Out of This World

Chapter 18

“I’ve decided there’s something to be said for dull,” I said. “Dull’s the new excitement.” My voice wavered. It was all getting to me. My stomach jangled, my knees wobbled. “I really miss dull,” I whispered.

Kel tried to study me in the darkness. “What’s going on, Rach?”

“I’m cursing the day I thought I needed adventure and got on a plane. And when I say ‘plane,’ I mean airplane, not level of reality. You?”

“I meant, what can you see?”

“Oh.” I sighed, and looked around with my new-and-improved vision. “Well, we’re in the attic.”

“Where is everyone else?”

I looked at the floor and saw through it. Nothing on the level beneath us. And nothing on the floor below that. But on the bottom floor…“Omigod.”

“What?”

“Two men in the kitchen, standing in front of the freezer, eating-Hey! They’re eating the cookies!” Then I saw more, and fear froze me to the very core. “They’re armed.”

“Okay.” Kel sounded unhappy about this news. “Where are Axel and Marilee, and William and Serena?”

I searched. “I don’t see anyone else. My God, do you think they’re all okay?”

“Well, they have the laptop.”

“Yes.” My voice sounded small. “I hope they don’t go to the Bahamas without us.”

“I don’t know if they can. We have the abilities.” He grimaced. “That’s getting easier to say, which scares me.”

“Kel, what’s going to happen to us?”

He reached for something tucked into his waistband: the gun he’d taken from Gert’s.

“Kel.” I swallowed hard. “Can you actually use that?”

“Maybe not with any finesse, but if it comes right down to it, I’ll do what needs to be done.” He said this with just enough grimness that I knew he meant it. “I need you to keep an eye out. If our unwelcome guests start upstairs-”

“Oh my God.”

“Will said they already searched up here. Let’s just try the stay-quiet thing.” He tucked the gun back into his waistband and pulled out the Blackberry. “Time to make this thing give us some answers.”

The glow from the small screen lit up the dark. Kel’s face became visible, and I looked at him, so familiar, so damn important to me. I’d gotten us into this. If we died here…God. My throat closed. “Kel.”

“Hang on.” He was working the buttons, oblivious. I could see his fingers, and the cuts on them from putting his fist through two doors now, and I took his hand.

He glanced at me, eyes blind in the dark. “What?”

“Just making sure you’re okay.” I ran a finger over his palm.

“It’s you I’m worried about.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said softly. “Always have.”

“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.”

“You’re not alone in worrying, you know. I do it, too.”

His gaze searched mine in the dark. “Do you?”

I could barely speak past the ball of emotion. “So much, Kel.”

His eyes never wavered. “I’m never sure what you think, when it comes to me. And you and me.”

“I guess that’s fair,” I managed to say with a little smile. “Since I’ve pretty much been confused about that since we got here. You’re, um, not my usual type.”

“Yeah, you’ve dated some real winners.”

I opened my mouth, but at the look on his face, and the knowledge deep down inside that he was right, I shut it again. “So I’ve had some wild oats to sow.”

“A few.”

“As my friend, you’re supposed to give me unsolicited opinions. It’s an unspoken pact of our relationship. You could have tried to talk me out of a few of them.”

“Rach, has anyone ever successfully talked you out of anything?”

“Okay, I’m a little stubborn.”

“A little?”

“Kel.” I shook my head. “Sometimes…I’m not sure what it is you want from me.”

His smile faded, his eyes letting the heat shine through, just plain, primitive, raw emotion that told me exactly what he did want: me. On a platter.

The man made my knees wobble without saying a word. “Kel-”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to go there again.”

“But…” I put words to my biggest fear. “If we don’t get out of here-”

“We’re going to get out. Trust me, you’re going to live to torture me another day.”

I’d always been aware of him having a crush on me, but he’d never put it to words, and I certainly never had. I think the truth was, I’d always felt terrified that if he did say anything, it’d mean the end of our relationship, which had always meant everything to me. Everything.

And now I could lose him anyway. “You want-”

“Nothing. I want nothing from you.”

“No, don’t do that. I want to be honest; I need you to be honest. You don’t want to have a causal thing with me, and my first instinct is to run, because I haven’t done anything deep when it comes to men. The deepest I’ve ever done is-”

“Cade.”

A fellow painter I’d dated for three months before finding him in bed with his roommate. For me, it’d been a passionate affair, and I’d mistaken lust for love. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. “No.”

“Devlin, then.”

The Harley-driving bartender. I’d met him after I’d painted a mural in his bar. We’d burned hot and cold for a few months, before his intensity had scared me away. Well, that, and his habit of drinking himself into a coma at night. “No.”

“Then-”

“You,” I said, and drew a deep breath at that admission. “You, Kel.”

His startlingly blue eyes didn’t waver. “But we never mixed friendship with anything more.”

“But our friendship…it’s the deepest, most important relationship with a man I’ve ever had,” I admitted. “It’s why I’m afraid to screw it up by adding…”

“More.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, and turned in a slow, frustrated circle. “So you can’t give anything else, and I can’t take less. Hell of a place to be.”

Oh God. I was losing him. “Good things don’t last, Kel-”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh really?” I put my hands on my hips, not that he could see me. “What was the last relationship you had that lasted?”

“My relationships have all been good ones.”

“But none lasted,” I persisted.

He stared at me. “You’re saying what then? That you can sleep with a guy but not get to know him, or you can get to know him but not sleep with him?”

Well, when he put it like that, I sounded as crazy as my great-great-aunt Gertrude. “It’s made for some pretty limiting relationships,” I allowed.

“This weekend is a bit of a departure for you then. Sleeping with a good friend.”

“You knew it was.”

“So when I told you this was a bad idea…”

“I know.” I covered my face. “I’m sorry, but…”

“But what? You were just carried away? By my…what did you call it? Animal magnetism?”

He sounded frustrated and hurt, because that was the part of himself that he’d gained here, with the swap. Or so he thought. I was beginning to see he’d had it all along, though I had no way of proving that to him. “Kel-”

“No, it’s all right. I get it.” He went back to the Blackberry, jabbing at it a little harder than necessary.

“It has nothing to do with you,” I insisted. “It’s me, and my inability-”

“More BS.” He looked up, his eyes dark and full of temper. “You have the ability to do anything you want. Look, let’s talk about something that’s helpful, like how to access some info-Well. Look at that…”

“What?”

“Did Gert ever e-mail you?”

“No, I doubt she even knew how.”

“Oh, she knew how.” He showed me the screen, which revealed e-mail files for Gert, Marilee and Axel. He opened Axel’s.

I stared at it for a moment as the ramifications fell into place. “But Axel said he didn’t know how to use a computer.”

“Read,” Kel suggested, and I turned the screen more fully toward me so I could.

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

Gert was right. Her niece e-mailed me from the Web site, and has called several times. She’s coming.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

Be ready. And remember your part.

Kel pulled up the reply.

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

I know my part. Be the stoner. It’ll be fun, delving into my past.

A smiley-face emoticon came after this, animated and bouncing up and down.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

It wasn’t so in your past.

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

Fair enough. Don’t worry, I won’t regress.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

Let’s just do this. Show the place off, and then get her to go back to L.A. Then things can continue status quo. I like status quo, Axel.

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

Status quo, and all that it implies, works for me.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

Implies?

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

You know, the you-wanting-me thing.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

Oh, delusional one. I do not want you.

To: Marilee

From: Axel

Subject: Trouble

You’re such a beautiful liar.

To: Axel

From: Marilee

Subject: Trouble

Stop e-mailing me.

And he must have, because there were no more e-mail messages in the file. Kel clicked on Gert’s file.

To: Marilee

From: Gert

Subject: This weekend’s guests

This weekend’s guests are Serena and William, regulars, as you know. Are we ready?

“What did Marilee reply?”

Kellan looked, but eventually shook his head. “I don’t think she did before Gert died.”

“They all talk about this swap thing like…like it’s normal,” I said unevenly. “And what the hell happened? How did we become the unwitting hosts? They can’t just do that.”

“But they did. Look at this one.”

To: Gert

From: Perry Dickenson at All Travels

Subject: 4 stars!

Once again your B &B has been nominated for Favorite Alt-Uni Mini-Vacation. It’s also been upgraded from a 3-star to a 4-star destination. Congrats, and keep up the good work!

I stared at it. “Alt-uni?”

“No idea,” Kellan said, then combed through some other files. “Huh. Look at this. It’s labeled Alt-Uni: Rules.”

Iron-clad rules, punishable by banishment:

• No swapping with unsuspectings.

• No stealing of abilities.

• No swapping for longer than three days.

• Pirates are to be shot on sight.

I gulped hard. “Pirates.”

Kellan scowled. “Unsuspectings.”

“Shot on sight. What the hell is that?”

Kellan slipped an arm around me and shook his head. “Really don’t know. And really don’t like not knowing.”

“It’s like we’re in some Harry Potter world. And I want out.”

“Where is everyone? Can you see?”

I focused, then felt my heart kick hard. “I don’t see anyone. Nothing moving at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but why?” Panic filled me again. What was happening to the others? Were they okay? Damn, I was so darn tired of the fear. “Kel, maybe we should make a run for it.”

“Where to?”

Good point.

“We’re better off waiting for dawn,” he continued, running a hand up my arm, his eyes peering through the dark in my general direction. “Serena said they’d have to leave then.”

“Can you see me at all?”

“Not so good,” he admitted, and let his fingers do the walking, stroking my jaw, my cheeks, wiping away a tear I hadn’t even realized I’d shed.

“Hey,” he murmured, tugging me with him as he sank into the closest piece of furniture, a high-backed Victorian couch. Dust rose, enclosing us, and Kellan sneezed a few times “We’re going to be okay,” he promised, his hands staying on me.

Which was good. I liked that part a lot. With his hands on me, and the dark all around us, the adrenaline and fear turned into something else as I snuggled up to him on that dusty couch. “Kel?”

“Yeah?”

I slipped a leg on either side of him, straddling him.

He went completely and utterly still, only his face lifting to mine. “What are you doing?”

“Well…” I’d been kind of hoping he’d know. “Looking for comfort, I guess.”

“Feels like more than that. And anyway, didn’t we just do this?”

“Again.”

“Rach,” he said cautiously, and set the Blackberry aside. The screen went dark, robbing him of even that small bit of light. He blinked like an owl.

“You really can’t see anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Hmm.”

His voice went even more cautious. “This is not going to happen.”

“Work with me here.” I loved the look on his face, that wary arousal. “It made us feel better before, remember?” I leaned forward, and he put his hand out to feel exactly where I was, coming in accidental contact with my breast.

“Damn it,” he said, and yanked back.

I took his hands and put them on my hips.

“Rach.”

I loved it when he said my name like that, as if I was both torturing him and yet was his next breath of air. “I’m just taking us back to where we were at the guest house, before we were interrupted.”

“We were not doing this.”

“No, but I wanted to be.”

“Yeah, but-Oh God.”

I’d leaned in, and because I was straddling him, the movement brought us flush together in a specific spot that had him breaking out an oath and me sucking in my breath.

I wriggled a little bit, just to get even closer. A rough sound escaped him, and I think I heard him grinding his back teeth into powder.

“You’re wrong,” he said in a tight voice. “We were not going here. Not again.”

I leaned down and kissed him, making a liar out of him, when his arms came up and surrounded me, holding tight, as if he didn’t want to let go.

As if maybe he didn’t want to ever let go.