She looks up at me, and then I hear her voice.
She doesn’t speak or bark or squeak. She doesn’t open her little fox mouth. It’s as if she’s transferring her thoughts from her mind into mine.
You wished for the kiss.
The voice is pure, sweet and high, too melodic to be human, too real and weighty to be a figment of my imagination, no matter how much I wish I was just suffering from delusions.
“I did not wish for it!” I snarl. At a fox. I realize that if this keeps up I will soon be enjoying the strangled hug of a straight jacket.
You can’t push down what you desire, Wren! My purpose is to help you achieve your desires. You guard them closely, but I can see what they are. Even when you can’t.
“Forget about helping me!” I push my face close to the little fox’s. “Loki, I’m fine. I don’t want you to interfere. Tonight was a mess. And I don’t want the money or the gifts. Understand?”
You have the potential for great power. And if you have any hope of achieving it, you must open yourself to your desires. The more accepting you are, the easier it will all be for you. Trust me.
The voice that seemed so melodic suddenly strikes me as grating. “Loki, back the hell off! Life was fine before you came around. I don’t need your help and I don’t want it. If you keep interfering, I’ll send you back to Japan tomorrow.”
There’s silence from the fox for a long minute. Bestemor has been better than ever. I bring health. I bring luck. You wouldn’t want to ruin that, would you, Wren?
My own fox’s paw. My own terrible, twisted hell of a genie. I press my fingers to my temples. “Don’t use Bestemor like that,” I beg, my voice a low whisper.
I love her. She’s part of your family, Wren, so she’s part of my family, too. I will bring her luck as well. You’ll see. We’ll manage to do things you never could have imagined possible!
I’m too tired to argue anymore. Loki gives me a last look, hops down into the laundry basket, circles, then drops into a tiny red ball and falls promptly to sleep. She looks like an innocent little fox, and it’s easy to believe that maybe, possibly, I dreamed all of this insanity up.
Even though I’m talking to a lucky fox, I know I’m not completely crazy. And I have major research to do.
I open my laptop and flip to the pages Jonas bookmarked. I order every book, read every article, my eyes sleepy and heavy over the words, and before I know it, the shrill scream of my cell jerks me awake. It’s just after midnight, but I’m usually up this late.
“Did I wake you, sweetie?” Nevaeh trills into the phone.
“Mmm? No,” I yawn. “I just dozed for a minute. How were the zombies?”
“Gory! And awesome! But forget zombies, and tell me every single detail about Jonas right now. Now, now, now!”
I laugh even though the whole thing is decidedly unfunny.
“Nothing happened. Sandwiches, Scrabble, we talked, he went home.” I omit the part about me throwing him down on my bed while we were under the evil lust spell of a wish fox.
“You didn’t kiss him?” she presses, her voice a sticky honey trap.
I hesitate for one brief moment.
“You did! You did kiss him, you filthy liar! Admit it!”
“It was no big deal. And I kind of freaked and kicked him out after.”
“Wrrrreeeennnn,” she whines. “What is up with you?”
“I just felt like I was, um, pressuring him.”
She laughs hard. “I so wish I could call Jonas and get his side of the story. I wonder if he was so overwhelmed by your naughty pressures that he just couldn’t wait to escape. Honestly, you’re a half-wit.”
“It was complicated,” I mumble.
She sighs a long, humoring sigh. “What isn’t when it comes to you?”
“Vee?” I attempt to tell her about Loki’s voice in my head. I do.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing. I should go. I have an early shift tomorrow.”
“Love you, sweetie! Kisses!”
“Mwah! Love you.”
I turn my phone off, and wish I could do the same for my brain.
I keep seeing Jonas lock eyes with me in my brain’s endless replay. I feel his hands squeeze my hips. I hear the soft moans that sounded suspiciously like my name drop from his mouth. I smell the sweet of his aftershave and the bitter of engine. I can taste his mouth and tongue, I know the scrape of his stubble on my lips.
But it wasn’t real. Not for me, not for him.
And I don’t want it if it isn’t real. It’s bad enough that I’m keeping the wad of money, the tire, and, possibly, the jacket. I’ve stolen time and beauty. I’ve stolen kindness from JR. And I can never return the time, beauty, and kindness, even if I wanted to. Those are irrevocably altered pieces of reality.
I’m not snaring Jonas like this.
He’s been nothing but amazing to me.
There’s no other explanation for the turn of events. He’s bewitched.
I’ve bewitched him.
The other day he looked at me with cool, assessing eyes.
Then the fox showed up and things got raging bonfire hot.
Much as I wish it wasn’t true, it has nothing to do with me or my charms. I may have held a candle for Jonas for a few years, but I’m not willing to jump in based on a spell.
I swallow hard because something scary occurs to me. How am I ever going to know if anyone loves me? How will I ever be sure it isn’t just witchcraft?
I flop on my bed and curse my new luck.
Chapter 8
I’m becoming paranoid. Jump-when-I-hear-a-loud-noise, neck-ache-from-looking-over-my-shoulder-paranoid. And it’s all because of my unlucky luck.
I wake up late for work, but I’m not a minute behind. Bestemor sings like a happy bird all through breakfast and doesn’t turn the toast into charcoal or forget where she put her fur muff and demand we find it before she makes omelets. Loki doesn’t invade my head, but her gold eyes follow me back and forth across the kitchen while she licks all of the grease off of her bacon before crunching it down.
My hair and makeup look perfect, the poodle skirt I was sure I forgot to wash hangs in my closet, pressed and ready. My disaster of a room looks like Martha Stewart just dropped by and did a quick overhaul. Everything in my life is neat, happy, perfect.
So why do I feel like I’m crawling out of my own skin?
I’m ready for work early, and I leave my grandmother humming to herself as she clips basil, rosemary, and thyme in her herb garden, Loki nestled at her feet like a furry guardian.
When I get to my truck, a scream erupts out of my throat.
Jonas lies under the tire, his legs limp and splayed into the street.
The legs jerk, I hear a thwack, and Jonas yells.
“What are you doing?” I’m so angry, I could kick him.
“Tightening your brake line!” Jonas pulls his head out from under the truck and glares at me, a gash of red sliced across his forehead.
I notice his tools on the ground near him, and the spare tire, now propped uselessly against the dented passenger door. The new tire is in place.
“Why?” I demand.
Jonas presses his palm to his bloody head, stands up and leans against the front bumper. “Because brakes are one of those things you need when you’re driving. So I thought it might be nice if yours worked.”
I fish in my purse and find a wet wipe from the last time Nevaeh and I went to the lobster place by her aunt’s house. I rip it open and move towards him. He slouches so I can reach his forehead and lets me press the little cloth to his gaping head wound.
“You might need a tetanus shot. Or a couple of stitches.” I do not allow myself to touch him on his skin. My fingers remain planted firmly on the wet wipe, and I do not let them wander, no matter how much they want to. “By the way, thank you.”
“No problem.” He smiles and inadvertently moves his head. Then winces. “I don’t know what happened last night, b
ut—”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.”
Jonas takes a deep breath and blows it slowly out of his nostrils. He puts a hand up and covers mine on his forehead. I yank my fingers away and leave him to apply pressure to his own pulsing wound. My skin tingles where our fingers brushed. Hormones? Imagination? Magic spells?
“Can I call you? Can I come by?” The tense square of his shoulders tells me he’s trying not to come off as too hopeful.
This is hard. He’s bleeding because of me. He got up early to fix my tire and check my brakes. The memory of his frantic, perfect kisses sears my brain. I want more. I want him.
Before my brain can go down that twisted path, I shut it off. “It’s just better if we don’t.” I clear my throat and pick at my poodle skirt. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
My words sound hurtful and stupid in my own ears. He scowls, then shrugs. “Then I guess I’ll see you around.”
I want to run after him and drag him back into my house, shed this polka-dot poodle skirt, this itchy crinoline, these saddle shoes, this pearl-buttoned pink sweater, get under the covers and be with him. I want to whisper in his ear and giggle through the whole afternoon and into the shadowed dusk and inky night.
He turns, one hand on his driver’s side door and calls to me. “Can we at least talk about this? I can’t get you out of my head.” He pushes his hair back with a quick run of his hand. His eyebrow catches a line of blood leaking down towards his eye.
I wish I could…
“No!” I yell. He doesn’t like me; he’s under a spell! It would be cruel to string him along against his will. “Don’t you get it, Jonas? No! Leave!”
He shakes his head and gets into his Ranger with a dense slam of the door. I smell the rubber of his tires as he peels down the street.
I ball my hands into fists and bang on the hood of my multiply dented truck and scream for a long minute. Bestemor rushes to the front door, gardening gloves waving, trowel in hand.
“Wren, elskede, are you alright?”
“Fine, Bestemor. I just, um, stubbed my toe!” I hop on one foot for dramatic realism, and wave her back inside.
At work, things are a little too good. Big parties seem to rotate to my tables and booths. The customers are on their best behavior and the tips are all topping twenty percent. Even when I screw up an order or two, there aren’t any complaints.
“Hey, Wren.” Macie, my friend and coworker, tucks a stray curl back into her bun and anchors it with a pen. “Is it a full moon? My customers are beasts. I hate Sundays!”
“Yeah, it’s been weird.” That’s technically not even a lie.
“We’re all headed to Elijah’s house after shift. Wanna come?”
Elijah is Macie’s sometimes-boyfriend, the hot, mysterious new guy with a dreamy British accent who turned us all into raging maniacs when he showed up at Immaculate with his Mohawk and tattoos last year.
“I don’t know.” I feel like all the life has deflated out of me. “I should probably stay with Bestemor tonight.”
She pinches my cheek. “Alright, you good girl! Seriously, it’s like you’re already an adult. Look, if you change your mind, stop by. And bring Nevaeh and her guy. What’s his name again?”
“Zivalus.” I nod. “I’ll tell her. I’ll see how my grandma is feeling. Maybe I can just come by for a few.”
“Excellent. Ugh, Kerry’s seating me a huge family group with eight kids under five. Let the fun begin!” Macie winks at me and heads to the booth full of screaming, bawling, squalling kids.
By the time shift is over, I’ve made so much more than the other girls, including Cadence, our regular top earner, that I’m petrified to announce the amount. I don’t trade the bulk of my singles in for bigger bills, so no one knows my dirty little secret.
I am a scummy cheater.
I rush to the parking lot, more than ready to leave, and my new tire gleams black and full on my beat truck. I feel another swipe of guilt like a dagger to my gut. I’m a scummy cheater and a pathetic excuse for a friend.
When I pull up at home, Bestemor has Kjøttkaker and cold potato salad cooking in the kitchen, and I could collapse with happiness. Kjøttkaker is a fancy word for what’re basically Swedish meatballs, an outlawed term in Bestemor’s proudly Norwegian kitchen. But more importantly, Kjøttkaker are extremely time-consuming and difficult to make. If my grandma made them, she’s feeling better than she has in weeks.
“Smells great!” I hug my grandmother tight around her soft waist and bury my nose in her neck so I can drink in the smell of her; powder, lilies of the valley, and onion.
“Your beau is in the living room.” She sprinkles ginger, nutmeg, and allspice into the meat, checks the crackling chicken fat in the cast iron pan and avoids eye-contact.
JR hasn’t dropped by unannounced in weeks, but I did just see him the other day. “I’ll get rid of him.”
“That would be so rude, skatt. He did such a wonderful job fixing the drainpipe!” She trills a line from some old Norwegian love song and Loki appears from under the table, rolls on her back and begs for a scrap of meat, which my grandmother drops, still sizzling with chicken fat, on the floor. Loki licks the linoleum clean, and I pause to scratch her belly before I go, considering Bestemor’s last sentence.
JR doesn’t fix things out of the goodness of his heart. Who is this ‘beau’?
I plod into the living room and glare at Jonas, who’s sitting on the old yellow couch, flipping through a National Geographic from 1984.
“Hey.” His work shirt is cuffed up to his elbows, and I find myself staring at the gold skin of his nicely muscled forearms. His hair looks dark, probably from grease and sweat. There’s a semi-clean band-aid on his forehead, over the gash from this morning. He stands up and rolls the magazine into a tube, thumping it against his palm. “I didn’t want to hang around, but your grandma started cooking, and it felt rude to just leave.”
“It’s okay.” I fold my arms tight over my chest. “I’m going out later, so you can’t hang around after dinner.”
The windows frost. My heart is a solid chunk of ice.
“I’m eating here because your grandma invited me. It has nothing to do with you.” His eyes are the coldest, lightest, glacial blue now, bright with frustration.
“You fixed the drainpipe,” I challenge.
“You’re too stubborn to ask for help, but that doesn’t mean your grandma has to suffer.”
“I have lots of money. Tons. I don’t need your charity.”
I’m positive that I’ve remained leaning in the doorway, protected by the solid wood frame of the door, but, unexpectedly, Jonas puts a hand on my upper arm.
How is he touching me?
I’ve crossed the entire room without realizing I moved a step.
Loki rubs her head against my ankles and her body hums with low, deep purrs that seem to rumble through me.
“So, you wanna tell me what happened?” He bends his head close to mine. “What changed after we kissed?”
“We shouldn’t have kissed. Nothing changed. I did something I shouldn’t have. We were fine as just friends, and that’s how I want it to be now.” I lay it all on the line for him so it’s icicle clear and sharp. I try to avoid looking at him too much, but I can’t help noticing a few little details. He’s chewing some kind of fruity gum. He needs chapstick. And a shave.
“Just friends?” His eyelashes flutter next to my face. “If we were just friends, you wouldn’t be pissy with me.”
“Why not? I was pissy to you after the debate.”
His mouth moves from right to left, chewing on his answer before he gives it. “You were cold after the debate, like you didn’t give a shit about me. Now you’re pissed.” His voice goes low, husky, un-Jonas-like. “Because I matter.”
Loki’s purr has moved up my legs and into my belly, blossomed out through my chest, and I feel like rubbing against Jonas. His eyes go dark, and I know without looking mine are gold.
This is beyond wishing. I’m hungry for him. I’m starved.
I have to hacksaw my way past what I feel, slash through the tough, tight net that’s binding me closer to him.
I hurl myself back to the solid safety of the doorframe, grip it for dear life, and suck Jonas in with my eyes only. It doesn’t quell the hunger completely, but it’s the best I can do. If I don’t stay away from him, I’ll give in.
“I’m changing. We’ll eat dinner, then you have to leave. I have a date.”
Jonas’s sharp jaw clicks back and forth in irritation.
I skid into my neat room, throw my clothes into the laundry basket and pull on a cute skirt, tight and short, a tight, low-cut black v-neck, and boots with fur. I hang jangly earrings from my lobes, switch my lipstick out for a wild red, slick finishing crème on my fly-aways, and admire my satisfyingly hot reflection.
We sit and eat Bestemor’s dinner, and Jonas doesn’t pretend to not stare. He eats incredible amounts of all the fragrant food with heavy compliments for my grandmother, but his eyes look at me hungrily. I smirk with my shiny red lips; it’s cruel to dress up and turn him down, but I want him to believe that I have a real date and save himself.
From the jinx I’ve become.
Bestemor gets up to do the dishes, but Jonas and I object loudly, and I go to tuck her in while he fills the sink up with hot water and soap.
Her room smells like her, all powder and the softest, sweetest flower smell. I sit on the edge of her bed, and think about how good it would feel to curl up on the mattress next to my grandma like I used to do when I was young and my mother was gone on another long man-chase. It’s always been just grandma and me. My parents never stuck around, never made any real effort to raise me.
“He’s a good one, that boy,” Bestemor says, shocking me out of my gloomy thoughts. “Don’t be too coy with him, Wren. The good ones are rare.”
I kiss her cheek. “I’ll keep that in mind. Did you have a good day today?”
My grandma leans her head back on the cream pillow case and closes her eyes, her lips curled in a cat-in-the-cream smile. “A wonderful day, elskede. Really wonderful. You have fun on your date tonight.” She pinches my side.
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