WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening

by Athena Grayson

  “When did you talk to him last, Starla? Are you sure he’s coming?”

  “Shane knows better than to miss out on my ham.” Starla looked over her shoulder as she was arranging slices. “Do you have a reason to think he might?” Her green eyes flicked from Lin to him and he felt their sharpening.

  Lin opened her mouth to speak, her expression plain with mounting concern. Jack moved between her and Starla, nudging her to the other end of the table. “Don’t involve them.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

  Jack looked up, glanced around, made a big show of selecting gourmet mustard. Picked out olives. “Because.” He glanced towards the kitchen, where Maggie surreptitiously kicked her brother, then stole an olive from his plate while he looked under their table. “I’ve been through this with Shane before, in entirely mundane circumstances.” Time hadn’t dulled the terror from the night he and Bailey had found Shane mere minutes before a brickload of consequences with permanent damage rained down on him. “I’m not dragging Bailey away from his family for that.”

  “And if the circumstances aren’t mundane?”

  “Then I’m definitely not separating Bailey from his family.” He glanced up again, pasted on a smiling expression for Bailey, then turned back to Lin. “Eight. Starla’s invited more guests at eight. If he doesn’t come in with them—” He had a sudden vision of himself at the mouth of the alley behind Chesterfields, as he’d done ten years ago, with Bailey at his side, both of them fearing what they’d find of their friend, with the sounds of sirens creeping closer. Only this time, instead of a filthy dumpster in an alley, the crazy-colored Oddways lay before him, and instead of aborting a beating administered by two-bit thugs who bolted at the sign of witnesses, he’d be pulling his friend out from under a pile of things that might not even look human. He swallowed back the dread. “—then I go looking for him.”

  Lin held his gaze for a long moment, then closed her lips with a glance at the clock.

  Starla inserted herself between them. “Casserole, Jack?”

  Lin’s eyes held his a moment longer. I know. He sent the silent message to her and hoped she’d understand, then turned his attention to Starla. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  ~*~

  Lin glanced up at the kitchen clock when they sent the kids upstairs to change into pajamas. “So, when is Shane supposed to get here with his mystery date?”

  “He said he’d drop by.” Starla checked the warmers under the chafing dishes in the dining room. Lin followed her with fresh rolls. “I know you’re concerned. But remember, this is Shane we’re talking about. As chronically early as you are, he’s just as chronically late.”

  Late is one thing. Waylaid is another.

  With the kids upstairs getting into their jammies and the men outside playing firebug, now would be as good a time as any to test the waters of re-shaping Starla’s reality. “Hey Starla?”

  “Yeah?” Starla had started putting ham and sides into containers to send home with her. It made Lin feel guilty about not having shared her information with her best friend before now. “Remember when you made the circle out in the woods?” She picked at a sliver of ham. Starla was right. It was good ham.

  Starla nodded. “The kids still look for faerie gifts sometimes.”

  Send ‘em out there now, because it worked. She opened her mouth to say just that when a burning pain cut across the back of her tongue. Instead of speaking, she started coughing. Gagging as the involuntary reflex stole her breath and tweaked her tonsils.

  Starla rushed around and thwacked her on the back. “Easy. Can you breathe?”

  She wheezed, but it was an inhale of a wheeze so she nodded. A few breaths later, the tickle cleared up and she shook her head. “Dunno what happened there.”

  “Swallow food. Breathe air,” Starla said helpfully.

  She rolled her eyes. “I think I got it this time, thanks.”

  “So what about the circle?”

  It works. She took another breath to speak and this time, she sneezed, ending in a coughing fit.

  “Damn, girl!” Starla thumped her again. “No more ham for you.” She scooted the leftovers away from Lin. “You’ve got an eating problem.”

  Lin shook her head as her throat cleared. I think I’ve got a speaking problem. She tried to speak again. “The ham is fine. I’m fine.” Her throat felt fine. Your magic circle is real. “Your—” Before she could get the next word out, her tongue swelled to a meaty lump against her teeth. She clapped a hand over her mouth and sucked in air around her fingers.

  The last test confirmed it. For whatever reason, under whatever power, she could not speak about Jack’s vulnerability in the circle. She could not reveal to Starla that the circle worked. The weight of the Otherworld began to close around her.

  “Lin?” Starla’s worried voice came from a long tunnel. “Hon? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you sure you can breathe?”

  She blinked and took a deep, cleansing breath as evidence. Cold air flowed from her nostrils and her tongue returned to normal size in three breaths.

  The Scarecrow’s words from Friday came to her again. All we have are words. Shane’s absence pressed in on her. If her waiter at the Tea House hadn’t been playing a prank, and Shane had been drawn into the Otherworld, then her own tongue-tie made two of Jack’s friends who’d been affected by Otherworld forces. One’s a coincidence, two looks suspicious. If she counted Jack himself, that made three. Three’s a conspiracy.

  ~*~

  When Starla and Lin brought the kids outside, Lin pulled Jack back inside into the sunroom. “Need to talk.”

  He spoke before she did. Only because he had to get it out. “Listen. Thank you for bringing me out here. As much of a pain as it was to get here, it was worth it.”

  Bailey’s life wasn’t his—he wasn’t sure if he could handle suburbia—but the evening brought home just how much he missed being able to at least visit. Not for the atmosphere, but for the people. He missed his friends, missed sharing their lives. Even missed being scared by how fast their kids had grown. “I have you to thank. I feel—I feel like I’ve been—I don’t know—in hibernation since Nan and I split. Hell, maybe even before, with my mom being sick.”

  The worried set of her brow softened. She took a deep breath. “I’m honestly glad. I hate that you’ve been in this self-imposed exile all this time. These are the people who care about you. You have to let them in a little.”

  He held up a hand. Out of the question. “It was good enough just to touch base.” It had to be. An ache rose in him when he thought of things like Bailey’s pride in his riding lawn mower, or his plans for landscaping, and confronted the frank reality that he, Jack, couldn’t share in those things. He sighed, a breath that came out from around the shape of a hurt that kept a hole somewhere tender and sore, scabbed over, but never healed. “But the Boundaries are there for a reason.”

  Her mouth returned to a distressed line. “Jack, listen. I—” she dropped her gaze from his. “I tried to talk to Starla about—some of this.”

  A chill went through him. “You told Starla?” Dread furrowed his brow in anticipation of a between-the-eyes blow from an invisible hammer. “I told you not to involve them!”

  Her expression steeled. “She has to know!” She flung her hands towards the bank of windows opening out onto the darkness of the backyard. “Her kids play back there.”

  She put voice to the nagging fears he dared not speak. Fears that drove him away and kept him apart. “What did she say?” He asked the question through dry lips and could not stop himself from glancing out towards the deck where Starla’s blonde curls bounced as she leaned down to peck her husband on the cheek.

  Lin shook her head. “I couldn’t tell her. I-I tried, though.” Her forehead crinkled in a stricken frown. “I wouldn’t have mentioned you at all. I just wanted to let her know about the circle. I tried to ask her about it and I…couldn’t.”

  “I don’t care abou
t me! I care about—” The tension cutting his oxygen stopped winding tighter, but maintained a tight band around his chest. “What do you mean, you couldn’t?”

  She shrugged. “I mean, I physically couldn’t speak when I had anything to say about the circle. My voice wouldn’t work. I coughed, I choked, I sneezed. My tongue swelled up.”

  His own frown turned curious. “Allergic reaction?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “No. This was not an allergic reaction. That would have kept me from talking at all. That’s physiology. This is youkai stuff. Spirit world. My tongue went right back down when I changed the subject.”

  He focused on her mouth, looking for signs that a mundane explanation existed. as he came up with nothing, no reasonable, rational explanation for the clog in her words.

  The squeal of the door opening intruded on his attempts to further rationalize, and a five year old inserted herself between them. “Come on, Mister Jack.” She slipped her mittened hand in his. “You’re going to miss the fire.”

  The warmth from inside the house faded when Maggie pulled the door closed. “Mom says only people who were born in a barn leave the doors open.”

  “That sounds like your mother, all right.” Jack was even more conscious of the heaviness of the night forest pressing in around them. Of the feeling of being watched. And not just by a pair of big, five-year-old green eyes.

  It hit home, then. Lin couldn’t talk to Starla. She couldn’t talk. Could. Not. Speak. Somehow, the little creeps didn’t just make themselves know to her. They influenced her.

  This went deeper than seeing Chillsprites or meeting a Frostling. Even the trip to the Winterlands hadn’t had any physical effects on Lin’s body. His own life had shattered so drastically when he started suffering the effects that he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.

  As he glanced around at his best friend’s beautiful family, the warm comfort of an evening spent with good friends turned to ice. It was one thing to have Chillsprites hanging around his loft. It was another to picture the little gremlins perched at the foot of Maggie’s bed, or hiding in Mason’s closet like little boogey-men waiting to terrorize them.

  And they keep trying to make me their leader.

  That makes me the biggest boogey-man of all.

  ~*~

  Lin never realized how much work went into faking normal.

  Her ever-mounting worry about Shane cast a pall over what should have been peaceful time with friends. She handed the kids their Christmas eve presents—having already slipped mega-packs of gum and candy into their stockings earlier—and clamped onto the joy in their faces at the little robot bugs that bounced and buzzed in their hands. Over their giggles, she caught a look at Jack’s face, and the exact moment when his veneer collapsed.

  His head came up, his attention pulled by something outside the warm glow of the copper fire-pit. Headlights of a car pulling into the driveway reflected through the house and cast a brittle, fleeting brilliance over the bare fingers of the trees. He rose.

  Starla body-blocked him. “Not so soon, Jack. You just got here.”

  “I had fun, Starla. Truly. It’s just time—” Jack’s lips stretched into a smile that, by the time it reached its eyes, had become a caricature of what it should have been. The bright twinkle should have been happiness. Instead, the sheen carried just a little too much mania. She stood up as well. Her own response, to cover up Jack’s sudden twitchiness, was a too-bright exchange with each of the twins that earned her a fish-eyed look from Bailey.

  The doorbell rang, pulling Starla’s attention away from Jack. “Maybe that’s Shane. You’d stay for Shane, wouldn’t you?”

  She locked eyes with Jack. If Shane walked through that door, all could be well. She’d have worried for nothing, she’d have been right to doubt all along.

  Bailey rose as well.

  “No!” Jack’s response froze him in the doorway. Lin turned to see his wild-eyed expression for a brief second before his back was to her, blocking Bailey from coming in. “Stay out here with them. You don’t want to leave them alone.”

  Bailey’s bushy eyebrows went up. “Jack, they’re fine. They know their fire safety.”

  “But—” Jack’s head turned towards the woods and she knew what he was thinking. Caught the expectation like a panic-virus, spreading from him to her. She felt her mother’s world looming over her head and squashed it with ruthless mental discipline. No. The moment they turned their backs, hordes of youkai would not descend on two helpless children outside past their bedtime.

  Now it was her turn to run interference and smooth over the veneer of normal. “Hey, why don’t you guys put your robo-bugs under the Christmas tree before you lose ‘em?” She extended her hands to the twins.

  Twins in tow, she followed Starla into the house and the children dashed off towards the tree. She couldn’t help but reach for Jack’s hand as Starla twisted the knob on the front door and pulled it open.

  A neighbor couple entered the house amid holiday greetings and a bottle held up and waved. Behind them, only empty space.

  The clock mounted to the wall began a subtle chime, heralding the top of the hour.

  Jack moved for the door.

  Starla blocked their exit. “Not without leftovers.”

  For an instant, Jack looked ready to gently-but-firmly set her aside and plow through the door—or the wall if he had to. She moved to intercept. “I’ll get them. Come help?”

  She glanced back in time to see Bailey shake Jack’s hand and turn it into one of his bro-hugs. “Mi casa es su casa, amigo.” Jack’s expression shifted from shell-shocked to naked pain at Bailey’s words. After a second, Jack’s arms went around his friend.

  He’s really isolated himself from us. And he’s hated it. She masked her own shock before it showed on her face while Starla handed her a bag load of plastic containers large enough to feed a whole family. She’d be eating ham for weeks at this rate. Unless I share it… “Thanks for the evening, hon.”

  Starla nodded, then eyed Jack. “Do not let him think he can wait another three years before showing his face around here. I expect to see a lot more of you both.”

  Even from across the room, she could see the panic flash across Jack’s face. She gave Starla a hug to distract her keen-eyed friend. “I’ll call in a few days.”

  ~*~

  The front door closed, shutting out the light and warmth and leaving him standing with Lin under a cloudy, indigo sky.

  “Jack, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She shifted the bag of leftovers to her other arm while she fished around in her purse. He automatically relieved her of the bag of leftovers. “Sorry. Poor choice of words. Um…did you see something back there?” She started towards the car, parked out in the street earlier to give them the ability to make a quick getaway if need be.

  Cowardice kept him from answering. I saw me. I’m the monster.

  They rounded the corner of the house, out of the light altogether, and something fluttered out of the corner of Jack’s eye.

  He turned, and discovered they weren’t alone.

  “Winter his welcome has outstayed. Comes close to betraying the bargain made.”

  “Oh God, not you again.” Jack faced what should have been just a stray page of newspaper and stood eye to eye with Old Crow. He waited, and the pressure to rhyme built up until he couldn’t stand it. “I had enough of you back then.”

  Old Crow hopped from foot to foot, his beady bird-eyes moving from Jack to Lin and back again. “Winter crown must not delay, else new bargain must parlay.”

  Jack thought he was getting pretty good at not letting Oddlings get to him. But the Scarecrow still bothered him. “I’m going, I’m going,” he muttered. “I’ll leave when I’m ready.” Shit. What rhymes with ready? “You can’t bust my chops if my progress is steady.”

  Lin threw him a ‘really?’ look.

  He glanced one last time at the warm light spilling from the house. “What? I’m not
a poet. And everyone knows it.” Bailey might still be his best friend, but he also had a life here, and Jack would be damned if he brought chaos to that life. He promised himself that he would find a way. A way to protect his best friends and their precious family from the fallout of knowing him.

  Lin tossed him her keys. “We’re ready to go, we’re leaving now.” She folded her arms and stopped her forward motion towards the passenger side. “What did you trade to get us here, anyhow?”

  He returned her Look from before. I’m not the only one who can’t rhyme. He shrugged. “It can’t have been much, if we’ve been booted this quick.” He faced Old Crow, feeling a challenge swell in his chest. “I hope you aren’t sore, getting the short end of the stick.” He had no idea what the Advisor bargained with, and it was probably better if he didn’t know.

  Old Crow burst into laughter. “Short end, you think? Think again, young buck. Might ask your bargain’s value from the one they call Puck.” The scarecrow slapped its knee with a dried grass crunch.

  “Trading barbs won’t get either of us far,” Lin interjected. “See you around, grassy-ass. Jack, get in the car.”

  Alright, alright. He didn’t say it aloud, because he didn’t want to rhyme ‘alright.’ The gear-grinding sound of Lin’s seat adjuster made a sound close enough to a raspberry that Jack grinned as he slammed the car door shut in the scarecrow’s still-laughing face. “What an asshole.”

  “Start the car, Jack, and step on it.” The tense edge in her command was not what he expected.

  Inside the car, the pressure to rhyme eased off. “Well, that could have gone worse.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the scarecrow pirouette around Starla’s mailbox in the red glow of their tail lights. “I still don’t know what to do around Bailey’s kids. They—”

  “Drive, Jack. Now.”

  He navigated the maze out of the subdivision, until he reached the county highway that would hopefully take them to the freeway. He felt a faint pull in his chest telling him to go south, and the lights over that way looked like they might be highway on-ramp lights. His stomach tightened at the thought of the boundary’s effect on him coming up. Maybe we have to go fast, like ripping off a bandage. “Hey, are you okay? I’m sorry about the scarecrow thing. I just—it’s nice to finally feel like I’m not two miles behind everybody else in this. Of course, the trade-off is that—”