by D. N. Hoxa
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Katherine said, covering her eyes with her hand for a second. “I don’t hear from you for four years, and now you show up at my door in the middle of the night with a complete stranger, asking to spend the night.”
I stepped to the side and put my hand on Logan’s arm. It felt weird and fake, but what the hell.
“He’s not a stranger. This is Logan Haines, and he’s helping me.”
“For God’s sake, Ruby!” said Katherine, her eyes almost begging me to just disappear. As much as I would have loved that, I couldn’t.
“Katherine, Nana’s gone. I’m trying to find her and Gwendolyn Love. They’ve both been kidnapped.”
“I know,” she said. “What does that have to do with you?”
I shook my head. “No idea. Nana sent one of her students to find me, and when I came back, she’d already set it up for her attorney to practically hand the Enclave over to me, Guards and all. Can you believe that? Nana with an attorney?” I tried to joke. Didn’t work.
“After everything, I thought you’d be happy that she was gone,” Katherine said, making ice cold shivers wash down my back. I knew exactly what she meant. She thought that because Nana had locked my magic away, I’d be happy to see her dead. I wasn’t. Not at all.
“She’s not gone, just taken,” I said under my breath. “I really need help. Just a place to spend the night because everybody is looking for me. I promise we’ll leave as soon as the sun comes up.” She looked at me and shook her head. I could hear the word no coming out of her lips even before she said it, so I stepped closer to her. “Katherine, please.” She had to see how desperate I was. She had to know how much it cost me to come here like this and ask for her help.
We’d been friends once, and I liked to think that if the roles were reversed, I’d have taken her in without question. I’d have helped with everything I could.
And then…
A sound came from somewhere far away—probably upstairs. And it wasn’t just a sound.
It was a baby crying.
Katherine closed her eyes and let go of her breath.
“There’s a baby in here,” I told her, pointing at the ceiling. I was sure she could hear it, too.
“Wait here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be back,” Katherine said and ran out of the living room, leaving me completely helpless.
I turned to Logan. “So…the baby’s hers, right?”
Logan visibly rolled his eyes. “Of course the baby’s hers. It’s her house, isn’t it?”
God, I needed a drink. So desperately. “I’m going to find the kitchen,” I said breathlessly and walked out of the living room, too. Katherine probably had some booze somewhere in the kitchen. She had a baby, so it would make sense that she would have alcohol in here somewhere.
The kitchen was right across the foyer from the living room—and I never found out if she had any booze or not. Instead, I found another baby.
Well, technically, she wasn’t a baby. She was sitting by herself on a stool to the side of the kitchen isle, with a glass full of milk by her side and a coloring book with some coloring tubes in front. I forgot how to breathe.
She was small, with a heart-shaped face and beautiful blonde curls. Her wide, blue eyes could have been a drawing, and her small mouth with bright red lips could make anyone fall in love at first sight. I’d never had much of an opinion about kids, but she was adorable! The kind of adorable they made memes about.
“Hello!” I said with a wave. I must have been too excited because my voice was higher than I intended for it to be.
And the little girl shied away.
“Oh, no,” I said, raising my hands. “Please don’t be afraid.”
She leaned a bit away in her stool, and slowly, her big eyes moved to the side where Logan was standing. Of course. That made perfect sense.
“Are you afraid of him?” I asked. Logan was twice as wide as me and a head taller. But the girl shook her head.
“Oh.” So it wasn’t Logan. It was just me. That sucks. “I’m sorry I scared you. I swear, I’m not going to hurt you.” What the hell else could I say?
Then, she smiled, and it completely transformed her face. “You don’t scare me.” I didn’t? “What is that?”
She touched her eye with a finger covered in blue paint.
“It’s an eye patch. It’s pretty cool, right?” I said with a bright smile.
But the girl shook her head again. Logan tried to stifle a laugh. If he were any closer, I’d have elbowed him in the gut.
“What is it?” the girl asked again.
“It’s, uh…it’s a shield. My eye is a bit sick at the moment, and this protects it,” I said in a rush. I’d never been asked what the eye patch was before, and it had been a long time since I even spoke to a kid, so I was a complete virgin in that department.
“It’s black. I don’t like black,” she said, but sounded more like bwack and wike. She wrinkling her little nose. For a second, I could see Katherine, the way she used to be when we lived together in Nana’s Enclave, and my heart all but melted.
“What’s your name, little girl?”
“It’s Hailey,” she said with that little angel voice. Again, it sounded like Haiwey.
“Nice to meet you, Hailey. I’m Ruby, a friend of your mom’s, and this is Logan.”
“Ruby is nice. Not Wogan,” she said and I pulled my lips inside my mouth to keep from laughing. Then Hailey sighed and looked so, so sad. “I haven’t found my ew yet.” I was positive she meant L.
“That’s okay,” I said, but she shook her head.
“Mommy says it’s here somewhere, hiding in the house. I just have to find it.”
I was literally melting on the inside.“I’ll tell you what, how would you like to give some color to my eye patch?” I said, hoping to cheer her up. I swear her whole face brightened up as if the sun just shone.
“Okay!” she said and turned to her colors right away. I approached her slowly because I didn’t want her freaked out again and leaned down on the counter. “I like butterflies. Do you like butterflies? They’re very nice.” Yep, she missed all the L’s.
I laughed. “I like butterflies, too. And you can draw whatever you like.”
She showed me all her little teeth. “Hold still,” she demanded and took her brush in her hand.
“How old are you, Hailey?” I asked. I had no idea what kids looked like at any age. Never really gave it much thought, but she’d colored in her coloring book and she’d barely gone outside the lines.
“I’m three and a half years old,” she said as she pushed the brush onto my eye patch. Katherine must have gotten pregnant with her after she left Nana’s Enclave. I watched her with my good eye as she worked, and for whatever reason, she completely relaxed me. I’d just barely escaped with my life, but it was like that had happened days ago.
“Wow. You’re so big,” I said with a grin, and she giggled. “What are you doing up so late? Shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”
“I took a nap and it was too late. When I take late naps, I can’t sleep and my legs get itchy. So Mommy said I could have cocoa milk and paint for a little while.” She looked completely serious as she moved her small hand. “Done!” she exclaimed and dropped the brush on the counter.
Taking the phone out of my pocket, I looked at the reflection on the screen and laughed. She hadn’t drawn a butterfly on the eye patch. She’d drawn an eye—a big, round, blue eye.
“Just like your other one,” Hailey said, so proud of herself her eyes sparkled.
“Thank you, Hailey. This is gorgeous. I promise I’ll never clean it off.” I turned to Logan. “Like it?”
Logan grinned. “Much better than before.”
The asshole.
“Would you like to paint my friend Logan, too, Hailey?” Let’s see if he liked it when I made fun of him.
But to my horror, Hailey shook his head. “No, I don’t want to.”
“Are you sure? H
e’d make a beautiful butterfly,” I pushed, but Hailey wrinkled her little nose again.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Logan looked like he was enjoying this. I had to get that smile off his face.
“You know what? You’re right. He wouldn’t make a beautiful butterfly,” I said, smiling. “But he’d make the most beautiful horse.”
Hailey drew in a long breath in absolute awe. “Really?”
Logan widened his eyes at me. “No.”
“I love ponies!” Hailey informed us with a shout.
I wiggled my brows at Logan. “Oh, yes.”
11
“I’m coming for you, kid! I’m coming for you, you just wait!” I said as Hailey laughed, riding on Logan’s back, and I chased them around the kitchen counter on all fours. You could tell the little girl was having the time of her life, and I couldn’t say I was bored, either.
Then…
“What in the world are you doing?!” came Katherine’s ice-cold voice.
I jumped to my feet as fast as I could without tripping and pulled Hailey from Logan’s back.
“We were…we were just playing,” I mumbled.
“Wogan is a pony, Mommy! He’s a pretty pony,” Hailey said, jumping in her mother’s arm. Being so close together, I could see clearly how much Hailey had taken after Katherine. They looked almost identical now that Katherine had gone blonde, too.
“Pretty pony,” I whispered at Logan, who would have killed me with his eyes if he could. I was never going to let him live this down for as long as he lived.
“And, look, now Ruby has two eyes. I did another eye, Mommy. Look!” Hailey demanded, and finally Katherine smiled. Just a bit.
She kissed her daughter on the forehead and put her down. “Go to bed, honey. I’ll be right up.”
Hailey looked like she wanted to refuse but didn’t. She turned to us and waved. “Night night, Ruby. Night night, Logan.”
“‘Night, Hailey,” we said and watched her until she disappeared out the door, running.
“She seems like a really great kid, Katherine,” I said, and I meant it.
“Thanks.” Katherine looked at the floor. “I’m going to take you to the guest house in the back yard. We only use it during the summer. It has a sofa, but it’s a pullout. It’s the best I can offer you.”
“It’s perfect!” I said quickly. “Thank you so much, Katherine.” She wasn’t going to send us on our way. I didn’t think anybody would think to search for me in Katherine’s house, so we would be safe for a few hours.
“It’s just for tonight. You’ll be gone by sunrise, okay?” she said, and she was nervous. Very nervous. “My husband is working tonight, so you’re in luck because he doesn’t like people spending the night. He’ll be home by eight a.m., so you’ll need to be gone by then. Deal?”
“Deal. We’ll be out of here before you know it,” I said, unable to contain a smile.
Katherine let go of a shaky breath. “Follow me.”
She took us through the back door on the other side of the kitchen, into a decent-sized back yard with the small guest house at the corner of the large white fence. Toys of all kinds covered almost every inch of the yellowing grass. The house was made of light-colored wood with a large porch on the front and two windows on the sides. Katherine turned the lights on, and it was obvious no one had stayed there in a while. Dust covered everything. To the side was a green sofa, a TV stand without a TV, and a table with eight chairs thrown one on top of the other, probably for the porch. A lot of toys were in there, too.
“This is it,” Katherine said.
“It’s perfect.” Much more than we needed.
“I’ll bring you a couple of blankets. It gets cold in here,” she said, hugging herself.
“That would be great, thanks.”
“Anything else?”
“We’re all set,” I said with a smile. “We really appreciate this, Katherine.”
“Just don’t bring any trouble to my door, Ruby,” she said, almost as if she felt sorry for me.
“I won’t.”
“The Ministry is looking for you,” she reminded me.
“I know, but they won’t find me here.” I really believed it; otherwise I wouldn’t have come to her at all.
“Right,” Katherine said. “Well, I’ll go get those blankets.”
“Okay,” I breathed, and I knew in my heart that she regretted saying yes to me, but I was thankful that she did. Tomorrow, we’d be gone, and she’d never have to see me again. Right now, we needed a safe place to think about our next steps.
Logan and I dusted off the sofa as well as we could and then pulled it into a bed. Katherine brought us two thick blankets that were going to have to do. The sofa wasn’t big by any means, but I figured it would be comfortable.
That’s until Logan sat at the corner and started untying the laces of his sneakers.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Surprised, he turned back. “Lying down?”
“Not here, you’re not,” I reminded him and sat on the bed, too. The bed was mine—he could take the floor.
He laughed a bit. “Of course I am. Where else would I sleep?”
“On the floor, like a normal person?”
“A normal person sleeps on the bed.” He patted the bed and then lay down, right next to me.
The guts on this guy. “Have some respect, will you? I’m a woman, and we’re at my friend’s house!” I shouldn’t have needed to tell him this, right?
“So what that you’re a woman?” he said, shrugging before he put his arms under his head, leaving me a tiny bit of space to put my head on.
I pushed his elbow away.
“I demand my rights!”
“You have your rights. Women want equality, and I’m treating you equally. We both get to sleep on the bed.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The asshole. I was too tired to argue, so I lay down beside him. Eh, screw it. I’d slept with less attractive men before. It was only a few hours until dawn anyway.
“You don’t snore, do you?” I asked. I hated snoring.
“I wouldn’t know. I sleep alone.”
“Come on. Someone must have told you. You’ve slept with women before, right?” Of course he had.
“No, I haven’t.”
“So, what, you’re a virgin?” I laughed, but he only shook his head.
“Not a virgin. I’ve had sex—plenty of times—but I only sleep alone,” he said, giving me a pointed look.
I grinned. “Well, you’re sleeping with me, now.”
I got comfortable, toed my sneakers off and kicked them out of the bed. Then I took off my chakris and whip, put them right under the pillow where it would be easiest to reach them if I needed to, and took my eye patch off, too. The eye Hailey had drawn on it was perfect. I really didn’t intend to wipe it off. I’d just clean the eye patch on the inside from then on.
“It was nice of you to let her draw on that,” he said in wonder.
“It was nice of you to let her ride on your back.” She’d loved every second of it. “Pretty pony,” I added with a laugh.
“I’ll take it. It’s the best nickname I’ve had, anyway.” I totally agreed. “She’s very powerful.”
“Hailey?” I asked, and he nodded. “Can you feel how powerful others are, too? Interesting that I never knew this.”
“Not always, only with certain people. But I could tell that little girl has a lot of magic in her.”
Suddenly, I felt proud, which was stupid. “Her mother is very powerful, too.” I’d witnessed Katherine’s magic many times, and she could do spells better than most in Nana’s Enclave. Ah, those memories…
“Let me see,” Logan said, catching me by surprise, as if I’d forgotten he was there.
I turned my head and let him see my eye. It wasn’t anything disgusting—just a bit of a scar tissue on my upper lid about half an inch long and my eye that had once been blue was now
almost completely white, with a bit of blue blended in.
I expected him to make fun of me or even just a comment, but he didn’t. He only nodded.
“How long have you known Katherine?” he asked after a little while.
“A long time. We lived together in Nana’s Enclave. She was a smart kid. Joined us when she was fifteen and me and my friend Avery took a liking to her almost instantly.”
“What was it like to grow up in an Enclave?”
“It was okay for the most part,” I said. I hadn’t had the best life, but I hadn’t had the worst life, either. “It was boring until my friend Avery came. She was a rock star.” I still remembered her face, even as a kid. “We were typical teenagers, eager to cause trouble, enamored with the idea of saving the world. We read too many comic books and were obsessed with superheroes.” How else were we going to spend all those sleepless nights?
“A lot of people think they can save the world when they’re little. Then they grow up and realize they’re part of the problem, too,” Logan said, almost as if the words had slipped his lips. “Where is your friend Avery now?”
Like always, just to think of it made me feel like I had a three-hundred-pound person sitting on my chest. “She died over four years ago.” Yet it still felt like yesterday.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said in a whisper. “How did you end up in Nana’s Enclave?”
While I appreciated that he didn’t try to make me tell him how Avery had died, I really didn’t want to dwell in the past any longer. The memory of how I came to be in Nana’s Enclave was traumatic, to say the least. I’d just watched my father being murdered and the building in the basement of which I grew up get swallowed up in flames. I had no choice but to run—as fast and as far away as I could, just like my father told me to. A day didn’t go by in which I didn’t regret leaving. If I’d stayed and done something, maybe he’d still be alive today. But I was seven years old at the time and didn’t know any better
“That’s a story for another time.” I wasn’t ready to share yet.