Lucy at Peace

by Mary E. Twomey

  I cringed. “I believe there was a ‘whoops’.”

  Tucker shrugged. “Oh. Well, there you go.”

  “Not exactly an apology.”

  Tucker’s guy died rather quickly, making it my turn again. “I don’t believe in apologies. Sets a bad precedent.”

  “That, what? You’re a decent person?”

  “Exactly. I don’t need your forgiveness.” His tone was light, with none of the biting edge his words suggested. It was like everything was a joke to this clown.

  “Good, because you’re not getting it.”

  This isn’t like you, syster.

  I paused the game and took a long swig of my drink to shut Jamie out.

  Lucy, please! Jens is mad enough. What can I do? Britta’s gone, and I need you to convince her to come back!

  His mournful tone might have given me pause were it not for the hateful words he’d sentenced me with when I’d first been cast out of the social elite. Jamie, you’re on your own. After what you did to Britt and me, you’re dead to me. Solve your own stupid problems. You created them. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you’ve changed.

  I could feel Jamie’s perplexity. Something’s wrong in me, Lucy. Ever since the night we saw Jeneve, something’s been off. It’s like there’s this darkness that weighs me down and makes me say and do things I would never have considered before then.

  I don’t care, I shot back. You broke Britta’s heart, so I don’t care about yours. I’ll say it again: solve your own stupid problems. I took another drink. Get a fan or something to clear out that black fog you’ve got. It’s annoying.

  You… you see it, too? I don’t know where it’s coming from! It’s not always here, but when it is, I can’t find myself. I can’t think straight or control myself.

  First time I saw it was at the baseball game, but I felt something shift when we saw Jeneve, I commented, adding my recollections and helping when I’d made it clear I would not. Jamie, weird magic fog or not, I’m done with you. You made me watch you have sex with my best friend. I know what your whole business looks like, and I never wanted to know. You broke my friendship with Britta. There’s no forgiveness for that. I drank more, ignoring his pleas, and as I began to calm, his voice grew further away. I could still sort of hear him, but it gave me a little distance so I could ignore him and breathe a little.

  “Do you usually sleep in full-length opera gloves?” Tucker inquired, bringing me into the present.

  “Do you usually sleep in suspenders?” I shot back.

  “That sounds like an invitation to sleep over. Thank you, #5603. I was thinking the same thing. Though you should probably make it sound like it was my idea, yeah? Jens might not be too happy with the obvious sparks flying between us.”

  I snorted, loosening up and leaning back against the cushions. “Oh, Tucker. Shoot those British flames up someone else’s butt. I got enough problems without adding you to the list. Just keep your paws off the furniture, and you can sleep on whatever scrap of floor you feel like. There’s a particularly cobwebby closet you’re welcome to sleep in over by the laundry room. But fair warning, I stab people who snore.”

  “At least you warned me first,” he joked, focusing on his losing score. “So, #5603, what’s your story?”

  “Do you care?”

  Tucker shrugged, appreciating being given the easy out. “Not really.”

  “Then let’s keep our relationship at a cordial ‘Hey, #5603,’ and ‘Have a nice life far away from here, jackwagon.’”

  Jens trotted down the stairs, eyed my glass on the end table and took a sip, wincing at the surprise of alcohol. “Ugh. That’s not milk. How much did you put in here, Mox? That’s way too strong.”

  “I can handle it just fine.” I took a drink without any show of a grimace and smacked my lips. “You’re not human, so of course it tastes off to you.”

  Jens shot me a wary look as he sat next to me on the couch. He pulled my legs onto his lap. “I know what’s too much, and that’s on the brink.” He began rubbing my feet.

  I decided against telling him about the shot I’d had upstairs. “I needed a break.” I tapped my temple, and he nodded in understanding.

  “Elsa and Leif just left. And I talked to Jamie. He said he was sorry. You can do what you want with that, but there’s nothing I can really do to him. He’s a mess right now, Loos.” Jens took the controller I handed him and started playing on Tucker’s level of expertise. I was Linus’s sister, so I had a natural aptitude for video games built in.

  I shot Jens a look that told him I didn’t want to talk about Jamie and the bond in front of the stranger. “Why don’t you two catch up? I can sleep in the living room.”

  “Babe, you don’t have to leave. I was just about to tell Tuck about the magic you worked on the farlig fisk.”

  I had no desire to relive any of Undraland’s horrors, least of all the one that resulted in Tor’s death.

  You miss Tor. Why don’t you ever talk about him?

  I winced at Jamie’s voice that wasn’t quite far enough away and downed the rest of my drink.

  “What magic could kill off a farlig? Certainly not a stiff breeze. You’re a wind elf, yeah?”

  “Night, guys,” I responded rudely. I really didn’t want this jag poking around my life.

  “Loos, do you want tomatoes in your omelet in the morning? The garden didn’t get burned. I can get us some fresh herbs, too,” Jens asked as I stood and kissed his cheek.

  “Sure. Whatever you like. Thanks.”

  Tucker raised his eyebrow at Jens. “You have a garden? Turned in your guardian days so easily for garden duty?” He narrowed his eyes at Jens. “You’ve changed, mate.”

  As I walked up the stairs, I heard Jens and Tucker mumbling about me. “She’s a wind elf on her dad’s side, but she doesn’t have any of the powers. Remember Alrik? He gave her his arv, so she’s part water elf and part wind, along with Huldra and human.”

  “All that and no powers? That seems off.” I could hear the smile in Tucker’s voice. “Alrik. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. How is the old boy?”

  I picked up my pace and tripped on the top stair, but righted myself before I toppled all the way down.

  The couch in the living room called out to me. The blanket I pulled off the arm of the couch near the fireplace smelled faintly of Foss from when he’d held me two nights ago. I flopped down on the beige cushions and shut my eyes. Though I knew Jamie was there, I couldn’t hear him, and the silence of nothingness was bliss.

  Seventeen.

  Flight by Night

  A headache hit me like a hammer not long after I passed out. It was so severe, it woke me from my slumber with a scream of agony. Before I could assess the source of the pain, someone picked me up, jostling me in my befuddled and exhausted state in the dark. “Make it stop!” I cried, my eyes feeling like they were bugged from the pressure in my brain. My blanket was wrapped more securely around me, and I cuddled into the warmth of the body without question, begging it to fend off the pain in my temples that felt like a screwdriver pressing into my cranium.

  I heard a crack and felt a pull on my joints, but it stopped as quickly as it started, and with it went my headache, disappearing into the night as swiftly as it came. I slumped into the hold and cooed against the hard body that cradled me, feeling completely safe as the muscular form started running.

  “Start the car!” I heard the man’s voice say. “I’ve got her!”

  My eyes opened, but the world took more than a couple blinks to snap into a bleary focus. The smarm was gone off Tucker’s face, and had been replaced by determination mingled with panic.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, not totally aware of anything at that point.

  “Almost there, käresta.”

  I started struggling against him, but my limbs were weighted and slow. “Jens! Where’s Jens?”

  Tucker didn’t answer, but I heard my boyfriend’s commanding voi
ce, so I relaxed a little. “Get in! Hurry!”

  Tucker slid into the passenger’s seat of a brown sedan with me on his lap and slammed the door behind him. “Go!”

  Jens peeled out of the parking lot I didn’t recognize in a car that was not ours. “Lean your seat back and cover her head with the blanket, Tuck! She can’t be seen, and I need two hands on the wheel, so I can’t vanish her!”

  “What’s wrong? Where are we? What’s happening?” I sat up and whipped my head around, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings in the dead of night. I saw in the backseat that Jamie was slumped down and buckled in, fighting off sleep and alcohol unsuccessfully as his eyelids drooped from the relief of the instant headache alleviating.

  “Get down, baby!” Jens ordered.

  Tucker had more wits about him than I did in that moment. He leaned the seat back all the way and pulled me down flush atop him, covering my body with the blanket I’d been wrapped in. His arms were around me, holding me in place and rubbing my back to soothe the confusion no one was bothering to clear up. “There wasn’t a mix-up in your paperwork,” Tucker explained quietly. “Someone took a hit out on you, älskling. Quiet now. We got you out.”

  Despite my feelings of revulsion toward Tucker, I gripped his chest in fear. “What are you talking about? Who would want to kill me?” Not again. Pesta’s dead. This isn’t happening all over again. Make it not true.

  “First thing when the office opens in the morning, I want you to call in that you killed her,” Jens demanded, taking a turn at too high a speed. The rusty car rocked, uncertain of its determined driver. “It’ll stop the hunt for her while we figure this out.”

  “No!” I shouted, my brain fighting through the fog to catch up with them. “Don’t erase me again!”

  “Honey, it’s the only way to keep them off our trail. You have no idea how dogged these hunters are.”

  “Jens, I have to go back! All my stuff is at the house!”

  “We can’t go back, babe. They got to the house.”

  I tried to sit up, but Tucker’s embrace mutated to restraints to keep me in place. “Let me go! Take me back!” I thrashed around to no avail.

  “Settle down and let’s figure this out.” Tucker tightened his grip to squeeze a little of the air out of me. “Maybe there’s another way, Jens. I mean, what would they want with your charge? Pesta’s dead. No one’s after her family anymore, right? Pesta was the only one chasing them.”

  Jens focused on the task at hand, speaking through gritted teeth as he flew down the main road. “Tuck, I can’t answer anything unless you’re willing to see this through till the end, and I won’t ask you to do that. Just leave it at people think Lucy’s dangerous, but she’s not. They think she has access to powers she doesn’t. I don’t know how they found out.”

  “Elsa must’ve told someone,” I breathed, relaxing a little when Tucker loosened his death grip around me and melted it back into a gentle hold. He pulled the blanket up to my temple, hiding me from the night.

  Jens shook his head, eyes on the dark road that was only lit by sparse lights. “She wouldn’t do that. She left on good terms. She even apologized for controlling you and violating our agreement that she’d leave our minds alone.”

  “An apology days after the fact? Wow. It almost erases the two seizures she gave me!”

  Tucker tried to piece together the meaning behind our conversation, but came up blank. “Why is Lucy dangerous?” Tucker lifted the edge of the blanket to peek at my scared expression. “Who took out the hit on you, love? What enemies do you have?”

  Jens and I flipped through our mental Rolodexes of anyone that fit that description. Jens bit his lip. “No one that’s still alive, I don’t think. I mean, she killed everyone else who came up against her.”

  “Don’t say it like that!” I yelled. “You make it sound like I am dangerous, but I had help with all those things!”

  Jens exhaled before responding. “I’m just trying to think here, Loos. Who would want you dead?”

  “Olaf?” I guessed. “Foss is supposed to be dead, but I’m a Tribeswoman still, so I’ve got his money. I got Olaf’s bedslave killed, and the chief liked Foss and me better than him. But I thought Undrans didn’t travel over here all that often. Is he here?”

  Jens shook his head. “No. Undrans are terrified of the Other Side because of the Huldras. Olaf wouldn’t need to be here. He can call in a hit that extends to the Other Side. But you’re Queen Lucy. That hit wouldn’t go through on the proper channels. No one would approve that. They’d bring you in for questioning or cut your stipend first before anything else. Keep thinking.”

  “Tribeswoman? I thought you two were sharing sheets.” Tucker tried desperately to keep up, but it was useless. He looked down at me, taking in my features with new appreciation. I could see him reevaluating my potential appeal now that I was a bigger commodity.

  “She’s a Tribeswoman,” Jens explained, jaw clenched. “She was married to one of the four powers in Fossegrim. It’s a long story.”

  “Sounds like an interesting one,” Tucker mused, his hand rubbing my back in comfort. “What about her husband? I’m not in on the gossip concerning Undraland. Haven’t been back there in decades. Which power, and how did he die?”

  “The power of the East. And Foss didn’t die. He’s still alive, but we faked his death. He followed her over here and helped us get to Pesta.”

  “Well, then it sounds like you found your killer. A Grimen would never let you shack up with his wife. They stone women who try to leave their husbands.”

  Jens shook his head. “No, they’re legally divorced on this side, but you know that stuff doesn’t carry over to Undraland. Foss wouldn’t have her killed. He’s still in love with her. If I was gone, he’d swoop in no problem.” Then under his breath, he added, “Swoops in while I’m still here easy enough.”

  Jamie piped in from the back. “You’re not wrong about that, brother.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here! And you shut up, Jamie!” I demanded, my temper flaring at my life being dissected in front of the stranger. “Foss isn’t trying to kill me. He was just here! He’s the one who pulled me out of the fire. Think again. We were closer to the mark with Olaf.”

  There was a beat of silence, which was broken by Tucker – a hint of amusement in his voice. “You’re dating a Tribeswoman?” He giggled into my hair. “Well done, Jens. Well done. Knew there had to be a reason you feigned monogamy. Quite a prize you’ve stolen.”

  The guy desperately needed a good beat-down. Unfortunately, my fists were too sluggish to commit to the effort. I swore off white Russians right then and there.

  Jens took a sharp turn onto the freeway. “For the record, I was only stealing her back. It’s a long story.”

  “Jens, I can’t help hide you if I don’t know what’s coming. I want to help you. You know I’ve got your back on anything, but I’ve got no idea what’s going on.”

  “I know. Thanks for getting us out of the house. That’s more than enough for now. We can lay low for a while. I’ll drive through the night and get us a hotel to hole up in until we get to the bottom of this.” Jens passed a particularly law-abiding vehicle at a nerve-wracking speed. “Wouldn’t say no if you offered to do some digging on who ordered the hit, though. I couldn’t get that information as easily as you could, being that you work for them and all.”

  Tucker considered this and nodded. “I can do that. The marker of a Tribeswoman is one I’d like to collect on someday.”

  I tried to pull myself out of the buzz that still hadn’t worn off, but it was no good. I slumped down onto Tucker, and he wrapped me more securely in the blanket, bringing me up so my face was buried in his neck. He smelled like expensive aftershave and cigars.

  “I don’t feel well,” I admitted. “Jens, did you call Foss and Britta?”

  Jens shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t want you using your phone for now. Not until we figure this out. And I told you t
hat drink was too much for you.”

  I was jostled atop Tucker as he fished out his phone for me, and then he settled me more comfortably in his embrace. “Thanks.” I punched in Foss’s number by heart. I laid my head back on Tucker’s shoulder as I waited for Foss to answer. When he picked up, the fear I’d been holding onto threatened whatever grip I had on anything resembling composure. “Foss?”

  I’d woken him up, and he was grouchy. I could picture him with pouting lips forcing his scowl to look comical. “What? I made Britta some tea, but she didn’t want it. Go back to sleep.”

  “Foss, I need you to wake up.”

  “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” I heard him jostling on his bed and could picture the scene perfectly. When he slept by himself, he sprawled out on the mattress like a giant X, sometimes with his arm thrown over his forehead, and his other gripping a knife. It was so dangerous. I’d lectured him on that so many times. When he slept with me, he turned on his side to spoon me, stretching his arm to my front and resting the blade across my chest. It was a strange calm that added layer of protection brought me, though I didn’t miss waking up to a knife at my breasts. Every now and then, he palmed my stomach instead of clutching the blade. I tried not to dwell on the emotions that brought up in me.

  He was quiet, and so was I, letting his heavy breathing level off as I listened to him try to decide if he was going to wake up or ignore me and go back to sleep.

  “Foss?” I whispered, wishing I didn’t have to wake him with such bad news.

  “Yeah, honey? What do you need?” Foss’s lovey nickname brought about a raised eyebrow from Tucker, and I knew the phone was close enough and the volume turned up loud enough for Tucker to listen in. “I thought I would like my bed better than the floor, but it’s not as good without you next to me. Tell me you’re coming over.”

  I closed my eyes, my heart jolting at the sweetness. “I need you to stay calm.”

  The springs shifted and I knew he was sitting up, his voice slightly more lucid. “I’m getting my boots on. What’s wrong?”

  “Some guys came to the house looking for me. Bounty hunters. That paperwork Tucker got to kill me wasn’t a mistake.”