by Nicole Thorn
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I just know I have to get you something. I’ve successfully wooed you, but I cannot slack in my duties now, because then it would seem like I just wanted in your pants. That’s not an okay thing for you to think, so I shall collect a sibling, and go off to the store.”
“You don’t have to get me anything,” Zander said, laughing. “I think sex counts as wooing. We can go upstairs, and see if we can’t break the bed.” He grinned at the last, and it was the kind of grin that made me shiver. It almost did the trick too, but I would not be deterred.
“You’re annoyed because I’m so good at the wooing,” I told him. “You tried so hard to resist me, but I’m too awesome for that, and when I succeeded, you were ashamed that you couldn’t even last a month. I understand that Zander. I do. Now, let me go and get you something that’ll make you feel better about the whole thing.”
“You are not better at wooing than I am,” Zander said, putting extra emphasis on ‘wooing’.
“I never said that I was, but the fact that you’d basically admitted to it makes me feel good. It couldn’t have been an easy thing for you, the son of Aphrodite to admit that me, a mere mortal, is better at this than you are. Thank you, Zander. You are truly great.”
“And I never said that,” he accused, pointing at me. He rose to his feet, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t make me prove a point to you, Jasmine. We’ve barely been together a day. I don’t want to destroy you that quickly. It’s not how love is supposed to work.”
“You can delude yourself that you’d win all you want, but look how our relationship has gone so far,” I said with a shrug. “You cannot beat me. But I love you for trying. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I twirled, and started walking for the garage.
“Hey, Jasmine,” Zander called.
I turned to look at him, and he smiled at me. It looked like that dangerous smile, that made me think things that would delay my departure. He had such a mixture of cocky and brazen that I wanted to pounce on him, but no pouncing when points needed to be made. If I told myself that enough times, maybe it would matter.
Zander leaned forward on his hips, that smile never leaving his face. “Challenge accepted.”
My eye narrowed. I turned on my heel, and went off to find my brother. He worked in the studio with Kizzy. They goofed off, flicking things at each other and waiting for the paint to dry, I thought. I knocked on the door before they could say or do something that would mortify all three of us.
Jasper glanced up first, and then Kizzy.
“I need a ride to the store,” I said. “I’ve got to get something that’ll shut Zander up for at least a week, and help me win this Romance Contest in a landslide.”
My brother blinked. “Romance contest?” he said, clearly not hearing the capital letters in my voice.
I nodded. “He thinks he can beat me just because he’s Aphrodite’s son, and I need to make sure that he learns otherwise, sooner rather than later, and for that I need to go to the store. Sorry, Jasper. I love him to death, but I need to destroy him, just this once.” Then I smiled, widely.
Kizzy and my brother looked at each other. She nudged him with her foot. “Go on. I should probably spend some time with him anyway. I can keep him distracted with food, and maybe that’ll help Jasmine win.”
Jasper snorted. He kissed Kizzy goodbye, and then grabbed his keys. Mine were still with Zander. I trusted him with them more than I trusted myself. So far, it hadn’t been difficult to go without a drink, but it had only been a day. I was terrified for what a week from now would be like. Or two weeks. What the first truly stressful occasion would do to me. The second. It felt like this giant cloud that would follow me around for the rest of my life, and I didn’t know how I felt about that, other than terrified.
Because clouds could rain, and this one happened to be filled with tequila.
We climbed into the car, and Jasper asked the destination. I looked up little places on my phone, the kind that specialize in this romantic crap. I found a little boutique kind of place about twenty or thirty minutes from the house. I chose them because they sold giant teddy bears. I decided that the one thing missing from Zander’s life was a giant teddy bear.
Halfway there, Jasper said, “The hospital called Juniper.”
I blinked at him, and the sudden change in subject. “About what?” I asked, a knot of worry in my stomach. Seers were just humans. We could get all the human diseases, even if it would’ve been rarer in us than a regular human—since we had to live long enough for the next generation to be born. I hadn’t thought she was sick, but what if she hid it?
“Dad,” Jasper said.
The oddest feeling filled me when he said that. Utter relief that Juniper Jasper hadn’t been hurt. Then the weirdest guilt that I didn’t worry more about my father, and that every ounce of concern drained out of me. I still loved him, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. At the same time, I found it incredibly difficult to care at the moment.
“What happened?”
“Apparently, someone beat him up, and he was crawling down the sidewalk a block from our house when another person found him,” Jasper explained. “He passed out, and Juniper is his second emergency contact.”
“Who’s his first?”
“Some woman we don’t know,” Jasper said. “They asked if there was a way for us to contact her, and there wasn’t.”
“What’d Juniper do?”
“She gave them all pertinent information, told them to please not contact us again, and hung up,” Jasper explained. I must have just stared at him, because he turned to look at me when we hit a red light. He shrugged. “She’s still mad about . . . ” His eyes went to the bruise on my face. I had forgotten about it with everything else that had happened. I touched the sensitive skin, and immediately pulled my hand away.
“Oh,” I said.
“Does that bug you?” Jasper asked. He started driving again. “I can’t say it bothers me all that much. I’m still furious that he hit you, too. And if Juniper had been the one hit, you know you’d be angry.”
“I’d want to hurt him worse than he hurt her,” I said, honestly, thinking of all those times he put us in the dog kennel. Or every time the camera came out. When we’d been that young, our rage had felt impotent, but I was much older now. If I wanted to hurt my father, I could’ve done it. Didn’t that tell me everything I needed to know. “I’m not upset,” I told him. “Any feelings I have about it is just habit, I guess.”
We pulled into the parking lot of the little store. It wasn’t quite in the middle of nowhere, but the places on either side had clearly been empty for a while, and the other stores were a block away. This one looked like a cute little place that had once been a house.
The inside felt cramped with all the things they sold. They had lined the walls with shelves of toys, a dozen different flower displays, cards galore, and a cat. A really fat cat sat in the window, getting what little light it could from the sad rays of sun that peeked through the clouds.
I was glad I had brought Jasper and not Zander. My brother had issues fitting into the store. I couldn’t imagine the bigger man trying to move through the narrow aisles. He’d end up knocking over every shelf of stuffed animals, and then sitting on the floor, covered in them.
Then I found the perfect teddy bear. It was the exact same shade as Zander’s hair, and it was easily four feet tall. Its eyes were brown, so that was unfortunate, but everything else looked perfect. The pads on its hands and feet said ‘I Love You’. He would be completely embarrassed by it. I absolutely had to get it for him. I hefted the thing up, and waddled over to the counter with it in my arms. Carrying a giant teddy bear turned out to be harder in real life than it had in my head.
I slammed it down on the counter, and smiled at the woman behind it. “I’d like this, please.”
The lady smiled back at me, and rang the toy up. It cost enough that even I blinked, but I paid the cor
rect amount, and then we were ready to go. I could already picture the look of astonished horror on Zander’s face as I walked in with the teddy bear and dropped it down in front of him, all smug that I had clearly won the round. Then I would drag him upstairs for a victory party, one in which we both won.
It would be beautiful.
Jasper had to carry the thing to the door for me, because he didn’t want me to die. I pulled the door open, all happy right up until I saw what waited the on the other side. I frowned, and closed it. Then opened it again. Closed it again, convinced that if I kept doing it, what things on the other side would change, and I’d stop seeing it. When the third time produced no result, I looked at Jasper.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Tell me what you see,” I said, and opened the door again. Webs completely coated the door, so that not a spark of light could be seen through them. They looked thick, and shiny looking spider webs. Everywhere.
“Webs,” Jasper said with a sigh, and put the teddy bear down. I followed him back into the store, and looked out the window. More webs. Over every single window. I’d check of course, but I was pretty certain that every exit would be covered, and I tried hard not to panic.
“Is something wrong?” The clerk asked, leaning over her desk.
I beamed at her. “Oh, no, nothing. We’re almost done here.” She went back to what she had been doing, and I leaned into my brother, “I’ll give you absolutely anything you want if you’re the one to break the webs. Literally anything. I will find a way to do it.” I looked up at him.
Jasper smirked and went to the front door. We looked out at the webs. He glanced at me. “Do you really think breaking them would be that easy?”
“A girl can dream,” I said.
Jasper tried, but they seemed more like wires than webs. The first one cut across his hand, leaving blood behind. The second one had more flexibility, but it also appeared more durable. Stretching and stretching, without ever actually letting us out, thanks to the stronger, wire-like webs surrounding it.
Around the third cut, I told Jasper to stop, and we’d figure out a different escape route. Of course, we hadn’t paid close enough attention, because the clerk came up behind us, and said, “What on earth is that?” she sounded scandalized.
“Those are spider webs,” a new voice said with an accent I couldn’t place. I jumped, and looked towards it. The man stood at the back door. It had been pushed open, and possessed a little window through the webs so that we could see him from the top of his head down to his belt buckle. The man looked tall, so that was a lot of person to see. He was also muscular, and his bare arms seemed covered in scars. His eyes looked like a feverish blue, and his hair was brown. But the man wasn’t a gorgon, so we had that going for us.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” the man said. “You’ll be dead by the end of the day, and then the webs won’t seem like such a big deal.” He grinned, and his face just . . . changed. It started subtly, but then it began getting more obvious. I blinked, and his clothes laid in shreds around his body, and the man vanished. He’d been replaced with a giant, brown wolf that could poke its head through the window of webs.
The clerk started screaming bloody murder, backed into a wall, and covered her face with her hands.
The wolf stepped back, and the window covered itself in those wiry strands. I looked at my brother. “Did that look like a werewolf to you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.”
“Smart.”
Werewolves. Just what I needed in my life. The one thing I never thought I’d encounter. They were incredibly rare in the US, and the Hunters made sure it stayed that way.
The clerk swallowed hard, “That was . . . That was . . . ”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t worry, it’s not that big a deal.” She gave me a look that pretty much said everything. I had to ignore her because webs and wolves. I couldn’t remember much about werewolves, or how you would go about incapacitating one. I just knew the story of how they came to be. Some idiot thought it’d be good to mess with Zeus, because messing with the gods never ended with you being murdered/turned into something you never wanted to be. Anyway, this idiot, Lycaon, thought it’d be a good idea to trick Zeus into eating a dead body. Only it didn’t work, and Zeus got angry about the deception, as gods were wont to do. As punishment, he turned Lycaon and his sons into werewolves.
Naturally those werewolves turned some other people into werewolves, and procreated until there was a werewolf problem, and then things got ugly as Artemis stepped in. Now there weren’t that many werewolves. But like any disease, it was pretty hard to stamp it out completely.
Something hit the side of the building, and the woman screamed again, one long peal of terror that had my ears ringing. I knelt in front of her, and took her hands. “It’ll be okay, ma’am,” I said. “I need you to breathe. And not scream. Please, do not scream again. Breathe. There ya go.”
Whatever hit the side of the building thought it would be fun to hit the roof next. This time, the clerk passed out, slumping to the side. I looked up at Jasper. “What do we do with her?”
He knelt, and checked her pulse. “Fainted,” he said. “If we’re lucky, she’ll wake up thinking it’s a terrible dream. Here, I’ll move her behind the counter.” He lifted the clerk up, and did just that, while I stayed out of his way. We tried to make her as comfortable as we could, tucking a blanket around her legs, and putting a stuffed animal behind her head. She looked pale, though. Could someone go into shock from seeing something really scary? I thought they could . . .
I looked up at my brother. “We’re trapped in a stuffed animal shop filled with greeting cards, an unconscious woman, a very annoyed looking fat cat, with webs keeping us inside, and werewolves circling the perimeter. Is there any way to spin that so that Zander doesn’t freak the fuck out?”
My brother gave me a flat look.
I sighed. “That’s what I thought. Hold on.” I pulled out my phone, and selected Zander’s number. He would be furious, hopefully not with me, but when in situations like this, I felt like I had to call in the demigods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
It Had to Be Fucking Werewolves
Zander
“This. Is. CHAOS!” Juniper shouted, her hands balled into fists at her sides. I would have said something to her if my mouth hadn’t been full of cookie, and if I hadn’t been busy shoving things into a bag. It was a good cookie too, double chocolate chip and fresh out of the oven, just for me. “I DON’T LIKE THIS!”
“Calm down,” I finally told Juniper. “I’ll make it neat and tiny when I’m done.”
She stomped her foot and glared at Kizzy as she started packing up Jasmine’s dresser. “Why are you letting this happen? You’re dating my brother, so you should automatically take the side of his family.”
She snorted. “Yeah right. Zander promised me he’d buy some of those special Greek chocolates I like if I helped him win, and my heart lies with candy.”
We paused in the middle of our mad dash, and I felt halfway sure I had turned into a real dick for doing this. But I needed to win, so I carried on. Jasmine totally liked my bed better than hers, and she should live in my room with me. I started small so that she wouldn’t notice at first. Boiling a frog was delicate. It would be just her clothes, then a poster at a time, and her little trinkets. Jasmine owned a lot of little random things, including a stone cat that made me more than a little sad to look at. But I planned on moving her in with me slowly, so that she wouldn’t realize until too late what happened. That was real love, I thought. I had a better view in my room anyway.
Cocky woman thinks that she could out woo me . . . My freaking mom is the goddess of love, and my brother is Eros. This shit is what I do. It pumped through my blood, leaving me unable to be anything but the most romantic motherfucker on this planet. So, I would destroy my girlfriend, because I had to be romantic
. I’d woo the hell out of her. She’d wake up to flower petals leading her to a homemade breakfast, and the table would be surrounded by boxes of chocolate and roses. Then after she finished eating, I would carry her back up to our room and proceed to spoil her for the rest of the day. There would be nothing she didn’t get, because I would be one step ahead of everything she would ask for. Candy and the best food, and toys up to her eyes. Yeah, I am the real romantic.
Juniper scurried after us to my room, and she scolded my sister and me as we put Jasmine’s clothes in the drawer space I had made. I didn’t own a lot of stuff . . . It would have been a lot easier to move my things in with Jasmine’s, but that didn’t equal me winning. I couldn’t let someone out cocky me, even my girlfriend.
“Kizzy,” Juniper sighed. “You didn’t pull this with Jasper. Why are you supporting it with Zander? Why should a woman automatically have to move in with a man?”
My sister rolled her eyes. “This has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with me getting my chocolate. Zander isn’t so gross that he would pull that gender role shit. You know that.”
Juniper shrugged.
“Besides,” Kizzy went on, turning to face her. “When we first moved in, I had a lot less stuff than I do now. It was nothing for me to move a handful of clothes and some of the few things I’ve collected over the years. Jasper was all moved in and comfy in a bigger room. And it wasn’t like we made the choice consciously. I just started sleeping in there most nights and we realized it. No big deal.”
Juniper covered her face with her hands. “Jasmine’s room is Jasmine’s room and should remain Jasmine’s room! We have it all set up perfectly, and there is no reason to change things.”
I ignored the rest of her rant so that I could get this done before Jasmine and Jasper got home. It would ruin everything if she caught me, and I would not let her win. Just in case she got a little snippy at the total violation I committed, I got my sword and shield out, and laid them against the wall so she could see them. Some girls like guns, mine liked medieval weaponry.