“Was my sister, Tess, called about this?”
“Yeah, we tried her first but got no answer.”
Right. I smiled and said, “Look, thank you so much for calling. I think you’re right and it's just a rat or something. I’ll check it out and if there’s any hassles, I’ll let the police know.”
“You sure?” the guard asked. “I’m more than happy to stay.”
“I’ll look after her, mate,” Gabe said.
“Righto, well, keep us posted if anything turns up,” the guy said, finally going back to his car. Now, I needed to get Gabe to head home.
“Gabe, you may as well go home. I’ll do a quick check and take the car home. You’ve got work tomorrow.”
“I’m not leaving you alone, in the middle of the night, in a shop that may or may not have been broken into. Come on; the sooner we check this out, the sooner we can go back to bed and maybe do something that we’ll both regret when we wake up.” I gritted my teeth as he pulled me against him and pushed his face into my hair. He was lovely and sexy and my body was already proposing some possible ideas for what we could do later, but right now, I needed him gone, so I could see what the hell had messed with our portal last night. He got distracted, pushing my hair to one side and kissing his way down my spine, so I pulled my phone out and called Tess. The phone rang and rang and rang until I got her message bank. Well, it was the middle of the night. I turned in Gabe’s arms and met his lips with mine, trying to keep it just a peck, but he deepened it, his lips hard, his tongue questing. Fuck, I really didn’t . . .
He groaned when my body relaxed against his, our hips aligning perfectly, his shifting to grind his hard length into me. I pulled away finally, gasping. “Let’s not dry hump outside the shop. I’ll look inside and then we can go.”
“We’ll look inside,” he corrected, taking the keys from me and opening the front door. I rolled my eyes as we went in, locking the door behind us. I turned on the lights and looked over the counter, shelves and stock quickly. Everything seemed like it should. Gabe disarmed the alarm, no point in dragging security out again. I checked the till, then ducked into Wizards of Ink and while there was a hell of a lot of bottles and cans lying around, it looked the same. Gabe checked the door and shrugged when it was locked.
&n
bsp; “Can you have a look in here for me?” I asked, “I’ll duck in the back.”
“Ash–”
“They said that it’s all good.”
“The guard wanted to come in with you.”
“Maybe he just wanted my number.”
“With me by your side? He wouldn’t be so stupid. How about you look out here and I go in the back.”
“Gabe . . .,” I said between gritted teeth. In the half-light, partially illuminated by the reflection of the yellow streetlights outside, he was a beautiful lump of manliness, but right now I needed him to dial the testosterone back by about 70%. I took a deep breath. It’s not his fault. I’m the one trying to hide something from him.
“I get it; you’re an independent, tough chick, but babe, I’m not letting you go in there by yourself.”
“You know you can’t stop me, right?”
“That’s right, just as you can’t stop me,” he linked his arm with mine. “C’mon, I’ve got better things I plan to do to you than argue about who’s looking in the storeroom.”
When I walked in, sure enough, it was the portal door that was open. I gave the rest of the room a cursory look, but didn’t see anything untoward. I opened the safe, but nothing was missing, neither was the stash under the floorboard. Gabe raised an eyebrow at this but just shook his head. “It looks like it was just a rat, though there’s no footprints in the dust.”
The floor was still seriously dusty from moving. There were lots of smaller girl footprints, some larger ones from the guys when they helped with the books and there were . . . My eyes widened when I saw some, blurred and mixed in with the others that didn’t look like any of our footprints. One set was longer, wider and contained toe prints tipped with claws. I sucked in a breath, remembering those weird silver-eyed bat things. I grabbed my phone and rang Tess again, surreptitiously looking up at the ceiling. My eyes flicked over the white expanse as I waited for the phone to start to ring. I nearly jumped ten feet when I heard an answering ring in the storeroom. Gabe picked up Tess’s phone from the main table with a quizzical look. I hit end call and walked over to find a neatly addressed envelope underneath it. I opened it, knowing what I was going to read and wishing like hell I didn’t.
“Ash, what’s happened?”
Gabe’s voice sounded echoey and distorted like it was coming through a tube or a tunnel. It reverberated in my ears slightly as I read the words.
‘I’ve gone through the portal. I know you’re pissed, but I thought about it last night. No, I haven’t really thought about much else since Merlin arrived. This is what I’ve always wanted to do with my life. Like so many little girls and boys, I dreamed of going through a portal and experiencing whole worlds, universes. Exploring stuff that people on Earth will never get the opportunity to see. You can have my half of the shop. I’m hoping you’ll keep it or sell it to the boys on the proviso that they keep the portal, but don’t feel obligated. I’d go through the portal, even if there was no chance I could come back. That probably sounds really shit, but Ash . . . It’s not like I’ll never see you, Dad, even Mum again, but I have to do this. I’m really hoping that over time, you’ll understand.
Love always, Tess.’
I scrunched the paper in my hand, not so much to stop Gabe’s prying eyes as to channel the surge of anger into something. I stood there for a moment, unable to hear Gabe’s words or register his touch. All I perceived was the hard ball in my hand and the fury that held my body rigid. She was gone, fucking gone through a portal to gods knew where. I could just see her, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, stepping into some completely different world, assuming it was just like in the books we read as kids. Friendly animals, heroic quests, pretty boys, it would all be laid on for her and all she’d have to do is remain pure of heart and courageous and right would prevail in the end. She’d completely ignore the fact these would be complex realities with their geopolitical paradigms with little to no interest in one fragile little girl. Fuck.
My eyes narrowed as I raised them up from the ball of paper in my hand, just in time to see Natty slip out from inside one of the cupboards under the bench; his ears laid flat against his skull and his big brown eyes flicking from one side to the other. “Jesus, Fuck!” Gabe said, backing away from Natty, feeling around for some kind of weapon on the benches. “Ash, get back. I don’t know what the fuck this thing is. . . .”
“It’s Natty,” I said, feeling incredibly tired. I stepped forward, ignoring Gabe’s attempts to keep me back. “What do you know about my sister? Did she go to your realm?”