Into the Twilight: a Between the Worlds Novel Read online

  Into the Twilight

  A Between the Worlds Novel

  By Morgan Daimler

  All rights reserved. This book and contents may not be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems without permission in writing from Morgan Daimler. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination; any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, locations, or incidents are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014 Morgan Daimler

  Dedicated to my husband Scott, for always supporting my dreams and keeping me entertained. As requested your fictional counterpart appears and dies horribly in this story. Love you, babe.

  And to my beta readers Maya, Cathy, Tricia, for constructive criticism and feedback.

  Novels in the Between the Worlds Series:

  Murder Between the Worlds

  Lost in Mist and Shadow

  Non-fiction by Morgan Daimler:

  By Land, Sea, and Sky

  A Child’s Eye View of the Fairy Faith

  Where the Hawthorn Grows

  Fairy Witchcraft

  Pagan Portals: The Morrigan

  Table of Contents

  Guide to Characters Names and Pronunciations

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 - Monday

  Chapter 2 – Monday afternoon

  Chapter 3 – Tuesday

  Chapter 4 - Wednesday

  Chapter 5 – Thursday

  Chapter 6 – Friday

  Chapter 7 - Saturday

  Chapter 8 - Sunday

  Chapter 9 – Monday

  Chapter 10 – Tuesday

  Epilogue

  Guide to Characters Names and Pronunciations

  Aliaine “Allie” McCarthy–Ah-lee-awnya

  Bleidd–Blayth

  Syndra Lyons -

  Elizabeth “Liz” McCarthy–

  Jason Takada–

  Jim Riordan–

  Sam Kensignton –

  Ciaran – Keer-awn

  Jessilaen–Jes-ih-layn

  Brynneth–Bree-nehth

  Zarethyn–Zair-eh-theen

  Aeyliss–Ay-ee-lihs

  Natarien–Nah-tah-ree-ehn

  Ferinyth–Feh-rihn-eeth

  Morighent–Mor-ih-hent

  Mariniessa – Mahr-ihn-ee-ehs-sah

  Salarius – Sah-lah-rih-uhs

  Prologue

  Allie was sitting by the edge of the garden at the side of the house, staring listlessly at the ground. She’d come out planning to weed the small plot which was only just beginning to show signs of growth, but found that her heart wasn’t in it, so instead she sat in the grass watching the sunlight and shade shift across the lawn as the wind blew. When she heard footsteps she glanced over her shoulder just far enough to see a familiar pair of battered sneakers and sighed. “If you’re going to tell me I need to keep your secret, I already figured out I shouldn’t tell anyone. If you want people to know or not know that’s your business.”

  Jason sat down next to her, carefully, “No. I mean yeah please don’t tell anyone, but that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to see if you were okay.”

  “I’m not sure okay is something I’m ever going to be again. Can I ask you something?” Allie said softly, reaching out to touch the grass around her knees.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I get not telling anyone about your, you know, history. I even get hiding it. I guess I do that too a lot. Pass as human I mean. And, ummm, not talk about my past, where I come from. So I can’t criticize you for it. But I was just wondering…is that why you’re friends with me?” Allie kept her eyes down as she spoke, not daring to look at him.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Jason said.

  “I mean are you only my friend because you feel like I’m safe to be friends with because I’m mixed? Or…”

  “No,” Jason cut her off, sounding upset, “No, Allie. Please don’t think that. I like you because I like you, for who you are, not because of something stupid like your ancestry…”

  He trailed off, but Allie smiled slightly, nodding. “Okay. I just had to know.”

  “Why would you even think that?”

  “I don’t know. Because I feel like I can’t trust anything anymore. Nothing’s like it should be. We saved Jenny, but she’s…it’s going to be a long time before she’s herself again, if ever. And three other girls are dead. Bleidd almost died because of me, because I’m too stubborn to listen to anyone telling I’m in danger. And I still just can’t let the elves totally take over my life, even knowing that it’s probably the smart thing to do,” Allie sighed again, resting her cheek against her knees.

  They were silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Allie knew Jason had been visiting Bleidd at the clinic, and she wanted to ask how he was doing but part of her was afraid to find out. She hadn’t dared to go see him yet herself. The two days since the shooting had been stressful even though a kind of fragile peace had settled over everything, and Allie feared finding out how much Bleidd remembered. Allie and Liz had gotten into a huge fight about Jess moving in, and she felt like she’d lost all the ground they recently made up. And there was still a subtle tension between her and Jason. Finally Jason cleared his throat, “Is that what you were thinking about before I came out? That you can’t trust anything?”

  Allie shrugged, “Kind of. I was thinking of an old Robert Frost poem. He’s a poet from regular earth, from America.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Which poem?”

  “It’s a short one called Nothing Gold Can Stay. It’s about how leaves look gold at first but turn green quickly…basically just how everything changes and nothing stays the way it starts out I guess,” Allie finally turned and looked at Jason.

  “Sounds like fairy gold turning into leaves,” he smiled at his own weak joke.

  “I guess,” she agreed. Then, looking up at him, afraid of what he’d say, “Jason? Do you think this is all my fault?”

  “Of course not,” he said forcefully. “You aren’t making those people kill people. You aren’t making them hurt people. You’re just trying to help.”

  “Yeah, and Syndra’s dead and Bleidd got shot because I was trying to help,” she said.

  “And you’ve been hurt too Allie, don’t forget that. And if you hadn’t done what you did Walters would still be killing people and no one would have any clue it was a big crazy ritual and not just a normal crazy serial killer,” he said.

  “It seems so unfair that trying to be the good guy has such a big price tag attached,” she said.

  He laughed, “You know I kind of feel that way about being a firefighter sometimes. Its hard work and there’s so much training all the time, and people get hurt, sometimes even killed. But it’s still worth doing Allie. Somebody has to do it or the town would burn down.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she sighed again.

  Jason looked over his shoulder towards the house, “Speaking of benefits of being the good guy, I think yours just got home. Looks like you have a hot date tonight. And wow.”

  “Huh?” Allie said cleverly. She twisted around to see what he was looking at and realized Jess was walking across the lawn towards them. For the first time in the months that she had known him he wasn’t wearing his Guard uniform or his armor. Instead he wore tight dark green leggings and a lighter green tunic, belted at the waist. His hair hung loose, falling to the middle of his chest.

  He was stunningly beautiful.


  Jason scrambled to his feet, “Wow, ummmm. Yeah. I’ll be…ummm, somewhere else…”

  She barely noticed him leaving, her attention fixed on Jess. He nodded slightly at Jason as the two crossed paths, and Jason tripped over his own feet, blushing and stumbling the rest of the way into the house. As Jess got closer she could feel an odd nervous tension that set her on edge. He had seemed so accepting of her actions after the shooting, but his feelings now were so reserved and uneasy that she fully expected bad news. Then she had a truly horrible thought. Was he here to tell her that he had been called back into the Fairy Holding? The Guard worked rotating assignments and the Outpost was only one possible place they could be set to work. Maybe Zarethyn had changed his mind about Jess staying here with her…

  He reached her side and hesitated a moment, then extended his hand down to her. She took it and he helped her to her feet. She looked up at him in mute resignation waiting for him to break whatever bad news was waiting.

  Instead he launched into small talk. “Good afternoon Allie.”

  “Hey Jess, you look…amazing,” she said, distracted from her worry by the novelty of seeing him so finely dressed.

  He relaxed slightly, his emotions shifting to something gentler, “As do you my heart.”

  She laughed nervously, “Me?” she gestured down at her grass stained jeans and plain t-shirt.

  “You always look amazing to me,” he replied. She blushed and he stroked her cheek, his lips turning up in the barest hint of a smile. “Has your day gone well?”

  “Well, no one’s tried to kill me so far, that’s an improvement,” she joked, but his face tensed and she regretted mentioning it. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to make a joke. My day has been boring. My arm feels much better today – Brynneth is coming out tomorrow to do more healing work. Physical and non-physical.”

  He nodded, “That is good. He is very fond of you, you know.”

  “Wasn’t he one of the ones urging you to break up with me and start seeing other people?” she quipped, once again seeing her attempted joke fall flat as he looked distressed.

  “Don’t think badly of him for that Allie. They worry for me, my family and Brynneth who is my friend. That is a rare thing among the elves, to have a true friend and I value him very much.”

  “Why do they worry?” she asked, deciding to keep her humor to herself from then on.

  “Because I love you too much. Because they fear that if I lose you, through death or rejection, that it will…be bad for me,” he answered honestly.

  “That you’ll Decline you mean,” she said referring to the term the elves used for a person falling into suicidal despair.

  “Yes,” he said earnestly. “They do not understand you as I do. They do not understand that your ways are different, more human, and they judge you by an elven standard.”

  “They must hate my habit of getting into these near-death situations,” she said, grimacing.

  “They understand that seeking to fight darkness is a dangerous thing to do and they do not judge you for that. My brother and Brynneth both respect you more for your determination, and blame your penchant for injuries on youth and inexperience,” he said sincerely. “What they dislike is the appearance that you don’t return my feelings.”

  Her eyebrows arched upwards. “Even now? When I’m calling you like a hysterical child every five minutes and you live with me?”

  He pulled her into him, until she rested her cheek against his chest. She decided the tunic must be silk, and fought the urge to run her hands all over it. “You call me for work related things, and they appreciate the importance of that. But from the outside looking in they do not see the intimacy. You are a very guarded person Allie, and they see the caution and misinterpret it, while they see my feelings only too plainly. And the sex means nothing to them.”

  “Yeah,” she said closing her eyes and sighing, “I don’t suppose it would.”

  “Allie…” he started and stopped. She looked up and then stepped back a little as his emotions were overtaken again by anxiety.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth again, then closed it again. Finally he reached down and took her hands in his. When he spoke his voice was rushed, the words tumbling out on top of each other, “Aliaine of clan Draighean, will you agree to marry me?”

  She looked at him, completely stunned, and the only thing she could think was, He’s flouting custom, I should be the one to ask him, or his mother should arrange it with me and then ask him…

  When she didn’t immediately respond, he rushed on, “You can negotiate whatever contract you want, anything you want, and I will see that my mother agrees to it. Only say that you will take me as your husband Allie, under the law.”

  “What?” she managed to stutter, her brain still stuck in neutral.

  “Marry me,” he repeated, squeezing her hands, then raising them to his lips and kissing them.

  She stared up at him, completely dumbfounded.

  He spoke into the silence, his voice uncertain. “My mother has given me an ultimatum, to accept a contract and marry Avaeryn. If I refuse she is going to go to our clan head, my great-aunt, and ask that she compel me to do so, which she may do. But I can accept another offer that I prefer, if there is one. If you make one. And I do not want to marry anyone else Allie, not now nor ever.”

  “You – wait. So either I have to marry you or you have to marry someone else?” Allie said, thinking Gods I really hate your mother. Why does she have to push this now? Even though she remembered the conversation she had overheard where his mother had been pressuring him to marry, and Jess saying afterwards that she had been pushing him like that for years.

  “To be blunt, yes. If…if you do not want me then once my mother goes to my great-aunt I will have no choice but to accept the contract,” he said, his voice unsure.

  “Gods this is so…so Victorian, except role reversed,” Allie mumbled, unable to believe she was in this situation. She loved Jess and her own unhappiness at the thought of him being with someone else aside, she hated the idea of him being forced into a marriage he didn’t want just because his culture said that he had to do what the women in his family said. Then something occurred to her. “What if I do offer a contract and they turn it down?”

  His hands tightened in hers and she felt a surge of hope from him, “My mother will not turn you down Allie. She knows how strongly I feel about you, she only fears that you do not return my feelings. If you were to ask to marry me, it would show that you do care.”

  Allie took a deep breath. Her mind felt frozen and she knew, with a rising sense of panic, that she needed to think quickly to come up with a response to this. She just wasn’t sure she could. She did not want him to marry someone else. But she also wasn’t ready to even think about marrying someone she had only known for a few months, no matter how much she loved him. “Jess…ummm…would it…I mean, if I asked your mother to marry you,” she repressed a hysterical giggle at the words, “how long would I have to actually get the contract written up?”

  “Generally it takes several months to negotiate and set a contract, although sometimes it may take years,” he replied and she felt a sudden surge of relief. She could ask his mother and get the pressure off of him, but still have time to really think about this. And, a small part of her heart whispered, if you change your mind later you can always back out…

  “All right,” she capitulated, embarrassed by her own reluctance. “I’ll talk with your mother.”

  His joy surged up and overwhelmed her fragile shields, which collapsed, and then flowed into her, filling her so that her own doubt and worry were erased. He swept her up in his arms, and she let herself reflect his own happiness back at him.

  It wasn’t until much later, when she was finally able to extricate herself from his emotions and get some space that she felt a twinge of panic. What did I just agree to?

  **************************

 
“Calm down,” the group’s leader said, holding her hands up towards the other woman, who was throwing things around the room. Clothing, books, and less easily identified items lay haphazardly around the floor and bounced off the walls. The leader raised one blond eyebrow at the wreckage but wisely didn’t move to interfere.

  “Calm down? Calm down?” the other woman’s voice was shrill, caught somewhere between anger and fear. “You shot her.”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody,” the leader replied, her voice completely calm.

  “Oh don’t give me that,” the other woman snapped. “You ordered it done. You weren’t holding the gun but you caused it.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, it was just supposed to be a warning shot,” the woman said, her voice still calm, unmoved by the other woman’s hysterics.

  “Well that’s not what happened, is it?”

  “She’s fine…”

  “She could have been killed!” the other woman’s voice grew shriller with each word until she was shouting.

  That finally broke through the leader’s calm expression. She frowned fiercely, her voice hissing out, “Keep your voice down! Do you want someone to come in here and see this mess and ask what’s going on?”

  The rebuke broke through some of the other woman’s anger and she took a deep breath. When she spoke again her voice was lower, although it still shook slightly. “You should have let me handle things. You promised she wouldn’t be hurt again, and she was. She could have died. And then I couldn’t get in touch with anyone – couldn’t find you to talk to – for days. I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “I’ve already apologized for that. How many times do you want me to say it?” the other woman’s voice was sharp. “Since she’s fine I’d think you’d be more upset that Amy was killed. Or doesn’t that bother you?”

  For a moment the woman was tempted to be honest and admit she was glad that the shooter was dead, but instead she said, “Of course I’m upset about Amy. I’m the one that brought her into the group, aren’t I?” she paused slightly, surveying the mess she’d created. “What are we going to tell everyone?”