Jayne Castle - Bridal Jitters

A long time later, she came awake, aware that Sam was not asleep. She stirred and stretched and drew her toes up along his leg.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No." His arm tightened around her. "I was just thinking about that place where we hid out while I recovered from the burn."

"The zoo?"

"The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe it wasn't a zoo."

She shrugged. "A down-market apartment complex or a cheap hotel. Maybe a prison, as you suggested. I doubt if anyone will ever know for certain, even when the experts get through untangling all the traps."

"True, but there is one explanation for the chamber that we overlooked. It fits with everything we experienced while we were in it, and it explains a lot."

She propped herself on her elbow and looked down at him. "What's that?"

"Maybe what we stumbled into was a Harmonic graveyard."

For a moment she could not believe she had heard him correctly. And then the implications hit her. Her mouth went dry.

"You think it was a cemetery?"

"That would account for all the small chambers," he said seriously.

"Graves and crypts." She shuddered. "Good grief. Now that you mention it—"

"It would also account for the weird feeling you got from the traps that guarded the cubicles. Maybe they were set as warnings against disturbing the dead."

"But that fountain room and the little antechamber off of it," she interrupted quickly. "Why wasn't it trapped?"

"Probably because it wasn't an actual grave site. It may have been a meditation chamber or a viewing room. Or it could have been the place where the caskets were displayed for sale, for all we know."

"Aaargh." She flopped back on the pillow. "Do you think we really spent Halloween in an alien graveyard?"

"I think there's a good chance that we did, yes."

She stared at the ceiling. "Kind of boggles the mind." Abruptly she sat up amid the sheets. "But what about that strange energy storm that Chaz triggered when he untangled one of the traps? And those things that we saw drifting past the window. You don't suppose they were—" She broke off, unable to put the thought into words.

Sam smiled slightly. "Real ghosts?"

"No." She shook her head violently. "I absolutely refuse to believe that. The only ghosts are unstable dissonance energy manifestations. UDEMs. Composed of ambient psi energy. There is no such thing as real ghosts."

"Whatever you say." He threaded his fingers through her hair. "Who am I to argue with an expert such as yourself?"

"Definitely not real ghosts," she reiterated very forcefully. Then she frowned. "But about that antechamber off the fountain room."

"What about it?"

"If it was a funeral room or some sort of viewing chamber, then that big chest where we… where we—"

"Where we made love for the first time?

"It must have been a—"

Sam grinned. "Yeah, I think it might have been a casket or a sarcophagus."

She swallowed. "We did it on top of a casket? Our first time together took place in an alien funeral parlor? On top of a coffin?"

"I'm pretty sure it was empty," Sam said. "There was no trap, remember?"

"That's not the point. What am I supposed to tell our grandchildren when they ask us about our first real romantic date? That you took me to an alien cemetery and made wild, passionate love to me on top of a sarcophagus?

Sam roared with laughter and eased her onto her back. He lowered himself until he covered her body with his own. Then he braced his arms on either side of her head and looked down at her with eyes that gleamed with sensual amusement.

"Maybe we ought to make it our own, private Halloween tradition," he suggested. "We could hunt up a new alien graveyard every year."

"Don't even think about it."

He smiled slowly. "Then what do you say we get busy on creating some children so that one day we'll have those grandchildren you mentioned a minute ago."

"At last, a truly brilliant idea." She wrapped her arms around his neck and urged his mouth down to hers.

He kissed her until she stopped thinking about Halloween and graveyards and alien sarcophagi; until she could think of nothing else except their love and the future that they would build together.