Small,” he said, and his voice was a
little softer than it had been before. “Delicate.” The word slipped
out before he gave it much thought. “And she has these
eyes
that just...”

He brought his head up. Maxine had lost
interest in the doughnut. Her attention was all his now. Brown
eyebrows which had never been dyed to match the copper-red hair
rose in twin arches. “Well, now. Isn’t that interesting? She had
eyes, you say?”

Her voice was full of speculation, and her
double chin damn near quivered with amusement. “Ebony eyes,” he
said, careful to keep his voice cool and detached. “Hair to match,
long and curly. When she left, she seemed a
little...distraught.”

She’d been distraught all right. Almost as if
looking at him—
touching him—
had shaken her as much as
looking at and touching
her
had shaken
him.
Why,
though? Why?

What did she really want with him?

A little voice inside whispered a warning,
once again. But it was quieter now. This need to see her again had
all but drowned it out. Still, he heard it, recognized it. A woman
with this kind of power over him—one he sensed was lying—was the
last thing Adam needed in his life right now.

But despite the very real, icy fear that
writhed
in the pit
of his stomach at the thought
of seeing her, Adam was convinced he could handle this thing. He
could keep his feelings in check, talk to her as if she were just a
stranger. Hell, he only wanted to see her long enough to make her
tell him where they’d met before.

Liar!

As much as he detested dishonest women, he
figured he could stand her that long. Unless she decided to lie
about that, too.

Maxine puckered her brows and sighed. “I just
don’t remember seeing anyone like that in here yesterday.
Sounds...pretty, though.” Reaching for her doughnut with one hand,
she flipped a few pages in her book with the other. Then stopped
abruptly. “Well, what do you know? Here she is. Hmm, that’s not my
writing. She must have stopped in while I was out to lunch. You
were right, someone stuck her name on the visitors list.”

“Well?”

She turned the book around and Adam leaned
down. Brigit Malone. Akasha, The Commons. That was all it said.
“What the hell is Akasha?”

“Akasha?” The male voice from behind Adam
made him turn around to see his best student, Michael Sullivan,
lounging in the doorway. “Oh, come on, Mr. Reid. Akasha. You know,
the fifth element. The omnipresent spiritual power that permeates
the universe and all that.”

Adam frowned. “I was talking real life, kid,
not religious myth.”

“Skeptic,” Michael accused. Then he shrugged.
“Well, in real life it doubles as a flower shop on the Commons.
Great place. You ought to check it out.”

Adam nodded slowly. “I think I will.”

“Uh, can you do us a favor and wait ‘til
after class? Everyone’s waiting on you, Mr. Reid. I got elected to
come looking.”

Jerking his wrist up to eye level, Adam
blinked in surprise. He was never late for anything. He was the
most notoriously prompt, the most organized man on campus. He never
got distracted like this.

“Anything wrong, Mr. Reid?”

“No.” He looked at his watch again,
confirming he was ten minutes late for his own class. Distractedly,
he started for the door.

“You’re forgetting your briefcase, Adam.”

He turned to Maxine, saw her plump finger
pointing to the floor where he’d set it down. Shaking his head, he
bent to pick it up.

“You’re not yourself,” Maxine whispered at
him. She sent him a wink. “Must be those
eyes.”

Maybe it was. More likely, though, it was
this niggling feeling, half-anticipation, half-dread, when he
thought about seeing her again.

He managed to get through class, but he was
thinking about seeing her, getting the answers to his questions,
the whole time. He couldn’t seem to carry a thought to completion
before he lost the thread. Couldn’t seem to concentrate, wasn’t
focused. The kids tossed their theories at him as to the origin of
the Celtic text, and he listened. Didn’t argue, didn’t question.
Just listened.

It seemed to take forever, but the class
finally ended. His timer bell pinged and he walked out, just like
that. Papers strewn over the desktop. Drawers unlocked. And ten
minutes later, he was at the front door of Akasha.

The sign said closed. But as he peered
through the glass, he saw movement, so he tried the door and found
it unlocked.

He stepped through and into what seemed like
another world. The place sparkled. The place actually sparkled. And
it wasn’t just the crystal prisms turning slowly in the windows,
and reflecting rainbows of color that danced with a life of their
own, touching everything. It wasn’t just the many windows that
seemed not only to admit golden sunlight, but to enhance it
somehow. Or the plants that lined every available bit of space. The
place smelled magical. A mingling of incredible perfumes, plants
and flowers, and some sort of incense, too, he thought, permeated
it. And the sound of it sparkled, too. Mystical music floating
softly on fragrant air, touching him, caressing him. Those wind
chimes that came alive with the slightest change in the air
currents, whispering, tinkling whenever he moved.

He stood still, just inside the door, lost in
sensations for several moments, before he gave his head a shake and
reminded himself why he’d come here. To see her and figure out why
he felt he knew her. It was important, somehow. He’d sensed that
from his first glimpse of her.

No one stood behind the counter. He heard
something. A sniffle. A sob. Adam was still holding the door in one
hand, and he let it go now, stepping farther inside, scanning the
aisles in search of her. The door swung closed, tinkling the chimes
overhead as it passed.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not really open
today.”

It was her voice, but not deep and resonant
as it had been yesterday. It was tear-choked and hoarse. It came
from somewhere beyond the slightly opened door in the back. And he
moved toward it, an odd sensation snaking around in his
stomach.

“I just came in to take care of a few
things,” she went on, guiding him in, drawing him nearer. He
thought of sirens, and wondered if he were about to crash on the
rocks. “And then I’m going...”

He nudged the door open and stepped through
it, into the warmth and light and humidity of a small room made
completely of glass. Her greenhouse.

She stopped speaking as if she sensed him
there. Lowering the watering pot to a bare spot between several
ferns, she lifted her head, met his gaze. And behind the round
glasses, those black eyes were as mysterious as ever, more so even,
because they glimmered beneath an ocean of tears. She wore a green
silk blouse, tucked into a modest black skirt that hung loosely on
her, and skimmed the tops of her knees. Her wild hair was caught up
in a tight French braid that hung down to the middle of her back.
This was her costume. He knew it instinctively. Yesterday she’d
taken it off, and tried to look like one of his students. And he
thought maybe she didn’t even realize that she’d been more herself
in jeans and a crop top with her hair wild and free, than she was
now in her uniform of propriety.

And why the hell was he thinking as if he
knew her better than she knew herself? He hadn’t even met her, yet,
technically speaking,

“And then you’re going...?”

She blinked, averting her face and removing
her glasses long enough to swipe the back of one hand over her wet
eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “Never mind. It’s...not
important.”

“Looks pretty damned important to me.”

He moved closer, because he couldn’t stop
himself. And she stood perfectly still, watching him, quickly
slipping those glasses back on as if to hide behind them. Fear
and—God, was that longing?—mixed in her eyes, and he almost
believed she couldn’t have moved away if she’d wanted to. He
reached out, unable to control the impulse to brush at a tear she’d
missed—or was it simply because he had to touch her again? He ran
his thumb across her cheek, his other fingers spreading gently over
her face. And there was something. Something that sent his heart
slamming against his ribs and made his throat close off. Something
potent and startling and unexpected. Though it shouldn’t have been.
He’d reacted much the same yesterday, hadn’t he? It was as if he
fell under some kind of spell every time he looked into her eyes.
And yet he couldn’t seem to resist looking into them anyway.

The way her eyes widened, the way she sucked
in a sharp gasp and pulled away from his touch, he was well on the
way to convincing himself she’d felt it too, whatever the hell it
was.

His hand hovered in the air for a moment
longer. Then he lowered it, feeling like a fool. And he searched
for something to say. What did you say to a beautiful, weeping
stranger?

“Is there anything I can do to help?” She
held his gaze with those moist, mesmerizing, soul-searching eyes of
hers...and very slowly, she nodded.

She tried not to look into his eyes. She
couldn’t afford to feel his pain, or to see the other things coming
to life in those deep blue gemstones. Other things. Like the way he
looked at her. As if he were seeing the epitome of his fondest
dream. As if she were something precious, rare, something he’d
never thought he’d see.