When the Woods Go Silent (Haret Chronicles: Dark Fae #1)

CHAPTER FIVE

R OSE

The streets are dark again, and I’m relieved to see Charles is no longer outside when I pass his art shop, so soon after I left. I’m still not in the mood for conversation, but now it’s for a very different reason.

Shadows stretch across the street from the forest, branches casting shadows on the pavement, like bony fingers reaching to scrape at my skin and draw me into the darkness. I edge closer to the buildings, thinking of Charles’s innocent warning to stay safe, and the police officers’ mention of animals. Out of habit, I’m already scanning the tree line for movement and danger, just the way I used to examine a row of parked cars in the city.

A twig snaps between the trees, and I walk a little faster, pulling my sweater tight. Something is definitely moving there in the darkness, parallel to me. Not quite following, but watching. At this point, I don’t care if it’s a spring bunny. I shiver and hurry up our porch steps, slamming the front door behind me.

It’s a relief to be safely home and able to lock away those creepy woods. I have no idea how Ruby is brave enough to take midnight walks in them, but she loves it.

As soon as the door is bolted behind me, a heavy tiredness sweeps over me, whatever feel-good chemicals I got from being with Arlo long gone.

I feel stupid for even going to meet him now, and I just want to go to bed and sleep it off like a hangover.

That’s the problem with flings - sometimes when the rush of lust wears off, it’s hard to swallow the reality of being used like an object, even if I’m using the guy right back. A longer relationship would be nice, but that takes more trust than I think I have.

After checking all the alarms again, I put myself to bed early, snuggling deep under the down comforter with an especially dirty angels and demons novel I’ve been enjoying. I want to lose myself in someone else’s sexy story for a while instead of analyzing mine.

I don’t get more than a few pages in, though, when my eyes droop and slide closed. I can almost feel myself falling asleep, and my dreams are oddly lucid, as though I’m watching myself though a lens as the images run together like beads of a necklace.

I see myself back in the dining room of the restaurant with Arlo, sitting across from him at a candlelit table. His full lips pull upward in a teasing half-smile as he offers me a forkful of something that sparkles with sugar crystals and drips ruby red juice onto the tablecloth.

I part my lips, and his eyes follow the movement with the kind of hunger that makes me squeeze my thighs together. The bite slips onto my tongue, the tartness of cherries pulling my lips together in a pout.

It’s delicious, though, and as I chew, the sugar crunches and melts into the sour, until I realize my head is tilted back, my tongue licking a bit of sugar from my lips as Arlo leans over to me and slides his mouth across my neck.

“Delicious,” he whispers, as though pulling the word from my mind, and I let myself sink deeper into the fantasy dream. It would suck to have this orgasm denied, too. He sinks to his knees before me, tugging my chair away from the table and spreading my legs before his gaze.

In the way dreams flow, I’m suddenly wearing a silky skirt, and my breath catches as he slides the fabric slowly up my thighs, kneading the muscles and soft places as he fixes me in that icy blue gaze. The candles above him on the table gild his wavy hair, and he’s my own personal Adonis.

I let him touch my hips, moaning softly into my pillow as my brain is somehow aware of being both in my bedroom and in the dreamland of the restaurant.

“More,” I demand, just as I did before our real date was interrupted. His fingers tug my underwear to the side and sink deep inside my pussy, stroking my inner walls as he works to find that perfect spot.

“More?” he growls, as his thrusts speed up, his thumb tapping my clit with a teasing lightness.

“So much more,” I breathe, spreading my thighs wider for him. I fucking love dreams like this, so much more vivid than fantasies, aided by the panting need of my subconscious as I play out the scene like a movie director.

And then, just as he leans closer and licks along my thigh, his tongue teasing its way right to the spot I desperately need him to suck, a security alarm blares.

His eyes suddenly blaze golden and his teeth flash at me in a snarl as I shoot up in my bed, heart pounding as the dream dissolves like wet paint splashed with water.

Fucking hell. That had been a good one. My emotions are a tangle of desire and disappointment, shifting to shock and fear as I finally process that here, in the real world of Clearwater, the security alarm in our bookshop downstairs is making my ears ring.

Gasping for breath, I fumble for my glasses, and my eyes whip from side to side as though I’d be able to see an intruder right here in my bedroom. As my brain clears away the final bits of the lost dream, I grab my phone from the nightstand charger.

The new alarm has an expensive package that links us directly to a hub somewhere that can alert the police and fire departments, and I know I’ll be getting a phone call to ask if anyone needs to come check on things.

Hands shaking, I pull up the camera feeds on my phone, scrolling quickly before the call comes in. Is that something there, in the local history room? There’s a soft blur by the window, like a smudge on the camera lens, but no movement. My phone shrills, and I mash my thumb on the screen.

“Hello?” My voice is breathy and tight.

“Yes, ma’am, we have a report of an alarm triggered in your building. Are you safe?” The voice on the other line is oddly detached, and I imagine a bored person spinning in their chair in a cubicle somewhere.

“I... I don’t know. I’d like you to have the police come,” I manage, working to collect my thoughts. “I was sleeping, and I haven’t been able to check all the cameras.”

“Of course. Hold one second.” The sound of clicking keys calms me as the operator does something to alert the local cops. The alarm noise cuts off as well, and I steady my breathing in the sudden silence. “The police have been contacted. I can see the camera feeds on my end, ma’am, and just to reassure you, I don’t see any movement at this time. The trigger came from an outside camera at the back door. Would you like to stay on the line?”

I shake my head, then remember that of course they can’t see me. We don’t have any alarms or cameras on the upstairs floor.

“No. I’m fine, thanks.” I wrap up the call and hang up without answering the automated survey about customer service. My hands are still trembling, and I have to force myself to move. I slide into some sweatpants and slippers, yanking a sweater over my head just as I hear the slam of a car door.

I nearly trip over myself rushing down the stairs to meet the police, desperate for them to not damage the new doors. As I reach the front room, breathing heavily, I see their flashlights shining in the big windows. I wave and hold my hands up. All I need now is for one of them to think I’m the intruder and shoot me.

As luck would have it, it’s the same pair of officers who answered my previous call. At least tonight I have the reality of the alarm to prove I’m not imagining things.

“I haven’t had time to check all the feeds,” I blurt out as the two cops come inside.

“Wait here. We’ll walk the building,” the woman assures me in a steady voice. I close the front door and press my back against a bookshelf, hugging my arms against my chest.

Seriously, what the hell.

This store never even had an alarm before we bought it, and the locks on the old door were nothing more than a simple deadbolt and key. Ruby had asked William about crime, and he’d just laughed. Charles did too, when I asked him. I’d been the paranoid city girl who insisted on the full package, but now I’m grateful.

Maybe - hopefully - it’s just a fault in the system. A setting that can be changed, or something tripped by an animal somehow.

“Anything?” I call as the cops circle back around.

They both shake their heads. “We haven’t been upstairs yet, but things are quiet here. Would you know if anything was stolen?”

I don’t love the question that points out my lack of organization, but I understand it. “Probably not. Unless it was computer equipment.”

“Office looked like it did last night,” the woman says, her tone flat but kind. She circles her flashlight on the ceiling, clearly unworried.

“I’m sorry to bring you out here again,” I say reflexively.

“No worries. It’s the job. If I were you, though, I’d have someone from the alarm company come out and test it. We were told the trigger came from the back door?” She examines the display on the alarm’s control pad to be sure.

I nod, thinking of the woods so close behind our building. An intruder could disappear into that thick darkness so easily.

“Could have been an animal, then. Raccoon or something.”

The idea seems to settle both cops, but I’m not so certain. Surely, the alarm won’t be going off every time a trash panda wanders by the window. The cops head upstairs for due diligence, me trailing after them. Everything is quiet here, as well.

“Well, hope you can get some sleep tonight. And don’t worry about calling,” the woman assures me again with a friendly smile. “Crime’s low here, especially before tourist season. Things get boring.”

I force a small laugh for her, and they thud back down the stairs.

For the second night in a row, I lock the doors and set the alarm after a police search.

“Ru, you owe me,” I mumble as I drag myself back to my bed, even though I haven’t told her about either incident yet. I pull the covers up to my nose, but sleep doesn’t find me again. Instead, I watch the shadows in my room, imagining shapes created by the boxes and piles of things I haven’t had time to organize.

Outside the window, an owl hoots, and the wind picks up again. I want to love it here in Clearwater, but tonight, just for a moment, I wish I was back in the bustling, never-sleeping city, surrounded by the safety of familiarity.