by Megan Curd
Krista wasn’t been too thrilled about his sudden breakup with her, or the fact he was trying to get back with me. She seemed to take it as a personal insult that he preferred a sophomore that wasn’t on the homecoming court to her. She’d push through and find someone else to yank around within a week, I was sure.
Reese met me at my locker at the end of the day. He slammed it shut to announce his presence. “So how goes the prodigal boyfriend?”
I sighed, reworking the combination to finish what I had started. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
This put a smile on his face. “So then you are fair game.”
“Reese, don’t do this.”
“Why? If he’s not your boyfriend, then obviously you’re not sure about it. My kiss left a mark, didn’t it?” He grinned his most mischievous grin, making me shake my head.
“Yes, you’ve scarred me for life, are you happy now? It doesn’t change anything, Reese. He’s my Protector.”
He grunted, running his hand through his hair in frustration. “Well, here comes Mr. Prodigal himself, so I’m gonna split. Baseball practice. I’ll text you later.”
“Mmhmm,” was all I gave him.
Before he left, he gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Seriously, Ash. Just think about it.” With that, he bounced away, his demeanor unchanged by my denial. He passed Liam as he walked, turning to wink at me once more after they had passed.
My stomach was in knots as I watched Liam walk toward me. His usual confident stride was broken as he reached my locker. Leaning against the wall of lockers, his gaze didn’t meet mine. “I miss you, Ash.”
“I bet you do.”
“Ashlyn, just answer me this,” he suddenly blurted out. I shut my locker and turned toward him, wary. “Could you ever forgive me, or am I strictly your protector now?”
I looked at him, judging how honest I wanted to be versus how much I wanted to make him squirm. He certainly deserved it. “I’m not sure, Liam. You said you wanted to kill me. To kill your mom, essentially.”
He looked down, ashamed. “I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”
“You didn’t give us a chance to explain.”
He opened his mouth to say something more, but then apparently decided it was best to say nothing at all. Nodding his head in agreement, he turned and walked toward the parking lot. There would be no chase on my part. I was still thinking of Krista kissing him. He definitely kissed her back.
* * *
Driving home, I considered the situation. Part of me wanted to be as far away from Liam as possible, while the other part wanted to give him a kiss of my own that would make him forget he ever wanted to fool with Krista. The part that wanted him far away was winning at the moment. Plus with Reese running around, trying to kiss me into believing I wanted to be with him at any opportune moment, it was hard to know what I wanted.
I pulled into the driveway to find Chris standing on the front porch. I hadn’t seen more than the back of his head in almost a month, as he had purposely avoided me. Figuring it was something he needed to work out on his own, I left him alone. However, how he looked now was a complete shock.
Wearing dark jeans and a long, black leather trench coat that reached his knees, he had his head cocked sideways, almost jeering. His hands were behind his back, waiting impatiently. There was no trace of his usual smile anywhere on his face. This was not the Chris I had known before Ireland.
“Hey, Sasquatch.”
He glanced my way, not bothering to meet my eyes. “Don’t call me that.”
That was my nickname for him. He’d always joked with me. I took a step back from the hatred emanating from the stranger standing on our porch.
“Waiting for someone?”
He looked at me hatefully. “No one you know.”
Reese’s Jeep pulled into the driveway with Liam at the helm. He was just a glutton for punishment.
Hopping out, he smiled his best smile and held his hand out to Chris. “Hey, you must be Chris. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Chris eyed Liam, eyes thinning to almost slits. “So. You’re Ashlyn’s boyfriend.” He said it like he couldn’t believe I could manage such a feat. There were dark circles under his eyes. He couldn’t have slept in days.
Liam stayed friendly through the awkwardness. “Your sister always has great things to say about you.”
“I can only imagine,” he said in a clipped tone. He looked at me with such disdain. It was unbelievable. What had I done?
Liam grabbed my hand and I didn’t fight it. I shifted my weight uneasily, trying to think of something to say.
Mom emerged through the front door, saving us from the strange predicament. “Are you hungry, Liam? Ashlyn?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Liam said. He always treated Mom with the utmost respect. Completely opposite from what Reese would do. I smiled at the stark differences between the two men in my life and then looked back at Chris. I looked down instantly. It was painful to see him so angry.
“Wanna come help me with my algebra? It’s not fair you’re taking the same class as I am. You’re younger,” I teased, nudging Chris’s leg with my own. He stepped back, lip curling back in disgust.
“You’re a big girl. You can do it,” he said, wiping his pants off as though I had muddied them up.
Memaw came out of the house at that moment. “Christopher Michael, help your sister. We’re family.”
The authority Memaw had by being our grandmother was something Chris didn’t seem to care about anymore. He was looking at her with almost the same amount of loathing he had reserved for me. I was surprised Memaw didn’t bend him over her knee right there. “I have better things to be doing than playing tutor to her. If she’s too stupid to get it on her own, then that’s her problem.”
Mom looked down, hurt. “Chris, you don’t mean that.”
“Oh yeah I do. Teaching a stranger is a waste of time.” With that, he stalked off to stand at the end of the driveway, continuing his wait for the unknown arriver.
Mom didn’t even attempt to go after him. I stood in quiet shock. Stranger? What did he mean by that?
“Where’s he going?” Liam asked.
“He’s going to spend more time with his new friend, who has a car,” Mom said.
Memaw shot Liam and I a meaningful glance. Liam nodded. It was obvious that this new friend of his was not a good addition to his life.
Memaw and Mom’s acceptance of Chris’s defiance was surprising. “You’re just going to let him leave? You’re not even asking him where he’s going? Isn’t that in Parenting one-oh-one or something?”
Memaw sighed. “He needs to go through this on his own terms, Ashlyn. Let him go. He’ll come back. Just like someone else we know.” She eyed Liam’s hand in mine. Liam blushed, dropping my hand and suddenly becoming very interested in the squirrels chasing one another around the oak tree in the front yard.
Liam coughed. “Ash, I’m gonna get started on homework. So uh, I’ll see you inside.” As he walked away, Memaw and Mom started cracking up.
“Ashlyn, just forgive him already.”
Blushing, I attempted to hold onto whatever dignity was left. “Memaw, he needs to sweat it out a little. I mean, he was kissing another girl not a week ago. It seems a little soft to just let him run back in with open arms.”
“Don’t let him sweat too long, Ash. I heard you were kissing someone just yesterday, so don’t hold out on him for long. He might go find someone else to kiss in the meantime,” Memaw said, chortling. “If you want him, make sure you keep him.”
I decided to possibly take Memaw up on her advice tomorrow as we all walked into the kitchen. Liam was sitting at the bar, Spanish book out. To be perfectly honest, he took my breath away. Today he was wearing dark blue jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. Fairborn logo emblazoned on the front, he had taken to the once too-big high school very well. His black hair was in a casual disarray from the gel he had run through it in the morning. He looked like he could be
a model. Watching him stop chewing his pencil eraser for a moment to smile at me, I wondered why I hadn’t forgiven him right off the bat when he burst into my room yesterday. I had to be having a mental lapse.
Memaw was cooking something. The ingredients were probably edible, but the end result would not be. She was a worse cook than anyone I’d ever met, save for Jamie. She was having a conversation with Mom on the other side of the kitchen. “Sarah, have you got the mail today?”
“No, I haven’t.” Mom stood to go retrieve it, setting down her cup of coffee she’d been nursing.
Liam stood up, smiling at the two women. What a suck-up. “I’ll go get it, Mrs. Walsh.”
Memaw winked at me. “Ashlyn, he may need help.”
There was no way to contain the eye roll that was threatening to emerge. I walked with him out the door, making sure Memaw heard my comment. “I didn’t know paper cuts were deadly.”
Liam laughed and intertwined his fingers again with mine. Laughing, we opened the door in time to see Chris getting into the black truck Reese had described yesterday. It stopped me short, curiosity taking over. “Hey, that’s Chris’s friend that Reese was saying was creepy.”
“Any friend that’s messed Chris up that much is creepy,” Liam said. “Come on, let’s get the mail. You can get a closer look at the guy.”
We walked up, minding our own business as best we could. When we got to the mailbox, I couldn’t help myself. The urge to take a peek got the best of me.
After taking the peek, I wished I hadn’t.
While he looked our age, there was no mistaking Ankou. He exuded hatred. He winked at us. “Chris, is that your sis we talked about?”
“Yeah, Andy. And her boyfriend.”
He may be able to take a different shape, but apparently he didn’t care to change his name. Liam shoved me behind him, running up to the window of the passenger seat. “Chris, what are you doing?”
Then there was a voice that I would recognize anywhere. “He’s coming to play with us, what does it look like?”
Jamie. Jamie was here, and she was with my brother.
I started toward the truck, but Liam pushed me back again. “Chris, get out of the car. Now.” While Liam’s voice was low, you could hear the panic underneath the command.
Chris laughed. “What are you? Babysitter of the year? Andy, let’s go,” he said as he put his feet on the dash.
Ankou laughed and slammed on the gas. I started running after the truck, but Liam wrestled me to the ground. “You can’t do anything to help him right now, Ash.”
I watched my brother disappear down the road with the world’s – no, worlds’ – deadliest person alive from ground, inside the iron grip of Liam.
After they had been out of sight for a minute or so, Liam let up on his hold. Breaking out, I ran into the house to tell Memaw.
She was waiting at the door with a look that said she had already seen what transpired. I started crying.
Memaw put her hand on my shoulder. She was quietly crying as well. “He’s out of our hands, Ashlyn. He has to make decisions for himself.”
“Does that mean he decides to commit suicide and bring the entire family with him?”
For once, Memaw didn’t have an answer.
TWENTY-FOUR
“But why are we letting him run around with Ankou and Jamie?” I asked for what felt like the thousandth time. Leaning against the kitchen counter, the dishtowel draped over the sink became my stress reliever. No one could think Chris being with Ankou was any sort of safe, sane, good idea. Liam seemed to be in line with my thoughts, because he was as livid as I was. Well, except for why he was angry.
He took the towel I was threatening to rip in half, handing it to my mother who was crying. “You are aware Ankou knows exactly where the family is now, Emily? You coming home probably brought him right along with you. God only knows how many cracks he has around this place now. Ashlyn isn’t safe here. No one’s safe here, not even mortals who have no stake in this.”
Mom was leaning against the refrigerator, freezer door open. She’d been fanning herself since we gave her the news, eyes red and mascara streaming down her cheeks. The charade she’d been putting on the past few months of having a normal family had finally come to a head. It seemed she finally realized how serious the situation was.
Mom had begun to monologue, not stopping her mutterings since she had propped herself against the fridge. “I didn’t know that was who he was with. I had no idea. I’m such a terrible mother. We’re all in trouble now…”
I was pretty sure we would have to pry her away from the freezer to avoid her becoming stuck to it. That, or all of our ice cream was going to leak out onto the floor. Neither option was good. Mom would need the ice cream later.
Memaw was sitting at the table, stirring a spoon in the cup of tea she had made. She seemed to be the only one who was capable of being completely stationary. Setting her half-empty cup down, she looked at all of us. “Chris is almost an adult. We have to let him decide where he stands on his own. If he’s with us, or with them.”
Liam pounded his fist against the counter. “Bloody hell, Emily, what do you expect to happen if he’s with them? Ankou is going to turn him against us! Is there any other outcome, or do I not have the entire story?”
Liam had been slightly put out about being kept in the dark about Tess and I. Although most of the time I enjoyed his Irish brogue, today it only made him fiercer. The fire behind his eyes was unquenchable. I could see his desire to go get Chris was even with mine.
Pushing myself off the counter and out of Liam’s one-armed embrace, I stomped over to Memaw. “How did you let this happen?”
“It had already happened when Sarah called me months ago, concerned about the turn in Chris’ behavior.”
Behind me I could hear mom hiccup, trying to stifle her sobs. I looked back and saw Liam comforting her. He pulled her away from the freezer and managed to finally shut the door. She leaned her weight into him now, threatening to buckle onto the floor if Liam didn’t support her. He was trying to get them both back to the counter tops from the look of it so that he would have somewhere to disperse the extra weight.
Mom was still talking to no one in particular. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know. I had no idea…”
Liam looked at me questioningly. I shrugged my shoulders and made patting motions to an invisible person, trying to get him to comfort her. He mimicked my actions, relieved to know what to do with his hands.
Memaw closed her eyes. Opening them again, her now-green eyes smiled. It wasn’t a good smile. She seemed to be as upset as the rest of us, but just unable to express it. “Ankou left the minute you slipped through his hands. He had no idea we had so many protectors in place. Any way he looked at it, he was fighting a losing battle. He knew the one way to get to you and I, Ashlyn, was to get to Chris. Jamie told him all about our family and he set out for Ohio. When I realized he had left Ireland, I came home immediately, but we were too late getting this information.”
Liam was wedged between Mom and the counter, still trying to keep Mom up and not be crushed in the process. Mom wasn’t big, but Liam wasn’t the next Olympic bodybuilder, either. He repositioned her to get a better view of the conversation. “How did you know Ankou left? I didn’t think we knew those kinds of things. We don’t have an informant.”
Memaw smiled slyly. “Ah, but in a sense, we do. Your mother has been practicing finding cracks on her own. She found a few Changelings speaking as they prepared to cross back to Neamar.”
I looked up in shock. Tess has been running her own reconnaissance mission the best she could. No wonder she wanted a more viable option rather than slinking around in forests on her own, hoping to overhear something. Memaw continued to explain. “A Changeling saw her and tipped off Ankou over here in America. Knowing he had limited time before I would arrive in Ohio to try to preempt whatever he was up to, he moved in and made his play for Chris.”
Mom was
finally becoming coherent. At least, she had stopped her monologue and was supporting her own weight against the counter beside Liam. He was still eyeing her suspiciously, one hand on her back in case she decided to break down again. “What does Ankou want with Chris? He can’t kidnap him now; he’s a grown man in their eyes. What more could he want?”
“I believe he wants to use Chris as a bartering chip for Ashlyn in the end, but for now, he wants an informant. Someone who can stand at the crack and run errands for Ankou,” Memaw said.
“What do you mean, stand at the crack?” I asked.
It was Liam who answered this question. “Humans can’t cross over into Neamar. Only Changelings can.” He then looked at Memaw. “Or you and Mum, it seems. Same goes for going to Adaire. Faeries can come and go between the human realm and Adaire, but can’t go to Neamar. You can go everywhere.”
“You and Tess are the Bridgers of the human race, each in your own respective way,” Memaw said. “Chris is simply human, though he descended from me as well. It seems you were the lucky one,” she smiled as she finished. We both knew that the luck she spoke of was relative to the situation at hand. Right now lucky wouldn’t be the first adjective I’d use with what was going on.
“So what does it all mean?” I asked.
Memaw answered again. “Ankou wants you. He’ll use your brother as a way to get to you, knowing you’ll go to rescue him if the opportunity were to present itself. You must not prove him correct. He wants to bridge Neamar with Adaire, freeing the Changelings to come and go wherever they want, just like you and Tess. You’re the catalyst once you realize your full potential. You will be able to connect or burn the bridges that allow faeries to come and go in the human realm.”
“If you think I’m going to just let Chris be used, you’ve lost your mind,” I said, squeezing the back of Memaw’s chair tightly. “I can talk sense into him.”
