by Chloe Garner
“How did it feel?”
“Like I couldn’t think because my head was so full of light. I don’t remember running, like it was my memory. I remember running like I was watching myself run from inside my head. And I ran to your backpack like I knew where it was, but I didn’t ever actually know where it was. It pulled me all the way down into the basement, where I was standing when I had my first two visions.”
She nodded.
“You know what I mean?” he asked.
“Haven’t a clue. But it sounds normal, as far as that goes.”
“Awesome. You knew I was there. How?”
“Same way I know exactly where you are right now. And that you’re really, really worried about me. I’m fine. Again. I mean it. The last three days don’t even crack the top ten worst things that have ever happened to me.”
“Your life has sucked,” he said. She tipped her head into his chest and nodded.
“Yup.”
He considered.
“Number two, making a serious run at number one.”
She took her head.
“Don’t even think it,” she said.
“I thought we were going to find you dead, if we ever found you,” he said. She shook her head.
“Not this time.”
Sam paused and for a moment she just sat, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
“I don’t think I’ve felt this safe since my parents died,” she said. “Well… Yeah. Yeah, I don’t think I have.”
Her eyes started to close again and she scrunched them hard, trying to pick her focus back up again.
“You may as well say it. I can tell it’s bothering you.”
“Carter said that it’s slavery.”
She laughed.
“He’s one to talk. He’s jealous he didn’t think of it first.”
“I can’t let you,” he said. “He was right.”
She sat up and looked at him.
“You want to send me away?”
“No. I want…” he trailed off.
“The words are all tacky. I pledged. I bonded to you.”
“I want to be able to find you if you’re in trouble.”
She grinned and set her head back down.
“I have no intention of keeping my guard down like I have, any more. You should worry less about that. But about pledging, I’m not going to argue with you. I’m not even going to tell you that I think you’re wrong. But I’m not going to let you make a decision today, or tomorrow, or the next day. You’re upset and you’re off balance. Give it some time and figure out what you think is right, and then we’ll talk.”
He nodded.
The door opened and Jason stuck his head in.
“I am definitely, absolutely, without a doubt being taken hostage,” he said breathlessly. A woman’s voice giggled loudly, and drunkenly, in the hallway behind him. “Do not, I repeat do not, come looking for me.”
He slammed the door and Sam looked down at Samantha to say something, but she was asleep.
<><><>
Samantha woke in the lovely bed for the second time in a row and smiled. She felt whole again, and wanted to go stab something to celebrate. She sat up and frowned.
“Sam, did you sleep there?” she asked. Sam jerked and looked over at her from the chair. “There are three bedrooms in this suite. Do you mean to tell me that we only managed to use one, for all our deprivation every other night?”
He shrugged and yawned.
“Did Jason come back?” she asked him. He rubbed his eyes, standing to stretch.
“I didn’t hear him.”
“You want breakfast?”
“Let me go get a shower. You can put in an order if you want. Surprise me.”
She agreed and he wandered out of the room. As she was getting out of bed, she found her backpack sitting next to her on the floor. She smiled. It had been sitting next to the couch, last night. She went and ordered a tableful of food, then put her feet up on the table to wait for it to arrive. After a few minutes, she went to change into her pajamas on a whim. She loved eating breakfast in her pajamas.
A few minutes later, Jason came sneaking in the front door, walking backwards.
“Problem?” Samantha asked. Jason jumped, then closed the door and put his back to it.
“She might be crazier than you,” he said.
“She would sleep with you,” Samantha answered. He pursed his mouth to one side as he considered, then shrugged.
“I guess I probably wouldn’t,” he said, then walked across the room to join her on the couch. “Who am I kidding? I so would. Where’s Sam?”
“In taking a shower.”
“And why aren’t you in with him?” Jason asked. Samantha moved away from him on the couch, tucking her legs under her. He rolled his eyes.
“Oh, come on. Sex isn’t this big secret. You’re allowed to want it, and I’m allowed to tease you about it. And, I can tell you, Sam wouldn’t say no.”
“You really don’t think about much else, do you?” she asked.
“Not on my time off. What’s for breakfast?”
“I ordered everything on the menu. Carter’s paying.”
He grinned.
“I like your style. I could use a wash, myself. I think the other room had a bathroom, too. Don’t hog all the bacon.”
He stood and was halfway across the room before he turned.
“Unless you’d rather join me, instead,” he said. She threw a pillow at him.
“Just asking,” he said, throwing it back at her. “Prude.”
Sam returned a bit later, sitting down at the end of the couch with his arm across the back, and Samantha thought about joining him, but thought of Jason walking back in with them like that and cringed. She cuddled into the other arm of the couch.
“Jason came back,” Samantha said.
“Glad he isn’t dead.”
Samantha snorted.
“I swear, it isn’t the monsters that are going to kill him, some day, it’s the girls,” Sam said. She nodded. There was a knock on the door and Sam stood.
“Excellent,” he said. Sam let in a young man with a cart, and Samantha dug into her backpack for cash to give him as a tip. The food just fit on the coffee table, and the young man left, nodding at Sam. They hadn’t made much of a dent by the time Jason rejoined them.
“So where to?” Sam asked, between mouthfuls.
“Not north,” Jason said.
“Not north,” Sam echoed.
“Has Simon got anything?” Jason asked.
“Had one thing, but there was another Ranger in the area and I told him to go ahead and hand it off. There are a few Rangers with downtime around, it sounds like.”
“Reno?” Jason asked. Sam held out his fingers.
“Is it time already?”
“Day late,” Jason said. Sam grinned.
“Reno.”
“What’s in Reno?” Samantha asked.
“A lot of the Rangers and the Seekers, if they retire, will open up businesses to help fund the rest of us that are still working. There’s a guy who opened a hotel in Reno,” Jason said.
“Classy joint,” Sam added. Jason grinned.
“It’s awesome. Anyway, there’s just an informal thing there every year. There are a lot of them around the country, and if you’ve got time off, you just go hang out. They’re awesome.”
“Samantha looked from Sam to Jason and back.
“You’re serious?” she asked.
“What?” Sam asked.
“Slayercon?”
<><><>
“So,” Jason said, turning to Sam as Samantha closed the car door behind her to go in to the restroom at a rest stop. “You going to give me the Cliff’s Notes on what’s going on with you and Sam?”
“Nothing,” Sam protested.
“Oh, no, there’s definitely something going on between you, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What Carter saw.”
“Oh,” Sam sa
id. “I was going to tell you…”
“Sure, I believe you. Tell me now.”
“It’s kind of more complicated than a rest stop break,” Sam said.
“Simplify it. Quickly.”
“She… She called it pledging. She pledged her loyalty to me, or something, and now… I don’t know, I guess she’s my servant or something, and she can tell where I am and she has to do what I say and I swear if you make a sex joke out of that I will punch you in the face. I may not have broken your nose since we were sixteen, but I can still do it.”
Jason knit his eyebrows and shook his head.
“This is kind of more important than that, Sam. What are you going to do?”
“Well, the way I look at it, I can break the bond and send her away, I can leave things the way they are, or I can reciprocate.”
“Why would you send her away?” Jason asked.
“Apparently she’s going to hate me when she isn’t bonded, bound? I don’t know, to me any more. Or maybe that isn’t right, yet. Just later.”
“So what do you think you’re going to do?”
Sam sighed and rested his temple on his fist.
“What do you think I should do?”
Jason looked at him for a long time, or, at least, as long a time as he thought he had, trying to have the entire conversation before Samantha got back from the bathroom.
“You take longer than anyone I’ve ever met to fall in love,” Jason said. “You remember that girl, Lauren, from the week in Lake Tahoe? Or Meagan, the three weeks we were in Vancouver that one summer? Paige, from Sophomore year?”
“What about them? They were nice,” Sam said. Jason could hear that his brother knew what was coming.
“They were all in love with you. And you liked them, but you put on the brakes, hard, and you took your time. And then we left. Every time. Sam is the first girl I’ve ever seen you fight for, and I think you’re in love with her.”
“You don’t believe in love,” Sam said.
“I don’t ever want to be in love. It’s different. You do. I think you should do whatever it takes to keep her.”
“Even if it’s a giant mistake?” Sam asked.
“Life is supposed to be full of giant mistakes. We’re too careful.” Jason said. Sam snorted. “Fine. You’re too careful. Look at this one like a giant mistake that has the least likelihood of any giant mistake you could ever make of killing you.”
Sam sighed and looked out the window.
“What?” Jason asked. “Am I wrong?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Sam said.
“You’re looking at dating a girl with the same name as you. That’s complicated. After that, everything else is your imagination.”
“No, it’s that…” Sam stopped. Samantha was coming back out of the bathroom. She got back into the car and looked at them.
“Awkward silence, much? I know you were talking about me.”
Jason looked at Sam, then over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Sam was awkward and confused and angry. I figured. So I stalled as long as I thought I could without completely freaking out the woman in the next stall over.” She paused. “So, there’s that…”
“Sam’s in love with you,” Jason said. He watched her face. There was a moment of panic, but it closed over quickly.
“Not on the table. I’m a Shaman. He’s a Psychic. Professional. Friends. Maybe I’d go so far as to say that I love him and he loves me. But that isn’t on the menu.”
Sam looked at Jason helplessly and Jason started the engine back up. Maybe it was that complicated.
<><><>
The two-day drive to Reno was quiet. Samantha intended to give Sam his full three days to think before she even started the conversation with him about what he wanted to do next, and she was equally determined to not have a preference, when he made his decision. She would not feel rejected. She would not. Sam and Jason had a few of their ping-pong conversations that lasted for hours and wandered apparently nomadically through anything either one of them had ever thought before, and she managed to resist jumping in. Even when an argument about whether Bert and Ernie had different favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seriously needed to be redirected.
Clearly they were GI Joe men.
Clearly.
They arrived at the hotel in Reno where the Slayercon was happening - neither Sam nor Jason approved of the term, so Samantha was determined to make it stick - and Samantha shouldered her bags to go into the lobby.
“I probably should have spent the last couple of days preparing you for this,” Sam said. The hotel was outside of Reno by probably thirty minutes, and was built to vaguely resemble an abandoned mining facility. A group of men the same age as Jason and Sam were standing to one side of the front door drinking while another pair made a drunken attempt at boxing. Two women stood on the other side of the door, watching the boxers. One of them waved at Jason and the other one flicked him off.
“Friends of yours?” Samantha asked.
“Everyone here is a friend of his,” Sam answered.
They made it in the front doors and Jason gave the desk attendant their names and grabbed a pair of keys, handing one to Sam.
“Jason!” someone shrieked. There was a small split in the crowd and a woman came catapulting through, grabbing Jason and meeting his open mouth with hers. She was taller than Samantha, nearly as tall as Jason, and wore tight jeans and a ripped-off tee shirt that didn’t make it to the bottom of her ribs. She had a giant mane of brown hair with honey-colored highlights that waved its way to her waist. She was the kind of woman who made straw cowboy hats look sexy, and she grabbed a hold of Jason with rather less entreaty and rather more ownership. She turned her head and Jason buried his mouth in the trench between her collar bone and her neck. Samantha was desperate not to watch, but couldn’t look away.
“Hel-lo, pussycat. Who’s this?” the woman asked, seeing Samantha. Jason was still busy with her neck, so Sam stepped forward.
“Sam, this is Kara. Kara, this is Sam.”
She turned her head toward Jason again and met his mouth, then put her hand around the back of his neck and her thumb under his chin and tipped his head back.
“Down, boy,” she said. He looked at her mischievously and she tapped his nose. “Later.” She looked back at Samantha.
“So: Jason. Have you had him yet? He’s the best. Believe me, I know.”
Samantha was stunned, and she knew that it showed on her face. She opened her mouth to deny, but even that wouldn’t come out. She looked at Sam. Kara’s eyes shot wide open.
“Oh. My. God. You and Sam? Even I haven’t managed to pull that off,” she grabbed Samantha’s arm, dragging her over to her side. “Tell me everything.” Her eyebrows went all the way up to her hairline. “Everything.”
“Friends,” Samantha managed. “We’re just friends.”
Kara looked at her, grinning.
“Uh huh. We’ll see how that holds up after three or four shots. Let’s go. Boys, you’ll get her bags and meet us in the main hall, won’t you?”
Feeling very much out of her element, but not so far out of her comfort zone to pull away, Samantha handed her duffel bag to Sam and let Kara drag her down the wide hallway to a tall pair of double doors that went into a conference room. Half of the room was set up with tables and had waitresses with trays of drinks navigating them, and the other half had a dance floor where it appeared that excess drink had rendered a substantial portion of the revelers without any inhibition at all. Kara grabbed an empty table and manipulated Samantha into a chair.
“So. Truth. Tell me everything.”
“Nothing to tell,” Samantha said, mostly recovered. “I’ve been traveling with them for a few weeks. I like Sam, but it isn’t going to go anywhere.”
“Uh huh,” Kara said, raising her arm for a waitress.
“Whiskey,” Kara yelled, holding up four fingers. The woman nodded.
“How do you know the
m?” Samantha asked, looking to deflect.
“Jason was my first, way back in the day. Think I was his, but he’d lie if you asked. So… you and Sam…”
Samantha considered the truthful responses. Sleep in the same bed from time to time? Have a deep, spiritual bond of a profound and nearly unique nature? I’m afraid to touch him?
“It’s complicated.”
Kara grinned.
“Closer.”
She took the shots from the waitress and put two in front of Samantha. Samantha looked at Kara deviously and downed them one after the other. Kara whooped and followed suit. She waved at the same waitress and put up four more fingers. Samantha glanced over her shoulder, relieved to see Sam and Jason approaching.
“Kill anything interesting?” Kara asked as Jason sat down next to her. Sam glanced at Samantha with concern.
“A few things. Sleep with anyone interesting?” Jason answered.
“A few,” Kara said and, grinning, kissed him. There was less tongue, this time.
“I’m fine,” Samantha said softly to Sam. Sam twisted his mouth, then smiled involuntarily.
“Kara’s kind of overwhelming… all the time,” he said back. Another waitress dropped four more shot glasses on the table and Kara passed them out. All four shots went down at once, then Kara slapped the table.
“All right, Sammycat. The DJ is a friend of mine, and we are going to go dance. Then you’re going to tell me everything.”
Kara grabbed Samantha’s wrist and pulled. Samantha slipped free and pulled off her jacket, then, after a moment, untucked and unbuttoned her shirt and handed that to Sam as well, leaving her in her tank top. Kara crowed. Samantha looked at Sam for a moment, wanting to explain, then just shrugged and raised her eyebrows. Jason grabbed her wrist and leaned forward to talk into her ear.
“How come she gets to call you Sammy?” he asked.
“The rules are different with girls,” Samantha answered, then turned and let Kara drag her into the swarm of bodies in the next part of the room.
<><><>
“Damn,” Jason said, setting his beer on the table and leaning forward to watch. Sam nodded mutely. Samantha was dancing.
He had expected that Kara would drag her out into the middle of the crowd and they would shimmy and laugh, the way girls did when they were dancing socially, but at this point, Samantha had a solid ring of spectators around her, and she and Kara were… dancing. He had never seen Kara dance like that, though frankly nothing the woman did could ever surprise him again, but Samantha…