EXCITED AND NERVOUS, I OPENED my eyes to find Ash peering at me. “What?” I snapped, not for the first time that day. Or night? I tried to figure out my days and nights while Ash continued to look at me.
“I think I have found the perfect dress for your hair color,” she said, turning towards the wardrobe. She bent in and pulled out a mossy green dress that crossed over the bust and tied in the back. The overlapping layers in the front tapered to a longer back that would end mid calf. “What do you think?”
“Perfect,” I breathed, not believing I was saying that about a dress.
Ash’s face lit up. “Can I do your hair as well?”
I tried to shrug nonchalantly but really I wanted to look nice for him.
She helped me into the dress and carefully braided my hair around my head, letting the long end sweep over my shoulder. When she sat back satisfied, I leaned in towards the mirror. My hair was definitely a shade more auburn and my eyelashes seemed darker and thicker. I turned my head side to side, noticing a new rosiness in my cheeks that matched a new rosiness in my lips. “Is this how I looked the first time I came here?”
“Of course not, you looked like a petrified albino kitten.”
I snorted at that and she laughed out loud.
“So where are we going tonight?” I asked.
Ash smiled and shook her head, leading me out the door. We went back down to the huge main room and I cringed at having another emotional outburst for everyone to witness. But she breezed right through it, turning left down a dark narrow hall. I followed behind, starting to fear I was going to finally see the dungeon I had been imagining until I began breathing in the most wonderful smells: roasted meats and vegetables, pungent onions and yeasty bread.
The hall opened into a kitchen nearly the size of the main hall. Huge hearths lined one side and massive butcher blocks and marble tables marched down the middle. Surprisingly current stoves ran along the back wall and seated at a giant workspace in front of them was Jordan.
I tried to suppress my smile but couldn’t. Again his answering smile was brilliant and my knees wobbled a little. “Oh come on, get it together,” I mumbled under my breath, still smiling. I was not some adorably klutzy girl in need of a strong man to be my hero, which was a good thing, cause I was pretty sure that was never going to happen for me anyway.
“Still in a good mood?” Jordan asked. Ash had silently disappeared.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, not able to make eye contact.
“I was worried when you left,” he said softly.
I eyed all the produce in the baskets on the countertops. “Um, yeah, sorry about that, I guess I was just having a bad day.”
“Bixby,” Jordan said, grabbing my hand. “You don’t have to be strong for me. I’m not your brother or grandma or dad. I’m just your friend. If you’re having a hard time, I want you tell me, not hide it from me.”
I blinked hard, cursing my leaky eyes. No had ever said anything like that to me, not needed me to do or be something for them since my mom had died. “Thanks. I’m fine today, really. So what’s up with meeting in the kitchen?” I grimaced at my clumsy attempt to change the conversation but Jordan gracefully played along.
“Well, I was hoping you would make me something, if that’s all right. You really seem to love cooking.” I eyed him, wondering what situation he had spied on till I remembered I had actually told him that.
“Okay, what do you want me to make?”
“No, I want you to make me one of your favorites,” he said, leaning back on the tall stool he sat in.
I looked around the kitchen, taking in the foods, the equipment available and thinking through all recipes I had memorized. “Do you have spices?” I finally asked.
He led me to them, small glass jars lined up on tiny shelves taking up an entire wall. Printed on the edge of the shelf beneath each one was the name of the spice above. I looked around again, noting apples and wooden canisters of flour and sugar. “All right, have a seat, let me work my magic.”
Jordan smiled and sat back while I gathered the apples and a sharp knife. I worked quietly, getting more nervous as the silence lengthened. Looking up I saw him watching me, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“What?” I asked, exasperated. Was that only thing I was going to say today?
“Nothing, I just like watching you.” My face flushed and I peeled more furiously, almost slicing off the skin of my thumb. “Careful,” he murmured. “Do I make you nervous?”
“No,” I lied. “Don’t you have some questions you should be asking me?”
“Always.”
“Well, fire away.”
“Fire away?”
“It’s a figure of speech, it means go ahead, ask.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin before asking. “What do you do during the day?”
I looked up, surprised. “Nothing really, my life is pretty boring.”
“Indulge me.”
I sighed. “Okay, well, most days I go to school. Before I leave, I have breakfast with Grandma and make sure she has an easy lunch laid out and things to keep her occupied. She’s usually okay if I leave some laundry and magazines and turn the television to the station she likes.”
Jordan nodded. “I’m familiar with most of those things. What is your schooling like?”
I grimaced and moved on to sifting flour and sugar together. “It’s pretty much everyone my age in town heading to the same building and being stuck there for seven hours while the teachers repeat the same boring stuff over and over.”
“You don’t like school?” he guessed.
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t really get along with the other kids and most of the teachers are pretty apathetic. Mostly, we read a lesson out of a book and then do practice problems or answer questions.”
“You are friends with these other students.”
I cracked an egg over my flour mountain. “Not really. They’re interested in a lot of things that I’m not. So I just do my school work and go home.”
Jordan nodded thoughtfully. “What is a swim team?”
That stirred a little regret. “A group of girls join together and swim in the pool. They practice almost every day and go to things called swim meets and compete against other teams.”
“What are they competing for?”
I smiled at that, surprised by things he wasn’t aware of. “We race each other to see who is the fastest. Each girl has a specialty, like backstroke or freestyle and whoever wins earns points for their team. The team with the most points wins the meet. And then we do it over and over, against different teams. At the end of the season, one team is recognized as the best.”
“Is your team ever the best?”
“Last two years in a row,” I said proudly.
“And what were you best at?”
“Relays and breaststroke.”
“So why did you quit?”
My hands froze over the dough. I didn’t realize he had been listening so closely to me the night before. “My grandma needed me.”
Jordan leaned forward, clearly not satisfied with my answer. “Didn’t she need you before?”
“She got worse after Lincoln died … disappeared.”
“So you must have recently quit?”
I attacked the dough with more force than necessary. “I quit the day he died, or whatever.”
“Why?”
His eyes were glowing, inches from mine as I kneaded the dough. I couldn’t lie to him, I could tell he would know. “I didn’t want to have to be around other people.”
“Wouldn’t that have made the loss of you brother easier?”
His questions were irritatingly pointed.
“Not for me. They wanted to ask questions and talk about it and cry about it and I didn’t.”
Jordan sat back, surprised. “You didn’t cry over your brother?”
“Of course I did,” I snapped. “In private.”
“He really was the only person you
had?” he asked wonderingly.
I nodded, trying not to cry again.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Hey, it wasn’t your fault, right?” I said roughly.
“Right,” he echoed.
I seasoned my apples with spices. “So, what’s your next question?”
“Tell me about your dad.”
I suppressed a groan. “That’s not a question.”
Jordan cocked his head to the side. “What’s your dad like?”
I silently wrapped the apples in packets of dough for a few minutes before answering. “His name is Travis. He drives a truck for a living. He looks a lot like my brother.”
Jordan toyed with a spice jar, waiting for more.
I sighed. “He’s … gruff. He used to be happy when my mom was alive. Whenever he’s around he’s just angry and a jerk. He yells a lot and gets Grandma riled up and messes up how I do everything around the house.”
“You don’t like him?” Jordan guessed.
“He doesn’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“No idea,” I snapped. “I can’t do anything right, I’m too smart for my own good, I don’t listen—take your pick.” I slammed my little creations onto a steel sheet and shoved them into an oven that didn’t seem too hot.
Jordan seemed to take the hint. “Maybe you’d like to ask me something?” he asked, trying to ease the tension.
“Tell me about your uncle.”
It was his turn to grimace. “That’s not a question.”
“All right, what is your uncle like?” I asked, glad not to be the only one uncomfortable.
Jordan sighed and ran a hand through his gorgeous hair. “He is old, very old. And my guardian. He’s very opinionated.”
“About what?” I asked, carefully sweeping my scraps of dough off the table.
“Everything. Humans.”
My head snapped up. “He doesn’t like humans?”
Jordan shook his head. “It’s not that he doesn’t like them, he doesn’t like to associate with them. He thinks things should be separate.”
I heard a silent admission in that. “So what does he think of you and me?” I blushed at the way that sounded.
Jordan played with a little piece of dough I had missed. “He doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know?” I repeated. “How could he not know? I thought he was the one that owned this place? And he is your guardian?”
Jordan shrugged sheepishly. “He’s away right now. He often has to deal with issues that come up between the tribes.”
“And when he gets home …” I drew out.
Jordan squared his shoulders. “Then he and I will need to have a conversation.”
“A conversation? You mean you’re going to have to tell him you somehow chained a human to his fortress.”
“Yes …”
“Okay,” I said, my hands on my hips. “And how do you think he’s going to take that?”
“Not well,” he admitted.
“Not well as in this whole deal is off?” Panic well in my chest.
“He can’t do that, it’s already been done,” Jordan reassured me.
“So what will he do?” I asked, really starting to panic. My dad would kill me then lock me in the basement if he thought I had some secret boy visiting me in the night. What a djinn would do, I had no idea.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
It was getting hard to breathe. “What does he typically do when he finds out something he doesn’t like?”
Jordan’s face paled and that was enough for full on panic to settle over my body and mind.
Ash entered in a small door I hadn’t noticed and went to whisper something in Jordan’s ear. His grim face melted in relief. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to see something. I’ll be back in a moment.”
I nodded numbly and turned to check the oven. As soon as he left out the secret doorway, I fled out the hall I had come in through. Panic made my feet fly; I had to get out of there. I was very familiar with what angry male guardians were capable of and didn’t want to be around when his uncle found out about his pet human.
I flew through the main hall and out near the stables that housed the demon horses. I skirted them and took off in the darkness.
Tears poured down my cheeks. What had I gotten myself into? Determined to get myself out of it, I stopped and wiped my face. With a deep, calming breath, I oriented myself with the nearby sound of Lake Michigan lapping on its shore. Nightmare Town was on Lake Michigan. My Nightmare Town house was on Lake Michigan.
I entered the sparse dune forest and plowed through the root riddled sand, determined to make it to the shore before Jordan even knew I was missing. If I could just make out enough of the shoreline in the darkness I would know which way to head. Nightmare Town sat in a small bay with a small outcurving of land to the south and a much larger one to the north.
I burst onto the wet sand rimming the lake and almost pitched in. Gasping, I blinked furiously, willing my eyes to adjust to the starlight. The shoreline to the north was almost a perfect line and to the south it seemed to bow out almost a quarter of the way into the horizon. Relieved, I headed south with my head down and sand flying out behind my running feet.
The lake was eerily dark with no lights of cities and towns to mar its length. My hands pumped at my sides and I was entirely out of breath when I noticed a light coming up my smoke chains. I almost stopped, relieved that it was time to wake up. But it wasn’t the rosy glow that I was used to seeing; it was sharp silver light. Jordan had said the bracelets and chains were like an anchor to tether me and I picked up the speed, unsure of what was happening.
A wet slapping of sand came up behind me and I tried to run faster. Terrified, I looked over my shoulder only to see a dark shadow coming over me. My scream was cut off by a hand to my mouth and an arm around my shoulder, taking me down into the wet sand. The falling weight of the body on top of mine forced what little air I had in my lungs out and I struggled to get free. But the shadow rolled with me, pinning me on my back in the sand. The only thing I could make out in the sparse light was masculine shoulders.
I kicked and flailed, trying to shove my attacker off but he kept me easily pinned and the hand over my mouth didn’t budge. Determined to get free I opened my mouth wide and took a big bite.
The shadow keeping me down swore softly and jerked his hand away. Praying my aim was true, I threw my fist out from my shoulder and hit something hard—very hard. My attacker and I both swore but I was less injured and managed to squirm from under the hips holding mine down. More trees meant less light so I took off into the dune forest again, praying I wouldn’t run head on into a tree.
“Bixby!” Jordan hissed behind me. “Stop!”
I slowed but didn’t stop. He was my attacker? He must be furious I had run. Dodging around another tree, I skidded to stop and dropped to the ground, listening for his pursuit. There was nothing to hear, save the constant lapping of the lake.
Sweating and frightened, I craned my neck to see if I had been followed but could see nothing but broken up stars between dark tree trunks.
“Bixby,” came another strained whisper. “Please, come to me.”
I shifted on the dry leaves, praying he couldn’t track me my by smoke chains. A cascade of leaves burst from the trees behind me and I dove around the same tree I had been hiding behind. Jordan scooped me up on the other side and took off running. I bounced as he ran, my stomach slamming sickeningly into his shoulder. More leaves scattered behind us, the noise deafening in the otherwise peaceful quiet. We were being chased.
I pressed my hands into Jordan’s lower back to raise my head up and found myself eye to eye with a creature almost totally encompassed in the darkness.
With a squeal I tucked my head back down, trying to be as aerodynamic as possible. The nausea inducing chase lasted forever with Jordan zigzagging around trees, sliding over fallen leaves and tripping over hidden roots. Ju
st as I thought maybe I could escape better on my own, he slammed me to the ground and covered my body with his.
“Be quiet,” he breathed in my ear, his hair tickling my face. I had no choice but to comply. The weight of his body made pulling air into my lungs almost impossible.
We stayed that way for several minutes as the shuffling of leaves moved further and further away from us. Finally, Jordan pulled himself up and me with him.
“What—” I tried to asked, only to have his hand slam over my mouth again. In the scarce light, I could barely make out the shaking of his head. He put his other hand over his mouth, motioning for silence. I nodded in agreement.
Slowly, silently, he led me out of the dune forest and into a lit yard of the fortress. He still didn’t say anything as we crept around the massive barns and in the front entry. It wasn’t until we were in the main hall that he broke his silence.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he bellowed, his anger barely restrained.
“Me?” I shouted. “You frigging attacked me out there.”
“You shouldn’t have been out there! Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? Do you know what lurks out in those woods?”
“I know what I was planning on happening—me getting to Nightmare Town and out of this mess!” I regretted the words almost immediately.
“This mess is what allowed your brother to come back to you,” he said coldly.
“No,” I argued, “what allowed my brother to come back to me was agreeing to be your little encyclopedia, answer your questions. I had no idea you really existed, I had no idea you were governed by some angry, human hating uncle. What’s going to happen to me, huh? Do you even know? This is like a little game to you, an amusement. But it’s my life and I’m scared.”
My chest heaved, trying to pull in the oxygen it had been lacking for what felt like hours. Jordan panted and paced, refusing to look me in the eye. I caught his shoulder when he passed me for the fourth time. “What do you really want from me? What’s going to happen to me?”
He stepped in closer to me and grabbed my upper arms when I tried to back away. That close to him I had to crane my neck to see his face and was surprised by the pained look on it.
“Bixby,” he whispered, pulling me in closer.
I was suddenly more fearful than I had been in the woods. His grip was painfully tight but I couldn’t squirm out of it. “Jordan, you’re hurting me.”
“I would never hurt you,” he said fiercely, unmindful of his fingers digging into my flesh. I was horrified to see a glistening of tears in his eyes. “I can’t change what I am, I can’t change the world I live in but I will never hurt you again and I will never let anything in this world do so either.”
“Again?” I echoed, still trying to pull free of him. His intensity was unnerving. I felt hot and cold and every time his breath fanned out across my face I had to stop myself from leaning in closer.
Again he ignored my words. “I have watched you for years. Years, Bixby! And every second of every year I spent falling for you. Every tear you cried over your mother, I watched fall. Every lonely moment you spent on the beach, I was there. Every time your selfish brother disregarded your feelings I had to stop myself from running to you, telling you there was someone who cared for you more than you cared for yourself.” He took a quavering breath and released one of my arms. Pins and needles jabbed from my elbow to my finger tips as the blood flow returned.
“Jordan, I—” he cut me off with a gentle finger to my lips. Despite my fear and confusion, heat blossomed in my chest.
He looked into my eyes as if searching for something then swept his hand across my cheek and into my hair, pulling my face to his.
His lips met mine and he let my other arm go to pull me closer. He touched his lips to mine, softly over and over, building in intensity. I gasped when the kiss deepened and he grabbed my arms again, this time to shove me away.
His hands shook and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I’m sorry,” he said, his chest heaving.
I touched a finger to my tender lips, unable to speak.
Jordan stepped closer to me again and gently smoothed out the sleeves of my dress and tried to fix the falling pieces of my hair back into my braid.
My racing heart would not slow down and I waited for some explanation. He took his time fixing my dress and brushing crushed leaves from it and my hair. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes.
“I’m sorry for taking your first kiss, I was too rough. But you had to know.” He took another deep breath. “I love you. I have been in love with you for years. There are so many things I can’t change and so many things I am sorry about but you have to know. I love you.”
I could feel my mouth opening and closing, trying to force an appropriate answer out.
Jordan shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything. We have forever to figure this out.”
Chapter 13