Jill Shalvis - Out of This World

Maybe my next mural would be of these mountains. You know, when I was back safe and sound in the city.

In less than three minutes, I was completely swallowed by the forest, and I stopped, a little unnerved by how quickly that had happened, and by how isolated I was. I couldn’t be more than a football field’s length away from the B &B.

Right?

And then I realized something: The temp had dropped. I looked up, and gasped.

The sky had changed from a stunning blue to a dark, swirling mass of black and gray. A storm was brewing, and I hadn’t even seen it coming. This storm wasn’t like anything L.A. ever saw either. I was talking a big, badass storm.

Adding to the sense of urgency was the utter and astonishing silence. It was as if even the insects had stopped breathing. And then…

Plop. A single raindrop landed on my head, making the only sound in the entire world.

And then another.

Plop.

The sudden and overwhelming urge to turn back and run like hell to the inn nearly overcame me, but one, I never run, and two, my mother always warned me about running in a storm.

“Rachel!”

I nearly collapsed in relief at the sound of Kellan’s voice. He was coming…down the path? I couldn’t see him. Why couldn’t I see him?

“Rach!”

I whipped around in a circle, but I still couldn’t see him. “I’m here!” I yelled.

“Rach?”

He’d sounded so close a moment ago, but now-now he could have been calling to me from another country. Hell, another planet.

“Rachel, where are you?”

I circled again, panic racing up my spine, blocking my throat.

Why couldn’t I see him?

“Right here! Kel? Kel, I’m right here!”

“Rachel!”

It was like he couldn’t hear me, and the hair rose on the back of my neck, the way it did every time he forced me to go see whatever the latest horror flick was at the movies.

There I’d spend the entire two hours with my face pressed into his neck, listening to him occasionally laugh softly at me, but he was still always there to comfort me.

Damn it, I wanted his neck right now!

And then I thought, to hell with the moratorium on running. It’s okay to be terrified bone-deep and to act on that terror . So I took off like a bat out of hell.

Only I didn’t get very far before I was abruptly and rudely stopped cold by the loudest, most resounding, most terrifying CRACK I’d ever heard-

And then nothing, as my world faded to black.

Ilove good dreams, and I was in the middle of a doozy. I was hanging off the HOLLYWOOD sign painting a mural. It was a typical gorgeous Southern California day, not a cloud in the slightly pink, smog-tinged sky. The temp was in the upper eighties, of course. Perfect . And not a worry sat on my mind.

Because in my pocket was a check for a cool mil, payment for said mural.

A million dollars, all mine.

Since I’d never had a savings account with more than even five hundred dollars in it, this fact kept blowing my mind. I wanted to help the poor; I wanted to stop world hunger; but a girl could do only so much on her own. So I kept thinking about the car I was going to buy, one that would run all the time and not stall in the rain or fail to hop to it when I stomped on the gas to try to get on the 405 in the mornings.

Yeah, this was a good day.

Below, holding and belaying my ropes, stood the gorgeous actor Josh Duhamel, and he kept smiling up at me.

God, he was hot, and I smiled back.

That’s when the dream shifted.

Josh wasn’t smiling at me per se, but at the view up my dress. Odd, since I never wore dresses, but there I was, in a little gauzy number that revealed much more than I’d intended to reveal.

Oh no. No, no, no…

Yeah. I was wearing granny panties.

Shit. Just my luck.

Surreptitiously I looked down the bodice of my dress to make sure, and groaned. Yep, plain white grannies, the ones with the hole over the hip. I’d have thrown them away, but I had a tendency to forget to do laundry, so I’d always saved them for the day when I woke up to no panties in the drawer.

Natch, today had been that day.

Stupid. Hadn’t my mother drilled this one thing into me: Never ever wear underwear with holes because you never know when you’ll be in an accident and some cute ER doctor will see your holey panties and refuse to marry you.

I should have just gone commando-

Wait. This was a dream, which meant that, theoretically, I could be wearing anything I wanted. Anything at all.

So I went shopping mentally and picked out a thong. A black lace thong…

“Rachel?”

Hmm. That didn’t sound like Josh’s voice. And his face was doing something funny now. Sort of smearing, changing…

“Rachel!”

Damn it, that wasn’t Josh’s voice at all, and I was no longer hanging off the HOLLYWOOD sign. I wasn’t sure where I was, to tell the truth, because everything was dark.

Waaay too dark. My heart kicked into gear, because suddenly it was all coming back to me.

Hellacious flight from L.A. Dropping the steak. B &B with the oddest staff members. And the coup de grâce: Girl Scout Cookies in the freezer.

“Rachel! Jesus, where are you?”

Yeah, there it was-everything I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, including my most stupid move of walking into the woods by myself, then the sudden storm and-

Another boom of thunder made me shudder. Had I really been hit by lightning?

Since I could smell something burning-possibly me-I had to come to the conclusion that this was a definite possibility.

Not good.

Just in case it was gruesome, I kept my eyes tightly closed. I’d never been good with blood or guts, always being the one to faint in biology class when we’d had to dissect the poor little froggies.

I could feel rain plopping down on my face-or, at least, I hoped it was rain and not someone slobbering over me.

More smoke…

Maybe it was my own blood I could feel on my face, and with some sort of morbid curiosity, I lifted my hand and touched my jaw, then cracked an eye to peek.

Nope, not blood. Just rain. I closed my eye again, because somehow, ignorant bliss felt good for now.

Guess my mom had been correct about that whole running-in-a-storm thing. And damn, you know I hated to admit that.

“Rachel!”

At the extreme worry in Kel’s voice, I forced myself to open my eyes again. I looked up at the individual raindrops falling through the sky in such a mesmerizing pattern, landing on my face. I could feel water from the wet ground soak into my clothes, and probably more than a few bugs along with it, and I knew .

Somehow, in some way, I was different.

I peered at the tree next to me. The trunk looked weird, and it took me a moment, but finally I understood why. I could see through it, past the layers and layers of natural wood to the myriad ants crawling inside, winding their way up-

My heart kicked into gear really well on that, right up to heart-attack level, because it turned out I didn’t understand at all…

Breath hitching in my chest, I shook my head, and looked up into the sky again. Oh good. Everything there looked normal. But then I focused and…no, not normal.

Not even close.

Already the odd and violent storm was moving on, those horrendous black and gray clouds vanishing before my very eyes. Now I could see the moon, and it looked funny. This was because I could see each and every crater on it-which, by the way, seemed like they might be fun to explore.

One step for mankind and all that.

“Christ, there you are.” Kellan dropped to his knees at my side and leaned over me. He had a smudge of dirt on his jaw, and his glasses hung from only one ear. His hair was plastered against his skull, his shirt saturated. In his hands he held what looked like a pen, but a beam of light came from it.