“They’re alive! Let’s move!” Foss ordered. He hoisted Jamie up, and motioned for Jens to be a crutch for the prince’s other arm.
Nik lifted me up off the ground and carried me like a baby as he ran us in their direction. Charles carried Henry Mancini behind us, horror washing over his face.
Everyone was a mess of emotions, but I felt nothing. My face was blank as Nik carried me, running for over a mile. I should have been embarrassed at my partial nakedness. I should have been crying at the hands that I could still feel on me. I should have had some sort of reaction, but all I did was watch Nik’s wet white-blue hair flapping and sparkling in the breeze. I could see his fear, but I was immune to it, completely checked out from reality.
Nik ran at full speed until the brook disappeared and we were surrounded by old fashioned German-looking buildings. Little wooden houses with ornate shutters and colored doors whizzed by me. He did not stop until we entered a large orange house and the white door slammed shut behind us.
“Niklas! Gracious, what’s all this? Who are your friends? Is she dead? Oh, Niklas! Look at the new drapes I got. Fancy lace from the east village.”
“Great, mom. Lucy!” Niklas laid me on the couch and checked my vitals.
“Niklas! The couch, dear. She’s all wet. Could you move her to the floor?” The chubby woman had hair like Nik’s, but hers was coifed and set to look extra fancy. She turned to Charles and caught sight of his tail and elfish features. “Ah! Niklas! What are you thinking? Get the halfy out of my house! Out, before the neighbors see! Out!” She swatted Mace with her plump hand. Uncle Rick stood in between them, his gentle expression resolute that Charles would not be struck.
Nik ignored his mother. “She’s alive. Why isn’t she moving?”
Wasn’t I? My body felt too heavy to budge, so I stopped trying to access my limbs. I stared blankly at whoever came in my vision. Jens. Foss. Uncle Rick. Charles. Whatever. My brain was fuzzy. I couldn’t find myself in the fog, so I let myself float. Jens tore his shirt off and pushed it over my head. It smelled amazing. Like man and cookies and warm comfort. Then I was pushed into the warmth, and my soul felt the growing heat. My body had left me, but at least I could still feel my soul. My wet shoes and jeans were yanked off me, and then I was floating again. Nik with his wet, but still bouncing, game show host hair moved me to a bed that was so soft, I could have sworn it was pure feathers. A comforter was pulled over me and tucked up to my chin. Somebody was holding my hand, but I couldn’t focus enough to tell who.
I drifted in my mind to one of the times I was getting picked on in Junior High. Erin Hanson filled my locker with shaving cream, ruining my books and homework. She’d also written “ditz” on my locker in permanent marker that the janitor took two months to paint over. Every day for two months was a reminder that I was stupid, and had no friends.
Erin Hanson had a crush on Linus and thought picking on me would be a good way to get on his radar. I’ll never understand women like that. I’d had a paper on the Civil War due that day, and stayed up late with my dad to finish it.
Linus’s retaliation when the school took too long to clean my locker was to write a very offensive slur on Erin’s locker, which, I’ll admit, did speed things along as far as getting them to bust out the locker paint. He also filled her locker with deck stain, ruining her property far worse than mine. I loved him for it. I loved him for a great many reasons. He was my best friend, and in many cases, my only friend.
I remember being covered in shaving cream up to my elbows and all over the front of my only non-resale purchased shirt, but Linus held me anyway. We sat on the floor in the hall as I cried into his shirt that day, certain it couldn’t get any worse than that.
If only I’d known.
My body ached, but I didn’t care enough to address the pain. Instead, I screamed in my mind. Over and over, screamed for my brother to find me. Screamed for my dad to take me home. I didn’t care which home. Just somewhere with Chinese food and Linus. I screamed for my mom. Not for her to take me away or bring me anything. Just for her. I hadn’t had a mom in so long.
In the back of my mind, I noticed a brick wall that had been in the white noise of my imagination ever since my parents died. When I screamed for my mom, it shook almost as if in answer.
I felt Jamie banging on the walls of my mind to let him in, but I held tight to my fortress so I could scream until I lost myself in the comfort of insanity.
Now I was dirty and unspecial with those filthy hands crawling all over me. I wanted to scream aloud and wipe them off me, but I couldn’t move. So I called for my mom like a child and waited for her behind my closed eyelids.
Eighteen.
Dealing
I’m not sure how long it was before my eyes opened. My mother was holding me. Her arms were not repulsed by all the hands that had been on me. She did not turn away from my pain. Instead she snuggled me to her bosom and stroked my hair.
My body finally found itself and allowed me access to my tear ducts. I let myself go and cried into her dress. Movement told me she was crying too, and we were united in that. I found my arm and wrapped it around her, drawing comfort from the fact that she did not shirk away from how filthy I felt.
“There, there,” she said, kissing my hair and holding me close. “We’re alright. Nik got us out.”
Nik? I pulled back and found not my mom, but Britta, her face soaked from tears. I sobbed all over again at the loss of my mother. Losing even the mirage of her was crushing, and I was already down for the count.
Britta kissed my temples and then called for her brother. “Jens! She’s awake!”
Three seconds later, the door burst open. Jens looked like he had not slept in days. His hair was matted in parts and sticking up on its ends in the front. His clothes were rumpled and he had bags under his eyes, plus the bangs and bruises from killing the mountain trolls. “Lucy?”
In the next second, he was sitting up against the headboard between us, pulling me to his chest and propping up my limp frame with his strong one while his other arm banded around his sister. I meant to ask where we were, but my mouth was so dry; I couldn’t make a sound without rasping.
Jens called over his shoulder, “I need water in here! Foss, get me some water!”
Britta combed her fingers through my tangles. “Lucy, sweetheart. You’ve been out three whole days! Tried everything to wake you!”
The expression on Jens’s face broke my heart. “Awake, but not awake. Alive, but not. Don’t do that! Don’t shut down like that!” he yelled at me.
One day I was going to have to teach him how to talk to women.
A bare-chested Foss came in with water, but my hands were so weak from grief coupled with malnutrition that I couldn’t hold the glass steady. Foss tipped the cup to my dry lips, and as my throat constricted, I winced at the effort it took. I could feel the hollow splash of the liquid as it hit my stomach and sloshed around the emptiness. The moment my throat found its use, I choked out, “I want my mom!”
There are most likely people who will look down on me for crying for my mommy. Those people did not have my mother. She could make a meal out of beans and a game out of an empty apartment. If she was here, surely she could fix the hands that felt seared on my body.
I turned into Jens and cried in his neck, my words muffled by his warm flesh. “I was pure! No one ever…and now I’m gross! I can feel their stupid hands still!”
He smoothed the hair back from my face too quickly to be soothing. “No, baby. You’re not gross. You’re perfect and special and everything… just everything. Foss and I tracked them down and killed nine of them. We’ll find the others that did this to you and Britt. We’ll tear their hands off so they never do this again. I’ve already got eighteen Nøkkendalig hands.”
“I don’t want to be here!” Then I gripped his shirt and let out a gut-curdling scream into his neck. “I don’t want to feel this!”
“The marks will go away. We got you ou
t in time. They’re just light burns, and Alrik’s cream’ll take care of it in no time.”
I pulled back and stared into his emerald eyes, searching for something to force it all to make sense. “Marks?”
Jens shook his head. “Never mind.” He held the hem of his shirt I was wearing down. “Don’t worry about it right now.”
Fear flared up in me, barely giving me a moment’s respite. I tugged the hem up and saw large male handprints scattered around my torso.
I lost my mind. Despite the company, I ripped my shirt off and stared down at my chest covered only in my blue bra. My body was riddled with red handprints marking every spot that scarred my insides. I screamed and tried to claw them off my body. “No! Get them off me!” With every rake of my nails on my skin, the injuries burned anew as they had when I was underwater.
“Lucy, stop! Foss, help me!” Jens batted my hands away from my body, and then I felt Foss’s arms fall around me from behind and squeeze, pinning my hands down at my sides.
And then I lost my shiz.
Foss was the last person I wanted near me. He was dangerous and hinted at my impending doom at the hands of his people. He was unsafe, and I was vulnerable. Plus, his breath smelled a little like vomit, and I could tell Mace had done another stripping of the curse while I was out. I flailed and kicked and thrashed around like a madwoman, crying and screaming for Foss to leave me alone.
“What the crap?” Jens tried to shush me, but it only angered me further. “Foss, why’s she so scared of you? Lucy, it’s okay!”
“I don’t know!” Foss yelled over my cries for help.
“Yes, you do! Yes, you do! You scared me on purpose, you horrible, awful man!”
I writhed and twisted in his arms, but all that managed to do was turn me so I was facing him. I wrenched my arms free, pushed at him and pounded with my fists on his massive chest, bawling for some freedom. We ended up wrestling on the floor when Foss could not keep me still, but I could not escape him fully.
“Stop it! I’m sorry!” Somehow without my knowledge or consent, Foss’s hold mutated into a hard hug. He sat us up, palmed my back and held me to his chest, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not! You hate me! And I never did anything to you!” I struggled to leave the hug, but he was so much stronger than me.
“I’m sorry, Lucy!”
My fury broke into tears that poured over his shoulder, his hug turning my terror into mourning. “Get off me! Get the hands off me.” I sobbed into his neck, despite myself. The only reason I can think that I cried on Foss’s shoulder and allowed him to comfort me is that I was pretty insane at that point, and I couldn’t escape him.
He shushed me like a parent calms a toddler and rocked me on his lap, rubbing my naked spine. He grabbed at the corner of the blanket that was on the bed behind me and pulled it down, draping it over my shoulders as his thumb continued to trace each of my ribs across my back.
Jens bent down and looked into my eyes, his expression almost as tortured as mine. “They’ll fade away. Your body won’t be marked forever.”
I gave another small struggle in Foss’s grip, but my heart wasn’t in the escape anymore. His chest was warm against mine, and I sunk into it as my adrenaline ebbed. “Yes, it will.” My voice dripped with the sadness that weighed my body down.
Foss spoke low in my ear. “We choose what marks us.” His arm banded across my back in a show of protection and unified strength. “I’ll find the others. The Nøkkendalig ends tonight.” He spoke to me like he was swearing an oath of loyalty. “The Nøkkens are weak to’ve let them live this long.” His voice lowered, the deep cadence tickling my ear. “But I am not weak.”
I sagged in Foss’s embrace. When we both decided I wasn’t going to attack my own body anymore or his, he relaxed a little, allowing me to move my arms more freely.
I wound my arms around his thick neck and cried softly. “I want my mom. I just want my mom.”
“I know, Lucy.” His chin rested on my head. “I know. Me, too.”
Then something brilliant clicked in my head. I turned my face from Foss’s chest to peek at Jens. “I need to forget. Just for a little bit until I can deal. I can’t handle this. It’s crap on top of garbage on top of puke. It’s too much.” I swallowed hard and wiped a tear from my cheek. “That powder you have that makes you calm down. It takes away your pain.”
Jens froze. “What about it?”
“I need it. I want it. I can’t be alive like this. I can’t… I just can’t.”
Foss, Jens and Britta all answered in a definitive “no.”
I motioned to my marked body. “Look at me! I can’t deal with this! I’ve been a halfway decent survivor until now. I need to not know any of this, even if it’s just for a little while.” I left Foss’s protection and stood, wrapping my fingers in Jens’s sweat-stained shirt. “Please, Jens. Just a little to take the edge off. I need something to keep me from feeling all this.”
Jens shook his head, self-loathing etched all over his handsome face. “No, Loos. You can’t handle this stuff. You have no idea how addictive it is or what it does to you really. You don’t think I wish I’d never tried it? No. Don’t check out. Don’t get high. Don’t shut yourself off and power down. Feel it. Feel all of it. I’m here, and I can help you. You’re not alone this time.”
I wanted to scream at him, “Yes, I am!” but tried a less mean approach. “Please, Jens,” I whispered, nipping his lower lip.
“No.”
Foss was livid. “Do it, and I’ll shove your whole stash up your arse, Jens.”
I kissed Jens lightly, pulling him closer. “Please.”
His eyes closed, and I could feel his defenses melting. “I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Please.” I deepened the kiss, my tears wetting his lips.
Jens leapt back from me as if I’d singed him. “No, Loos! No!” He touched his lips and shook his head, pain and disgust mingling on his face. “Don’t kiss me to take. Kiss me to give.” His hurt was evident, and I shrank in my shame. “You’re the only woman who’s ever kissed me to give me something real. Every other girl wants to use me to up her status or get whatever money I’ve got. You’re different. Don’t be the same.” He gave me a look that broke my heart all over again. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
I whispered, “I’m sorry,” and located the discarded shirt. I covered my body along with my shame and slumped onto the side of the bed. “Why don’t you go? I’m crazy embarrassed right now. Like, nine kinds of crazy and seven kinds of embarrassed.”
Jens chewed on his thumbnail. “Foss, could you and Britt give us a minute? And send in Henry Mancini.”
Foss held out his hand. “Give me your stash first.”
Jens glowered at him. “You act like I travel with it everywhere I go.”
Foss stepped forward and yanked the cord from around Jens’s neck, shoving the pouch in his pants pocket as he left. “I know a junkie when I see one. I’ll be taking this.”
“Screw you, Foss! It’s your people the powder comes from.” Jens called after him as Foss took Britta to the living room. He escorted her like she was a fragile old woman. Gentle, slow, and like he was transporting a great treasure. Even through my overly emotional craze, I couldn’t help but marvel at the progress Mace was making in peeling back the layers of the Fossegrimen curse.
I waved my hand toward the door. “Just go, Jens. I’m fine if we’re fine.”
“Good to hear you’re still full of it.” He looked around the room as if trying to find something to adjust his stress level. He kicked off his boots and flopped on the bed, stretching his long form out. “Take a load off. Keep me company in this big empty bed. I’ve been out all night slaying dragons and whatnot.”
Henry Mancini came scampering into the room and hopped up on the bed next to Jens, wagging his tail at me expectantly.
“I wish I was sure you were joking about the dragons. It
feels like there’s a new kind of terrible around every corner.” I sighed, giving up my fight and lying down next to him. Henry Mancini licked my hand, and then laid down next to me so I was sandwiched in the middle. I traced loops and circles on Jens’ stomach and chest. It relaxed me to calm him. I felt my anxiety dulling its sharp, unmerciful dagger as Henry Mancini cuddled into me from behind. “I’m sorry I kissed you like that. I was a little desperate.”
“That’s how I like my women. Good and desperate.” He moved his arm under me and cradled my head in his nook. He looked up at the wooden ceiling before speaking. “You know, I was pretty close with your family. Your parents knew how unhappy I was back home. When you and Linus were secure, every now and then your dad would take me out for a drink, and we’d talk about what we’d change if we could. We played darts, pool, or we’d just sit and talk. Point is, he was a decent guy. Towards the end, he guessed I had a little thing for you.”
“You talked to my dad about me? Pretty ballsy.”
Jens grinned. “That’s me. I’m all kinds of ballsy.” He brought his fingers up to brush through my blonde that was now stringy and dirty. “Linus knew first. He had a sixth sense when guys looked at you with Romeo eyes. Could even tell when I was invisible. I’m not ashamed to admit that I let the air out of a few tires of your secret admirers when I was looking after you.”
“You evil mastermind,” I joked, snuggling closer to his side.
“After they died, I was in pretty bad shape, too. They’d become like a family to me, especially after losing my parents to Be. You pulled one of these like you did today. Just checked right out after Alrik left. Laid on the floor of that apartment on Fifth, practically comatose. I tried a few things to snap you out of it without compromising my cover, but nothing worked.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, and his voice grew quiet. “There were a few nights that I covered you with a blanket and held you on the floor. I’m not ashamed to admit that I needed you then.” He kissed my lips, gentle and slow, like he was approaching a great treasure. “I need you now, too, Loos. When something too much happens, you can’t check out like this. I’ve waited too long to be with you. So let me be there for you.”
Nokken Page 10
