by G. A. Rael
"Actually, we are," she said, slipping underneath his arm. At least there were some benefits to being short.
"No, we're not," Darren growled, taking her by the arm. As he spun her around, her mind flashed back to the alleyway when Hank had grabbed her. The shock must have been obvious on her face because, for a moment, his eyes were filled with horror. At least it was something other than apathy or anger. He had seemed capable of little else ever since Hermes had brought him back from the dead.
"I'm sorry," he said, releasing her immediately. "I don't know what came over me."
Jordan looked down at the red marks forming on her forearm and tried to rub them away, as if she could pretend it hadn't happened if she could keep the evidence from forming. Darren stared at her like he wanted to say something else and couldn't find the words.
“It’s…fine. I guess neither of us are feeling like ourselves today,” she muttered.
"Let me see your arm," he pleaded, reaching for her hand.
She jerked it back out of instinct and a mixture of pain and guilt showed on his face for an instant before it was expressionless again. "I didn't mean--"
"I said it's fine, Darren," she said, lowering her voice to keep it steady. "Let's just forget it. Better yet, let's try to forget everything that's happened between us, alright?"
He set his jaw. "Is that really what you want?"
"It is," she lied. It wasn't at all what she wanted, but she knew it was the only way she was going to survive Cold Creek, especially now that the future Mrs. St. Clair was running around. "I know we're going to run into each other at town events, especially since Chase and Allison are friends, but there's no reason we have to go out of our way to talk to each other."
"I guess not," he said stiffly, falling silent for a moment before he asked, “So you and Chase, that's official now?"
“I wouldn’t say it’s official. We're not engaged or anything, but yes, we're dating."
"I give that a week," he muttered. "I'll say one thing for the man, he gets what he wants."
"So do you, Darren," Jordan said, trying to keep the melancholy out of her voice. “You and Chase just want very different things."
He frowned and seemed about to argue before he muttered something under his breath and shook his head. "Just promise me something."
"That depends on what it is."
"Friends or not, you come to me if he tries anything," he said with a look in his cold gray eyes that she never thought she would see again--at least, not for her.
"We're in a relationship, Darren. Him 'trying things' kind of comes with the territory."
"That's not what I meant and you know it."
“Chase would never hurt me," she said, regretting her choice of words when he cringed. "I appreciate the offer, but protecting me isn't your job anymore and it's not his, either. I'm not the same pathetic girl you broke up with."
He frowned. "Pathetic? Is that how you think I see you?"
"It doesn't matter," she said, trying to drown out the memory of Allison's words. "In any case, I can take care of myself now," she said, pulling the door open. She paused, lingering under the bell for a moment. "Before I go, you should know that someone has been watching your shop."
"Who?"
"A woman. I've never seen her before, so I don't think she's from around here… I just thought you would want to know."
"Yeah, thanks," he said, taking a step closer. “Jordan, I --"
"Goodbye, Darren," she said, letting the door fall shut behind her before he could say anything else. She knew she wasn't going to make it very far before the tears came and she didn't want to give him one more funny anecdote to share with Allison.
Thirty-Four
Three Months Later
"Jordan?"
Chase’s voice broke through the clutter in her mind. They were seated outside the only French bistro in town at a little cafe table since the weather was nice. Jordan had lost track of the conversation somewhere between the latest scandal at the country club Chase’s uncle owned and his speculation as to what the theme of Cindy's next party might be. Everyone had agreed that her last--a nautical event complete with pirate ship netting and a waitstaff dressed as bar wenches--had been one of her finest yet.
"Mm, yeah, the party was great," said Jordan, taking a spoonful of the French onion soup that had grown cold in front of her. She was watching Darren’s building in the town square below as the woman in the familiar yellow dress paced back and forth underneath a flickering street lamp. Her appearances were growing more frequent, but she seemed to be on no set schedule. Jordan had seen her there both early in the morning before any of the shops had opened and late at night as Chase walked her home. She wasn't always there, but Jordan had only ever spotted her in front of Darren's building and she was always wearing the same yellow dress and large straw hat. Jordan had long since realized that she was the only one who saw the woman and had grown so weary of the pitying glances that she stopped asking if anyone else could.
Whenever she asked Hermes about it, he would merely smile and suggest that she say hello next time.
"The party?" Chase frowned. "You know, a man with a fragile ego might think he was being ignored."
"I'm so sorry," said Jordan, turning her attention back to him. "I must have gone to space for a second. What were you saying?"
"I was just saying that it looks like rain."
She looked up at the velvety clouds bulging around the moon. "Oh. Yeah, it does."
"Mind if I ask what's got you so deep in thought?"
She hesitated, taking another sip of her drink to buy some time. "Just work. A batch of seedlings aren't doing as well as I'd hoped."
"Jordan," he said in a chiding tone. "We've been dating how long now? Three months?"
Thirteen weeks to the day. She knew the exact length of time not for sentimental reasons, but because they went on a date every Friday at 8 o'clock on the dot. Sometimes their weekly date stretched into a full weekend in New York, but Chase was a creature of habit. Even the itinerary of their dates followed an exact formula. Dinner, then a movie or some other form of enjoyable but predictable entertainment, and then back to his place for sex. Then they would cuddle until they both fell asleep and he would drive her back home in the morning after having a nice breakfast and coffee at the local cafe.
Chase scheduled every facet of his life, she had come to realize. Jordan didn't mind it, even though it had taken her awhile to adjust. After all, the fact that he devoted so much time to her when he had a life that was already filled with an abundance of work, family gatherings and social demands was flattering, to say the least. When it came to their time together, he always provided his complete and undivided attention--unlike her.
The fact that he had so little time left plenty for her continued studies with Hermes. Even though she had made it clear to Chase that she wasn’t interested in being exclusive, she had yet to touch her familiar since their fallout. He was being a brat about it, too, but her pyrokinesis hadn’t reared its head since the forest and neither had her next consort. The more time she had to sort it all out, the better.
"Yeah," she answered. “About that.”
"I would hope that after everything we’ve been through, you’d feel like you could tell me me what's on your mind," he said, taking her hand. “Especially considering we’ve literally walked through fire together.”
Jordan sighed. So far, his bad jokes were the only crime he seemed capable of committing. “We have, but…” Her gaze drifted across the street again. Yellow Dress was still there. “Chase, can I ask you a question?"
"Anything, love."
The woman--the Watcher, as Jordan had started calling her--had resumed her post staring up at the apartment above the clinic even though all the lights were out in the building. "Do you see that woman over there? The one standing under the street lamp?"
He craned his neck to look and narrowed his eyes. "The lamp in front of the animal clinic?"
<
br /> "Yes," she said, taking a sip of her wine as she prepared for the inevitable confusion.
"The one in the yellow dress?"
Jordan choked on her drink and turned to look at him. "What?"
"Are you alright?" he asked, frowning in concern.
"I'm fine," she said, coughing. "You can see her, too?”
He glanced back toward the clinic. "Well, yes. She's plain as day in that ridiculous hat."
Jordan stared at him in disbelief. "I know this is going to sound weird, but humor me. Tell me what she looks like?"
He squinted. “She's middle aged, brunette… she's quite pretty, I suppose. Other than the clothes, I wouldn't say there's anything remarkable about her. What am I looking for?"
"Nothing," Jordan said, finishing off her wine. "It's just that she's been there for a while I thought I might be seeing things."
"Ah," he said knowingly, giving her hand a squeeze. "I figured it might be a witch thing."
Jordan watched him for a moment, frowning. "How can you be so casual about this? You're dating someone who can't even tell the difference between reality and hallucination."
"Seeing ghosts and hallucinating are two different things."
"That's exactly what I mean. How can you go from being an atheist to just accepting the idea of ghosts and witches and magic so easily?"
"I wouldn't say it's been easy," he scoffed, "And I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic. That means that I don't believe anything unless I see evidence for it in the natural world. After what happened in the forest, ghosts are hardly a stretch."
"Okay, but what if I'm crazy on top of the things that are real?"
"Jordan," he began in that gentle tone of his. "You've been through so much. After everything you've told me about your family these past few months, it would surprise me if you didn't have some cognitive glitches here and there."
"So you don't think I'm crazy?" she asked warily. Despite what all the townsfolk thought, the only thing that scared her about Chase was how little she scared him. He prided himself on his openmindedness, but in the blink of an eye he had been able to accept things about Jordan that had taken her a lifetime to come to terms with.
Of course, she hadn't told him everything. He knew that Hermes was her familiar, but he had no idea that her cat was actually a demon or that he could take human form whenever he wanted. He knew that the fire had been the result of her repressed powers, but he seemed to consider it a fascinating if tragic case study in psychic phenomena and little else. As grateful as she was that he neither ran from nor attempted to explain away the truth, she thought it might not be the worst thing if he at least pretended to wrestle with it from time to time.
"Of course you are," he said, placing a kiss on the back of her hand. "I'd be worried if you weren't after everything you've been through. It's part of your charm."
Jordan wasn't sure whether to be offended or flattered. She decided she was both.
"Not that I'd be surprised if you really were seeing the dead at this point," he continued. "That's what you think she is, isn't it? A ghost?"
"I thought so," Jordan murmured, rubbing the side of her neck. The only non-vanilla thing about the man was his kink for getting toothy during sex, but even though he’d never broken the skin, it still stung from the night before. "I guess not if you can see her, too."
"Well, when did you start noticing her?"
"Months ago. She seems to be focused on Darren," said Jordan. "Whenever I see her, she's watching his clinic, but only when he's not there."
The first hint of displeasure she had seen regarding the supernatural flickered on his face as he set his glass down. "I see."
"What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he said carefully. "There's just something I've been meaning to ask you, and I keep waiting for the perfect time to come, but between my work and your, uh, witchcraft, I don't think that’s ever going to come.
Jordan's heart skipped a beat. She might not have been there for the breakup that had taken place only in Darren's altered memories, but she had caught up on enough pop culture to know the beginnings of an, "It's not you, it's me," speech when she heard one.
"Forgive me if this seems out of the blue, but I've been doing a lot of thinking lately," he said, taking on a formal, almost grave tone. "About our relationship, I mean."
Shit. Three months of trying to work up the courage to tell him he was her destined consort and he was about to break up with her. Not that she could blame him. She wasn’t the most attentive of girlfriends, and the parts of her life he did know about were a hot mess.
"Things obviously didn't get off to an easy start between us," he began.
Jordan's thoughts began to drift. She didn't know what had taken him so long, but maybe her near-ghost sighting had finally pushed him over the edge. How exactly did a breakup with someone who’d been destined to fall for you work, anyway? Did Lucifer have to sign off on it?
She could already hear what Hermes would say. “You’re supposed to be the Whore of Babylon and you can’t even keep a man who was made for you.”
"Do you know what I thought when I first met you, Jordan?" Chase asked, drawing her out of her thoughts.
Jordan shook her head and found her throat too tight to speak. She both wanted him to put her out of her misery and to put it off for just a little longer. She shouldn’t have been relieved, or devastated, and yet both emotions were there. After Darren, she’d put up a wall and she wasn’t sure when Chase had climbed over it, but the emptiness in her core left no doubt that he had. The relief came from knowing that the moment she’d been expecting had finally come. Maybe there wasn’t a need to turn his world upside down at all.
She didn’t love Chase. She wasn’t sure she could love anyone anymore. Not the way she’d once loved Darren and still did, if she was being honest with herself. Even so, Chase was becoming dangerously familiar. She didn’t want to become dependent on his presence in her life, knowing there was such a good chance he wouldn’t want to be in it if he knew the truth. There was still the matter of Hermes letting him go, but the seal of flame was already unlocked, so surely his role couldn’t be that hands-on moving forward.
"I thought you were the most beautiful creature I had ever seen," he answered in the utmost sincerity. Coming from anyone else, those words would have seemed hollow, but he said them with such earnestness that Jordan could only believe that he meant them, no matter what pain the next words out of his mouth would cause her. She couldn't help but think that if he let everyone else see this side of him once in a while, maybe they would come to accept what she had somehow known from the beginning: That he was far from the monster they all thought he was.
“Chase, you don't have to --"
"No, please," he said, stroking her cheek. "Let me say the words before they fail me again. It wasn't just your beauty that made me want you from the very first moment we met. There was a light inside of you that it felt like only I could see. For the first time since I came into this world, I felt like I was home. I've always felt like there was someone out there—a soulmate, if you like--who belonged to me. Now I know it was you. It was always you…”
Jordan stared at him in confusion. Leave it to Chase to turn a breakup into a confusingly poetic speech. Of course he had to pick breaking up as the one thing he wasn't good at. “Chase, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I knew you were mine from the moment we met," he said with a soft chuckle. "Of course, I was under no delusion that you had the same experience. The very same force that drew me to you seemed to draw you to Darren. I thought I’d missed my chance, and then you broke up. Do you know what I felt then?"
Jordan hesitated. “I don't know. Relief, I guess?"
"You would think," he mused, taking a sip of his wine. "I thought that's what I would feel myself, until it actually happened and I could feel how much pain you were in. You see, in that moment, I realized that I wasn't the same person anymore. I realized that you had
changed me."
"How?" she asked, bewildered.
"The old me would have given it a week at most before he 'accidentally' bumped into you around town," he said, swirling his glass. "He would have done whatever it took to charm you and sweep in while your guard was down. He would have taken what he wanted and left you to pick up the pieces that were left when he was done."
"Why are you telling me this, Chase?”
"Because I want you to understand, before I get to the point of all if this, that not all the rumors you've heard about me are false," he said, his voice rougher than usual. "I want you to know that even though I would never hurt you, it's not because I'm a good man. If I'm anything close, it's only because you've made me that way."
As the probability of him telling her he never wanted to see her again dwindled, Jordan found herself no less confused. “I’m sorry, but… what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that fate saw fit to give me a second chance with you," he said, taking her hand again. He rose from his chair without letting go of her hand. As he sank to one knee and pulled a small blue box out of his jacket pocket, Jordan's head spun in confusion. "Jordan," he murmured, holding her gaze earnestly, "You asked me how I could so easily accept the supernatural when I've never been a man of faith, but that's just it. I don't need faith when I'm with you. The unreal becomes tangible every time I touch you. Magic is the way your laughter chases away the darkest shadows in my mind and the sound of your heart beating as you lie next to me is the only hymn that's ever moved my soul. I still can't say I believe in God, but the fact that something as perfect as you exists in this terrible world is the best and only evidence I've ever found in his favor."
“Chase, this is all really sudden and I…” she trailed off, at a loss for any word that adequately described it. She was also trying to convince herself she was having another, far more bizarre hallucination. It was only then that she noticed the small crowd of passersby who had stopped to watch what was probably the biggest town spectacle since what had become known simply as the Condom Incident. The woman in the yellow dress was gone from her post across the street, but Darren and Allison had taken her place at the front door of the clinic. They were both watching the scene, to Jordan's horror. Allison leaned in to whisper something in Darren's ear.