by Chloe Jacobs
Isaac deftly stepped aside and cuffed Ray upside the head. Greta winced. That kind of taunting was only going to make things worse. But she knew Isaac had no intention of harming Ray, so she kept her distance. She understood Ray’s fear and doubt better than anyone, and she also knew that the only person who had a chance of getting through to him right now was the very person he had focused his anger on. As crazy as it seemed, they needed to hash this out on their own.
They circled one another. Isaac had no weapon, and it was obvious that he wouldn’t make any move against Ray, but that put him at a disadvantage. The sharp blade from her parents’ kitchen knife glinted in the moonlight as Ray angrily swiped through the air again. Isaac moved, but Ray redirected his aim quicker than expected. The tip of the knife scraped across Isaac’s arm, and Greta hissed.
That’s it. She took a step forward, but Isaac threw her a hard glare.
“Damn it,” she muttered, crossing her arms and holding her ground.
Isaac caught Ray’s arm mid-swing on the next pass and pulled the knife out of the teen’s hand.
At that moment, with the knife in Isaac’s hand and his arm pulled back to toss it away into the bushes, a siren sounded and lights struck them as a police cruiser pulled to a stop.
“Oh crap,” she swore. Focused on Ray and Isaac, she hadn’t even noticed it approach. “Isaac, hurry, get rid of the freaking knife.”
“Don’t move! All three of you!” a voice echoed over a microphone from inside the cruiser before he could toss it away. The door opened and someone stepped out from the driver’s side of the vehicle. Greta shaded her eyes as she tried to see over the stream of light. When the officer stepped around and approached—gun pointing right at them—she swore again.
“Good evening, Officer Fielding,” Greta said with a heavy groan. “Fancy seeing you out at this time of night.”
Chapter Six
Officer Fielding confiscated the kitchen knife from Isaac and pushed all three of them into the back of the police cruiser. Squished into the middle, Greta crossed her arms and glared first at Isaac and then at Ray—mostly at Ray—as the police officer remained outside the car speaking into her phone. She was probably calling the station to tell them to get a couple of cells ready.
“Look what your guilt has gotten us into,” Greta snapped. “I swear to God, I didn’t survive four years in Mylena only to get thrown in jail in the human world because of you. And if my parents try to ground me because of this, I’m so going to kill you myself.”
It wasn’t fair to take her frustration out on him…wait a minute, it so was.
With his hands behind his back, Ray stared stiffly out the window, refusing to acknowledge her at all.
“And you—” She turned to Isaac quickly and poked him in the ribs—Officer Fielding hadn’t cuffed her, only Isaac and Ray for fighting. “Put a lid on the arrogance. Nobody here cares that you’re the goblin king and pointing it out is only going to get us in more trouble.”
He hadn’t actually come out and said it…yet. But when the officer had told him to drop the knife and put his hands behind his back, she’d sensed it on the tip of his tongue. He’d straightened to his full height to stare her down. Afraid of what the officer might do with that gun, Greta had jumped between them, facing Isaac, and silently begged him to stand down and do what she said.
Officer Fielding got in the vehicle and put her phone down in a holder attached to the dash. She turned around and looked back at them through the black metal cage between the front and backseats. “You guys want to tell me what’s going on here tonight?”
Ray didn’t even look up. Isaac simply raised a brow at Greta. She groaned and racked her brain for an explanation. “It was just a misunderstanding, and we’re really sorry if we caused any kind of disturbance,” she started quickly. “Ray here sleepwalks sometimes, and when Isaac noticed that he was gone from the house, he came to get me, and we went out looking for him.”
Officer Fielding looked at Ray, but he still wasn’t responding. “What about the knife?” she asked, sounding skeptical.
Greta hesitated for a heartbeat, but she had to go for it. “It was wrong, and that’s totally my fault.” Carrying a weapon was going to be the biggest issue, and the hardest for the officer to overlook. She couldn’t let Ray jeopardize his reunion with his parents tomorrow, and she couldn’t let Isaac get put into a jail cell.
“I took the knife before we left the house without telling anyone, but when Isaac noticed that I had it, he took it from me. And that’s when you showed up, I swear.”
The officer’s gaze narrowed. She looked into Greta’s eyes as if she were searching out the whole truth. And maybe she didn’t find the truth of this particular situation, but she seemed to find a truth, nevertheless. “Just how often were you forced to protect yourself before you found your way back home?”
Good question. In the officer’s profession, she probably saw more of the dark parts of this town—even as small as it was, there had to be darkness—than the wholesome, pretty, good parts. Not exactly the same as being a bounty hunter in Mylena and hunting down the Lost, but maybe Officer Fielding would understand better than the other adults what had made Greta into the person she was today.
She swallowed. She could probably get away with shrugging it off, but there was more to Officer Fielding than a uniform and a badge. She seemed to know without having to be told that Greta had been forced to protect herself…often enough to make it a habit.
“A few times,” she admitted in a broken whisper.
Ray tensed beside her, but now she was the one refusing to look at him. Isaac leaned closer, making sure she felt his presence even though he couldn’t take her hand.
Officer Fielding gave all of them the once over before she finally sighed. “I’m not taking you in to the station,” she said. Thank the Great Mother. Then the officer’s voice hardened. “But consider this your one and only warning, which I am granting only because of the extenuating circumstances. You won’t be given any more leeway, so I had better not catch you guys out on the streets at this time of night again for any reason.”
Greta let out a relieved breath. “Thank you,” she said.
Officer Fielding faced forward and turned the ignition. “Don’t thank me yet. We’re still going to explain what happened to your parents, and they may not feel as charitable as I do after being awakened at one a.m. with the police at their front door.”
Greta groaned and jabbed Ray in the ribs again as the cruiser pulled away from the curb.
As promised, pulling her parents out of bed so they could learn that their recently lost daughter had left again, before being picked up on the streets by the police in the middle of the night…did not go over well.
Her father clutched the edge of the open front door dressed only in a pair of striped pajama pants and a gray T-shirt, while her mother pulled the ends of her silk robe together so tightly it practically went around her twice. Their matching stricken expressions made Greta’s mouth go dry, and she started apologizing before Officer Fielding could even begin to explain where she’d found the teens.
Her parents’ faces only turned paler, if that was possible. Greta hated that she seemed to be causing them more heartache and trouble by returning home than she had by staying away.
“They’re lucky I was the one who found them. I’m going to let it go this time, because they’ve all been through a lot already,” the officer was saying, “but if I catch any of them somewhere they shouldn’t be again, we’ll have this discussion down at the station, and we’ll have to talk consequences.”
Her father cleared his throat and looked away from Greta. “I’m very sorry this happened, Officer Fielding. Rest assured, there won’t be a second time.”
The officer put a warm hand on Greta’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think they were just trying to look out for one another, and that they’re still adjusting after their ordeal,” she said in a voice filled with understand
ing. “But I’m going to ask Ms. Davidson to stop by again in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”
The social worker was coming back again? Well, it could be worse, she supposed.
Then Officer Fielding held out the kitchen knife.
Her mother gasped, and her father swore—and Greta finally understood where she got that bad habit from.
“What the hell were you doing with that?” her father said.
Officer Fielding handed it over to Greta’s mother carefully. “Thankfully, nobody was hurt with it.”
Greta was supremely glad that none of them seemed to have noticed the thin cut through Isaac’s sleeve.
“Thank you for bringing Greta home before we had a chance to worry,” her mother said softly, holding the handle of the blade delicately between two fingers as if it had become contaminated.
With that, the officer nodded. When she stepped behind Ray and then Isaac to remove their cuffs, her father’s jaw tightened, but he stepped aside and let everyone come into the house. Greta sent Isaac and Ray each a warning look not to cause any more trouble. Ray quickly headed for the basement. Isaac paused as if he wanted to stay back with her, but she waved him down, too.
She folded her hands in front of her and looked between her parents. “Dad, I—”
What was she going to say? That she hadn’t meant to slip out without their knowledge when that’s exactly what she’d meant to do? Maybe she should just apologize for turning into the kind of daughter who would slip out without their knowledge and come home in the back of a police cruiser.
She said, “I know this appears bad, but it’s not quite how it seems.”
He shook his head, looking tired and disappointed. “Now isn’t the time. Just go to bed…to sleep…and we’ll discuss it in the morning.”
She opened her mouth, but one look at the strain and distress in her mother’s face and she changed her mind. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said again. “Good night.”
Walking up the staircase to her bedroom was like doing the march of the damned. She felt her mother’s horror and her father’s disapproval following her, weighing on her.
When Greta opened the door, Siona sat up in bed and flicked on the bedside lamp. “You are always making me tell you I told you so,” she murmured, sounding not in the least sleepy, as if she’d been waiting the entire time.
That only added to her guilt, which made her cranky. “I’m not talking to you,” she snapped.
“How am I to blame? I warned you that sneaking out wasn’t going to be a good idea.”
“Exactly. You knew it, but you still didn’t stop me.”
She snorted. “And have you ever tried to stop yourself from doing a thing that is ill-advised?”
“I stop myself all the time. How else do you think I survived Mylena?”
“You never pulled back from anything,” Siona protested. “If you wanted to become a bounty hunter, you did. If you wanted to travel to the most desolate, dangerous places in Mylena, you did that, too. You are too used to doing whatever you like, whenever you like, because you think you will just handle whatever obstacle is thrown at you.”
“I guess if you’re going to look at it that way…” So maybe Siona was a little bit right. There were always extenuating circumstances, but it did sound a lot like her.
“But even I have learned that this world will not tolerate the kind of recklessness that served you so well in Mylena,” her friend continued. “A world without the chaos of two moons is a world where order and predictability reins.”
“Mylena has just as many boundaries as this world. Do you think if I had shouted to the Provinces that I was a human, a girl, and that I was going to train to be a bounty hunter, the powers that be would have clapped their hands and thrown down the red carpet for me? No, of course not. I had to fight to be all of those things in Mylena, just like I may have to fight to be those things here, too.”
“And where in this world do the people need a bounty hunter? It seems to me that you fought so long and hard to return here because you were trying to escape the harshness of my world, and yet now you search it out.”
“Tonight wasn’t about that. I’m not searching out anything,” she grumbled. Was that even true? She could have taken Isaac anywhere, but she’d chosen to go to an adult dance club in the middle of the night and surround herself with drunk idiots—practically guaranteeing they’d get into some kind of trouble.
She kicked off her Keds and slipped off her jeans. She tossed them across the foot of her side of the bed and pulled back the covers. They lay on their sides facing each other in the darkness. She closed her eyes, because she couldn’t see anything anyway, but she said, “I know I’m not the girl my parents hoped for when I arrived back on their front step after so long, but I can’t go back to being blind and innocent and helpless.”
“Your strength is an admirable trait, and I’m sure your mother and father are proud of you for being a survivor. So what is it you really fear?”
Greta let that question go unanswered. She wasn’t about to try and explain to Siona that it wasn’t the act of surviving she feared her parents wouldn’t be able to accept…it was the darkness she’d let into her soul, what she’d become in order to survive. And yet, there was no escaping it. That darkness was part of her now. A part of her she wasn’t even sure she wanted to let go of. At least it was familiar and honest.
As the silence deepened, she started to drift off to sleep. Her dream started right away, and there was no Isaac. He didn’t show up at Maidra’s to tease her, didn’t walk at her side into a great hall filled with his people and announce to them all that she would become the goblin queen. The dream didn’t even take place in Mylena; it was right here, with her standing in front of her parent’s house…alone.
When the door opened and her mother and father saw who had come back to them, they didn’t cry tears of joy and relief to see her safe and alive. They looked at her exactly the same way Drew had when he’d seen her at the door—with fear and a healthy amount of horror.
Drew was there, too, and he started crying and begging for their parents to hide, tugging them back inside the house to get them away from Greta.
Wait! I’m still your daughter! She cried and rushed forward with her arms outstretched. I made it back! I tried for so long and finally came home.
She reached them just in time, but when she thrust out her arm out to keep the door from slamming shut in her face, she realized too late that her sword was in that hand.
Her mother started screaming, and Drew yelled, Killer! Killer! Get out! Go back where you belong!
But where is that? Where do I belong?
She stumbled backward and tripped down the front steps. She spun around, thick red blood dripping from her blade on to the concrete patio stones and into the grass. She didn’t remember where it had come from.
The entire town now crowded the curb in front of her parents’ house, watching and pointing. Most of them looked horrified, but some of them laughed. Officer Fielding held her gun pointed at Greta with a narrowed, wary gaze.
Wyatt and Ray stood with the crowd. All the rest of the boys, too, and even Siona.
Please, I’m not a monster, she cried.
None of these people will ever understand what it was like. They will never accept who you are, who you had to be. They will never love you the way I can love you.
That was Isaac’s voice. She spun back around, and there he was. He stood between her and her parents, and she ran to him. He welcomed her with open arms and buried his face in the crook of her neck, alternating between whispering love words and kissing her. But suddenly he stiffened and backed away.
What? What’s wrong?
They both looked down—
Her sword was buried in his gut, all the way through him with her hand still wrapped around the hilt. Agony twisted his features as he fell to one knee.
No! she screamed, but her cry was cut off by the slamming force of a bull
et in her shoulder. She felt the impact even before the crack split the air. Another bullet in the chest threw her backward before she could explain to everyone that she hadn’t meant it, that she wasn’t really dangerous.
Suddenly she was lying on her back with the taste of blood in her mouth. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t speak.
But she could see. And the tall figure casting a shadow over her bleeding body wasn’t her mother. It wasn’t her father. And it wasn’t Isaac.
It was Agramon.
Greta awoke with a start, thrashing to get out from the twisted covers that only tightened around her like one of those Chinese finger things.
Finally, she was free. She sat up and groaned. Cold sweat stuck her shirt to her back. Without even looking, she knew her hair was a crown of matted knots and tangles atop her head. She braced her elbows on her thighs and covered her face with her hands, focusing on regulating her ragged breathing and slowing her racing heart.
At least she was alone and Siona hadn’t witnessed her sleeping panic attack.
Wait a minute, why was she alone?
She looked up, seeing the room this time instead of the grinning face of the demon that still continued to live inside her…if only as a lingering menace in her dreams.
What if there’s more to it than that? How could she be sure that she was free of Agramon, or that the wounds he’d left on her soul would ever heal completely?
She shuddered and wrapped her arms around her middle. Sunlight filtered through the sheer white curtains over the window. It was still early by human standards, but later than Greta had slept in years.
She’d been forced to rise at an ungodly hour when she lived with Luke, but she’d always been a closet slugabed and used to crave the day when she could sleep in until whatever time she wanted. Then again, if she’d known that extra sleep would only bring more horrible nightmares, she might never have bothered.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Yeah, I’m up,” she called.
Her father entered, a stern look on his face. He came to sit beside her on the bed.
