When I call him at 4:30, he answers almost immediately.
"Zane, you work out, right?"
"Yeah girl, I work out," he says, with an exaggerated sexy drawl. "You don't get this body sittin' still, you know what I'm sayin'?"
"Okay, okay. I'm actually serious."
"You know I run, play ball— and we have a heavy bag in the basement at our house. I use that sometimes. Do some wrestling with Julio and Mike."
"Could you teach me? How to hit the right way, and everything?"
"I'm no Deontay Wilder, but I can show you a few things. Why?"
"Just— for protection. In case I ever get into trouble."
"Girl, you're already in trouble and you just won't tell me. You think I don't know, but I got eyes in my head, okay? I can read the signs."
"I can't tell you about it. They're not my secrets to tell."
He sighs. "All right, come over tomorrow afternoon and I'll show you."
I know the way to his house well enough by now, so I walk over around 4 o'clock the next day. He arrives a few minutes later in his truck and leads me into the basement, through the laundry room to the area with the TV and sofas.
"I'm gonna run upstairs and change. You want a drink?"
"No thanks."
He disappears up the steps. I wander around the room, picking up a few family photos. There's one of his older sister that draws my attention. It must have been her prom photo or something— she's dressed in a blue gown with her hair piled like a crown on her head. She's gorgeous.
And then I hear feet on the stairs— more than one pair of feet— and the same gorgeous girl from the photo enters the room behind Zane. She's a little curvier than in the picture, but just as beautiful; and in her arms is a baby. A bright-eyed baby with a fuzz of dark hair and the cutest plump cheeks.
"Aislinn, this is Ada," Zane says. "And Dallas." He rubs the baby's head.
"Just gonna feed him down here and watch a little TV," Ada says. "Good to meet you, Aislinn."
"You too. He's so cute!" I can't help coming closer; he's just the chubbiest, prettiest little thing I've ever seen.
"Yeah, he's a charmer," she says, as the baby grins at me, all dimples and sparkly dark eyes.
"We'll be in the gym," Zane says.
"Really?" Ada raises her eyebrows. "Okay, be careful."
Maybe I look pretty fragile to her. Maybe I can prove that I'm stronger than anyone thinks.
Zane leads me back to the laundry area, then to the right into another area of the basement. There's a workbench and some tools here, and also a space covered in rubber mats. A punching bag hangs from the ceiling, and a nearby rack holds weights and yoga mats, a couple miscellaneous water bottles, and a sweat-stained towel or two. On a small table stands a speaker dock for a smartphone.
"Nice setup," I say. But I can feel my skin crawling because this space is darker than the other areas of the basement, and the ceiling feels lower, and the exposed concrete of the walls and floor remind me too much of my dungeon. My breath is coming faster, even as I try to slow it down and stay calm.
Relax relax relax. This is not a prison, you're fine, nothing bad is going to happen, calm down calm the heck down!
"Aislinn?" Zane touches my arm. "You okay?"
I realize suddenly that I've crossed my arms over my chest and I'm gripping my upper arms so tightly that my fingertips have gone stark white. I let go, hoping the grooves from my fingernails will fade quickly.
He's looking at me strangely, and I realize that I have to tell him something; otherwise he's going to think I'm crazy. Any normal guy should have dropped me after the second time we met— should have realized that I'm weird, I'm damaged, I'm not the kind of girl you should hang out with when you're a smart, handsome, popular senior in high school.
Why am I even doing this to him? I'm being incredibly selfish to take up his time and worm my way into his life, when he has better things to think of and plans to make. Sure, he makes me feel good, but I don't want to be some kind of emotional leech.
I step back. "Maybe this was a bad idea."
"What do you mean? It was your idea."
"My ideas often suck."
"Nah. Come on, it'll be fun."
I stare at him, shaking my head. I'm going to regret saying this. "Zane, why are you being so nice to me? Like really, why?"
"Hey, I'm a nice guy." He grins, but for once I don't smile back.
"No really. Why? I'm kinda messed up, in case you couldn't tell. I don't want to bring my negative stuff into your life."
"Look, I can tell you've had some bad crap happen to you, okay? I'm not blind. And hey, my life may be good right now, but I know something about pain. Three of my grandparents are dead; I remember all the funerals. And I got friends at school who been through hell half a dozen different ways. I'm not gonna push somebody out of my life just because they wounded or messed up. No, I'm gonna help 'em hang in there till it gets better."
"Even if that person makes life worse for you?"
"How are you making my life worse?" He's smiling again. "You're a smart chick who looks like a model and wants me to teach her how to fight. Yeah, I'm suffering."
The smile starts in my very soul and makes its way to my face. I feel happy and warm all over now, and the basement seems brighter, even before he turns on another light.
"Are we gonna do this or what?" he asks.
"Okay. What do I need to do?"
Over the next hour, he shows me how to punch the bag properly, for maximum impact, without hurting my wrist or fingers too much. We watch a few videos on fighting and hold escape techniques, and we even practice a couple. It's strange and incredibly hot to be this close to him, pressed right against him as he shows me how to buck or twist out of someone's grip. He even shows me a few kicks he learned during his four years of karate.
"You can practice a lot of this at home," he says. "If you really want to get good at it, you'll need more than an hour of training."
"Now I just have to convince my guardians to buy me a punching bag."
"Do they give you an allowance, or something?"
"They've started giving me a little money, since I turned seventeen."
He frowns. "Who are these women, really? Sometimes you say they're your aunts, and then sometimes you say family, or guardians."
"It's kinda all of the above," I say. "It's complicated."
Just then, Ada appears in the doorway. "Mom wants to know if Aislinn is staying for dinner."
"I'd better not," I say. "I'll come up and say hi, and then I need to get home."
"Same time tomorrow?" Zane asks in a low voice as we follow Ada upstairs.
"Don't you have things to do?" I whisper.
"Probably."
Why is that smile of his so sexy?
"How about day after tomorrow?"
"Perfect."
10
BELIEVER
Zane
"Zane, what you doing with that girl?" asks Ada. She didn't even wait till Aislinn had ridden her bike out of sight.
"What do you mean?"
"Zane." She raises her eyebrows. "You're graduating. You're going to college."
"A nearby college," I say.
"Like that matters. You two will be worlds apart starting this fall." She lays the baby belly-down on a blanket on the carpet. He lifts his head and waves his arms, whining a little. "Shhh. Tummy time is good for you, Dallas."
Then she whips her gaze back to me. "There's no future here, Z. Why not wait till you get to college and then find someone on the same path as you?"
"Ade, you're worse than Mom."
"Maybe. She's bein' sweet about it cause she's just excited to see you so worked up about a girl. You haven't been this way since Laurel. Actually I think you got it worse this time."
"What's the big deal if I want to hang out with her? I'm allowed to have a girlfriend."
"She's your girlfriend already?" Ada frowns.
"Not yet."
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She sighs, wiggling her long, ringed fingers in front of Dallas's face to distract him from fussing. "I just want you to think, okay? About what's best for you— for the family."
"For the family?"
She looks me straight in the eyes. "You know what I mean."
"Not sure I do. But if it has something to do with her skin color, I'm done talking. That's old-school thinking, Ade."
"It's the kind of thinking we all have to do, like it or not." She sighs. "But I'm more concerned about you gettin' distracted so close to the end of high school."
"Don't worry, I got this."
"I hope so, little brother. You tend to believe the best in people, Zane, but there's something about her makes me wonder. Has she told you much about her family?"
"Enough. She's got it rough at home."
"Well, all I'm saying is you don't need that kinda mess introduced into your life. You gotta focus on you right now, little brother."
I stand up. "I'm giving this thing with Aislinn a shot, and you throwin' shade isn't gonna change my mind. You can't start something with doubt in your heart. You gotta believe a thing's going to work, or else it won't for sure."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah, that's so."
She's making me mad, so I go downstairs and punch the heavy bag a few dozen times. I keep hearing warnings— from Mom, from Ada, from Aislinn herself. The more they warn me, the more I want to be with her.
When we were practicing, she felt so slim and soft and breakable, but inside I can tell she's strong. Every time she lunged to break a hold, or punched that bag, I could feel her anger, giving her power.
Where does that fire come from? Who is she?
I have to know.
11
IMMORTALS
Aislinn
When I walk into the kitchen at home, Magnolia is slicing a strawberry pie. Gillian sits at the island, leafing through a home decor magazine.
"You look happy," Gillian says. "Were you hanging out with that boy again?"
"What boy?" I raise my eyebrows.
"The boy from the mall. The lean handsome one, with the arms and the cheekbones."
I glance around the room. There are no other Korrigan in sight. "Are you going to tell Maeve on me again?"
"No, as long as you're not getting too attached."
"I'm not," I lie.
"Good, because human men are trouble," says Magnolia.
"Sometimes," says Gillian. "But they do make lovely playthings. Tell us about him."
"We were hanging out in his basement. That's all, really." I have no plans to tell them about our little self-defense class. "We watched TV. I met his sister, and his little nephew— so cute! He has the brightest eyes and sweet little cheeks." I can't help smiling at the memory.
"How old is the nephew?" says Gillian. She's smiling, too.
"I think she said six months old? He's adorable." I see them exchanging glances. "What?"
Magnolia turns away, busying herself with serving the pie onto plates.
"Luck is with you, Aislinn," says Gillian. She's still smiling, but I see something predatory in her gaze now. "Think about it. You know the house. It's not far away, and you would have easy access."
"No! How could you— just no. I would never do that to them."
"They would never know," Magnolia assures me, setting a large slice of strawberry pie in front of me. The filling oozes out slowly, red and glistening. "Sweetie, you need the days. It would be easy, and harmless."
"Harmless? Do you realize that we're stealing lives here? Time that these people could have with their families?"
"One year off the end of their lives, Aislinn," snaps Gillian. "What do you think they'll be doing with that time anyway? Doddering around the nursing home? Lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines, eating gelatin? We're doing them a favor."
"But you can't know they'll live that long," I say. "What if I take life from someone who's supposed to die at age 45? Now he's going to die at age 44. I've taken one year he could have spent with his kids, with his wife. Maybe he would have discovered something or invented something. We're changing fate here. Messing with the future."
As I mention fate, I see Gillian and Magnolia exchange nervous looks. "Don't talk about Fate," says Magnolia.
"Why?"
"Just don't," says Gillian. "Of course we're changing it. We don't have a choice. But as long as we're careful, it's fine. Anyway, what's your alternative, Miss Judgy? Where would you suggest we get the time?"
"Old people," I say. "Not babies."
Gillian shakes her head. "Tried that. Too dangerous. Too much security in nursing homes, too many people. Plus you take all that risk, and then you never know if you're going to get a few days of sunshine or a few months. And if you accidentally take too much and the old crone dies, there are all kinds of alarms, nurses rushing to the scene— the payoff isn't worth the effort."
Magnolia shakes her head. "I miss the old days. You could always count on finding an old beggar, a foundling, or a cripple, somebody no one would miss. It was easier then."
"I miss the days when we could nab a wee babe right from the cradle while the mother was outside hanging up the wash," says Gillian. "She'd cry for a week and then have another one within the year."
I pick up my pie plate. "I'm eating in my room."
They whisper behind me as I march upstairs. Of course I've heard them talk like this before. It always bothered me, but today it's absolutely sickening. Maybe because I've hung out with real live humans now, and I haven't had hundreds of years to grow callous to the idea of stealing their life-force to fuel my daylight hours.
◆◆◆
There's no countdown clock for the Korrigan. No hourglass with sand running, running, running to the inevitable. We have to keep track of the days we have left, or we run the risk of transforming outside, near people. One slip-up, and next thing you know you've murdered a dozen, or two dozen humans, and the authorities are hauling you away in an armored truck to some secret military base.
It happened a couple of times, before I was born. The others don't talk about it much, but I've gathered bits and pieces of the story from their conversations.
One incident I know of was long ago, in Europe, right around the time when the first colonists were sailing to the New World. A Korrigan fell in love with a human man and went to live with him in his cottage, near a small village. No one knows how she lost count of her days, or why she didn't take some of his Life-Stream— but somehow her time ran out.
She woke up in their bed just as the sun was rising, just in time to see her lover's face before she transformed and tore him to bloody shreds. When she turned back into herself that evening, the men of the town seized her and she was hung immediately, screaming and wailing and calling out her lover's name till the rope cut off her breath. At least, that's how Gillian told it to me, whispering the story quietly to me late one night when I was about eight. It terrified me so much she had to drag me to the basement for lockup.
No one ever told me that Korrigan's name.
The Korrigan stayed in Europe for another hundred years, wandering from country to country. I kind of wish I'd been with them during that time, seeing all the magnificent architecture and beautiful landscapes. But I suppose it was also dirty and violent.
Finally the Korrigan crossed the ocean. Magnolia told me they were all tired of war, and they wanted some space, and peace. Arden said it was because of the new opportunities and new career options. Gillian and Gemma were bored of European men, and the rugged pioneers appealed to them. For whatever reason, Maeve finally made the decision, and they booked passage.
I don't know exactly how they spent the next few hundred years. Magnolia's dream of peace didn't come true, what with the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and the border wars and all the other unrest. They must have lost a couple more Korrigan during that time, because Magnolia says nine of them crossed the ocean. I don't know the stories of the ot
her two— but I do know about Wynnie.
What happened to Wynnie is still a mystery, even to my guardians. She was a human-Korrigan hybrid, like me, born to one of the Korrigan they lost in the wars. Like me, she aged like a normal human until she was in her early twenties— and then the aging just stopped, and she stayed young and perfect as the decades passed. Her looks stayed the same, anyway; her mind didn't cope so well.
They were living in California when it happened. Wynnie became reckless, and careless— partying and drinking and popping pills and injecting things. Maeve tried locking her up, but she managed to get out and lose herself in the crowds of star-struck tourists and would-be celebrities in Los Angeles.
The last they heard of her was a news story about a monster that tore up an L.A. party house full of people. The handful of survivors were all drunk, asleep, or high around dawn, when it happened, so no one really believed their descriptions of the creature; but Arden found out that a S.W.A.T. team took the beast away. The Korrigan never heard from Wynnie again.
I know better than to lose track of my precious days. Every evening I go to the whiteboard calendar in my room and mark off another, each one bringing me closer to the final day, which I've colored in solid black.
April is passing by. My last sunny day will be April 29th, when the moon is full again.
The other Korrigan don't really care what I do with my time, or how many days I've got left. I'm like the Pluto to their planets. They're not quite sure if I belong with them, but I'm permitted to orbit their sun as long as I stay quiet and distant.
Maeve is the only one who seems to notice when and where I go, and that's only because she wants to be sure I'm not putting them all in danger. Ever since I stood up to her in the office and demanded answers— ever since she told me she's my grandmother— she hasn't really made or enforced any rules, other than a curfew of 8 p.m., which I think is ridiculous. But I still manage to see my friends in the afternoons.
They really are my friends now. We go out for milkshakes, wander deep into the swampy bowels of the nature park to the south of the city, and try roller-skating and bowling— both of which I suck at.
Korrigan (Secrets of the Fae Book 1) Page 10