“It’s Boo. The alarm went off, and when I checked, it’s because his collar went cold. It might mean Sasha took it off, but more likely, he’s dead, and that can’t mean anything good.”
“Shit!” Jax jumped out of bed and ran to his closet, threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, slid into his trench coat, then popped to her room, cloaked because he had no idea what, or who, he’d find. His relief was immediate when he saw Sasha was there, that she hadn’t been taken, but it swiftly turned to pain when he took in the whole situation.
She stood in a corner, clutching Boo’s lifeless body against her chest while her aunt and uncle shouted at her. Her eyes met his, but she didn’t move toward him. She knew he was cloaked, that the others couldn’t see him. But she also knew whatever was going down wasn’t going to be as horrible as she thought, because he was there. The anxiety in her eyes eased.
He looked toward Tim and Melanie and felt the old familiar feeling of defeat when he saw Tim’s eyes. He was surprised, because he hadn’t thought Tim was at risk.
“You don’t deserve this room,” Melanie said. “I can’t believe you brought that mangy thing into our house, and he attacked Brett! Look at the blood on the carpet. If he wasn’t dead already, I’d take him out and shoot him. Maybe I’d miss and shoot you instead.”
“You’ll clean this up,” Tim said, “and apologize to Brett. Then you can pack up your things and move down to the basement.”
“I’ll clean it up and I’ll move, but it’ll snow in Hell before I apologize to Brett. Did you hear what I said? He tried to rape me. If it wasn’t for Boo and Chris, he would have.”
Jax nearly passed out, the rush of blood to his head was so fast. Had he ever been this mad? Had he ever wanted to murder a human this much?
“He’s an eighteen-year-old boy,” Tim said, “and you’re prancing around in front of him all the time. What did you expect?”
With hate in her eyes, she said in a dead voice, “I’ll apologize.”
They both looked like they were disappointed, like they wanted to keep berating her, but with her total capitulation, there wasn’t much left to say. On their way out, Melanie said, “You could make all of this go away if you’d join the Ravens.”
“No way. I’m not a sellout like Tim.”
Tim, moving amazingly fast for a fat man, backhanded Sasha, knocking her to the floor. She tried to roll away, but the nanosecond between when she went down and when she realized Tim was coming at her again was enough time for him to slap her so hard, her lip busted, and blood dripped onto Boo’s fur. Tim was drawing his leg back to kick her when Jax threw a freeze on everyone in the house, picking Sasha up off the floor almost at the same time. She clung to him, blinking and shaking her head as if to clear it.
“Jax, I remember something,” she whispered. “You did this that night you found me in San Francisco, didn’t you?”
He kissed her lip until it healed, and held her cradled in his arms against his chest for as long as it took to get a grip on his anger. Finally, when he could speak, he said, “Yes. And now we have a big problem.”
“What to do with them when they unfreeze?”
“Right. Just stay with me and stay quiet, okay?”
She nodded and tightened her arms around his neck. He popped them to the house, to the war room in the basement, and set her on her feet before he hit the intercom and called his brothers. In less than a minute, they were all there, wearing trench coats over boxers or pajama bottoms. Key gave Jax a hard look. “Talk now.”
“Tim Shriver took the oath. He was assaulting her, and I froze the whole damn house. We’ve got maybe eight minutes before it fades.”
Key looked at Sasha before he took off to pace around the long oval table in the middle of the room, pushing his long hair behind his ears. “We can’t take them all, not yet. It’ll alert Bruno, and the whole plan will be screwed.”
Denys said from the opposite side of the room, “Let’s take Tim and leave the others. He’s huge, so Bruno wouldn’t question if he had a heart attack.”
Ty shook his head. “We don’t have a doppelgänger.”
“We can have one by this afternoon,” Zee pointed out. “In the meantime, we could put him in a coma and get M to work on his heart, so the hospital won’t question what happened to him.”
“It’s risky,” Phoenix said. “He could actually go into cardiac arrest and die. That’s a win for Eryx.”
“Don’t see we have a choice,” Zee said, fiddling with his diamond stud. “Sasha can’t stay in that house if he’s going to beat up on her.”
Key looked around at each of them. “Are we agreed?”
They all nodded.
He looked at Jax. “Will it work?”
“It’ll work, but the son of a bitch tried to rape her.”
“Tim?” three of them asked in unison.
“Brett.”
They all looked at Sasha, who was standing there in nothing but a T-shirt and wide eyes.
Phoenix asked, “Did he see your birthmark?”
“No. Boo attacked him before … before anything happened. Then he killed Boo and Chris came in and threatened to pound him if he didn’t leave. Then Tim came and I saw … his eyes, and he was mad about Boo, and about the blood on the carpet, and he shouted for Melanie. I told them why there was blood, why Boo bit Brett, and they called me a slut and said I’d have to live in the basement. Then Jax came and …”
She was babbling. Jax hauled her next to him and wrapped her inside his trench coat, looking over her head at his brothers. “I’m taking her to my room. If Chris wasn’t already asleep when I threw the freeze, make sure he’s asleep after the fade.”
“I will,” Ty said.
“When we’re back,” Key said, “we’ll discuss Sasha. What happened tonight cannot happen again. We need something more effective than a dog guarding her.”
As soon as his brothers disappeared, Jax popped her upstairs, picked her up, and laid her on his bed, drawing the covers to her chin. She blinked at him, resisting shock. Her teeth began to chatter. “I’m … so … cold.”
Unbending, he went to the console against the north wall and opened the doors, retrieved a bottle of whiskey, and poured half an inch. He took it to the bed and slid an arm around her waist, pulling her to sit. “Drink this.”
“It’ll make me … sick.”
“It won’t, I swear.” He watched her take the glass and said, “Small sips.”
She drank a little and made a face. “It’s like NyQuil.”
He resisted smiling at the comparison of his two-hundred-dollar reserve scotch whiskey to a four-dollar bottle of cold medicine. “It gets better.”
She kept sipping until it was gone and handed him the glass. “It did get better.”
He set it on the bedside table, and after she was lying down again, he tucked her in. “Try to sleep. I’ll stay right here until you wake up.”
“Jax, I don’t want to go back, but I … don’t have anywhere else to go, and I can’t leave Chris there all alone, especially now, when his dad is going to be gone.”
“I know, Sasha. We’ll talk about it when you wake up. Go to sleep now.” He’d force her to sleep if he could, but she was way past his being able to manipulate her in any way.
“Why did he do it, Jax? He hated Melanie, never even looked at Brett, made fun of the Ravens.”
“Everyone wants something, and if they want it bad enough, and if the Skia can figure out what it is, they’ll cave. Tim wanted something—I don’t know what—and he believed Bruno when he told him he could have it.”
She was quiet before she asked, “Would you sit here with me for a while?”
He sat and stroked her hair, watching for her lids to get heavy.
They didn’t. She was wide-eyed, staring up at his ceiling. She shivered.
“Are you still cold?”
She nodded. “Would you get in with me?”
Standing, he shrugged out of the trench coat an
d tossed it to a chair, then took off his boots and got into bed with her, still in jeans and a T-shirt. He pulled her next to him, and she laid her head against his shoulder, wrapped an arm around his middle, and was asleep in two seconds. He figured he’d stay awake until his brothers came home, then leave her there asleep while he went down to meet with them and figure out a new plan to keep her safe.
Instead, he drifted off, and when he woke up, he was on his side and she was curled into him like they were spoons in a drawer. He realized he’d woken up because Phoenix was standing next to the bed. “How did it go?” he whispered.
“We put Tim on the floor of his bedroom and set it up so he was comatose, and M worked on his heart. We put Melanie in the room so she’d see him right away. Chris wasn’t asleep, but Ty fixed it so he was after the freeze faded. That’s when shit got crazy.”
“How?”
“Melanie saw Tim passed out on the floor, but she didn’t call an ambulance. She got dressed, then went to see if he was dead yet. He wasn’t, so she went downstairs and made coffee. She had a cup, went back upstairs and checked again. She was pissed off he still wasn’t gone, and cussed him for living. This went on for over an hour, until Key said to hell with it and made Chris have a bad dream so he’d wake up and want to check on his dad. We were there almost two hours before an ambulance came to get Tim.”
“If Eryx knew, he’d take her out.”
Surprising him, because he thought she was still asleep, Sasha asked, “Why? I thought when they die, he takes their soul and it makes him more powerful.”
Phoenix said, “All true, but he wants them to live as long as possible so they can recruit new followers. If a lost soul kills another, it’s automatic death, and Melanie’s not calling an ambulance for Tim is like trying to kill him.”
Jax withdrew his arms from around Sasha, turned over, and sat up, blinking the last of sleep from his eyes. “What day is it?”
“Thursday,” Phoenix said.
Glancing at the clock, Jax said, “School starts in two hours. I’ll take Sasha home for some clothes and her books, then we’ll come back here, get dressed, and meet over breakfast.”
Phoenix said, “I’ll tell Key,” then disappeared.
Sasha rolled to her back and looked at him. “Jax, what am I going to do? Maybe I’m stronger than before, but last night, he was … I couldn’t get away from him.”
The concept of being overpowered wasn’t something he could comprehend, but looking into her eyes, he could see how frightened she was. “Did you eat dinner?”
“Just what we had at the coffeehouse.”
He shook his head. “Not enough. You’ve got to eat protein. If you get in a bad situation again, if you’ve eaten what you need, you won’t be as weak or helpless. As for Brett, we’ll think of something, Sasha. He won’t bother you again, I swear it.”
She sat up and slipped her arms around his neck. “I wish I could stay here until they’re all gone, but I can’t leave Chris.”
“I wish we could take them all out, immediately, so you wouldn’t be in harm’s way.”
“I want Bruno gone so he can’t take any more oaths, and I want the others gone so they can’t talk people into pledging, but when I think about what happens after they’re gone …”
He sighed. “Is there just no way you’ll change your mind, Sasha?”
Pulling back, she looked into his eyes and didn’t say yes, didn’t say no. “We should get dressed.”
No one was at the house when Jax took her to get some clothes; they were probably at the hospital with Tim. She hurriedly stuffed some things in one of the Macy’s bags from their shopping trip, grabbed her laptop and backpack, then he popped them back to his room.
“You can use my shower, and I’ll go next door to use Phoenix’s. If you need something, press the intercom button and ask for Mathilda. But fair warning, she’ll pop in really quickly.”
He left then, and she went to his bathroom, gawking at how huge it was. He had a ginormous bathtub, a separate shower, and a sauna. A sauna!
She walked farther and was in his closet, which was as big as the bathroom. He had a gazillion pairs of black leather boots and scads of shoes. He had at least twenty suits, all black, and dress shirts hanging in a perfect row, separated by color. He had tuxedos and flannel, sweaters and jeans, and a whole section was nothing but leathers. Standing there, looking around at his clothes, where he got dressed every day, she was overcome by his scent, that lovely fragrance of cider and spices, making her think of everything warm and wonderful.
In the middle of the back wall was a long, built-in dresser. She moved closer and noticed a small wooden box. It was rough hewn, almost primitive, but smooth and shiny from years of handling. Unable to quell her curiosity, she picked it up and lifted the lid. Inside was a small scrap of fabric, maybe linen, faded to beige, impossibly thin and worn in one place, as if he’d rubbed that spot over and over, wearing away the fibers. She lifted it out and saw a lock of dark hair beneath. It had to be his mother’s. He’d had this little box for a thousand years, kept it where he’d see it, every day, took out that little bit of fabric and touched it so he wouldn’t forget, so she’d never die in his heart.
Blinking, not wanting to cry again, she put the fabric back, replaced the lid, and carefully set the box back on the dresser.
She went to the shower and couldn’t stop thinking about that little box. She was still thinking about it when she stood in front of the mirror in his bathrobe and blew her hair dry.
He knocked and came in with a towel around his waist. Oh, man, he was amazing to look at. “Sorry. I need to get in my closet.” His gaze swept her from head to toe, not failing to notice the robe was dragging the ground, and he smiled.
“I hope you don’t mind. I was wet, and cold.”
He walked on toward his closet. “Of course I don’t mind. What’s mine is yours.” He closed the door, and she went back to drying her hair, wondering if he was looking inside that little box. Did he do it every day, before he got dressed? Or at night, before he went to bed? Maybe by now he didn’t take it out except every once in a while.
Why couldn’t she stop thinking about it? What was it about that little box with his mother’s mementos that fascinated her so much?
By the time he opened the door, dressed in jeans and another henley, this one red, she was curious enough to ask. “Don’t hate me for being nosy, but I looked in your closet.”
He shrugged while he took a seat on the bench close to the tub and pulled on his boots. “Not sure why you’d look. Just a bunch of clothes.”
“It’s a girl thing.”
“Really? Girls like to look in guys’ closets?”
“If it’s a guy they like, they want to look at all his stuff.” She fidgeted with the hairbrush. “I’m kinda curious about that little box on your dresser.”
Done with his boots, he stood and disappeared into the closet, returning a few seconds later with the box. “This one, you mean?”
She nodded, not admitting she’d already looked inside. “It looks so old.”
He came close, the box on his palm, and lifted the lid. “I made it when I was a kid, from an old dead hickory tree on Kyanos. Took me a couple of months of whittling.” He moved still closer, to show her the contents. “When my mother died, we each took a piece of her robe and a lock of her hair before we buried her.” His fingers lifted the fabric from the box, and as if by instinct, he rubbed it. “Someday it’ll disintegrate, especially if I don’t stop touching it, but it’s funny, I can’t help it.” He looked up and met her gaze. “Kinda weird, huh?”
“No,” she whispered around the lump in her throat, “not weird at all.”
He put the lid back and returned to the closet, calling out as he went, “Are you about ready? I bet you’re hungry, and Hans is making his famous pancakes, just because you’re here.”
“Hans?”
“He’s the cook, a Purgatory that came to the mountain during
World War One.” He returned to the bathroom and watched while she put on some makeup. “You don’t need all that stuff, Sasha. You’re unholy gorgeous without it.”
“You’re such a guy.”
“I’m just pointing out the obvious.”
“You’re prejudiced because I’m Anabo. Also inclined to flattery.” She leaned closer to the mirror to put on mascara, well aware he was watching her every move.
“That looks hard to do.”
“You get used to it.” She dropped the mascara into her cosmetics bag and dug around for lip gloss. When she was done, she pulled out her clothes. “I’ll go in your closet to get dressed.”
“Do you have to? Let me watch.”
She walked away. “You’re bluffing. If I said yes, you’d leave.”
“You’re right, but only because we need to get downstairs, and I’d be way too distracted.”
“What is it with guys and naked girls?”
He was following her. “Not girls. Girl. Just you. I only want to see you naked.”
She’d never understand why she did it, but she jerked the tie belt loose, flung off the robe, and turned to face him. “Okay, there. Now you’ve seen me naked. Is it really such a big deal?”
He wasn’t looking at her body. Just her eyes. He looked a little hurt. “You don’t have to make fun of me.”
Everything went still. So still, she’d swear the rivers stopped running and the birds weren’t singing. “I would never make fun of you, Jax.”
Turning away, he walked out and closed the door behind him.
Not sure what just happened, but feeling like she’d kicked a puppy, she hurriedly got dressed, then went to find him. He was standing at the window in his room, looking out at the mountains. Moving to stand next to him, she reached for his hand. “Are you mad at me?”
“No. It’s okay, Sasha. I don’t know when to stop, and I forget sometimes that you’re seventeen and still so innocent.”
“I know what’s up, Jax. It’s not like I exist in a bubble.”
“Sure, you know, but you haven’t lived it.” His hand tightened around hers. “And for all that I’ve been alive a thousand years, I’m about as clueless as you are when it comes to how this works.” He sighed. “I want to be with you all the time. I want to know everything you do, and why. I wish I knew how to be romantic, and I think a lot about stuff they do in movies, but then it just seems so corny, and I know I’d start laughing and ruin everything.”