by Kiki Howell
Jacob could guess what she was about to say. He didn’t want to hear it, nor did he need to. ‘What if’ and ‘if only’ never solved anything, they just made life all the more complicated.
It wasn’t easy to hug someone while holding a sword, especially when Kirsten’s magic bag at her side got in the way, but Jacob managed well enough.
“Don’t,” he murmured. “What happened, happened, and we can’t take it back. But we can move forward. We can move past it. If that’s something you want.”
When she gave him a pained look, Jacob’s heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Had he read everything wrong? What if she didn’t want to move past their break-up? What if her admission changed nothing after all? What if he was meant to go on as before, except that now he’d know she felt the same way he did? It’d make everything incredibly more painful. Jacob wasn’t sure he could live like this.
“I love you,” she said softly, as though reading the fears on his features. “But that doesn’t mean everything is solved for me. Not any more than before. I guess... I guess we need to talk.”
Despite himself, Jacob grimaced. The last time she’d said those words to him, it hadn’t ended well.
“It doesn’t mean it’ll be a bad thing,” she whispered, brushing her fingers across his cheek. “Just that we have a lot to talk about. But... later? I could fall asleep on my feet right now.”
“Later,” Jacob agreed. One word was all he could manage with his tight throat.
Grabbing the strap of Kirsten’s bag, he ignored her protests and drew it over her head before slinging it over his shoulder. A simple gesture, but it took him all the way back to their years together. As they started walking again, she did what she used to do back then, too: she slipped her hand into his and held on tight.
They were soon stepping up the driveway where Jacob had, long ago, learned how to ride a bike. Judging by how few cars had been driving down the street, it was pretty late at night, but no car was parked outside the door. Jacob had to let go of Kirsten’s hand to fish his keys from the inside pocket of his jacket. As soon as they stepped in, he called out, “Dad?” but as he’d expected no answer came. It didn’t take him long to realize the house was empty. Both his fathers had to be out hunting demons.
“Do you want to wait for them so they can drive you home?” Jacob asked. “Or there’s the guest bedroom if you prefer.”
“Yes, please,” Kirsten said with a sigh. “I’m going to take the longest shower ever and try to get out before I fall asleep and drown myself.”
Jacob had to agree it sounded like a fabulous idea.
As they climbed the steps to the second floor, Trixie appeared at the top of the staircase. Sitting by the banister, she eyed Jacob curiously and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Hey Trix. Did you miss me?”
He reached out to pet her, but she sniffed at his hand and, without warning, hissed and ran off.
“I guess she didn’t miss me that much,” he tried to joke, but Kirsten barely offered a half-smile in reply. She really was exhausted.
He took her to the guest bedroom and she went straight to the attached bathroom. When the door clicked shut behind her, Jacob set down her bag of magic supplies and considered the bed. The sheets hadn’t been changed since Rachel had spent the night before he and Kirsten had taken their little trip. Andrew was usually pretty quick about this kind of things. Jacob wasn’t sure what it meant.
He stripped the bed, remade it with new linens. The shower was still running by the time he was done, and he knocked on the bathroom door.
“Kirsten? You didn’t drown yourself, did you?”
“Not yet,” she called out.
“I’m leaving clothes for you to sleep in on the bed. Let me know if you need anything else.”
After a brief pause, she answered with a simple, “Thank you.”
Jacob said goodnight and left the room. A shower sounded like a terrific idea, but he’d been trained to take care of his weapons after a fight before anything else. He went back downstairs, retrieved the sword where he’d left it by the wall, and took it into the back room.
His mind was blank as he scrubbed dried blood off the steel. Some of it—very little—was his. Most was demon blood. He’d wiped his sword on the largest demon’s tunic after his last fight, but it hadn’t been enough.
As he scrubbed the dried, dark blood off, his throat started to tighten at the memory of plunging the blade into the young demons. Suddenly, holding the sword was beyond him. He set it down in front of him and grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, bowing his head and closing his eyes. He took a few deep breaths that helped clear his mind, but couldn’t bear to look at the sword again. Pushing back from the table, he turned away before he opened his eyes and left the room.
Returning upstairs, he paused briefly by the guest room. No light filtered under the door, and he couldn’t hear anything more than Kirsten’s regular heartbeat. It was nice to know she’d found sleep easily.
Jacob stepped to his room, washed up and slipped on clean clothes. He was about to try to call his fathers now that his phone had charged up for long enough when he heard the rumble of a car in the driveway. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, both Andrew and Nicholas were walking in and calling his name. Jacob had never been happier to see them.
ANDREW DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what Kirsten meant, and he said as much.
“All those diaries can tell you is how Cara became pregnant.” Eyeing Kirsten’s and Jacob’s entwined hand, he added, “If that’s what you intend to do, you have my blessing, but I doubt you’ll need a spell.”
His intent was to fluster Kirsten and get out of this conversation. What happened instead was that Jacob blushed brightly and hissed out a quiet, “Dad” the way he used to, when he was younger, whenever Andrew did something ‘embarrassing.’ Kirsten, on the other hand, barely reacted.
“Last I checked,” she said dryly, “I’m the one who knows anything about magic here. The only way we’ll know what I can get from those diaries is if you let me have a look at them. And if you’ll recall, working on new spells by extrapolating from old ones is my specialty. And again, I don’t plan to do anything that could harm Jacob.”
Andrew didn’t like this, not any of it. He liked it even less for the fact that what Kirsten said made sense. If she’d been unapologetic in her desire to do whatever needed to be done to stop the demon invasion, it would have been easy to shut her out. But she was saying something else altogether. She was saying Jacob’s safety mattered to her the same way it did to Andrew. She was saying she wouldn’t use whatever knowledge she gained if there was a risk. She was also implying there might be an end to all this without harm coming to Jacob.
When he looked at Nicholas, Andrew was seeking the same support Nicholas had offered him moments earlier. What he got instead was a calculating look.
“If the girl agrees to some ground rules,” Nicholas said quietly, “it might not be so bad.”
“The girl has a name,” Jacob interjected. “And if by ‘not so bad’ you mean we might manage to put an end to all this, then yes, please, let’s set some rules and get to work.”
Andrew grimaced. He knew that tone of voice. It was the same tone Jacob had always used when saying he wanted to train to fight demons. And it was the same tone his mother had used when declaring she would carry Andrew’s child, whatever the cost. In both cases, Andrew had found himself swept up by their willpower. He had a feeling that, regardless of how hard he fought, things would be no different this time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
BACK IN HIGH school, Kirsten had been part of the ‘Model UN’ club. Every quarter, she and the other students had staged debates and mock-negotiations mirroring events that were going on in the world. She’d enjoyed it, and had liked to think she was rather good at it. Nonetheless, when she sat down at the kitchen table with Andrew across from her, Nicholas on her left and Jacob on her right, she realized tha
t a few debates could not have begun to prepare her for this.
Downstairs, Andrew had made his reluctance clear. Now, cornered into negotiations he had little interest in, it was more than reluctance she could see on his face. He was looking at her in a way she’d seen other people look at demons. She was the enemy, she had no doubt about it, and it was not a pleasant feeling. She’d never been afraid of him, but he was a vampire and her boss, and he could be intimidating without even trying. Good thing she had Jacob on her side.
“So, what rules do you want to set?” she asked, showing nothing of her nerves—or at least, she hoped she wasn’t.
“You already know the first one,” Nicholas said before Andrew could even open his mouth. “If there’s any risk whatsoever that Jacob might be harmed by whatever spell you come up with, then it’s not happening. Period.”
“I already told you I don’t want him to get hurt,” she replied with a little eye roll.
“Yes, you said as much.” Andrew’s voice was low, his gaze unforgiving. “But I want you to understand something.” He paused and leaned a little forward over the table. “I’ve never been a killer. The only human lives I ever took were my Childer’s, and they all asked to be sired. If you break the pact we’re making today, if anything at all happens to my son—”
“Dad!” Jacob hissed, but Andrew went on undeterred, and voiced what Kirsten had already guessed he would say.
“—I will kill you.”
It was a death threat, there was no denying that much, but it didn’t scare her. If it came to that—if she created a spell, cast it, and accidentally caused harm to Jacob—she’d never be able to forgive herself. She didn’t want to die, but she wasn’t sure she could live with that kind of guilt weighing on her, either.
“Dad,” Jacob said again, shaking his head. “You can’t threaten her like that, it’s not—”
“It’s fine, Jacob,” she said, reaching for his hand on the table and squeezing it lightly. When he turned worried eyes to her, she smiled. “Those terms are fine with me.”
“Fine with you?” he repeated, his eyes wide and incredulous. “Kirsten, he’s talking about killing you! There’s nothing fine about that!”
“What he’s doing is giving me a really, really good incentive to be certain of what any spell I come up with does.”
While Andrew gave her a humorless smile and Nicholas snorted, Jacob apparently saw nothing amusing in her words.
“You mean, the way you were certain about your sunlight spell?”
Pulling her hand away from his, she crossed her arms. “I was certain about it,” she said, annoyed. “And I still am. It didn’t go awry because I did anything wrong. It was your blood. How was I supposed to know what your blood might do, when added to those ingredients?”
“How are you supposed to know it now?” Andrew interjected. “It’s not like there’s a treatise out there about any of this.”
“Isn’t there?” she shot back. “Until I’ve seen those diaries, I’ll reserve judgment on that.”
She could see he was about to object, so she continued smoothly. “You’ve read them, sure, but what do you know about magic? Something innocuous to you might make all the difference to someone who understands magic. And without being immodest, I do. I don’t just have raw power. I understand how it works. If you’re going to show these diaries to anyone, I’m the best possible person for that.”
After observing her for a little while, Andrew said, “‘If’ is the correct word. I’m still not convinced I should.”
Jacob heaved a sigh. “Dad, come on. Haven’t we been over that already?”
Andrew’s gaze did not leave Kirsten, and she realized this was it. This was the moment she convinced him—or not.
“You should,” she said calmly. “Not because people are dying all over the world. Not because it’s the right thing to do for them. But because one day...” She had to swallow hard to clear her throat and finish. “One day Jacob is going to die under a demon sword and you know it as well as I do. You’ve known it since the moment he told you he wanted to fight. And you know there’s nothing you can do about it. It took me a while to get it, and even longer to understand it, but now maybe I can do something about it. Just maybe. But a maybe is better than what you have right now.”
She had him. All she needed was to see the way he was looking at Jacob, worry and determination battling on his features, and she knew Andrew would agree in the end. Even when he said gruffly, “I need to think about it. Go home, take the rest of the day off. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Kirsten wasn’t worried.
He didn’t need that time to decide, but to wrap his mind around the decision he’d already made. Beaming, she looked at Jacob. He smiled back, but for some reason he didn’t look quite as excited as she felt. No matter, she thought. They’d won this first battle and that was enough for now.
THERE WAS A LOT JACOB wanted to talk about with Kirsten, including where they stood in relation to each other now that they’d both admitted they each still loved the other, but she’d mentioned meeting her brother, and he didn’t want to crowd her. He’d have time later, after he’d put some order in his mind. Besides, he needed to talk to someone else first.
As Kirsten left the room, Andrew and Nicholas started to stand. Jacob shot a hard look to Andrew.
“We’re not done,” he said darkly. “Sit.”
Andrew stilled, though he did not take his seat again and remained standing by the table. His expression wavered between surprise and mild annoyance.
“You might want to check your tone, young man.”
“And you might want to recheck the kind of threats you think are appropriate toward my girlfriend. Let me give you a hint. The correct answer is none.”
Nicholas snickered, drawing Jacob’s attention to him.
“So, she’s your girlfriend again, now?”
Jacob’s cheeks felt like they were on fire. He hoped it looked more like anger than embarrassment. He pushed away from the table and stood so they wouldn’t both be looking down at him.
“Not the point,” he said. “The point is that I’m not going to stand there and listen to you threaten—”
“But you just did,” Andrew cut in. “I said my piece, and she heard me. The topic is closed.”
“The topic is not closed! If you think I’m going to let you hurt her—”
“The whole point is that you wouldn’t be there to stop him,” Nicholas cut in. “He said he’d kill her if she does something to harm you, remember? And while we’re on the subject, I thought that was rather amazing how you could say that with a straight face, Andrew.”
Now they were both staring at Nicholas, which didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. If anything, he smirked a little more widely.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Andrew demanded, his voice close to a growl.
Nicholas shrugged nonchalantly. “You know what it means. You’ve killed three people in that many centuries, for the sole purpose of making us vampires. And you’ve admitted yourself that you regretted the killing part, as necessary as it was. The girl believed your threats. Jacob did too. But I didn’t.”
Wondering if Andrew had really been faking, Jacob turned to him. His face showed nothing whatsoever as he considered Nicholas. Empty threats, Jacob could live with... but were they empty threats?
When Andrew’s gaze came back to Jacob, it felt cooler than it had been in a long time.
“We lost you for a couple of hours last night,” Andrew said in a quiet voice. “And that was still one of the worst moments of my entire existence. Does it surprise you that much that I’d be ready to do anything if I lost you for good?”
It was like Kirsten’s fears, all over again—like her saying she’d left him rather than stay and risk losing him. On the one hand, Jacob was humbled by how much love was directed at him; on the other, it was stifling.
“But you are going to lose me,” he said, swallowing a sigh. “Maybe from a demon sword
like she said. Or maybe from an illness. Or maybe when I’m out jogging and a car runs me over. Or maybe when I’m a little old man, tired after a long life. Would you go after a doctor who couldn’t save me?” He turned to Nicholas, showing him the question was meant for them both. “Would you go after the driver who killed me by accident?”
“We’re not talking about an accident,” Andrew said, though he sounded troubled. “We’re talking about Kirsten doing a spell and—”
“And potentially making a mistake,” Jacob cut in. “Magic is tricky. Sometimes it does things the mage didn’t intend. Julie proved that before. And my mother.” His voice dropped to a near whisper at that, but firmed up again when he continued. “I get it. If I died, you’d be devastated. But I’m pretty sure she would be, too. So I’m asking you. If something happened to me because of that spell, don’t hurt her. Please.”
He didn’t know what else he could say, how else he could impress upon his father, upon both of them, that he meant every word, and that this was important to him; that Kirsten was important to him. Then again, given that he’d only ever gone against their wishes about two things in his entire life—Kirsten and fighting demons—they had to realize how serious he was.
NICHOLAS REMEMBERED all too well the last time things had been so tense in this kitchen. Jacob, still a teen, had been staunchly affirming his intention to fight demons, and Andrew had been dead set against it. It had only been one of many discussions about the topic.
Jacob seemed quite as determined today; and Andrew’s expression, just as severe. It was time for Nicholas to do what he did best and calm things down.
“He’s not going to hurt anyone,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “The goal was to scare the girl—”
“Her name is Kirsten,” Jacob interjected, frowning.
“Scare Kirsten,” Nicholas picked up, “so she won’t take any of it lightly. She seemed suitably warned to me, don’t you think, Andrew?”
It took an impatient look from Nicholas for Andrew to offer the tiniest of nods.
