The dark room was a box, a grave, a coffin. My heart beat clunked along while I practiced calming mantras. I could do this—I’d shared a dorm in college. When I had to, I could handle small spaces. And this room was much bigger than an elevator. Bigger than a bus, a crowded subway, a compact car, a cramped closet, a crate—okay that line of thinking was not helping. I was starting to sweat.
Think positive.
This room was so big, a dozen Jupes would fit in it with me. And if I could just stop thinking about it, I could fall asleep and if I could fall asleep, I could stop thinking about it.
I worked on meditating and relaxing my muscles systematically, starting at my toes. By the time I got to my knees, the dog was snoring. By the time I got to my elbows, Zayvion was snoring.
Great. Like sleeping between dueling chainsaws was going to do me any good. I knew I’d never be able to fall asleep.
Then, of course, I did.
Chapter Nine
C
ody wasn’t asleep. He kept his eyes closed while the lady he did not know came into the room. She stopped by the bed he was lying in and pulled the covers up closer to his chin. That felt good and made Cody wonder if he should stop pretending to be asleep now.
Wait, the older, smarter part of him said.
So Cody waited. A lot of people had done bad things to him. Maybe the lady was going to be bad too.
She moved around in the room and Cody didn’t know what she was doing. Pretty soon, he felt something press down at the bottom of the bed like she had left something there. Then the lady walked out of the room.
Cody waited. He was good at waiting. He thought about nice things, like sunshine and wind, and maybe fell asleep for a while. When he woke up, he tried not to think about bad things, like the Snake man and the death man and the knife and the magic and the pain. . . .
Cody whimpered. He remembered the bad things. The bad things were bigger and stronger than the good things. He breathed and breathed, but it did not make the bad things go away. He had to get away from them. He had to run. But the older, smarter part of him had told him to be quiet. He didn’t want to make the older, smarter part of him mad.
Open your eyes.
Cody opened his eyes. He was in a room. A new room. He had never seen it before.
He turned his head. The room was dark, but a little yellow light, like a star, twinkled by the floor and made just enough glow that he could see. There was a window with pretty curtains on it and the wall was covered in rows of little flowers.
Cody liked flowers.
Maybe this was a good place. A place where the bad things couldn’t find him. He held still and listened. There was wind outside the window, but not a lot of other sounds. Cody was curious about the outside, but tired, too. The spell the older, smarter part of himself had used on him to make the Snake man think he was dead hurt really bad. A tear trickled down the side of his nose. Cody didn’t like that the older, smarter part of him had done that bad thing.
It was a good thing, the older, smarter part of him said. It saved us.
‘‘It hurt,’’ Cody whispered.
I’m sorry. You were brave.
Cody sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. The older, smarter part of him did sound sad. And Cody had been brave. Brave enough to ask the lady with magic inside her to help.
Yes, that had been a good thing too.
Cody wondered where that lady was. And then he thought about something else. Kitten. His heart started hitting the inside of his chest too fast, and his throat got all scratchy and scared. Where was Kitten?
He sat up and looked around the room. More tears fell down his face. Cody was all alone and afraid. Maybe Kitten was all alone and afraid too. He had to find her.
He moved his foot and bumped something at the bottom of the bed. Something heavy like a blanket or a towel. Cody looked down at it. It was a towel with a lump in the middle.
Cody pushed away the blankets and crawled down to the bottom of the bed because he knew what the lump was. It was Kitten. Kitten was here!
Cody picked up Kitten and brought her back up to the top of the bed. He put her very carefully down on the pillow next to him, close to the window so she could see that they were in a new place too. Kitten didn’t wake up, but that was okay. Cody was happy. Happy she was here.
He put his head down on the pillow next to her and petted her soft fur with his fingertips. Everything was going to be okay now. Everything was going to be good.
Then Cody felt a strange tingle grow in his stomach, like bees had gotten under his skin, right where the Snake man had cut him.
But it wasn’t bees. Someone was looking for him. Looking with the magic coins. Looking with the bones and blood and bad magic.
Snake man.
Hold still, the older, smarter part of him said. Don’t do anything. Cody. Don’t move.
Cody pulled the covers over his head, hiding Kitten under the blankets too. He held still. He held his breath. He wanted the tears to stop falling down his face, but they fell anyway. The older, smarter part of him was gone, so far away, and Cody felt all alone again. But he held still just like the older, smarter part of him had told him to.
The buzzing got stronger, and spread under his skin. The bees were angry. They buzzed all the way up to his throat because the Snake man told them to. They buzzed around her heart because the Snake man told them to. They wanted to buzz inside his head, but the older, smarter part of him had done something so they couldn’t get in.
Cody held still. He tried not to scream, but a tiny, scared sound came out of him.
The Snake man looked and looked. The bees buzzed and buzzed.
It felt like it took a long time. A really long time before the bees flew back down away from his head. Away from his throat. Away from his heart.
Finally the bees stopped being mad. They all went back inside his scar and didn’t buzz around anymore and didn’t move around anymore.
The Snake man stopped looking.
Cody was alone again.
He was glad the bees were gone. He was glad the Snake man was gone too. But he was afraid they would come back. Come back and hurt him.
It’s okay, the older, smarter part of him said. He sounded far away and tired. Go to sleep. We’re safe for now.
Cody didn’t feel safe, but he did feel tired. He made an opening in the blanket so Kitten could breathe cool air better. Then he went to sleep.
Chapter Ten
S
omeone was staring at me. I could feel it even before I opened my eyes. I breathed in, trying to orient myself by the smells around me. I got a noseful of flower, soap, and dog.
Nola’s place. The house was quiet, and no light came through my eyelids. It was night. Everyone else sounded asleep too.
So who was staring at me?
I opened my eyes just enough to see. Darkness and nothing else.
No, someone was watching me. I glanced at the doorway, and in the uncertain light from a night-light by the hallway floorboards, I could see the dark shape of Zayvion sitting on the couch.
Staring at me. He looked like he’d been awake for a while. Alert. Wary. I wondered if I’d missed something.
‘‘Are you okay?’’ he asked in a hushed voice.
A fleeting memory of a nightmare, bones and pain and blood, slipped from my thoughts. The sides of my cheeks were wet. I’d been crying.
‘‘I’m fine,’’ I said. Except I was alone. Except I wanted someone to hold me, wanted someone to comfort me, even if for only one night. The memory of the kiss in the car made me ache for the taste of him. It would just be one night. One night before I had to pick up my real life and deal with it again. I wondered if he’d say yes.
I sat. ‘‘Zayvion?’’ I whispered.
Light licked amber across the muscles of his arms, bare chest, stomach, and thighs as he stood and silently made his way across the living room. He paused at the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. Shadows moved across his face, hiding his lips, but I could see his eyes, burning bright.
‘‘Yes?’’
‘‘Would you hold me?’’ I asked.
‘‘Just hold you?’’
I answered him by pulling off my T-shirt. He grunted like I’d just hit him in the stomach. I sat there, half-naked, cold. I wanted his warmth, wanted the safety of his arms around me.
‘‘More than that,’’ I said.
He still stood in the doorway, dark, motionless, and silent, except for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed more quickly.
After a long pause, I realized I had made a mistake. He was going to say no. Maybe the kiss in the car and the kiss outside the deli had all been one-sided—had all been me assuming there was an attraction between us that was not there.
‘‘I’m sorry,’’ I said reaching for the T-shirt next to me. ‘‘I thought you wanted—’’
‘‘No,’’ he said, cutting me off. ‘‘I do want.’’
Those words seemed to decide something for him. He finally moved. He let go of the doorjamb he’d been holding onto and snapped his fingers. Jupe lifted his big head and thumped his tail on the hardwood floor.
‘‘Out,’’ Zay said. He snapped again and pointed to the living room. Jupe yawned and dutifully walked out of the room, like he and Zay had been buddies for years instead of hours.
Nola had left Jupe here to guard me, to keep me from sleeping with Zay. Probably because she thought getting serious with a man I barely knew wasn’t a good idea. But Nola hadn’t had everything in her life go to hell. She hadn’t been chased, hurt, accused. She hadn’t gotten sick from watching a little boy almost die, hadn’t had her father lie through shared blood, hadn’t overdosed on magic to try to fix a stranger’s stab wound.
She hadn’t told her father for the last and final time that she hated him, then had him die on her before she could say she was sorry.
Zay quietly shut the door and padded across the room. He paused and stood in front of me.
Electricity trembled through me. I reached up and placed my palm against his chest, my hand a ghost of ivory against the darkness and heat of his skin. I drew my palm slowly down the tight muscles of his stomach and paused at his waistband.
‘‘I want you,’’ I whispered.
He leaned toward me and I leaned back, lifting the covers so he could come with me to this soft and sacred place. He waited as I tugged off my sweatpants and panties. I waited as he pulled off his boxers. In all the time since he had come into the room, and it felt like hours, days, he had not yet touched me, had not yet kissed me.
And I so desperately wanted him to.