J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

Morgan looked at her, green eyes pensive, head cocked to the side. “Actually it makes a great deal of difference,” she said quietly and set the basin on the floor.

Morgan had already been to the bedroom door three times. The first to whisper something to someone standing outside, the second to lock it, the third to stop the pounding of a very strong fist with a hissed command.

The pounding started up again, louder than before. It shook the heavy door in its frame.

“Let me guess,” Jenna said. She glanced wearily at the door. “Everyone knows I’m back.”

“If they didn’t before, they definitely do now,” Morgan muttered. She stood and started toward the door again.

“Can’t you just ignore him?” Jenna fought the pull of exhaustion, unwilling to face the owner of the pounding fist.

Morgan looked at her. “ Him ?”

“Yes, him. Leander.”

She knew it was him. She smelled him, felt his particular brand of pulsating energy all the way across the room. Even the locked door did nothing to diminish the feral current it sent scorching across her skin. She hated that even in her current state of bedraggled fatigue, he still affected her so strongly. And his heartbeat...

She was beginning to realize she recognized the sound of it anywhere, as if it were a voice that spoke her name, over and over.

Morgan looked at her askance. “So you can feel each one of us specifically ? Not just the general sense of an Ikati close by, but you can identify specific individuals?” She glanced back toward the closed door. “Without laying eyes on them?”

Jenna sighed. “No. Just him, specifically. With the rest of you I just feel this...presence. You’re different from anything I’ve ever sensed before, so it’s easy to pick you out from your surroundings. But with him...” She sighed again, annoyed with herself for even admitting it. “It’s like this pulse, like the charge of electricity before lightning strikes. It was so strong the first time I felt it I passed out.”

Morgan’s mouth made an O of surprise. Her eyes were so wide Jenna could see the whites both above and below her irises.

“What?”

She glanced at the door again, looking confused. “That’s why you fainted—at the store? Are you sure?”

“Well, yes. I felt it before I even saw him. And then when I finally did see him, that energy knocked me on my ass. I tried to pretend it wasn’t him at the time, but unfortunately it appears it was.”

Morgan made a sound of amused amazement. She lifted a hand and covered her mouth; Jenna could see the smile she tried to hide.

“Please don’t make me guess what you’re thinking, Morgan. I have no energy for guessing.”

“No, it’s nothing,” she said airily, waving her hand in front of her face. “Really, it’s probably nothing.”

Jenna glared at her.

“Well, it’s just that...” She trailed off, pressing her lips together.

“ What ?”

“It’s just that only an Alpha can sense another Alpha like that. Specifically.” She giggled, a lighthearted, girlish sound that seemed distinctly out of place for the circumstances. “And only with the Alpha to whom they’re mated.”

Jenna wished she wasn’t so tired. She thought she could probably throw Morgan a good twenty feet across the room on any other day.

“If you ever say anything like that to me again, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Morgan made a gesture of acquiescence with her shoulders and hands, though her smile still wasn’t helping Jenna’s peace of mind.

The pounding on the door started up again, louder than before.

“All right. We’ve got about five seconds before he breaks down the door. I can’t ignore it. What do you want me to do here?”

“Just tell him I’ll come out later, for dinner. If I’m allowed to eat.” Her upper lip curled.

Morgan’s smile faded. She regarded Jenna with a look of peculiar, intense concentration for a long moment. “ That I’m sure they’ll let you do. As for the rest of what you’ll be allowed to do...” She pursed her lips. “That’s going to depend entirely on you.”

Jenna closed her eyes and let her hair fall over her face as Morgan went again to the door. This time she stepped through it and closed it behind her for a moment before she came back in and slammed it shut.

“That ought to do the trick.”

When Jenna opened her eyes, she saw Morgan standing with arms akimbo at the end of the bed. “I just told him if he didn’t stop the pounding you were going to fly out the window, never to be seen again.”

“That was the original plan,” Jenna murmured. She stifled a yawn behind her hand and eyed the pillow, the fluffy duvet, the layers of satin sheets below. The soft bed called to her like a siren’s song, lush and succulent and oh so inviting. This place might be a prison, but at least it was a sumptuous one.

“Well, little bird, you’re grounded until that foot heals anyway,” Morgan said.

Jenna came instantly alert. “Why?”

“Because we can’t Shift when we’re wounded. Even a little cut will do the trick. You’re not going anywhere until that foot heals.”

Something inside her stomach eased and softened, then bloomed into a tiny flower of hope. A shallow cut like this would heal quickly. A few days, maybe a week...

She turned away so Morgan wouldn’t see her surprise. She stood, putting most of her weight onto her right foot, and hobbled over the plush carpet toward the bathroom.

“So you’re saying I’m stuck here until this heals completely,” she threw over her shoulder.

“I’m saying, my dear,” Morgan said, utterly neutral, “you’re stuck here permanently.”

That stopped Jenna dead in her tracks. She turned slowly back to Morgan, holding a hand out at waist level for balance. Panic sprawled over her chest. “I knew it,” she said, her mouth gone bone dry. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. He never planned on letting me leave, did he?”

Morgan’s face held another inexplicable expression. Her eyes shone with a deep, hard thoughtfulness. Her gaze flickered to the window for a moment. “Unless...”

“Unless what?” Jenna said sharply.

She cut her gaze back to Jenna. When she spoke, her voice was urgent, a sudden rush of words falling from her lips. “How did you find your way back to Sommerley, Jenna?”

“I walked , I told you—”

“Yes, for two days. I know. Through woods you’ve never set foot in before, evading along the way an army of the best hunters on earth, and simply came in through the open kitchen door. But how did you know which direction to go?”

For some bizarre reason, Morgan’s facial expression exuded an air of incredulous expectation as if she were just about to peek around a corner to see a unicorn standing in the middle of the room.

“I just...” Jenna struggled to find the right description for what had led her back. “I just followed the trail.”

Morgan just stared at her with the same silent anticipation, so Jenna went on.

“There was a trail—”

“Your scent? You detected your own days-old scent?” Morgan interrupted.

“Well, yes, my scent was the obvious thing, but there was also...the light.”

This was a wholly inadequate description for the pulse of energy she had detected when, as she knelt down to examine the cut on her foot, she closed her eyes for a brief moment and saw the concentric rings under her lids, a faint, glimmering trail of diamond-white and gold that led off into the woods. When she opened her eyes it was gone, but she closed them again and it came back, glittering shapes like circles with streamers trailing behind heading steady south, even as she turned her head to and fro to see if it would move.