Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (11 page)

Chapter 21

I reread what I'd written and sat up, setting the notebook aside. If I knew how this worked, Stinger would be knocking on my door any minute.

So I waited. And waited. After a couple of minutes I went over to peek out the peephole, just in case he was out there somewhere. He wasn't. A few more minutes later I crossed the room again, this time opening the door to the motel room a little so that I could hear the roar of his Harley when it approached.

Nothing.

"Well shit," I said, exasperated. "If it's not one thing, it's another."

I looked down at the notepad. Had I done something wrong? The writing felt like it should, but I hadn't done it on the computer like I had with Logan and Keller.

Was that part of it? I didn't know, and if it was, well... If it was then I guess I was out of luck. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. I wasn't even sure what I was thinking, trying to bring one of them into the world again. After all, the last two hadn't gone that well. I'd found a controlling megalomaniac and dragged a sweet, gruff Bear Shifter away from his home.

A badass biker could
really
throw a wrench into things.

Then again, that might be exactly what I needed. I'd been happily locked away in my own little world for so long that a hint of danger may well be just the thing.

I picked up my phone and turned it on. I'd put off this moment for as long as humanly possible, but lack of internet was already starting to make me twitch. I was like an addict, and once the phone sang its little wakeup song and I watched the logo flash into life, I felt like I was already a little more human than I'd been a second ago.

Sue, maybe the open road was calling to me, but I wasn't about to kick technology to the curb just to answer it.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
The phone spat chimes and tones at me like a thing possessed, the poor thing going into a fit of hysterics as it realized exactly what sort of backlog it was expected to convey to me.

Once it had shut up, I looked at the screen to survey the damage. Seventeen missed calls. Thirty emails and almost a hundred texts.

Wow. I mean, it was good to be missed and all, but if all of these were from David he'd go from nice guy who means well to lunatic stalker with control issues pretty damn fast.

I clicked on the SMS icon and quickly found that his image was safe. I had text messages from Grace, Charlotte, Hank and David, not to mention the usual crap that comes with the writing game.

All of my friends wanted to know if I was okay. They asked where I was. Hank and Charlotte offered money, David offered to listen and Grace offered to kick the stuffing out of David for, in her words, 'chasing you off into a night like a common trollop'.

The emails were a little more of the same, though I always got a lot of spam and today had been no different.

The missed calls were another thing. I may have had seventeen missed calls from a variety of numbers, but there were only three voice mails, all from David's number.

Reluctantly, I hit the icon that would play them back at me and held the phone up to my ear.

"You have three new voice mail messages. Message one, sent today at four nineteen am."

I nodded to myself. That made sense, seeing as how it was pretty much only a couple of minutes after I'd driven out of my driveway, leaving him in the unenviable position of having to choose between going after me or staying behind to guard my stuff.

"Beth? It's David. Look, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not worried about you. Between that crazy message you sent me earlier about me not being fired and what happened tonight, I don't know what to think. Call me back. I'll be at your place until you return."

I made a face.

"Message two, sent today at nine eleven am."

"David again. I get that you didn't call me into the bedroom for the same reason I thought you had, so forgive me for that. Please. You can use it in one of your books, and I won't hold it against you. It's cringe-worthy now, but with any luck we'll both be able to laugh about it in a couple of years. Right? I hope so."

He paused, and I heard him suck in a big lungful of air on the recording. "Look, I saw the printouts you left for me by your laptop. The stack of books too. You're right about one thing, whoever left those reviews saw a version of your manuscript not intended for public consumption, but I assure you it wasn't me. You've got a list of other names here, and I'll do some research while I wait for you to turn your car around and come home. Hopefully I'll have some answers for you by the time you do. You can trust me, Beth. You can. Except you have to trust that the thing I do next is to help you too. I found a folder on your laptop labeled Completed. I had a peek inside. Looks like everything you've ever done, going way back. I'm going to try not to read it, since it feels like a tremendous breach of privacy, but if I think it holds answers to what's going on with you or to you or whatever, I might have to."

I bit my tongue as I waited for the next message to play, even though what I really wanted to do was throw the phone against the wall. That folder was my special place, and I didn't want anyone going through it without my permission. My hopes and dreams were in there. I'd let myself be silly or stupid or bare my soul in those documents, and the thought of anyone, even David, sifting through them blindsided me with the amount of pain it threw at me.

Nothing you can do now,
I told myself sadly.
If he read it, he did it hours ago, while you were asleep
.

"Message three, sent today at three forty three."

"Beth, I'm sorry. Anything that looked too personal I closed without reading. I know you won't have wanted me in there, but just hear me out for a second. One of the names you wrote down was WIP underscore GH, right? Well, you and I have both thrown the term WIP around often enough to know it means work in progress, at least in our industry. It got me thinking, which is why I went into that Completed folder in the first place. Next to WIP_GH you'd written Gina Huxley and a phone number which you put a line through. I called it. It's disconnected, though you probably know that already."

He paused, then began to talk faster. His excitement was contagious. It was like I was in the same room as him, and I felt my pulse and my breathing click up a few notches to match his pace.

"Beth, Gina Huxley is in one of your early stories. You must have known her in real life and put her in there. She's the heroine's best friend in
To Have and to Hold
, though you'd already ditched her and made Monica a lonely, friendless socialite in the version you sent me to sell to Wellspring. I don't know what this means or where this is going, but I think your old friend Gina is pissed off you cut her out of your story and decided it's time for a little revenge."

He paused again, this time lowering his voice. "Come back and let's talk about this, okay? At least call, so I know you're okay. I really don't want to have to explain to the cops why I'm in your house and you aren't, but I'll have to if I file a Missing Person’s report, and I think that's something I'm going to have to do soon..."

The message ended and I set the phone down. My arm was suddenly incredibly heavy, and the device fell from my numb hand to land on the mattress.

Gina Huxley. Work in Progress Gina Huxley.

David was right. I'd forgotten her the moment I deleted her from the manuscript, but Gina had been in
To Have and to Hold
for the majority of the first draft, right up until the time I got annoyed with her role in the story and axed her.

But he was wrong about one thing. I'd made her up. Gina had never been a real person.

That is, until now.

Chapter 22

I stayed in my room, numb to the room for a little world, feeling more and more like there wasn't anything I could do but wave goodbye to myself as I succumbed to the craziness I felt sweeping toward me. I mean, there's nothing like the realization that a fictional character you deleted years ago has come back to screw with your life to make you feel trapped...

All of a sudden, sitting there in my arguably free hotel room since I still had yet to pay for the time I was using, I was struck with the single, unmistakable urge to get the hell out. I needed to go. It almost didn't matter where I actually fled to; if I stayed in this place for an instant longer I was going to be one of those stories that kids read by the news guy after the big news and before the weather.

Romance writer found in room writing Happily Never After in her own tears.
Or something.

I jumped up and ran out of the room, slapping my pockets to make sure I had the hotel keycard and my wallet before I let the door swing shut behind me. I hurried along the building, past my car and the few other cars that were parked in the mostly vacant lot. I didn't see a Harley, or any other type of motorcycle, but that didn't mean I didn't look twice for one.

Once I got to the office, it was the same guy behind the desk as it had been last night.

"Hey," I said, approaching and opening my wallet for the cash. "I want to extend my stay and pay for tonight."

"You haven't checked out, yet," he said.

"Yeah... Sorry about that. I overslept, I guess. Anyway, I'm sorry you couldn't rent the room out to anyone else, but I'm going to be staying tonight, so you guys haven't lost any money, right?"

He shrugged. "You need more towels?"

I shook my head. "No, I'm fine. Thanks though."

"Get much writing done?"

I practically heard the record scratch noise in my head as my brain registered what he'd said. My mouth had been open, the next meaningless line in a meaningless conversation with a man I'd never see again already on my tongue. "P... Pardon me?"

He hooked a thumb over his should, indicating the office behind him. The door was closed, but that didn't seem to matter to him for purposes of demonstration. "The wife reads your books. Leaves them lying around when she's done with them. Says she's just going to read them again in a couple of days, so what's the point of putting them away?"

"Oh," I said. "Right..."

But he wasn't done with his tale of literary dishevelment. Far from it, by the light that had sparked up in his eyes. "That's no excuse to leave them out, though, is it?"

I shrugged.

"I can't tell you how many times I've tripped on one of those damn things in the dark. Anyway, recognized your face."

I faked a laugh and set the money for the room on the counter, eager to be done with this. "Well, thank her for being a fan for me. Sorry the books are a hazard and everything." I turned to leave as he counted out the bills, but then turned back around. One more question. It was a good one, or else I wouldn't have bothered risking becoming entangled in another tale of wedded woe. "Is there a bar around here?"

He hooked his thumb over his shoulder again, and for a second I was worried that he'd be inviting me to sip gin and tonics with his wife. "Three blocks over," he said. "On the corner. Can't miss it." He looked at his watch. "They'll be opening up in a couple of minutes."

I smiled my thanks and left the office, walking back to my car instead of my room. A couple of drinks would really hit the spot right now, and the warm feeling the thought of them gave me was a much more pleasurable one then the prospect of returning to an empty room.

I got behind the wheel and drove the three blocks, taking my time, studying the buildings I passed. If the town I was in had a bad part, this was certainly it. Nearly a third of the stores were boarded up for good, and half of the ones that weren't looked like they were barely hanging on. Graffiti riddled walls and bars on the windows were the architectural decor of choice, and everyone hanging around on the corners looked they were either selling something the law would frown on or in the market to buy the same.

The bar turned out to be called
The Mess Hall
, and even though it was a couple of minutes after seven, the parking lot was already dominated by a big row of shiny motorcycles. Once I saw them, I knew I was in the right place. Of course! I parked and thought back the intro I'd written to bring Stinger into the world. It had taken place in a bar, right? The scene I'd penned for Keller and Logan Mercado hadn't specified a place when they'd met the heroine.

What had I called Keller's Love interest? Lorna? Lucy? No... Lacy, that was it! I bet if I'd written a conversation with Lacey and Keller that took place in his cave out in the far reaches of the frozen north, I wouldn't have found him until I'd wandered into such a spot.

Excited, I got out of my car and hurried into the bar. It wasn't exactly how I'd pictured it inside, but then again, I didn't frequent this sort of establishment. In my mind, there would have been sawdust on the floor and motorcycle parts mounted on the wall like some sort of twisted nod to modern art as opposed to the bar floorboards and wide open scenes of Route 66 and the Southwest that greeted me.

There were a bunch of guys in there, many of them wearing the rocker-clad cuts that I knew meant they were
real
bikers, not just the weekend warriors that straddled a bike once they got through accounting tasks or finished up at the bakery. Tattoos and scarred male flesh were everywhere in abundance, but I didn't see anyone who looked even remotely the way I'd imagined him.

I was the only woman in the joint that wasn't serving drinks, and I got my fair share of looks and then some as I strode up to the bar and asked for a beer. The girl back there, here too-tight t-shirt and jeans working harder for her tips than the rest of her lackluster attitude, popped the top off a bottle and handed it over, taking my money in exchange for me going away.

I didn't take it personally. There was no doubt that she'd be used to being the center of attention in a place like this, and a woman not on the arm of a biker was probably as rare a sight in this place as an off duty cop or a Greenpeace
Save the Whales
shirt.

Beer in hand and hope in my heart, I picked an empty table and sat down, making sure I had a clear sight line to the front door. When Stinger came in, I wanted to know.