by Nicole Thorn
“I wouldn’t think about that too much,” Verin said. “It’ll drive you mad.”
I glared at him, and he put his hands up. “Just saying. Now, what would you like?” He pulled the phone out of the cradle, and started dialing for room service. I didn’t think I would get out of this, so I told him a salad with the dressing on the side. He gave me a flat look, like I had done something disappointing, but ordered the salad, and then so much food for himself that I felt dizzy just thinking about it.
Once I thought that the bed would do, I went to check on the bathroom. It would be so easy to overlook, and not clean it every single day, I thought. Or not as thoroughly every single day. They had no reason to try.
It all looked okay, but I didn’t trust it. The shower seemed spotless, and only that kept me from deciding to make the drive back myself, and coming to get everyone in the morning after two hours of sleep.
Verin appeared in the doorway, and stepped into the bathroom. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Making you sit down,” he said, coming toward me. I dodged around him, and out the door without thinking about. He followed me out of the bathroom, and into the room at large. And kept coming until my knees hit the bed, and I collapsed, thus giving him what he wanted. He smiled again, and it made me want to smack him. “There. That’s much better.”
I glared at him, and crossed my arms. “I don’t know what makes you think I’ll sit here, but you’re very stupid for thinking it.”
He smiled at me, and looked pointedly at the fact that my butt had been planted. Right where he had put me, I stood up, my arms crossed over my chest, and raised an eyebrow. He nudged me, and I fell back on the bed. It had been that simple. I glared some more, and began rising up, getting ready to fight him, but someone knocked on the door.
The jackass answered it with good cheer. “Hello! Ooh, food. Bring it in!” He and the guy pushing the cart talked for a few minutes, all cheerful happiness between them. Verin left a sizable tip as the boy left, and then turned to the food. He’d ordered a burger, two things of fries, a giant cookie, an ice cream sundae, and two sodas, and then my salad and water, with the dressing on the side.
I took my plate, and perched at the desk, so that I wouldn’t make a mess of the bed. Verin flopped onto his bed like he did a belly dive into a swimming pool, and practically smothered his burger with ketchup, and his fries got even worse treatment.
I shook my head at him. “You’re going to make a mess,” I told him, while carefully drizzling a drop of dressing onto my salad. It tasted okay, but I didn’t trust that it didn’t have a ton of fat.
He smiled at me. “No, I won’t.”
I rolled my eyes, turning back to my salad. They put nuts in it. I sighed, pushing the little things to the side so that I wouldn’t have to eat them. If I had to order it again, at least I knew what to ask for. As I continued to search the bowl, I also found grilled chicken. I pushed that to the side, since I didn’t know how it had been cooked, but could assume that it had been done with some kind of anti-stick ingredient, such as butter. I couldn’t eat butter.
Verin took the plate away from me before I got another bite in my mouth. “Hey!” I shouted, reaching for it.
Verin shook his head, and put it back on the cart. “You can have it back, but first you have to eat some of these.” He handed me the extra thing of fries. I stared at it, and then at him. “That’s not funny, Verin. Give me back my dinner.”
“Why?” he asked. “Just one fry.”
“I can’t eat a fry,” I said.
“Why?” he asked again.
My face heated. I had already let slip my little rewards system, so I didn’t know why this embarrassed me. He already knew all the bad stuff, and he should’ve known that this wasn’t okay to do. I crossed my arms over my chest, and tried to work up a glare, but I couldn’t quite do it. My face felt wrong.
Verin set the plates down, and sat on the edge of my bed. I tried not to get upset about that. He didn’t realize he did anything wrong. Most people didn’t understand how often they do something wrong, because it wasn’t actually wrong in anyone’s eyes but mine.
“Why?” he asked again, quietly insistent.
I still didn’t say anything, though the reason sat on the tip of my tongue. I could tell him that I had to be extra careful. If I ate junk food, I ballooned out like a walrus, and looked awful when standing next to Jasmine. The only reason I allowed myself the pop tarts was so that I had motivation.
I didn’t actually say any of this because I couldn’t. Oh, I wanted to. The desire to tell him almost overwhelmed me. I just didn’t think he would judge me, and that bothered me a lot. It felt easier when we just hated each other, before he felt sorry for me.
He sighed, and it made me think he would relent. Silly, really. He picked up the basket of fries and offered it to me again. I stared at them. He had gotten these for me, which meant he spent money on them. Guilt poked at me, telling me that I should at least eat one, but the rest of me couldn’t give in to that. It would only get me in trouble later.
But Verin wouldn’t back down, which meant I had to do something. Before I could think of a better response, I blurted out, “Why did you sleep with Celeste?”
Oh gods. I wanted to bury my head in the pillows, and never come out again. My face felt like it had been set on fire.
Both his eyebrows popped up. “Huh?” he asked. “I did not sleep with Celeste. Why would you think I slept with her?” He sounded so confused, and mildly disgusted. I had made a huge mistake in bringing this up, but he stopped pushing the fries on me.
“You told me you did,” I said
“I did not,” he said. Then his face cleared up, and his eyes got darker. I couldn’t be positive, but I thought that I had offended him. “You really think that little of me, that I would make comments like those?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know you all that well.”
“Do you just assume that all men would make comments like that?” he asked.
I shrugged again. It seemed like the only response I could come up with, but I also wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. There’d probably be dust and dust bunnies under the bed. I would never be clean again.
Verin got up in my face, and I thought my heart would explode. He seemed entirely too close. I needed him to back up, and now. He spoke clearly and softly, but I didn’t mistake his words for gentle. “I. Did not. Sleep with that woman. I’d rather stick it in a blender.”
I flinched. “Oh . . . Okay then.”
Looking away from him, my eyes landed on my salad. I had fucked up, and now he was angry with me. I could see only one way to fix it: tell him a little more. I knew we confused him already, and we didn’t give him any information. I started with his original question. “I can’t eat the fries because it’ll make me ugly,” I told him, without looking at him.
“You are far from ugly,” Verin said.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, because I don’t eat stuff like that,” I said, flicking the fry plate. “If you got that other soda for me, I can’t drink that either. It would do the same things that this would.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Jasmine eats this stuff all the time, and it doesn’t do anything to make her unattractive.”
“I’m not Jasmine,” I said.
He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “One fry?”
“No,” I said.
“How about, since you seem to apologize with stories, I give you a story, and you eat a fry?” he asked, wiggling the plate in front of me.
“No,” I said again, rolling my eyes. “And you really don’t want to try and get closer to us.”
“Why not?” he asked. “I’ve never known so much family before. It would be a shame to ignore all of you.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “If you were smart, then you would run far, far away from us before you got sucked into the mess that is our lives. You have no idea what kind of bullshit is going down with us.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I told him, frustrated now. “Don’t you get that you’ve walked into this big mess, and that the only way to save yourself is to walk away. Take a look around. Haven’t you noticed all the weird shit that goes down around us. You think it’s a coincidence that your father’s dog was stolen right after we met?”
I didn’t think it had been a coincidence. I thought we were dangerously close to getting ourselves into a mess that we couldn’t wiggle out of, like we had been doing for the last several months.
“Why are you trying so hard to drive me away?” he asked.
My frustration grew to the point of breaking. “Because we’re gonna die!” I said.
He blinked. Of all the things I could have said right there, that had been the last thing he expected. Verin cocked his head to the side, really looking at me. “Why do you think that?”
Well, now I had really stepped in it, hadn’t I? Ideally, I would have liked to talk to my siblings before telling a perfect stranger any of this, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
Where to start? “It’s a prophecy,” I finally said. “I really hate that word. As a seer, I really, really hate that word. Jasmine says that there are a thousand different futures, and she sees the one most likely to happen, but that future can be stopped. Once a prophecy gets thrown in, everything gets much, much more difficult than it was before.”
“Who gave you a prophecy?” he asked.
“Callie,” I said. “It was a couple of months ago. We were going to check up on her, and the gods had been chattering away at her for a long time. She started acting funny, and then she said ‘The eyes will fall, and the mountains will cry. One by one, the eyes will close. Leave this world for the next, abandoning flesh for stone. Six mountains will stand when the wind comes blowing.’” I had it memorized, like my brother and sister probably did.
Verin cocked his head, working through the words.
When he looked at me again, I repeated what I said earlier. “We’re gonna die.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
Well . . . I Should Have Done that a Lot Sooner
Verin
She is NOT going to die.
“You are not going to die,” I said, almost through my teeth. I pulled myself back together before I could scare her.
Her expression never changed from sick certainty. “That’s what the gods said. We’re fated to die.”
“I don’t care,” I said simply. “I don’t care if the gods said that all three of you are going to enter a talent show with Fozzie Bear, and he would bring the house down with his stand up. You. Are. Not. Dying.”
Juniper stood up from the bed, and her hands went to her hair. Ah, I frustrated her. No shock there. “You’re not listening.”
“I am. I listen to every single word you say, even when you’re being insane. I’m telling you, nothing is going to touch you.”
She huffed and dropped her hands. “With everything coming after us, why do you think that three humans can somehow survive this mess?”
Oh, she didn’t understand me. Fine, I would just have to clear it up for her.
I stood up, and smoothed out my clothes before I put my hands on her shoulders and forced her to sit down. She went with a squeak that made my insides feel warm for some reason.
Gently, I held her chin in my hand, aiming her face at me. “Juniper,” I said softly. “You’re not going to die because I’m not going to let you die. Any of you. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Why? Why would you protect me, or my siblings?”
I stared just a little too long into her mismatched eyes, and I saw something I shouldn’t have. Something I would kindly ignore, right up until it smacked me in the face and I simply could not ignore it any longer.
So, I let go of her stunning face, and I backed up, clearing my throat. “No man left behind and all that,” I said, trying to sound casual.
My broken little seer looked up at me with one dark brow raised. “Really?”
Of course not. I couldn’t be a bastard to her right then. Not when she seemed so fragile, and clearly hung onto every word that anyone said about her, as if it were gospel. What ugly words had been said to her to make her believe she had so little worth. Little enough to not let herself enjoy anything in life. Relaxation, peace, a goddamned chip?
I took a deep breath, and I told her the gods honest truth. “I won’t let you die, because I don’t want you harmed. And I won’t let your siblings die, because you love them, and it would hurt you if you lost them.”
Juniper blinked from her bed, and she ran her hands down her pants. “I see.”
She didn’t see.
I sighed. “Get some rest, luv. It’ll be a long one in the morning.”
I watched Juniper gather her things up for a shower. I kept my eyes on her as she went, and she finally looked back at me. She made me feel like a puppy that awaited his master’s attention. I didn’t get pet behind my ears, but I got something better.
She reached back to the tray of food, and she picked up a chip. She ate the thing, expressionless as she did so, and then she walked into the bathroom.
I didn’t want to think I waited for her to go to bed, so I just didn’t. I had things to do. Should those things take up enough time that she got out of the shower and in bed before I was finished, then so be it.
I had to call up my mum of course, just to make sure she still did okay. She told me that she and Nemo had been having a grand time, and he loved her cooking. They got on very well, and he liked forehead kisses. I let her go so she could get some sleep, and she told me Nemo promised to keep her safe for me. Nemo couldn’t talk, so . . . I didn’t know what to think.
Juniper came out of the bathroom after her shower, bringing the scent of steam and her body wash. She had on matching pajamas. White on white; pants and a shirt. I didn’t know if I liked how it made me feel when I saw her in it, no shoes as she tiptoed over to the bed. With two fingers, she lifted up the comforter and got in.
Fucked. That’s what I am
“I need to tell you something,” Juniper said to me as I stood up to get ready for bed.
I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it onto the floor by my bag. I ran my fingers through my hair, saying, “What might that be?”
Juniper stared at me, eyes wide like I startled her. “What are you doing?”
“Changing for bed. Tell me what you were going to tell me.”
Her nose twitched, and she looked straight ahead. “Callie said a lot of things to us. We knew that me and my siblings were the eyes, and she said that Kizzy and Zander were the mountains.”
I took that in. “Makes sense, but that leaves one out. One mountain.”
She looked at me again. “She told us another was coming. A man. She said darkness was coming from down under. Then she said that there was a lot of light in him, but the darkness wants to take him. Callie said that the darkness might take him, and she said, ‘she’ll have to bring it out of him’. I don’t know what any of that means . . . but it’s you, right? Who else could it be? And you came, like she said you would. So why is that true, but the death part isn’t?”
Before she could lose her breath in panic, I hurried to her. I didn’t think she would want me at her side, so I knelt on the floor in front of her, taking one of her little hands in mine.
I smiled. “Luv, if you look hard enough, you’ll see whatever you want to. But look at me. Do you feel any darkness? Even one scrap?”
Her eyes examined me, running over every inch she could see. “No . . . But—”
“There is no darkness. I’m one big ball of loud, bright, light. You can’t deny that.”
Her fingers squeezed my hand. “She said you were light, but the darkness would try and take you.”
“What darkness? There is none to speak of.”
I didn’t think she believed me, and she stared at our linked hands again. I wondered how
long she would let me hold hers like this.
“Maybe you’re right,” she whispered. “Callie said the mountains would cry. But you wouldn’t cry if I died.”
Somehow, I doubted that.
Still with her hand in mine, I watched her. “You’re not dying for a very, very, very long time.”
“You’re missing the point. You’re part of this, whether we like it or not. I doubt another demigod is coming along any time soon.”
I shrugged. “Probably not. But you seem to be picking and choosing what about that prophecy you pay attention to. What about that last line? What was that?”
She repeated, “Six mountains will stand when the wind comes blowing?”
“Right. So, what does that mean to you? That another three demigods are just going to show up out of nowhere? That’s mad. A prophecy is a bunch of random words that only confuse people. They are made to be cryptic and they can mean anything.”
“Like that I’m going to die.”
I couldn’t make her understand. She wouldn’t die because I wouldn’t let her die. I wouldn’t let any of these people die, because I didn’t want that for them, or me. The gods can tell me whatever they please, but I made my own future. I chose how this story ended. It did not end with Juniper dying.
I had to fix this. My mind screamed it at me. Fix this prophecy, fix this girl, fix the world for her. She couldn’t see anything, but it seemed to be the fault of someone else. I had suspicions, but I couldn’t do anything about it until someone confirmed them.
Juniper saved me from being in the dark by telling me what was going on. I could believe any loose interpretation of this prophecy, so maybe that would be my part of it. She did what she meant to do, and she saved the darkness from taking me. Sure, I could buy that. And it never said that they would die. Just . . . fall. That could mean a lot of things, right? I wouldn’t lose her. And six mountains . . . it said that the seers would trade flesh for stone. I had no chance of knowing what this all meant, but it didn’t have to be death. I didn’t have to watch her die.
“No,” I said. “Do you really think I’m the kind to let a poor, innocent girl get herself killed?”
