Page 41 of Fanged Embrace
“I’ve been alive a very long time.” She sighed with mock solemnity. “Eventually, you go a little crazy. Or you startcollecting things—artifacts, eccentricities. Then one day you look back and realize you’ve filled an entire building with koi ponds and cursed amulets and enough plants to start your own ecosystem.”
“Dream big,” I muttered, but the warmth in my chest was real. No interrogations, no pity, just… banter. Normal—if you ignored the events that brought us here.
“Oh, I do.” River’s laughter was light, a lively, lilting sound like honey in my ears. “I already have high hopes that you’ll get over your unreasonable hatred of coffee.”
“Not hate,” I corrected with a finger pointed her way. “Indifferent. Coffee never did anything for me. Chamomile, though… This feels like a hug.”
“That was the idea.”
The silence that followed wasn’t strained. It was soft, warm as the steam curling from our cups. I glanced around the kitchen again: copper pots and pans, plants hanging from the rafters, and dozens and dozens of trinkets on every available surface. “Do all these… treasures have stories?”
“Every last one.” River’s voice turned tender, like every item in her cluttered home was near and dear to her heart.
“Even the lava lamp?” I stifled a sudden yawn, fighting the effects of the herbal brew and the mountain of fatigue pressing down on my shoulders.
“Nice tonsils you got there.” River finished her coffee and set the cup aside, chuckling when I slammed a mortified hand over my mouth. “There’s a guest room three doors down. The door locks from the inside.”
I struggled to clamp down a second yawn, sounding out the words around the sensation. “How do I know you don’t have secret passages hidden behind the tapestries or something?”
“If I do, I have long since forgotten how to find them.”
I let out a snort that turned into an unsteady laugh. “Great.If I vanish tonight, just assume I fell into your forgotten trapdoor to Narnia.”
River’s smile tipped lopsided. “If you stumble on Narnia, bring back the lamppost; it would look magnificent next to the samurai armor.”
I giggled again—a real laugh, not the unhinged hysterical kind that popped out when I was trying to save face.
When the sound faded, I found River watching me, slender arms propped on the island, ochre eyes soft and glowing slightly like two halos around her pupils.
“You’re safe here, Laurie.” Her voice was low, no grand flourish, no polished mystique. Just a simple statement offered like an open door. Something loosened slightly, deep in my chest. It was a minute movement, the tiniest bit of give. But it made the next breath easier.
“Okay,” I murmured, surprised at how steady it came out. “But I’m still going to booby-trap the guest room.”
River’s lips curved up at the corners. “I would expect nothing less.”
21
River
It started with a creeping panic slinking into my subconscious. Suddenly my dreams were not my own, overtaken by a much more powerful presence in my head. I caught flashes of memory: red lights and wailing sirens and smoke. Faces concealed behind surgical masks crowded over me, poking and prodding and staring with blank, empty eyes.
Notmymemories then. Not my nightmare.
It was easy to acknowledge that; wrenching free from the very real terror those memories instilled was the hard part. Horror had my blood running cold, prickles erupting along my back where I lay pinned on a steel table.No–not me. These aren’t my memories.
In my chest, the pressure was building, ballooning outward and straining at the cage of my ribs. Something was wrong. Something was so very wrong, and my throat throttled tighter as panic clawed up my spine. I heard my own serrated breaths from a distance, the strangled sound melding with the memories that played out in my head.
I saw smoke, billowing black clouds corralled down a pristine corridor, enveloping me where I crouched. It blurred my vision and stung tears from my eyes, clogged my throat and coated my skin. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t?—
I jolted upright, clawing at the bedsheets that shrouded my body like that choking cloud of smoke.
For one blind second I expected to taste soot—but the air hit cool and clean. I slapped a palm against my sternum, feeling the drumroll of a heartbeat that had no business pounding that hard in a body that barely needed to breathe. I sucked in a deep breath anyway.
In. Out. Fresh oxygen, none of it tainted by smoke and fire.
I was safe in my own bed, far from the horrors of that terrible place, but the terror didn’t evaporate; it circled, hungry, demanding to be known. Now that I was awake, I could see the brittle outline where it ended and I began. A sensation like an electric cord still plugged into my spine tugged me beyond the safety of my own skin.
“Not mine.” I wheezed out the words, spearing fingers through my hair. “Not my fear.”
