Ashes and Ice (20 page)

“You know, I have helped you out quite a few times now and I never get a real thank you.” He cocks his head to the side. “Don’t you think I deserve one?”

“I—” I fall silent as he takes my palm in his hands, gently, and traces the lines , then he swirls his finger in a round motion and glides his finger down my wrist. The touch is so soft, so light, like a flutter against my skin, but it awakens something foreign and primal inside, a need, a longing I can’t quite understand.

“You aren’t wicked, Jade.”

I inhale sharply. “Wha—what?”

He looks at me with his black eyes. I think I can get lost in them.

“You aren’t wicked. You kept saying that while you were knocked out.” His fingers glide over my palm, wrist, on the soft stretch of my forearm. A tiny part inside me tells me to pull my arm away. But I don’t. I just keep listening to his voice, and looking into his deep, black, bottomless eyes. “You are beautiful.” When he says it, he’s looking into my eyes, not my breasts or my legs. “You are strong.” He lifts my palm to his lips. “And you are powerful.” And kisses it. “And that’s why I want you.”

I quiver under his touch, the cool soft feel of his mouth. His words feel like velvet and silk in my mind.

“Get dressed.”

“What?”

“It is time you gave me a real thank you.”

Wow. That is disgusting. How did this guy get a date to the dance again? Surely, it wasn’t his sexy charm. “Okay.” I point to the pages. “So do you know what any of that says?”

“Yeah, this is what your dad was working on.” He squints at the page. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

I look at the nearly transparent, cream pages so thin they feel like vellum. “Yeah, yeah it is…” I say, growing more impatient. “So, what does it mean, Matt?”

“Well, I can’t read it outright. I just know a bunch of words.” He points to different gatherings of strange glyphs. “You know, like fire, hell, secret, seraph, demons, man…”

“What, so you can’t tell me what it says? Like what is written?”

“Well, no, I mean it was a huge feat just to figure out what these weird symbols meant at all.”

“Oh, I see…” I slump into the chair on the other side of the desk, feeling deflated.

“Your dad could read it though.”

I roll my eyes, but am glad Matt’s head is poised over the pages instead of looking at me. “That doesn’t really help me now, Matt.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

Matt doesn’t notice. “It’s incredible. It looks like your dad also came across letters or notes… a bunch of pages that weren’t in this text at all. But it’s the same language.”

“How do you know it’s not a part of the same text?”

“Look,” he lifts a few pages in his hands and shows me. I gasp, before he says. “These were loose pages not bound in this book and the paper…it’s different. And it’s in handwriting.”

I stare at the book and the pages and realize he’s right. But that still doesn’t help me.

Matt stands up and walks to my dad’s bookcase. “So, you haven’t seen your dad’s translated copy, huh?”

“What?”

“Your dad was writing the translation. He kept it in a chest just like this one.” He points at the bookcase. “You know in the hideaway compartment in the bookcase.”

“What?” I jump to my feet.

Matt pulls a stack of books off the bookcase and pushes on a space at the back of case. It pops open and reveals a square opening.

And in it is a chest.

I pull it out slowly, holding my breath, and set it on the desk. There is one big difference between the two chests. It takes me a moment to see it. This one doesn’t have a lock. I tip the top open and let out my breath.

It’s empty.

“It’s not a big deal.” I am not afraid of the water anymore, but it still evokes a sense of uneasiness.

“Sounds like a weakness.” He says matter-of-factly. “A liability.”

What is that supposed to mean? “It’s not a weakness.”

“Then there isn’t any reason for you to not go.”

I huff out a breath. “Maybe I just don’t want to be on a boat with you.”

“What? Think the big bad wolf is going to eat you up?”

“Don’t think me vulnerable. I may be small, but I’ll snap you in half if I need to,” I say, and the edge of my voice tips from playful to wicked. I swallow hard.

He raises his eyebrows, “Oh, I bet you could.” He winks and in one swift motion, my hand is in his and he is pulling me towards a small white boat propped up on the bank behind the house.

***

The spray of the water is cool on my cheeks. I sit very straight and still in the center of the boat. The narrow waterway opens up to a swamp and I feel vulnerable in the wide open space. Dominic moves from the back of the boat to the center and straddles the bench facing me. “Well, now I have you all to myself.”

He touches my bare shoulder and leans in to kiss me there. I shrug him off.

“You know, Jade. We aren’t so different. We are both misunderstood.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about…”

“Oh, c’mon. That first day when you slammed Courtney into the table, I saw the look on your face. You
enjoyed
it.”

“She was being intolerable. She deserved…” I cut myself off.

Dominic smiles. “She deserved it?”

“Well, I…”

“Look.” Dominic points out something in the water. “Alligators.” He pauses. “I could toss you in. Should I?”

My eyes widen.

He laughs aloud. “No, no. I would never do that. Even if you insult me, hate me, and push me away. I will protect you.”

He nuzzles my neck and the shock registers. I never imagined Dominic saying something like that.

He moves quickly, but my body’s response is also instantaneous. I’m in a dizzying haze. His fingertips trace circles from my wrists to the inside of my elbows and it feels like my skin is alive and waiting, waiting for something more, something deeper, something that could set me off like a cannon, but I am not sure what. He leans in closer and I feel the smoothness of his cheek against my own. I don’t pull away even though I know I should. His fingers trail across my back and he pulls me close to him, so close we might as well share our skin, our bones. I feel him, too much of him, against me as he whispers in my ear. “I want to taste you.”

“I—” A reprimand dies on my lips, because as I form the words with my mouth nothing comes out. A small, unknowable part of me wants to be tasted. I swallow hard, both terrified and giddy my resolve not to let him touch me is shattering so easily. I feel tingly, as if butterfly wings are dancing all around me, filling up all the space between us. I feel weak and strong, alive and thrumming.

Dominic smiles against my ear and I hear him chuckle, low and steady. When he pulls away, creating space between us, I sigh—to my surprise and horror—aloud. I am desperate for negative space between us, for him to lean back in and a nervous anxiety quakes within me as he pulls our bodies further away.

When he lets go, I feel colder, emptier than before and an ache deep inside me wants more, so much more.

***

When we go out to dinner, I feel uneasy and restless. I stare at a menu, but the words blur together. Alarms blare in my ears, but I don’t know what they mean. I twitch as if something is slithering under my skin and I am desperate to release it.

My eyes fall to the waitress’s leg. Such a fragile thing: bones surrounded by flesh. I stare at her leg and my fingers become restless. I wonder if I could break the bones in my hand, if they would crack like splintered wood. What would it be like to be able to hold the pieces? Could I make broken something that once was whole?
Just like that other waitress…

I breathe in sharply and jerk my head away to stare at the paper napkins. I swallow hard. The thoughts, the vile, wretched thoughts are coming more often now. I close my eyes and imagine building a fortress of iron to block out the blackness, to keep the light inside.

“Hey, Jade? What are you ordering?”

As I start to open my eyes, the image pans out and I understand the fortress I built in my mind is not keeping out the dark and in the light, but keeping my darkness from blackening the day outside the iron gates. I shiver. I shiver for the first time in a long time.

But just as the shivers stops, I sit taller. My fingers stop twitching and thoughts of gruesome lovely things bounce around my head and tickle my mind with possibilities.

***

The days blur together. I don’t even know how many have passed since that day in the boat. Touches, caresses, sweet, cold, refreshing thoughts keep my days occupied. Every once in a while, another feeling rises to the surface in panic, an annoying, nagging voice whispers in my ear. But I shut it out. It ruins the deliciousness of dreams.

I go to school because Nanan would ask too many questions otherwise. I have one more exam to take. Instead of answering the questions, I draw pictures in the corners, pictures of faces I don’t even recognize. In the hallways, I see the kids and they all make me squirm. I could teach them a lesson, teach them all to cower. I smirk whenever someone looks at me too long and their gaze skitters away.

And then there is Dominic. He eases away any building anxiety with touches and kisses.

Jade. Jade…Jade!

Come back to me, child… Come back.

Two distinct voices call out to me. When I hear them, I feel uneasy, weak. I feel like there is some ridiculous foreign element trying to control me and I don’t want to be controlled.

But then… there is something so familiar about those voices. Something so necessary, urgent, and comforting… I squeeze my eyes shut. Fear is taking hold. What am I forgetting? The haze lifts for a moment, but then…

A movement behind me wraps me up in two large, muscled arms.

The rush unsettles me, it meanders through me, licking its way across my skin, my veins, my core. I avert my eyes, unsure of what he can see, unsure of what I want him to see. His fingers tease me like a feather—light and sweet as a breath. The tumble of feeling is not a breath at all, it’s a whirlwind of want, of desire, of something new and foreign to me and I both want to resist and give in and fly away in its turbulence.

My eyes flutter close. I want this feeling to go away. Skin to skin. Lips to lips. Tongue to tongue. The images flash in my mind so I snap my eyes open because this boy looking at me seems a less dangerous sight. I am wrong though, and I know it. He leans in closer to me. I lean back—with considerable effort. His mouth quirks up on one side. Damn that mouth. That simple, subtle movement brings my eyes to them and I can’t help but wonder what they feel like.

“You really shouldn’t resist so much.” His mouth moves. It takes me a moment to register his words in my brain and I look up at him. His amused eyes are penetrating.

“Why not?” I say, the words thin as my resolve to resist.

“I think you know why.” He holds my wrists and creeps his fingers, twirling in their little circles, up my arms.

Desire. I desire him.

And that shames me.

I step away from him. “Haven’t you ever heard you shouldn’t touch a lady without her permission?”

“Oh, I have.” He says, slanting his body toward me, his breath cool against my face. “Permission is written all over a girl’s face when I touch her. And you, Jade, are no exception.”

I flush and turn away.

He pulls me back and pins me against the locker. “And worse comes to worse, I take what I want.” His voice is a growl on my skin.

His mouth comes down hard across my lips. I gasp against them, pulling back. His lips trail down my jaw and neck. My body wants to respond, wants to give back. But I don’t want to. My eyes open and a few lockers down I see a pair of amber eyes watching me. His face is open and honest and hurt. For a moment, I try pushing Dominic back. Connor. I need to go to Connor. But as Connor’s face becomes guarded, a flicker inside of me cools and I feel mischievous and cruel. I keep my eyes on Connor and nip on Dominic’s ear before pulling his face back to mine and I kiss him back, fiercely.

When I flick my eyes back to Connor and see his glow fade to gray and wispy, I smile.

Inside me, a little voice whispers, “It’s almost time.”