Illusory

Van unlocked the ornately engraved front door of the house, pushing the heavy mahogany out of the way and stepping onto the plush carpeting. He flipped the light switch next to the door, and a chandelier in the center of the room sprang to life. The white of the carpet, the sky blue of the walls, the pale gray of the couch and matching armchairs, all of it nearly glowed beneath the bright light, and I had to shield my eyes for a moment to give them time to adjust. It was dark outside, cold and dreary and gray; it felt like rain was coming. But in here, the chandelier felt like the sun at 12-noon on a cloudless day. It was hard to get used to.

I uncovered my eyes in time to see Van drop his bag on the chair closest to the door and start for the stairs across the room. "Are you mad at me?" I asked as he began to ascend the stairs, his footsteps slow and heavy. He hadn't spoken to me since our first and final conversation on the plane, and he didn't seem ready to start now, continuing up the stairs without acknowledging that I'd even spoken.

I sighed and shut the door, struggling with it a bit because of its weightiness. I thought it was unnecessary, but Van always disagreed when I mentioned it. "It's an antique," he would say in that calm way of his, barely glancing at me. "It's a bit heavy, but my great-great-great-grandfather carved it, and it's not going anywhere. Besides, don't you think it looks lovely?" No, no, I did not; but this was Van's home, a summer home that his parents no longer bothered to travel to, and I didn't really get a say in what doors went in and out of this place. I was a guest here, really. I just happened to sleep here every night.

I dropped my own bag onto the chair beside Van's, glaring at the door. "If I had my way," I muttered threateningly, "you'd be torn from your hinges and thrown on a fire." I swore one of the faces carved into the wood twisted into a menacing snarl, but I didn't dare move closer to check. This was a magician's home, and I wasn't stupid — completely. Sometimes. Usually…Well, it was debatable, and I was in the Ember's-not-stupid-I-promise camp.

"Van?" I called, turning from the door and starting toward the stairs. "Van, will you talk to me?" I made my way up the stairs and into the hall, my footsteps nearly silent on the carpet. He still didn't speak. "Van?" I peeked into his study, but he wasn't there, so I continued down the hall to his bedroom. The door was shut; I knocked and called again, "Van, will you talk to me?" Again, no answer, so I pressed my ear to the door and listened. "Van?"

There was a sudden noise down the hall, from the top of the stairs, and I spun to find an entire set of kitchen knives flying toward me. With a shriek, I dropped to the ground. The knives sailed over my head, only a couple of steak knives embedding themselves in the wall. The rest of the cutlery doubled back and dove down, their sharp points hurtling toward my face. I rolled to one side, onto my front, and turned to watch a massive cleaver slam point-first into the floor. It jerked back out with the splintering of wood and joined the rest of the cutlery in another full-frontal assault. Panicked, I lurched to my feet and took off down the hall.

"Van!" I screamed, then again when a fillet knife zoomed past my face and slit my cheek open, "Van!" I dashed into his study, slamming the door shut behind me. I heard several of the knives impaling the wood, all but one on the other side of the door. A steak knife had sneaked into the room with me and had decided to slice my other cheek open, jabbing its point into the door beside my face in the process. It pulled itself out of the wood quickly, however, and I began to back away from it. "Van!" I cried again, breathlessly. "Van, I'm sorry I made you mad at me! Please help!"

"That's all you've got?" Van's voice came from behind me, and I turned to find him sitting calmly behind his desk, leaning comfortably back in his plush leather chair while the knife stared me in the face. "A few dodges, a failed hiding spot, and you're already cornered by the smallest knife of them all?"

My eyes darted from Van to the hovering knife and back again, widened with cold, hard fear. "What else did you expect?" I asked between gasps for breath. I was so out of shape that it wasn't even funny; just that run down the hall had me wanting to fall over, dead.

"I expected you," he started, his voice almost harsh, and he leaned forward in his chair with a loud creak to scowl at me over steepled fingers, "to use that shielding spell from the woods. I wanted to see whether it was a fluke or not."

"I don't even remember —"

"Well, you'd better remember." And with that, our conversation came to a close, the door opening at his whispered Latin. The tips of the knives were free from the door and glinting dangerously even in the hall's dim lighting. I stared at them for a moment, mouth hanging open in shock, then they advanced.

"C-Co," I stammered, squeezing my eyes shut and picturing that shimmering wall of yellow with every brain cell I had left. "Con...Conte...Contego!" I cried finally, and a cold breeze wafted over me. I cracked one eye open, and sure enough, there stood that mesmerizing wall of dancing yellow, the knives' tips repeatedly jabbing at it and bouncing off.

The cutlery fell to the floor with a discordant array of clatters as Van got to his feet, clapping vibrantly. "Bravo!" he cried, wearing his cutely lopsided smile. "I knew you could do it. It wasn't just a one-time thing."

I dove onto the desk and pushed myself to my knees, grabbing Van by the throat in a tight, two-handed grip. "You just tried to kill me!"

He laughed even as I choked him, good humored and bright. He caught my wrists and pulled my hands away easily, grinning down at me with teeth that were just as beautiful as Rick's were. I wondered how I hadn't noticed them before. Was it only because I'd met Rick? Was I comparing the two men? What was wrong with me?

"I didn't try to kill you," he said laughingly, keeping hold of my wrists. "I wouldn't have let the knives do any real harm. You should know that."

"Look at my face!" I yelled, trying to point at my cheeks but not making it very far, still caught up in his grip. "Does this not count as real harm?! I could have these cuts for days!"

He laughed again, much more jovially than I'd ever heard before. "Relax, relax. I can heal those easily." He let go of my arms, his broad smile shifting into a small smirk, and leaned his face close to mine. "Percuro," he whispered, and gently brushed my cheeks with the tips of his fingers. I felt a light tingling where my skin was split, then nothing, not even pain or the warm stickiness of blood. All I could feel was the touch of Van's warm, smooth skin against mine, gentle and soothing.

"Wow," I whispered. "You're good at this."

"You could be, too," he murmured, "if you wanted." Only now, with the breath of his words hot on my lips, did I realize how close he'd come to my face. My cheeks began to warm, and I wondered if he could feel the heat beneath his fingers, still resting gently upon my cheeks.

"You're good at that, too," I breathed, my eyes wide in fright, shock, surprise, fear, something that I couldn't quite fathom but felt like one of those or all of those or, at the very least, most of those.

"At what?" he asked, and I felt his breath on my lips, closer and hotter than before. I smelled just a hint of mint.

"At making me nervous." It was barely a whisper, barely even a breath. I felt him smirk, so close he was to me.

"Is that all I'm doing?" he asked in a low, sexy voice, and then, his lips were against mine, hot and damp like his breath.

I didn't know how to react at first, taken by surprise as I was. He'd never shown any real interest in me. He teased me, he told me how cute I was whenever he made me flustered, but he never actually seemed interested. He'd never even returned my innocent flirting over the past three months that we'd been in business together, not with anything but his teasing. He'd even outright said that he wasn't interested just this morning. Was I just blind? Had I missed something?

All of this flew through my mind in a panicked flash, then disappeared, buried beneath the here and the now and Van's lips pressed to mine. I returned the kiss without any of the cool restraint he was showing; I wasn't patiently awaiting his response to my affections. My lips parted, and his followed, and our tongues played together in a twisting and turning of passion in between.

His fingers drifted from my cheeks, leaving them cold and empty, and wandered down the sides of my neck, then my shoulders, then my chest and stomach until they could move beneath my borrowed AC/DC shirt, gliding against my skin. He pushed my bra up and over my breasts, allowing them to dangle freely until his palms cupped them, his thumbs brushing against my nipples to bring from me a groan of delight that was muffled by his tongue in my mouth. He pinched them, and I let out another quiet moan. When his fingers left them, his lips parting from mine, I let out a groan of disappointment. But he wasn't stopping; he'd only paused to push the too-large shirt up to join my bra over my breasts. His lips soon found my nipple, then his tongue, then his teeth, and I moaned more loudly than before, my fingers tangling in his hair as I pulled his face closer to me, eager.

Was this really happening? Were we really doing this?

And then, suddenly, his warmth left me all at once. His face left my breast, his fingers left my shirt, and he took a step back. The shirt dropped back over my bare chest and stomach, and I frowned up at him.

"Did I do something wrong?" I asked, my hands resting on the desk to either side of my knees as I steadied myself, my body wobbly in his absence. I felt cold.

But he didn't seem displeased. He was gazing down at me in wonder, an odd look to his eyes that I'd never seen before. "You have very soft skin," he said softly, then quickly left the room.

I watched him leave, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "I have very soft skin? What does that mean? Does he not like soft skin?" I stared after him for a moment longer, attempting to riddle this whole thing out in my mind and failing horribly, then tugged my bra back into place and slid off of the half-empty desk. "I have very soft skin," I mumbled again, and walked out of the room.

"Van?" I called quietly as I wandered down the hall. "Where are you?" I paused by his closed bedroom door but moved on when I heard nothing. I noticed that the bathroom door across the hall was also closed, and when I leaned close to it, ears perked, I heard a thump from inside. "Van?" There was a creak, then the sound of running water; he was definitely in there. "Van, I think we should talk."

"Later," he finally responded, his voice oddly strained. "We can talk later, after I'm out of the shower."

"Oh," I murmured, "all right." I headed down the hall and down the stairs to where my bag still set upon the armchair, unzipping one of the front pockets. After a brief search of the inside, I discovered my cell phone. A similar search of the front pockets of my jeans produced the small slip of paper Rick had given me when we parted, and my eyes skimmed the neatly written numbers on the front. His writing was almost feminine, more slanted and curvy than the handwriting of most of the men I knew. It was odd, considering he was such a big man, but I couldn't say I didn't like it.

I dialed the number and put my cell phone to my ear, hoping all the while that I wasn't going to be bothering him or anything. But I really needed something to take my mind off of what had just happened, off of what was puzzling itself into a knot in my head. He'd never seemed interested before. What the hell was that?!

"Hello?" came Rick's deep voice, raised in question. He didn't sound busy; he sounded pleasant, relaxed, as if he weren't doing anything of importance.

"Uh, hi," I said with a nervous laugh. "It's me, Ember, the girl who —"

"Yeah, I remember you," he said with a deep, rumbling laugh of his own. "There's no need to explain. So how was your trip home? It wasn't too hard to find the airport, I hope?"

"No, not at all," I answered, crossing my arms and looking around the room for something to stare at while I talked. I was so used to being surrounded by the people in an airport that I found the living room to be too quiet to make a proper phone call. "It was a straight shot, just like you said."

"Good, good. I didn't want anything to happen to you on the way." He let out a softer laugh, one that sounded more nervous than the others. "I didn't expect your friend to seriously turn down the ride and walk instead."

"Yeah," I sighed. "He's stubborn like that." Eager to change the subject, I asked quickly, "So have you noticed anything?"

"About the books?" he asked, and I nodded even though he couldn't see me.

"Ah, yeah. The books." My eyes landed on that creepy front door, and I thought that the biggest face, a feminine one smack-dab in the middle of the wood, was scowling at me. It made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Was I?

"You haven't been gone for long," he told me. "I haven't really had time to look in to anything."

"Oh, yeah," I said with another sheepish laugh, my cheeks beginning to burn. I was so stupid sometimes. "Of course. I just thought I'd ask, just in case, you know?" I laughed again, and he chuckled, no doubt picking up on my nervousness.

"It never hurts to ask," he reassured me pleasantly. "But I have some work I need to do, so I'll call you when I find something, all right?"

"Don't you need my number?"

"Caller ID," he reminded me, and my face felt like it was on fire.

"Oh, yeah. Of course. Just thought I'd ask, you know, just in case." My cheeks burned even more when I realized that that was exactly what I'd said before, just with a couple of phrases switched around. I am such a spaz!

"Right," he said, chuckling softly. "It never hurts to ask." There was a click, then silence. He'd hung up.

"Will you stop looking at me like that?" I snapped at the door, where the woman's face still sat scowling. "I didn't do anything to deserve that look." But the face didn't change, so I turned from the door, even more frustrated than before.

I flipped my phone shut and tossed it onto the mahogany coffee table, then flopped lazily onto the plush couch across from it. "Why am I so stupid?" I groaned, slapping myself lightly on the forehead.

"How are you stupid?" Van asked suddenly, his steps light and quick on the stairs. He seemed much more composed now, much more casual and in control, much more...shirtless. I stared at his six-pack, wondering how I'd never noticed it before. Shouldn't I have noticed something that lovely through his shirt by now? "How are you stupid?" he repeated, and my eyes quickly returned to his face, half hidden by the fluffy white towel he was using to dry his hair.

"What?" I asked, trying to act cool, as if I hadn't just been ogling his abs.

"You just said that you were stupid," he explained, cocking an eyebrow at me from the other side of the table. "How are you stupid?"

"Oh, uh..." I wasn't sure if I really wanted to mention Rick right now, so I blurted, "I was talking to the door again. How stupid is that?"

"It'd be stupid if it was any other door in this house, but I don't blame you for talking to that one. Everyone does. Even I do it occasionally." He sat down in the armchair to the right of the couch, draping his damp towel over one arm. "Now, what did you want to talk about?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. And I'm the stupid one. "Really, Van? Do you really need to ask that question?"

"There's nothing to talk about." But his eyes immediately left my face, instead focusing on the kitchen doorway across from him.

I sighed. "You kissed me," I said flatly. "You grabbed my boob, you licked my boob, and you bit my boob. Then, you told me that I had very soft skin and ran away."

"I didn't run away," he said defensively, his eyes returning to my face with a hot look of indignation; but when he saw my knowing look, both eyebrows raised and a smirk playing across my lips, his gaze returned to the empty doorway.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?" I asked after a moment. "'You have very soft skin.' Where did that even come from?"

"Well, you do have very nice skin," he commented coolly, eyes still carefully focused on an object that wasn't me.

"But why did you say it?" I asked, leaning forward on the couch urgently. "Why did you kiss me? Why did you do any of what you did in there?"

He inhaled slowly, then exhaled even more slowly. He was trapped, and he knew it. "Did it ever occur to you," he began, turning to look at me once again, "that I might have some sort of...of thing for you? That I might, I don't know, like you?"

"But you don't like me," I said bluntly. "I know that very well."

He sighed. "Then why did I kiss you?"

"Because...Because..." I paused, thinking, and I could only come up with one other reason. "Because you haven't gotten laid for a few months, and I just happened to be a mildly attractive girl who has a thing for you?"

"Mildly attractive?" he scoffed. "Please. Don't pretend you're so modest. I live with you, you know. I'm aware of how much time you spend checking yourself out in mirrors and windows and even the toaster, on occasion. We both know you're more than mildly attractive."

My cheeks began to warm, but only slightly. "Well, then, all the more reason for you to want to sleep with me after months of not getting any."

He sighed again, leaning back in his chair and focusing his attention on the bright white of the ceiling. "If that were the case, wouldn't I have had sex with you instead of just sliding my hand up your shirt?" His eyes slid down to me, though his head barely moved. "I'm not a teenage boy. I know how to get what I want, and I wouldn't stop at second base."

"Well, then, you've got me," I said with a shrug.

"Why won't you just accept that I like you?" he asked, head tilting to one side curiously.

"Because I've liked you for well over a month now, and I've made that obvious," I said as I got to my feet with a light huff. This wasn't real. There was no way any of this was real. "If you were really interested, you wouldn't have made fun of my advances; you would have returned them. Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel disgusting. I need a shower."

"Think what you want," he said as I started up the stairs, "but don't try to tell me how I feel. I've fought with myself over it enough already; I don't need to fight with you, too."