Chapter Fifteen
“Battles cannot be won if you see the enemy as anything other than targets. You cannot for a moment believe they love and hate and fear like you. Turn them into marks on a map or you will lose.”
Pax whispered these words into Josie’s ear while they lay on their stomachs next to each other behind a crumbling barrier of poorly packed snow.
“By the same token,” he continued, his lips barely grazing the shell of her ear, sending jolts of arousal from her belly to her core, “you must remember your soldiers have lives and loves for which you are responsible. Protect them to the death.”
Even during Josie’s worst times, reality had never come into question. The revelations two nights ago, coupled with whatever this was sparking between her and Pax, had messed with her brain, though.
The world was spinning with her on it and the resulting dizziness could be mistaken for happiness.
Josie rolled onto her side on the bed of snow beneath them and studied Pax’s face.
“That’s intense. Were you in many battles?”
Raising himself on his elbows, Pax risked a quick glance over the icy barrier, then dropped and mirrored her position. Contrasting with the grayish light against the white snow, his skin looked ruddy, and his hair revealed strands of auburn amid the ebon black.
“I was a soldier in the Army of Light for nearly one hundred of my world’s years,” he said softly, eyes constantly tracking everything around them. “Before that, I was in the soldiers’ training academy straight from the orphanage.”
There were men like Pax on this world, too. Boys who lost families in brutal, long-running wars. Josie knew students in the local Sudanese community whose fathers wore the same expression as Pax when they spoke of the wars at home.
Not all of them were able to leave those wars behind.
Was Pax?
He seemed thoughtful and kind, but did his stoicism mask a deeper well of emotions? Did a man who fought others for an entire lifetime know how to set violence aside?
When Pax smiled, though, Josie pushed her worries aside; the smile reached his eyes.
How could she doubt his character? Weren’t the heroes in fairy tales always noble and righteous?
The existence of faeries and vampires and other sorts of creatures meant there must also be handsome knights who would slay dragons for the love of a lady.
Still…
“Remember not to take this too seriously,” she reminded him, keeping her voice light. “We’re play—”
“Charge!” hollered Joey Z. as his spindly legs carried him over the barrier.
“C-H-A-R-G-E. We’ll kick your ass we guarantee!” screeched a faery cheerleader as she and three of her sisters ran right past Josie’s head. Josie rose to all fours and peered over the snowbank at utter chaos.
As soon as he and Joey had completed their first fort, Amos had declared it was time for a snowball fight.
Apparently, the idea of an all-out melee appealed to the other-worlders, because by the time teams were chosen, even more residents had spilled out of the building.
There were at least thirty people—beings—now on the front lawn fully committed to the battle despite the snow falling and temperatures dropping in the face of a bitter wind.
“Left flank, retreat,” Pax called, jumping to his feet with a shocking grace, considering his size. The sight distracted Josie so much she almost didn’t react when the first snowball hit her right on her temple.
The second one smacked her in the chin—after that one she reacted.
Denis had thrown both.
Of course.
While the battle raged, Josie had the sensation of being watched.
She couldn’t make out any figures in any of the windows, and it might have been the building itself watching her.
Now that she knew the part Pax hoped her to play in Number Five’s recovery, the thought was less creepy than she’d supposed.
Mostly, she kept her attention on Amos, making sure no one slipped up in front of him and revealed their true selves.
Any of their neighbors could be lethal when careless.
Denis and his little troop of crony gnomes might be small, but some of them were downright feral with sharp teeth and short fuses.
Bert, the gargoyle from the lobby, ran around on all fours dressed in an ugly Christmas sweater trying to pass as a dog.
He weighed a good three hundred pounds if not more—and Josie worried he might accidentally step on Amos’s foot.
Once Cindy and a few other faeries began hair-pulling, Josie decided it was time to take Amos home and make them both a snow-day dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup when everyone around her went silent.
Josie blinked away the snowflakes from her lashes until she could make out the figure standing on the front steps of the building.
“Shit,” muttered Future Fate. “Here comes the buzzkill.”
Sure enough, Maddy’s expression as she regarded the front lawn was of deep disgust. A few faeries halfheartedly cheered but trailed off as Maddy walked closer and closer.
She looked like the White Witch from the Narnia books, her tall white fur-capped hat sitting regally atop her white headscarf, her white down-stuffed coat trailing off behind her.
Maddy hadn’t offered any information about her home world other than the fact the boogeymen there were scarier than anything Josie could have imagined.
Why was a woman as powerful as Maddy working as an assistant to Pax?
He was amazing, yes, but there didn’t seem to be anything magical about him.
Maddy, on the other hand, could turn people to stone.
Not to mention she exuded badass from her invisible pores.
Seriously. Maddy had the most perfect skin Josie had ever seen.
Was Maddy here to be near Pax?
“And what are you teaching your child with this play, Ms. LaChiusa?” Maddy asked now, her words icy and sharp. “How to be a soldier?”
“Well,” said Josie, unsure whether Maddy genuinely wanted an honest answer, but since Amos had wandered over next to them, that’s what she’d get. “This is a play fight. That means we are all friends when playtime is over, no matter which side we were on.”
More than a few residents took issue with that.
“I wasn’t friends with Denis before he threw a snowball at me,” announced a stocky faery cheerleader with a bruise forming beneath her eye. “Do I have to be friends with him now?” she asked.
“If we can’t be friends after a game, we can’t play the game anymore,” Amos answered in a serious tone. “ ’Cause if we lose our friends, no one is left to play.”
More grumbling ensued.
“Or we can play a game wif no winners or losers. Then nobody is mad,” Amos offered.
Maddy sucked her teeth and scoffed. “What’s the point of playing a game if no one wins or loses?”
Her toes going numb, Josie took Amos’s hand, ready to bring him inside to warm up.
Amos looked up at Maddy, his big eyes wide. “Games is fun. They make you happy. Happy is when you is your best self.”
“Fun,” Maddy muttered darkly. She leaned over and picked up a snowball. Some in the crowd gasped; others audibly caught their breath in anticipation of something terrible.
“Never tell Maddy something is fun,” Denis whispered to another gnome. “She’ll find a rule against it. No one kills a mood like—sphflunf de hoock!”
Amos clasped both of his mittened hands to his mouth in shock at the sight of Denis spitting out the snowball Maddy had thrown directly into his mouth. No one else made a move or said a word for a second or two after, while they tried to wrap their minds around the fact Maddy was out here for…
“Fun, eh?” Maddy tapped her chin with her gloved finger. “I’ll have to try again to make sure I’m doing it right.”
Sure enough, she leaned over and picked up another snowball, releasing whatever spell held them motionless. Joey Z. emitted a wailing battle cry, and the cheerleaders exploded into cartwheels and one-handed aerials.
“M-A-D-D-Y wants to play and won’t be shy,” they cheered as the Fate siblings and their cousin returned to their task of packing the snow into perfect spheres and tossing them lightly to whoever ran by.
Given the excitement, Josie let Amos stay out for another ten minutes.
The battle devolved into neighbors throwing snowballs at their own teammates, tossing snowballs in the air and catching them in their mouths, and finally throwing armloads of snow into the air. Josie stood to the side and watched.
“This is a sight to remember.” Pax had good-naturedly allowed a group of faeries to stand on one another’s shoulders and dump snow over him, then dusted himself off and came to join her.
Josie laughed. “It’s like if Disney characters came to life.”
“Oh.” Pax shook his head, the corner of his mouth pulling down. “Don’t mention that particular multimedia conglomerate around the tenants, Denis especially.”
“Why not?”
They ducked when a snow boulder came whizzing by accompanied by the faint scent of paprika.
“No smells, Cindy,” someone shouted.
“Their specious infantilization of gnomes aside,” Pax answered, “they would be considered allies of the Dark on many worlds.”
“The Dark?” Josie saw the word as capitalized in her head. “How does Donald Duck contribute to the obfuscation of universal truths?”
“The concept is infinitely more nuanced.”
Josie cringed when Bert knocked two gnomes off their feet and into a pyramid of snowballs Aunt Gbadu had carefully stacked.
She didn’t know who to be more concerned for—Bert or the gnomes who let loose a string of what she supposed were vile curses in a guttural language.
Language that offended Aunt Gbadu, judging by the way she now wagged a finger at them.
Josie’s stomach turned in foreboding.
“Pax?” Josie waited until Pax turned to face her. “I’ve been thinking about everything I learned Saturday night, and I have the sense you guys left something out.”
When he reached over and clasped her hand, a tiny tremor shook Josie from her toes to her scalp despite the thick gloves separating their skin. If she had been bare-handed, her knees might have weakened.
“We have not lied to you,” he said seriously. “You would know if we had.”
Josie started to object when it hit her. “Cinnamon, right?”
“Mom, look!”
Naliti had picked up Amos and let him sit on her shoulders. She wasn’t nearly as tall as Cindy and seemed more responsible, so Josie waved in acknowledgment, allowing it for the moment.
“Number Five is allergic to lies,” he admitted.
“You may not have lied,” she said. “But there’s more to this story and to this place than a stranded hotel needing a new tenant.”
The sun had never come out from behind the swollen storm clouds and the streetlights were still set to winter times. The orange cast of their bulbs turned the shadows between her and Pax into hollows of a sickly dark green and dirty blue.
“Mom, I’m cold,” Amos called, dragging his Spider-Man boots in the snow while he trudged toward them. “We can have supper?”
“What about Saturday?” Pax said suddenly. “Can we have supper, too? It would give me time to tell more of the story and answer any questions you have.”
“Supper?” she asked. “You want to come over for supper?”
His cheeks darkened and he rubbed his chin.
“I thought I could make it for you. A meal. It doesn’t have to be supper,” he said quickly.
“It can be lunch. It can be coffee.” Pax nodded as though they were settling an argument.
“We can go somewhere else and drink the coffee. Or water. We can…Do you drink water? We can do that.”
Was he nervous?
Her own palms were sweaty, and her heart slapped against her chest.
“Supper is fine,” she blurted before he could ask her if she liked to breathe air. “I mean, supper would be lovely. No one has cooked me a meal in years.”
Josie’s brain hissed in derision.
Way to sound desperate, Josie. Her gramma’s scratchy voice itched behind her skull. Practically begging for attention.
Too late, the words were out. They stood there like fools, staring at each other. God. How embarrassing.
“Mom. We can have pudding for dessert because it’s a snow day?”
Amos’s arrival broke the tension. Pax recovered first.
“Pudding sounds most excellent, Mr. Amos. It is my second-favorite dessert.”
“I likes the green kind,” Amos offered.
Josie tugged at her scarf to cover her still-burning ears. “What is your favorite dessert?”
Pax cleared his throat. “You’ll find out Saturday, I hope?”
“When pudding is green, it’s called lickstacio.” Amos kept talking, oblivious to the heat and hesitation between the adults above him. “When ice cream is green, you call it mint.”
“I…” Josie swallowed, trying to listen to her brain while her whole body screamed, Yes!
“That would be nice,” she said finally. “I would like that. Dessert and water. Yum.”
Pax smiled weakly, then bowed to Amos. “A most enjoyable battle, Mr. Amos. I look forward to more play with you.”
Amos bowed in return, and Josie allowed him to tug her away from Pax and into the building.
“I like Mr. Pax. He’s a funny nice guy,” Amos confided as they made their way up the staircase, shedding clumps of snow as they moved.
“I like him, too,” Josie said, nearly choking on the last word as the wrought iron vines sprouted pink heart-shaped flowers as they passed.
Holy shit.
“Tomorrow is going to be a wizard day, too, Mom?” Amos asked as Josie helped him off with his snow boots.
Would the flowers be there tomorrow? What did this mean?
“I have no idea, Amos,” she answered, her head spinning with what-ifs and how-the-hecks? “But if I had to guess, I’d say we’ll have plenty of wizard days ahead.”