by J. J. Neeson
“Yes,” Thorston admitted. “I wanted to leave. I never stay in Broken Ridge long. This is home, but I’m not a homesick kind of guy.”
“And I’m tired of not having a home. I want to stay. I left Vegas to find something better. This is better. If I leave this, I’ll be running forever.”
He stepped forward, desperate. “Reigh, don’t let Lu get into your head.”
“She hasn’t. You have. Tell me now you’re willing to stay. If this really means as much to you as you’re making it out to be, tell me you won’t be disappearing in the middle of the night.” Indomitable, Reigh stepped away from the motorcycle and met Thorston on the porch. “Tell me you’ll stay.”
“I think I love you,” Thorston revealed, his voice barely a whisper.
It wasn’t the first time a man had said it to her, but it was the first time she believed it to be said with sincerity. However, she couldn’t accept his words. For so many reasons.
“I don’t think you do. I think you’re still hurting over the loss of Dodger. I think it’s causing memories of losing your parents to surface, and so you’re reaching out to me. I don’t deny there’s something between us, but I don’t think it’s love.”
He held her gaze and refused to let go. “You’re wrong. If this was merely two friends finding solace with each other, neither of us would be so disoriented right now. I need you.”
“Then tell me you’ll stay.”
He had no choice but to look away, unable to.
“Then it doesn’t matter what this is,” Reigh determined. “Because it can’t carry on.”
He didn’t speak. And neither did she. There were too many emotions coursing through them. It overwhelmed them—all the pain they had carried throughout the years.
Finally, Thorston looked upwards and said, “The lights are gone.”
“So they are,” Reigh muttered, wondering where Calder was.
He sighed. “I wish I could tell you I was going to stay, but it would be unfair to you. And I know better than to ask if you’d be willing to leave with me. So maybe you’re right; we should leave things where they are. It’s a confusing time.”
He was giving her what she said she wanted, but in so many ways, it wasn’t. “It is a confusing time.”
“Do you want me to move out?”
The suggestion was upsetting. She was used to having Thorston on the couch, of the safety of having his presence near. “No, of course not. This was your home long before it was mine. I’m just saying that until you can honestly tell me you won’t leave, keep it friendly.”
He smiled with relief. “It’ll be hard having a roommate as hexy as you, but I’ll try.”
Knowing the matter was far from over, but ready to put it aside for the night, Reigh pushed past Thorston and went to the door, her cheer returning. “I hope you bought some beer,” she remarked, “because I could sure use one.” She paused. The door had deep claw marks in it. “You do this?”
“No,” Thorston said. “No need to. The door was unlocked.”
“Strange,” Reigh mused, but she shook it away. The night was already full of too many questions. For now, forgetting was better than seeking.
Chapter Nine
“Can we take the convertible?” Reigh asked enthusiastically. She leaned against the rail of her porch, enjoying the turn of events the morning brought.
Standing next to her truck, Lu lifted a hand to block out the relentless sun. “You know your way to New Orleans?”
“I know how to read a road sign.”
“Good enough for me,” Lu stated, locking the truck with the remote on her keys. “You’ve got some color back to your face,” she added as Reigh bounded off the porch. “Another night in the woods?”
“No,” Reigh hissed, afraid Thorston would hear. The door to the shack was wide open, allowing a breeze in. “Things are just going really well.”
It’d been a long week at Odd Wonders. With magic banned around town while they figured out what to do about the threat, it motivated a lot of idle hands to clean out their attics. Every day, the store had been packed with people wanting to trade, donate, or buy. She’d been called in to work every day of the rush, resulting in a nice paycheck and a taste of what normalcy in Broken Ridge was like. She liked it. A lot.
Today was Sunday, the only day of the week Odd Wonders was closed. Her plan had been to sleep in, but earlier that morning, she’d woken to Lu honking the horn of her truck like a rooster with a bad cold. Stumbling outside, she was certain she was in a nightmare, until she heard Lu’s pitch to drive down to New Orleans for the day, where all talk of magic and boys was off the table. Reigh gladly accepted. It was more normalcy.
“I hope that junk of metal drives better than it looks,” Thorston called out from the door as the girls hopped into the Mustang convertible.
“My car is hot!” Reigh yelled back, patting the dashboard. “Don’t be jealous. If you work real hard and play nice, you can have four wheels, too.”
“Anything over two is training wheels,” he scoffed.
Ignoring him, Reigh wiped the swamp dust from her review mirror with the sleeve of her black sweater. It had been awhile since she’d driven, but with her latest check from Odd Wonders, she could finally afford gas again. Ready to go, she dropped her oversized, knock-off shades down from her head and pulled away, waving goodbye to Thorston as she turned down the wooded path to the main road.
Beside her, Lu wore a dusty-rose sleeveless blouse over her naturally sun-kissed skin, paired with her skinny jeans and a pair of white sandals. It was a far cry from the blue coverall she wore to work, and she rocked it. But her hands told a different story to her casual dress. She tapped her fingers together, preoccupied.
“Go ahead, say it,” Reigh permitted.
Lu blushed slightly, caught in her thoughts. “We said no boy talk.”
“And it sticks, once we leave Broken Ridge. So use the next few minutes to speak your mind.”
“I don’t understand how you two do it. I see the way you look at each other, especially lately. How do you live in the same space and not rip each other’s clothes off?”
“Because we’re friends. I know Thorston values that above all else,” Reigh told her, shifting gears as they went up a short incline that led out of the woods.
Lu leaned back, troubled. “I’m just not sure it’s healthy.”
Reigh was having trouble understanding. “You think we should just go ahead and mess around?”
“No,” she said with an edge of culpability. “I think the sooner Thorston inevitably takes off, the better. You two may not be sleeping together, but that doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t growing.”
She shouldn’t have prompted Lu to speak her mind. She didn’t want to think about it. But sometimes it was better to put something out in the open, so she pulled over.
“What’s wrong?” Lu asked. “Why did you stop?”
“Because we’re about to turn onto the main road and head out of Broken Ridge, and I want to talk to you first, regarding magic.”
Lu shifted in her seat. “Go ahead.”
“You brought up taking off for someone’s own good. Isn’t that what you should do? You and your family. If the omen from the owl is so serious, why not pack up and get as far away from the threat as possible? Start over.”
Lu nodded in understanding. “Samuel and I have talked about it. He has a sister in Maine we could stay with for a while. But when you have kids, it’s not so easy. They have friends here. And school in the fall. Also, we invested everything into the house and the business. If we close shop for too long, we can’t make our mortgage, and we lose everything. I don’t know what the threat is doing here, who he’s seeking vengeance against, but clearly my family is involved. Otherwise, the owl would not be warning me of impending tragedy. But running may not help. The threat might follow us. In Maine, we don’t have the townspeople of Broken Ridge to help protect us. So for now, we stay.”
Re
igh hadn’t meant to ignite the fear that now hung across Lu’s shoulders. Realizing her friend needed a magic-free day as much as she did, she re-started the car and accelerated past the town sign, away from their troubles. From the rearview mirror, she could still see the faint traces of the rune on the sign, bidding her to come back when the day was finished.
“And we’re off!” Reigh hailed, momentarily throwing her hands into the air. “Hell yeah! Off to enjoy a normal day, if such a thing exists.”
“It does,” Lu assured her.
The drive out of Broken Ridge was much of what she remembered—oaks, plantation houses, orchards, the occasional small town, and the constant scent of peaches in the air. It all dissolved when they turned onto the coast. The endless waters of the Gulf greeted them, vast like an epic sea. Above the burning sands and grey waters, gulls flew high, untouchable. She lifted her sunglasses to enjoy the purity of the colors that surrounded them, wondering how she’d missed the coastal road when she’d first passed into Louisiana.
“Want me to drive?” Lu offered.
“No, I’ve got it,” she said, dividing her attention between the view and the road. “The only time I’ve seen the sea was on a trip to LA with my girlfriends. We had some crazy idea we were going to score celebrity boyfriends. I was too messed up to enjoy the backdrop of the Pacific. Vegas isn’t that far from LA, but it was the only time I went.”
“I’ve never been to LA, but I’ll take Louisiana shrimp over California crab any day,” Lu asserted.
Her stomach growled, and she laughed. “Yes, shrimp. We should get some in New Orleans. I think I’m maxed out on frozen pizzas.”
“Shrimp. Jambalaya. Cornbread. Po-boys,” Lu said, ticking the list off in the air. “You name it; New Orleans has it. New Orleans has it all.”
***
The French Quarters of New Orleans was as intricate and diverse as a deck of cards. Amongst the lush greenery and stately cathedrals, they passed by a traveling jazz band; a drunken street performer painted gold who couldn’t stand still, though he tried; and a pleasant woman offering crystal ball readings from a blanket she had laid out in the grass of a park. Following their hunger, they hit the French Market, stepping through a massive stone arch that gated hundreds of stalls within the district. Reigh navigated to the handmade crafts before Lu pulled her into the fruit and vegetable stands.
“What do you think?” Lu queried, pointing to a poster that had caught her attention, advertising a month-long line-up of midsummer parades.
“Any excuse for a party,” Reigh mumbled, picking a tomato up from a stand.
Lu agreed. “That’s what I love about New Orleans—anything goes!”
Reigh set the tomato down. “It’s almost as bad as Vegas. I think I’ve had my fill of half-naked masquerades. I’d rather find a jazz bar and experience what they mean by the Big Easy.”
Lu snatched the tomato Reigh had set aside and added it to a wicker basket she’d picked up a few stalls down. “But you hate jazz music.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t like anything that doesn’t involve men with painted faces and big hair. Come on, the parade will be fun.”
“Fine,” she relented, “but I’m not lifting my shirt up just so you can get one of those flower necklaces on the poster.”
“It’s the costumes and the floats I want to see. I know Vegas is tough competition to the parties in New Orleans, but Vegas is all imitation. New Orleans is the real thing!”
Reigh laughed. They’d only just arrived, but clearly they were in for one hell of an afternoon. “I believe you.”
“Why do they call it midsummer, anyway?” she pondered, fiddling with a crown of broccoli. “The solstice is the start of summer, not the middle of summer.”
“In most places, yes, but in some parts of the world, like England, summer begins when the weather changes, usually the start of June, sometimes earlier. It’s not exact.” Lu put the broccoli into her basket. “Thus Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which the parade is fashioned after.”
Reigh reached for the broccoli and held it up as evidence. “You gonna grab everything I touch?”
“I still haven’t cooked you a proper dinner. I figure these are the ingredients you like.”
She was appreciative, but out of instinct she set the broccoli back on the stand. “Thanks, little shoemaker, but I actually hate the taste of the green stuff. I just like looking at it. It makes me think of tiny fairy trees. As a child, I would check for little swings attached to the branches.”
“Awe. That’s cute,” Lu crooned. “But please don’t ever tell my kids that story. They’ll never eat broccoli again.”
“Not a bad thing in my book, but I won’t. How long before the parade starts?”
Balancing the basket against her hip, Lu checked her watch. “Twenty minutes. We should hurry.”
Lu grabbed a few more vegetables and fresh herbs, paid for her items, and they set off towards a street Lu seemed to know well but Reigh had never heard of. She admired the historic, tiered buildings, like steamships on the Mississippi, structures with elaborate balconies not too dissimilar from the ones in Broken Ridge. However, where the intricacies of Broken Ridge were hidden beneath its outward serenity, the intricacies of the French Quarter in New Orleans were flaunted around them—in the vivid costumes of the street performers, the antique signs of the bars, and the smooth pace of the city.
Soon, the crowd around them thickened, pushed off the streets by metal barriers that paved a way for the parade.
“Here should do,” Lu said, standing on her tiptoes as she searched around. “If we go any further, we’ll be forced to the back.”
Reigh rested a hand on one of the metal barriers, wishing she had brought her bottle of water with her. She had left her sweater in the car, wearing only a tank top with her cut-offs, but between the heat of the sun and that of the growing crowd, she was beginning to feel faint. “I don’t think I can go any further,” she reported. “So here is just fine.”
Examining her with concern, Lu quickly waved her hand, creating a small but incredibly refreshing breeze.
“Hey, no magic,” Reigh whispered.
“No talking about magic,” Lu cited. “I didn’t say a word.”
Reigh couldn’t complain. She felt much better, and in good time. The sound of an electric violin resonated down the street, preceding a float where the violinist was dressed like Pan and moved across a paper forest as erratically as he played, accompanied by an orchestra of women in flowing Romanesque gowns.
“Magnificent,” Lu applauded. “I’m so glad we came.”
“Me too,” Reigh said, feeling the music. “I take back what I said. This is much better than a jazz bar.”
More floats followed, each with their own interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some were more provocative than others, with skimpy beaded costumes, but all embraced the boldness and fervor of summer.
“We should organize a parade like this in Broken Ridge,” Lu decided. “Many celebrate the solstice with festivities of their own. A parade would help pull us together. I could rig up the floats.”
“It would be hard to pull off with only a few weeks until the solstice, but where there’s a mechanic with the will, there’s a—”
Reigh stopped. Something superior to the floats stole her attention. She couldn’t believe it, but she knew her eyes were not playing tricks, no matter how hazy the sun made New Orleans shimmer.
“Something’s wrong,” Lu detected.
“Across the street, behind the barriers. Calder is here.”
Lu followed Reigh’s line of vision and gasped. “It is him.”
Reigh shook her head, frustrated. “I can’t believe he’s been in New Orleans this whole time. I told you he was no Norse god. He’s just a human jerk who stands a girl up for no good reason.”
Not caring about the line of percussionists marching in front of them, Reigh squeezed past the barrier a
nd crossed over to the other side of the street, winding in front of a drummer who danced alongside her as she passed.
“I’ll wait here!” Lu called behind her. “Feel free to slap him. This is New Orleans!”
Wearing a sharp blue suit perfectly tailored to his fox-colored hair and friendly but colorless eyes, when Calder spotted her on the street, he lit up. “Reigh!” he greeted, meeting her at the barrier. On this side, there was no room to slip through, so he lifted her up, holding onto her a beat longer than necessary before setting her down.
She was slightly taken aback by his strength. He had lifted her as if she were no heavier than one of the feathers worn by the girls on the floats. But she didn’t let it override her anger. “Are you married?” she accused, taking a step backward.
“What? No,” he avowed, setting a hand on her waist as a group of school kids pushed past them, following the parade.
“Then why have you left me waiting in Broken Ridge while you gallivant in New Orleans?”
Unsuccessfully, he tried to hide a smile, clearly pleased that she was so upset by his absence. It was enough that Reigh almost did slap him.
“I haven’t been in New Orleans this whole time,” he quickly explained, reading her anger. “I’m only back now. I heard you had headed here for the day, so I followed, hoping to find you.”
Reigh knew he was telling the truth, but she found it hard to back down. “Where were you?”
He touched her cheek. “I had to leave. It was beyond my control. But I’m here now.”
Less irritated, more reluctant, Reigh moved his hand away. “That’s not what I asked.”
“I know,” he admitted.
She looked back to the parade, forming the words she didn’t want to speak, thinking them ridiculous, yet still afraid to hear his answer. “Calder, are you… are you a Norse being? Someone from another world?”
