A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck

by Jade Brieanne

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The package has been delivered.”

  JiJi heard a heavy sigh on the other end. “The package? Stop watching so many movies.”

  “I don’t have much else to do,” JiJi admitted, defending herself. “They are headed your way. Should be there in the next twenty minutes.”

  “Good,” Sheeda said. “This is fantastic. And knowing I got one over on Key is so worth all of the hassle,” she giggled into the receiver.

  Sheeda always oozed, if that’s a good word for it, sensuality and opportunism, which was something that JiJi should be used to by now but it wasn’t something you got used to. Her fixation on some perceived one up she needed to get on her ex, however, was something they’d all gotten

  accustomed to. It was a peculiar obsession but Sheeda was peculiar.

  “Question,” JiJi said, getting to the one she’d had all night. “Is this a good idea? I know Phi gave you the authority to do as you needed, but Lucan told us to–”

  “Don’t worry about Lucan. We’re doing this so he can concentrate on other things. He will thank us. Trust me.”

  JiJi shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “If you think so.”

  Sheeda hummed into the receiver. “I know so.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jon took a step back from the curb and watched rear red lights until they disappeared. As soon as Aiden’s taxi was out of sight, Jon walked around the corner and into, just like he calculated, someone who was waiting for him.

  “Kid,” he growled.

  The tall youth grinned and lifted the rim of his cap. “Agent,” he chirped, which made Jon want to pummel his face in. He was no longer an FBI agent. Due to certain recent events, if you could categorize transrealm travel, transhumans and extraterrestrial conspiracy in the same way you’d categorize, say, a write-up, he’d been forced to quit. With any luck, when all of this was over he could get his job back.

  That is if this would ever be over. He was starting to think it would never be over.

  “I think I remember saying in our last little meeting that you didn’t have to stalk Aiden if I was stalking Aiden. Seeing as I am currently stalking Aiden that means you take the day off, runt.”

  “It’s kind of fun,” was all the little shit said. He had on a fake mustache which bewildered Jon but he was too tired to ask.

  “And,” Jon continued as he took a step closer to him. He grabbed Rooke by the sleeve of his bomber jacket and began to drag him away from the bar. “I know you think you’re helping by being as psychotic and creepy as possible but jumping Aiden and telling him to ignore his dreams is counterproductive. Now all he will think about are his dreams. Good job.”

  “Well, he forced my hand! He was idling in front of Imane’s bakery today with this stupid look on his face.”

  “So he’s having dreams about doughnuts? Call the National Angelic Guard! It’s an emergency!” Jon deadpanned.

  “No,” Rooke replied, shoving Jon’s shoulder. “He’s having dreams about Jin Amaris and although his brain doesn’t remember her, his heart does. So visiting Dolce Confections or getting on the subway, only to ride the same circuit he and Jin took to escape Shen for hours and hours was a warning sign. Or did you know he requested information about moving up a floor to his old apartment? Things like that are big indications that maybe his memory is going to trigger soon.”

  “And you thought telling him not to remember was going to work?” Jon scoffed. “I don’t care what rank of freak you are up above, you are as green as I thought you were.”

  “Aw, Jon,” Rooke said with a pout, “I thought we’d moved past you calling us names.”

  “Not sure what gave you that idea, kid. Let’s get back. I’m sure you haven’t told Key about your little adventure into stupidity today.”

  Rooke winced and Jon laughed. “Thought so. Rooke’s gone rogue.”

  “What took you so long?”

  Jon had never been in a more decrepit, rundown apartment than the one Key, Tahir and Rooke were holed up in. And that’s saying a lot. On a technicality, this was also Jon’s unofficial official residence as well. Something Key said about keeping his name off paperwork and being on the low. Like he wasn’t a former FBI agent. He knew how to keep a low profile, thanks.

  Despite his “orders” to do so, Jon didn’t spend too much time here. He had standards and sleeping foot to head with Rooke on a dusty moldy couch or that nasty stained carpet was way, way under them.

  “Jon made us walk. Walk,” Rooke gasped as he staggered through the door, holding his chest.

  Jon closed the door behind a wheezing Rooke and smacked him upside the head after he fell to a knee and began fake hyperventilating. The youngest shot to standing, like a lanky jack-in-the-box and glared at him. Jon noted the wheezing had stopped. “Not my fault you idiots try to keep me locked up in this shitty cage all day. I wanted the trip back to be as long as possible. This place smells like the bottom of someone’s foot.”

  “How do you know what the bottom of someone’s foot smells like?” Tahir asked from atop a bar stool. She had a sandwich fisted in one hand and a book in the other.

  “Experience,” Jon answered as he ducked his head to peer at the cover of her book. “Notre-Dame de Paris?” Jon asked, his brows furrowed. “Why are you reading a book in French?”

  “One, because I can, and two, because it’s a beautiful story about unrequited love–a theme in this house,” she finished, looking at him pointedly.

  “It’s not about unrequited love.”

  “Yes, it is. That’s the core message.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m half-French, I know a thing or two about the damn book. It’s about wanting something you shouldn’t want and letting that obsession eat you alive. Think about it. Frollo betrays Esmeralda. She is hanged for it and he is chucked off a balcony like a Christmas ham because of this obsession.”

  “But–”

  “Then,” Jon continued, “Quasimodo chumps himself out because of, guess what, his obsession and starves to death watching over Esmerelda’s dead body. People go crazy when they don’t get what they want,” he pointed out. “We all remember Shen, right??”

  Tahir deflated. ”You suck,” she grumbled, slamming the book close.

  “Don’t blame me. Blame Victor Hugo.”

  “I get a sick kind of joy when you are proven wrong!” Rooke laughed, pointing at Tahir. “He ruined your book!”

  Jon argued with Tahir the most. He wasn’t sure why–he liked her well enough. She was a sweet woman when she wasn’t planning how to blow something up or explaining what certain bullets did to the brain in gross detail. Rooke didn’t bother him much either, other than overwhelming him with unconscious reminders as to just how obtuse Jon was.

  Despite the chummy banter, he still found it super annoying to be here. Being crammed in this apartment had to be punishment. Punishment for being alive? For knowing two people who were affecting different realms in two different ways with neither of them realizing it?

  He often found it hard to conceptualize how much bullshit had happened since that night last year.

  Jon had grown up only mildly religious despite his parent’s faiths. His father was a born-again Christian after a few wild years in his youth and his mother was considered Jewish–a term his grandmother used to reference his mother’s ethnicity and not her devoutness. As a child Jon kind of wandered in between the notions and ideals of his parent’s separate religions, never electing to grasp onto anything substantial, going through the motions of Easter Sunday with his dad and Pesach with his mother. He memorized the scriptures, he committed passages of the Torah to heart.

  As an adult, his beliefs floated above any religious grounding. He stopped believing in the fairy tales his dad told him, the fables his mom laced within her prayers. He stopped believing in things he couldn’t see and started to ground his belief in the corporeal.

  That was until the day he met angels.

&nbs
p; Tahir reacted to Rooke’s laughter with animosity, shoving past Jon and knocking him from his thoughts. “He didn’t ruin anything, dipshit! And take that ridiculous mustache off,” she riposted.

  Rooke looked up from the couch, his laughter dwindling. “You act like your disguise is any better. Blond isn’t your color.”

  Tahir scrunched her lips up for a long considering moment before she walked right up to Rooke, grabbed the edge of the mustache and ripped it off his face. The young Mutare’s hand rushed to his upper lip and a string of curses flew from his mouth.

  Yeah. Angels.

  So his belief in the supernatural grew a little. As things kept happening, one after another, he had to reference words from his past, words whispered and implanted in him as a youth, words he’d tried to refute.

  Angels. Watchers. Everlasting life. Death.

  Still, it wasn’t until he’d seen Ahn run Jin through with a sword did his “religion”, so to speak, come back to him. Why? Because for the first time in a long time he found himself praying.

  Praying that he wasn’t seeing what he was seeing, praying that Aiden wouldn’t lose his mind, praying that everything they’d told him about their efforts to save Jin’s life was true. That if he was truly in a realm of angels, that he should be close enough to God so that his prayers would be heard.

  Apparently, God heard Jon’s prayers. It was the answer that confused him.

  Jin survived. She was in a state where she couldn’t leave Caeli, but hey! She was alive! That’s what mattered, right?

  Next thing Jon knew, their angel-agent-human trifecta was now this weirdly shaped hodge-podge polygon with little direction and no answers. Well, he didn’t have any answers. Key, as always, had all of them, and as with Key, Jon knew he wasn’t going to just hand them over.

  “Where is your leader,” Jon asked, his hand braced against Rooke’s chest as he tried to keep the younger angel from murdering the older one.

  Tahir nodded with her head towards the back bedroom before she reached around Jon and yanked Rooke towards her by his collar.

  Jon stepped aside. He had his own fight to pick.

  Without knocking or anything anyone would consider polite, Jon pushed open the scratch riddled white door of Key’s room. He took one look around and rolled his eyes.

  It looked like something out of a low budget horror flick about séances. Even the set design was on point–candles, white chalk outlines, low lighting. Perfect. He recognized the symbol drawn over the mottled wooden floor easy enough––he’d only seen the Sigillum Dei Aemeth about a thousand times.

  Covering most of the chalk drawing was a single full mattress with thin sheets draped over it. At the foot was a thick blanket folded and out of the way. By the wall, lying on its side, almost as if it were discarded, was Jin’s third keystone floating in the case, pulsing like it had a heartbeat. It was cracked in one corner but whole. Which mean that Jin’s third “death” was no accident. He hadn’t come to grips with that, yet.

  The room smelled incredibly clean like it had been scrubbed of impurities. Sitting center of the mattress with his eyes closed and his body frozen like the statue he pretended to be, was his current target.

  Kithlish of Caeli, Luminary General of Fox and a pain in his ass.

  He was shirtless, his lean build tinted orange as one too many candles for Jon to consider safe flickered all around him. His hair was piled on top of his head in a messy knot and he was wearing a pair of stretchy yoga pants that stopped right above his ankle. The angels had all adopted disguises. Key’s disguise involved longer hair, a stronger clog and a pair of contacts that dulled the green of his eyes.

  Not…that Jon was being super observant on what Key wore. It was just...he noticed it. Nothing wrong with noticing it. Right? Right.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” Jon said. He winced because it also sounded like he was pouting. He was not pouting.

  Not that it mattered. Key’s hands moved from his sides to knees, balling to fists as he continued to…do whatever it was that Key was doing.

  “Hello?” Jon shouted as he took a step into the room. Key’s lips remained pressed together but he did raise his hand, his palm facing towards him like some kind of pale barrier.

  Scoffing, Jon took another step into the room and one of Key’s eyes popped open.

  “Universally speaking, this is the symbol for stop, halt, don’t move, not another step. Yet you push on, ever vigilant and steadfast.”

  Jon glared and Key rolled his eyes.

  “This is sacred land. At least take off your shoes, you brute.”

  Jon looked around the ragged room not seeing anything sacred about it but he did as he was told, toeing off his shoes and kicking them to the side. “Shoes, off.”

  Key hummed his answer and his eyes slid back close. He sighed back into his stance, his shoulders relaxed and his fist returning to his knee.

  Jon was flabbergasted. He waited a few tense seconds before he reacted. “Are you ignoring me on top of avoiding me?”

  “Ignoring you would be recognizing that you were in the room and refusing to acknowledge you. I did acknowledge you. I even spoke to you. So, no, I’m not ignoring you. I’m meditating, so technically I’m trying to pretend you don’t exist.”

  “You’re a piss-poor liar.”

  Key cursed as both of his eyes flew open, annoyance dancing dangerously in shades of green and gold. With a flick of his hands, the candles vanished, the Sigillum Dei Aemeth disappeared and the ceiling light in the room popped on. He stood up on his bed, the yoga pants slipping down his hips before he yanked them back and Jon followed the movement with this eyes, almost against his will, watching as Key marched up to his closet and yanked a shirt over his head. “And you’re crazy.”

  “My last psychological exam says that you’re wrong. So if you’re not avoiding me, and you’re not ignoring me and if you’re not talking to me like I’m an extension of Rooke’s…pants or something equally not important, then what are you doing?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Why are you avoiding me?” Jon repeated for the third time.

  “I’m not.”

  “This? What you’re doing right now? It's call avoiding.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, I’m doing my job. Sorry I can’t be your favorite radio station where you can tune into me whenever you want.”

  “Your job?” Jon snorted.

  “What makes you think I owe you my attention?” Key hissed.

  Jon’s brows rose to his hairline, taken aback by how harsh Key’s tone was. ”I mean, I know we’re not the best of friends but–"

  “That’s it, Jon, we’re not friends. We were never friends. I had a mission to save Jin. I did that. Our association at this point is just a continuation of that. It doesn’t mean we suddenly understand or like each other,” Key bit out before he laid down on his bed and slung his arms over his eyes.

  “But you didn’t,” Jon said, his voice brittle.

  Key’s head snapped towards him, stare pinned to Jon, fury reflecting in his murky green eyes. “What did you just say?”

  “I said,” Jon began, his face hard, his hands clenching at his sides, “You didn’t save her. She’s a pillar of salt in a temple in another world. A pillar of salt. The only thing you did was move her out of one danger and put her in the way of another. For all that it matters to me, she’s dead. So find some new shit to trumpet and parade around me other than that silly ass mission because you failed it.”

  “Fuck you,” Key seethed, his eyes narrowed and flashing red. He sat back up, anger radiating off of him. “That’s your problem. You think you can say whatever you want, however you want to because you think you know everything. Ever since I met you that’s all you do, say whatever you want.” Key looked away. “Get out of my face.”

  The anger bled out of Jon as fast as it built up. “That wasn’t my intention. I–” Jon sighed. “So we’re not friends but you have to stop denying it happ
ened and talk to me. Don’t avoid me because I remind you that you failed.” Key snarled at him, and he responded by frowning. He walked up to the mattress. “It happened, Key.”

  “I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing longer than you’ve been alive. I don’t need your help with how I process things. It happened. I know that! I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  Jon sighed again, this time his cheeks puffing out in resignation. “I’m so tired of fighting with you. You’re almost not worth the stress.”

  “Good to know. Leave.”

  “I said almost.” He took a seat, crossed his legs and leaned forward. “Have you ever cried for someone you lost?” he asked, careful to keep his tone somewhere around concern and not…soft.

  Key didn’t bite. “Drop it, Jon.”

  “Have you?”

  “No!” Key answered, exasperated. “No! And I’m not going to start now! You think I don’t understand what happened? I told that woman that I was going to protect her, that all she had to do was trust me. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it happened.” Just like that, everything seemed to drain out of him, the anger, the frustration, and the stubbornness. “I’ve never lost anyone before. I’ve seen death but I’ve never failed to prevent it.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Everything is my fault. That is the burden I took as a leader.”

  Jon was silent because, on one hand, he was right. It was the kind of training he got at Quantico and in the ROK Armed Forces. There is no I in team but the T is capitalized and it’s the first thing that you see–the character that leads. There wasn’t much he was going to be able to say to Key to knock that staunch accountability from up under him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. But he didn’t want Key to shoulder the entirety of his grief on his shoulders.

  “How’s Aiden?” Key asked abruptly, his face stormy and contemplative.

  “Ah, you mean your lobotomy experiment? Nuts. Hey, do those brain melting doozies you perform on him mess him up in any way? You know how like they say if you talk on your cell too much, you’ll get cancer or if you watch TV too long your eyes will be shaped like a box? If you have done this to him, and if I count correctly, three times, isn’t there some brain matter that’s…affected?”