by Starla Night
Grandma’s thin shoulders sagged. She looked beyond Rose into the distance. Her eyes wrinkled with sorrow. “Briar took it.”
Rose’s heart dropped. “What?”
“Briar—”
“But I left the car for you. So you could go to your appointment. The one you’ve been putting off for months, even though you’re feeling sick all the time, to tell you whether your cancer came back.”
“She needed the car.”
“For what?”
Grandma stared off into the distance again. She didn’t know.
“Did you even go to the appointment?”
Grandma gestured at the neighbor who’d faded into her front room to avoid the argument. “Clara took me.”
Rose fought her feelings. “That was my car, Grandma.”
“Briar promised she’d be right back. You weren’t supposed to know. She was going to be back before you got home.”
Rose hugged herself.
Her crappy four-door sedan only had three working doors. It smelled like green tree air fresheners and cigarettes even though nobody smoked. The peeling gray paint job was spotted with rust, the bald tires squeaked in the rain, no AC huffed from its broken grills, and she’d covered the torn seats cushions with an old sheet.
She loved her grandma because Grandma would give a stranger the shirt off her own back, but she hated that her grandma would also give the shirt off Rose’s back.
Liam bounced off the steps and started back to the mud puddle.
“No, Liam!” Rose corralled him onto the steps. His clothes were sopping. She couldn’t put him on the bus. “Where are your shoes? We’ll have to walk.”
Grandma brought out his soaking sneakers and Rose tied them on. She’d already had to walk over a mile to the other bus stop. She didn’t want to walk home.
“Does Briar even have a driver’s license?” she muttered, mostly to herself, because Grandma wouldn’t know. “Does she have insurance?”
Grandma handed over Liam’s preschool backpack that she’d left inside the doorway. “Liam went to the principal’s office today.”
“Why?”
“Attention deficit.”
“He’s only four!”
“They want to test him. You have to talk to the principal.”
Rose shouldered the backpack—which felt heavier now that she knew Liam’s soggy clothes filled it—and shepherded him the hot, wet mile home. He only cried twice because she wouldn’t let him run into traffic. Good thing, because her temper was shorter than a half-burned matchstick.
At the gas station on the corner, Liam whined about being hungry, so she stopped in and refused to buy him a soda but relented on an overpriced, black-spotted banana. She’d need bus change for tomorrow, but when she handed over her only twenty, the cashier tapped the sign—no change unless buying fuel—and Liam had already peeled the banana, so she had to dig in every pocket until she’d produced change to the penny. The cashier scooped it up with a self-satisfied smile as if he’d foiled her from trying to steal his change.
It took every ounce of willpower to not break down and explain herself. She gritted her teeth and left. He wouldn’t believe her or care.
At least her new apartment was worth coming home to.
She’d lived in Grandma’s spare room with Liam for years, and had just afforded the down-payments for a one-bedroom in a nice complex with smooth concrete parking spaces, mowed lawns, and neighbors who hung seasonal decor. Porches were strung with summer suns, pool signs, and martini glasses.
Best of all, the after-hours were quiet. No shouting matches, no ridiculously loud TVs, no police sirens.
So she had to be on her best behavior. Nobody could know where she came from, or else like mold spreading from her grandma’s kitchen, her past would rot out her new life before she noticed it taking hold.
“Hi, Rose!” Her kind neighbor, a grandmother named Taylor who wore a conservative sundress and pearls, watered sweet tomato vines on her white porch trellis. “I’ll be right over with the movie.”
“Take your time.” Rose climbed her own firm, painted, well-maintained front steps.
Liam raced into the front room leaving muddy, wet tracks across their cleanish floor. She yelled at him to come back and peel off his shoes, argued him into the bath, and was just blotting the spots with a wet rag when her doorbell rang.
Taylor offered a plate of cookies and a gory slasher DVD. “My grandson left Stabber 4.”
Rose tugged at her damp shirt. “I’m running behind.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“That would be great, actually.”
Rose finished putting Liam to bed, trying not to let her exasperation rise when she was still trying to pretend she was a good person to her neighbor, although since she didn’t have air conditioning and their windows were open all the time, that was a dream. She snugged him into his racecar bed, whispered her usual goodnights, pretended she would sleep beside him and, as soon as his breathing evened out, stealth army-slid backward out of the room and closed it up tight.
Taylor had set up her laptop and slid in the disk; Rose’s tea steeped on the table beside an oatmeal cookie. “Your tea’s cold.”
“Cold is fine on a night like tonight.” She collapsed onto the couch next to Taylor, then got up with a groan and shut the blinds.
It wasn’t necessary here—they didn’t have to fear home intruders—but securing the apartment soothed her. Rose locked the deadbolt, sealed up the front windows, and wedged dowels into the tracks. Nobody could get in from the porch, and anybody trying to get in the open windows on the sides—the kitchen or the living room—would need a ladder or the ability to fly.
“Thanks for watching with me.” Taylor skipped through the previews. “My grandson is too cool to watch horror movies with an old grannie. You’re the only one I know who doesn’t mind.”
“Your grandson doesn’t want you to know he shrieks at the scary parts.”
Taylor laughed. “You’re probably right. How can he get scared in front of the ‘cool grandma’ who watches the same movies as his friends?” She sighed. “I hope that’s not true. It would mean that we’re missing each other for no reason. I assumed he preferred to watch movies with a girl.”
Rose settled into the couch and lectured herself not to snore. The day was long, the night was warm, and horror movies were oddly relaxing. Probably because her real life was so surreal. She didn’t get attacked by plant monsters from space every time she cleaned a bathroom, but today wasn’t her first time, either.
Honestly, The Day of the Triffids for her was just another Tuesday.
She tried to prop her lids open as a demonic knife-wielding maniac chased screaming college students down long hallways and around beach barbecue pits.
Liam’s cartoon fairy tales gave her jagged stress. A prince rescued his princess from an evil queen and they got married, but come on! Things always looked up right before someone died.
In a horror movie, the protagonist’s survivability depended on their cardio routine. How smart they were. How they did lateral thinking. In a fairy tale movie? Yeah, they defeated one bad guy and thought the sun should set forever. They weren’t prepared to survive real life’s knocks at all.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She jumped up on the couch, sleep thrown from her mind as she jarred awake.
Taylor sat frozen beside her. Her voice whispered in terror. “There’s a man at your door.”
“A man?” Rose whispered too. “No man should come here.”
He was a big man. The porch light illuminated him from behind, and he was wearing a big bulky leather jacket, which made no sense on a blisteringly hot summer night.
Unless he was a demonic serial maniac coming at her with a knife.
“Rose?” A muffled voice sounded strangely familiar, like something her brain should recognize if she hadn’t just been woken from a dreamy slumber in the middle of a horror
movie and put on high adrenaline. “I know you’re in there.”
Taylor’s eyes widened. She looked at Rose for confirmation that she knew the strange man.
Rose shook her head.
Taylor leaned forward and tapped the space bar to stop the movie. The lights were dark. She closed the screen so nothing reflected on their faces.
The man peered through the windows. Rose had lowered the blinds but not closed them so there were thin gaps. He lifted his hand to shield the porch light.
A massive knife was silhouetted against the blinds.
Rose’s heart banged in her throat.
Taylor gasped.
Rose ducked out of view and dragged Taylor off the couch with her, trying to be silent as she pulled the blanket over them. This was not secure. They had to run. Get out. Hope they were faster. And she needed to protect Liam.
Taylor stabbed the emergency number on her phone. She decreased the volume as it dialed.
The operator answered. “911, what’s your emergency?”
Her voice quavered as she whispered. “There’s a demon outside my neighbor’s apartment with a knife.”
“What’s your address?”
Rose left her there and peeked out of the blanket. The silhouette was gone. She whipped her head around. There! His shadow had moved around the corner seeking a way to the open windows at the side of the house. He could not get to those windows unless he was a demon who floated.
The bulky man levitated off her porch and curled unnaturally, knife-first, toward the window screens.
Her breath froze in her throat.
No.
She army-crawled to Liam’s bedroom, opened it so she could see his sleeping form, and coiled in the shadows like a snake.
He was a demon with a knife. She had nothing.
Her heart rat-a-tat-tatted in her chest. Her hands flexed for something, anything, to use as a weapon. A weapon that could incapacitate a demon.
Police sirens had never filled her with relief before, but they did now.
Her anxiety ratcheted higher as the red and blue strobes infiltrated the parking lot and swung around to her apartment. Headlights blasted the levitating man in the face, lighting him from underneath and creating bizarre shadows across his unfamiliar face. He blocked them out by lifting the leather-jacketed arm across his eyes.
Police megaphone announced, “Drop your weapons and come out with both hands up where we can see them.”
The man dropped the meat cleaver and floated away from the window with his arms out.
“Come out with both hands up,” the police repeated.
“I am out,” the man said, in a more ordinary tone that Rose suddenly dreaded she recognized.
There were only a few hundred dragons on Earth, total, and even though Jasper worked in the same city, these police officers had probably never seen him before. They might never have seen a dragon in person.
“Oh sweet jeez—he’s floating! He is a demon!”
Chaos erupted.
Jasper dropped to the ground, officers swarmed him, and lights in the other apartments turned on. The police officers shouted over each other and didn’t seem to hear Jasper’s calm responses.
“Don’t resist!”
“I’m not resisting.”
“Put your hands out!”
“He’s grabbing me, so—”
“Do it!”
“Okay.”
“Hey, don’t resist!”
Rose stayed down because that was the smart thing, but she signaled to Taylor peeking out from the end of the couch that it would be okay. A few minutes later, the calm returned, and heavy boots clomped up the stairs. An officer banged on the door.
“Ms. Taylor? Rose? It’s Officer Dave. We have a few questions.”
Rose beat Taylor to the door and opened it. The officer was broad as a wall. “What is it?”
“The prowler says he’s your boss, Jasper Onyx, and he came to ‘ask’ you to marry him with this.” Officer Dave held out a silver cleaver.
Her heart kicked her in her throat again. “Excuse me?”
“Do you have a boss, and did he proposition you?”
“Never with a knife.”
The officer’s brows rose, waiting for her to deny the rest of it, and when she didn’t, he snorted. “You’ll want to get a new job.”
“But it’s my only job.” Rose peered around his shoulder. The silhouette in the patrol car might be Jasper. “He’s never done anything like this.”
Taylor oohed. “Can she keep the knife?”
Officer Dave frowned. “Is it hers?”
“No,” Rose said.
“That’s a Shin Rey chef’s knife,” Taylor said. “I used to work at the Ceramic Bungalow. That’s a $600 blade.”
“So he can afford bail.” Officer Dave turned away.
Rose’s heart kicked. She took a few steps onto the porch. “You’re arresting him?”
“For resisting arrest, domestic violence, prowling, and whatever else I think of.”
“But he…this is all a misunderstanding.”
“Your boss comes at you in your home with a knife because you won’t marry him? Yeah, lady, that’s a heck of a misunderstanding.”
“No, I mean…” She followed him down the steps. “What was he thinking?”
“Ask him.”
“Can I?”
Officer Dave looked at his partner, who shrugged. They both thought she was delusional. Officer Dave opened the door.
Jasper still looked cool, even in the back of a police cruiser. “Hey, Rose.”
“Jasper, what were you doing?”
“I needed to see you.”
“Okay, but you can see me at work tomorrow. Coming to my home like this is crazy. You’re respectful to your employees. This isn’t like you.”
“He snapped,” Officer Dave’s partner opined.
Jasper pursed his lips and then studied his cuffs. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
Her heart broke. “You did?”
“I thought…Rose, I’ve told you in every way that you are the greatest female in the entire universe, and things in the Empire are changing now. I can feel it. My chance to be with you is slipping away.”
“That’s nuts. We see each other at work every day. I’m not getting a new job. And your family owns the company. You’re not going anywhere.”
“I hope that’s true.”
She felt terrible this happened. If she hadn’t been half-asleep…if Taylor hadn’t brought over the knife-wielding demonic slasher movie…if Jasper hadn’t brought a knife late at night…
Wait a minute.
“Hey.” She got his attention again. “What was that about the knife?”
“Oh.” He looked embarrassed. “It was to protect myself if you tried to drive me off with machine guns or hand grenades.”
She sighed. “Now, if you’d asked me, I could have told you I’m fresh out of machine guns and hand grenades.”
“You could know someone.”
“Yeah, I don’t know anyone in a cult or in a cartel.”
He looked down at his hands again, rueful about his mistake and calm as always.
His words echoed in her head.
I crossed a galaxy to reach your planet. I’ll go as far as I need to reach you.
She needed to end this.
Officer Dave cleared his throat and rested his hand on the door. She was about to lose Jasper. For how long? All because she hadn’t listened to Elle and flat out stopped Jasper from thinking about her. Her worst fears had come true. He hadn’t lasted five minutes in her world because the police station was only three minutes away.
If he’d come at a normal hour, unarmed like a normal person, and asked to see her in the normal way, would she have let him in? She couldn’t even offer him a soda or crackers. Her cupboards were bare, her house was bare, and her emotions were bare.
And why was she still carrying around the scrap of his suit in her back pocket?
&
nbsp; She couldn’t love him. He needed to be free.
“Jasper.” Rose captured his gorgeous warm gaze. “You’re my boss. I will never date you. We will never marry.”
He looked like she’d hit him. His hope crumpled.
So did her heart.
She pushed through. “You need to stop chasing me and move on to another woman. Do you understand?”
He nodded sadly.
“Then don’t come here again.” She stepped back from the car, nodded at the officers who approved her hard-line message, and watched the car drive away.
Elle was right. Rose should never have let Jasper’s kindness toward her grow. She’d been selfish and had to become a better person.
Even though it cut her heart like she’d been stabbed with that fancy $600 chef’s knife.
Chapter Five
Three weeks later, Jasper moped into the conference room.
He ground the beans for an espresso and keyed it into the machine. Outside, the pre-dawn darkness pricked with stars. It was peaceful like Earth.
And miserable.
Mal strode into the conference room and dropped his files at the CEO seat with a decisive smack. “You’re early.”
Jasper slid a black coffee with a single shot to Mal’s spot. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Perhaps you should drink less coffee. Cheryl says it keeps humans awake.”
“But I’m a dragon.”
Mal checked his watch, studied his files, and drained the beverage. “Mm, perfect.”
The second-oldest brother, Pyro, ambled into the conference room and smirked at Mal. “Hope you’re ready to be defeated.”
Mal dropped the empty cup with a clatter. “You won’t beat us with one product launch.”
“I’m not your VP anymore. I’m a CEO with my own full staff of fallen aristocrats jumping for me like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We’ve got something to prove and your fall will prove it.”
Mal shot to his feet. His green scales shimmered over his skin. “No aristocrat will ever beat me!”
Pyro rolled up his shirt sleeves to reveal battle-hardened knuckles. “You want to see?”
“No, I want to fight!”
Pyro’s eyes gleamed with radioactive red threads that matched the pulses running up his scales. His denim squeaked as his body bulked, starting to shift. “You got it, big bro. Bring it on.”
