The Innocent

by Michelle K. Pickett

  Slipping out of bed, I tried not to wake Ben sleeping on a cot next to me. I walked downstairs for a drink when I saw him. He stood on the street like the other man had. He wore the same black cloak. His hood was down. I could see his pale skin almost shimmer under the street lamp. It looked almost translucent. Like if I was near him, I’d be able to see his veins and bones through it. His nearly white hair was slicked back on his head. I strained to see his face, but the street lamp cast it in odd shadows—it looked distorted and sinister.

  What was he doing at Xavier’s house? How did he know we were there? Xavier never mentioned having midnight stalkers. It had come up several times in conversations that we had them. Especially Jake.

  I bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Jogging as quietly as I could to the master suite, I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again—a little harder this time. Still no answer. Opening the door, I slipped inside.

  “Xavier.” I poked his cheek. “Xavier, wake up.” Another poke. He batted my hand away.

  “What?” he snapped, turning his head away from me.

  I poked the back of his head. “Wake up.” Poke…poke…poke.

  “Stop poking me, damn it!”

  “Someone’s outside,” I said.

  He sat straight up. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  He’s shirtless. Geez, where’s his shirt? Not on him. How do I get him to put one on? Here Xavier, put this on so I don’t have to look at your abs. Oh crap, what if he sleeps in the nude? I’m so not ready for that.

  “I was having too much fun poking you.” I laughed, more out of nervousness that I was about to see more of Xavier than I wanted to than about the poking. Although, that was fun. “Seriously, you wouldn’t wake up.”

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Looks like the same guy that was at our house. Do you usually have midnight visitors?

  “No.” He started to pull back the blankets, and I braced myself.

  Please, please have pajama bottoms on. Please. He doesn’t. He has boxer shorts on. Those aren’t much better, but at least he isn’t nude. That’s good… yeah, that’s good.

  He pulled on a pair of sweatpants, thank the good Lord, and we went downstairs. The man was still there. Standing in the same place. Watching.

  But there was someone else outside, too. But he wasn’t watching Xavier’s house. He was watching the cloaked-stalker-demon.

  I opened the door. “Chay, what are you doing? Get inside.” He unfolded himself from where he was sitting on the porch and walked through the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “He was watching you. I was watching him.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Xavier said.

  “Yeah, except she had to go wake you up to do it. How often do you have nightly visitors, Xavier?”

  “Never, until now. And how the hell do you know she had to wake me up?”

  Chay smirked at him before saying, “Hmm. The hobgoblins. They must have told them you were here. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Xavier asked.

  “Unless there’s another traitor in the group.” Chay glared at Xavier. He glared back at Chay. They both looked like they wanted to kill each other. Why—I didn’t know and really didn’t care. They never liked each other. From the first day they met, there was this… thing between them. I was getting tired of their machismo.

  “It’s Brann,” I said quietly.

  “Huh?” Chay and Xavier said in unison.

  “He’s the only one we haven’t seen yet.”

  “I’m kinda afraid to know, but what demon is he?” Chay asked.

  “The demon of fire. Look at his feet.”

  His shoes glowed orange-red, like embers. They flickered like fire.

  “Oh damn,” Xavier whispered.

  As if the demon could hear us, he stretched his arms out in front of him. He cupped his hands together. When he opened them, a glowing ball of fire about the size of a baseball was floating in the air between them.

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered.

  “Milayna, when you were Googling these guys, you didn’t happen to find out what he could do with his fire balls, did you?” Chay asked.

  Fiddling with the drawstring on my sweatpants, my gaze never left the demon. “Um, just what the legend said.”

  “And what was that?” Chay was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

  I reached out and grabbed his arm. “Stop fidgeting. It’s making me nervous.”

  He laughed. “There’s a guy with a floating fire ball outside and my fidgeting is what’s making you nervous? You’re as weird as they are.”

  “Probably.” I love you, don’t I? “The legend didn’t say much about Brann. Just that he was the demon of fire and he could manipulate it any way he wants.”

  “Nice.”

  The demon lobbed the fireball at Xavier’s house. It landed about five feet away, in the front yard. It shot up like a firework fountain on the Fourth of July. Sparks flew everywhere. We could hear it crackling and popping. He lobbed another ball. It landed next to the first, shooting upward into a fountain. Soon, the entire front yard was lined with fountains of glowing fire.

  “What’s going on?” my dad said, running down the stairs with my mom close behind him.

  “Brann showing off,” Chay said.

  My mom went to the window and took a large step back when she saw the fireworks in the front yard. We didn’t like fire much. We didn’t even have a fireplace put in the house when it was rebuilt even though the original house had one. After our house burned to the ground, fire was on our list of things we never wanted to be around again, thank you very much. That made Brann the demon we least wanted to see.

  As quickly as the fire fountains ignited, they were gone. And so was Brann.

  “Where’d he go?” I asked.

  “Do we care?” Xavier answered.

  “Um, yeah. I don’t want him going somewhere and setting the whole subdivision on fire.”

  There was a loud crash. I jumped. My mom screamed.

  “What the…?”

  “What is it, Chay?” I asked.

  “The house next door just went up in flames. Like spontaneous combustion.” Chay made a sound effect of a bomb blowing up, complete with hand motions.

  “Please tell me there was no one home.” I looked at Xavier.

  He shook his head. “No one lives there. A lot of houses on this block are empty and used for show houses.”

  Another loud boom sounded, and we all jumped. A house three doors down and across the street went up in flames.

  I looked at Xavier. He nodded. I let out the breath I was holding. It was an empty house.

  “I’ll call the fire department.” My dad’s slippers shuffled across the carpeting as he walked to the phone. “Hey, son, glad to see ya.” He clapped Chay on the back when he walked by.

  “Nice to see you too, Mr. Jackson,” Chay answered.

  I looked over my shoulder at the two of them. Chay seemed completely at ease with my family. Like nothing ever happened. And of course, my family accepted Chay back as if nothing happened because they knew it wasn’t his fault. None of us was angry with him or held him responsible, least of all me, but I was the one he seemed mad at. I was still lost in thought when I noticed Chay staring at me. I smiled quickly and turned my back to him.

  Seeing him, the face of the person I loved, look at me with so much hatred in his eyes was physically painful. Something deep in my chest ached and my heart slowed, like his anger sucked the will for it to beat out of it. And the butterflies that always swarmed my stomach when Chay was near? Well, they were dying. One by one, I felt the last twitch of their wings slide against the side of my stomach before there was nothing. Each time a butterfly died, it chipped my heart. I wondered how many chips it would take until it shattered.

  So I reminded myself for the thousandth time—he wasn’t my Chay anymore. He was someone else. And that someone didn’t like me. I d
idn’t particularly like him either.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Um… I have to go to the school,” I said around a huge mouthful of fruity ring cereal.

  “Huh?” Xavier asked with a chuckle.

  I motioned for him to wait. Why did he ask me a question right after he watched me take a bite of cereal and then expect to understand me when I tried to answer? I wondered if all men were that unbelievably frustrating or just the men in my life.

  I took a drink of orange juice to wash down my cereal and repeated myself. “I have to go to the school.”

  “Why?” He picked at the crust of his toast, the black crumbs making a mess on the table.

  “I need to drop my classes before it’s too late to get a refund.”

  “They put a limit on that?”

  I smiled. “Yes. Why didn’t you start school?”

  “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” he said with a grin, and my stomach did a little twitch thing. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it tickled and I was positive it wasn’t something I should be feeling when it came to Xavier.

  “Ah.” I took another big bite of cereal, which, of course, was his signal to ask me another question.

  “Want some company?”

  Taking my time chewing, I tried to figure out a way to turn him down without hurting his feelings. I decided there wasn’t a way, so I smiled and nodded. He grinned until I said, “I was going to call Muriel and Drew and see if they wanted to go, too.”

  “They don’t have class?”

  “Just in the early morning. They’ll be done by eleven. We’ll be on the road by lunch. We could stop for something to eat and then go.”

  “Sure.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. I felt bad, but I didn’t want him to misunderstand and think it was a date or something.

  I texted Muriel and asked her and Drew to go with us. She answered right away.

  Me: Want to ride to Ann Arbor with me so I can drop my classes?

  Muriel: Road trip! Yay!

  Me: I guess that’s a yes.

  If Jen was home from school and could go, it would’ve been the whole group of demi-angels, except Chay.

  Since everyone was going, we needed a bigger car. So I drove to my dad’s office and switched out my car for his SUV. On my way back to Xavier’s house, I made a detour.

  My legs shook on my way up the walk. My hands were shaking so bad the keys I held rattled. I shoved them in the pocket of my jeans and took a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I jammed my finger on the doorbell before I could change my mind.

  The door opened almost immediately. “Milayna, it’s so good to see you,” Mrs. Roberts’ said. Reaching out, she gave me a hug. She smelled slightly of roses and gardenia, comforting smells. Her blonde curls were pulled back loosely in a clip at the base of her neck, and she wore faded jeans and a T-shirt. She looked like a teenager herself, not the mother of one.

  “Hi, Mrs. Roberts. How are you?”

  “I’m good.” She smiled. “Are you here to see him?”

  I felt my cheeks blush. Looking down at my hands clasped in front of me, I nodded. “That is, if he’ll see me.”

  “It’s a big adjustment for you both. A lot has happened—is happening. Please give him some time, Milayna. Don’t give up on him yet.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Roberts, that’s the last thing you need to worry about. I… well, I… um.” I laughed a short, nervous laugh. It was hard telling your ex-boyfriend’s mother that you were still in love with her son. “I… love him. I’m not going anywhere.”

  She cupped my cheek with her hand, and smiled at me. “He’s in his bedroom. Why don’t you just go down there? You remember where it is, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I walked past the two-way fireplace that separated the living room from the formal dining room. Turning down the hall, I walked to the last door on the left and stood in front of it. It was so much harder than I’d thought it’d be.

  I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s not like I’m asking him out on a date. The whole group is going. I just don’t want him to feel left out. Yeah, right.

  I reached up and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  I walked into the room. First, his face registered surprise. Clearly, I was the last person he thought would walk through his door. Then he masked his surprise fairly well with indifference, but I could see through the cracks. There was something there. Something more. I just couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Idiot. That’s all you can think of?

  “Hey.”

  Okay, we’re getting somewhere. He didn’t order me out. He actually spoke… sorta.

  “Um… I was wondering if you wanted to go with the group to Ann Arbor.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyone’s going. I didn’t want you to feel left out if we didn’t ask,” I answered.

  “Well, thanks for thinking of my ever-so-sensitive feelings, but that’s not what I was asking. Why are you going to Ann Arbor?”

  Ever-so-sensitive feelings? Sarcasm. This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped.

  I shrugged a shoulder. “I need to withdraw from my classes.”

  “You’re not going back to school?”

  “Not until this mess is cleared up. Hopefully next semester.” I shifted and leaned on my left leg. He didn’t ask me to sit.

  “And you’ll go to Ann Arbor?” he asked.

  I shrugged a shoulder. I didn’t know where I’d go. The plan had been for Chay and me to go to college together. We were going to take our minor courses at the community college in South Bay and then transfer to one of the universities for our major courses. But that had changed when Chay left. A lot had changed.

  “I guess it’ll depend on what’s here to make me want to stay,” I said, my gaze locked on his. “What about you? What do you think you’ll be doing?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I guess it depends on what’s here to make me want to stay.”

  “Chay, I—”

  “Who all is going on the road trip?” he interrupted.

  I blew out a breath. “The group.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes. Except Jen. She’s away at school,” I said.

  “I don’t think—what are you doing?”

  Walking to the bed where he sat, I lowered myself next to him. I turned so my body was angled toward his. “I want to talk. I can sit here all day if I need to.”

  “What about the others? They’re waiting for you.”

  “They’ll get over it.”

  “Fine. Talk.”

  “Why are you so angry with me?”

  His face softened just for a second. For a tiny moment, I saw my Chay. The one who loved me as much as I loved him. “I’m not angry with you, Milayna.”

  “Then why did you leave?” Tears pushed behind my eyes. I didn’t care. I let them fall. Maybe he’d understand how much it hurt me, hurt everyone, when he left. He reached out and gently brushed away a tear with the pad of his thumb. Realizing what he’d done, he jerked his hand back and leaned back on his elbows on the bed. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why did you stay away?” I asked.

  “I can’t be around you.”

  “Look at me when you say that.”

  He turned his head and looked into my eyes. “I don’t want to be around you, Milayna.”

  Pain ricocheted through me. It felt like someone set off a pinball in my head and it slammed from side to side. My heart skipped more than one beat, stuttering and making it hard to take a breath. “Oh. That kind of changes things.”

  “Yes. It does,” he agreed quietly.

  “Okay then. I’ll… just.” I stood and waved my hand toward the door. “Goodbye, Chay.” I bit down hard on my lip to keep it from quivering.

  “Damn it, Milayna, wait.”

  I stopped with one hand on the doorknob, keeping my back to him.

  “
I love you,” he murmured.

  I could feel the breath rush out of me. I could feel my heart slow. My shoulders sagged, and I leaned my head against the door to keep from falling.

  I’d waited six months to hear those words again. Six long months. But somehow, he made them sound wrong.

  “You can’t love me, Chay. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t tell a person you love them but don’t want to be around them. It doesn’t work like that. You just took the three words I’ve waited six months to hear and ruined them.”

  I started to open the door. Chay jumped up and was behind me in three long strides. He flattened his palm against the wood and pushed it closed, holding it while he talked. His lips were so close to my ear that my hair moved under his breath.

  “I don’t want to be with you because I can’t risk Abaddon using me to hurt you. I almost… I almost killed you. It’s too dangerous for us to be together.”

  “Abaddon’s dead,” I said, turning to him.

  “Dead? How?”

  “I killed him.”

  “Of course you did,” he said, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck and laughing a harsh, bitter laugh. “I should’ve known.” He let go of the door and took a step back.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “The great Milayna to the rescue. Saving the day when no one else can.”

  “Wait—what? Why are you mad?”

  “Nothing. Just forget it.”

  I laughed. It was cold and harsh, just like the man in front of me. “Oh, I see. You’re mad because it wasn’t you who killed him.”

  “No! I’m mad because I wasn’t strong enough to resist him and you were!” I could tell by the look on his face he hadn’t meant for his words to slip out.

  “Chay…” I reached out to him, but he stepped away from me. “Abaddon is to blame for what happened. Not you. I wasn’t under a curse or spell or whatever you want to call it—you were. You were under a demon’s curse and you were able to fight it. That takes a helluva lot more strength than poking him with a dagger.” Curling my fingers into a fist, I let my arm fall slowly to my side.

  “Just go. Have fun on your road trip.”

  “Please…” I reached out to him once more. My hand cupped his cheek before he stepped away.