Just Believe (7 page)

"I'm going to get the guards."
Annabelle got off the bed, determined to do the right thing, even
if Erin hated her for the rest of her life.

But she didn't get to the
door.

Lucas bolted upright in the chair, his
eyes wide.

"Saints in Heaven! Not him!"

Erin grabbed his hand as he stood
up.

"Don't leave me again, Lucas. If you'll
just tell them what happened, they'll let me out."

Lucas knelt by the bed and took Erin's
hands between his own.

"I promise you, Erin, my love, I'll be
back. But I need to regain my strength. If he tracks me here, he'll
find you." He turned and once more he fixed Annabelle with a stare.
"You have to help us, Annabelle."

"No way, José." Annabelle crossed her
arms and returned Lucas's stare full measure.

He rose and came to her, towering over
her.

"Listen to me, now," he whispered
harshly, his exotic accent becoming more pronounced with his heavy
breaths. "He's coming for me."

Was he as nutty as Erin was? Maybe
there was something in the water. Maybe they'd participated in a
psych experiment gone awry.

"Who's coming for you?" Annabelle
asked, her anger melting into concern.

"My brother. And if they sent him,
they'll be wantin' Erin, too."

"For what?"

Lucas closed his eyes tight, as though
warding off some horror. Annabelle felt her own skin pucker with
goose flesh at the dread marring his face.

"For lovin' me."

"What in the world?"

"I don't have time to explain,
Annabelle. But my kind aren't supposed to mingle with your kind."
He rested his forearm on the rolling table at the foot of the bed.
"It's my fault, I own, but I couldn't help myself. I love her. I
don't want anything to happen to her. Please, help us."

His eyes, already bright before, burned
now. She didn't know why, but she believed he believed. And
whatever he believed frightened him enough to spill over onto her,
too.

"What do you want me to do?" she
asked.

* * * *

The trail was clear until Gaelen
arrived back in Chapel Hill, then it faded as he neared an older,
well-established neighborhood on the east side of town. Gaelen knew
the area well. Several of his colleagues lived here in the
comfortable seventies-style homes nestled among towering
pines.

He followed the last remnants of the
trail into the neighborhood, back to the last street in the
development. The trail disappeared as it led him around to the back
of sprawling, one-story house sitting on a lawn manicured to the
consistency of a putting green.

Gaelen unsquooshed by an open window at
the back of the house.

"Ach, Lucas," he whispered, recognizing
in his marrow the traces of his brother's blood on the
windowsill.

Raising his leg over the sill, Gaelen
climbed in. He stood quietly, letting his eyes adjust to the dark
and listening for the sound of another person.

A gentle snore echoed through the
hallway. He followed the sound to a bedroom at the back corner of
the house and peeked around the door. A woman lay alone in a
king-sized bed, one slender arm resting across her forehead. Her
mouth hung slightly open, a soft growl marking each
breath.

Gaelen approached the bed, wondering if
this was Lucas's human girl.

Snort, snuffle.

Gaelen froze by the bed, his own breath
suspended until the woman once again breathed rhythmically. There
was enough trouble without letting himself be seen.

Kneeling by the bed, Gaelen leaned
close to the woman's face. This close, he could see she was a
mature woman, probably nearly fifty human years. A wry smile
twisted his mouth. Lucas's tastes tended toward the more tender,
younger women, but this one was very attractive for her age. Some
familiarity in her face made him study her more closely. He knew
he'd seen her before, but couldn't place her. Her auburn hair
spread out on the pillow underneath her head, creating a halo of
warm color glowing in the dim light.

A smile flitted across her mouth,
softening her gentle features even more.

Gaelen reached into the woman's mind
with his own and, finding trust there, gently probed for her
name.

"Ah, Susan. What a lovely name. I am
Gaelen."

"Hello, Gaelen," the woman said, her
voice rough with sleep, her eyes still closed.

"Susan, do you know Lucas?"

"Yes."

"When was the last time you saw
him?"

"Two days ago." She scratched her nose.
Gaelen leaned back into the shadows, in case she woke suddenly. "He
picked Erin up, and they went out." A frown creased her
forehead.

Erin. He remembered Eochy mentioning
that was the girl's name. Lucas's human girl. If he could find her,
Lucas wouldn't be far away.

"Where is Erin, Susan?" he
asked.

A sniff signaled her answer. "He hurt
her."

"No, Susan. Lucas wouldn't hurt Erin."
His certainty surprised him.

Susan shook her sleeping head. "I
didn't think so, either." Another smile flitted across her mouth.
"They are so lovely together." The smile disappeared, a bitter
frown taking its place. "He hurt my little girl."

Erin's mother, he realized.

"Why did he hurt my daughter,
Gaelen?"

"I don't know, Susan. But I do know he
never meant to hurt her." The degree of trust Susan showed gave him
the heart to ask her, "Can you help me find Lucas? He's in trouble.
If I don't find him soon, he may be hurt before he can tell Erin
he's sorry."

Susan shook her head. "No. I don't know
where he is. Erin has been waiting for him since the aliens took
him away."

Gaelen stifled a chuckle. Such a tale
would go a long way to keeping this whole disaster quiet. Sensible
people would laugh off any story smacking of things that couldn't
be explained. In the privacy of her own conscious mind, Susan
probably didn't think she believed it.

"Did Erin see where the aliens took
Lucas?"

"No. They disappeared in a flash of
light."

"Where is Erin?"

Susan sniffled again. "The hospital." A
single tear slid from the corner of her eye.

Sensing her starting to waken, Gaelen
withdrew from her mind, careful to place the suggestion that she'd
had a lovely dream of a conversation with an incredibly handsome
man about... He paused, trying to get just the right thing to leave
with her.

Ah, he thought, perfect.

"Fireflies, Susan. The little point of
light is a firefly flickering around in the dark."

She smiled. "I love
fireflies."

"Yes, my sweet, I know you do." He
raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back tenderly. "Goodbye,
Susan."

"Goodbye, Gaelen."

Gaelen stood by the window and
squooshed.

Next stop, the hospital.

Chapter Five

Annabelle sat at Erin's bedside, her
sister finally asleep. Lucas's visit had calmed Erin more than all
the Prozac in the joint.

Now that he was gone, though, Annabelle
didn't know if she'd made the right decision. Helping Lucas was the
same as supporting Erin in her delusion about him.

With a long sigh, Annabelle rose from
the chair and went to the window. The hospital was on the southern
edge of the university campus, but what had been a wide boulevard
lined with important-looking brick buildings housing the pharmacy
and public health schools on one side and the hospital and medical
library on the other, Cameron Street had become overbuilt as the
hospital complex had spread. Even so, Erin loved it here, even
hoping to work in the UNC hospital itself when she graduated next
spring.

Daddy would be happy, Annabelle
thought. Vern was a Tarheel born and a Tarheel bred, and had stayed
on at the university as an administrator in the athletics
department after his own graduation some thirty years ago. "Uncle
Jumbo" they had called him, for his size and his appetite-both
prodigious-and his memory, which never forgot a name or a
face.

He was as tender as he was large,
though. Never did one of Jumbo Tinker's athletes spend a holiday in
their dorm room if they couldn't get home. The Tinker home was
open. He played Santa Claus for children in the hospital, often
buying the gifts himself. And people weren't the only recipients of
Daddy's generosity. Annabelle thought of the dishes of milk he
always left out. "For the fairies," he'd said, but she'd known it
was for the stray cats in the neighborhood.

Annabelle turned from the window, arms
wrapped around herself. Even a year after his death, she missed him
so much, his droopy brown eyes, his ever-present smile, and his
childlike wonder with everything.

Wonder Annabelle had once
shared.

"Ummm."

Erin's muttered moan and smile as she
twisted in her narrow bed caught Annabelle's attention.

"Lucas," she said, her eyes popping
open. "Where is he?"

"He left." Annabelle sat down in the
chair beside the bed. "He's waiting in my car, and I'm going to
take him to the house when Mom comes back to stay with
you."

"Oh. That's right." Erin glanced
around. "I'm still in the hospital." She flicked her eyes to
Annabelle. "I dreamed I was at home. Well, in my home, with Lucas.
And two of the most adorable children you've ever seen."

"Erin," Annabelle moaned,
"don't-"

"What's wrong with you? You used to be
happy and laugh and have fun." Erin stared, making Annabelle
uncomfortable. "You used to dream. I remember once," she smiled,
"you saw a tiny man in the tool shed."

"That was a just dream."

"Oh, I don't think so. You talked about
him for years."

Annabelle hadn't thought of that dream
for what seemed like centuries. She'd been barely twelve and had
just read Peter Pan to Erin. Again. Annabelle had just entered that
hormone-driven romantic time, and she often imagined herself as
Wendy. In her own private version, of course, Peter stayed with
Wendy/Annabelle in London, and they grew up and got married and had
many children and lived happily ever after. She'd cried when
Tinkerbell drank the poison and clapped louder than Erin had to
save the fairy's life.

Then one night she'd been sitting by
her window, gazing into the spring night.

Annabelle smiled at the memory. "He
wasn't tiny. As a matter of fact, he was taller than
Daddy."

"Was he handsome?" Erin
asked.

"Very," Annabelle said, warming to her
topic, "with wheat-blond hair and eyes the color of the sky. And,"
she went on, telling Erin what she'd never told another soul, "he
had these wonderful big wings that looked like gossamer and
twinkled with blue and green light."

"Wings?" Erin whispered the word, then
her brow furrowed. "You mean...?" Suddenly, her brow smoothed and
she sat up toward Annabelle, her face full of mischief. "You mean,
your dream man was a...a...fairy?"

The word was so unexpected, and had so
many other connotations, it caught Annabelle off-guard, though
she'd often thought the same thing.

Tonight, after the stress of hearing of
her sister's tragedy and being drawn into God-alone-knew-what, the
idea hit her funny bone, pushing aside all worry, fear, and
tension, and dragging her spirits out of the tank. She laughed. And
laughed. And laughed, until tears fell from her eyes, and she had
to hold her sides to keep the stitch in her side from bending her
double.

"Oh, Erin!" She dragged in a breath. "A
fairy?" She sputtered. "Oh, I hope not! That would be such a
waste!"

Erin's scream of hilarity was muffled
as she dove face first into her pillow.

A knock at the door signaled a visitor,
giving Annabelle and Erin time to stifle their howls to mere
snorts. Annabelle hoped they hadn't been heard. She didn't want to
end up sharing a room with Erin permanently.

She covered her mouth with her hand to
mute her giggle at that idea.

"Excuse me, is this Miss Tinker's
room?"

Oh, my, what a sexy voice, Annabelle
thought. It was also familiar, honeyed with a hint of an accent.
She turned to see if the figure matched the voice.

"Yes," Erin said, sniffing in a giggle,
"I'm Erin Tinker."

"Miss Tinker, I'm so glad to meet you
at last."

A man came into the room, dressed as
one might expect a university professor to be, right down to the
elbow patches of the tweed jacket he wore over his cream turtleneck
sweater. Annabelle smiled and half-expected him to whip a pipe out
of his pocket. "I'm Gaelen Riley, Lucas's older
brother."

Erin's face shone with sudden delight.
"Gaelen!" She reached out toward him. "Lucas has told me so much
about you."