Page 27 of Big Witch Energy

All of the pain and the cold felt like it was leaching out of her body and into the ground.

She could hear Ben calling out to her as her eyes fluttered shut. “No, Caroline, don’t close your eyes. Caroline!”

She didn’t drift off to sleep so much as plummet.

Chapter 6

Caroline

Caroline walked through the silence without fear. The moon was bright over her shoulders, blue-white and full of promise. Starfall has served its purpose, but now she was done with it, with its people. She had a whole life ahead of her, waiting for her like an open door, and she was ready to run out of it.

As her body—which was not her body—moved down a worn dirt path, Caroline heard these thoughts in her head, knowing they were not her own. These words in her head were an echo of someone else’s feelings—the joy was muted, like a particularly good story she’d been told before. They weren’t the thoughts of someone she knew, and yet somehow, they felt familiar. This woman was happy, hopeful, like Caroline used to feel as a kid on Christmas morning, the torturous ticking of time before decadent wonder.

The surroundings were familiar enough, In the place where Caroline could feel her own thoughts. This was Vixen’s Fall—the craggy cliff face dropping into the strange little crescent moon–shaped inlet filled with sharp, fang-like rocks. Why would anyone want to visit this place at night? It filled Caroline’s stomach with dull electric dread, but this woman didn’t seem to share that apprehension.

Emmett was coming. They would leave this place. Their new life was starting. No more waiting. No more backbreaking work for people who looked down on her.

She heard a noise behind her, a branch snapping.

“Emmett?”

The trees that grew close to the cliff’s edge, the same trees that had cradled her and her lover during stolen midnight hours and sheltered them from discovery as they laughed together, seemed so sinister now. They created deep shadows that suddenly made her afraid.

Within those shadows, she heard leaves moving. “Emmett, come out. This isn’t funny and we need to leave.”

No answer. Caroline could feel the annoyance building in her (host’s?) head, crowding out the fear. That was good. The body, whoever was carrying Caroline like a passenger, wasn’t used to fear. She worked better with annoyance. She moved closer to the trees, to the shadows. “Emmett, the boat—”

White hands, soft hands that had never known a true day’s work, shot out of the shadows and closed around her shoulders. They were strong, so much stronger than this body had expected. Those hands drove her back, toward the cliff, moving her feet over the dirt like useless rag-doll legs. How were they so strong? They’d all been fooled. The cliff face was getting closer. Caroline could feel the wind against her back, hear the waves crashing beneath her as she was shoved farther and farther away from safety.

She felt the world give way from beneath her feet, and she was falling. The cliff’s edge grew smaller and smaller, giving her the upside-down sense of floating as the crash of the waves grew louder. And all Caroline could seem to focus on were the soft, white hands backlit by the moon.

And as the darkness swallowed her, one thought echoed through her mind, the person she regretted leaving behind. The person who would never know what had just happened to her.

Emmett.

***

Caroline gasped—a hoarse, labored sound even to her own ears—as she broke the surface of the dream like water.

Everything in her body hurt, from the crown of her skull to the tips of her toes. But it was an indistinct pain, muted somehow, like the emotions in her dream. Her brain felt slow, like the last time she’d decided, in a fit of overconfidence, to taste test several new brands of bourbon. Her eyes didn’t want to open. She could smell Ben’s cologne, in a distant haze that was still comforting. That made sense since she seemed to be lying in a bed at Ben’s clinic. The pillow beneath her head wrinkled with a papery crunch. Beside her, a monitor was beeping in the most annoying pitch possible.

When her eyes finally opened, she could make out the familiar shape of Ben, standing beside her, scribbling on a clipboard. And she couldn’t seem to move one of her feet.

“The fuck?” she whispered, pulling absently at the plastic tubes taped to her wrists.

“Caroline!” Ben dropped the clipboard and rushed to hover at the edge of her bed. His hands were warm and gentle as he cradled her jaw, and yet, he was obviously being scientifically objective as he tested her eyes, pointed a penlight at her pupils—measuring and judging and drawing conclusions. He adjusted the angle of the light and made her wince.

“Ow. If I wasn’t on what I suspect to be a very high caliber of pain meds, I would be very annoyed by this,” she muttered, shying away from the light. It felt like he was stabbing her in the back of her skull. “Nope, still annoyed.”

“Well, the next time I get run down by a moped, you can drug me and put me through concussion protocols,” he replied.

“Deal.” She laughed, or at least, she tried to, but even that slight motion sent waves of knife-sharp agony in a burning line from her chest to her left knee. How could a tiny attempt to move her midsection hurt her knee?

There was a moment when Caroline could almost see the doctor part of Ben’s brain shut off and he was just a man who was frightened. He dropped down, kissing her feather-soft, and even though the muscles in her right arm screamed in protest, she reached up, grabbed the front of his T-shirt, and urged him closer. She had missed his mouth, his kiss, the way he tasted like cinnamon, that pine and spice smell.

For a moment, she didn’t hurt. She didn’t worry. All she could feel was the warmth and peace of being held by Ben. And she was happy. She wanted to wallow in that happiness, make it last, make it theirs, but all too soon, he was pulling his mouth away from hers to gently lean his forehead against hers.

And the selfish, post-near-death-experience-hormonally-fused part of her brain screamed for her to demand more kisses, maybe even nudity.

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