Page 106 of White Hot Kiss
We crossed the wide street and the tops of the sandstone museums peeked through the starry night sky. “Do you do the invisible thing often?”
“Would you if you could do it?” he asked.
“Probably,” I admitted, trying to ignore how warm his hand felt in mine.
Tight knots formed in my stomach as the Washington Monument came into view. Having no idea what was going to happen, I was expecting some kind of Indiana Jones booby traps lying in wait.
When we made it to the Lincoln Memorial, the moon was behind a thick cloud and the reflecting pool was vast and dark, still as always. Trees lined the pool, and the wet, musty smell of the Potomac teased my nose.
I waited until a park ranger moved on before I spoke. “What now?”
Roth glanced up. “We wait until the moon comes back out.”
A minute and ten thousand years later, the cloud rolled on and the silvery light of the moon was revealed inch by inch. Swallowing hard, I watched the water, wondering if we really did have the right place.
In the pale light of the full moon, the Washington Monument’s reflection started at the center of the pool farthest from where we stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The pillar sped across the pool as the reflection grew, until the pointed end reached the edge of where we stood.
I held my breath.
And nothing happened. No doorway suddenly appeared. Horns didn’t hail. Indiana Jones didn’t appear out of thin air. Nothing.
I looked at Roth. “Okay. This is really anticlimactic.”
He frowned as he scanned the area. “We’ve got to be missing something.”
“Maybe Sam was wrong or the seer was just messing with us.” The level of disappointment I was feeling sucked. “Because everything looks the same.... Wait.” I took a step forward, still holding on to Roth’s hand as I knelt at the edge of the pool. “Is it just me or does the water where the monument is reflected look sort of...shimmery?”
“Shimmery?”
“Yeah,” I replied. It was faint, but it looked like someone had tossed buckets of glitter on the water. “You don’t see it?” I looked up at him.
His eyes were narrowed. “I do, but that could just be the water.”
With my free hand, I reached down and dipped my fingers into the water and jerked my hand back. “What the Hell?”
“What?” Roth was kneeling in a second, his eyes glowing in the darkness. “What?”
It was way too hard to explain. The water...wasn’t water at all. My fingers had gone completely through it and were dry as the desert. “Put your fingers in it.”
The look on his face said he had a really disgusting comment to follow that up with, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Using his other hand, he put his fingers into the pool.
Roth laughed. “Holy crap, the water...”
“Isn’t there!” Amazed, I shook my head. “Do you think the whole thing is an optical illusion?”
“Can’t be. There are idiots who jump in this thing all the time. It has to be some kind of enchantment that’s reacting to us.” He moved his hand along the fake water, covering about a six-foot space until he must’ve hit the real deal, because a small ripple moved across the pool. “It’s in this space.” His gaze followed the center of the pool and then flicked up. “It’s the entire length of the reflection.”
I hoped so, because I was pretty sure the pool was at least eighteen feet deep and drowning didn’t sound like a lot of fun.
“You ready to do this?”
Not really, but I nodded as I stood. Roth went first, testing the theory of the water not really being water. His boot and then his jean-clad leg disappeared. There was no ripple or movement.
He smiled. “There’s a step, and it’s not wet.” He moved farther down until the darkness swallowed him up to his thigh and our arms were stretched as far as they’d go. “It’s okay. Whatever this is, it’s not really here.”
Taking a deep breath, I took the first step. Water didn’t soak through my sneaker or my jeans, and then I took another step and I was inches from Roth. “This is so damn weird.”
“I’ve seen weirder.”