****
“I miss seeing you at your grandmother’s place,” Leah whispered as she followed him up the stairs. “You know she hasn’t had any tenants since Clarissa left. I worry about her sometimes. It isn’t good for her to be all alone in that big house.”
Jackson didn’t comment as he secured the unconscious woman more comfortably over his shoulder. She didn’t weight enough to be much of a burden.
“You could go one night and visit her,” Leah continued. “I’m sure she’d really like to see you. You could bring Clarissa along if it would make you more comfortable.”
He did visit his grandmother. Leah just wasn’t aware of it. Some nights he’d circle the block on his motorcycle he knew his grandmother hated him to drive. They were dangerous contraptions in her eyes. But he was dead, so how dangerous could it be for him now?
Sometimes he’d stand outside when he knew she was asleep in her room and he could hear her breathing, the sound of her life’s blood coursing through her system. Just as he could sense Leah now with her strong psychic energy an enticing aphrodisiac to someone with so little life-giving essence of his own.
Yet she seemed completely at ease with him so near her. She’d trusted him once and he’d almost destroyed her. He’d been possessed by Fatio, but still she should be wary of him. He was a monstrous creature and she was a weak living woman, even with her witch powers.
They made it onto the landing and Leah reached around him to open the door to the floor. A female student came out of her dorm room, walking down the hall toward them. Jackson almost thought that she saw them, but her eyes seemed to pass over them. It was something he imagined Clarissa dealt with on a regular basis, the eyes of the living never taking stock of her existence in their world. Yet in this instance he was glad of it.
“What are you doing to make her not see us?” Jackson asked, as the woman walked on past them seemingly unaware of their presence.
“It’s a trick of concealment. Her brain is aware of us, I can’t change that. But I’ve manipulated the brain to be unable to formulate an image of us for more than a few seconds. She sees waves of light and shadow. She likely thinks she’s hung over. Here,” Leah stopped at a closed door. “This is her room.”
Jackson read the name plaques on the door, written in feminine swirls on heavy pink and green card stock. One was Natalie, the name he remembered Leah saying was dating her boyfriend’s roommate, with a star over the ‘i’. The other name read, Kasa, the ‘s’ sweeping down to form a tale. It suited her, he thought.
Leah touched the end of the door knob with one delicate finger. The sound of the lock popping open was loud in the otherwise quite hallway. She opened the door, letting Jackson go in first with Kasa.
The room was dark with blinds drawn down and a heavy curtain over them to block out any extra light that might penetrate through it. Jackson noticed the two figures curled up on one of the beds. They didn’t stir as he crossed the room past them, finding the empty bed with its red and blue patterned comforter.
Jackson laid Kasa gently on her bed, her head turned to the side on her soft satin pillow. He took a second to watch her sleep, her small body encased in his shirt, before pulling the comforter over her body. She was in a deep sleep that would likely last for several more hours. Kasa would be confused and angry, he was sure, but he’d be long gone by then.
Jackson would never see her after this. That did a strange thing to his insides. Even though she had tried to destroy him, something about her enthralled him. It might have been her tenacity, or more likely that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Jackson,” Leah whispered from the hall near the open door. “Come on, it’s getting late, and more people are starting to come out of their rooms.”
Jackson tucked the comforter higher up under Kasa’s chin. Bending down next to her bed, he touched the warmth of her lips, felt the hot air brushing his finger tips. He touched the stubborn set of her small chin. “Good-bye, Kasa,” he breathed close to her face. He did something then that he’d never intended to do.
Jackson drew closer to her face, kissing her full soft lips. It was like an instant combustion of energy, one that he felt throughout his entire system. Feeling the sensitive petals of her lips against his mouth he wondered if there was any greater earthly pleasure.
He pulled back, knowing that nothing would ever come from such thoughts. Jackson left her in her safe bed, his shirt on her body the only reminder that he’d ever been in her life. It’d be better if he erased her memory of him in her brain, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Hearing the sound of Leah’s agitated Korean out in the hall Jackson left the room, closing the door softly behind him. Too bad he couldn’t close Kasa from his mind so easily. He found Leah at the end of the hall. When she was upset she always reverted back to Korean, her mother and grandmother’s heritage language. He imagined her father was likely just as confused as he was now when the three of these Korean witches got together, their energetic conversations going right over his head.
“Leah, I don’t know what you’re saying to me.”
“Go home Jackson,” she said, finally in English. Touching his arm lightly, something passed over her face, a reflection of emotion he couldn’t name. She did something then that he hadn’t expected. It seemed he was falling more and more off his usual predictable beat lately.
“Don’t be such a stranger, Jackson,” she scolded him, her thin black brows drawing down, “We all miss you so much,” she confessed as she threw her petite arms around him. She barely reached his chest, yet she held him with strength unmoving.
He couldn’t bring himself to hug her back. They’d been best friends, but that had been before.
“I’ll see you around, Leah,” he said in a low voice as he disengaged himself from her clutches.
He was through the connecting door and down the stairs before she could say anything more. Jackson wasn’t aware of the silent tears that escaped from Leah’s lavender tinted eyes or the little tremble to her tiny bowed mouth.
###
The End. (to be continued…)
Thank you, dear reader, for your interest in my works. As always I appreciate hearing your thoughts. This is the first Companion Guide, this one to explain the events in Grave Danger, with other editions to follow as the stories progress. If you are confused by anything, or need clarification on a particular ‘factoid’, please feel free to post a comment on the site where you downloaded this work.
K.E. Rodgers
Other Works:
Grave Danger
Shadow Musique
Rainbow Heart
When Man-Made
Life in Pause
Divine Kingdom
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