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Chapter 2
Later that day, Cal jangled her keychain against the doorknob while she fought to liberate the key from the lock. After she bolted the door behind her, she dropped the keys into a small bowl on the table and trudged to her bedroom. She ignored the dark woodwork and avocado walls of the living room. The very sight nauseated her on the best of days.
Tossing her backpack on her bed, she let out a weary moan and stretched her muscles. Being stuffed into a chair all day was hell on her body.
Now she could relax. She glanced around. Her apartment might not be much, but at least she didn’t live on campus. Maggie wouldn’t be back until sometime after seven, so the place was hers for a few hours. At a time like this, she could overlook the tiny, outdated kitchen and the even drabber green bath.
She smiled wryly. Apparently, the owners had been obsessed with green and even now didn’t want the puke-colored shades changed. She shrugged. The visual assault to her retinas was worth the privacy. Fortunately, the color scheme for the walls hadn’t carried over into her cream-colored bedroom, though the carpet was another matter.
A yawn escaped her. She kicked off her shoes and collapsed in a seated position onto the lumpy mattress. The impact knocked her bag off the edge of the bed. When it hit the floor with a thud, she winced. Oh well, she’d pick it up later.
Hours of coursework awaited her, but sweet oblivion was what she needed. In the corner of the room, her glossy acoustic guitar glowered at her. In the past, practicing the instrument had soothed her, but she couldn’t muster the drive anymore. She hardly felt like herself, awake or asleep.
Cal grimaced. Surely, she was only restless and tired, her sleep not being what it should be. Too bad the excuse rang hollow.
Strange dreams and visions, ones she couldn’t quite remember when she awoke, had overtaken her nights. Only snippets remained, but the common theme always featured a man. No, that wasn’t right. She labeled the male an elf for some reason.
Maybe because of the lilting language he spoke, and oh yes, the pointed ears. Flowing black hair and stormy gray eyes seemed permanently branded into her psyche. That was all she could recollect of him when the dreams faded.
Pressing a hand to her still aching forehead, she bent over to retrieve her bag and froze. The floor underneath the bag, underneath her feet, rippled and swelled into a mass of waves.
She jerked her legs up on the bed, her heart plummeting. A whimper broke from her lips while her gaze stayed fixated on the floor.
A glittering mist formed on the ground, overtaking the strange ripples and leaving her blind while it crept over the bed. Quickly dismissing the idea of making a break for the door, she yelped and scrambled for the covers. Her fingers shook so badly, they hardly functioned. She pulled frantically at the comforter and sheets. Desperation lent strength, and she flung the covers over her head. Nope, not even for escape would she get off the bed.
Her blood tried to pound itself out of her veins, and her body trembled. Inside the cocoon of her blankets, there was nothing but the darkness. She focused on her breath, the rasp of it as it rose and fell. What would the fog do now? Would it take—
She shook her head. No, there was nothing out there. Pretend the mist didn’t exist, and it wouldn’t. Denial was easier and less painful. It’d always meant no pills or pitying glances.
How long she stayed huddled under the covers, she couldn’t guess. Her thoughts turned to mush, fatigue and reality melding together in some kind of bizarre dance. Her bone-deep exhaustion finally took over, and sleep crept over her.
Even in sleep, her chaotic mind retained a disjointed awareness. Images of black hair and eyes the color of an angry sea flowed through her mind. Nothing else about his appearance was important. Then the scene changed, and she appeared beside him. She shivered at the heat between them, acutely aware of his body inches away from hers.
Reaching out, he pulled her to him with a familiarity that settled deep into her bones. His touch burned through her like lightning as the calluses of his fingers left a lingering thrill of sensation on her skin. He lowered his head and captured her mouth with his. The taste of mint hit her tongue. She groaned and deepened the kiss, wanting to crawl into his very being.
The scene skipped forward. A bed appeared and bumped into the back of her knees as he pressed her down. Desire hummed through her at the feel of his body, of silk and muscle, bare against hers. Her hands roamed over him, and he moaned, the rasp of his breath in her ear. Settling over her, he joined their bodies, and hair of auburn and black lay fanned across the pillow.
With that last image, she shot up in bed, her breath rapid. Her mind spiraled into chaos as shudders racked her. The dream seemed so real. She could still feel his hands on her body, her skin tingling from that ghostly touch. Cal frowned as she pushed herself into a seated position against the headboard. What was she forgetting?
Slowly, the events of her day came back to her. Remembering the mysterious fog that formed on the floor, she crawled on trembling hands and knees to the edge of her bed. No mist lurked in the air. Now for the floor.
She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes tightly shut before looking down. Nothing. There was nothing, nothing except the old harvest gold shag carpet and her bag. Maybe she really was crazy.
Cal’s hands covered her face. She didn’t know what anything meant, didn’t want to know. All she wanted to be was a college student in her last year, getting ready to graduate. That was her definition of normal, one she’d thought possible.
She sought solace by attempting to place these outrageous events into some semblance of a pattern. Any pattern that would tell her why control of her life, of her dreams, was slipping from her fingers like too many grains of rice piled high.
Could he be the same male—the one from the tree-lined clearing ten years ago, the one in her recurring dreams? Every part of her cried out that he was. There was also the hair fetish thing. Two separate times the mist took her hair. Every time, it and her elusive hair seemed to work in tandem, actively seeking him out.
She’d only been twelve during that first encounter with the mist, and therapy convinced her that the occurrence had been a manifestation of a psychotic mind or, at least, of an overactive one. But even that knowledge, along with a bevy of medications, had failed to stop the dreams and visions.
Over the years, her mind had created a fantasy world—one he inhabited. And these improbable thoughts painfully intruded when she least expected it. She’d come to believe she’d embellished upon her original hallucination, making him more awe-inspiring than reality demanded. No being could be so handsome and so...not human. Admittedly, all the mythical beings in that clearing had been shockingly attractive, but none touched something within her as he had.
While she hadn’t quite understood his pull over her when she was younger, she now recognized the feeling as attraction. He drew her physically, even while dread repelled her.
Her control of that intruding world had been fragile before, but now it was nonexistent. She no longer imagined she saw shadows of a world in the peripherals of her vision. Now, they appeared before her like translucent moving pictures, astounding her with their reality. Human-like beings, all with pointed ears, populated this lush, green world. However, she only caught snatches of the images before they floated away. Surely, she couldn’t imagine such a place, let alone fabricate the intricacies she saw so briefly? But memory always quickly drifted away like mist, making her doubt the trueness of her beliefs.
Cal shook her head and removed her hands from her face before she straightened out of her slump. The parallels she’d drawn were neither helpful nor healthy. Madness would be her only companion down that road.
