by Emma Hamm
The muscles in his shoulders tensed. She had never seen them tense before although she would have sworn she had if asked the question. He had always been painfully relaxed around her.
Now he was not.
Deceptively, he lifted his glass of water to his lips before he spoke. “You think Juice is just a bit of smoke?”
“Logically, I know it’s more than that. Normal smoke doesn’t make people feel things that aren’t actually feeling. But it’s all just a game isn’t it? Feel good for a little while and then leave. The same as any other drug.”
She was pushing his limits. She watched the muscles in his shoulders tense and his jaw tick.
“A game?”
“Or something like it.”
“Why do you believe, little girl, people come into my club and use Juice?”
A loaded question, she thought, and a dangerous one. “To feel good.”
“To feel good?” he repeated. A cruel laugh burst from his chest. “You know nothing about Juice. If you did, you would never lower yourself to try it.”
“You sell it on a daily basis, but you say that?”
His chair scraped the floor. The sound grated her ears and made her flinch into perfect posture in her wheelchair. His hands slapped down on the table, thrusting his body away.
She could feel his breath against the back of her neck moments later. The warmth of his fingers bled into her shoulders but he was not touching her. Not yet.
Somehow, she had unleashed the beast. She had called his life’s work a game, a drug like any other, and then criticized him for disliking selling the drug itself. Never provoke a drug lord, she chastised herself.
“And what would you have taken?” His murmured words stirred a lock of hair sliding past her ear. “Euphoria? Love? Romance?”
“Why do you assume I would have taken those?”
“What else do women wish from moments like that?” He finally touched her. His fingers traced the outline of her neck, lingering upon the delicate bones of her shoulders. “They wish for something they do not get at home. They want to feel taken care of, swept off their feet, all the things that men can’t seem to do for them in the squalor of their lonely lives.”
“Not me.”
“No?” He moved to her other ear. His breath teased the seashell curves. “What would you have taken then, my lovely little captive?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, but you know it wouldn’t have been one of the Juices I listed?”
“What do you want me to say?” she cried out. “I don’t know what you want from me! I don’t know if I would have even followed through! I might have walked up to the counter, told the bartender what I wanted, and then stared at it for hours before I gave it back to him.”
“He would never have let you do that.”
“You don’t know that!”
Pitch’s hands danced over her shoulders and down her arms. It brought him forward until his chin was nearly resting on the top of her head. “I know my employees, and I know the people who use Juice. I know how addicted they get to the feelings Juice can inspire.”
“It can’t be that good.”
And there it was. The final moment she would always look back upon and think that’s when it happened. That was the first spark lit off between them until they were both consumed by fire.
“No?” His voice deepened, laced with anger. “And what do you know of Juice?”
Lydia remained frozen in place as his hand trailed from her wrist, up to her neck, and then outlined her jaw. She felt the soft pads of his fingertips. The light scrape of his nails as he forced her to turn toward him. The puff of his breath against her lips.
“I know nothing,” she whispered.
“You would have chosen Happiness,” he told her.
Smoke curled out of his lips as he spoke. She was too close to tell, but out of the corners of her eyes she could see sparkling golden smoke.
She inhaled.
He breathed Happiness into her. Greedily, she gasped in the feeling as it burst forth from her chest. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to stretch out in the sun and run her fingers through her hair.
Her lips curved into an astonished smile. Although her eyes wanted to drift shut, she did not let them. Because his hand had curled into her hair and he was tilting her backward just enough so that the Juice was pouring into her lips now.
It was overwhelming. The Happiness overflowed from him until she could not tell where hers started and his began. Surely it was his Happiness that he shared with her. It was his experiences, his life, his wonderful pure golden Happiness.
“But Juice is dangerous business,” he said around the smoke pouring from his lips. “One small slip, and you aren’t Happy anymore.”
A different smoke bled from his nose. Blue like the deepest ocean, it was sluggish and slow. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want that Juice, but she didn’t have a choice as it dripped into her mouth and sank into her skin.
This didn’t feel good at all. Tears pricked at her eyes and she wanted to struggle but she didn’t. Her body locked in place. Unable to move as shock and horror and awe and denial all mixed together. Her chest clenched.
“Happiness can disappear so quickly,” he murmured. “Good things are enticing in the beginning, but they aren’t what people want. You have to feel the bad to know the good, and people always choose Betrayal.”
No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Her mind was a chaotic mass of emotions she couldn’t name or feel through the numbness that burned like dry ice.
“I don’t want it,” she murmured as the Juice poured over her. “I don’t want this one.”
“And then sometimes you can mix them,” he said as the yellow and blue smoke swirled together to create the purest of greens. “And that’s altogether dangerous.”
Her next lungful of air tasted bitter. It settled deep into her stomach like an angry creature she could not control. Everything around her was suddenly useless. It should be better, not because it should be different but because it should be someone else’s.
She wasn’t good enough. She never would be good enough because there would always be someone better. A single person better. No that wasn’t right. There wasn’t a single person in her life that she wanted to harm, but suddenly, she did.
It wasn’t right to want to hurt someone. It wasn’t right to feel this way, but she did. Her fingers curled into claws on the wheelchair as she glared up at him and fought against the emotion that made her head ache.
“Stop,” she gritted out.
“Jealousy is dangerous. More dangerous than any other emotion, do you want to know why?”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m proving a point. Jealousy is dangerous because it always leads to one thing. Even the Juice has a habit of switching itself around without a host.”
She looked up into eyes made of cold stone and felt a pit in her gut. He didn’t see her, she realized. He was looking at someone who needed to be taught a lesson, and she couldn’t understand why.
The smoke he breathed out was a violent bloody red.
“No,” she croaked. “I don’t want it.”
But this wasn’t normal Juice. Bloody and with a mind of its own, red smoke forced itself into her nose, her mouth, her eyes, her ears. It poured into her body until she realized that it wouldn't hurt her.
It would hurt everything else.
His hands slammed down upon her wrists, trapping her in her wheelchair. But she didn’t mind that. She wanted to hurt him any way she could. Her mouth twisted into a snarl and her brain raced ahead to find the perfect thing that would cause him the utmost pain.
“Rage,” he interrupted her train of thought. “It is always the natural progression of things. And then someone makes a foolish mistake when all they thought was one sip. Just the once. Just the first time with friends to watch over them. And then they always end up with me.”
&nb
sp; The Rage inside her disappeared. With one final exhale, he leaned so close he nearly pressed his lips to hers.
Tears slipped from her eyes. She didn’t need to see this Juice to know what color it was. White smoke, glittering like diamonds.
His hand softened against her head until he was cradling her. Her lips parted in a silent gasp as he hovered just out of reach. So close that she could feel the heat of his mouth but not close enough to find out if his lips were as silky as she imagined.
“I created this one for you,” he said. His hand stroked her hair as the Juice took effect.
“Not me,” she told him as more tears tracked down her cheeks.
And it was true. This was not named after her, but the one who came before. She knew this through the blinding aftermath of so much emotion that she was left numb. She knew this as the wave of self-loathing and acceptance crashed over her head.
Regret.
It tasted like ashes upon her tongue and sounded like whispered secrets in corners. It felt like happiness for another and bitterness that she was still alone. It stung as it healed.
But pain was still pain whether it was felt alone or with another.
His thumb rubbed the base of her antler. His fingers trailed through the length of her hair and eased knots out of its path.
“You are her, although you do not wish to admit it. Every day you become more like her and infinitely more powerful.”
“I don’t,” she told him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be the person to tell you she’s gone. I don’t want to be responsible for bringing her back because I can’t.”
“You don’t have to try so hard,” he told her. Pitch leaned forward to press his lips against her forehead. The soothing touch made her ache just as much as it made fruitless hope blossom. “Sil will never be you, but you become more and more like her. It’s the magic, not the body. It’s the power, not the mind. You are her because you both started out as a bit of wax given a wick. And I will be the one to provide you light.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Only this time, in this dimension, I will provide you with all the tools necessary to make you into a firework rather than a candle.”
He withdrew from her. She felt cold and lonely in the absence of his unwanted heat.
“Pitch?” her voice carried into the darkness of the room but disappeared into his shadows.
Chapter 9
She watched the world die over and over again, despite her many attempts to save it. There was always ruin. Screaming. Women, children, men all dying and reaching out for help.
Lydia became afraid of the night. Not for the darkness, which had become comforting, but for the nightmarish future revealed to her in dreams.
Her body became stronger every time she slept although it remained a prison. Lydia had no control over what it wanted. Sleep happened with or without her approval. Nightmares were uncontrollable in those moments of vulnerability.
Sometimes she would wake up alone. Those were the worst nights when she saw people in the shadows, blaming her for deaths which had yet to happen. Sometimes Pitch was there. He would gather her into his waiting arms and rock her while she sobbed. He never asked what she had seen, and she never told him.
Tonight as she awoke, the dream lingered. She could see the faintest edges of it and groped at the edge of the bed.
She cast her pleas to the high heavens and hoped that someone would take her hand, reaching out in the darkness. Being alone would shatter her mind into a million pieces which could never be put back together.
Warm fingers grasped hers. Smooth and strong, they tangled around her shaking hand and eased her fear away.
The edge of the bed dipped. Heat seeped through the blankets as he leaned over her. Pitch. Her silent shadow who was always there when she needed him most.
“You know,” she whispered into the darkness, “it’s really fucked up that I’m relying on you this much.”
He stroked sweat tangled hair off her forehead. “Why is that?”
“You kidnapped me. You’ve been holding me captive for years in this house and you still haven’t let me out of it. You gave me this power that’s eating me alive.”
There were too many things to count. Reasons for her to hate him and yet, she found she could not. He was darkness and no one could hate what was naturally made.
“True,” he told her. “I did all of those things to you, and I cannot promise that I will not do more.”
“Are you ever going to let me go?”
He did not respond and continued to stroke her hair. The soothing rhythm pulled her from the nightmare and into reality. It was still dark. The shadows still moved. But these shadows touched her body with soft caresses rather than harsh jabs.
She knew was he was going to say. She was here for a good reason, to save the world.
What girl didn’t want that?
Lydia turned her head away from him. “It wasn’t a dream this time.”
“It was more?”
“I can’t describe it. It wasn’t like with the red woman.”
“Sil’s visions never were very consistent,” he quietly replied. “Either way, they should not be ignored.”
“Why am I dreaming of these people?”
“They are the puzzle pieces you are fitting together.”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Lydia grumbled as she forced herself into a sitting position.
Her head was aching, throbbing with her heartbeat. Would she never return to herself? She couldn’t even control when she saw the visions, saving the world was far beyond her reach.
All she wanted was one day where she didn’t feel tired. One day when she could stand on her own two feet, walk out the door, and sit in the sun.
His hand returned, rolling her to her side, and digging strong fingers into the tense muscles along the edge of her protruding spine.
“I do not know how her magic works,” he murmured. “It is vastly different from my own. She not only saw the future, but read it like a book.”
Lydia buried her face in her hands, her voice muffled as she spoke, “You can see the future?”
“All of us could.”
“All?”
“The dark Five,” he amended. “We were the ones who created creatures of oracular gifts. Limiting them, of course, as we saw fit. But we could all walk the strands of time.”
Lydia lifted her head from her hands and tried to find his eyes in the darkness. “You could? Then why didn’t any of you see… sorry. That was rude.”
“Why didn’t we see our deaths? We did. That was why they killed themselves.”
She shifted on the bed. Her back hit his chest with a thump. She felt his sharp inhalation and thought he would push her away, but he did not. Pitch leaned against her headboard and settled her more comfortably against him before he continued.
“What do you know of my siblings?”
“Just what I saw in the visions.”
“So, very little.”
Lydia nodded.
His breath stirred the hair above her ear. “I wish I could say they were good people, but they were not. Dark things can so easily shift to evil. It’s in our nature. But they had swallowed too many lies and unpredictable futures. They saw assassins in their own shadows and murderers in their own siblings.”
“What a terrible way to live.” Lydia’s heart broke for them, in the same way it had broken when she had seen the fragile expression upon Pitch’s face.
“It was how they would have wanted it. They would have preferred to look a killer in the eyes before he struck. To die without knowing that someone was going to murder them would have been the ultimate disgrace. But, in the end, they all died.”
He sighed, “They were always too cocky. Too prideful. So when they saw a future full of Light creatures, they saw an army bearing down upon them. They did not see a group of people who were farming, building families, creating art. This was their first mistake and their downfall.<
br />
“I still remember that moment,” he ruefully shook his head. “The night I walked down the stairs and saw the knives in their hands. There was no calling them back from their desire for murder. My eldest sister had two blades anchored in her shoulders and she was laughing. My brother had stabbed himself so many times in the stomach he was no longer standing, but he still held his arms out and called for me to join them.”
The memories poured out of his mouth like water from falls. Perhaps, she thought, this was his way of healing from a wound that had long been open.
Instead of interrupting, or telling him her opinion, she reached out to hold his hand. He hesitated for the briefest moment before lifting it to press against his heart.
“They were my heroes. They had created so much life and allowed me to run wild with freedom and abandon. I created whatever I wanted and they would critique it. Tell me how lovely it looked or how I could make the creature better. We didn’t think of them as anything other than a piece of clay we had molded into a lifelike figure.
“It was the difference between the Light Five and us. They saw themselves as Gods breathing life into the elements. We saw ourselves as scientists who could turn something on and off when we wanted it.”
Her fingers spread wide above his heart. He mirrored her actions and pressed his palm against the back of her hand.
“I was so angry with them. I didn’t want to see them die, and I didn’t want an army. And I had met her. Sil. The woman gave me so many new ideas that I hadn’t thought of before. She changed the way I saw the world, and they hated her. They ran her from our lands, they destroyed everything I secretly desired.
“So I did not want to save them. I looked into the future and I saw good coming from their deaths, and I still did not want to stop them.”
“But you did?” Her voice sounded like the shattering of glass against stone. “You must have stopped them.”
“The first time, yes. How did you know?”
“You aren’t the type to let someone die like that.”
“I have let many people die like that,” he growled. His voice shuddered with the ache of old pains. But his arm snaked around her waist and pressed against her hip.
