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Threshold Volume 2
The Summoning: A Northlanders Tale
By Shelby Morgen
Take Me With You
ByStephanie Burke
Prologue
RE: I’m FREE!!!
From: Clrless1@aol.com
To: Marylin1987@aol.com
>It’s official. One year from today I’ll be a Divorcée. Went to court this morning to sign >the final
paperwork. I’m now legally separated. From just about everything, including >my sanity.
>
>I miss you so much, Gray. I want to SEE you. SICK of emails. Listen, I’ve been looking >at this ad on
the Internet…a bed and breakfast on theGulf of Mexico , right on the >water, and it’s not that expensive.
 
Check this out—
>DESIREISLANDESCAPE—YOUR EVERY WISH COME TRUE $399
>
>I know you’ll say you can’t afford it, but I can. Think of it this way. You never liked >Don anyway. I
got to the checking account before he could clean me out. Help me >spend some of this money while I
can. I haven’t told him yet, but that’s ALL I’m taking. >I’m just going to walk away from all of this. I
never wanted this place anyway. You >know my tastes. This house just screams new money and no
class, just like Don. Just >plain garish.
>
>Please, please say you’ll come. There’s just something about this place. I have to go >there. It pulls
me. The first time I stumbled across the web address I just sat and >stared at the pictures. There’s
something compelling about this old inn…
>
>Say you’ll come. We can spend a week talking till 4 AM—just like when we were in >college. We’ll
have a great time!
>
>Please. I need you.
>
>Marylin
You need me, Baby-Girl, I’m there.
Gray.
* * * * *
Even the weather had conspired against them. Marylin turned away from the window to study the figure
on the old settee just as thunder cracked loudly in the background. Gray didn’t jump. He wouldn’t want
her to remember how much thunderstorms always frightened him. But he went rigid for the moment it
took for the lightning to follow the thunder.
He didn’t say anything. Just sat there stoically, his hands wrapped around his tumbler, a tall, lean man,
slightly shadowed in the light from the fireplace. She didn’t need to see his face to read him. She knew
him too well. Dear Gray. Always trying to be a hero for her…she could have loved him for that alone.
Damn. She had such lousy taste in men.
 
No, that wasn’t fair. At least not to Gray. Gray was a fine man. Tall and graceful and handsome
and—gay. Well, bi maybe. He had been married, once upon a time, at least for a while. It wasn’t Gray’s
fault she’d fallen in love with him all those years ago. He’d warned her not to. Told her often enough all
they could be was friends. She hadn’t listened. Hadn’t understood. She was a rescuer, after all. She
always fell for that wounded look. She’d been so in love with him once…or at least infatuated. Maybe
that was why now he was the only one she felt would really understand.
She took her time crossing the room, reminding herself that he was a friend. Just a friend. That’s all he’d
ever really been. All he could ever be. Sort of like a really great girlfriend. One who was actually taller
than she was.
“I don’t know what went wrong or just exactly when, but one day it hit me. I could ignore the flirting
with his students. I could ignore the not-so-subtle innuendoes from other professors. I couldn’t ignore my
own feelings. People don’t change. We are who we are. I wanted Don to be someone he’ll never be. I
wanted him to care about me. To need me. The real me, the one inside he never got to know. Twenty
years, and we were still strangers. Don had some image of who I should be, the perfect wife, and it was
soooo not me! I just don’t care enough to live with the lies anymore. Maybe I never did. Sometimes I
think I married Don because I just gave up. I quit looking for that one perfect man I was meant to be
with. My soul-mate.”
Because I thought my soul-mate was you, and I’d already lost. I settled. For too little. Yeah. I settled for
way too little.Marylin swallowed two fingers of Amaretto, ignoring the burn. She’d never been much for
subtlety. There was a time for sipping, and a time for getting drunk. This night was definitely the latter.
“Do you still believe in soul-mates, Gray?”
“I used to.” Gray raised his glass to his lips and drank deeply of his favorite poison, aged Canadian
whisky. Marylin cringed. That stuff was guaranteed to degrease engines and peel paint off the walls. “I
wish…”
His deep, deep voice seemed to purr as he turned to lift his gaze toward her. Light filtered over his face.
The color struck her once again, odd and fascinating and vaguely wrong for this world. How many
people had violet eyes? Gray was the only one she’d ever met. His eyes were true violet, not some deep
shade of blue that seemed to take on a purple cast—a deep, rich, violet framed by eyelashes the color
ofmidnight.
“What?” Marylin took another long swallow of Amaretto. “Sometimes you have the oddest way of not
saying things.”
“Nothing.” He smiled that deep, sad smile that always got to her. “I was just—never mind. It was a long
time ago. I’m sorry, Baby-Girl. I hoped things would work out better for you. I thought things were going
swimmingly between you and what’s-his-name.”
“Swimmingly?” Marylin threw her head back and roared with laughter as she sprawled on the couch
next to him, her long legs bent double under her. “Swimmingly! I like that…”
No, nothing subtle—or fake—about Mary. Gray tossed back the last of his whisky, praying it would
give him the courage and the power to forget. He pointed to her bottle of Amaretto. Maybe it was time
for a change.
Marylin wiped the back of her hand across her cheek before she reached for the Amaretto. Still
 
laughing, she poured them each a triple shot. “I’m so glad you could come, Gray. I’ve missed your
friendship… I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too. No one else understands my sense of humor anyway. I love your smile. And I
love the fact that I don’t get a cramp in my neck trying to give you a hug. And for the record, you always
had my friendship. No matter what, that will never go away.”
He lifted the glass to his lips and took a quick gulp. Then he winked at her before his face twisted into a
visage of disgust. How could she drink this crap? But when the warmth hit his stomach, he suddenly
remembered. Amaretto had always had that effect on him.
“You didn’t bring Carlos. I thought you might…” Marylin tried to maintain her smile for his benefit, but
he knew what she was really asking.
“Carlos… Carlos is gone. For good. It’s just you and me this weekend, Baby.” He stared down into his
glass before a wry smile twisted his full lips. When did the forgetting start? Maybe he needed a bit more.
He took another drink.
“Damn, I’m sorry, Gray. That was one beautiful man. Just they way we both like ‘em. Tall, dark, and
handsome. It’s not just a cliché!”
Did she sound a little relieved?
Did it matter?
Not anymore. He wouldn’t let it matter. “Tall, dark, handsome, jealous, and colder than a witch’s tit in
January. I always seem to fall for the betraying type, and most of that breed seem to be tall, dark, and
handsome.” Gray pulled her over against his side with a gentle tug on her wrist, jumping slightly as
another crack of thunder split the night.
The lightning followed closer this time, lighting up the beach and the tossing waves beyond with a pale
wash of fire. She snuggled against him, maybe for warmth, but he suspected it was as much for his benefit
as hers. She knew how much he hated thunderstorms.
“What do you think’s wrong with us, Gray? We have such lousy taste in lovers in general…”
Gray laughed at that, his mood lightening. Man, did his Mary-Baby have a gift for understatement! The
logs settled in the fireplace, sending out a wave of small, bright orange sparks. “You know what the
problem is? We’re too good for this world, Baby! We would have to go to an alternate universe, back in
time, another planet or something, to find people who are good enough for us! We’re a special breed,
Baby-Girl! The last of the heart-hungry people. We want…we need more than a quick roll and a few
fake words of love. We want it all.”
Marylin downed her Amaretto, blinking back the tears he knew she wouldn’t want him to see. “We had
dreams, Gray. We were going to change the world. We were going to make a difference! All I got was
older. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we were born in the wrong time and place.”
“How does that Smashing Pumpkins’ song go? The world is a vampire, set to drain? Well, I’m all
drained out, Baby-Girl! Sometimes I couldn’t care less about the world and then sometimes, I… I
wish… Damn.”
 
Gray’s glass was almost empty again.
Marylin sighed, staring up at the tapestry on the wall. “I was meant to be surrounded by Warriors in
chain maille, set to do my bidding at the flick of my finger.”
He hugged her tighter, fighting back the desire to run screaming around the room as his frustration built.
He could never do that to her. She wanted a big, strong Warrior type, and that was something he could
never be.
He was too nice, too understanding, too much of a good guy. At least that’s what Carlos told him when
Gray caught him in bed with histhree o’clockmodeling appointment.
It was the same thing Paula had said to him before he caught her in their bed with his plumber. His
plumber, for God’s sake! The man had more crack than theSan Andreas Faultand his droopy pants,
caused by an incessant beer gut, perpetually showed it!
He was supposed to be sensitive and non-aggressive, a pacifist. He was an artist, damn it! It wasn’t his
fault he was six-feet-four, with what Carlos had called the body of Atlas. That was just genetics and
hauling around metal to weld for his sculptures. So why did everyone seemed to think he should abuse
his body in senseless fighting?
Not that he wouldn’t fight to defend those he loved or himself, but why fight over an unfaithful mate? He
knew Carlos was pissed when he handed him his suitcase instead of pounding the model into clay. But he
didn’t see the need to fight over a relationship that was so obviously dead anyway. The same for Paula
and her plumber.
Gray was a man who picked and chose his battles carefully, and trust was a major factor in his
decisions.
Besides, he was a sensitive man who hated bugs and was afraid of thunderstorms, and he didn’t have
the power to change who he innately was. Not now. But once, long ago, maybe, if he’d tried. “I just
wish… I was just meant to be…”
“Yeah.” He didn’t have to say it. She knew. It had always been that way with them, after all. “What do
you dream of, Gray? What’s your fantasy lover like?”
He didn’t hesitate at that, this new game giving him something else to think of. “My fantasy lover? A cat.
A big, tawny cat. Long and lean and sleek and sexy.”
“A cat?”
“Yeah! A real lion of a lover. Color is not important! Gender is not important. I just want a big old lion
who will do the lion thing.”
“The lion thing?”
“The lion thing, you know? Don’t you watch the Discovery channel?”
At her confused, albeit tipsy look, he went on to explain. “A lion makes love for ten days non-stop and
then goes to sleep. I want someone who’s going to be there for me and give me what I want. I want
someone who’ll stand by me and fight for what we believe in. A lion will do that. Of course, I don’t want
 

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