15 Birdie #2
Tearing my gaze from the wall of darkness, I look to Jasper.
He’s not twitching anymore. Fuck this, he needs help.
Cursing under my breath, I push off the railing and run barefoot down the stairs, wincing at the pain of the metal treads digging into my feet.
I feel like one of those mothers who drops her child into a lion cage and has to leap in after it.
The lion prowls in the shadows, out of sight but never out of mind.
The feel of his hunter’s gaze raises all the fine hairs on my arms.
“Jasper?” I drop down to his side on the rough cobblestones. “Oh god, please don’t be dead.” I tap his cheek, quickly trying to rouse him. “Come on, wake up.”
Will this psycho attack me now? Because I’m not going down without a fight.
I’ll kick. I’ll scream. I’ll bite his stupid gloved hand like a feral freaking raccoon.
I splay my hands protectively over Jasper, searching the shadows.
There’s a bag of trash discarded by his feet.
The asshole jumped him while his back was turned?
Then he’s a creep and a coward. My eyes narrow as I fight my own snarl.
Beneath me, Jasper groans, stealing my attention. He wraps his hand around my wrist, squeezing weakly.
“Come on,” I whisper. “We gotta get you inside.”
As I try to pull him up, our watcher dares to move in closer. I tense, readying for the fight. But then Pickles comes charging past us like a cat out of hell. How the heck did he get out of the apartment? Back curled high, he hisses at the wall of shadows.
“Pickles, no,” I cry. “Come back!”
He ignores me, snarling and growling like a ferocious little panther.
Our watcher finally backs away down the alley.
I can’t see him, but I feel his retreat.
I feel the tug of him, like he’s daring to pull me along with him.
I resist, clinging to Jasper with both hands while Pickles gives chase.
Then they both disappear around the corner of Heirloom Café, out onto the main street.
The moment they’re gone, the feeling of being pulled leaves me on a panicked sob. I cup Jasper’s face with both hands. “Hey, can you hear me?” I pat his cheek, sniffling back my tears. “It’s Birdie. Your annoying new shop girl, remember?”
“Birdie,” he mumbles, turning his face towards my touch.
“Open your eyes. Look at me.”
He looks up, his gaze unfocused.
“I can’t lift you. But we have to get inside. Now. Before he comes back.” I can’t explain this feeling, but I just know he’ll be back. “I need you to stand up, okay?”
Groaning, Jasper nods.
Standing up first, I reach down and grab both his hands, pulling as hard as I can. “Come on, you big tree.” Somehow, I get him to his feet. He wobbles, one arm slung around my shoulders. “Pickles,” I hiss, looking around the dark alley. “Here, kitty kitty!”
“What’s happening?” Jasper slurs.
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I curl two fingers into the belt loop of his jeans. “Pickles ran off. We can’t just leave him out here.”
“’sfine.”
“He could get hurt.”
“Always—comes back—”
Groaning under Jasper’s weight, I grip his hand on my shoulder, and we stumble together, tripping up the step, all but falling against the wall of the shop as I try to get the door open. I rattle the knob.
Locked.
“Seriously?” I all but shriek. “Please tell me you have keys.”
He mutters something unintelligible.
“What?” Distracted, I glance down the mouth of the alley, looking once more for the cat and just praying I don’t see the Shadow Man standing there again.
Jasper waves his arm like he can’t find the knob.
With a frustrated huff, I shove my hand in his pocket, searching for the keys myself.
At the same time, he reaches around me, pressing my bare shoulders against the cold glass of the door.
Then he grabs the knob and twists. The door opens as if by magic.
I fall backwards as it swings in. Jasper keeps me upright, but just barely.
“I swear that was just locked,” I pant.
“It sticks.”
I shuffle us sideways through the open door, trying to avoid his boots with my bare toes. We stumble our way into the shop, and I drop him into the closest chair. He slumps sideways onto the tea table, nearly pulling me into his lap.
“Water,” he croaks.
“Hold on.” I extract myself from his tentacle hold and race back over to the side door, looking once more for any sign of the cat before locking it and throwing the deadbolt. “Sorry, kitty.”
I tug down the little window shade for good measure.
Then I hurry back into the shop and over to the front door, checking it too.
That one is already shut and locked with the shade pulled.
The front window doesn’t have a shade, but there are so many plants filling the display that hardly any light from the street peeks through.
I turn around, taking in the dark profile of the room.
It looks eerie at night, with the plants all casting strange shadows.
Feeling like I’ve really lost my mind, I slip over to the display of witchy daggers and pluck one from the wall. It feels foreign in my hands. They didn’t teach the basics of knife-wielding in my graduate research methods class. But at least now I’m not totally unarmed.
“Water,” Jasper rasps again.
“I’ll get you water, but I need to check you for injuries first. We should probably go to the hospital. Does this island have a hospital?”
“Not injured. Just water.”
Huffing something about “men,” I set the knife down on the table and duck behind the tea counter. Grabbing the first regular size cup I can find, I fill it with water from the tap and bring it over. “Here.”
He pushes off the spindly table with his elbow, looking up at me. Without my contacts in, he’s like a Renoir version of Jasper. Damn, he even looks good pixelated. He reaches for the cup and lifts it to his lips, draining the water in three gulps. Then he thrusts the cup back at me. “More.”
I return to the sink, fill the cup, and come back. He’s already sitting up a little straighter, his breathing more even. “Here you go.”
He takes the cup with more confidence, draining it again. “Fuck,” he says on a breath, tossing the cup aside. It rattles across the floor, disappearing under the broad leaves of a potted plant.
I step in closer. “Let me look at you.” Cupping his face with both hands, I search for any sign of injury.
His eyes look strange in this half-light. The pupils are dilated, leaving only a thin ring of silver. “Did you see what happened?”
“I didn’t see him attack you, no.” I brush my fingertips down the sides of his neck. “When I came outside you were already on the ground. It looked like he was strangling you.”
He grabs my wrist, looking up at me with bloodshot eyes. “You could see him?”
“Well, yeah. Now, hold still.”
He tries to lean away. “I said I’m fine.”