by Nicole Thorn
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said gently. “What happened?”
Jasmine turned her mismatched eyes up to me, resting her chin on my chest. “Nothing,” she lied. “I just don’t feel good.”
I could tell that she had only started to come out of a night of drinking. I shouldn’t have let her go out, but what could I do? I wasn’t her keeper. I loved her, but that didn’t give me any power.
“You were crying,” I pointed out as I sat us up. I took her, and set her on my lap, tucking her against me because I refused to let her be farther away. I had nothing else. “Tell me what happened.”
I didn’t Charm her, because I hated doing that. I used to have to influence Kizzy with it, and I hated myself for it. Sometimes I didn’t have another option, though this was not one of those times. Jasmine needed to trust me.
“Bad night,” she said.
With a sigh, I decided I couldn’t push her. I laid her down on my bed and went to get a shirt for her. It would drop well past her bottom, so would be appropriate to sleep in. More than her current clothes. I handed it to her, and looked away while she changed. Then I pulled off her shoes, and put them in the corner before I threw her clothes in my hamper so I could wash them later.
After I pulled the blankets up to her chin, I got back in the bed with her. She immediately rolled over, and snuggled up against my chest. I let her, because I was too selfish to do the right thing and force her away. My broken little Jasmine could be mine tonight.
I didn’t sleep, but she did, and that mattered more. She whimpered through nightmares, though. I did a bad, bad thing when I whispered in her ear to dream of something else. Something happy and warm. When she eased as if I sedated her, I laid in peace until she woke up again.
Jasmine groaned until she opened her eyes. I smiled at her, and said, “Hungry?”
Jasmine nodded, and ran a hand through messy hair. She clearly hadn’t cheered up, so I scooped her into my arms and brought her out of the room. I wore pajama bottoms and a shirt, so I looked decent enough. And you couldn’t see anything but Jasmine’s legs. So there.
When we started to walk past Nemo’s tank, Jasmine mumbled out an order for me to stop so she could see her beta that wasn’t a fucking beta. The thing had been decapitated and grew a new head.
“Morning, Nemo,” she said, smiling as I held her to the tank. “Mama’ll bring you candy later.”
The little guy swam around, not caring too much about the promise.
It had been a little less than two months since this whole . . . thing started. Right after my and Kizzy’s eighteenth birthdays, the furies decided we needed to be punished for our sins. But I was the only sinner here. The only living one. I killed the others, and I didn’t regret a line of it. They deserved more than I gave them. The bitch who touched my baby sister, and the psycho who beat her for it. The people who broke her and left the pieces for me to try and repair. But I couldn’t repair them. The best I could ever do was keep her from falling even further apart. She only just now wanted to get better, after years of thinking she didn’t deserve to be better. To have what she wanted.
Then we met the seers, and everything changed. They were all so broken, but none of them knew it. They didn’t see what we saw. Kizzy never doubted she had been damaged, but it was something else to see blindness in people. Jasper saw it now, and he wanted to be better. He worked on that with Kizzy. He knew that there was something wrong with him and his sisters, but I didn’t know if he quite understood the extent. But that was a process, and at least he started.
The girls were a whole different story. My little Jasmine drank her problems away, and Juniper bleached them away. It all acted as a bandage, and soon it wouldn’t work anymore. I waited for the levee to break, and feared that day.
“We can play later,” I told Jasmine as I dragged her into the kitchen. Everyone else made themselves scarce, so I figured I could start on breakfast for all of us.
I sat Jasmine in a chair, and started.
I put a pot of coffee on for her, and began to gather what I needed to make a breakfast for five. Everyone liked the same kind of things, but Juniper, who would rather deny herself than enjoy a day. For her, I made up egg whites and a little bowl of fruit. Everyone else got the works. Bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast, and sausage. The greasy food should help Jasmine.
My sister came downstairs, riding on her boyfriend’s back. I could have killed him, but I chose not to. I needed to constantly remind myself that it was a wonderful thing, that he had my kid sister all the fuck over him. And yes, I realized that she was not my sister, and yes, I realized we were born on the same day, but fuck it. I was taller. I am the big brother.
Kizzy couldn’t handle being touched if it wasn’t me, up until she went and fell in love. Jasper eased her into things, and I thought that a good thing. At least they hadn’t had sex yet. I knew that for a few reasons. One, she would have told me. Two, I would have felt the change in aura between them. Three, they didn’t officially have a room they shared. She slept in his room every night, but she still had one of her own. Kizzy wasn’t ready for sex yet, and I thought it would be a long road to that. At least she had someone like Jasper, who seemed more than okay with waiting for her. He made her as comfortable as she could have been.
He put her in a chair and helped me put everything on the table. Kizzy began making up his plate before he even sat down, and she put it on his placemat. He had gotten better with the whole, eating on time thing. She still worried.
Last to come was Juniper, and I gingerly put her food in front of her, bowing obnoxiously. “Ma lady,” I said.
She stared at me.
We ate as a family. Kizzy and I found a home after all this time being hidden from the world. As broken as the seers were, Kizzy and I had just as much damage. I’d been a killer since I was thirteen, and she had been abused in such an ugly way. But we all found each other. That had to count for something.
We’d had some peace this last month and a half. We got to celebrate Christmas for the first time, and it had been wonderful. Kizzy’s and my mothers stopped by to give us all gifts. Jasper got Kizzy a little plant for the house, among other things. She loved it, of course. It had been a lovely day, with more before and after. The house had been repaired, Nemo hadn’t died, Kizzy started getting better, and . . . everything else stayed the same.
Jasmine always lingered on my mind. She worried me so much, and I didn’t know what to do. She lived with so much pain, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. So, she drank, she put herself in danger, and she ignored it. She didn’t see that one day, it would crush her. It would sneak up on her, and she wouldn’t stand a chance. Then what would I do?
We ate and I was careful to only look at the girl when she didn’t pay attention. Jasmine was hungover out of her mind, so that proved easy. I could still feel her quiet sadness, but I didn’t want to ask her about it. If she wasn’t willing to tell me, then I wouldn’t force her.
“We’re going to be in the studio later,” Kizzy told me. “If you need us. Jasper and I are finishing up that little clay VW I wanted to give Mom.”
They spent almost every hour together now, and I tried to be fine with my best friend not being around much anymore. It was for the best of course, but it didn’t make me any less sad to not have my snuggle buddy anymore.
“I have cleaning to do,” Juniper said as she set her glass down. “The snow last week made the gutters all messy.” She made a face. “Should take me a while.”
I would have offered to help if I thought Juniper would go for it. She didn’t let anyone do the chores but her. Everything had to be perfect, or she would meltdown. So, I tried to not add to the messes.
“No problem,” Kizzy said. “If you want, I can get the leaves out.”
Of course, Juniper turned her down. “I’ve got it. Thanks.”
Jasmine still looked off, and I felt useless again. I poked her from under the table, and she looked up at me. “You okay?”
I asked.
She smiled at me. “I’m great, Zander. Really.” She rubbed my arm. “I’m fine.”
Jasmine had never been fine.
CHAPTER THREE:
Blown Away
Jasmine
Zander had been doing that overprotective stalker thing again. It used to bug me a lot more than it did now. Guess I had gotten used to it. The first time he did it was after I got hurt. He would follow me all around the house, and carry me up and down the stairs against my will. It was hardly my fault that a fury looked at me, and thought I’d make a great punching bag. And I did. I excelled at being a punching bag. Few people could be a better punching bag than I could.
Now he only did it when he thought there was something wrong, since I didn’t go around getting myself hurt on a regular basis. I didn’t know why he ever thought something had gone wrong, because nothing ever did. I had a great life. My brother and sister treated me better than most people can dream. I had amazing friends in him and Kizzy. We only had our father, but he loved us. I didn’t see why Zander thought something in me needed to be fixed.
I’m perfectly fine.
After breakfast, Juniper went outside. I wanted to stand out there to make sure she didn’t fall off the roof and break her neck, but she wouldn’t have liked that. Juniper preferred doing things herself, because she liked making sure they got done right. She did that best when no one watched her.
I’d just listen for the sound of screams, and hope for the best.
While she did that, Jasper and Kizzy disappeared into his studio—which was really the garage, but we had converted it for him. My brother liked to make things. Artsy things, and Juniper couldn’t handle that mess in the house, so it went into the garage. She tried not to go in there too often, but when she did, she couldn’t help but straighten up.
I forced Zander to leave me alone long enough for a shower. Not that I would have minded seeing him shower, but I was the one under the water.
Zander was very, very attractive. Mm. In the back of my head, I heard Jasper telling me that I couldn’t leave my room, and grinned.
After my shower, I pulled on a flowy dress. It went down to my knees, and the bottom puffed out and swished around my legs. The top hugged my chest a little more than I normally liked, but it looked nice. The dress was a deep purple with a handful of light blue dots on it. I did a little bit of makeup so that I would look cheerful, and shook my hair out so that it looked messy. When I finished with all that, I took a step back and looked at myself critically. I appeared normal.
Good.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, I peeked right and left, making sure that Zander didn’t do his stalker thing. I mean, it was pretty sweet that he cared so much, but I didn’t need him to watch out for me. I just wanted to snuggle last night. It wasn’t like I sought comfort or something.
The coast was clear, so I zipped downstairs. I paused by Nemo’s tank to give him an offering of Cheetos, and looked in at him. He bumped the glass with his nose. I frowned at him. “What kinda games are you playing?” I asked my fish, whom I loved very much. Jasper won him for me at a carnival when we had been eighteen, and had only just moved out. Nemo was the first pet I ever had.
So, I found it a little concerning that he had a second head . . . After the first got decapitated. I tried hard not to draw conclusions.
I stepped back from the tank, but then paused to frown at him again. I got up on the stool that let me clean the bottom of the tank—when Juniper allowed me to do it anyway—and peered into the water. “Are you bigger?” I asked my fish. “You looked . . . bigger.” Like he had grown overnight. He was the size of my middle finger now, and he hadn’t been when I went to bed.
Shaking my head, I stepped down. “I don’t know what the fury did to you, ya know other than the decapitation, but it’s starting to get concerning.”
Nemo nibbled on a Cheeto happily. He had no clue that he was a freak of nature, but I loved him anyway. When I knew that my fish had been well fed, I went over to the computer we kept in the corner. We weren’t much for computers, but we had a couple. Juniper had one in the office that only she could touch. She did the bills on it.
And this one. Jasper had a laptop, but I didn’t need one, so I usually used the family computer. I pulled up Google, and then stopped. What are the chances that he already has an obit up? I mean, it already seemed creepy that I wanted to cyberstalk this guy, but did I really want to hurt myself like that again when I knew what happened.
I frowned, and nudged the mouse around aimlessly for a couple of minutes. Bill had been so kind to me, when he could have easily tried to hurt me. Plenty of people liked to mess with drunk chicks just to watch them flounder around. Instead, he had gotten me a cab home. A kindness that few people cared to show.
I shouldn’t look . . . but I’m going to.
His name had been revealed to me in the midst of my vision. I remembered it from years of practice with my father. Back when he had us getting dirt on the people in our neighborhood, so that he could blackmail them. Juniper was the only one who had trouble remembering what she saw. I didn’t think she couldn’t remember, but that she didn’t want to. All that information acted as clutter, and that didn’t belong in her world.
William Franklin Donahue. I typed his name carefully, and then typed Seattle after it, and hit enter. A ton of hits popped up, but I got what I wanted pretty quickly. I clicked on the link to his Facebook page, and smiled sadly. He hadn’t used it much, but what he did put up was pictures of his grandchildren. At least twenty of his new grandson, wiggling around like mad.
His profile picture had been of a fish. The kind that people hung on the walls in the hopes that it’d harass their guests when they walked by. It had a caption that said something salty next to it, and that had me smiling again. I scrolled through his page until I saw his wife’s picture. I recognized her from my vision.
Against my better judgment, I clicked on it. She had poured her heart out on the post about how he had died that morning, at 4:10. My eyes watered as I looked at it. She wanted to let everyone know he died, she said. There were dozens of posts with condolences typed in.
I sat back, and crossed my arms over my chest, trying to breathe normally. He died of a heart attack, like I’d seen. He had sat right up in bed, and he had reached for his wife . . . and he had died. I looked down at my lap. It shouldn’t have hit me this hard. I barely knew the man. Sure, he had been nice, but lots of people were nice.
People died every day, and I saw a lot of it. It shouldn’t have hurt this much to see that he had passed away, but it did. I scrolled through the messages until I found one of his three children. I clicked on their page, and it had another message similar to her mother’s. She talked about her father, and how much she had loved him, and what a good man he had been.
His two boys had said similar things. By the time I finished cyberstalking them, I was thoroughly upset. All of them missed him already, and wanted everyone to know that they felt grateful for the good thoughts and wishes. The last thing I read was about the funeral, and how they planned it, and would post the date as soon as they knew.
I closed out of the program, and looked over at Nemo. He had finished eating his Cheeto, and swam lazily around the tank. Happy as could be. He didn’t know that Mama hurt herself for no good reason. So, Mama had to shake it off, and act like everything was fine. That man would be missed, but he had loved ones that would remember him fondly. He had grandchildren named after him. He had lived a good life.
I shook off the bad feelings, rose to my feet, and pushed the chair in. All right, what to do, what to do . . . It wasn’t even ten yet, so the bars hadn’t opened. Damn it. I would have loved to drink a little beer. I wondered if anyone in the house would notice if I took one from the fridge. I wasn’t supposed to get one before noon. Juniper and Jasper would let me get away with it, but Zander and Kizzy would not.
Before I could think too hard on it, Jasper and Kizzy cam
e into the house. They both had clay dust and paint on their hands, but they seemed careful not to touch anything. Jasper looked at me, and I beamed at him. “What are you guys doing?” I asked cheerfully, following them into the kitchen.
“We were going to get groceries,” he said, while Kizzy turned the faucet on. He looked back over at me. “Do you wanna come along?”
I thought about it for a couple of seconds. Jasper’s one chore was to do the grocery shopping, and Kizzy never left him alone for too long. It was that whole love thing. She liked being around him, and it made me so happy that he had someone who loved him that it hurt sometimes.
I shook my head, because I didn’t want to intrude on their time. “Nah, that’s fine. You should totally pick me up some candy, though, Jasp.” I beamed as wide as I could, and gave him my hopeful eyes.
He smirked. “Of course.”
He and Kizzy disappeared out the front door to fetch some food so that we didn’t starve the rest of the week. I perched on the counter while thinking about what to do. Zander was still upstairs, doing something. Probably trying not to act like a super stalker. It wouldn’t surprise me if he made himself wait for an hour before he could come and bother me again.
I heard a noise from outside, so I hopped down to go see what happened. Juniper came down the ladder. She had a bag in her hand, and I could see dead things in it. I wrinkled my nose. “Want some help with that?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to take it to that Dumpster around the corner. Be back in ten minutes.”
My shoulders slumped. Nothing to do . . . but no one would see me drink that beer either. I scuttled into the kitchen, and pulled the fridge open happily. The bottles had been arranged neatly in three rows of four. If I took one out, it had to be the one nearest the left, and then I had to remove them in a certain order, or Juni would flip. I didn’t want Juni to flip, so I pulled the first one out. It felt ice cold, and nice in my hand.
