Your Dimension Or Mine? (7 page)

When she was finally able to tear her gaze away from his picture, she looked at his narrative, hoping against hope he wasn’t going to talk about war.

Everyone has something to say on these things, but most of what could be said should be saved for a face-to-face meeting. So, I will give you an overview. I live a rather lonely life. My work and position make it so I cannot get out and just date, as much as I would prefer to be doing so. I come from a very large family and am the only unmated sibling left, much to my parents’ disapproval and my brothers’ amusement.

For everyone there comes a time in their life where they are just ready to meet that special someone. I suppose I have finally reached that time. Ask yourself the following questions. If your answers are yes, I look forward to getting to know you.

Terrian

Q1. Can you handle stress well?

Q2. Do you enjoy silence?

Q3. Do you feel as though magic surrounds us all, coming out at the strangest times to make us notice?

Q4. Do you like me so far? *wink*

Laughing in delight at his friendly profile, Ari bounced softly in her seat. Finally, here was a possibility! He sounded nice and had a great sense of humor not to mention his picture was attractively normal. Sitting up straight, she minimized the profile and went back to his message, clicking the link to reply.

Terrian,

Thanks so much for your message. Yours is the first one I have received that did not make me shudder. I have no issues with you living in a library as so do I. I prefer to spend my time around books. They are non-judgmental…well most of the time. Ha ha.

Aristotle and Shakespeare. Interesting duo. Can you imagine those two standing toe-to-toe having a discussion? Something tells me Aristotle would get annoyed first, if he did not try to come on to Shakespeare that is.

Your life sounds as lonely as mine. I have a few friends I go out with on the weekends, and I see and talk to my two sisters on a weekly basis, but my mother left us a decade ago. I have never met my father and my only other living relative, my grandmother, traipses around the planet digging up things and sending them to me.

To be honest, I only joined this website because my sister Jane kept setting me up with the strangest men and we came to an agreement that if I joined an online dating service, she would stop. Up until your note and profile, I was sure the universe was filled with losers. Now, I might possibly change my mind.

I look forward to your next note,

Arwen

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the send button, hoping she didn’t come across as, as much of an idiot as she usually did with men she was interested in.

For some reason, she felt exhausted, as though reading and writing the message had taken everything out of her. Shutting down her computer, she changed into pajamas and went to bed. Maybe an early night would help. The instant her head hit the pillow, she fell asleep, two pairs of eyes watching her in her dreams. One pair was dark, intelligent, caring. The other was intense, sinister, evil. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake either of them. Four times, she awoke in a sweat calling out for a person she had never met.

“I must be going crazy,” she murmured the fourth time she woke up. Her ankle tingled as if to agree, and she slipped once again into sleep.

Chapter Five -
The Shift Bracelet

Tapping her fingers on her leg, Ari stared out her living room window at the mountains outside. She hadn’t slept well the night before and was feeling jumpy. Added to that, she had agreed when Jane asked to come over with her three youngest children for brunch. Glancing over toward her computer, which she had studiously ignored all morning, her eyes caught sight of the three ugly stuffed pigs she got at the zoo. Hopefully, her nieces would like them.

Glancing at the clock ticking madly away on the wall, she was disgruntled to see only two minutes had passed since the fifteen or so since she last looked at it. Jane was not set to arrive for another thirteen minutes, and knowing her sister, it would be more likely to be thirty. Given she had thirty minutes, her eyes slid back over to her computer. Would Terrian have replied already?

“No,” she quickly said, taking a deep breath. She was not going to be one of those girls who waited with baited breath, or other such nonsense, for some guy to contact her. Leaning over, it took a moment before she realized she was rubbing her ankle again.

Groaning, she leaned back. Ever since she had put the anklet on, she always seemed to be touching it. To her embarrassment, even though she would not admit it to anyone else, she had not removed it since she put it on. She tried once and had a tiny panic attack. So far, it hadn’t tarnished at all, so she assumed getting the metal wet was not hurting it in any way.

Glancing up again at the clock, she grimaced. “Someone has slowed down time.”

A knock on her door surprised her. For one thing, Jane was never early; for another, she would have expected to hear Jane’s three children as they came up to her place. They were not exactly quiet. Walking quickly to her door, she opened it with a smile on her face, ready to greet her nieces, but there was no one there.

Surprised, she placed her hands on the door jamb and leaned forward looking both ways. Not a person was in sight. “Hello?” she called. No answer. As she pulled back to close the door, something caught her eye. Looking down, she was surprised to see a flower wrapped in tissue paper lying at her doorstep. At least she thought it was a flower. She had never seen anything quite like it.

Leaning forward, she picked it up, a loud cry leaving her lips as her ankle flared with pain. “Crap!” she hissed, hopping back on her good ankle while shutting the door. “What is with my ankle? Am I allergic to my anklet?”

That made her freeze. She did not want to be allergic to her jewelry because that would mean she would have to remove it. Hopping into her kitchen, she laid the flower down on the countertop and leaned over to get a vase, sighing in relief as the burn became less intense.

“Maybe it is time to remove it, at least for a few hours,” she tried to convince herself as she poured water into the vase. “At least to check for a rash or something.” Her fingers reached out for the flower and the second they made contact, her ankle once again burst into shards of stinging pain.

Screaming, she dropped the flower and grabbed hold of her ankle, hopping back and forth on her one foot as she tried desperately to unhook the anklet. “Crap, crap, crap,” she hissed as tears ran down her cheeks. Hopping to the closest chair, she sat down and scrambled for the clasp on the anklet. It seemed to take forever as she fiddled around it, trying to find the small item. Finally, when she was about to pull out some ice and pour it over her foot, she found it.

Grasping the small lever, she pulled and screamed.

The lever pulled back, but when she pulled at the metal to pull it off her ankle, it seemed to be adhered to her skin. Yanking at it, she finally made it budge, letting out another scream when her skin tore. “Holy crap! What am I going to do? The thing has become a part of me!” Before she could try to think logically, noise erupted from her doorway.

“Auntie Ari!” three tiny voices called.

“Crap!” Ari looked at her ankle where a thin line of blood visibly trickled down her foot and between her toes. Grabbing the closest hand towel, she shut the lever on the clasp to keep it in place until she could have it removed and wrapped the towel over it.

“Just a minute!” she called back, standing up and limping slightly out to the living room.

Jane was getting the girls settled on the couch so at first she did not notice her sister. When she did look over, her eyes narrowed. “Ari, what’s wrong?”

Shaking her head and putting on a fake smile, Ari smiled at her nieces. “Hey, Kari, Nell, Shasta, guess what I have for you?”

“What Auntie Ari?” they chimed together, making her grin. Who knew identical triplets could be so cute? They all had their father’s coloring with their bright red hair and deep green eyes. Add in their cherubic faces, and she didn’t see how anyone could not fall in love with them on sight.

Grabbing the pigs, she tossed them at the girls. With squeals of delight, they wrestled with them, and before long they were playing quite happily, ignoring the two adults in the room.

“While they are playing, let’s take care of that foot,” Jane said quietly, grabbing Ari’s hand and dragging her into the kitchen. While Ari watched her, Jane efficiently put the flower in the vase and placed it on the counter before wetting down a couple of hand towels. Then she walked past Ari, returning a few minutes later with antibiotic cream and some bandages.

“So, what happened?” she asked, patting the countertop as her way of giving Ari the direction to hop up there.

“Not sure.” Ari winced, hopping over and up onto the fake granite. “I got this anklet about a week ago and it has been just fine, but for the last day I’ve been having some reactions to it. When I tried to remove it, I tore my skin.”

Shaking her head, Jane removed the towel and quickly cleaned up the dried blood. Turning Ari’s ankle this way and that, she asked, “How does it feel now?”

“It is still burning.”

Frowning, Jane looked up at her. “Where’s the clasp?”

“Oh, it’s hard to find. Just a second.” Fumbling around, Ari found the small lever. “Here.” She pulled it up gingerly and left it.

Jane grabbed the lever and lifted it slightly. “Oh dear, I see what you mean.” Letting her fingers trail along the top of the anklet, she tried to get her nails underneath it. “Um, Ari? The whole thing seems stuck to your ankle. What’s it made of?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

Turning, Jane exited the kitchen for a moment, coming back with some hydrogen peroxide. “Place your ankle over the sink.”

Knowing she looked real stupid, Ari moved as quickly as possible to do so. Her ankle still burned and she wanted the thing off…almost as much as she wanted to leave it on. Jane poured the peroxide on top of the jewelry making Ari squeak.

“Oh, don’t be a baby,” Jane chided.

“It’s not that,” Ari whined. “Don’t hurt the anklet.”

Jane looked up at her, her mouth partially open. “Don’t hurt the anklet? Ari, this thing is hurting you.”

“I don’t care. I will wear something between the anklet and me if I have to, but I don’t want to lose it.”

Rolling her eyes, once again Jane tried to run her fingernail between the anklet and Ari’s skin. “Shit!” Jane hissed.

“What?” Ari cried out, afraid Jane had broken it.

Lifting her hand, Jane showed off her extremely nice manicured set of nails. Except for one which was now torn.

“Oh.” Ari looked at her sister in surprise. Jane had had long fingernails as long as Ari had remembered; ever since their mother had allowed her to get her first manicure. “What happened?”

“The anklet just severed the nail. How strange.” Not to be deterred, Jane grabbed the peroxide, lifted up the latch, and poured it where the skin had torn.

A hiss escaped Ari’s lips, but that was all the sound she made as the cold liquid met her torn skin.

“Well, there are no bubbles, so at least there is no infection,” Jane said cautiously, as she pulled lightly at the anklet, trying to make it come away from her sister’s body. Finally, she re-latched the clasp and looked up. “Ari, I think you need to go to the emergency room and have that thing removed.”

Groaning, Ari shook her head. She hated doctors and hospitals more than anything in the world. Even if she didn’t, she had the feeling they would be more likely to want to cut it off and she was not about to allow that. “I’m sure it will come off. Later, I will take a nice hot bath, and I bet it releases then.”

Frowning, Jane rinsed Ari’s ankle and wrapped it in gauze. “Well, keep an eye on it. If it looks like it is becoming infected, call me, and I will take you to the emergency room right away.” She stood up and leveled her most motherly gaze at Arwen. “Tomorrow you call your normal doctor and have him remove it. Understand?”

Groaning, Ari whipped her body around and hopped off the counter, only wincing slightly as she landed. “Yes, Mom.”

Smiling, Jane turned to the flower. “Where did you get this? It’s quite beautiful.”

Ari’s eyes settled on the strange flower that had three deep red petals shaped like helicopter blades surrounded by a bevy of white fuzz. The center of the flower was a deep black, deeper than she had seen in any flower before. It was captivating and rather unsettling to look at.

Shaking her head, Ari took the vase, hissing as the burn exploded in her ankle, but tried to ignore it, at least as long as Jane was nearby. “Somebody left it on my doorstep. I’m not even sure what kind of flower it is.”

“It’s gorgeous. When you find out, let me know. I would love to have some in the house.”

After placing the flower on her bedside table, she went back into the living room, glad the burn was settling into just heat. Now it felt like a light sunburn—that she could handle.

For two hours, Ari and her sister talked and played with the triplets while eating the cinnamon rolls Jane brought. It was so nice Ari practically forgot how bossy Jane had been about men lately. Almost as soon as she thought that, Jane ruined it.

“So, any interesting men online?” Jane asked without looking at her sister.

Shaking her head at the irony, she wondered if she hadn’t thought it would Jane have mentioned anything, Ari nodded. “Well, most of the emails have been from dorks, but I did get a really nice message last night from a guy that sounds…decent.”

Jane whipped her head around so fast, Ari was surprised her sister didn’t get whiplash. Jane beamed. “Oh, do tell.”

Grinning, Ari told her the little she knew. “Well, I’ve just received the one email and sent one back, but he seems nice. He works in a library, too. Terrian also seems to have a great sense of humor.”

“Terrian?” Jane asked with interest. “Oooh, that’s the kind of name for tall, dark, and handsome heroes in romance novels. Is he tall, dark, and handsome?”

Laughing, Ari shrugged. “Well, he seems to be dark and handsome. I don’t know how tall he is. Did I mention, he has a great sense of humor?”