Circle of Arms (The Shades of Northwood 2)

by Wendy Maddocks

  The front door was opening just as Katie jogged up the path feeling as though every step was dragging through rice pudding. Which made her crave the dessert. Adam was heading out of the old house with a gym sack slung across his chest and shouting his goodbyes behind him as he headed for one of the bikes lying in the front garden. “Leave the door!” she called before he closed it without seeing her. “You off out? How come I never see you at the gym?” Surely those muscles didn’t come for free.

  “I teach self defence at the community centre. Tonight’s enrolment.”

  “I’m guessing the classes have a lot of women in them.”

  He blushed at that and pulled the bike upright, wheeling it to the path. “You should come one week. I give family and friends discount.”

  “Sorry, I’m more a private tuition kind of girl.”

  “Been hanging around Jaye way too much.” Adam looked as though he was about to go and Katie let her smile drop and her shoulders fall into a comfortable and tired hunch. “You doing okay?”

  “It’s hard, you know. Trying to be okay every day.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. We’re all here if you get tired of being alone.”

  “All this… it’s not me. I’m trying to be the old Katie but I don’t even remember who she was. There’s so much going on, it’s like I don’t know what to do first.”

  “Bad first day?”

  “No, it was fine.”

  There was quiet for a few seconds. A thousand words hung between them, loud enough that it seemed the whole world should hear. Neither of them wanted to speak though. But saying nothing was hard.

  “Katie, if there’s a problem, you need to speak to us. Not just because we want to help but because we’re responsible for you. If things happen and we don’t know about it… like the other day, you had bandages on your arm, a cut on your head – yeah, we both noticed that – and you didn’t tell us how they got there.”

  “Not that it matters now but there was a weird dream thing. You know when you fall off a cliff in a dream and you’ve really fallen out of bed?”

  “Hell, yeah. See this scar?” Adam pointed to an inch-long scar running down his chin. “Dreamt David Haye knocked me out.”

  “Really?”

  “Promise you won’t laugh.” Katie crossed her fingers behind her back and tried to keep a straight face. If Adam had sought a promise not to laugh, it was obviously giggle-worthy. “That coat stand in the hall.”

  And then she left and skipped into the house already feeling lighter and happier. It was amazing how just a funny mental image could make the day seem a little bit better.

  “No, she’s not back yet. She probably went straight to the – oh, hang on.” Lainy took the old Bakelite house phone from her ear, covered the end with her hands and held it out to Katie the very second she made it through the door. “It’s your mother.”

  Lovely. A worried parent checking up on her. Can’t think of anything I want more. She rolled her eyes and earned a knowing grin from Lainy, then took the phone and sat on the stairs, holding her fingers up and counting down from five. Five, four, three, two, ah hah! Interrogation begins. A few assurances of okayness and promises to call if she needed anything and her daughterly duties were done.

  “Where’s Jaye?”

  “Lifeguard training. Leo’s at the library. It’s just us for a while, sweetie.”

  Uh-oh. Why didn’t Katie like how that sounded? She took as long as she could pouring juice and washing some fruit and then, when it would definitely seem suspicious to take any longer, she jumped up to sit on the sideboard with her back to the window and started munching away.

  “Fruit is not an after-class snack. Cake, biscuits, that’s where the yummy stuff is.”

  Katie took the apple away from her mouth and tried to chew double fast to answer. Apparently, a new law said hurrying meant everything took twice as long to do. “Good for you. Slow release of energy, full of vitamins, essential for an athlete. You were a nurse – you should know this.”

  “Not a practise what you preach person.”

  “Tasty too.”

  “You keep telling yourself that. 5 a day?”

  “I try. My medical records may be all kinds of colourful but poor diet is not on them. Gotta count for something, right?”

  “Adam said he’ll bring pizza back tonight. Few hours away though. Want something until then?”

  “No, I’m okay with my fruit.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not hungry either.” Lainy looked down at her nails and started picking at her chipped peach nail varnish. “Got much homework?”

  “Just reading which I’ve already done. Not much else to do when the house mommy confines you to bed for a day.” Katie was pretending to be pissed off about it but she was having a hard time keeping a serious face on. “I thought leaving home meant I was too old to be grounded.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  “I-“

  “I hate to ask, Katie, but are you sure you’re ready for this? I mean college and running and being here and everything? You seem to have been having trouble coping.”

  “The last week was just a blip, Lainy. I’m much better now.”

  “A blip? Talk to me, sweetie.”

  “Please, I just want to forget the last week ever happened.” Now, there was a thought. “I’m ready for my new life now and anything that happened before… well, it’s over now, isn’t it?”

  “I hope so. I really do.” Lainy played with the long braid running down her back and then, chewing her lip, got up and wrapped Katie in her arms. There was something about this young girl that really made her believe that she would make a success of this new life. “Oh, wait, while I remember. Here.” She fished a white mobile phone out of a drawer and held it out. “Yours was completely fu- bust. So I put your SIM in one of my old ones.”

  “Cool. You didn’t-“

  ”Not that I tried but I don’t think yours even turns on any more. Anything that was on there, probably never getting it back.”

  “Nothing important really. Just number for people I used to go to school with.” It wasn’t as if she was ever going to need any of them. And now she had a handy excuse for not getting in touch.

  “It hasn’t got any of the bells and whistles but it makes calls and it holds a charge. If you knew the amount of abuse I put these things through, you’d be impressed.”

  “So… two hours…. Cards?” Katie ducked next door and fetched a deck. Her brain wasn’t up to anything more complicated than snap or two person patience. “I signed up for athletics team trials. You know, not expecting anything, but just to see if I can run with the big boys.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. They run you pretty hard I’ve heard.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement, Lainy.”

  “I just want to warn you not to mistake this for running when you were at school.” No danger of that. The race on Saturday had not been a serious competition but she had needed to run almost a 23 minute race to get her place. The next under 18 was about three minutes behind her. “These guys are professionals with a year or more of training behind them. When are try outs?”

  They spent the next half an hour chatting about this and that and Katie was glad of the time to do nothing but play and talk about nothing in particular. Then the front door rattled as a key shuddered in the lock and it squealed open. Jaye and Leo entered together locked in a whispered conversation that stopped almost as soon as Jaye clocked Katie through the open kitchen. She decided not to get paranoid about it – perhaps it was a totally not-about-her conversation that had just reached its natural conclusion at that very moment. The god of coincidences evidently was not playing though, and Jaye shoved Leo towards the stairs and beckoned her over, frantically waving her arms and holding a finger to her lips. Katie rose from her seat and put her juice glass in the sink
.

  “Leave it. I’ll wash up later.”

  Katie took the stairs three at a time to see what all fuss was about, her long legs taking the steps like they were one.

  “In here!”

  Jaye was propped up on her bed, Leo had taken over the chair and desk, so Katie plumped for perching on the edge of Jaye’s bed too, feeling awkward about taking up position on the empty bed about a foot away. It was Dina’s after all. “Okay, this looks suspiciously like an intervention.”

  “I’m hoping it doesn’t get that far.”

  “Okay, what’s going on then?”

  “Ain’t that your job?”

  Katie frowned and replayed the day – as much of it as she could remember – to see if she had said or done anything to make this her responsibility. She had the feeling she had promised something but the specifics were just gone. Poof. Right out of her head. No matter though, there were plenty of other things to say. “The other night… the storm and then me being hurt and everything… I don’t know what Jack told you, I’m not sure what I told you actually – I know I started to tell Leo – whatever good that did….”

  “Hey, the good that did was you’re not still lying out there.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real hero. We’re all proud.”

  “As I was saying…” Katie shot them both death stares and carried on. “There was this guy and he was hurting me.”

  “The one who-?”

  “No.” Katie spat the word out before Leo could finish the question. That was a whole ’nother problem she didn’t want to get into. She would have to start that story right from the beginning for Jaye. It didn’t seem very important at the moment. “Not him. It was the man who killed Jack but I didn’t know that till later. Every time I closed my eyes I woke up with a new cut or a bruise. Wednesday night, the night you stopped me drowning, I didn’t want you to because somehow I knew what was coming.”

  “Which was?”

  “Jack was trying to keep him away from me for as long as he could but it had to happen.”

  “What did?”

  “Shut up. She’s getting there.”

  “There was a fight between me and this guy and I know I would have lost if I hadn’t had help. There are loads of spirits down on that waste ground. It’s so powerful down there. They gave me all this energy, fixed all the cuts and stuff, took all the marks away, and I sort of screamed it out of me and into him. He died, I lived.”

  “I get the feeling that’s not the end of the story.”

  Of course it wasn’t. All three of them knew there would be comebacks from this but not what they might be. There was never any getting away from consequences – even when you thought things were over, they never were. “This darkness they put in me… I felt empty when I got rid of it – I mean, I saw it coming out of my mouth.”

  “Babe, you’re giving us a story, not a problem. And we know there’s a problem.”

  “I think I’m different now. I think I touched death and it saved my life.” Katie dropped her head to her hands and pulled at her long hair. “God, this is so fucked up!

  “And I saw Dina there.”

  “What? How? When? What?” asked Jaye again.

  “I’m with her,” Leo agreed. “Don’t get it at all.”

  “And I do? There’s so much in this town that I don’t understand, don’t even want to understand, and trust me when this is all over I’m going to be hitting denial big style.”

  “Might join you.”

  “Look forward to it,” she bit back. “Just what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Don’t get possessive.”

  “Yeah, ‘cos you’re so worth my affections.”

  A tiny hand waved tentatively in the air and attentions dragged back to Jaye. She looked even paler than usual, if that was even possible, and swallowed hard, getting ready to say something she didn’t want to. “You must have seen some-one else. It can’t have been Dina. She’s dead.”

  “No, she’s not. She’s still alive and waiting for us to bring her back and that’s why we can’t let her father turn the machines off yet.”

  “But the tests?”

  “Mean nothing, not really. They say her brain is dead but it’s not, it’s just somewhere else. The life support is keeping her alive and-“

  “As long as she keeps breathing, then there’s the chance to find her.” Man, he had caught onto this idea faster than any of them. It didn’t make much sense to either of the girls and Katie was the one putting the theory forward. Maybe that was why; maybe she was overthinking the whole thing.

  “Right.”

  “So, why didn’t she come back and tell us this. That’s how it works – you die, you come back and carry on like it never happened.”

  “Jaye, listen to me.” The pair took a hand each and squeezed to make her get the point. “Dina’s not dead. The living can’t turn into ghosts.”

  “Brain dead.”

  ”Doesn’t count,” Leo repeated. This compassionate side of him was completely different from the one that had been showing earlier. College was a time for change, personal growth and all that, but just one day… damn, further education worked fast. “Katie, are you sure about this?”

  Well… are you? “We just need to get Mr Bayliss to hold of on the switch off otherwise there’ll be no chance to get to her.”

  Jaye really had gone paper-white during that conversation. Now, she threw back her bed covers, curled into a black-haired hedgehog and flipped the duvet back over her. “Wake me when things are normal again.”

  “This is Northwood, Jaye. How much faith you got in that?”

  “At least it’s not Millford!”

  “What’s so bad about Millford anyway?”

  “It’s a shithole.”

  Katie got up and wrenched the duvet back from Jaye and hauled her up. “Wait there,” she instructed the two of them. “I need to show you something.” An idea had been brewing in her mind. She ran from the room and into her own, tearing through the drawers of her desk. Where had she put that thing? If it was a Shade thing then maybe Jaye would know something about it. And even if not, it never hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes on a problem. Her hand closed around something sharp and metal cold. Her finger caught on one point of the star and as she took her hand and the object out, a tiny drop of blood had gathered there. Katie wandered back into the bigger room sucking her injured digit and cursing it for hurting more than it should. “Look- Where’d she go?”

  There was a distinct lack of feisty girl in the room. Leo shrugged. “Gone.”

  “What do you mean gone? Gone where?”

  “How the fuck should I know? She just vanished. Kapoof. You know, like she does.”

  “Great. This is shaping up to be the best night ever.”

  “It didn’t look like she was being taken or nothing. She just… faded away.”

  This could be completely normal and she just had to go into the Shade world – there had to be a proper name for it – to recharge her batteries every so often, like Jack did – and the time just happened to be about thirty seconds ago. Only Jaye hadn’t left once in the last couple of weeks which led to the only other logical conclusion – something horrible was happening. That was Plan B. “Fine. Okay. We can’t do anything if she went, right? We have to assume she went of her own free will and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

  Doubt clouded Leo’s dark blue eyes. “And how are you going to explain this to the other two?”

  Oh crap. She hadn’t thought of that yet. No, thinking about it still was not tempting. “Me? You were here too.”

  “True, but I’ve never been part of this crap before. You have.”

  “Please let’s bring that up as often as possible. It never stops being fun.”

  “Okay, not willingly but you know more than me what’s going on.”

  “Hell no, Leo. I know nothing about t
his – what’s happening, why it’s happening. But I’ll figure something out.”

  “Care to let me in on that plan?”

  Yes. As soon as she figured a plan out.

  Katie touched her bleeding finger to her mouth and frowned. She looked down at the thing she held in her other hand – the silver star that had cut her. There was something scratched onto the flat circle in the middle but the silver was age-tarnished and scuffed. The word SHERIFF was visible and below that, she assumed, was a name. This had been playing in the back of her mind for days. Even when Katie had locked her memories away –

  ­Oh God, the memories.

  Tears filled her eyes and she ducked her head until her hair fell over her face so Leo didn’t see her cry.

  “Hey, I can see you under there.”

  Not the teardrops tracking down her cheeks or them dropping off the end of her nose, but he could see the unnatural stillness of her shoulders as Katie struggled to control her silent sobs. The quiet catch of her breath as she gasped for the air her weeping was using up.

  “Whatever you’re upset about now is not helping,” said the king of sensitivity. “The attack – or one of them at any rate – it’s over now, yeah? Go clean yourself up and we’ll work something out to get Dina back. And when we do, I reckon Jaye’ll come back too.”

  “That’s not the only problem.”

  “Oh Christ help me, what now?”

  “You really believe that? That God will help you?”

  “I ain’t got nothing else to believe in. Nothing else to justify anything that happens in this crappy world.”

  “Nothing makes this right. Nothing makes being raped anywhere near okay. I want to find the man who did this to me, bring him here, kill him, wait for him to come back and then do it all over again.” She stood up and wiped her eyes with a closed fist. Something dark was creeping into her mind, making her wish for revenge where she had only wished to forget. Katie stood up and pressed something into his hand as she passed, whispering, “Google this thing till it overloads.”

  The door hadn’t even closed when Katie felt a familiar cold pressure around her stomach. She’d known Jack had been lingering in the other room for the last few minutes – not long enough to hear the nervous meltdown though. There had been a low hum of energy in the room, too low to be heard. But she could feel it vibrating over her skin.

  Are you okay, Lady Katie? You’re cryin’ again.

  And she didn’t know quite why she couldn’t stop. “Do I look okay?”

  I’m coming. Don’t worry.

  Something twisted deep inside. An invisible hand held her body still, super cooling flesh Katie was sure would burn right off. Sweat was sheening her skin. Everything would go back to normal when she had calmed down a bit. Katie took a couple of deep breaths and waited for her heart rate to dip below the hundred mark. The next few minutes put it right back up. Katie scrunched her eyes shut and threw herself forward on the bed, twisting onto her back as she fell-

  - to the ground. Huh. Floor was meant to be two feet away from the bed, not millimetres away from her skull. Then she realised that the chill presence had gone. There was nothing inside that she wanted so badly to be there - no promise of Jack, no ghost of a cowboy with green eyes. “Jack?” The question was all squashed into that one word. Behind her eyelids, Katie saw his hand grasping in the emptiness and getting nothing. His fingertips brushed a thread of something shiny and she zoomed in as you can in daydreams, on a silver string that darkened to thunder grey and then black as she watched. She saw it running through his fingers and then suddenly, the effort of living inside herself became too much and she dropped back into her body with enough physical force to bump her head off the carpet. She wondered if she was bleeding, and then about how lucky she was too have this maroon carpet where no-one would be able to see. Why on Earth was she being so morbid? Shaking the dark thoughts away, Katie heaved herself up to a sitting position and waited for the pain to begin. Jack would pull on what little energy she had left to give and that hurt like her vital organs being ripped apart and then filled with ice and fire in equal measure.

  Close your eyes and go to that place you feel safe, Jack whispered so close he could have been sitting next to her. This is gonna hurt.

  And oh God it really did. It took Katie all the will power she had not to scream the house down. Pain was whipping through her body, swirling a tornado in her head. Her eyes fluttered closed and she redded out for a moment, lost in flashes of memory and burning hot pain, blood and skin and searing flesh. The next thing she felt was a cool hand pressing her shoulders down as she bucked against it. She opened her eyes and saw Jack standing over her in a dusky blue haze and looking concerned. He wasn’t as solid as she had seen him before but he was real enough to be worried and brave and beautiful. Katie wanted to reach up and touch him, trace his cheekbone and that perfect round scar on his forehead but her arms were lead weights attached to a body that was so empty it might float away. All she could think of was the pain, the endless hurting that was still digging away inside her.

  “Shhh. You’re okay. I’m here now.”

  “Sorry, Jack, but you’re not God. You don’t make everything okay by being here. I wish you could, I wish it to hell and back, but you can’t.”

  “Lady Katie, look at me. Just look.”

  She didn’t want to but the patient silence went on so long that she couldn’t help herself after a while and instantly felt herself being sucked into those green pools as though they had a gravity all their own. She was drowning in them. And everything was going to be fine. The rest of the world fell away. None of the other problems had ever existed. Pain was a dull and distant tingle in the body she was no longer part of. It was just the two of them. Katie. And Jack. And these few moments that were theirs and theirs alone. He got down on the floor next to her and tugged the girl until she was half lying in his lap. Which was prime view of her smile and shining eyes but close enough to see that they were shining because of the tears in them and that the smile, though genuine, was fitted onto a pale and lightly lined face. Her tan was covering most of the pallor of her skin – nobody would notice unless they were only inches away from her. Jack brushed her hair away from her face.

  “What’s happening?” Katie sat up without touching him, putting her toned abs to good use, knowing that to touch him would be to never let go. She scooted away and braced her hands on the splash of water on her dolphin duvet and hauled up. “Jack, I’m so tired.”

  “How was the academy?”

  Not the thing she wanted to talk about right now. Small talk had never been a strong point and it seemed even less useful now. What good was discussing the weather or sharing their day’s activities going to do? Would that- “What do you do all day?”

  “Stuff you don’t need to know about.”

  She was prepared to take his word for it. “Jaye’s gone missing. We need to find her.”

  A pause of a few seconds and then Jack pulled himself up to his full height – the exact same as Katie – only Katie had another couple of inches in her, whilst Jack would never grow again. Never grow or get fat or start losing his hair or get wrinkles. He was over 150 years old and the boy still looked like a teenager. “You never stop running, do you? Never give up, even when it seems hopeless.”

  “That’s what we do.”

  “Yeah, I ‘member,” he muttered, those fleeting shadows Katie reluctantly recognised rushing behind his eyes. "I think that’s the best thing about you.”

  “Great. A guy who only loves me for my dog-with-a-bone attitude. What happened to men who want me for my body?” The words sounded natural and careless as they spilled out, or at least she hoped they did, but this front was hard to keep up. The edges were crumbling already.

  “True, your body adds weight to the argument…” further words flew out of his head as Katie dropped flat onto her back and st
retched out, making curves and dips move in exactly the right ways. What was even better was that Katie had no idea she was doing anything more than a purely functional act. “Yeah, I’m convinced. I want your body.”

  That got him an accurately thrown (for once) pillow to the face. “Where have all the gentlemen gone?”

  “Cowboys came first.”

  Katie grinned up at him and squirmed over so he could sit beside her. She hooked a finger in the back of his shirt and pulled him close, closer, close enough to kiss. But neither of them made the final move to touch. Jack glanced away when he thought the pressure was going to be too much. This is a bad idea.

  “No, this is the best idea I’ve ever had.”

  There’s no coming back.

  Whether the thoughts were her own or Jack’s, Katie didn’t care. Jack might be speaking in her mind and making her believe his words were hers. He did that. They were going to talk about that. One day when she wasn’t so… so… so tired. “Jack, how come you didn’t take my memories when we kissed last week? I slipped into your head for a minute. I didn’t know it worked like that.”

  “Neither did I. At least, I wasn’t sure it did. There were stories that you can give memories as well as take them away if you concentrate. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

  “But you showed me stuff I don’t want to have in my head. I know things I know I’m too young to know. Stuff that’ll drive me crazy.”

  “Lady Katie, look at me.” She did, without hesitation. “Whatever happened to you, whatever’s gonna happen, you got me. I’ll be right here whenever you need me and I won’t let anything hurt you.” Every time Katie looked at him or was even near him, she believed him that he was going to protect her. And when he touched her, curled those strong arms around her, the world was magically a little brighter. “Right, I just heard Adam come back. Pizza time for you, missy.”

  “But-“

  “Go. Eat.”

  “What about Jaye?”

  “I’ll think, okay. Now, stop worryin’ yourself and be a teenager for the night,” he said and shooed her out of the room. There was something wrong in this house and he needed time to work out what it was. Time he wanted so badly to spend with Katie.

  Explaining Jaye’s sudden disappearance was easier than expected and Lainy and Adam easily believed that she had just taken off for some alone time. Evidently the chances of her running out without warning were quite high. The chances of most things in this place were higher than average, to be honest, and Katie had to work hard not to spill her theory on Dina and pretend not to notice the looks passing between them. Not that any of her thoughts were fully formed yet. None of them seemed like solid ideas that might be right. But thoughts were all Katie had and she was damn sure she was going to follow them until the end. Leo sat opposite her at the kitchen table, not joining in the idle conversation and looking lost in thought. Maybe he was. God knew there was enough to think about. He had seen Jaye fade out and, so far as any of them knew, he had never seen that before. There was the partial fade when Jaye had misted right around his hurtling fist but that had been so fast it had been almost a non-event. He looked so lost and confused that Katie nearly reached out and put a hand on his, just so he knew he was not alone in his mystification. It wouldn’t do any good though. It was obvious he wanted to shoulder his burden alone. Katie knew enough about trying to force people into dealing with problems in a way that wasn’t theirs, not to bother trying. The caring/sharing approach was over-rated.

  “Didn’t know what you liked so I brought you a piece of each.”

  “I don’t like asking but have you been feelin’… bad lately? Like you got no energy.”

  “No more than expected.” Katie slid the plate of pizza – a slice of ham and pineapple, a slice of cheese, tomato and sweetcorn – onto the dresser. “I nearly died just a few days ago, Jack.”

  “Apart from that? Like when I took energy from you to cross over. I felt something break and then I saw you lying there an’…” he tried to get off this track. He didn’t want to worry Katie any more than she already was. “I jus’ think you need to get your strength back before you start out on another mission.”

  “Pity we don’t live in think world. Sounds such a nice place.”

  “Think world?”

  “Uh-huh. You should visit.”

  “I might at that.”

  “You don’t want pizza?”

  I want to invade you, possess you, kiss you and leave you gasping for breath. I want to protect you and love you and never let you go. I want to save the world for you and hand it to you. “No thanks.”

  Katie blushed having caught, if not the exact words he was thinking, then the general feeling of them. The red raw desire in Jack; the hot, dark, desperate need.

  “What are we going to do about the girls?”

  “When I go back, I’ll see what I can find out. If Jaye went into my world, I’ll find her.”

  “It must be a huge place. How will you find her?”

  “We all have this kind of energy around us, like different degrees of Shade. There are dark ones and there are light ones. Jaye’s one of the lightest. It mos’ly means she can live in this world all the time and ever have to go back, never have to draw off another living person. So I’ll just look for silver sparks.”

  Silver like the thread she once had so much of. More ideas sparked in the back of her brain but they slid right out of her grasp when she tried to bring them into focus. “What kind are you?”

  “Somewhere in the middle, I guess.” He turned his back after Katie glared at him and showed him her PJs. He couldn’t resist getting a cheeky glimpse of her bare back in the mirror as she wriggled out of her clothes but kept his cracking voice as even as possible as he carried on speaking. “The darkest can’t come through at all, only make you hear them. But we can do that and come here too. It just means some-one has to give us a helping hand. And sometimes that costs.”

  “Okay, you can turn back now.” Katie had scraped her hair back and held it away from her face with a hairband and was rubbing a face wipe over her skin. Baby wipes had loads of intensive moisturiser in – much more effective than creams which were usually full of chemicals. “Yeah, not my best look ever.”

  Jack didn’t care. “You need to sleep.” He shrugged his leather jacket off, flipped the covers back and slid onto the edge of the single bed, holding his arms out for Katie to come and join him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

  Katie was so wired that she didn’t think she would sleep for days but ass soon as she curled herself into the bubble of safety in those arms, the exhaustion came crashing back into her, threatening to overwhelm her and drag her under. She was too used up to fight it, barely managing to mumble “tell me a story” before soft darkness wrapped her up and spirited her away.

  The story Jack told was one of sand and silver, of bullets and blue skies. It was the story of his life – his short, carefree life. A mother who loved him and a father who died before his birth and was replaced by a faceless man who had no love in him. And then, just after his sixteenth birthday, he ran from his home to escape a life of being the dead man’s son, to a place where he became the dead man. To survive, he stole and begged and borrowed never knowing he would never get to give it back. Because then he took the wrong things; money and a horse to get away and find a second chance. And then there was a storm and lashing rain, lashing whips. And so much anger. But he didn’t cry. Jack screamed and tried to run but he looked this man in the eyes every second he was able. Every moment until his eyes filled with blood. He felt drops of red find paths down his cheeks but, remembering the words his uncle had been drilling into him for years – cowboys don’t cry – no tears mixed with them. He looked this man in the eyes and, although the oil lamp lit the barn, the light was too dim to make out features. A silver badge gleamed at the mans waist. Sheriff.
He knew a sheriff. Somebody close to him had a badge like that. Killing a kid was bad but a lawman doing it…

  Everything got jumbled up as the whipcracks came again and again, splitting skin and spilling blood, and just when it was all too much and Jack knew he would cry- it all stopped. The pain stopped, the relentless attack stopped. His heartbeat stopped.

  When Katie awoke early the next morning, it has to be admitted that she was more than a little surprised to find Jack asleep next to her. She spent a couple of minutes just lying in the bend of his elbow and enjoying the sensation of closeness. Her alarm clock buzzed for the second time and the temptation to roll over and slap another five minute snooze out of it was practically irresistible. But resist it she would. This morning, Katie felt better than she had in days. How much of that had to do with Jack and being able to fully relax and sleep without fear?

  She eased out from under him and rolled off the bed, glancing back at him every few seconds as she buzzed around the room getting clean clothes. Somewhere during their night together, Jack’s beige t-shirt had come off. There was no sign of it anywhere on the floor but he no doubt could get another one. Katie did not remember him taking it off or getting frisky enough to do it for him – but she wasn’t ruling it out – but she was hardly complaining. Waking up to a half naked man with sun-golden skin and muscles that told of years of manual labour, not an addiction to weights, was definitely a good thing. He looked just like any other teenage boy as he slept. Peaceful. It was easy to believe he was just any other boy but Katie felt a rush of… pride? Passion? As she reminded herself of the difference between Jack and everyone else. He’s not any boy. He’s mine.

  And then he ruined the moment – the beautiful, delicious silent moment

  Jack muttered something in his slumber, threw his other arm out and rolled over until his face was half-buried in the pillow. Katie had to swallow back a sob as she looked at his scarred, rutted back. As if somehow sensing her horror through the barrier of sleep, Jack woke up and sat up.

  “I got no shirt.”

  “He did that to you?” Meaning the man who had murdered him and relished every second of it. “You can’t heal from mortal wounds, can you? Just the ones you pick up in your…” afterlife didn’t sound right, “…you pick up now.”

  “It’s all over now, Katie. All that’s left is scars and memories.”

  At the word, Katie retreated into herself, feeling the ghost of that whip arcing down on her skin; she remembered being afraid to close her eyes, him chasing her around the waste ground, thinking this would never be over, this would go on forever and one way or another the lawman would kill her, whether she had to watch Jack suffer for eternity or if he stripped the skin from her bones.

  “Don’t. Just don’t think of it.”

  “I can’t help it.” She inched over to him, held his shoulders and turned him so she could see the grooves across his back. Not so long ago, she had watched his killer carve these marks into his flesh and, because she had hijacked his mind, she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Maybe she could do something now though. “I wish I could take them away, Jack. I can’t do that. But I can turn them into good memories.” She put her lips to the scar nearest his shoulder. He shuddered as cold lips touched skin that hadn’t known intimacy in so vey long, and felt her lips curve into a smile against him. She climbed back onto the bed, her busy morning wilfully ignored. “I’m done with thinking. With self-control.”

  “Katie, we shouldn’t.”

  “No, but we will anyway.”

  “When you’re near me, it’s difficult not to…”

  The end to that sentence was unnecessary. She dipped her head lowered down his back, blowing air kisses as far down his spine as she could decently go without removing clothing. Which, even in her hot and bothered state, Katie knew would be a step too far.

  Jack shivered against her, his spine arching just the tiniest fraction. The controlled stillness of his body told her how much he wanted to give in, give back. Words were meaningless. Body language was everything. If he could only touch his girl… if he could give her the same chills she was giving him – ones that ran up and down his spine, radiated out to his extremities, made them tremble and quake, itching to feel her warm flesh under his. Why hadn’t he realised that just being kissed and caressed like this could feel this good? For so long, human affection had seemed too dangerous.

  “What am I doing?” she muttered into the small of his back. The few minutes she had mentally blanked out and listened to her heart – the heart that told her to jump on every moment she had with Jack, just be near him – had been wonderful and far too fast. She put a hand on his shoulder, surprised at how solid and strong he now felt, and dragged her face up to rest on his shoulder, breathing a trail of dry, warm air as she went. She lingered over the curve of his spine to feel him stiffen against her; his own breathing becoming ragged and urgent. She found she enjoyed having this much power over a man. The vengeful part of Katie that had woken up yesterday decided this was what her rapist had felt when he had her pinned to the ground with his merciless grip and his body weighting her down and motionless. Yes, this feeling was good.

  Jack took her chin and lifted it up to face him. No longer were his eyes the calm green pools they had been last night. They were fever-bright and jumping with wild excitement. “It’s getting late and you have things to do,” he growled, trying and failing to remain in control. “It’s not that I don’t want you.”

  “I think my hormones are speaking louder than logic anyway. Don’t want to do something we regret, right?”

  With the promise that she would call if she needed Jack and he would come straight across, he faded out and left Katie frowning and listening to the war in her head. The devil half was telling her she should be happy that she had found a way to take their relationship further. The angel half was insisting on blushing and feeling guilty at the morning’s activities.

  “Some-one looks happy.” Adam tore open a packet of Reddy Brek, poured it into a tub with milk and slammed it in the microwave. “Good night?”

  “Feel like I’ve actually had a proper sleep. Which is novel.”

  “Haven’t you been sleeping well?”

  She shrugged and sat down. “I sleep for an hour or so and then I wake up wondering where I am and what’s going on. Stress, probably.”

  “Right.” He opened the microwave door, stirred in a little honey and shut it to finish nuking. “You sign up for early classes?”

  “Hell no. Do I look like a lunatic? Don’t answer that!” Her mother had always said she could never take in new information before coffee – with Katie it was before food of any description. Once there was something solid in her belly then the world could end and she could probably think her way out of it. “Not if you ever want to have children.” An indescribable look flitted over his face and Katie had to duck her head to her Reddy Brek to hide her face. Strangely for a man who was surrogate father to a houseful of teenagers, he had a pathological fear of babies. It was the though of all those dirty nappies. “I need to go for a run before classes. Get the juices flowing. Ooh do we have any juice left?”

  He grabbed it from the fridge and got a glass out. “So. What exciting things you got planned for today?”

  Chapter five