19. Res
19
Res
N ow more than ever, I regret the lie I told Zach about why Jaxson was present at dinner.
There’s no risk of Zach finding out that Jaxson didn’t sponsor the community Halloween party. So I hardly expected him to write the check to fund our haunted house. I certainly didn’t expect him to want to be involved in the planning with an enthusiasm that makes me wonder if he’s not just doing this in his continued efforts to invade every aspect of my life. Makes me wonder if he’s actually not just a little intrigued about the whole prospect of Halloween considering the Sovereignty never let him have anything to do with it. Either that or Jaxson just doesn’t have any concept of the phrase “doing too much.”
I’m beginning to lean toward the latter as I look at the layout for this weekend’s haunted house. It’s really a haunted floor since we’re using a school building that was long abandoned for the new construction down the road. Well… newer considering it’s thirty years old. It was supposed to be a haunted hall. Not a floor. But it’s like I said. Jaxson doesn’t seem to understand the concept of doing too much. No matter how much I tell him that he doesn’t need to hire an entire construction crew. Or actors. Or all the other extravagance that blows the initial two thousand dollars he was supposed to donate way out of the water.
“Jaxson,” I say with a sigh as I look over the blueprints spread over his dining room table.
The last place I want to be is back in his house. But there wasn’t much I could do when his men turned up on my doorstep and told me that Jaxson requested my presence. Well, except slam the door in their faces. Jaxson sent me a text not even a minute later telling me to go with his men, or he’d come retrieve me himself.
Not in the mood nor having the time to resist whatever sick and twisted way Jaxson would “retrieve me,” I told his men to give me a minute to get dressed before leaving with them and resigning myself to being back in his house. He let me leave the last time, after which I got home, took off the dress he forced me into, cut it into pieces, and threw all the accessories in the garbage. Hopefully, he’ll let me leave again.
“Anything missing or that you want to add?” he asks with a straight face.
If it were anyone but him, I’d swear he was messing with me.
I sigh again. There’s no talking him out of this. I haven’t been able to talk him out of anything since I met him.
“No. It’s fine. Tell your people to have at it. They’ll be able to do all this in three days?”
Jaxson gives me a look like I’ve grown two heads.
“I’m serious,” I insist. “This is a lot. ”
“They’re going to. I’m paying them enough for it. And if they look like they won’t be able to meet the deadline, I’m sure I can motivate them to redouble their efforts.”
I’m pretty sure I know what that motivation looks like and joke, “Through aggressive negotiations, I’m sure.” Then, remembering that this guy was raised in a cult even stricter than the one I was raised in, I begin to add, “It’s a reference to—”
“ Star Wars . Yes, I know.”
I frown at that. “You get a Star Wars reference but you don’t know anything about Halloween?”
“I told you. I don’t celebrate Halloween.” I look pointedly at the blueprints he just showed me and back at him. So he adds, “Typically. This time it’s—”
“Yeah. Endearing yourself to people in service of power and all that bullshit,” I say as I wave a hand dismissively. “I didn’t celebrate Halloween growing up either. But the Halloween and horror memes would have been all over the internet. If you’ve run into a Star Wars reference, no way you didn’t run into Halloween and horror memes?”
Jaxson huffs. “I watched Star Wars .”
I tilt my head in confusion at that. “You watched Star War s?”
“Yes.”
“But you never watched a horror movie or a Halloween movie?”
“No.”
“So… you couldn’t watch anything to do with holidays the Sovereignty didn’t celebrate?”
“No,” Jaxson answers as he puts away the blueprints .
I slap my hand over my face in exasperation with his one-word answers. I don’t know why I even care. Call it my fucking curiosity.
“So what could you watch and what couldn’t you?” Because he clearly gets some pop culture references. He got the Star Wars one, and he calls me Snow White.
“I could watch whatever the Oracle thought could be used as a metaphor for the mission of the Sovereignty in some way,” Jaxson answers.
I make a note that the best way to get answers out of Jaxson is to ask more specific questions. I also grin at his answer.
“No fucking way. Wait a minute. Let me guess. The rest of the world was the Empire and the Sovereignty are the Rebellion?” I ask.
“The Rebellion or the Jedi. Depended on which trilogy was being used to support the analogy.”
I laugh. “Oh my God, you don’t know how sick of that fucking metaphor I was growing up. You know how pissed off I made my Bishop when I challenged him on it and said the Jedi were a cult whose dedication to the status quo and not their supposed mandate helped shape the Republic into the Empire.”
“Of course, you did,” he says neutrally. Then he says, “You’re not wrong, though.”
“Did they ever use The Matrix ?” I continue.
Jaxson actually rolls his eyes at that one. “God, I think I hate that movie more than I hate the fucking Godfather .”
“Language,” I say. Before Jaxson can add anymore, I laugh and say, “God. The Godfather . I threatened my dad that I wouldn’t talk to him for a month if he used another sexist analogy about women and their God-given place on me.”
“I wish I could have threatened my father the same,” Jaxson says, sounding like he’s reliving the torture.
“What about the crazy end-of-the-world weather ones?”
“If I never have to watch another stupid weather movie in my life, it will be too soon,” he mutters. “I think I’d rather watch the unrealistic Sovereignty propaganda commercials on repeat than any more of those.”
“You all had commercials too?”
“Had and do,” Jaxson says. “You don’t know how much I hated participating in all that.”
My grin grows wider. “You have to show me.”
“I will not, Snow White.”
“There’s no way you were allowed to watch Disney or read fairy tales. So how do you know that reference?” I ask.
“College course.”
“You went to college?” I ask.
“You already knew that when you looked me up before our interview.”
“Yeah, but like… an actual college where they read stuff like that. Not some barely accredited Sovereignty college or something.”
“Thankfully, the Sovereignty doesn’t have any colleges or universities and has a hostile relationship with other religious universities, so I was free to go wherever I wanted.”
“What did you major in?”
Jaxson raises his eyebrow at me. “Why so curious about the background of a madman that you hate so much, Snow White?”
I fight the blush that I know is threatening to overtake my face because he’s right. Why am I so curious? The answer is simple. I didn’t think we had so much in common when it came to our perspectives on our upbringings. It’s one thing for him to think the Sovereignty is bullshit. It’s another thing to have similar reasons why despite his desire to take it over for the sake of power. If he weren’t a power-hungry egomaniac who wanted to lead a cult in service of that, I might have agreed to humor his little obsession with me.
I’d walk ass naked through the Artic before I admit that, though.
“You know,” I mutter. “Know thy enemy and all that.”
He clearly doesn’t believe me.
“And since you dragged me all the way out here, may as well break your horror movie and general pop culture virginity. Do you have Netflix?” I ask.
Turns out not only does Jaxson have Netflix and every other subscription I can think of. He has a whole home theater. A home theater that he doesn’t even use. When I ask him why, he shrugs and says that it came with the house when he bought it a month ago. I decide not to ask him how it was possible for him to buy and furnish an entire house within a month. Rich people, even rich religious cult leaders, apparently can get whatever they want if they put enough zeroes on a check.
I decide to start with a classic. The aptly named Halloween .
Jaxson, unsurprisingly, is less than impressed.
“I’m supposed to enjoy this. Why?” he asks.
“Because it’s fun.”
“Watching a man killing and torturing people for his own perversions is… fun?”
“You don’t think so? Odd. Would have thought it was right up your alley,” I droll.
“I don’t kill and torture for no reason. There’s always a reason.”
I ignore the fact that Jaxson casually admitted to killing someone. But while it’s shocking, it’s also not surprising. There’s not much of a line to cross to get to killing from yanking all a man’s teeth out, cutting out his tongue, and castrating him.
“Okay. Let’s see,” I say as I flip through the curated Halloween list. While I try to decide, I ask, “So what costume are you wearing for the event?”
“Costume?” Jaxson asks.
“We went over the basics of Halloween. I’m sure I told you about the dressing up in a costume thing.”
“I was aware of that. I wasn’t aware that I was expected to wear a costume.”
“You are hopeless,” I mutter to myself as I debate between another horror or something sillier. Hocus Pocus , maybe? Nightmare Before Christmas ? “You’re going to be there, right? To help? You know… in the service of endearing people to the Sovereignty and to be my personal tormentor.”
“That we established.”
“Then you have to wear a costume. You can’t not wear a costume. ”
“And you and what army are going to make me?”
“I doubt I could make you do anything even if I had the backing of the most sophisticated army in the world, Jax,” I admit.
“No. But if you gave the right motivation, I might be convinced.”
I don’t have to look at Jaxson to know that he has something sinister in mind, and I have no desire to stick around to find out what. Without saying anything, I grab my purse off the chair next to me and start to leave the theater. Hopefully, he lets me leave. I really don’t want to fight him today. I really don’t feel like being humiliated and violated after learning that I actually have things in common with the guy.
I don’t think he’s going to stop me, but I hurry to leave the room and climb the stairs to the door anyway. I put my hand on the doorknob only to hear meowing and scratching at the door. Does Jaxson have a cat? I start to open the door only to freeze as my brain processes that meow. I know that meow anywhere. I could pick that meow out from amongst thousands of cats. But there’s no way. No fucking way.
I open the door.
“Nala!” I exclaim, kneeling down to her level.
Immediately, Nala leaps into my arms and begins to purr and rub her head under my chin.
“Oh, Nala! My sweet baby! You’re okay? I thought I’d lost you forever!”
I did. I truly did. It’s been more than a month since I walked into my apartment to find it broken into with Nala nowhere to be found. I was sure she’d been eaten by a coyote or hit by a car or something by now.
“How did you get here? How—”
I cut myself off. Because I know exactly fucking how.
“You broke into my fucking apartment?!” I yell, turning around.
Jaxson is at the bottom of the stairs. I climb down them with Nala in my arms to confront him.
“You broke into my apartment and stole my fucking cat? You asshole!”
“How else was I supposed to install cameras into your apartment?”
“You didn’t have to steal my fucking cat!” I yell. He didn’t have to break into my apartment and rob me at all. But Jaxson probably just wanted to torment me. Sick madman that he is.
“Language, Lauressa. And not so loud. You’re scaring Nala,” Jaxson says as he reaches to take Nala from me. To my surprise, she lets him.
Nala hates everyone. Everyone . It’s why I was so worried about her when my apartment was broken into. She wouldn’t have tolerated strangers in her space well and was more likely to attack them than go run and hide. So how the fuck did Jaxson manage to get her to imprint on him?
“Don’t tell me how to act around my cat,” I snap as I reach to take Nala from him. To my surprise yet again, Nala resists and lets out a hiss at me before continuing to nuzzle into Jaxson. “Don’t you dare hiss at me, young lady!”
Nala continues to ignore me. Traitor !
“I’m sure we can work out a custody agreement,” Jaxson says seriously, but obviously joking. Fuck, I hate that I can tell when he’s joking now.
“I’m not co-parenting my cat with you. She’s my cat!”
“And she clearly doesn’t want to leave with you right now.”
“Now you care about fucking consent and boundaries!” I yell.
“Lauressa. This is my last warning about that dirty mouth of yours.”
I glare at Jaxson, but decide not to push his limits and instead focus on my cat.
“Nala,” I whisper at her, aghast. But she simply ignores me, leaps out of Jaxson’s arms, and bounds up the stairs to do who knows what. No doubt she’s having the time of her life finding every single hidey-hole in this place.
I round on Jaxson. “You’ve turned her against me!”
He smirks. “You have done that yourself.”
I cough to disguise a laugh at the stupid fucking Star Wars reference, but Jaxson can clearly tell because he looks too amused.
It would take ages to find Nala and take her home with me. I’m more likely to get lost myself in this place before I find her. So I stomp my foot like a toddler—no, worse. I stomp like a teenager throwing a tantrum and storm up the stairs, resolving to bring Nala’s favorite expensive treats next time I’m here to lure her out and bring her home.
I push aside the irritation at my acceptance of the inevitability of a next time.