“Lincoln, stop,” I said from between gritted teeth, trying to pull myself up.
He didn’t even turn to look at me, to see if I was okay. “Bixby, I said shut up. Run out the front door, I’ll hold these demons off.”
David and Luka were watching from the door dispassionately.
“Well, this is a first,” Luka mused. “Lover come to save the day.”
“Brother, actually,” David corrected, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “Lincoln, I can see you’re not quite yourself. You need to calm down.”
“Seriously? How about a little help?” I snapped.
“Bixby, I said run!” Lincoln shouted over his shoulder.
“I can’t,” I said evenly. “Listen to me—”
“Listen to me,” he growled and turned on me. “Run!” He grabbed my arm and flung me at the open front door. I tried to shove him off but he was bigger and propelled me forward. My feet tangled in my skirt and before I could fully catch myself I crashed face first into the door frame. Heat and electric pain bloomed over my right eye.
Waves of agony rode into my brain, cresting in time with my pulse.
There was one large crash behind me, muffled by the blood rushing through my ears and then warm, gentle hands on my face. “Lincoln,” I mumbled, trying to get my right eye to open. But it wasn’t Lincoln, it was Jordan. And my brother was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Linc?” I demanded, lashing out at him. “What did you do with him?”
“Nothing,” he said, ignoring my flailing limbs and keeping my head trapped and perfectly still in his hands. He pressed his thumb to the bony ridge over my eye. I hissed with pain and jerked back.
“Where is he?” I insisted.
“My uncle took him to cool down,” he said, gathering me up into his arms.
“Put me down,” I said as coldly as I could. “I want my brother.”
“Your brother just beat the shit out of you,” he said with a sharp edge of anger. “He needs to calm down.”
I twisted and jerked out of his arms and managed to land on my feet. Another wave of pain crashed through my head from front to back and I staggered. Jordan reached a hand out and I swatted it away, determined to catch my balance on my own. When I could see straight again I looked him in the eye and met his fiery gaze with my freezing one. “He was worried. Who knows what he thinks has been going on, what happened to me. I bet he saw me come screaming down that hallway for him and thought something terrible had happened to me.”
“Bixby,” Jordan said, slowly coming towards me with arms held out. “Your eye is swollen shut and your wrist is broken. Let me heal you and then you can talk to your brother.”
“No,” I snarled. Pain tore through my body and heart and I unleashed it all on Jordan. “You’re just trying to trick me again. You fix my wrist and I’m going to get it back with a bracelet on. Now where is my brother? If you hurt him again—”
“I didn’t hurt him, even though he did hurt you. I had no idea he was like this, if I had known I would have—”
“What?” I taunted, cradling my aching arm to my chest. “Kidnapped him and locked him in some forest prison? Oh wait, you did do that.”
I watched anger fight for control of his emotions but he wouldn’t let it win out. “At least let me fix your eye,” he said evenly.
“No.” I spun around to stalk out of the room but wobbled on my feet again. A warm arm came across my shoulders and steadied me. Furious, I tried to push it off.
“It’s me,” Luka breathed in my ear, giving my shoulders a comforting squeeze. “Your boyfriend went to do a little cooling off of his own.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I mumbled, stumbling along with him. In one swift motion he swept me up. My head spun viciously. “Put me down,” I begged. Or I’m going to throw up on you, I added silently.
“Not a chance,” he said pleasantly. “You knocked your head pretty hard, I’m going to guess you have a concussion in addition to that stunning black eye. And I don’t think you’re supposed to have such a big bump on the side of your wrist there.”
I glanced down at it saw he was right; a purple goose egg was growing just above the hateful bracelet. The sight of it reminded my brain just how much it hurt and a groan of pain escaped my chest.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you fixed up quick.”
Chapter Eighteen
He set me down in a room I hadn’t seen before. Silken green drapes covered the cold walls and a thick brown carpet stretched from wall to wall. One wall banked a set of windows overlooking Lake Michigan. It was an angry, foaming grey under the dull sky. Perfect.
Compared to the rest of what I had seen of the place, this room was the warmest and most inviting. I settled back on soft couch he had set me on and I tenderly patted my face.
“Crap,” I muttered.
Luka pulled an ottoman up to sit right in front of me, an apologetic look on his face. “I can get you fixed up but it’s—”
“Going to hurt, I know.”
He lifted an eyebrow a fraction of an inch. It was the most surprised I had seen him look. “You’ve had this done before?” he asked, gently taking my arm in his hands.
“Yes. Unfortunately.” I tensed up as he slid his hand down my arm closer to my wrist.
He glanced up and his eyes were the color of the big lake on a warm summer day. “You need to try to relax.”
I gave him a pointed stare so he tried a different tactic.
“Why did you have to have this done before? Who did it?”
“Jordan. I got cornered by some pervert at juvie.” I looked everywhere but at my wrist.
“What’s that?” It was amazing to me the things jinn didn’t know.
“Like prison, for kids.”
“Now why doesn’t it surprise me you got sent to a place like that,” he joked.
“What? That was not my fault! David scared my grandma and she thought some cops were you guys and … oh never mind. It was Jordan’s fault. Everything is Jordan’s fault,” I said darkly.
A sharp pain lanced through my wrist and I jerked. Luka held my hand steady and said, “You might as well start at the beginning, this is going to take a while. There are all these tiny little bones in here.”
I didn’t really want to explain the train wreck my life had become but anything was better than watching him magically fish around in my arm. “Well, I’m a Gatekeeper—obviously—and Jordan came across me while I was dreaming one night and then stalked me for I don’t know how long—”
“Because you were a Gatekeeper?” Luka asked, still concentrating on my wrist.
“No, he didn’t know, I guess.”
“So why was he stalking you?”
My cheeks were beginning to warm. I blew my hair off my face. “I guess he liked me.” Luka nodded so I rushed on to the next part. “So anyway, instead of doing the normal things guys do, like introduce himself and ask me on a date or whatever the equivalent of that is in your world, he foresaw my brother dying in a car accident and saved him so he could give him back later in exchange for letting him put his manacles on me.”
Luka looked up at me, a crooked smile on his face. “Maybe that is the equivalent to asking for a date in our world.”
I shuddered, as much from his words as from the painful sensation of his fingers sweeping between my bones.
“So did you agree?” Luka prompted.
“Of course I did, it was my brother. And I didn’t know any better, I thought he was a dream. I certainly didn’t think he was some evil being bent on manipulating my life until he possessed me.”
“What did he do with you once he got the bracelets on?” The question sounded suggestive and I blushed a shade darker.
“Nothing. Well, nothing b
ad. He showed me around, we talked, spent time together.”
“Dated?” Luka clarified.
My face was beginning to heat. I didn’t want to talk to him about this, not after we had started to get close. But he was patiently waiting for an answer. “No. Well, sort of, I guess. He said he was just picking my brain for information about the human world he didn’t have access to.”
Luke leaned back from my wrist and inspected it. The swelling and bruising were gone and I could move it without pain. He pulled his perch closer and pulled me to the edge of the couch, my legs trapped between his. My face blistered with heat as he took it in his hands and pulled it within inches of his to inspect my eye. So close to him I could see his eyes were actually sea blue rimmed with silver. Thank God he was focusing on the eye I couldn’t open or I might have died of embarrassment.
He swiped a thumb over the swelling and I jumped. “I think you chipped a bone,” he murmured. “So what happened next?”
“Next I found out what was really going on. David informed me of everything, the Gatekeeping, Jordan’s lying, and I put an end to it.”
“You broke up with him?”
I gritted my teeth and he leaned closer to try to gently pry my eyelids apart. His breath was warm and sweet on my cheek. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It must have been for him. Not for you?”
“No.” I winced again at his prodding and he gave me an apologetic smile.
“Well, you seem way too angry for it to have been nothing for you.”
I pulled my face out of his hands. My eye was still swelled shut. “Sorry, was kidnapping my brother, lying to me and tricking me into being his prisoner not reason enough to be very, very angry?”
“Not this angry,” he said, taking my face back. “Hold still.”
I fumed while he worked and finally admitted, “Maybe it was something for me too. Before I found out the truth.”
“And that’s really why you’re angry. Because you fell in love with him and he betrayed you.”
“No,” I said a little too loudly. “I’m mad because he’s a total jerk.”
“A ‘total jerk’ who broke your heart.” He was insistent upon having the last word in this conversation. “Do you still love him?”
I opened my mouth to deny it fiercely but the words were mud in my mouth. Horrifyingly, I felt a tear slide out of my good eye and down my cheek. Luka wiped it away while still focusing on my injury. Embarrassed, I tried to pull away from him but his grip was strong.
“It’s okay,” he said gently. “I’m almost done. And I understand how you feel, believe it or not.” He paused to look me in the good eye. “And I won’t tell him.” After a moment he said, “There, done.”
He sat back and I gingerly felt my face and was relieved to feel both eyes slide open. Embarrassment and awkwardness radiated from me. “Thank you,” I said, as much for the healing as for the promise not to tell Jordan.
He flashed a quick smile. “You still have a concussion but there’s not much I can do about that unless you want me rummaging around in your brain.”
“No thanks,” I said quickly.
“Can I offer you some advice?” he asked, getting up.
I nodded, still wary.
“One, get some rest. Two, try to forget about him, about your feelings for him. It will only tear you apart in the end.”
I bit my lip and noticed. “Don’t like my advice?” he guessed.
“No, it’s very good advice, advice I’ve been trying to give myself for a while.” A little flash of hope lit his eyes.
“But you can’t? Forget about him, I mean?”
“How could I? He tore my family apart, he tricked me, he hurt my brother. Maybe you can’t choose who you fall in love with but you can choose who you are with. And I won’t choose him because I can’t trust him.”
Luka’s eyes were roaming my face long after I finished my painful explanation. Finally he said, “Maybe you can trust him now. I think he would give his life for you.”
My eyes narrowed. Why was he taking up for Jordan? Was I completely imagining the spark between us? “Being passionate and being trustworthy are two totally different things.”
He gave a little laugh and squeezed my shoulders before setting me back on the couch. I hesitated to ask my next question. “So you speak from experience?” I asked, leaning back against the couch. He cocked his head to the side. “I mean, trying to forget someone who isn’t good for you. You know what that feels like?”
“I do,” he said, his openness surprising me.
My next question was even harder to ask because I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the answer. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
He cocked his head as if confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You weren’t exactly friendly before,” I pointed out, trying to edge closer to what I really wanted to ask.
A crooked smile turned up one corner of his mouth. “You’re right. I apologize.”
“So why weren’t you?”
He ran a finger down the seam of his sleeve, carefully not looking me in the eye. “Out of practice, I suppose.”
His answer surprised me and I couldn’t help but tease him. “So you’re routinely rude to everyone?”
I thought maybe that would get me a full on smile but his face folded in on itself and I wished I had kept my snarky comment to myself. “No, not like that. But all the human girls I’ve met have been routinely … cold to me. And even my own kind shuns me. They view me as some sort of monster—imagine that.”
I nodded slowly, regretting how unkind I had been to him. I had just assumed …“But surely they know this isn’t your fault.”
He gave a quick nod. “They do. But kidnapping and probable murder still aren’t exactly standards of polite behavior.”
“What about the girls?” I asked. “Do they know this isn’t your fault?” I grimaced, thinking about chucking that statue at him when I thought the curse was his doing.
He shrugged. “If they do they don’t care. I don’t blame them.”
“And all the people here cooking and cleaning and otherwise running around?”
“Servants. Paid help.”
“So you have no one,” I concluded sadly.
“Right.” His tone was bright but he couldn’t hide the sadness behind it.
“But you did have someone once,” I guessed.
“Right again. But that is a story for another day.”
I sighed. “Yes. I need to go find my brother.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, gently pushing me back down on the couch when I tried to stand. “You need to rest.”
“I—”
“Your brother is fine. And you need to rest your bruised little brain.” He pointed out the window to two figures down by the beach. “Besides, he’s still talking with David.”
I looked around the room uncomfortably. “Yeah, but I’m sure he’s not happy about it—”
“He’ll live,” he said, his tone sharp.
“Lincoln’s been through a lot,” I snapped, always defensive of my brother.
Luka crossed his arms over his chest. “So have you.”
I crossed my own arms, resentful of the attack on my brother. “Yeah, but if it wasn’t for me, Linc—”
He leaned in and I shrank back against the couch until it didn’t give anymore. “It wasn’t your fault either and your brother isn’t perfect, so stop acting like he is. I saw what he did to you, there’s no excuse for that. A loving family member is a treasure. He should treat you like one.”
My temper flared. “You don’t even know him.”
He shrugged, his face infuriatingly blank again. “I don’t need to, I know you. I saw you run to him with comp
lete joy and he threw you around like a rag doll. I get that he’s angry, I get that he’s scared. I get that he thinks he’s going to save you. I can see that being here, being around us, had changed him. But there is no excuse to treat someone like that.”
More evil, silent tears slipped down my cheeks. “He’s mad at me.”
Luka leaned back on the ottoman again, giving me some space. “Why?”
“Because it’s my fault he got caught up in all this.”
“You know that it’s not. But did he think it was?”
I sniffled and tried to discreetly wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Yes. I mean, after the accident he was so different, so skittish and quiet and scared. And my brother was never scared before. He was … perfect. American all-star high school prom king—but nice. And after the ‘accident’ he came back like a different person.” I shook my head, remembering how Lincoln had been. “And he was having nightmares. I had to sleep in his bed one night, they were so bad. He was piecing things together but was missing the final big piece. And I had to tell him.” The tears kept coming but it actually felt good to tell someone. I had never been able to talk to anyone about it. “So I told him about Jordan and what he did and I had to tell him what Jordan was to me.”
“I take it he was angry,” Luka said dryly.
“Furious. He left the house and I haven’t seen until now.” My heart ached in my chest, mirroring the ache in my head.
“What are you going to say to him?”
I stared out the window, my mind blank. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you sleep on it?”
My chest hitched at that. “I can’t. I don’t want to sleep, I don’t want to dream, I just …”
Luka leaned forward and pulled me off the couch and into his lap before I could protest. He didn’t say anything, just let me cry. I cried for Linc and for Grandma, I cried for myself and for all the other girls, I cried for Emma. I even cried for Luka. And I didn’t feel any better because I still didn’t know.
Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) Page 15