“Jack, weren’t you listening?” Her voice rose in alarm.
He glanced over and found her brow furrowed while she furiously tapped her phone. “He said, ‘ask the one they call Puck.’” She held up the phone. “Puck was with Shane last night!”
The image of blue hair and a labret-pierced smirk crashed back on him. Somebody must’ve wandered into rough territory last night. “No.” He shook his head. “No. No. NonoNO!” He smacked the steering wheel, sending pain shocks through his palm. “That guy’s been making me coffee for two years!” His vision narrowed to a tunnel of black asphalt and white light, split by two highway-yellow lines stretching off into nothingness.
Focus. Focus on the road, Winters. His vision wanted to white out. He wished he hadn’t eaten so much ham earlier. His fingers started to cramp and he realized he held the steering wheel in a death grip and needed to downshift to make it up the hill. The blue glow of Lin’s phone teased the edge of his peripheral vision. “No, wait. It can’t be what you’re thinking. Puck’s been making me coffee for two years. Huh-uh.” He was getting tired of repeating himself. Tired of being three steps behind. Even when he thought he’d caught up, he was still behind.
“Jack, talk to me. What are you thinking?” The blue glow cut out as Lin turned off her screen. She shifted in her seat. “Shane is with this Puck person.”
Jack’s lips tightened. “Who’s been serving me coffee for two fucking years.”
She gave an impatient huff. “Let go of the coffee thing.”
“I can’t. It’s important. I just…don’t know how.” His focus abruptly sharpened when the black and white splintered into motion. He jammed on the brakes as a trio of deer chose the illumination from the car’s headlights to bound across the deserted roadway. He flung his arm out in a reflexive motion, knocking Lin back against her seat as the tires squealed and the car came to a halt. “Jesus!”
Lin clutched at her chest, which put her hands in contact with his arm. The last of the deer waited by the side of the road, staring slack-jawed. Its eyes glowed red and reflective from the headlights, giving it a demented, demonic appearance.
She hugged his arm for half a second, then rolled down the passenger side window and stuck her head out. “Fucking deer! There’s goddamn cornfield on either side of us for miles! Bound through that, you dumbasses! Read a map!”
Maps. Jack remembered his own map. “That’s it! Downtown is Winter territory. That would mean—” He broke off. That would mean nothing, he realized. Pint-sized critters patrolling the borders of a dormant realm? What could they possibly keep out? Starla and Bailey’s twins could have overpowered the Frostlings. “You said your fox-guy works in the tea house?” He edged the car off onto the shoulder of the road and closed his eyes for a second. “The tea house is my territory, too. Really close to the edge, but my territory. Good lord, I just said ‘my,’ didn’t I?” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I’ve been played for a fool. Tricked into negotiating for passage when these assholes have been passing through—have been living—on my turf all along! Squatting!”
Unable to bear it another minute, he flung the car door open. “You want me gone, you sons of bitches? Hell no! I’m staying right where I am until I get some answers! In fact, I think I might move here!” He lifted his head. “You hear me, Crow? The deal’s off!”
“Jack!” Lin climbed out of the car and ran around the front towards him.
“What?” He turned towards her, dared her to challenge him.
She blinked, then narrowed her eyes. She took a deep breath and jerked her head towards the shoulder. “Not in the road. The deer are bad enough out here, ranting men are liable to give somebody a damn heart attack.” She held out a hand to him.
He sagged against the hood of the Honda. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“I think you’re surprisingly sane, for what you’ve been dealing with.”
“Those—sons of bitches—took Shane. In exchange for my passage.” He tipped his head back, stared up at the blank sky, tinted orange with the distant reflections of the lights of the small towns strung like pearls along the county road, and the transient mini-civilizations huddled around the highway exits. Oases in the vast black landscape of uninhabited farmland. “I told the Frostling to go make a deal and get me passage. She had to give the Lawless something they wanted.”
Lin leaned on the car next to him and folded her arms, peering upwards. “She couldn’t have gotten Shane, though. The other Frostling said that no kin ever brought anybody to Winter lands.”
“No Winter Kin.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “And no humble kin. Puck’s not humble if he can think and act by himself. And he knew Shane was my friend when we came in for coffee together.” Dread formed in his gut. “Somehow, he got the Advisor to agree to trade Shane for my passage. This is a challenge.” He glanced towards the cornfield to their right. The bare field seemed devoid of life, except for the sparse, dead stalks the farmer hadn’t yet mowed down. “If we want Shane back, Winter has to go in there and get him.”
Lin pushed away from the hood of the car and reached into the still-open passenger door to pull out her purse. “Then let’s go get him.”
~*~
“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Jack stepped away from the car.
Lin pocketed her phone and shouldered her purse. You never knew when you might need something from your purse, and she wasn’t about to go into hostile youkai territory without her purse. Oh my God, I’m turning into my mother. She was sure the purse contained at least one lucky cat down in the bottom cruft of lip balm, lost eyeliners, and loose change. “I’m going with you.”
“Oh hell, no.” He held out a hand. Like a king ordering around a servant.
Her eyes narrowed. Her hands went to her hips. “And just why not, Jack Winters?”
Some part of her realized that she could do just exactly that. She could stay on the sidelines and choose to ignore or acknowledge the otherworldly part of Jack’s life, exactly the way he wanted them to be able to do. She could gloss over the unpleasant oddities, the stumbling lows, the awkward failures, and just enjoy his company when convenient. The Jack in her mind, the rock-star crush, the—
We could be the cardboard couple.
And what? Live a life with no more dimension than ink on rice-paper? A plastic mystery date, preserved forever on the box of an electric knife? For a thirty-nine year old woman, that’s pretty damn pathetic. “If you think you’re going to leave me out here in the middle of nowhere while you go in blind against crazy otherworld shit, you might want to re-think.”
“Of course, I want you to stay here, where it’s safe. And normal. Why do you think I stopped coming around after Mom died?” He paced back and forth in the glare of the car’s headlights, kicking up pebbles and loose asphalt in both directions. “Why do you think I stick to email and social networks and twenty miles of distance between myself—” He jabbed his fingers into his chest, then gestured north, towards Starla’s. “—and those tiny, innocent, precocious little beings who very nearly called me out without even being aware they were doing it?”
The harsh glare of the headlights cast his face in angular shadows. “What if it wasn’t Shane that was taken?” He stared hard at the ring of car keys he held like a life line. “I’d rather be the jerk who went away than the one who—” His lips folded in a tight line. The fingers of his free hand clenched around the keys until his knuckles were white. “The one who—destroyed their lives.”
Lin didn’t move for a long time after he went silent. He held himself still. She could see the tension building inside him, stringing him up like a coiled spring. Her own tension came more kinetically. She licked her lips, rubbed her hands together, fisted them apart, then knotted the fingers together. This is it. She felt the prickle of heat along her scalp and at the back of her neck. Her mother’s world waited in the cornfield. But more importantly, not one, but two of the people she valued most in the world were tr
apped there, even if one still stood before her on the solid ground of reality.
“Jack.” She lifted a careful hand and laid it on his cheek. “How long have you been carrying this around all alone?”
His entire body shuddered at her touch. The cold of his cheek stung her fingers. She moistened her lips again and tilted his face until he was forced to look right at her. She took a deep breath. “If you can’t un-see it, then neither will I. I won’t look away.”
~*~
He dropped his arm and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, just tight enough to feel her pulse, the warmth thrumming through her. “I wish—”
“Stop.” She leaned in close enough for him to breathe her perfume and the wood-smoky scent of her skin beneath it. “I won’t look away.” He leaned into her touch. “I won’t look away, if you won’t.”
Her words seemed to unlock something in him. He was in her arms again—where he belonged. The urge to devour her, to smooth over the insanity with a thin placebo of desire had his arms around her, at the small of her back where he could feel her body along his. But she curled her fingers against the side of his neck with gentle strokes and instead of trying to consume, he kept still and just shared her body heat. His hands splayed over her back, under her sweater, a cool touch over the silky knit of her tunic.
They stood like that for an endless moment, motionless, bent at awkward angles, but without the impetus to move. Until she turned her head just slightly and he found he only had to turn his a little for their lips to touch. Comfort bloomed into desire, this time with a slow burning need that took its time because it knew it had them both.
He shifted just enough to press her body against the car. He moved his hands up to cup her face, to take from her, but to connect to her as well. He deepened the kiss before pulling away from her warmth. “I—” He couldn’t finish. Any explanation would just be an excuse but he at least could be honest with himself. He closed his eyes and arched backwards, into the ditch by the side of the road, bracing for the impact that would hurt, but not nearly as much as losing her.
Act IV: Structural Failure
He landed, but not in the ditch. Or at least, not the same ditch he’d been headed for. The crunch of dry, dead leaves deafened him for a millisecond and he scrambled to his feet. “Huh. It worked.” He brushed the leaves off as best as he could and climbed out of the Oddways version of the ditch. His earlier episode at the rest stop had familiarized him with the sideways-sliding sensation of stepping into the Realms. Once he recognized it, he suspected he could enter the Oddways at will. If the Frostlings and Chillsprites could do it, so could he.
It took him a few yards to realize piss and vinegar weren’t going to propel him towards a plan.
He found reasonably flat ground and lifted his head to look around. The dead cornstalks marched in an even line to the left and right of where he stood, just at the edge of the ditch, and a little taller than the top of his head. Behind him, the road had been replaced with a softly glowing barrier. He couldn’t see the car, but he could hear the idling motor and—yes, there, faint and muffled as if coming from behind a wall, Lin calling him a jackass.
He straightened his jacket lapels. “I’m sorry!” He called out.
The rant fell to silence. “Jack? Can you hear me? Get me in there! You’re not doing this alone!”
He lifted a hand to the barrier. If he touched it, he’d go through, the same way he’d come in here. But the longer he waited, the less chance he stood of catching the Lawless off-guard and finding Shane. “Stay out there. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. With Shane.”
“How?”
He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see. “I don’t know. I’ll just keep trying things until something works.” He turned away from the barrier. The sooner he got someone’s attention, the sooner he could get out.
He wished his little Frostling advisor were here. She might be able to help him navigate the otherworld without doing any more damage to himself than he already had. But she wasn’t, so he had to make do with himself and all the things he didn’t know.
Which…won’t protect me here the way it does in the Winter realm, will it?
He took the lay of the land again. The line of cornstalks formed a wall before him, except for a break a little to his right. He edged across the rim of the ditch until he came to the break and stepped through a cornstalk wall, and into a more open field. Dead cornstalks had been flattened in large swaths, except for patches where the stalks still stood in clumps. The clumps made a line like a string of pearls lining the open space before him. A larger patch stood in the center, curving away like a crop circle in reverse. In front of it stood four bundles of cornstalk, tied into sheaves about as wide as a man standing with arms outstretched, forming the points of a rectangle oriented towards the curve of the large corn patch.
He ducked back into the gap in the wall and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. If the cornstalks were bricks, the patches to the left and right would be outbuildings. And in front of him, a castle. The sheaves might be some crude, maize-based portcullis, or two pairs of guards. Or in this place, maybe both at the same time. He was coming to understand a few truths about the Realms. Beings meant something. So did buildings.
For some reason, he thought of Bailey’s pride in his riding lawn mower. What I wouldn’t give for one of those right now. He could ride to the rescue on a yellow and green steed at two miles per hour and chew right through the walls of the farmland fortress.
Think, Winters. The Winter realm was full of beings and shapes that were manifestations of concepts. The Chillsprites were cold little breezes that snuck in under hats and around scarves and under skirt hems. Frostlings patrolled the edges of winter where cold air met moist warmth and created frost. And the Mother Glacier—well, she really needed no explanation.
His Advisor identified the Lawless as those who didn’t fit into either the Winter or Summer camps. Some were displaced from cultures not dominant to the area, and some—like Old Crow, he suspected—were just iconoclasts. Ornery loners who didn’t want anything to do with the Realms. I can respect that.
But they still had to follow some rules. He just wished he knew which ones. What he wouldn’t give for something to nag him about being “informed” now.
“That’s it!” He closed his eyes. “Seneschal!”
The sudden brightness blinded him when the world inverted, but otherwise, he was ready for the presence that popped into existence beside him. The wind stopped, the patchy cloud cover revealed open spaces where stars made inky pinpoints on a brilliant white sky, and the waning moon a black oval partially obscured by pearly gray. “Majesty calls?”
“Yes, Majesty calls,” he snapped. “These assholes haven’t been playing straight with me.”
“The fairness of parley is only that by which the parties agree to abide.”
“Yeah, well I never agreed to any of this shit. I thought normal people were out of bounds. I need to challenge a bargain. What are my options?”
The Seneschal bowed. “Majesty would know and have at hand all of Majesty’s options, if Majesty wore the crown instead of merely holding it.”
“Yeah, well that’s not going to happen. I’m surprised at you. Here I am, asking to be Informed, and you’re holding out on me.” Even though the Seneschal could be Dread personified—or at least, being-ified—Jack was already overloaded on fears. There simply wasn’t any more room to be afraid of the Seneschal right now.
“Majesty demonstrates characteristic lack of wisdom in parley alone.”
Okay, concepts weren’t getting him anywhere. He tried a more familiar tactic. “Specifically, tell me the exact details of the bargain the Advisor made to get me up here tonight. You can do that, right?”
The Seneschal bowed. “As Majesty wishes.”
Fuschia spots blinded Jack as the world inverted and he returned to a dark night in a cornfield alone. “Goddammit!” He looked around. “That’s not an an
swer!” He shouted to the uncaring sky.
“M-majesty?” The quavering, feminine squeak came from the gap in the corn leading towards the road. “Th-this one was s-summ-mm-mmoned?”
“Addie!” Odd relief tingled through him at the sight of the little blue Frostling. Her tunic looked hastily tied-on and he wondered if she had a life outside of licking the frost onto blades of grass.
She gave him a strange look, fear warring with fury. “This one is n-not welcome here!”
He crouched down. I can’t have her afraid. Aside from the fact that her size reminded him of Starla’s little girl more than ever now, he needed her knowledge more. “What, exactly, did you use to bargain my passage through here? And who did you bargain with?” He peeled off a glove and held out his hand to her when she didn’t answer. “It’s okay, I’m not angry at you. But I think the Lawless have been lying to us.”
She clasped his hand in her cool, dry one. “Majesty needed passage, so this one traded a human-tribe.” She puffed up her chest. “This one is clever to trade what is not Winter’s for what Winter needs. Winter loses nothing!”
The Mother Glacier’s words turned meaningful and his anger drained away. Addie didn’t understand the concept of individuals. She didn’t understand that Shane was his friend, or what trading a human could mean. “How did you trade the human-tribe?”
The advisor grinned, sharp icicle-teeth gleaming in the darkness. “This one sought parley with Lawless and found Lawless at the Boundary. Lawless could not coax human-tribe over the Boundary, so this one offered the trade. This one would lead human-tribe into the Oddways to the Lawless, if Lawless offered passage to Majesty. Lawless received its desire, and Majesty received Majesty’s bargain.”
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 28
