Free Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale by Christine Bell Page B

until the pain of it all passed.
    Despite my waffling, I made pretty good time. I arrived back at the inn about a half an hour later, freezing my ass off—since I had no drawers on.
    I looked like a disheveled gypsy mess. There was no way the proprietress would recognize me as the same lady who had checked in. To avoid any hassles, I sneaked around to the side door, maximum stealth engaged, and sidled through the hallway to our room. I unlocked the door and slipped into the room. Bacon was standing in the corner near the window.
    I shut the door behind me and rounded on him, the despair a living, writhing thing inside me. It was determined to manifest itself in some horrible way and found a suitable target in my brother.
    “Well, Bacon,” I began in a voice dripping with acid, “I just want to thank you again for setting this hideous mess into motion with your careless—ooof!” The air was forced from my lungs in a rush as he threw his arms around me, lifting me off my feet and squeezing so hard I thought was going to end up a human bobblehead doll.
    “Dammit, Storm, you scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I thought you were dead or something. One hour, one more hour and I was leaving for Leister’s to get you. What the hell happened? I was so afraid for you,” he said softly, voice breaking, dopey green eyes swimming with unshed tears.
    Aww jeez . My mouth was still open in preparation for verbal castration, but I closed it with a snap. And for my next act, ladies and gentlemen, seal pup clubbing.
    Dammit. I wasn’t even allowed to throw a decent hissy fit. With a sigh, I holstered my word pistols, packed away my puppy-kicking boots and pasted on a reassuring smile.
    “I’m okay, I’m fine.” Breaking away from his iron grip, I held out my arms and executed a turn so he could see that I was in one piece, at least on the outside. “But we have to go. Right now.” I brushed by him and started gathering the few things we had brought with us, shoving them into my bag.
    I briefly debated changing into my proper lady garb again to make the walk through town toward the beach in the event that Devlin asked after us and described me, but didn’t want to waste another minute. Even if he woke shortly after I left, it would take him some time to escape. Odds were that we would be long gone by the time he was out and about asking questions. Even so, he was wicked smart and my instincts were telling me that above all else, we needed to get out of town as quickly as possible. Plus we still had to get out to the beach, assemble my TTM and locate the wormhole. We needed as much of a head start as we could get.
    “Right, so you got it, then?” Bacon asked hopefully.
    “Of course I got it.”
    “Thanks, Sis.”
    He sounded pathetically grateful and I gave him a quick grin. “No problem.”
    Until that point I’d been so wrapped up in my own feelings that I hadn’t considered whether I would tell him what happened, or about Dev and the asylum. On one hand, he wasn’t a child and he deserved to know. On the other, he would feel just as guilty about it as me, and what purpose would that serve?
    For the gazillionth time since his death, I wished Gilly were there to give me some advice.
    Sick to death of my own self-pity and determined to shake off the melancholy, I stopped quibbling, took the bull by the horns and gave it to Bacon straight.
    “Here’s the situation,” I began, closing my carpetbag, and trying to keep my voice light. I told him almost everything but left out the sex part—because who wants to hear that about their big sister?—and any mention of how I left things with Devlin.
    He stared at me, trying to gauge whether I was serious or not, for a long moment.
    “Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, he does look like him, now that you mention it. Man, he was so nice to us, ’member?”
    Sigh. I ’membered.
    I tried to push the big lug toward the door, but he dug in his heels.
    “So is he okay now?” He