Unnatural Occurrence (An Anna Morgan Novella (Part 1)) (4 page)

I twiddled the hem of my blouse. I wasn’t used to wearing anything other than tee shirts and the occasional sweater. Black lace was a little intimidating. My sleeves were fitted all the way to my elbows and then the sleeves billowed out into a froth of black lace reaching my hands. I also wore tighter-than-I-was-used-to black slacks, but at least the material was soft and comfortable. I wore a half mask of black satin and sequins. The entire left side of my face was covered by the expensive party accessory. The only color I wore was the blood-red rose that climbed the side of my mask in delicate embroidery.

“I sure hope you appreciate this. I
never
do parties,” Christopher said as he joined me outside of the frat house we were standing in front of. I smiled and took a moment to take the sight of him in. Good Lord, how was I going to keep the horny mob off of him long enough for us to nose around the party? He also wore all black. His slacks were tailored to fit him perfectly and his black button up shirt had a bit of a shimmer to it. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing tan forearms. He also wore a mask, but his covered the upper half of his face and instead of a red rose on his mask, we attached a red rose bud to his shirt. Flying by the seat of our pants, we came up with a plan.

We found the masks first and
then coordinated our outfits to look like we were a couple. We planned to keep our masks on all night so that no one would figure out who we were, or at least who Christopher was. The only way anyone would be able to figure anything out was if someone recognized Professor Young’s hair. His red curls were not exactly subtle, but he assured me no one would put two and two together, since he never went to student parties. I had my doubts, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate it if I suggested that he dyed his hair or wore a fedora. Though a fedora would’ve been pretty hot on him.

“What?” he asked after a moment. I shook myself and refrained from wiping the corner of my mouth
, just in case a little drool had escaped.

“Nothing,” I sputtered. “Are you ready to do this?” I asked with a raised brow. Christopher stood just in front of me now.

“Are you?” he asked without answering. I shrugged and glanced over my shoulder at the wraith that still hovered close by. I didn’t have a choice. I had to go in. I could feel the need to move, to find out what drew me to this place almost as strongly as I felt the need to run back in the other direction screaming in horror. The house was a beacon of bad juju. I could feel the menace flowing from the building like a blanket of mist moving off of a bog out in the middle of undisturbed swampland.

“I am,” I answered hesitantly.

“Remember, in order to keep a lower profile, we’re a couple. It would really suck to have to deal with drunken suitors while we’re doing whatever it is we’ll be doing.”

I grinned up
at him and then wrapped my arm around his. We did make quite the pair. We walked up the steps of the frat house. Music was booming from inside and people were going in and out every thirty seconds.

“Suitors, huh?” I asked. He grimaced. “You don’t get out much do you?”

His eyes met mine as I tried not to laugh at him. “I get out enough to know how much being single at a party marks you as
fair game
,” he said with a frown. I patted his arm. Poor guy couldn’t help that he was every woman’s object of explicit sexual fantasy in the over-populated college town. I snorted as we reached the door. A guy stumbled out, his white Jason mask slipping off his head where it had been flung back.

We entered the doors, and I was immediately overwhelmed by the intense pummeling my senses suffered from the energy inside of the building.
So much darkness.
I clung to Christopher’s arm to keep from stumbling.

“Christopher,” I
gasped. He pulled me across the room and found a small space where bodies weren’t writhing in time to the deafening beat of the stereo system playing in the main area of the house. Christopher settled me with my back against the wall and then leaned in until his mouth was next to my ear.

“Anna? Are you okay? What is it
? The wraith?” I took a moment to draw in his scent through my nose. His aura shrunk away from the darkness of the house, but it seemed just a bit brighter than the others in the house. As a matter of fact, I was able to sense only a handful of auras since I stepped into the building. I leaned up and spoke next to his ear.

“Something is really, really wrong here. There is so much darkness and I can’t see anyone’s aura but yours. And even
it seems dimmer somehow.” I still felt dizzy from the negative energy swirling in the building. Christopher’s aura reached out to mine and I felt myself tug gently on it. The sensation was completely foreign to me.

I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure it would work
. More importantly, I wasn’t sure I could ask him. After a moment, I swallowed my pride and embarrassment and just blurted it out. “Christopher, would you press your body against mine?” I asked as I leaned up to speak to him again. His eyes widened behind his mask. My lips formed a straight line and I felt heat rush to my cheeks. “I know, I’m sorry. I just have a theory and I think it might help me clear my mind,” I said apologetically. His jaw hardened, but he leaned down to answer me.

“Put your arms around me,” he said next to my ear, his lips accidently brushing my
temple. I shivered slightly before awkwardly placing a hand on his hip. I squeezed his waist and then lifted my other hand to thread it into the hair on the back of his head. A breath of air hissed in through his teeth. He leaned in further until his body was flush against mine. It felt awkward and unnatural until he wrapped a hand around to the small of my back and pressed my body further into him. He buried his face into my neck and as his breath fanned across my flushed skin, his aura enveloped me. I contentedly melted into his embrace with a sigh.

My mind
slowly cleared and the dizziness became bearable. I hadn’t even known that I was able to siphon off of someone else’s aura. Luckily, Christopher’s energy seemed open to me borrowing a little. I’d worry about the connection that was implied later. I opened my eyes as Christopher held me and glanced over his shoulder to take in the room. It looked like what I would imagine any frat party would have looked like, with the exception of the presence of so many different masks. People danced, played stupid games, talked on the edges of the dance floor, and they all did it without anyone noticing the darkness that swirled around the room or that their auras had all but been snuffed out as soon as they’d entered the building.

An odd movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I squinted against the darkness in time to see a girl with platinum blonde hair
corner another girl. She didn’t grab her or hurt her, but the way she angled her body screamed dominance and anger. The girl—whose white mask was identical to the one the blonde wore—shrunk back, her eyes going wide as the blonde said something in her ear. My hand tightened in Christopher’s hair. He grunted before I loosened my grip and apologized. Everything about the situation screamed “popular girl drama” to the casual observer. But, I wasn’t a casual observer. I could read a person’s every move, the tiniest hint of body language, from years of living with my extra-sensitive perception. Even with the lack of colorful auras present in the room I could tell something wasn’t quite right.

I pulled back from Christopher, but
kept both my hands resting on his waist. He adjusted his mask before meeting my eyes.

“Thought we were going to have to make out there for a minute,” he grunted. I hoped my mask hid the majority of the blush I felt working up my neck and across my cheeks.

“You wish,
Professor
,” I mouthed the word
Professor
at him and he threw his head back and laughed. Several people were staring at us. We were obviously not very good at this “fitting in” thing. I didn’t think it was possible to find the one other person in the world who was more awkward than I was in a social setting. Just my luck, Christopher outranked my awkwardness as a Jedi master would outrank a Jedi padawan.
Just great
.

“We should probably mingle. Maybe even dance.” I grimaced. “I saw someon
e I want to talk to, so if you’ll pretend like you’re getting me a drink, I could find the bathroom and look around a bit.”

“
I’ll be glad to get you a drink,” he answered, already scoping out the drink and snack area. I already molested him and made him extremely uncomfortable. No wonder he was ready to run across the room to get away from me. I nodded and searched the room for the girl I was going to try to talk to. I finally spotted her making her way down the hallway, glancing over her shoulder nervously before turning the corner in the back. I needed to move. “Be careful.”

I smiled. I was going to try to be.
Once Christopher was off on his beverage mission, I began wriggling my way through the throngs of people and over to the long hallway that I watched the girl go down. I made it down the corridor and successfully avoided several groping couples before coming to the bend in the hallway. It was much less crowded here. There was a single guy heading back to the party from a small bathroom and then a couple halfway to consummating their relationship right in the hallway. They yanked each other into a door that I sincerely hope led to a bedroom. Ick.

I followed the red-carpeted hallway several more feet before realizing that I had no clue which door the girl had gone into. There were four doors past the bathroom and the door the couple had stumbled into. I stood outside of one and
, judging by the grunting and little sounds of pleasure coming from behind it, I could safely deduce that wasn’t the one the girl had slipped into. One door down, three to go.

I walked over to the next door and put a hand on the door knob. If someone found me, I could always say I’d gotten turned around and was looking for a bathroom.
Yeah, that sounded good
. I turned the knob on the door and slowly pushed it open. The room was dark, but from what I could tell it was a small library. An
empty
library. I glanced around the room a final time, a little uneasy, before closing the door and walking across the hallway to check another door. A bedroom that looked like a true dorm room, but a bit nicer. Empty.

B
y the time I checked last door only to find the same thing, I was feeling aggravated and tired. I put a hand out and steadied myself on the wall. I held my arm in front of myself and saw what was left of Christopher’s aura beginning to dissipate very quickly. I had no idea what my own aura looked like. For some reason, I’d never been able to see it, but I
felt
different. Lighter somehow in the corporal sense, and yet slower and more sluggish, like I was having to pull myself through the muck and mire of the blackness and evil that clung to this place. I was past ready to hightail it out of this god-awful party.

As I stepped past the door to the little library that
I opened just a few minutes before I paused. On a whim, I opened the door once again and quickly stepped inside. The darkened room wasn’t menacing, but if it were at all possible, the malevolence that coated the air thickened—an almost tangible thing. I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose for a few seconds. Once I opened my eyes, I took in the sights and sounds of the room again, this time allowing myself to tap into my extra awareness. It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. Even though I saw the same darkness, the same blackness swirling in the rest of the house, it was more concentrated here. Not only that, but it also seemed to move in a
pattern
. The smog swirled and twisted together and it all seemed to move toward a particular spot in the room.

I forced my feet to move in the direction of the flowing darkness across the room even though I felt on the brink of
unconsciousness. I stopped in front of the wall on the far side of the room, raising a hand in front of me to touch the spot. I ran my fingers along the wooden paneling, feeling the cool wood beneath my palm as the darkness swirled around my arm. Nothing felt out of the ordinary to me and yet I still pressed and prodded the paneling, unsure of what it was I was even looking for. When my hand stilled, I could feel a buildup of energy in the spot where it rested. I immediately applied pressure to the area. A panel shifted and groaned as a small opening in the wall appeared. If I ducked, I’d be able to go through the passageway easily. I swallowed and moved forward. As soon as I stepped inside the interior of the passageway, the paneling shut behind me with an ominous
click
.