by Milana Jacks
And someone would marry him. It just wasn’t gonna be me. There was no amount of kissing, spanking, or even this lovely cuddle time in the arms of a strong man that would persuade me to want the commitment he sought.
Reluctantly, I pulled away and watched his eyes. They appeared normal. In the throes of passion, I might’ve lost my marbles and started seeing things that didn’t exist. I’d witnessed quite a bit of crazy shit today, namely the moment when fire engulfed me but only burned my clothes and not me. I should have died today.
I kept that bit to myself.
Nentres tucked me closer, wrapped his arms around me, and bit my neck. I squealed.
“You drive me crazy,” he said.
“I could say the same about you.”
He kissed the place he’d bitten, then locked eyes with me. “I did what you asked today.” He glanced pointedly at the spoon on the floor.
“Thank you.”
“Welcome. Next time you leave the premises, I will use it. Do we understand each other?”
I nodded.
“That’s great, sugar. Now, I’m gonna take you upstairs to my room, where you will sleep.”
“I like my room just fine.” It wouldn’t do me any good to get comfortable inside his bedroom, then give it up at the end of the week right after another woman came and I left the mansion.
“Amy, I will use the spoon if you refuse.”
I scrunched up my nose.
He picked me up and carried me as if to leave the room.
“I’m naked,” I reminded him.
“I know.” He knocked on the door and waited. I guessed Mary heard it, and the lock clicked. Nentres opened the door, and people walking through the foyer paused in their tracks. I covered my breasts while Nentres marched onward.
“Let them see,” he said.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“I am. I like it.” He threw me over his shoulder and then climbed the steps with my ass hanging out for all to see. Shouts and whistles followed his ascent. I’d never been more embarrassed and turned on in my entire life, but thankfully, my head hung upside down and nobody could see the flood of heat in my face.
Exhausted, I slept as soon as my red ass hit the bed.
I found out I’d slept in his bedroom, but he hadn’t, because I found a key and locked the door from the inside around midnight, before he came to bed. The following morning, after I showered and dressed, I wanted to return to bed so I could lay my head on the fluffy feather pillow and get under the supersoft covers again. But had I done that, I would have slept the entire day away, and worse yet, I was pretty sure Nentres would demand I let him in when he retired for the night. Sleeping with him was one thing. Fooling around another. Sleeping was more intimate, and since we lived together, it would feel like living together, something I actively avoided.
Trying to distract myself from thinking about the feel of Nentres’s cock in my mouth failed until I got to work and wrote out two hundred more invitations. After I finished, I forced my thoughts back to yesterday morning, when dragon fire hadn’t burned me up. I didn’t know what to think. I might’ve imagined it. Maybe I’d finally cracked, my mind making shit up as a way of coping with all the misfortune in my life.
Right before my sweet sixteen, I’d lost my mother.
In the span of five years, I’d lost both parents, gotten sold to an outlaw, and seen a dragon who spit fire on me. And I hadn’t burned to ashes. If it really happened the way I thought it’d happened, Cindy would’ve said something on our way back. She’d said nothing, didn’t even look surprised at the sight of the dragon. I hadn’t had time to ask her where in God’s name had he come from, and I contemplated not telling her about the fire burning on me, because, at this point, I decided to pretend it never happened.
In the late afternoon, after I wrote out more invitations, I walked around the property. Finding things to do around here proved easy. The property stretched for acres, and I spotted a junkyard in the far corner of the back fence. Cyborg cars were piled on top of one another as if abandoned here. There were three piles, and I walked to the smaller one. Icicles formed on the cars’ windows; snow lingered on the car at the top of the pile. I circled the pile, and in the back found a car that looked new. I checked the hood. Yup, a Cy-20, one of the latest models.
I tapped my foot, my boot thumping the frozen ground. Modified Cy-20. Not new, but not old by any means. I grabbed the handle and yanked. Nothing. I grabbed it again, propped my foot near the door, and pulled, straining. The door swung open, and I fell back. The cold seeping into my bones made me vault right back up. I brushed the dirt off my ass and got in the back of the car, then rubbed my hands when my butt hit the cold seat. “Brrr.”
In the driver’s seat, the robot hummed to life. This modified tri-seat Cy-20 was a self-service taxi one could pick up for travel around the habitat. Anyone with authorization and money could ride in it. Hmm.
An idea struck me. “I’ll be right back,” I told the robot, then slammed the door behind me and bolted across the vast expanse of the backyard. Inside and upstairs, I got my wallet. From downstairs, I got a bag of invitations and a box of empty papers, then dragged it all into the back of the house. People watched, some had gathered, my girl Cindy came around the corner, a big smile on her face. “You going out again?”
“Not to the town. That was pretty stupid.” There, I admitted it.
“I told you so.” She lifted one side of the box, and we carried it together to the car.
I tapped the hood. “I’m gonna fly over the habitat.”
“In that?” She pointed at the tiny car.
“In this. Wanna come?”
Cindy chewed her bottom lip, a glint in her eyes. “I shouldn’t. Jason is sure to punish me again.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry you got punished because of me.”
“Um, yeah. That’s why I’m going out again.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t force my heart to fall for someone else, and Jason is the pack alpha, so I gotta take whatever attention I can get from him.”
“You’re misbehaving on purpose?” Pack alpha?
“Duh?”
“But you will get the wooden spoon.”
“Ha! I see you know about that. My spoon hangs in the kitchen all the time. Like a diploma.”
We laughed, then got to work.
Getting invitations and a box of papers inside the tiny car proved easy. Cindy asked why we’d cart blank papers. We needed a massive quantity of papers flying over the habitat so that people would take notice even if only a few hundred of them were actual invitations. If we dropped them onto the masses, those who received an invitation would feel special and those who didn’t would want one or at least wonder what it said. It would generate more word of mouth as opposed to the invitations alone.
We got in the back and closed the doors. Cindy put the box on her lap. From my wallet, I fished out my habitat public transport chip and slid it into the robot’s head. It hummed to life, and I waited for the verdict. “Account balance is forty-eight roges.”
“Do I have enough to get to the habitat and back?” I asked the robot.
“Mapping, calculating, done. Yes.”
“Yes!” I pumped my fist.
The robot started up the engine, and we flew over land. With my stepmom, when we’d flown inside the habitat, I’d just wanted the torture of sitting with her and my stepsister in the same closed space to be over. But when Daddy and I had moved from Jersey to New Orleans, I’d paid attention. Now, I paid attention too. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed flying and taking road trips with Mom and Dad. From up here, I saw the clear line of Nentres’s property defined by a tall black fence and torches positioned every few feet or so.
Unkempt grounds stretched beyond the property. Garbage littered the streets, though I spotted hardly any people. Imagining this town had once attracted young and old alike for their annual Mardi Gras nearly made me doubt the histor
y recorded in the books. But then I remembered living in Jersey before the volcanic eruption. It brought memories, namely the day of the Yellowstone eruption. I was nine. Mom had picked me up from school, and, at home, we watched the news, watched lava spreading over the ground, watched people and animals trying to outrun it and failing. I remember Mom crying. I was so scared.
But still I felt removed from it all because it was so far away. Until Mom had died, nothing really hit home, not even the freezing temperatures of the Ice Age.
Cindy pulled me out of my thoughts when she said, “There it is. It’s so pretty.”
The plasma dome covering the habitat glowed pink nowadays instead of clear translucent. We didn’t know why the Cy decided to change the color, but the pale pink did look pretty against the dark high-rises and light blue twinkling lights inside.
As we reached the plasma, I got my license out and slid it into the robot’s head. It read it and overrode its functions so I could drive. The robot projected the controls and set them in front of me in the form of an air panel. I slowed down to the speed limit and entered the habitat.
“You gonna stop by your home?” Cindy asked.
“Haven’t even considered it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m from Jersey. Never thought of this habitat as my home.”
“Never been up north. Hear it’s real cold.”
“Mm-hm. But you get used to it.”
“So now what?”
Under us, I eyed the main air space with parked coffee shops and bars where all the youth hung out. Cindy could barely contain her excitement. “We’re going down there? Say yes, please say yes.”
“Sorry,” I said and opened the windows. Cold winds didn’t blow inside the habitat, so nature couldn’t help with the distribution. I hit the gas and turned a sharp right, then a sharp left in a figure-eight pattern. “Dump the box.”
Cindy threw the papers out. They flew out of the car and rained down on the patrons. Cindy and I laughed. This was exciting!
Until the air panel lit bright red, telling me the taxi got flagged for a pull over. The level-five cyborg patrol was on their way. Time to hit the road. I gunned the taxi over the habitat, but the patrol caught up with me quickly. This damn thing couldn’t go any faster, a turtle racing a hare.
Five patrol cars surrounded us, one on each side, one car on the top, one on the bottom, and one in the front. We had nowhere to go.
The taxi jerked to a stop and hovered in the air. The air panel disappeared. The cyborgs took over the navigating robot. “You are under arrest.” The taxi robot echoed what one of the cyborgs inside his vehicle commanded it to say. “Follow the bottom patrol car.”
As if I had a choice. They’d taken my controls away.
“My first trip to the habitat, and I end up in jail. Jason’s gonna have a field day with my ass. I don’t think I’m gonna like it.”
“I’ll get us out of it,” I said. “We just littered. They’ll fine us, and we can go home.”
“Do you have the money for the fine?”
“No, but my stepmother can’t have a Trahan girl in jail. She’ll be quick about getting us out. Don’t worry.” Though it puzzled me why the cyborgs felt they needed five units to make an arrest. As far as I knew, littering didn’t warrant an arrest.
“What’s the charge?” Now the robot would speak with the cyborgs. Level-five cyborgs were machines too.
The car below bumped the taxi.
“What’s happening?” Cindy lifted her feet on the seat.
“The unit on the bottom attached its roof to our undercarriage. They’re taking us down.” I waited for the cyborg to answer.
“You are flying a stolen vehicle.”
Facepalm. Nentres, an outlaw, stole cars and piled them in the junkyard, probably waiting to sell them off either whole or in parts. God, I deserved a wooden spoon. I wanted to tell them I hadn’t known the car was stolen, but the fact remained, I’d stolen a stolen car. “Okay, so how much is the bail?”
“No bail.”
“We’re in big trouble,” Cindy said.
7
Nentres
Eddy and I went so far back, I couldn’t even remember when I’d met him. We’d been neighbors. His home still stood abandoned next to mine. The earliest memory I had of Eddy was when we’d brawled over a skateboard I’d found on the street. He’d claimed it was his when, in fact, the name on the skateboard was Larry Hudson. We both knew a Larry Hudson from the house down the street, but Eddy insisted everything on his lawn belonged to him.
Let the record show I’d found the skateboard, so it was mine. Eddy, two years my senior, beat me up and took the board. To this day I wondered what made him come to my house the next morning and ask me to play ball with him, but I went. We’d been inseparable until sometime in high school when his parents divorced and Eddy had left the private school for public school. His mom moved out, and I hadn’t seen much of Eddy after that, apart from brief glances in town, where we both pickpocketed the tourists. I did it because it was fun; he did it because he needed the money.
In town, I rapped on the boarded-up door of a former all-day breakfast place on St. Ann’s Street. An eye appeared in the small peephole, and, after a pause, a deep male voice asked, “Who’re you?”
“Tell Eddy, Jonatan Broussard is here to see him.”
I tucked my hands into my coat, kicked some dirt under my shoe, then counted to fifty so I wouldn’t break the door. Patience wasn’t my forte. I lifted my fist, ready to bang again, when a man swung open the door and got out of my way. Entering from the back, I walked the long hallway into the kitchen, where curious people paused their prep to stare at me. I moved into another hallway and finally got to the main restaurant floor.
Eddy sat in the corner of the restaurant, pretending to read something super interesting so he wouldn’t appear like he got here just to receive me. He’d grown a beard and shaved his head. He’d also gotten tattoos on his face. I guessed it made him look tougher, but I knew, way down deep, Eddy would do the right thing. If he liked you, he’d do you a solid.
Eddy lived a few doors down from here, and I could’ve landed on top of his roof, but that would make him change locations, and I liked it just fine that he believed I had no idea where he slept.
I sat at the table and pushed an invitation to my ball at him.
He folded his superimportant reading material—a decade-old menu—and raised an eyebrow. “Hello to you too, old friend. Here to give me back the Confederate coins you stole with that cheating poker hand?” Eddy still lived in the fantasyland where he knew for certain I’d cheated at poker, which got me his Confederate coins. I had cheated. But I was pretty sure he’d stolen that particular batch of coins from Hudsons’ down the street when they fled the area. So I didn’t feel bad for him.
The batch he’d claimed before the one I’d stolen off him was bloody. I would bet on it. In any case, I had no intention of admitting I cheated at cards.
I tapped the paper. “Seen three or three hundred of these?”
He picked up the invitation as if he needed to read it.
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, I seen these,” he said. “Why?”
“I need them.”
He eyed me sideways. “They came from you, didn’t they? It’s an invitation to some sort of a masked ball where you’ll be picking a bride.”
“Yeah, I’m not having a ball, and I’ve found the bride.”
“Too late. The women are already scouting for dresses, making masks, and I ain’t gonna tell them it’s canceled.”
I leaned my elbows on the table and narrowed my eyes. “You’re not listening. I ain’t having the ball. If they come, they’ll kiss the gate.”
He mimicked my posture. “You’re not listening. The invitations are out. At least two hundred of us are coming.”
“Who is us?”
“A suitable bride and a chaperone.”
“No chaperones.”
>
He lifted the invitation and pointed at the tiny print at the bottom.
* Invitation good for one prospective virgin bride and a chaperone.
Amy, Amy, Amy. I recalled specifically telling her no chaperones.
Eddy smirked. “What’s the matter, Casanova? You don’t want us lowlifes inside your pristine mansion?”
“I don’t want anyone inside my mansion.”
“So then you won’t mind when I tell you I don’t want anyone inside my town.”
“This ain’t your town.”
“It sure as fuck ain’t yours.”
My beast didn’t like the challenge. My skin stretched, and I thought I might just go dragon on Eddy’s ass. I gritted my teeth lest I bite him. Eddy paid me no mind and continued. “I haven’t seen you since before the Age, so as far as I’m concerned, New Orleans is my turf. I own the streets, I protect these people, and I provide for them. So fuck off back to your glamor nest. And we’re all coming to the ball. People are treating it like Mardi Gras. It makes me look good.”
“Mardi Gras?”
“Mm-hm. They’re planning a parade down Charles Avenue all the way to your house.”
“It’s October.”
“They don’t care.”
I scrubbed my face. “Fuck me. How many brides?”
“Seventy at the very least.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Eddy laughed. “You asked for it, man.”
“Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you half those coins you lost, and you cancel the parade.”
Eddy looked around and jerked his head. The pair of guards at the front cleared out, leaving us alone. He spoke in a low voice. “We need this fucking ball, asshole. I’ve gotta lift these people’s spirits, and you know booze and a safe place to stay the night is the way to go.”
I snorted. “I’ll give you booze.”