Luathara - Book Three of the Otherworld Trilogy (6 page)

“It’s just?” I prompted.

He glanced up at me, his eyes even darker than before, his mouth cut in a grim line.  “It’s so easy to over-extend your power, especially if you have not had proper training in how to utilize it.  If anything ever happened to you because you didn’t know how to rein in your glamour, I’d . . .”

“You’d what?” I asked immediately, the slight pain in my shoulders forgotten as my heart raced to catch up with my thoughts.

Cade lifted his head once again and gazed at me, the look in his eyes so beguiling that I almost started drooling.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but at that very moment Bradley decided to scream at the top of his lungs from somewhere up the equestrian trail.

“MEGHAN!!!  Mom says dinner’s ready!”

Cade straightened immediately, losing his intense composure.

No, no, no!  What were you going to say?!
I wanted to scream at him.

Instead I gritted my teeth and we started up the trail.  I was dying to know what he had been about to say, but I guess it could wait for later.  Perhaps we could find a private moment this weekend while at the lake.  Then again, did I want to risk Robyn, Tully and the boys overhearing?  But if it involved another declaration of love followed by a passionate kiss, I don't think I'd care very much who was there to see it.

-
Four
-

Truth

Lopez Lake was crowded with the usual family vacationers
,
looking for a weekend away from lying around the house.  The buzz of motorboats and the muffled sounds of radios playing across the campsites drifted through the window of Cade’s Trans Am as we rumbled slowly through the camping area.  Robyn, Tully, Thomas and Will were meeting us there, and as we drew closer and closer to our destination, the knots in my stomach became even tighter.  The night before, Cade joined me in my room after everyone went to bed so we could discuss the camping trip and the meeting of my friends.

“I want to tell them
everything,” I’d said nervously. “Well, not everything.  I want them to know the truth about what I am.  They have been my closest friends all through high school and they deserve to know why they won’t be seeing me so much anymore.”

I had kept my head down, talking to my hands as they worried away at the tattered cuffs of my sweatshirt’s sleeves.  Cade had gently taken one of them, distracting me from my nervous fretting, and squeezed my fingers.

“Then you should tell them, and I’ll help you.”

He kept my hand in his for a long time before dropping it, and once again I
'd
wondered about the big question that was my constant shadow.  Would we just go on forever pretending like nothing had happened between us?  I tried to forget it as I
'd
tossed and turned in my bed after Cade left, wondering if he was doing the same thing in the guest room upstairs.  Eventually, I
managed to force
the thoughts from my mind,
again
, and fell into a fitful sleep.

“This looks like the place,” Cade said, jerking me out of my reflection.

He turned his car down a paved lane that ended in a cul-de-sac of sorts mere yards from one of the lake’s small inlets.  I noted the numbers of the campsites until I spotted the one that matched the name scrawled on the paper I held
:
Toro
,
site
eight
.  If the sign
hadn't been
an indication, the image of Will and Thomas struggling with a partially raised tent while Robyn and Tully looked on in mild dis
approval would have cinched it.

Cade rolled up next to Thomas’s van (on loan for the weekend) and killed the engine.  I’d been too busy finding amusement at
my friends’ expense that I had completely forgotten that I was about to spend a night alone with Cade with only my friends to chaperone us.  Friends who knew nothing about him, nor how I had met him . . .
My heart shuddered to a stop as the last rumble of the Trans Am’s engine came to an end.  Not even Robyn
knew how I
'd
met Cade.  For some reason, she had been
s
o dazzled by his
Otherworldly beauty that she'
d kept her boundless curiosity alive on
ly on the
tidbits
I was willing to feed her
.

Okay, she had asked me once where I had found him, but I had flippantly responded that he had found me.  Sooner or later my friends were going to want to know more about my good-looking, mysterious pseudo-boyfriend, and I would have to either invent som
ething or
bite the bullet and do what I'd planned to do all along:
tell them the truth.
  For some reason, informing my friends that I was an immortal, Otherworldly being who'd met Cade while being attacked by monsters seemed far less daunting than admitting I
wasn't all that clear on what our relationship status was.  Yeah, and just what did that say about my sanity?

I took a deep breath and climbed out of the car, putting on my best smile as my high school
buddie
s came to greet us.  In all honesty, I still wasn’t ready to tell them about my unusual ancestry, but I had a weird feeling that Cade and I weren’t going to leave this camping trip without something happening that would give us no choice.

* * *

To my immense relief
, no one charged at me sp
outing questions regarding Cade and his sudden appearance.  They all had been aware of his existence for a little while (or, according to everyone but Robyn, his
feigned
existence), so his appearance wasn’t too shocking.  Last spring, Cade was supposed to go with me to prom and he would have met everyone the
n
, but that was before his mother sprung her neat little trap and kind of ruined my whole weekend.  Now, as the two of us slowly walked up the short drive to the campsite, I would
finally
get the chance to show them I hadn't invented him after all.

“Meghan!  Cade!  So glad you guys could make it!”

Robyn dropped the tent stakes she’d been holding and came sauntering over.  Though not as short as my best friend Tully, I still had quite a few inches on her and I had to bend down to give her a hug.  Robyn let go of me and I looked up at everyone else
, expecting the same casual, Aw-shucks-how's-your-summer-
been
?
expressions on their faces.  What I saw instead made me want to laugh out loud.  Tully, Will and Thomas stood ramrod still, their eyes wide and their mouths open in different stages of shock. 
Their gazes were fixed on Cade, like a
P
ointer spotting a duck.  I covered my mouth to hide my amusement.  Yes,
even in his civilian clothes
Cade had that effect.

Robyn hadn’t given Cade a hug, but she did give him a once over.  I noticed admiration on her face, but it wasn’t the dumbstruck look she had
plastered on
him the first few times they
'd
met.

I cleared my throat.  “Cade, you know Robyn of course, and this is Will, Thomas and Tully.”

I gestured towards my mute friends as I named them.  Cade smiled politely and nodded at
each of
them in turn.

“Pleased to meet you all,” Cade said.  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He indicated the tent and
,
as if some hypnotist somewhere snapped his fingers, Tully and the boys became alive with purpose, instructing Cade on how
he could be of assistance
.  I glanced at Robyn, but she only gave me one of her sly looks.

“I’ll get our stuff out of the car,” I blurted, and turned on my heel before she could start interrogating me.

Half an hour later the tent was up, our food organized in the cooler, and our camping gear stored securely inside our canvas abode.  The tent itself was big enough to hold eight people and had two smaller rooms off to the sides, their fabric doors rolled back to let it air out before nightfall.

“I moved yours and Cade’s stuff to one of the side rooms, you know, in case you two want some privacy.”

Robyn winked at me and I gritted my teeth.  It didn’t help stop the blush, however.  I pushed past her and went to join Will and Thomas, who had taken out their fold up chairs and were each enjoying a soda.  I plopped down next to them and released a great sigh.

“In case you’re wondering,” Will said after taking a loud sip of his drink and pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, “your boyfriend decided to take a walk.”

I had been leaning back in my chair, my eyes closed
against
the warm sun above.  Upon hearing Will’s comment, I did a full body cringe and leaned forward, my hair falling into my face, as I glared at him.

“He isn't my boyfriend.  He’s just a friend.”

Yes, I wanted him to be my boyfriend, but I couldn’t tell my friends that without talking to Cade first.  The last thing I needed to do was ruin our friendship by going around and telling people something that might not be the truth.

“Well, if that’s the case, can I have him?” Thomas asked.

My annoyance disappeared in a flash and I cast him a quick look.  He gave me his crooked grin, brown eyes dancing with mirth.  I snorted out a laugh and in the next moment the tense mood had vanished.

“Wha
t are you guys talking about?”
Tully asked as she and Robyn came walking up the road.

“How hot Cade is,” Thomas answered wistfully as he dug around for another drink in the cooler.

Will groaned and rubbed his face, but I only smiled.  I kind of felt sorry for him, getting stuck with all us girls and Thomas and the gorgeous son of a goddess and the Celtic version of Hercules.  It was definitely going to be a long camping trip for him.

Tully took a seat next to me and looked like she was about to ask me something when Cade appeared out of nowhere from the oak trees behind our tent.  He startled all of us into a fit of laughter and when it died off, Will clapped his hands together and proclaimed it was time to start the fire so we could barbecue the chicken.

Cade offered to help and Will begrudgingly accepted.  Thomas, without an o
unce of shame, offered to watch, which only resulted in
Will cast
ing
him an annoyed glare.  Not surprisingly,
I had to stifle another laugh.  Cade, to my relief, didn’t seem to notice his newest admirer and proceeded to make a teepee out of the wood they’d gathered earlier.

I helped Robyn and Tully get the meat and vegetables ready, and since Cade was in the immediate vicinity, we kept our conversation to books, movies and the like, though I could almost feel the waves of curiosity
roll
ing off of them, Tully especially.  She had been my best friend since childhood, but ever since I stumbled into the swamp in the middle of the night and met Cade for the first time, we had been drifting apart.  Not that it was anything she or I meant to do, it’s just how everything had turned out.  I regretted keeping things from her, but I had done it for her own safety.

The sun was dipping low on the horizon, but the chicken was over the fire, the potato salad waited on the table with the chips and drinks, and we had all retreated into silence.  Of course, the sounds of other campers nearby intruded on our thoughts, but I think for the most part we blocked it all out.

After eating and packing away the extra food, we
gather
ed around the fire pit and cracked open the graham crackers, marshmallows
,
and chocolate.  Thomas and Will sat across from me in their fold out chairs, Tully and Robyn on either side of them, and Cade and I took up one side of the bench.  We had dragged it closer to the fire so we could make our own s’mores.

I flicked a glance at Cade.  He gazed into the flames, his expression free of any emotion and his eyes dark.  He had remained relatively quiet the entire time, taking part in polite conversation but only speaking when he needed to.  Perhaps he was taking this time to study my friends; to get a sense of what they were like.  Mostly, though, I imagined he was deep in thought about what awaited us in Eile.  I bit my lip and turned my eyes back towards the fire.  I didn’t want to think about what might be occupying his mind at the moment.

I returned my attention to the marshmallows turning golden brown over the fire.  Mine was done, so I got to work making a s’more.  Cade watched me with curiosity, and then began mimicking my actions.  I was simply glad that look of deep contemplation was gone from his eyes.  It always worried me when Cade
adopted that expression
.

With nimble dexterity
, Robyn plucked the crispy marshmallow off the end of her own fork and wedged it between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate.  “So, now that we are all here with no pesky parents to eavesdrop, why don’t you tell us how the two of you met?”