A Thief of Nightshade (5 page)

“You have no idea what I’ve lost,”

he sneered.

Lilly walked over to Aubrey and laid a paw on her arm; Aubrey, out of habit, jerked back. “This isn’t like your world,”

Lilly said, clearly surprised by Aubrey’s response to her touch. “It isn’t that simple.

It never is.”

“I will either get my husband back or I will die trying. How is that for simple?”

Aislinn sighed, lowering his paw for Lipsey to climb into it. As he placed the little squirrel on his shoulder, he said, “Then might I suggest you at least speak with Tabor? Surely you aren’t planning on just walking into the Fae court totally unprepared?”

“Take me to him, then.”

“ARE

YOU

EVER

PLANNING

ON

SHOWERING
again?” It took a minute for Aubrey to hear Samantha.

“If you’re nice to me.” Aubrey lowered her head and sniffed. “Okay, maybe for my own comfort.” She’d been holed up in their den for two days, re-reading Nightshade.

Sam came around the corner with a cup of hot tea and handed it to Aubrey.

“You don’t look so good. You feeling all right?”

Aubrey shrugged. “Tired, maybe. I haven’t been sleeping too well.”

“Are you going tonight?”

Do I have a choice? “I said I would.”

“Don’t get so excited. You’re likely to have an aneurysm.” Sam opened the blinds, flooding the den with unwelcome light. “I thought you were looking forward to this?”

Aubrey groaned as she forced herself to stand. Her left foot was asleep and she hung on to the side of the chair while she shook it out. “I was. I have a lot on my mind, with work and just ... everything.”

She put her weight on it and grimaced, regretting her lack of movement in the last few hours. “Family stuff. I really don’t care to talk about it.”

“Drink that. Brooke again?”

Aubrey took a purposeful sip and let the tea sit in her mouth before swallowing.

She couldn’t seem to shake her exhaustion lately. “When is it ever not Brooke?”

“When it’s Grant.”

Aubrey scowled. “Funny.”

“Seriously, you know better than to take what she says personally. You are too smart for this. It took guts to do what you did.”

Aubrey did feel proud of herself for finally taking a stand and insisting that her family treat her like the adult that she was, but overall, the break from them and her carefully plotted life hadn’t been easy. As if refusing a scholarship to medical school wasn’t enough, she had also broken off a long-standing engagement to a son of one of her father’s associates. An engagement that she was certain he was just as pressured into as she’d been. Luckily for him, he could blame her for the sudden change of plans. The party Sam had so skillfully duped her into agreeing to was really the first social event she’d even considered in months. But in all honesty, it wasn’t any of her siblings that weighed on her mind, though it was family-related.

She’d found her daily routine particularly difficult after Dr. Sellars’ last lecture had dredged up demons from her past that she would have preferred to keep buried.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t anything Sam needed to concern herself with, so Aubrey used her usual excuse.

“I know. She just knows exactly what to say sometimes. It’s like she can read minds; either that or I am that predictable.”

Sam gave her a crooked smile.

“Predictable? Yeah, you are. You’re as predictable as the sunrise.”

It’s

not

predictability

...

it’s

dedication.

“You’re rationalizing this in your head right now, aren’t you? Stop it. Go get ready. Darin should be here in a little while.”

Darin,

Sam’s

boyfriend,

drove

Aubrey nuts. Unfortunately, Sam adored him, so Aubrey quietly tolerated his unemployment and lack of ambition.

“Predictable, my ass,” she muttered.

The party, a fundraiser for the arts, felt claustrophobic as always and would have seemed like a lavish event to anyone other than Aubrey, whose childhood home was three times the size of the modern mansion they’d chosen for the function. She’d started the evening just fine, far more social than she normally was, but after three hours of questions concerning her future plans, her ex-fiance and her family, enough was enough.

So she unpredictably drank several glasses of champagne and snuck her way through the mansion to the gardens—a maneuver she nearly didn’t pull off because of her intolerance of alcohol.

Usually one glass was enough to make her light-headed.

After she’d wandered for a bit, singing softly to herself, she found a bench overlooking

a

small

fountain.

She

considered sitting down but, no, that’s too predictable and I can’t be predictable tonight. Let’s be spontaneous. So, instead of sitting, she walked around the fountain until she stood at the far end and then lay down with her head resting on the lip of the fountain. Hidden from prying eyes, she had a brilliant view of the night sky.

“You know, I’ve heard there’s medicinal value in lying dangerously close to water when you’re intoxicated.”

Aubrey totally saw the humor in the comment until she realized who’d said it.

Dr. Sellars sat on the edge, looking down at her with a curious smile on his face.

“Dr. Sellars.” Her stomach was now officially somewhere in her throat.

“Call me Jullian,” he said softly.

“I’ve learned a lot about you tonight.”

“That could be very good or that could be very bad.” She shut her eyes, more in dread than dizziness, but when she tried to sit up, the world spun.

Jullian laughed, “Whoa, not so fast.”

His warm hands on her back steadied her, and for the first time in too long to remember, Aubrey didn’t shy away from human contact.

She groaned at how immature this whole picture must have appeared to him.

“Let me guess, you’ve been told how out of control I am; how declining a scholarship to medical school is one of the worst mistakes I will ever make, second only to breaking off an engagement with the son of the city’s second-wealthiest family,

and

how

incomprehensible my lack of direction is?” She wanted to keep going, but wondered what the use would be.

“I learned that the shy young woman in my Voice in Fiction class, who has been quiet through four class arguments that I know she could have won, is gutsier than I imagined. What you did is not only difficult, it’s terrifying. And I met your former betrothed a short while ago.” He frowned. “Not quite the man I would have expected to capture your affection.”

“Who said anything about my affection? According to my family and his, love has nothing at all to do with marriage.”

Jullian smirked boyishly, asking, “And according to you?”

“I left everything I know for my belief in it. What does that tell you?” She looked up at him, the alcohol in her system taking care of the jitters she might have been feeling any other night. He wore a black tux with a white ascot and vest underneath the jacket. The lines around his eyes belied his otherwise youthful appearance; their color always caught her off guard and if she didn’t know better, she would think he wore contacts. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

He picked up a bright red leaf from the ground and spun it by the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “Let’s just say that my family’s plans for me weren’t exactly in my benefit, or theirs, but they had too much fear to consider any other possibility.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, where are you from? You obviously aren’t from around here—Southern accents are hard to miss.”

He stopped fiddling with the leaf and watched as it fell. “Oh, all over. I can’t claim any place in the world, really, as home.”

He’d struck her as well traveled. She caught a shooting star just out of the corner of her eye. “Damn, I always miss them.”

“Miss what?” he laughed.

“Shooting stars.”

“Maybe you’re just too distracted.”

She giggled, “Maybe. Or I just have really slow reflexes.”

“Stand up,” he said with far too much enthusiasm.

“Um ... that might not be such a good idea.”

He took both of her hands and pulled her up, pausing until she’d found solid footing. The party behind them was at full swing, the music echoing through the open grass courtyards. It sounded otherworldly.

Ethereal. The small lights atop the hedges and in the corners of the garden highlighted the sharp line of Jullian’s jaw, the handsome curves of his face and she couldn’t help but to think it all fit him somehow. Suddenly, he no longer seemed like the uncomplicated man that she thought she’d gotten to know a little better since taking him to get his keys that night after class. Now, in the partial shade, away from the realities of day-to-day life, he radiated something besides his usual eccentric charm. Without meaning to, Aubrey leaned into him for balance, placing her hands on his chest. When she felt the strength of his muscles, she was reminded of the prince in Jullian’s book— the warrior who’d been just as adept on the battlefield as in the royal court.

His eyes met hers. “Come on, I want you to see something.”

She was grateful then for the arm that slid around her waist for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was to help her walk with some semblance of dignity.

Just before they made it to the highest hedge, he stopped.

“Close your eyes,” he said. When she hesitated, he tightened his grip and whispered, “It’s all right, I promise. I won’t let you fall.”

She did as he requested and felt them round the corner. “You can open them now.”

She did and while she would have loved to feign excitement, she saw nothing. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

He pointed up. High above them stretched an amazing filigree dome that reflected the light around them with diamond-like

facets

that

had

been

purposefully cut into the metal. It looked like a thousand shooting stars exploding across the sky at once. “All the stars I’ve missed,” she mused.

“Sometimes all the little things we think we’ve missed turn out to equal one amazing thing that we wouldn’t miss for all the world.”

She smiled as he spoke, but couldn’t look at him.

Jullian cupped her chin and turned her face to his, saying tenderly, “Or one amazing person.” He pulled her closer then and kissed her. It was tentative at first, but deepened quickly. Both of them struggled for breath when he finally pulled away.

“Let’s get you home,” he whispered.

She almost didn’t go to class the following Monday. She certainly had plenty to keep her busy at work, but eventually she would have to face him again. She held her breath as she heard the door to the lecture hall open behind them and waited to see him round the corner, but instead an older professor with gray hair and a ruddy complexion took the podium. He cleared his throat and turned around to write his name on the dry erase board.

Dr. McCormick?

“My name is Dr. McCormick. Dr.

Sellars regretfully had to withdraw from teaching this class, so I am his replacement.”

Aubrey felt like she was going to be sick. She glanced at Sam, who grimaced.