I hugged Jamie tighter. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the arv. Truce? And I’m sorry Stina’s chasing me and putting you in danger. I’ve got no idea what her deal is.
Jamie nodded his head into my shoulder, and then turned his face to kiss my cheek. The sweetness flooded me, making me blush unexpectedly. I knew he was being extra loveable to make up for what Jekyll-Jamie did. Britta fled to find safety with Foss. Foss! She feels safer with Foss than with me. I did that to her. I got everything I ever wanted, and I threw it away all to hurt my syster. Why would I do that?
You wouldn’t. It wasn’t you. She’ll understand. I held Jamie as he tore himself a new one over and over while Tucker and Jens secured the house. At one point, he grew so distraught that he nearly collapsed atop me. I raked my fingers through his curly chestnut hair that had grown a shade darker since being absent from Undra’s blinding sun. When he started a particularly pitiful rant about the ways he’d failed Britta over the years, I shushed him. Enough, big brother. Sure, you messed up and were horrible. Feeling sad is fine, but it won’t get her back. It’s time for planning.
She’ll never forgive me.
With one arm around his back and the other playing with his hair to soothe him, I cooed, Just be my Jamie – the one who would sacrifice himself to save Jens from the gullin. You’re the prince who loved her every second of every day except the few times you had no control over your mind. Love her. Plain and simple.
Jamie nodded into my cheek, and then switched the focus on me. I know you miss Foss.
I wanted no part of this conversation, so I pulled on the ripcord. “Jens! You about finished?”
“Almost. Just stay there until I say so.”
Jamie pressed further into the open wound. But I know you love Jens.
I swear, Jamie. Shut it. I don’t want to talk about this with you, or even think about it. If I ever do, I’ll let you know.
Jamie kissed my cheek and laced his thick fingers through mine, holding our hands between us like a promise. No, you won’t, but I appreciate the lie.
“Just how many men are you seducing, little slampa?” Tucker teased, poking his head under the table. “Shall we leave you two alone a bit longer? Gladys has some candles I could light if you want to make good use of the floor here. Though, I’ve got beds aplenty upstairs.”
I rolled away from Jamie out from under the table and stood, indignant. “You know, my life is weird enough without your commentary. Is everything cool?” I asked of the threat they were shielding us from.
“Always. Just a little hiccup. Jens is paranoid. Like I said, it’s probably just a P.I.”
Jens came down the stairs with his pit bull attack-dog face firmly in place. “New rule: you two stay away from windows, doors and anything else that might give your location away.” He ran his hand through his messy black hair, consulting his plan more with his tresses than with us. “Maybe we should relocate. If someone already found us on the road, it’s only a matter of time. But what do they want? Tucker already called in the confirmation. How could that not be enough?”
“Was it a lovely funeral you threw me?” I asked, my humor probably too morbid. I was just kinda over people talking about my death like it was no big thing.
Jens’s eyes fell on me as if only just noticing I was there. “Hm? Oh, yes. The whole affair was catered by Wong Fu’s and The Partridge Family reunited for one last showing. They sang Safety Dance in your honor.”
I couldn’t help the smile that brushed my lips. “I love you.”
Jens quirked an eyebrow at my declaration that seemed to him out of nowhere. But it wasn’t out of nowhere. It was the exact right thing. He had a knack for being the exact right thing in my life. “Love you, too. You alright?”
Tucker turned on the stove, heating up water in his kettle. Why he didn’t just heat it in his fire-gifted hand, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps it was the habit of it that seemed to relax his shoulders. “I told you, Jens, no one’s after you. And I have so many protections up around my houses; no one will ever find us unless they know the specific address they’re looking for. Elsa will be here soon, and once she undoes the curse on Jamie, we can relocate, if you’re still on edge. I’ve got no shortage of homes you can hide in.”
Jens helped Jamie out from under the table, but the two still couldn’t look at each other. The more contrite Jamie became, the more cross Jens was toward his best friend. “You should’ve known better than to sit at the table with her in broad daylight. We left home because we were being followed. Be smart, Jamie.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, because sorry undoes what you did to my sister and my girlfriend. I’m hitting the shower. Need a break from you.” Jens stomped off to recheck the entire house again before his shower, slamming doors along the way just to show Jamie he was extra mad still.
Twenty-Six.
Tea and Truth Time with Tucker
Jamie retreated to the study to pilfer Tucker’s classic literature where he wouldn’t bother Jens. I could feel him beating himself up as he slumped up the stairs. Their fight was the pain in my butt and the roll in my eyes.
“How do you take your tea, love?” Tucker inquired, reaching down a bowl of sugar.
“Oh, um, thanks. However’s easiest, I guess.”
He tsked me like I was a disobedient child. “Now, now. You’re not living in Undraland, sleeping in the dirt. Let’s have a bit of civility, shall we? How do you take your tea?”
Since there was nothing else to do, I sat down at the kitchen table. “A little lemon and a spoon of honey, if you have it.”
“Of course.” When the kettle whistled, Tucker took out two china cups with – you guess it – mauve roses painted on the sides, their stems looping like curly Qs in a row around the bottom of the cup. He had the fancy pour-over kind of tea with several small pots of loose-leaf blends to choose from.
When he sat the cup in front of me, it smelled of coconut and mango, and not perfumy at all. I inhaled deeply over the hot beverage, letting the wafts of steam fill me and relax the tension that having your life burned away put on a girl. “This is some serious tea. I’m usually used to Lipton or whatever has the prettiest box at the supermarket.”
Tucker blew on his. “This will be better, I promise. Supermarket,” he scoffed under his breath. “Jens has you living like a troll. This tea is some of the best the Other Side has to offer. Three hundred dollars an ounce, and worth every penny. Not that I paid for it.” He shot me a secretive smile. “The joys of porting when the world you’re in doesn’t know to take preventative measures against elfin magic.”
My eyes widened. “Seriously? I’m thinking cocaine’s probably cheaper than that. What’s in this? Gold flakes?”
Tucker chortled at my cocaine comment that was only kind of a joke. “When you’re as old as I am, you learn to demand the best of the best. Settling’s what your first life is for.”
“Well, this gets to be my only life, so I’ll take the great with the ordinary as it comes. So long as Undraland leaves me alone, I’m happy.”
He sipped his tea and watched as I tried mine. So many flavors washed over me, trickling down my throat and coating it with something delicious and new. The crispness of the herbs took me aback, and the soothing nature of whatever else made it amazing relaxed me as I sat and shot the breeze with the near stranger. Despite the danger and the Jamie of it all, I felt oddly at peace.
“My condolences on your death.” He raised his cup to me in salute.
I nodded as I took another drink. “My condolences on Gladys.”
Tucker swallowed. “That was decades ago, but thank you. Your Uncle Alrik didn’t approve of my behavior.”
“He’s funny like that. Has this whole being a decent person thing that makes him such a stick in the mud.”
“I was sorry to hear of his passing. That must’ve been hard for you.” When I didn’t answer, he urged, “Drink your tea. It’s terrible cold.”
I sipped, and that same strange immediate calm filled me, making me forget how much I didn’t care for Tucker. “Well, at this point I have more dead friends than live ones. I’d write out your will now, if I were you. Just in case. I seem to come with a black omen or something.” My tongue loosened as I took another drink. “You know, I’ve kissed four men on the mouth in my life, and two ended up dead. The other two are so jacked up, it’s a wonder they still hang around. Tor, Nik, Foss and Jens.” Part of me was screaming for me to shut up, but another foreign element coerced me onward. “You want to see something freaky?”
“Always and only.” Intrigue lit Tucker’s chiseled features. His brown eyes studied my face with a calculated delight.
I peeled off my gloves and displayed my glittering hands to him. “Ta-da! Travelling lightshow. Freaky, am I right?” I wasn’t sure why I did it, but something set all my secrets loose, and they began tumbling out of me like the start of an avalanche. A few rocks, and then a downpour.
Tucker’s hand went over his mouth as his eyes widened. “Is this what I think it is?” He touched my wrists carefully, turning them over in shock. “Domslut? This is siren blood!”
I laughed like a hyena. “I helped kill Pesta. It all happened so fast, and it was so awful. I don’t like remembering it. That’s what I do when I’m upset. I just cut crap out of my head.” I mimed scissors slicing through my temple. “Half the things that happened in Undraland make no sense. Like, how did the farlig fisk know to open his mouth at just the right time?”
Tucker sat back, regaining his lazy smile as he drank his tea, soaking up every string of consciousness I threw at him. “Tell me everything.”
“I’m a siren,” I admitted, laughing at his jaw drop. “Pesta gave me her arv right before I helped kill her.”
Tucker swallowed, glancing at the ceiling to confirm Jens was still in the shower. “Tell me secrets about your parents.”
“Linus and I stole a Christmas tree once. It was terrible. I mean, of all the things to steal. We heard my mom crying two days before Christmas when we were thirteen. She was upset that they didn’t have money to give us a proper Christmas. I hated it when mom cried. So we stole a tree and a string of lights off the lot, brought it home in the middle of the night, set it up, and she woke to Christmas coming to the Kincaids.” I started laughing nervously. “Why am I telling you all this?”
Tucker returned my smile and tipped my cup to my lips. “I’d love to hear more about your mother. Hilda the Powerful. Must’ve been nice to grow up with that.”
I scratched my scalp. “I didn’t even know she had powers until Jens and the whole Undraland nonsense happened last year.”
Tucker arrested my empty teacup and placed it on the table, gripping my chin in his hand. He moved closer, looking into my eyes for that same roadmap he’d been searching for earlier. I knew I wanted to bat him away, but my hand only half-committed to the effort. My brain started jiggling and shifting like Jell-O. “Tell me more,” he breathed.
“Mom got this weird look when she saw how far we’d go to give her a real Christmas, and she took us out shopping. We had no money and knew better than to ask for stuff, but out of nowhere, my mom had so much cash, we couldn’t spend it fast enough.” My brain reached for memories I hadn’t been able to recall until just then. Like a breath through a fog, I began to see again things I’d once known but impossibly had forgotten. My mother was crying, then embarrassed, upset and secretly touched at the sight of the Christmas tree. Then I recalled the determined expression she donned as she grabbed her purse, snatched up our hands and ran out the door, my dad trailing behind us so he could continue his unhappy rant. “My dad was yelling,” I remembered, the fog clearing in pieces. “But we kept going. Why?” I asked myself. “My dad never yelled. But he’s so mad. And… scared?” It was like I was seeing it all for the first time. It was a memory, but I’d had no recollection of it.
Had my brain been lying to me?
The brick wall in the background of my mind started shaking out of nowhere, adding to my unbalance.
My body started to tremble from my fingertips, and worked the lasting shiver up my arms and into my chest. My foot started tapping the wood floor like a stick on a drum. Breath was hard to come by, but Tucker urged me on as he held my face. “What did your mom do?”
My voice came out pinched, like someone was choking me. “The bank. Mom whistled the banker a song and he gave her stacks and stacks of bills while Dad waited in the car, steaming mad! Then we went shopping like people do in the movies. We bought shoes, so many shoes! One of every color so I never had to wear the same color on both feet! And video games and clothes and the best food and perfume like the fancy women wear! We bought dad a c-car and Linus bought himself a l-laptop. It was so much fun!” My hand reached out on its own and slapped my palm on the table over and over, calling out signals of distress.
“Then what happened, love?” Tucker pried at my eyelids. His face was so close to mine, I thought he might bite my nose. “Tell me what your mother did!”
My other hand gripped the chair I was sitting in as my body jerked around in it. “My dad freaked out and they started yelling! She shouldn’t have to live like this, and everyone has their breaking point! And her kids deserved better!” I gasped and heaved like a runner on a cold day. “But Dad said that controlling people is wrong, and stealing is wrong, and she’d have to return everything.” I started writhing and knocked over the chair. Tucker lowered me to the floor and held my head still. The back of my head was pressed to the floor so he could see the innards of me through my eyeballs. “Then she was crying. Then she was whistling. Then I was…”
My brain jumped ship on my body and took a much needed vacation.
“Lucy! Lucy, then what happened? Do you remember anything else?”
Then something so strange happened, I felt like the girl from The Exorcist. Words birthed from my mouth I had no control over. They spilled out from me in a tone not unlike my mother’s when she’d had just about enough of our antics. “My daughter does not belong to Undraland! My gifts die with me so she can live! Get out! You’ll not awaken my daughter!”
A burst of something primal shot out of me from my heart. Like a series of repetitive sparkling fireworks, light and energy exploded out, scorching the ceiling and throwing Tucker backwards in fear.
My mouth fell open as my body went limp. Something fizzled and popped in my mind. That little fissure spread while I checked out of my body and boarded a train to la-la-land.
Twenty-Seven.
A Waste of Stars
I awoke to the familiar jostling of travelling in a car. One eye slowly opened, taking in the interior of the brown sedan Jens had stolen to get us to Tucker’s (or, well, Gladys’s). The wide shoulders and slim waist beneath me felt sort of familiar, though I wish I didn’t know what falling asleep on Tucker felt like.
“Where are we?” I asked, groggy. My voice sounded like I’d been trying to eat my way through a brillo pad. My throat was dry and sore.
Tucker kissed my forehead, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about his forced familiarity. “We’re headed to another house of mine. You blew our cover at that last one.”
“Blew your cover? What’d I do? I don’t remember anything past that tea you gave me.”
Jens smacked the steering wheel and growled. “When we get there, remind me to murder you!”
“I’m adding it to my mental planner as we speak. It’ll be right before you thank me for saving your hide and uncovering the mess, and right after you apologize to me for breaking my house.”
“Breaking your house? What happened?” My brain caught up to the pace of the world and noticed I wasn’t wearing my gloves. I gasped and shoved them downward to hide them from view.
Tucker reached to his side and pulled up my bare fingers, examining the oddity. “Beautiful. Shame you hide these. Absolute waste of perfectly good stars.”
I was lying in Tucker’s arms across
his lap, my head on his shoulder and a blanket pulled up to my temples to hide me from view. The seat was reclined all the way back, and I could see Jamie snoozing across the backseat with his hand resting atop his belly. I was surprisingly comfortable, but sat up anyway. I didn’t like waking up on strange men’s laps.
“Get down, Loos!” Jens warned, his head checking both windows and mirrors to ensure no one had seen me.
I didn’t really feel a sense of urgency since I had no idea what was going on. Tucker jerked me back to his chest and brought the pink knitted afghan up to my ears again. His fingers wound through my hair in an attempt to soothe me. It did not work. “What the crap, Jens? What’s going on?”
“Tucker happened.” The lightness and frat-boy camaraderie that he shared with his old friend seemed gone. “Tuck drugged you while I was taking a shower.”
My heartrate picked up, and my voice came out all squeaky. “You did what?”
Tucker did not take my indignation seriously. His fingers in my hair kept up their lazy twining of the tendrils, wrapping one around his finger, then another, as if we had nothing but time and delicious tea to enjoy together. “You make it sound so sordid. I did you a huge favor.”
“A favor that jeopardized our cover, put her back on the map, could’ve killed her and did absolutely nothing to help! And all behind my back, Tuck. That’s what hits me the hardest. Why didn’t you just tell me what you were thinking instead of waiting until I was in the shower to drug my charge? You have to know you get better results with sanning basilika if they actually know what’s going on enough to want to give you the information. You just did it because you didn’t want me in on whatever you’re thinking’s going on here.”
“Information is power, friend.”
Lucy at Peace Page 17