Into the Fae (31 page)

“A limo? What foreign exchange student shows up in a limo?” Jen asked.

“I know right, that’s what I was thinking,” Jacque stated. “I assure you the limo is of no consequence once the person inside stepped out. Ladies, I saw the most gorgeous guy to ever grace my line of site.”

“When you say gorgeous,” Jen started, “are we talking Brad Pitt boyish good looks, or Johnny Depp make ya want to slap somebody?”

“No, we’re talking Brad and Johnny need to bow down and recognize,” Jacque answered.

“Aside from him being dropped off in a limo, and besides the fact that he is a walking Calvin Cline ad, it begins to get strange at this point in our story boys and girls,” Jacque says in a spooky narrative voice.

“Like it wasn’t strange already?” Sally asked.

“Well, okay strang-er. Just as he is about to walk up the path, he suddenly turns and looks straight at me, like he could sense I was watching him! Like, right in my eyes. I literally couldn’t move; it was like I was mesmerized by him or something. Man when did I start using the word “like” so freaking much?” Jacque said in exasperation. “Up until now it was strange, but now we are entering the world of “what the hell.” As he is staring at me I hear a voice in my head and it said “At last, my Jacquelyn,” then as he turned to go in the house and I hear the voice again say, “Soon.”

Jacque stares expectantly at her two best friends waiting for them to tell her she’s finally jumped off the deep end, but they just sit there staring at her. “Well?” Jacque asked. Finally Jen stirs taking a deep breath in, she looks down at her empty hot chocolate mug, “We’re gonna need more hot chocolate.”

“Agreed,” Sally and Jacque say at the same time.

Jen returned with three fresh mugs of hot chocolate and Oreo cookies. Folding herself Indian style on the floor, she cocked her head to the side eyebrows scrunched together, “So let me see if I’m catching what you’re throwing. Hottie exchange student drives up in a limo, steps out, rocks your world, looks into your eyes and speaks to you in your head? Am I getting the gist of it here?”

Jacque nodded her head sheepishly looking at the floor, “I mean, I guess it was his voice in my head. It could be a long lost dead relative who’s been searching for me since they died and happen to find me the moment that hottie looked into my eyes.”

Jen and Sally both gave Jacque the, get a larger spoon if you're going to shovel it in that big, look.

“What?” Jacque asked. “I’m just saying,” she said throwing her hands up in the air in frustration.

Flopping back onto the floor Jacque groaned loudly and covered her eyes with the back of her hand, “Am I going crazy ya’ll?” she asked.

“No sweetie, you been gone a long time now, we just didn’t want
you
to know that
we
knew.” Sally teased.

“Seriously, I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you guys I heard a voice, a beautiful, deep, masculine voice, in my head, and it knew my name! That is crazy, jacked up, put-her-in-a straight jacket, totally insane!” Jacque looked at them both with fear in her eyes; she truly did wonder if she had finally cracked.

There was after all, people in her family of questionable sanity, her mother being one of them. Jacque loved her mom and they had a good relationship, but she wasn’t always in touch with reality. Jacque’s father wasn’t in the picture and never had been, he had bailed as soon as he found out her mom was pregnant. Thankfully she had two best friends who kept her feet firmly on the ground, which is why she was so fervently seeking their thoughts on this matter.

Sally finally spoke up, “I don’t think you are crazy, Jac, really you’re not. There has to be some sort of explanation. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”

“Yea,” Jen added, “its 2 weeks until school starts. From now until then we are on scout detail.” Sally nodded her agreement.

The three were quiet for a few minutes, each pondering ways to run into the new exchange student without seeming too obvious. Jen was lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling fan, her eyes following the blades as her mind turned its own circles, “We need to find a way to introduce ourselves to him so that we can each get a good look and see if Sally or I hear a voice in our head.”

“My mom was planning on taking over a good’ole Southern meal for him since he isn’t from here. We could ask if we could go over with her, or would that be too lame?” Jacque asked.

“No, I think that’s perfect,” Jen stated.

Finally, by midnight they had thought up a somewhat weak game plan, the whole of it revolving around going with Jacque’s mom to the Henrys to give their new exchange student some fried chicken, ‘taters, and corn on the cob. Seriously, how lame could you get, Jacque thought as she lay in her bedroom floor. Jen and Sally had quickly fallen asleep on the other side of her room each with their own blanket wrapped around them.

Jacque sat up and looked around her room, and thought, this was a place I feel safe and comfortable. The twin size bed with the new deep green bed spread her mom had bought her for her birthday, the stained-glass lamp with absolutely no theme whatsoever that sat on her small wood
desk. She, Sally and Jen had carved various things on its surface.  She looked at her dresser mirror which had pictures lining both sides, mostly of Jen, Sally and her in various places and poses; just a few hours ago I was just another 17 year-old getting ready to start my senior year, so normal she thought.

She had three homecoming mums hanging on the wall next to her bed, and on the other side of her bed was the window with a seat where she sat tonight, where her life had changed in a way she wasn’t sure of yet.  Jacque lay back down on her back watching her ceiling fan go around in a circle, the motor lulling her to sleep. Her last thought as she drifted off was of a ful
l moon, whatever that meant.

More Titles by Quinn Loftis

Grey Wolves Series

Blood Rites, Book 2

Just One Drop, Book 3

Out of the Dark, Book 4

Beyond the Veil, Book 5

Fate and Fury, Book 6

Sacrifice of Love, Book 7

Luna of Mine, Book 8 Coming July 2, 2014

Elfin Series

Elfin, Book 1

Rapture, Book 2

Book 3 Title coming soon.

Contemporary YA Romance

Call Me Crazy

Please enj
oy this excerpt from
The Gate Keepers Sons
by Eva Pohler

Chapter One: The Drowning

Therese Mills peeled the white gloves off her sweaty hands as soon as she and her parents were in the car. Now that her mother’s thing was over, she could finally get home and out of this blue dress. It was like being in a straightjacket.

Anything for Mom, of course.

What the…

A man glared at her through her backseat window. She jumped up, sat back, blinked. The man vanished, but when she blinked again, she could still see the eerie face behind her lids: the scruffy black beard and dark, haunting eyes.

“Thanks again for making tonight so special,” her mother, apparently not seeing the man, said from the passenger seat as her father started the engine. “You two being there meant a lot to me.”

“Did you see that man?” Therese peered through her window for the face.

“What?” Her mother also looked. “What man?”

“What man, Therese?” her father asked.

“Never mind.”

Therese did not find it unusual that her mother hadn’t noticed the man. Although her mother was a brilliant scientist, she wasn’t the most observant person.
 

Just last spring after all the snow had finally melted around their house in the Colorado mountains, and Therese and her mother had been able to enjoy their wooden deck with the melted lake spread out in front of them and the forest rising up the mountains behind them, Therese had spotted the wild horse and foal she had seen just before winter. They both had reddish brown coats with a white stripe between their eyes, the foal nestled beside its mother’s legs, staring intently at Therese without moving. The animals stood beneath one of two magnificent elm trees ten feet from their back door—the tree her mother said had gotten the Dutch elm disease. Therese relaxed with her mother at the wooden table on the deck, each of them with a mug of coffee in the bright Sunday morning. Her mother had the paper but wasn’t reading it. She had that look on her face when she was thinking of a scientific formula or method that she planned to try in her lab. Therese stared again at the horse and didn’t move. She whispered, “Mom.”

Her mother hadn’t heard.

“Mom, the wild horses,” she whispered again.

Therese looked from the beautiful creatures to her mother, who sat staring in space, transfixed, like a person hypnotized.

“Mom, are you deaf?” she blurted out, and then she heard the horses flee back up the mountain into the tall pines. She caught a glimpse of the foal’s reddish-brown rump, and that was that.

As Therese strapped on her seatbelt, she also considered the possibility that she had only
imagined
the man in the window. She was, after all, prone to use her imagination and fully capable of making daydreams as real as reality, as she had, just now, with her memory of the horses.

Her phone vibrated. A text from Jen read, “Heat sheets r n call me when u get home.” Awesome, she thought. Therese was anxious to see who would share her heat in tomorrow’s championship meet. She hoped she would be swimming breaststroke in the top heat against Lacey Holzmann from Pagosa Springs. She wanted to beat her this time.

She searched outside her window for the scruffy face but saw only a line of headlights as others, like they, exited the parking lot of the concert hall. Maybe she
had
only imagined the man. It was getting dark. The mountains across campus were barely visible as dusk turned into night.

“We’re both so proud of you, Honey,” Therese’s dad said from behind the wheel.

Therese probably got her imaginative talent from her father, who was a successful crime fiction writer. As soon as his first book made the
New York Times
bestsellers list, he moved his family out into their big log cabin in the San Juan Mountains.

Therese saw her father eyeing her in the rearview mirror. “Aren’t we, sweetie pie?”

She wondered at her father’s need to praise her mother all the time. Didn’t her mother already know she was brilliant and that her husband and daughter looked up to her? “Absolutely. You’re awesome, Mom.”

Therese’s phone vibrated again. A text from Paul read, “Wat r u waring?”

She cringed and murmured, “Oooh. How gross.” She couldn’t believe he had got her number. He had been stalking her around campus just before school let out for the summer.

Before she had a chance to delete the text, Therese heard the rear window behind her head explode. “What the…” Glass shards pricked at her neck and bare shoulders. The car swerved left and right. She looked back to see the window behind her busted. The line of headlights had dispersed into chaos, horns blasting, people shouting.

“What the hell was that?” her father yelled. “Oh my God! Linda! Linda!”

“Dad, what’s wrong? Is Mom…”

Another explosion rang out, and something zipped just past Therese’s head.

“Therese? Are you okay? Get down!”

“What’s happening? What’s going on?” Therese cowered in the back seat as a third explosion sounded, this time near the windshield. Therese could barely breathe. She gasped for air, her heart about to explode.

“Stay down! Someone’s shooting at us!” her father shouted.

The car swerved, slowed, and turned. The smell of burned rubber permeated the air. Therese’s head whipped back as her father gunned the accelerator. Her fingers trembled so wildly, she was barely able to punch the correct numbers on her phone. She messed up twice and had to start over. Finally she pressed them in slow motion: 911. It seemed an eternity before a woman answered on the other end.

“Nine-one-one, is this an emergency?”

“Someone’s shooting at us! You’ve got to help us. We’re leaving Fort Lewis College. Dad, where are we?”

“Heading toward Huck Finn Pond.”

“Huck Finn Pond!” Therese screamed into the phone as the car swerved, her seatbelt digging into her hip. Then she noticed the blood dripping down the back of her mother’s neck and onto her mother’s silk scarf. “Oh, my God! Mom? Mom, are you okay?”

“She’ll be okay, Therese!” her father shouted.

“Oh my God! I think my mom’s been shot! You’ve got to do something! You’ve got to help us!”

A crushing sound shot through the car, and Therese felt herself jolted hard to the right. She hit her head on the window and dropped the cell phone. When she bent over and tried to pick it up, the back end of the car lurched upward like a seesaw, and her head hit the back of her mother’s seat in front of her. She sat up and saw they were sailing through the air over the lake. The front end of the car hit the water, causing her head to flop forward and back. She heard the air hissing through the airbags as they inflated in the front end. She was so stunned, she couldn’t speak. She watched in silent shock as water crept into the front end of the car, up to her father’s neck, the untied bowtie of his tuxedo floating around him. The front airbags pressed against her father’s cheek, her mother’s face. Water spilled over the front seat and onto the floorboard in back where she sat elevated higher than her parents.