WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening

by Athena Grayson

  “Gave us the source code for how to do it right. I know what I want, Jack. Do you want it, too, or not?”

  “God, yes.” His response came immediately. Like the rest of him was about to do. “Right here and now. But—”

  The buttons of his shirt gave way to her questing hands and her heated touch hit the naked skin of his chest. “God, you’re cold all over.” She bent again and her lips touched his skin. “It’s kind of neat.” She turned her head. Her warm breath tickled his neck. “It’s not medical, is it? I mean, I’m not going to kill you if you stay out here, am I?”

  Medical? I wish. “I think you’re going to kill me either way, but I’m going out happy.” Her laugh shimmered through the air and through his insides. “But this can’t be the most comfortable place in the world for you.”

  She shifted again, sending scarlet sparks along the edges of his vision. “Listen to you, going all gentleman on me.” She tweaked his nose. “If you want, we can sneak into Starla’s bathroom and do it there. She’s got this whirlpool tub you could swim laps in.”

  “That doesn’t sound sneaky at all.” He nuzzled her hand. “We could—” What? Go back to his place, where the chillsprites were probably redecorating?

  She climbed off him and he mourned the loss. But she never broke her gaze with him. “Are you coming?” Her eyebrow cocked as she backed towards the path leading back to the house. He leapt off the chaise after her, pausing only to adjust his painfully tight fly. Her lips curved up. “Do you want to?”

  Did he want to? Oh hell yes. He lunged after her, nothing more important than catching up to her so he could follow wherever she wanted to lead. Once upon a time, he knew the thrill of pursuit, the elation of capture, the flying leap into the unknown of new attraction like a fresh blanket of snow softening the gritty harshness of life’s other roughness. Once upon a time, he’d looked into her dark eyes and he’d wondered, if only for a fraction of a second. He remembered, and he wondered again.

  She stepped onto the path. He stumbled after her, hands outstretched towards her waist, ready to pull her back around for a confirming kiss—confirming grope, he amended—when he came up hard against a barrier that felt as solid to his hands as a concrete wall.

  And just as hard, too. His fingers smashed into solid nothingness and the rest of him came up against it half a second later. He ricocheted off the invisible wall and landed on his ass with the crunch of dry leaves buckling under him. His peripheral vision lit up scarlet for a second, until he shook his head to clear it from the sudden shock. “What the—?” He stared down at his hands.

  “Jack?” She turned and her eyebrows raised. “Oh! Did you fall?”

  He extended a cautious leg out towards the resistance he’d encountered. His foot came up against something hard and invisible, save for a dull crimson streak that shot from the tip of his foot out along the edge of the clearing in either direction in a slightly curved arc.

  Lin shook her head. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head. “No—I must have stepped in a hole or something. Have I dazzled you with my smooth moves?” The flirting question was supposed to distract while his mind ran through all the normal explanations for why a person might not be able to pass through thin air.

  She flicked her gaze in his direction. “You did that a long time ago.”

  He blinked. “I did?” Lin? Interested in him back then? He’d assumed he fell into the same category as Bailey as far as Lin was concerned, meaning she held him in the same sort of affectionate regard as a friendly dog with a slight drooling problem. Dazzled her? If he hadn’t already been flat on his ass, he would have fallen down again.

  She extended a hand to help him up. As if she trusted him not to just pull her down and pin her underneath him in wet leaves. “It changes nothing about tonight. Are you coming?”

  He pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his rear end. Only when he was vertical and wrapped in the shreds of his dignity did he take her hand. “Take me however you want me.” He didn’t think he’d ever meant any words more sincerely.

  Her fingers tangled in his and she pulled him towards the path again. Part of his mind was still trying to wrap around her admission that he’d dazzled her when they were younger. The rest of his mind braced for impact…and wasn’t disappointed. His fingers lost their grip on hers when she crossed the invisible line that caused the red glow to shoot out in twin arcs that raced around the clearing, enveloping it in the briefest of hazes for a moment before the glow faded back to blue moonlight. The fading crimson illuminated her cheekbones as she turned around. “Jack?”

  His heart sank as his last doubts faded away in the face of hard evidence. Goddammit. “What the hell is it now?” he muttered, too low for her to hear, but maybe loud enough for what he couldn’t see.

  Lin’s eyes met his. He raised his hand. A slight frown creased her brows. She took a breath. He slapped his palm against rock-solid invisibility, sending a shock up his arm and a shower of crimson sparks shooting out from his palm. She gasped.

  The world went white.

  ~*~

  Chapter One

  FPP: The Circle Trap, The Seneschal, and In Play

  Inverse-space froze everything around him. Jack felt sweat prickle at his spine as his eyes flicked around the clearing. Inverse-space turned everything its opposite color and hue, so that the inky fingers of barren trees became paper-white bones against a dove-gray sky punctured with black pinprick stars. Overhead, the sooty charcoal disk of the moon sent beams of shadow over the white-on-white landscape. Through the sea of whites and pale grays, a sharp crimson line stretched around the clearing in a perfect circle, glowing up in a fading dome that all but disappeared overhead.

  His heart gave a lurch as his eyes went to Lin’s frozen form, her lips parted in a freeze-frame gasp and her hand half-lifted towards his. She seemed to be standing in the middle of the red border, the line bisecting her body as if she were the insubstantial one and not whatever force kept him in the clearing. He’d never gone into Inverse, that inside-out space between one moment and the next, in the presence of another person before. And never without the presence of—

  As if on cue, the hooded figure in black shimmered into existence, the only other thing that moved in the strange tableau besides himself. The grim reaper-like appearance had nearly given him a heart attack the first time the figure materialized, but with time, Jack had grown used to the form of the entity he called The Seneschal. “Majesty wishes information?”

  Jack considered himself an easygoing guy, but nobody reacts well to the sudden presence of a tall, hooded figure in their airspace, and he was no exception. “Dammit! What the fuck!”

  The Seneschal bowed, folds of its robe coated in dark crystalline ice, sharp as volcanic glass. “Majesty has requested information.” The Seneschal’s voice was the ominous groan of a snow-covered mountain, buckling under the weight of impending avalanche, the silences between them made of cold so absolute it could only exist in a vacuum. A part of Jack never failed to flail in his mind at hearing that voice, gibbering in the ancient fear that soft, squishy, hairless humans bore for the night and the dark and the winter that brought cold, sleep, and death from things with bigger teeth and tougher hides and yellow, hungry eyes.

  He knew from his limited interaction that the Seneschal was, like the other Oddlings he’d encountered, a being that had some analogue to a force of nature. Just as the Chillsprites hung around the legs and other exposed parts of people much as cold breezes crept in under one’s collar, the Seneschal analogued to some other force of nature. Beneath Jack’s feet, the ground had frosted over between himself and the Seneschal. Through suddenly bloodless lips, Jack asked the question the being expected to hear. “What just happened?”

  The Seneschal’s inky robes shivered with anticipatory glee. “Majesty has become—”

  “Wait!” Unlike the Chillsprites, the Seneschal’s analogue, near as Jack could tell, wasn’t half as innocuous.
If the Chillsprites were the little frissons of cold that crept under collars and up skirts on cold days, the Seneschal was the absence of heat on the dark face of the moon. “I need to rephrase my question.”

  The Seneschal rose from its bow. “It is Majesty’s destiny. When Majesty is informed, Majesty must act.” The voice could have been the rumbling of two asteroids scraping against each other in mutually assured destruction in outer space, punctuated by the high, cold tinkling of interstellar cometary dust in the cold of absolute vacuum.

  The voice made Jack’s every breath in the Inverse feel like knives of cold slipped down his windpipe and sliced his lungs along with the air. “Which is why I—purposely stay as ignorant—as possible.” He had to suck air in around the tatters of ice that punctured his throat. He was used to winter cold, given his situation, but this cold was more than that. “That was our agreement, wasn’t it?”

  An agreement he made in haste and repented at great leisure. The first time the Seneschal appeared, Jack thought he’d come face to face with the Grim Reaper, over his mother’s hospital bed. Groggy from lack of sleep, in grief and shock even though he’d known the end was near, Jack could only stare while his vocal cords froze solid and the tableau of nurses quietly disconnecting flatlining monitors halted in mid-motion.

  In that grim moment, the Seneschal had pulled a shining black gemstone circlet from out of a nowhere location just above his mother’s head, and held it out to him. Then the thing spoke.

  The queen is dead. Long live the king. It had extended its arm, the circlet held in a hand Jack couldn’t see through the robe, and Jack—stupidly, or maybe just out of shock—took it. His fingers had seared from the cold and the circlet floated out of his hand and hovered above his head, unseen, but not un-felt, where it remained ever since.

  The Seneschal plagued him as much as the crown did, appearing at will, and always with some tidbit of information that meant a world of hurt for Jack. “Majesty” had to be very careful about the questions he asked. “What, exactly, prevents me from stepping onto that path right there?” He pointed to the ground where Lin stood frozen, his stomach giving a churn at what she might be going through. Of course, on her end, all this would be over in the time it took for her to blink.

  “Wild briar roses and holly, Majesty.”

  A faint grinding sound filled the silence. Belatedly, Jack realized the sound was his back teeth. He shook his head and wiggled his jaw. “Not so much.” He stepped toward the path. “There are no plants on this path, so your answer is incorrect.”

  “The answer stands. Majesty is subject to—”

  “Stop!” Jack slapped his hands over his ears to avoid hearing more. If he heard it, he’d have to abide by it—those were the rules he’d sussed out from the Seneschal after that first nightmarish encounter. “If I’m supposed to be the ‘Majesty’ how come I don’t—No. Don’t answer that.” He kicked the dead, frozen leaves at his feet, sending up a cloud of monochromatic detritus in a stiff, crunchy swirl. He pointed to the crimson barrier line. “What, specifically, is this right here, and why can’t I pass through it?”

  “Majesty is informed. The barrier is the limit of a circle to which all kin, be they Winter, Summer, or Lawless, are subject to. Majesty has fallen…or perhaps been led…into a trap.”

  Jack scowled at the hooded being. “How come you’re not affected?” The question had nothing to do with himself, so he felt safe in asking it.

  “Majesty is aware that this one’s function lies outside the realms of the kin.”

  “I am? Wait, I am.” The creature had said as much when Jack tried to remove the crown after he’d had a good night’s sleep and discovered that he was the only one who could see the thing. And—oh, crap. The Seneschal had said “realms.” As in plural. Winter, Summer, and Lawless. Great, and now I know that, too.

  “So I’m trapped and you’re free to move about the forest with impunity.” He folded his arms and scowled. “So far, I’m not seeing that much benefit in ‘embracing the destiny’ you seem hell-bent on forcing upon me.” He worked up a glare towards the black hood. He’d never seen a face, and he was sure he didn’t ever want to. “How do I get out?”

  “Majesty may exit the trap by rewarding the trapmaker with a gift.”

  “A gift? Really?” He rolled his eyes and slapped his hand against the barrier in frustration. The scarlet wall frotzed in protest, sending a jolt up his arm. “How did—whose bright idea was it to put a—nevermind.” He rubbed his temple. “I was having such a good night. I got to spend time with my friends, have a few drinks. There weren’t even any Oddlings around to make messes. The night had…possibilities. Maybe even inevitabilities.”

  As he ranted, he parsed the Seneschal’s words. He brought the rant up short when he realized one more thing. “Wait a minute. You said ‘the trap.’ I may exit the trap.” He narrowed his eyes. “That was voluntarily specific. Why?”

  The robes rippled in response. “Majesty must be informed that Majesty is no longer in Winter’s own realm. If Majesty would have traveled properly—”

  Jack’s hands fisted. “Gah! What does that even mean? That’s the problem with you people, you know. You don’t make any sense.”

  “Majesty will understand the concept if Majesty accepts the crown. Majesty has crossed the boundary between Winter’s realm and the realm of the Lawless.”

  “Stop! I didn’t ask you to answer!” It was too late to plug his ears now, and the knowledge slotted neatly into the folds of his brain. Of course there were boundaries, and of course they ended at the county line between the inner and outer suburbs of the city, and of course he’d crossed over them when he came up here. “This is why I don’t go out to the suburbs,” he muttered. Why couldn’t he just suddenly know things like what Lin’s favorite erogenous zone was and if she’d say yes to taking their attraction to its logical conclusion?

  “Majesty must be informed that Majesty has not followed the protocols of hospitality for travel between realms. Majesty must observe—”

  “You can’t tell me anything I didn’t ask about! That’s not part of our deal.” His hand went to the empty air above his head, where the crown, fully visible in the Inverse, pushed down with incorporeal weight, particularly against his temples, which had started a dull throb.

  “Bargains made in the Winter territories need not be honored when not in the Winter territories.” If that robe wasn’t rippling with amusement at his expense, Jack would kiss a Chillsprite. “Majesty has moved outside Winter’s realm. Majesty is now In Play.”

  “In play? What the hell does that mean—”

  His question—heartfelt this time—only echoed in empty air.

  Act II: Attitude Adjustment

  At ten AM this morning, Lin left her job for the very last time and questioned her future. At ten PM, she was questioning reality.

  When the hooded figure winked into existence the same moment the world lit up as if somebody’d taken a flash photograph and stopped it in time, she thought she might be on the verge of passing out, like she did one time after donating blood. But when the white didn’t turn to black unconsciousness, her mind failed to provide her with a logical explanation for the sudden change, or why she was no longer able to move or speak. She was left with the illogical. The superstitious. The world her mother lived in, and the world she’d rebelled against and finally refused to acknowledge because it wasn’t fucking real.

  She now saw clearly the thin red line inscribing a circle around the clearing. She even knew what it was and who’d put it there. I never thought it would work. Starla probably didn’t believe much of it, either. Starla would be peeing her pants if she saw just what her kids actually caught with a “faerie circle” they’d made out of pretend.

  Lin herself was having a little trouble with her constitution, although the strange pressure that kept her frozen didn’t cause her hurt or discomfort in any way. Not even to pee. She had the feeling that she was, in fact, moving, but just
going about it with excruciating slowness. Even the knee-weakening fear she should be feeling was making itself known more as a, “gee, wouldn’t it be nice to sit down and digest this more comfortably on the ground” feeling.

  I’m starting to feel like Mother…may have been right, she thought. Self-conscious warmth pooled in her body at the thought of Yukiko ever finding out about this.

  Give it time, her logical mind said. Freaking out in 3…2…1… But the freak-out didn’t seem to want to make an appearance, so she continued to observe, her mind racing.

  She listened with half an ear as Jack argued with the being, questioning it and ignoring its answers. What in the ever-lovin’ hell have you gotten yourself into, Jack Winters?

  If she’d been able to move, she should have passed out and gibbered in fear at the sudden up-ending of reality. Instead, Jack’s tone went right to irritation. The same kind of frustration he used to express when they were having arguments about EvoWorld’s need for financial solvency versus its creative vision. As if it were a necessary evil that he put up with on a day-to-day basis.

  Strange, menacing creatures that threatened him while calling him ‘Majesty’ as an everyday inconvenience? Not even her mother treated the spirit world so casually.

  And physically for-real trapped in Starla’s half-serious magic circle in the woods? If Jack wasn’t completely floored by the entire situation in the first place, then why was he handling it so badly?

  Half-remembered bits of advice—and doom-and-gloom prophecies of terrible fortunes—came back to her. Youkai—spirits—could be capricious and evil, or beneficent and kind, and much of Mother’s time involved charms, amulets, and complex rituals designed to pacify the good ones and drive away the bad. For the teenaged Lin who just wanted to fit in with all the Caucasian kids, it was an embarrassment to subject her friends to fortune-telling, or have junky little talismans forced on them by a mother who jumped at shadows and didn’t make a move without consulting the ancient waitress at the tea house who doubled as her fortune-teller.