by J. J. Neeson
“Reigh.”
Knowing who spoke, she threw the rope down and spun. “Calder!” she cried. “You’re back!” Happy to see him, she ran to him and hugged him like the old friend he was.
He seemed taken aback at first, but then he returned the gesture, holding her tight in his arms. “You’ve never greeted me like this before.”
“I never knew you traveled so far to see me before,” she said.
“Then I definitely should have told you who I was long ago.”
“Here, sit,” she instructed gaily. “If you don’t mind getting your suit dirty.”
To show her that he didn’t, he took his jacket off and tossed it aside before settling on top of the pier. Reigh joined him, glad to have him there, but it took her a moment to realize Calder was much less comfortable than she was. He seemed troubled, his mind full.
He knows about me and Thorston, she assumed. She was reluctant to confront him about it, afraid of causing him further pain, so she quickly said, “How have you been?”
Wait… that opens the gate…
“Not well,” he admitted. “Have I offended you?”
“Of course not,” she said then hesitated, trying to stage her response in a way that brought him the least amount of hurt. There had been enough hurt going around recently.
He continued on before she said more. “You’ve blocked me so that I can’t watch over you. I know what I told you in New Orleans must have come as a shock. I’m worried you’ve blocked me out so that, if you leave Broken Ridge like you did Vegas, I cannot follow.”
“Hell no!” she exclaimed. “Lu gave me an amulet because she was worried about my privacy. If you can see me from your uncle’s throne, then there could be others watching.” The last part was a lie, but a good one, she thought, especially if it protected Calder’s feelings. “Wearing it felt like the wise thing to do.”
“Oh,” he said, relieved. “That makes sense. But I don’t see you wearing any amulet now.”
“I took it off yesterday evening. Didn’t you know?”
“When I realized you had blocked me out, I didn’t try again. As soon as I was able, I willed myself here, to your shack. I would have preferred not to, not with him here, but I had to make sure we were okay, that I didn’t lose you completely.”
His face twisted into a look so dark, it frightened her. She’d always thought him too bright to be so dark. He knows. He knows everything.
“Well, he’s not here anymore,” she disclosed, folding her knees underneath her. “He left yesterday, and I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“I’m not sorry he’s gone,” Calder declared, “but I am sorry if he’s caused you pain.”
“Not as much as I would have felt if I never saw you again. I’m so glad you’re here!” she chirped, trying to lighten the mood. “Do you have long?”
“A bit,” he said, and then his mind drifted again. He looked out to the water, preoccupied.
“Calder, what is it?” she asked, setting a hand on his thigh. “Tell me.”
He studied her, his eyes full of a devotion that went far beyond friendship. He had never looked at her that way before, but maybe it was because she had never allowed him to. “I want you to come back with me. Will you, Reigh? Will you come to Jotunheim to be with me?”
She had expected the invite, but not the proviso at the end. To be with me. It made it a lot harder to turn him down. The fear that she would lose him returned. With Thorston gone, he was the only man in her life. She would never love him the way he wanted, but she did love him.
“I’m afraid that if I do, I won’t be able to come back here, where my home is,” she said, hoping it explained everything she was feeling while still keeping him a steady part of her life.
“Jotunheim could be your new home.”
“From what I know about it, it doesn’t sound like a place I’d like to live out the rest of my days.”
“It’s not,” he acknowledged. “But it would be a lot better with you there.”
The conversation was becoming more and more difficult to navigate around. “How about we go for blueberry pancakes,” she suggested. “My treat. There’s a bistro in the center of town I often walk by on my way to work.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Realizing she was avoiding the issue of traveling with him, the confidence Calder usually carried when he wore his suits transformed into an infinite sadness. He looked as if his whole world was crumbling around him. “No. I don’t want pancakes. I want you.”
“You have me.”
“Apparently, I don’t. He does, even if he’s gone.” He spoke with an anguish that was hard for her to bear. “Reigh, my world is cold. Really cold. And barren. You have brought meaning to my cruel, cold existence. You are everything to me. I would do anything for you. Come back with me, and if you find Jotunheim as intolerable as I do, I’ll bring you back.”
For the first time in their friendship, Calder was truly deceiving her. It cut through her. The lies he told before, they had been necessary. But this one—it was to manipulate her. It made her uncomfortable, but she tried to understand. He was lonely and he was desperate, feelings she understood all too well. Until Broken Ridge, whenever Calder wasn’t around during her washed-out days in Vegas, she had felt just as lonely and just as desperate. But she could not be the solution to his sadness, not if it meant giving up everything she was building here.
“Is there a way for you to stay in Broken Ridge?” she asked. “Maybe there’s a god who can help you, one who has the power to prevent you from fading back to Jotunheim when you’re here.”
At her suggestion, a flicker of shame crossed his face. It was out of place. She couldn’t interpret it.
“I already talked to a god,” he revealed. “The god was not supportive when it came to me staying in the human world. Many gods are not, believing Midgard to be a blight on the Yggdrasil tree because it is not wholly Norse. They separate mankind from other Norse beings.”
“That’s terrible,” she said.
“Not entirely,” he debated, surprising her. “I may detest Jotunheim, but I do believe it and the other worlds connected to the Yggdrasil tree to differ from humanity. I think Midgard is more of a side note, not actually one of our own kind. Except for those with Norse ancestry, like you. We are the same.”
“I wonder who my ancestors were,” she pondered. “I know it was long ago, that their blood runs thin in me, but were they gods? Or elves? Or giants?”
He smiled at the later. “What would you prefer?”
“Giants,” she said decisively. “I don’t know much about the elves or gods. But I do know about the friendship of giants.” She tried to emphasize friendship.
“Then let me make you a giant,” he urged. “Come back to Jotunheim with me. Share in my world.”
She closed her eyes, preparing for what she had to do. There was no dancing around it anymore. Kaylock was right. She just had to tell him the truth and pray he came back to her, one day.
“It’s not going to happen,” she said firmly. “Ever. I want to stay here.”
“Do you not love me, Reigh? Is that why?”
It was unfair of him to ask. “I just don’t want to go. I told you, Broken Ridge is my home now. I do love you, but not the way you deserve.”
She prepared for him to be angry. She would allow it. Anger was appropriate. Back in New Orleans, when she told him she would think about traveling with him to his world, she’d given him false hope. Though she had meant it at the time, it was still unforgivable.
Conflicted, he stood and paced the pier, each of his footsteps a strike against her. She felt terrible for rejecting him, enough that tears threatened to spill, halted only by her surprise at his reaction. Within the black of his eyes, he was hurt. And desperate. And troubled. But not angry.
When he stopped pacing, she stood up to meet him. “Calder, I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”
“I thought you left Vegas to find someth
ing better. Am I not something better?” he pleaded. “I don’t think you realize how much I love you, Reigh. It’s eternal. I feel like you are a part of me.”
Don’t, she thought. This is too heartbreaking. Please don’t do this. When he spoke, he was the boy in the flannels again, filled with the type of youthful passion that delivered only melancholy.
“Our friendship means more to me than what you’re looking for,” she asserted. “Romance, it flickers and it dies. What we have is eternal. Our friendship is eternal. I don’t want to lose you, but I won’t go with you.”
“What I feel is so much more than what you speak of,” he said, grabbing her arm. His grip was tight, more so than it needed to be. It scared her.
“Calder, let go.”
Again, he was conflicted, but he held on. “I can’t.”
The roar of a motorcycle suddenly bounced off the water. Speechless, Reigh turned, watching as Thorston pulled up near the porch. In a hurry, he jumped off the bike and ran into the shack, failing to notice them on the pier.
Maybe he forgot something, she reflected, refusing to believe he was there for her.
Calder continued to grip her arm. “In New Orleans, you seemed quite receptive to the idea of coming with me. What changed?” His voice shook as he spoke.
There was the anger she had expected.
“That was before…” Unable to help herself, she looked towards Thorston’s bike.
“Him?” he accused.
“No, that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say before I chose myself.”
Calder hadn’t expected her answer. “I can’t fault you for that,” he proclaimed, his grip less demanding. “Your free spirit is one of the things I love about you. It makes you even more beautiful than you already are.”
“So we’re okay?” she asked, hopeful.
“We always will be.”
Relieved, she hugged him, forgiving him his anger. “Thank you for understanding,” she muttered into his shoulder.
He didn’t respond. Instead, very softly, he began to chant in a language she didn’t understand, a chant that caused the wind to stir around them.
“Calder, what are you doing?” she questioned, struggling to pull away. He wouldn’t let her go. He held her tight, firm in his stance. And strong. Stronger than she imagined. “Calder… stop!” she cried as the wind picked up, tossing her hair around.
His intentions were obvious in his chant. He was trying to take her with him. She could feel it. The wind tugged at her bones, trying to tear her away from the world she knew.
“Calder, if you do this, I will never forgive you,” she warned, putting all the spite she could into her voice so that he would know she spoke the truth.
The wind continued to whip around them, but he quieted his chants so that he could say to her, “If you just let me show you, you’ll see how happy you can be with me.”
She didn’t recognize him. Whoever held her prisoner in his arms, it was the worst part of the person she knew, a shadow of her friend, malformed by his unhappiness. She knew that the true Calder, the boy who she drank cheap margaritas with and who stood by her side while she sang along to Leonard Cohen, was his true self, but right now, he terrified her. And that pissed her off, so she slapped him, partly out of anger, partly in hope that it would snap him out of the loneliness that haunted him.
Behind them, Thorston called out her name. She tried to turn around, but Calder wouldn’t let her. She prayed Thorston saw the situation for what it was, that he didn’t leave, thinking they were in an embrace more intimate than it actually was.
“I won’t go,” she told Calder. “Not willingly.”
“So you choose him?”
“I told you, I choose myself. Not him. Not you.”
It was a mistake. She may not believe the Norns had the power to weave her fate, but Calder did. From his back, he drew a dagger. It had runes inscribed on the hilt, an artifact of power, one used in rituals. He had found a way to bring her with him against her will.
“Please, Calder, don’t,” she begged, struggling against him once more, unable to take her eyes off the dagger. It was of a silver so deep, it ate the sunlight rather than reflect it.
His desperation took control of him. “You know how I feel about you. And I know you care about me. I’ve heard you say it. Say you’ll come with me,” he implored. “I need you, Reigh. You’re all I have.”
“I can’t go,” she said, hoarse with fear. “It isn’t enough.”
“Then you give me no choice.”
She braced herself, waiting for him to chant again, for the wind around them to grow more formidable than it already was. Afraid he would lose her as they teleported, she moved in closer, steading herself for when they faded from the pier.
But he was silent. The dagger didn’t require chanting.
It required her life.
Before she could stop him, he tightened his hold on her, and then he plunged the dagger straight into her back.
Chapter Thirteen
A pain Reigh had never known before pulsed through her body, radiating from the ice cold wound in her back where the dagger had sliced her flesh. She fell to the pier, landing cruelly on the wood. There was no one there to catch her. Upon striking her, Calder had disappeared, along with his dagger, leaving her behind.
She was disoriented from her wound, making her even more confused than she already was. Calder had betrayed her, and she did not know why. Instead of turning to an anger she did not have the strength for, she tried to find understanding, but there was none.
“No,” Thorston murmured, gathering her into his arms.
“Thorston,” she whispered, raising her hand to his chest. “Why are you here?”
“For you,” he said, tucking her hand into his own. She was shocked to see the amount of blood that covered his hand. “It was a mistake to leave. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She heard him, but with the amount of pain she was in, it took a while for it to make sense. “You left. And you came back?” Her voice sounded feeble, even to her own ears.
“I’m back for you, so stay with me.”
What does he mean? I’m here, she thought as Thorston pulled out his phone. It sounded like he was asking for an ambulance, but she didn’t really pay attention, tossed between the light of the day and the darkness of the unknown. She didn’t feel whole or connected. She felt like a piece of her was being pulled away to somewhere far from the bayou.
Why did Calder do this? The question repeated over and over in her mind.
“Stay with me, Reigh,” Thorston cried, both a command and a plea. “Don’t leave.”
He faded into darkness. She could not see, but she could feel. The intensity of the sun, only weeks from summer, did not warm her. Her body was growing as bitter as the ice of her wound. But the cold numbed the pain—a small consolation.
“I love you,” Thorston professed.
She could see him again. He was no longer blocked out by the darkness. There were tears in his eyes. “Don’t cry,” she said, managing a smile. She reached up and wiped a tear away. “I love you, too.”
Shuddering, her pulse weakened as her heart slowed, and she realized she was dying.
This can’t be happening. A great fear overcame her. She wanted to live. Resisting, she tried to hold on, even as her breath grew heavy, trying to maintain a body that was shutting down. Please, no, she begged to anyone who would listen.
“No,” Thorston cried beside her. “Reigh.”
Turning her head towards the water, she tried to whistle to the birds, remembering Stoyan’s promise to help if she was in trouble, but she couldn’t whistle. She was too weak.
Knowing she had very little time left, she focused her attention on Thorston. “I’m scared,” she told him, looking into his eyes.
“I know,” he said, caressing her hair from her forehead, trying to sooth her fear. “I’m here. Just keep looking at me. I’m here.”
She obeyed, refusing to look away, even as her body convulsed and she lost her ability to speak.
“I love you, Reigh,” he said again, his tears flowing freely. “You have to stay with me.”
She wanted to, but she knew she couldn’t. Her fate had been woven. With her last breath, she placed her hand back on his chest, over his heart. As she did, the music of the bayou stopped. She could no longer hear it, but she could still see.
“Go in peace, child,” Mrs. Florence said, appearing behind her nephew’s shoulder, a heaviness to her.
Reigh kept her eyes locked with Thorston’s. There was such gentleness in them, a gentleness she had known despite the walls he built around him.
I love you, she thought, hoping he somehow heard. Wherever I’m going, I’ll still love you.
No longer having any control over her body, her eyes closed.
And then there was nothing.
***
A woman with dark silky skin rose from the briny waters of the Gulf, close to Broken Ridge. She was covered in seaweed and nothing else. An owl screeched as it flew down towards the woman, welcoming her back—the same owl that refused to leave her home.
Gasping, Lu shot up from the couch in her den, waking from the dream. It hadn’t been a nightmare, but it left a foul taste in her mouth, more so when she heard the rain pounding against the window—and the owl outside, screeching.
“Go away,” she ordered, closing the curtains on the owl and an afternoon that had turned grey and cold with a storm.
Nothing about the storm was natural. She could feel the anger in it, and the pain.
Reigh must be more upset about Thorston than I realized, she judged based on the force of the winds and the heaviness of the downpour.
She called Reigh, but there was no answer, so she grabbed her keys to head down to the bayou, thankful her kids were in Mexico for a few weeks with her mother. She missed them terribly, but it had to be done, for their own protection while their move to Maine was finalized.
