Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles) (11 page)

Jackson’s behavior kept me on edge as well. He’d begun doing little things, considerate things. Like starting this fire in the stove without staying to enjoy it.

And two nights ago, in the group’s makeshift shelter, he’d moved some branches from the ground by his side. So I’d sit beside him? Or just to bolster our windbreak?

Yes, he’d helped me calm down Matthew. To keep the boy quiet from Bagmen? Yesterday on the trail, I’d seen him slip Matthew half of an energy bar. When I smiled at him, Jackson had scowled as if he’d been caught doing something stupid.

This morning, he’d begun something new. Several times he’d opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, then abruptly closed it—much like he had when we’d been in school together. He’d also remained close to me throughout the day.

Maybe he was softening toward me because I hadn’t gone Empress in days? Or maybe I was searching for signs that weren’t there.

I missed him, my chest aching when I remembered the pair of us on the road together. How the two of us, as different as we were, had begun to grow closer.

I’d just put my head in my hands when I heard someone bounding up the porch steps.

From outside, Finn said, “Uh, Evie’s in there, dude— OW! What the hell, Cajun?” Finn sounded like he was holding his nose.

Had Jackson just hit him?

“You ever make yourself look like me again,” Jackson grated, “and I’ll give you more than a tap next time, me.
Compris
?”

Why this sudden anger, days later?

“Yeah, cool,” Finn said thickly. “Kind of been expecting this.”

“Now, all of you get scarce. The barn’s awaiting.”

Jackson was coming in here? I’d never have time to reach my clothes. Shit! I ducked down in the tub, draping my arms over my breasts, hoping the suds covered everything lower. . . .

10

The door burst open. Jackson stood in the doorway, dripping from rain.

I was so stunned by the intent look in his eyes that it took me a second to sputter,
“O-out!
Now!”

As if I hadn’t spoken, he entered, shutting the door behind him, tossing his bow and backpack on the table. He shook out his hair like an animal, sending pinpricks of cool water across my face and arms. Black locks whipped across his handsome face.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He removed his jacket and hung it on a rickety chair to dry in front of the fire. “We’re goan to talk.” He dragged out another chair, sinking his tall frame into it, his gaze leisurely roaming over me.

“Get—out—now!”

“You doan like me here? Then you’re welcome to stand up and walk out.”

I darted a glance at my clothes. I’d set out a clean outfit—jeans, a sweater, an almost-matching bra and panty set. The bra was red silk, the undies pink lace; close enough. Unfortunately, they were a good five feet away.

I cast him a baleful look, tightening my arms over my chest. “What do you want to talk about that can’t wait? You haven’t said more than a
few words in days. Then when I’m enjoying my first hot bath in forever, you get chatty?”

“This way I know you ain’t goan anywhere. And we got a lot to
chat
about, you and me.” All his cockiness firmly in place, he said, “You’re in love with me.”

Be cool, Evie, don’t let on.
“Ahhh, now I see. You found crack out in the woods, didn’t you? Seasoned with bath salts?”

My answer didn’t appear to insult him; in fact, he seemed encouraged by it. “Nah, just some of this.” He pulled a mason jar of clear liquid out of his backpack.

He’d scored moonshine? “You’re like a bloodhound for liquor.”

He took a sip from it, then leered over me with a drunken grin. “Um, um,
UM
, Evie.”

I sank lower in the tub. Were the bubbles dissolving? “Why don’t you go enjoy that someplace else?”

“Been doing a lot of thinking, figured out some stuff, but I still got questions, me.”

I’d been wondering when, and
if
, this would come. But I never would have expected it during bath time. “This can’t wait?”

“We ain’t leaving here till we get something settled.” He shook his head hard, seeming determined to talk to me—and to keep his gaze from wandering again. “Like we should’ve done at Finn’s before you ran out on me, stealing his truck to get away from me.”

“And you know why.”

“Ouais.”
Yeah
.
“You thought you saw me and Selena goan at it and you couldn’t handle it.”

“You’re not going to make me feel guilty about this. I believed my own eyes. And you’d just yelled at me: ‘I am done with you!’ I took your words to heart.”

“I was drunk and pissed off that you wouldn’t trust me enough to tell me what was goan on with you. I’m still pissed.”

“And still drunk as well.”

He didn’t deny it.

“In any case, seeing you with Selena—”

“It wasn’t me!”

“—isn’t the only reason I left.”

“I know your other reason.
Coo-yôn
said you were afraid you were goan to poison me or get me killed by Death, or something.” He waved that away.

“Matthew told you that?”

Breezing past my question, he said, “Which just proves my point. You doan want anything to happen to me. Because you got it bad for me,
peekôn
.”

My face flushed, the truth laid bare.

“You got it even worse than you let on that night at Finn’s. You remember our little talk?”

“Of course I remember.
I
wasn’t chugging whiskey like a marooned sailor at the island oasis.” Jackson had talked about starting a life with me—on one condition. “You said I had to give up my quest to find my grandmother. When I told you I couldn’t, you broke up with me.”

“I didn’t break up with you, no. I just shot my mouth off because I was frustrated. Never met a
fille
so frustrating as you.”

How odd to be having this conversation when I was dressed in disappearing suds.

“I’ve been going over my options.” He raised a forefinger. “Ignore my every survival instinct and stick around some kids who are out to kill each other. Some real sick ones, too.” He raised a second finger. “Or leave and go after the Army of the Southeast, get my revenge.”

Jack and his adopted sister Clotile had been in that army. Only one of them had made it out alive.

“What was your decision?”

“Still here, ain’t I?”

“What swayed you? And why now? It isn’t like you’ve learned something new to change your mind, not since you informed me that I’m not
right
,” I said pointedly. Unless he had . . .
No.
That suspicion was too humiliating even to contemplate.

“Like I said, I figured some stuff out on my own.”

“Look, Jackson, say I did have feelings for you. That was before I realized you could never accept my nature. You saw me and freaked out.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I doan freak out, no. I think I’ve handled this pretty damn well. If you’d shown me that shit before, instead of springing it on me—”

“That
shit
saved my life.”

“From what I understand, it also led you to a madman. The Alchemist,
non
?”

Touché. “You treated me like a leper when you saw my abilities.”

He shot to his feet, pacing, and took another swig. “You expect me to get it right the first time every time!”

“Get what right?”

“My reactions, my words, everything. I ain’t goan to. I saw something I’ve never seen before, and I reacted.”

“With the sign of the cross? Really, Jack?”

“I’m a Catholic boy, me. And the sweet girl I knew had just slaughtered some kid and looked mighty pleased about it. It was like you were possessed by a demon or something!” He shook his head. “You expect me to be perfect.”

“It hurt, Jackson. Okay?” I pulled my knees to my chest, sloshing water.

As if helpless not to, he glanced down, seeming enthralled with my movements.

But he jerked his gaze up when I cried, “It broke my heart! I’d just gone through the most horrific event in my life. I needed you, but you were disgusted with me.” My eyes pricked with tears. “I needed you!”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Does it count for nothing that . . . that I’m
trying
to handle all this?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have to try so hard. Come on, we have problems that extend past the game. We’re always fighting, always on a different page. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had
a civil conversation. Most of the time I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“What you want to know?” He sank down in the chair again, resting his elbows on his knees. “You want me to talk out my feelings? Goddamn it, how do I even start?”

I blinked in surprise. He wasn’t being a smart-ass. He was genuinely baffled how to do this. And why shouldn’t he be? Where would he have learned how to discuss his thoughts and emotions?

Not from his mother. She hadn’t even been able to
feed
Jackson as a boy, much less teach him to talk about things that bothered him. From his dad? The man had washed his hands of his son.

It was a wonder Jackson was as decent as he was. I remember how he’d admitted that he didn’t know how to behave with me.
You can teach me how to court you. ’Cause I doan know my way around that.

He
was
trying. And how should I help him with this? Offer advice?
Use your words, Jack.

“You spring this shit on me, then within days you expect me to get over the fact that my girlfriend ain’t exactly human!”

I didn’t know what bewildered me more—the
girlfriend
or the
human
part.

“Damn it, Evie, you been to my house, you saw how I lived. Can’t you understand why I hate surprises? Why I doan like it when people live secret lives?”

Maybe we
were
too different. “Too much has happened. And you’ve been hideous to me for days.”

“I was angry because I didn’t understand any of this. I doan like things I doan understand. And that morning in Requiem, just when I was trying to come to terms with this, I returned—right as you were about to cut that Irish kid’s throat.”

“He attacked us, after I tried to call a truce.”

“I get that people are gonna be hurt. I understand the program—hell, I wrote the program on people getting hurt, well before the Flash. But when I saw you liked it . . .”

I buried my head in my hands. “I don’t want to!”

“I understand that now. Something comes over you. It’s still you, but you got a problem.
Peekôn
, look at me.”

I glanced up.

“If you got a problem, I can work with that.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Being with you hurts.”

“But sometimes it’s good.
Real
good between us. You thought my kiss was ‘perfect.’ ” His gaze flicked from my lips, to my neck, to my collarbones . . .

“I never told you—” Realization dawned. “Oh, my God.” My jaw dropped, my earlier suspicion confirmed. Yep, just as humiliating as I’d feared. “You took the Alchemist’s recorder!” Which contained the tape of my life story.

Jackson flashed me a shameless grin. “
Ouais
. Been listening to it for days. That was one reason why I got held up that morning in Requiem. I was sourcing for some earphones, so I could listen under my hood.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I played a big role in that tale, wanted to make sure you got me right.”

“That’s why you’ve been so up and down?” The angry looks, the troubled looks. The smirks?

“Some things you said pissed me off.” Expression darkening, he grated, “Had to listen to you talking about your boyfriend. Bad enough the first time around.”

Brand had been a good guy. Immature, maybe, but he’d had a good heart. His and Jackson’s personalities had been as different as day and night. The two had hated each other.

“But then you’d turn around and say something good. Like when you were nice to Clotile. You smiled at her and waved hello, when not another person in school was kind to her.”

I could’ve been nicer to her, wished I had been.

“Or when you described our kiss at the pool at Selena’s house.”
Jack scrubbed a hand over his face. “I must’ve worn a groove in the tape listening to that over and over.”

The way his lids went heavy and he shuddered, you’d think he’d had an eargasm. My breaths grew shallow in reaction. And suddenly I was very aware of my nakedness, of the cooling water. Of Jackson peering at my damp skin.

“That tape was private!”

“You’d tell this Arthur guy, a stranger, our story?”

“By that point, I was fairly sure he would never tell another soul.” My skin began to glow with remembered fury, glyphs winding along my arms, across my chest. Were my eyes turning green?

Jackson stared at the changes in me. “You showing me these . . . these
glyphs
to scare me off?”

Huh. He had the lingo right.

“It woan work. That tape let me wade into this Arcana thing, let me learn about it little by little. Like you did. And I heard you say that I was your anchor.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You pulled back from killing that Irish kid—once you saw
me
. Do you deny that?”

At length, I shook my head.

“You need me, and now I know it,” he said. “You warned me it wasn’t ever goan to be easy with you. I’m still signing on.”

“Why would you? This is deadly and weird and terrifying.”

“So is this whole world!” He shoved his fingers through his wet hair. “Here’s how messed up in the head I am: I can accept this game better than I can your secrets. At least now I know what I’m up against.”

Part of me was delighted that he wanted me. Part of me thought anything between us was doomed. “Let’s just be realistic about our chances—”

“You wanna know what I’m feeling? Lemme tell you,
bébé
. Amusement. You’re acting like we got some kind of choice in this matter. You’re just as screwed as I am—because we’re both too far gone for the other.”

I bristled. “Liking me is akin to being screwed? I thought you were smoother than this, ladies’ man, with all your
gaiennes
.”