by C. M McCoy
Asher shifted his gaze, and Cobon grinned. “You are intrigued by the idea—why else would you ignore her now, as she cries for you. Even I can hear her.”
“It’s not possible,” said Asher.
“Oh, but it is! Simply remove her soul—gently, of course—separate it from her body, but keep hold of it,” he told him raising an instructive finger. “Let her energy out, and then rebind her to her body—it’s a simple energy swap. Be sure to fling the rock away, far away—the others will follow it. Open the Aether, and send them home. You’d be free to love her . . .”
Asher straightened ever so slightly, and Cobon smiled gleefully. If his brother weren’t insane, Asher would have found Cobon’s sudden good humor suspicious.
“Bring the girl here, Asher, she needn’t fear this. We’ll talk . . .the three of us. Over dinner—she’ll like that,” he rambled. “And I’ll try not to kill her in the meantime—she’ll like that even more, I suspect.”
“I will choose the time, Cobon,” Asher commanded. “And you will not touch her.”
“I promise you nothing, brother, you know my impatience. Make it soon,” Cobon stressed, “and she’ll be safe.”
With that, Cobon bowed, and Asher reappeared in The Middle of Nowhere in time to watch his girl fall asleep in another man’s bed.
Chapter Thirty-One
Neglect
“Better never to have met you in my dream
than to wake and reach for hands that are not there.”
- Otomo No Yakamochi
Hailey woke up and made it back to her room just as Giselle came down from the ceiling. She changed Hailey’s dressings for her before leaving for class that morning and she even pulled a stray staple out of her neck. Tomas found another two lodged in her scalp, and Asher was still a no-show.
“Where do you think he is?” she asked Tomas as he twisted her hair into a fancy ponytail. Thank goodness too. Hailey couldn’t lift her arms high enough to even touch her hair, let alone brush it.
Tomas shrugged. He didn’t care, and as he finished, Fin let himself into her room.
“How’s the back?”
Hailey perked up.
“It’s just a little raw,” she told him optimistically, “and Giselle put some Indispensable Mend-a-Wound on it this morning.” Looking down at her backpack, she tried to reach it without bending.
“Stop,” Fin said. “I’ll carry your books.”
“Thank you.” She smiled, trying not to look as sore as she felt. Every breath hurt that day, and she sat on the edge of her seat through class, at first because she couldn’t rest her back against the chair, but later because Dr. Woodfork lectured on Earth-bound Envoys—she was riveted.
The hour flew, and when Woodfork discovered he’d gone late, he hurriedly gathered his papers and headed for the door, yelling over his shoulder amidst the racket of swinging auditorium seats, “A reminder—instead of Weights and Measures, you’ll all go now and meet with your section leads . . . Oh!”
He spun around with his armful of papers.
“Next time—the White Forest,” he told them quickly. “Your assignment: Go into the White Forest with a partner, please—we don’t need any fatalities this year—and listen to the trees.”
He pushed the door open with his back.
“Write fifteen hundred words on what you hear there and how it relates scientifically to paranormal research – due in class next week. Have a good weekend everybody,” he added, and the door closed behind him.
As Hailey exited, she had a flashback of her hellish night in Lab 1, and wondered if Asher would bother to show up.
He didn’t.
And she knew that meant one of two things: either she was expelled again, or he wanted her dead. She went to the observatory to find out which it was and discovered Asher there staring through his telescope.
“How can you see anything in the daylight?” she asked as the door closed behind her. “What are you looking for anyway?” When he didn’t answer, she huffed loudly and turned to leave.
“Forgiveness,” he called, and then he turned his gaze to her. “You’re injured again.”
“It’s nothing,” she lied. Actually, her back was on fire, but she was too angry to admit it. Not that Asher cared—he went back to his telescope. Fin was right . . .Asher was bored with her.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said softly as she started for the door again.
Asher jumped from his platform, landing loudly in front of Hailey.
“Don’t go,” he said gently, and Hailey’s lip trembled.
Why? Why did she always cry when she was angry?
Asher touched her softly, tilting her chin up, but he didn’t heal her. “Why are you sad?” he said.
Hailey looked away. “I’m not,” she argued. “I mean, I am. Or angry or scared, I don’t know—I tried to find you last night,” she told him, her voice going to a croak. She swallowed hard and looked away. “I called for you, and when you didn’t answer me, I thought maybe you were waiting to see if I’d die . . .again. You seem . . .” She risked a look in his eyes. “Do you want me dead again?”
He brushed her tears away. “Yes,” he said. “But only temporarily.”
Hailey’s blood ran cold. “What?” she managed, stepping away from him.
“Let me heal you,” he pleaded, “and we’ll talk.” He held his hand out for her to take.
Not sure she wanted his help, Hailey stared at the ground stubbornly, and Asher waited.
“Sometimes you scare me,” she said without looking up.
“I don’t mean to,” he coaxed.
Hesitantly, she placed her hand in his. Drawing her into his powerful embrace, he slid his hands around her waist and under her shirt, gently gliding his fingertips across her skin as she silently cried. A torrent of tiny tickles rose up her back, and she cringed slightly under the cold sting of regenerating skin. When he finished his repairs, Asher hugged her tight.
“It upsets me to see you in Pádraig’s bed,” he told her quietly, and Hailey pushed him away.
“I wasn’t in his bed, I was on it,” she informed him. “And I only ended up there because after you ignored me, I went home, and Fin was there, and he ran out to help me remove a gazillion staples from my back and neck and arms and head, and then I passed out, but you still stayed away, and all I could think was that you were out with Cobon plotting to kill me.”
Hailey bit her lips together, squeezed her eyes shut, and slapped her hands over them. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She had no right to accuse him of depravity when she’d slept in Fin’s bed the night before.
Asher fixed his eyes on her. “Cobon will one day succeed in killing you, but he has agreed to stay away for a short while.”
“Wait. You were with him last night?”
Asher dropped his gaze.
“Asher, did you make a deal with him?”
“We discussed a way to save you—an energy swap,” he continued, closing the gap between them and reaching for her cheek. “I would have to separate your soul from your body,” he said as he stroked her gently. “I would have to kill you temporarily.”
Hailey inhaled sharply, but she didn’t jump away from him.
“I love you, Hailey, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“Are you even capable of love, Asher?” Her heart pounding in her throat, she watched him close his eyes, ducking his head slightly.
“Can you not feel my love for you?” he asked, his voice half hurt, half angry.
“Sometimes,” Hailey told him cautiously. “Just so you know, it’s not romantic at all to talk about killing someone you love—even temporarily. I’m not okay with that. The whole separate-the-soul-from-the-body-thing . . . I think we should talk about this.”
She didn’t know if he would even entertain her thoug
hts on the matter. If he decided to kill her, she was dead, and that was that. She couldn’t stop him.
“We will.” He brushed a strand of hair over her shoulder. “I brought you something from Pittsburgh,” he said with an eagerness Hailey had never seen in him before.
“You were in Pittsburgh?” she asked, smiling a little. Jeez, if she’d known he could flit back and forth so easily, she’d have asked him to bring her some of her things.
Asher nodded and took her hand, leading her into his home and through the doors of his atrium to a wooden bench, built for two, which sat near the two-story stone fountain.
“Sit here,” he told her, “and close your eyes.”
Hailey obliged, enjoying the feel of her new skin against the back of the bench as the thunder of falling water filled her ears.
“Your uncle sent these for you,” came Asher’s voice, and Hailey opened her eyes to find her tattered Irish hardshoes sitting on the floor in front of her. She stared at them blankly for several seconds.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” said Asher. “Was I mistaken?”
“No,” said Hailey softly as she got up. “I just haven’t danced since . . .” Her voice died on her, and she picked up her shoes. “I’m not allowed to use these here anyway,” she said holding them wistfully, and Asher touched her hands.
“Dancing makes you happy, and seeing you happy pleases me. You may dance here, in my home, whenever you wish.”
“Don’t you hate percussion?”
“I do. I find it intolerably annoying, but I enjoy seeing you happy.”
As Hailey hugged her shoes to her chest, Asher produced a letter. “From your uncle,” he told her. “He kept me waiting while he wrote it, and I confess I listened to his thoughts as I lingered.”
“You can hear his thoughts? How?” she asked absently. She already knew. But she needed to hear it from Asher.
“It was Cobon,” he said, answering her real question. “Your uncles agreed to watch over your line centuries ago.”
Centuries. No wonder Uncle Pix was so grumpy.
“How is he?”
“He insisted I tell you he’s well.”
“How is he really?”
Asher hesitated. “He worries, and he misses you.”
“Maybe he’s worried you’ll kill me temporarily,” she muttered, stealing a glance at him. His face fell momentarily, but she gave him a half-hearted grin, and his mouth twitched in relief.
She opened the note, smiling at the familiar scrawl.
Hailey,
We all miss you. Looking forward to seeing you dance at the pub this summer. Remember: love beats like a drum in the heart of a righteous man. And it can shake even the most heinous of monsters into oblivion.
Love Pix
Hailey pulled her chin back, figuring Uncle Pix had been in the whiskey before writing such a cryptic note.
“Do you know what this means?” She held the note out, but Asher shook his head.
“Perhaps he’s referring to how you dispatched Adalwolf. But,” he added, “he had been drinking with his brothers, and it was difficult to follow his thoughts.”
Asher waited patiently as Hailey read the note twice again, and then he stroked her arm. “Hailey, would you join me in the observatory tonight?”
“Sure,” she said still staring at her uncle’s letter. “What time?”
“After the sun sets. Before it rises again.”
“Alright,” she chuckled. “I’ll see you then.”
Hugging her shoes, she left his home smiling. As she exited the ParaScience leaf, Fin caught up to her.
“I’ll take that,” he said, pulling her backpack off her shoulder.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome . . .and you know you’re not allowed to use those here.” He pointed to her hardshoes. Then he slapped her on the back. “Guess you’ve been to see Asher,” he said spitefully, and Hailey gave him a wry smile.
They walked half a block in silence before Fin blurted out, “I’m four hundred and sixty years old.”
Hailey stopped slacked-jawed.
“Been meaning to tell you,” he added over his shoulder, never breaking stride.
“How?” Hailey asked, running to catch up.
“Curse,” he said curtly. “Adalwolf.”
Hailey stared at the ground as they walked, not sure what to say or ask or think or feel . . .
“I stole all your mail,” Fin said suddenly.
Hailey pressed her brow down and pulled her chin back. “What?”
“Yeah. Every day,” he confessed. “You actually got into to Harvard.”
Hailey’s jaw fell again, and Fin smiled mischievously.
“I had to get you here,” he said shrugging, “and there was no way you were coming to Bear Towne if you knew you could go to Harvard.”
“There were an awful lot of scholarships available for Bear Towne . . .”
“I know!” Fin said excitedly. “I wrote all of those and put them in your mailbox.”
“You what?”
“Some of them were pretty good, right?” He smiled proudly.
“Mating habits of the Arctic Ice Worm?”
“I know.” He sniffed. “I’m brilliant.”
As they walked, Hailey recalled laughing with Holly as they wrote their ridiculous Bear Towne essays, and it made her chuckle.
Fin looked at her expectantly. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about Holly,” she told him. “She was hell-bent on finding a school we could both go to, and she wasn’t afraid to come to Alaska.” She raised her eyebrows. “I was, but those ridiculous essays we wrote . . . ‘gave impetus to my spirit of adventure’,” Hailey told him, repeating some of the verbiage she’d written for his “scholarships.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What word?”
Fin shot her a wry grin. “Impetus.”
“Why?”
“Because, it makes me want to prove to you that I am not what that word sounds like.”
Still smiling, Hailey shook her head. “You’re a juvenile. You’re a four–hundred-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile.”
“I’m a four-hundred-and-sixty-year-old, twelve-year-old, juvenile,” he corrected.
Hailey lowered her head, and her smile widening.
“Impetus,” she whispered, and Fin growled.
“I never washed my shirt,” he said quickly.
“What shirt?”
“The one you cried all over.”
“Which one?” She’d snotted on several of his shirts . . .and he . . .never . . .washed . . .
“Ew,” she said, scrunching her nose.
“Hm,” Fin pursed his lips. “Is that creepy?”
“I think so. Or funny. It definitely rises to at least weird.”
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. Guess I wasn’t ready to let go . . .” He sighed heavily then brightened. “Your turn,” he said, bumping into her.
Hailey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I once told a girl at Hullachan’s that you used to be a woman,” she confessed.
“What?”
“She was really pretty,” Hailey said, going red in the face, “but she wasn’t very nice, and she wanted me to introduce you to her and get your number and set her up on a date, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of you going out with . . .” Another girl, Hailey realized.
“With what?”
Hailey shook her head. “She just wasn’t very nice,” she said, her heart pounded. “At least I didn’t tell her you were the impetus for the—” Fin cut her off by throwing her over his shoulder. “—oof—condom machines in the ladies’ room.” She laughed as he threw her in a pile of snow and plopped down beside her. Seeing the last bi
t of sunlight paint the indigo sky reminded Hailey of Holly’s funeral and how Fin stood next to her, hugging her tight when she wept.
“You’re the only person I want around me when I’m sad,” she said. “And you’re the first person I want to find when I’m happy.” She sat up and looked at him.
“I didn’t want to stay away from you after Holly’s funeral,” Fin told her, still lying in the snow. “Asher and I had an argument, and he made me go away for a while. Eventually, we agreed you should choose who you wanted to . . .hang out with . . .”
He moved his hand across the snow and next to Hailey’s, reaching his fingers close to hers, but not touching them.
Watching his hand the whole way, Hailey slid her pinky only a little so it barely brushed his skin.
Then she stood up and crossed her arms.
“Cobon wants me dead, and Asher’s the only thing stopping him,” she blurted. She just couldn’t hold this in any longer. “Now Asher wants to kill me. But, only temporarily . . . Is that possible?”
“Hailey—that’s a really bad idea,” he told her forcefully.
“Asher said he and Cobon came up with a plan to—”
“This is Cobon’s plan?” Fin stood up. “Did it ever occur to you that Cobon is a manipulative, murderous liar?” He shook his head and whirled around at her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “And he’s insane! You saw what he did to Holly! He’s using Asher, he knows how to manipulate him—this is just a ploy to get Asher to kill you! Can’t you see that?”
“What am I supposed to do, Fin? I can’t stop them!” She was shaking all over when Fin wrapped his arms around her.
“We’ll figure it out,” he vowed, and Hailey sniffled into his shirt.
“You better wash this,” she chided, trying to laugh.
“I won’t,” he smiled, rocking her gently in his arms. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”