ASH LOOKED UP HAPPILY FROM her embroidery but her face quickly fell. “What’s wrong?”
“Bad day,” I said, refusing to elaborate.
I agreed to the first dress she pulled out of the closet and let her fix my hair. I let my anger build with that, being treated like an oversized doll. Is that all I was to him, something pretty to be manipulated?
Ash led me down to a room I had never been to before. It was set up like an office, minus any technology. Jordan sat at the oversized desk, shuffling through reams of yellowed paper, a little book and his fancy pen set to the side to make notes in. He smiled hugely when I walked in and I just stood there until it melted off.
His eyes were questioning but all he said was, “I missed you last night.”
I ignored that. “How did you know where to find my brother?”
If he was surprised by my question it didn’t show. “I’m djinn. I know a lot of things.”
That gave me a little pause but didn’t deter me. “Okay. Where did you find him?”
He cocked his head to the side and held out a hand to invite me to sit in the chair across the desk from his. I walked over to hang onto the back of it but didn’t sit.
“What is this about, Bixby?” he asked, seeing I wasn’t going to comply.
“I want to know how it is my brother got from a fatal car accident in Hemlock Bay to alive in a men’s shelter in Grand Rapids eight days later. I want to know what happened in between.”
Jordan’s eyes narrowed and he leaned back in his chair. “What makes you think I would know that?”
“You’re djinn, aren’t you?” I threw back in his face. His evasiveness was only confirming my fears. “And dream Lincoln said you did.”
“Did he?” Jordan mused. “I suppose I do. But let me explain it to you, okay?”
His last sentence stuck a chord of dread deep in me.
He came around the desk and sat on the edge of it. He pulled me down onto the chair and held my one hand in both of his. “We, djinn I mean, sometimes know things before they happen. It’s usually not very accurate, but sometimes, if we help it along, we can determine how they turn out.” He looked at me cautiously, and then continued.
“You know how very curious I was about you. How I … observed you. Of course I knew how close to your brother you felt and so when I saw the accident happening in the future I just had to intervene.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. “Okay,” I said in a tiny voice. “So what exactly did you do?”
“I made sure he didn’t die in the accident, as I had seen.”
Questions bubbled up in my throat but I just gestured for him to continue.
He looked at me, surprised. “Well? Isn’t that enough? I kept him from dying.”
“Yes, but what about the other two boys? You couldn’t help them? And that still doesn’t explain where Linc was for those eight days.”
“I love you, Bixby, but I couldn’t just reorder the entire universe for you,” Jordan snapped, still not answering my actual question.
“Whoa! What?” I yanked my hand out of his. “I never asked you to, I never asked for anything. You showed up out of nowhere offering to bring my dead brother back and I just want to know where he was and how you knew to find him there!”
Jordan visibly reined his temper in and responded after a long moment. “I kept him safe for you, for a few days, just until I knew for sure how you would respond.”
“Respond?” I felt like vomiting. I couldn’t even move away from him like I so desperately wanted to because I was shaking so badly. “So instead of just not letting the car accident happen, you took advantage of it? You knew me, you knew Linc was the only person I could count on and you hid him for eight days?” He opened his mouth but I rushed on in a quieter voice. “You held him hostage until you could be sure I would agree to you putting these manacles on me and making me your slave.”
The full truth of that hit me so hard I had to sit down. Jordan looked at me sympathetically. “That’s not quite how it played out,” he said gently.
“Really? Then explain it.”
“The car accident was going to happen, I couldn’t have stopped that. But I wanted to stop your brother from dying in it. And when that other boy came along, it was perfect.” He shrugged as everything tumbled into place in my head.
“You didn’t,” I whispered, my hands flying up in front of my face. “Did you steal the new guy’s backpack? So no one would know he had been in the car?”
Jordan shrugged defensively.
“That is so sick! People have been looking for him, everybody thought he ran away!”
“Be realistic,” Jordan snapped. “Nobody was looking for him except the police. He didn’t have a person in the world that cared about him.”
“That is so sick,” I whispered. “What kind of person does that?”
Jordan’s face turned hard. “You forget, Bixby, I’m not a person.”
The full knowledge of that settled on me like wet concrete. I got out of the chair and tried to stumble away from him but he grabbed my hand. “You’re making too big a deal out of this,” he said.
I shook my head, tears starting to flow. “So this whole time I thought I was falling for you I was really just falling for your lies. You took the only person in the world that I love and loves me and hid him so you could blackmail me.”
He pulled me in closer. “You love me too, I know you do. This isn’t going to change that.”
My sensible self wanted to argue but my heart knew better. “Maybe not,” I agreed. “But I don’t want anything to do with you anymore just the same.”
He turned my face up towards his and murmured, “I have forever to change your mind.” When he bent his face to mine I tried to turn my head but he just chased my mouth with his, stealing a kiss. Tears pouring down my face, I let myself have that one last kiss then shoved away from him.
“It’s over, Jordan. I can’t be with you.”
He laughed in my face and shook my arm, causing the bracelet to jiggle on my wrist. “Well, our agreement says you can. And you can’t go back on that, not without losing your brother again.”
Bile rose up in my stomach. I hated this side of him but it made it easier to back away. Mentally, I took all the love I felt for him, packed it in a tiny box and locked it away in dark corner of my heart. Seeing the resolve on my face seemed to weaken his power.
“Bixby?” he said, suddenly concerned. “I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. How can you not know that? I only did these things so we could be together.”
I shook my head, the last of my tears dripping from my chin. “You could have just asked.”
“I’m sure that would have gone over well,” he said sarcastically.
“It would have gone over better than things are going now,” I told him quietly.
He stared defiantly into my eyes. “You won’t get away from me. I won’t take those bracelets off.” More gently he said, “You’ll forgive me in time.”
“I forgive you now,” I said.
He gave a tiny smile, thinking my admission might somehow mean he could change my mind. “I have every night of the rest of your life to make it up to you.”
I shook my head sadly. “I’ll cut my hands off if I have to, but I am not coming back here.”
Jordan stared at me for a full minute, his eyes searching mine. I stared back blankly. I could see his anger rising as he realized how serious I was. His rage completely overtook him and he lunged at me. Terrified, I tried to leap back but ran into the chair and fell to the floor. Jordan pounced on top of me and grabbed my wrists. A white heat flashed against my skin and I almost screamed out with pain.
Instead he was the one to scream. “Then get out!” he shrieked in my face, tears dripping from the end of his nose. Before one could fall onto my face, I woke up.
I didn’t know if I had screamed in my sleep but I was sitting up before I fully woke up. My throat was raw and my
wrists burned. Shakily, I turned on my lamp and in the weak light examined them. Thin, blistered burns rimmed each wrist but the bracelets were gone. I sat looking for a long time, trying not to think.
I wouldn’t see Jordan again; he had made sure of that. I grabbed a box of Kleenex from the nightstand and waited for the tears to come but I was too numb. My wrists kept burning, reminding me I should probably wash and wrap them. Getting up, I glanced out the window and was surprised to see it was storming. I suddenly noticed the noise from it and wondered how long I had been sitting in bed, oblivious to everything.
Outside, tiny pieces of hail were tearing from the sky, shredding the multi-color leaves still clinging to the trees. The ground was an icy, dirty mush of hail pummeled into mud and torn leaves. Dully I realized there would probably be no more fantastic autumns in West Michigan.
As I watched my beautiful yard being destroyed by the storm, the noise suddenly ceased. I pressed my nose against the window to see the black storm clouds still blotting out the stars.
My heart stilled when I heard a voice calling in the yard.
“Grandma?”
My breath fogged up the window as I gasped. The voice was coming from a low dark bush furthest away from the streetlights.
And it sounded remarkably like mine.
“Grandma?” it called again, as the rain ticked eerily off the eaves of the house. Below me the front door opened. I was horrified to see Grandma poking her head out.
I raised my hand to bang on the window and the sky opened up again. Thunder cracked over the house and hail smashed into everything, drowning out my knocking.
“Grandma,” I screamed, knowing she couldn’t hear me. I watched her long enough to see she was out of the house and slowly creeping towards the bush then tore out of my room and down the stairs. I took them two at time and slammed into the wall at the bottom. “Grandma,” I cried again, rounding the empty couch.
The door was swinging wildly open and I raced out it, not bothering to put on any shoes. The hail pricked my feet and stung my face but I ignored it as I ran for Grandma.
“Stop,” I tried to scream over the noise of the storm but she kept creeping towards the bush. “Grandma, stop!”
I slid and tripped over the rough hail, my eyes never leaving Grandma. She had reached the bush and leaned down to part the branches. Suddenly she turned, the terror evident on her face. Seeing me, she began to scream. “Bixby, run! Run!”
I shook my head and kept running for her. She began to run too and we almost collided. I tried to lead her back towards the house but she jerked me towards the road. “It’s not safe there,” she yelled over the storm.
We ran together down the middle of the street. “Grandma, what was in the bush?” I asked, sure I already knew.
“One of them,” she hissed, beginning to get winded.
We were a block and a half from my house and the storm was beginning to die down. “Them who?” I asked, stopping her in the street.
“Oh Bixby,” she said. “There’s so much I was supposed to tell you. My mind just wouldn’t let me. But I remember now and—” she cut off as blue flashers made their way down the street towards us. She grabbed my arm and started pulling me along. “Run!”
“No, Grandma, no, that’s the police, it’s okay.”
“No it’s not,” she said, fear freezing her face. “It’s a trick.”
I looked doubtfully at the cop car pulling up next to us. “No, it isn’t. It’s okay. Somebody probably called about two crazy women running down the street in a major storm.”
I tried to fix what I hoped was a sane looking smile on my face as the car window rolled down. I was glad to see it was just one officer until I saw the unmarked cruiser with its lights off pull in behind him. “Everything all right?” he finally asked.
“Fine,” I replied, unable to think up a plausible excuse to be out in such a bad storm.
“And you, ma’am?” the officer asked my grandma.
“Piss off,” she hissed, pulling on my arm.
“Grandma!” I chastised.
The officers put their cars in park and both of them opened their car doors at the same time to get out. Grandma jerked my arm again. “We have to get away from them,” she hissed in my ear.
“Grandma, stop,” I protested. The officers were out of the car and watching us. Both had their hands on the butts of their guns.
They watched us argue for a second then motioned us over to the sidewalk. “Ladies, if we could just have a word over here.”
Grandma growled and shoved me away from her and the cops. I landed on the ground and watched in horror as she snatched up a fallen branch and swung it at the officer’s face. “No,” I shrieked as she tried to swing the branch around again. The hail impeded me as I struggled to my feet.
“Stay back,” an officer shouted at me. His gun was drawn and at his side.
I edged towards her anyway. “She’s sick and very confused, she can’t help it. Grandma,” I called to her. “You have to put that branch down. These are real cops.”
She swung around again, catching one of the cops across the face. I lunged towards her and knocked the branch from her hands as one of the officers grabbed me around the waist and pulled me out of the way.
“Ma’am,” he said, struggling with me. “I need you to back away.”
Grandma began wailing as she watched me struggle with what I could only assume looked like a monster to her. “You’re scaring her,” I accused as I tried to shove him off me.
“Drop to the ground,” the officer not holding me commanded.
“She might not get what you’re saying, she’s got Alzheimer’s—” I tried to explain. The officer holding me slammed my body to the ground and pinned me there with a knee in my back. I was soaked in ice water immediately and the tiny balls of ice jabbed painfully into every inch of my skin.
A shrieking banshee in red silk pajamas crashed into the cop sitting on my back. “Grandma, no!” I yelled as I watched the other cop rush her. “Don’t hurt her! She’s old and sick; she doesn’t know what’s going on!” The cop who had been holding me down snapped handcuffs onto my already sore wrists and jerked me up backwards. I gritted my teeth, determined not to make the situation worse.
Grandma was on the ground still fighting as the other cop put handcuffs on her. “Sir,” I said as evenly as I could. “Please be gentle, she is sick and old.”
He jerked her off the ground like I had been and shoved her in the back of his cruiser. The cop holding me followed suit. I twisted around in the seat, trying to see Grandma in the other car. The cops talked for a minute then the one climbed in the driver’s seat.
“Sir, please just listen for second, this is terrible mistake.”
He didn’t say anything; he just put the car in drive.
“My grandma is sick,” I continued, praying he was listening, “and she’s been doing worse the last few days. I was going to call the doctor in the morning. I don’t know why she was out in the storm, but I promise the only reason she acted like that is because she was extra confused and thought I was being hurt. Hello?”
He still didn’t say anything.
“Could you please just take her to the hospital instead of jail?” I cried from the backseat. When he still didn’t say anything I changed tactics. “That cop threw her to the ground pretty hard, and with all my neighbors watching. If she has a broken bone and you take her to jail instead of a hospital—”
“Calm down,” he snapped from the front seat. “He is taking her to the hospital. Crazy old woman,” he muttered under his breath.
I sighed with relief. “Great, I promise we will get it all straightened out once we get there.”
“You aren’t going to the hospital,” he said, and with that began rattling off my rights.
“What?” I protested. “I was just trying to help my Grandma!”
“Seriously, kid,” he said from the front seat. “Do yourself a favor and shut up.”
<
br /> “No, what are you arresting me for? I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You resisted arrested,” he said in a monotone.
“No I didn’t,” I argued, panic settling in my chest. “Look, I didn’t resist, I just sat there even though you threw me down in the rain. Last time I checked, that wouldn’t be considered resisting.”
“I’m considering it resisting, so just shut up,” he said.
I did.
The tiny little jail was only a few blocks from my house, just like everything in town. The cop handed me over to a lady cop who asked me first to empty my pockets.
“No pockets, I have on pajamas,” I told her, stating the obvious. “I get a phone call, right? I can call a lawyer? Because this is an unlawful arrest. I know that guy says I resisted arrest but I didn’t and I’m sure if the other officer that was there is honest he will back me up.”
She looked at me blankly and proceeded with her checklist of things. She patted me down, asked for all my information, and took pictures and then fingerprints. Finally, she locked me in one of the two holding tanks.
“Wait a minute!” I called after her. “What happens next?”
“Next we call your dad and you hope he comes and bails you out,” was her response.
I sat down on one of the concrete benches in despair. He wasn’t home to answer the phone and was almost impossible to get a hold of on the road. I had given them his dispatcher’s number but wasn’t sure they took calls in the middle of the night.
The only other occupant in the cell with me was middle-aged drunk lady, dead asleep with vomit down the front of her shirt. Even if I had been alone, and in warm dry clothes for that matter, I wouldn’t have been going to sleep. As far as I knew the bracelets were my only entry into Jordan’s world. And at the moment, I didn’t want to find out otherwise.
The last look on his face told me I had broken his heart and a tiny part of me wondered if this was his revenge. Elaborate and cruel though it seemed, I couldn’t put it past him. It hurt me to think his love was that shallow. But he probably thought the same of me.
Chapter 20