Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [43]
She loved everything about him. She loved his dark hair with the one funny lock that kept falling over his forehead. She loved his eyes, which were the deepest shade of blue she'd ever seen. She loved his broad shoulders and strong arms. She loved his intellect, which was as formidable as any she'd ever encountered in someone her age.
She still couldn't believe that of all the young women at the Academy Institute-all of them the best of the be/cheb was attracted to her. She was not the most beautiful; she frankly thought she looked like a tomboy with her angular features and her whippet-thin body. She was not the most brilliant; though she always ranked near the top in her classes there were always those who surpassed her. She was not the most talented or the most athletic. And yet, in this, their senior year, Cheb had pursued her.
Until she'd begun dating Cheb, she never thought of herself in comparison to other girls. But now she found herself thinking of them in a competitive way: Bess Terman had a much better figure; Allie Keagle had better skin; Nath Malone had a better sense of humor. Everybody had better hair. What did he see in her?
Ahead, in the cold dark woods of southern Ohio, Anna Mears giggled, and immediately Cheb hissed a "Shhhhhh" at her. Why he felt the need to be quiet, she wasn't sure. The chance of anyone's being out in these particular woods at this time of year was remote. It was frigid, and the ground was covered with icy snow that crunched under the footsteps of the four young people who walked, single-file, along a barely visible path among the trees. Only the moon, radiant in a starry sky, illuminated their way.
They had made the transport-completely unauthorized, of course-from school. Cheb claimed to know how to cover evidence of their maneuver so no one would realize they had commandeered a transporter for a purely personal, nonschool function. He had set it to bring them back in two hours from their beam-in site.
That had been less than a kilometer from their ultimate destination: the Magruder Mansion, an abandoned structure deep in the woods of a southern Ohio farm. Cheb had told them about it, how he had once gone with his older brother and his pals to see it, how intriguing and spooky it was, and how easy it would be for them to use the school's transporter to get there. He had made all the arrangements for this clandestine visit. It seemed as if they'd been walking forever; the air was cold enough to burn her nostrils, and her feet were numb.
But Kathryn felt warmed by the touch of Cheb's hand on her arm. She gazed upward, looking for familiar stars, and saw leafless branches arching upward toward the sky, stark and desolate. Orion dominated the sky, and Sirius shone brilliantly above the southern horizon. Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins, hung close to the zenith.
"There it is," she heard Cheb whisper, and the group drew up behind him, peering through the darkness toward the huge dark shadow that loomed ahead of them.
"It was built in the twenty-first century," breathed Cheb. "But it was modeled after castles in Ireland and England over a hundred years before that."
Kathryn had seen pictures of such castles, but seeing one in person was a different matter. It was set on a knoll, and loomed above them, four stories towering into the night sky. Crenellated gables, turrets, and pinnacles jutted from different levels, gradually building up to a massive central tower. She was awed by its power and majesty. "Let's go." Cheb started toward the mansion.
"How do we get in?" asked Blake Thomas, a thin, serious boy who was Captain of the Parrises Squares team, and one of the academic standouts of the senior class. His acceptance into Starfleet Academy was a foregone conclu- sion.
"Through the basement," said Cheb, leading the small band of adventurers through drifts of crackling snow to the back of the