Chapter 28 – Jack #2
Even Sugar was in on it, lurking beneath the couch, watching the gemstone swing back and forth as Paco shifted his seat.
“There’s a chance nothing will happen until right before dawn. And if that’s the case, then—”
“You toss me into the trunk of my RAV4 with a blanket over me and keep going,” Paco said, not taking his eye off the stone.
I frowned at him. “I don’t know if it’ll work if you’re not alive—and if Jack’s not alive, for that matter.” His head whipped over and he glared at me. “I’m not saying he’s dead-dead,” I quickly corrected. “I’m saying who the fuck knows what that stone will do during the daytime when you die?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Zach said, not taking his eyes off the gem.
“Fine. Take his side,” I muttered quietly. “See if I care.”
And then the phone in my lap rang and I about jumped out of my skin. Paco reached over with his free hand, and I passed it over, but after he answered he snorted. “It’s for you,” he said, and handed it back.
I blinked and took it from him. “Hello?”
“Hello, can you confirm I’m speaking to an exceptionally attractive goth girl right now?” asked a warm voice on the far end of the line.
Nilesh.
I stood up and paced away from the boys, into the kitchen. “Speaking,” I said, trying not to laugh.
“Told you I could find you.”
“Yeah you did—but you’re kind of riding the line between sexy and stalking here.” He chuckled as I went on. “What’s up?”
“We’ve been doing a deep dive on Rojo activity the other night, and one of my techs back traced their truck’s path with traffic cameras, and realized they were driving in the shape of a sigil. Probably part of their ceremony with you.”
“Huh,” I said, glancing back to the living room. “Speaking of—”
I turned back just in time to witness Sugar bolting out from underneath the couch, springing up to the coffee table, and hiss and bat at the green gem several times, sending it wildly swinging, before running off as both the boys shouted her name.
“We’ve got a little ceremony thing here happening of our own,” I said, pacing further away. “What kind of sigil was it?”
“One for rebirth.”
I cringed. “Oh, well, that’s not worrisome.”
“Yeah,” Nilesh confirmed. “We’re not giving up yet, but we might have more luck preparing to fight this thing in its next form—”
“Paco?” Zach asked, his voice pitched an octave up.
“I see it,” the other man agreed.
I whirled, to see what they were looking at.
The green gemstone was a little off-center . . . and holding.
“What if I told you I had a line on their location?”
“How?” Nilesh demanded.
“Trade secret. I might tell you though, if you come pick us up.”
“You still at Jack’s apartment?”
I snorted. “Yeah. You’re lucky I have enough childhood trauma to find being stalked hot.”
I heard him hold back a laugh. “Be right there,” he said, and hung up.
Zach’s eyes caught mine as I walked over. “Is this going to work?”
“Not sure, but I called in reinforcements,” I said, sitting back down.
Paco clamped his free hand down on Zach’s knee without taking his eyes off the stone. “It will.”
Nilesh was at our door approximately fifteen minutes later.
Both the boys had already gotten ready to leave in the meantime—Zach had on hiking boots and a heavy jacket, and Paco looked like some kind of terrorist, all dressed in black, with a balaclava pulled up around his head and heavily tinted ski goggles on.
“You realize you can’t outlast the day, right?” I asked him. “It’s not an, ‘if you can’t see it, it can’t see you-type situation.’”
He gave a dismissive grunt. “This is worth it, even if I just buy us an extra few seconds.”
Nilesh took him in, and gave him a kindly look.
“I brought the light-proof transport vehicle,” he said, stepping away from the door—I could hear it idling outside, the Faithful had backed it up directly in front of Jack’s apartment.
“Usually we use it for prisoners, but today it can be dual purpose.”
We filed out and I locked the door behind us, as Nilesh spotted Zach. “Hold on—who’re you?” he said.
“He’s an interested party.”
“He’s coming,” Paco said, taking Zach’s forearm to help pull him into the back of the waiting van.
Nilesh gave me a concerned look, and I shrugged. “Look, Paco needs to feed, and I’m not Paco’s type—but he can find Jack, and if we find Jack, we find your person.”
“He’s human . . .” Nilesh said, with a frown.
“Don’t worry so much,” I said, hopping into the van, after clapping Nilesh’s shoulder and giving him a grin. “He’s already halfway through the introductory videos.”
Nilesh groaned, but got into the back of the van with us regardless.
Jack:
I had never once taken yoga when I was alive, but I knew from watching enough late night romcoms what savasana was—the time at the end of class, when you were supposed to be resting, when you usually wound up whispering about your love life with friends.
I imagined that putting myself to sleep was a little like that—minus the talking.
Just lying there, breathing like breath actually mattered to you, trying to let things go so that you could survive.
I felt death take me at dawn, and then I felt it when the sun receded, bringing me back into my body just enough to know that I was there, without feeling the need to come to “life.”
Sam hadn’t killed me yet.
That was nice.
I wasn’t as hungry as I had been, now that I was like this.
That was nice too.
I just needed to keep breathing.
Slower and slower.
Letting myself be calm and relaxed.
Not ignoring my hunger, but acknowledging that it was a part of me, and learning how to coexist with it, without letting it control me.
Pulling a strange sort of peace over myself like a weighted blanket, and enjoying the sensation of rest.
Left to its own devices, my mind became a TV of sorts, with images resolving one after another.
Wholesome stuff.
Families, laughing around heavy meals at holidays.
Parties where no one was up to no good. Weddings with several generations of people having fun.
Churches and picnics and watching the snow from someplace warm.
I saw each of them in intimate detail, as crisp as if they were my own memories, even though I knew that they were not.
It was like a play-by-play of someone else’s life, which was fascinating at first, but then started to disrupt my previously pervasive warm and content feeling.
Because that old maxim was right, albeit for the wrong reasons: hell was other people.
But not because you had to associate with them.
Because you were never like them—because of where and how you were raised, and all the shit that’d happened to you after, until you wound up like this here.
Like me, right now.
A human-sized mosquito trapped in the amber of eternity.
Knowing you would never have the chance to be normal again.