Chapter Twenty-One #2
The stray regret she hadn’t paid attention to his naked feet streaked through her brain.
She was pretty sure he had sexy feet.
“I have a joke for you, too, Mr. Amos,” Pax called, his eyes never leaving Josie’s face. “I googled them,” he told her quietly. “I think I understand now.”
Longing, fierce and bittersweet, squeezed her chest.
Even if she weren’t a single parent struggling to overcome a lifetime’s worth of head-fuckery, she couldn’t be with this man. Whatever rebooting she and Amos were supposed to provide meant Number Five would eventually be on its way to other worlds, taking Pax with her.
It gave extreme Men Are From Mars, Women Are from Venus vibes.
“I must tell you. I’ve been to visit Number Five’s heart and—” Pax broke off at Amos’s arrival.
“Knock knock.” Amos came and sat next to Pax.
What was it Pax wanted to tell her?
“Who is there?” Pax asked, looking at her boy with a smile.
“Worm,” said Amos.
Pax considered him, eyes narrowed in thought. “Hmmmm. Perhaps I do not understand after all. Worm who?”
“It’s worms outside!”
Amos threw his head back and laughed. As the first silver note left his lips, the wizened black curls in the garden box popped back up into blue-and-pink spiked plants again.
The laugh felt like it lasted forever while little red vines joined pink-and-blue spikes, and next to them grew yellow stalks with iridescent buds.
In the next box over, black mushroomlike plants sprung up, their undersides spotted with eggplant-colored heart shapes.
Behind that box, a row of bushes appeared, dark copper leaves dotted with opal berries.
Pax was still looking at Amos. “Worms outside?” he repeated, then slapped one thigh in excitement. “Worm outside—‘worm’ sounds like ‘warm.’ See?” He glanced over at Josie. “I got it and…ah…”
“Mom, where did these plants come from?”
The three of them stared at the strange flowers, then one another. Josie’s mouth opened and closed rapidly like a flounder.
Pax appeared more dignified, but he’d nothing to offer, either.
The impossibility of what happened in front of her and the unreality of the past week came crashing down, and Josie, true to form, decided it was time to get the hell out of there.
“I don’t know, Amos. Let’s go on upstairs and have some ice cream, why don’t we?”
Just like that, her son forgot about the plants and raced to the building entrance.
Pax mirrored Josie’s slow rise to her feet.
“Words are hard.” Pax echoed his complaint from last night. “I tried to send you some in a note, but they curled up and turned to nonsense as soon as I wrote them down.”
Josie swallowed and nodded. Words were hard.
“I wanted to tell you I have never touched anything as soft as your skin, the memory of that touch is wrapped around my fingers, and all I want to do is bury my head in my hands and remember touching you.”
Oh. Oh, goodness.
“Those are beautiful words, Pax,” Josie said.
He shook his head, objecting. “They aren’t enough. You are a siren’s song and impossible to translate, but I want…”
Josie wanted as well. She wanted to go back to Pax’s bed, to be held, to be comforted, and to be supported when her energy was depleted.
“I wanted to tell you this before I told you my other news,” he said, “so you wouldn’t think what I felt…how I feel…” Pax rubbed his chest. “I want you to know that I want you here even if it has no effect on Number Five.”
Nothing Josie had experienced had ever taught her good things happened to good people. Instead, she’d seen time and again that opening yourself to happiness meant inviting weakness. Succumbing to pleasure was selfish.
Even if it wasn’t, there were garden boxes full of flowers from alternate dimensions right here on boring Earth. This wasn’t sustainable, was it?
This couldn’t last.
Nothing beautiful ever lasted.
“I have to tell you—” Pax said, but stilled again when Amos interrupted.
“Mom, we going upstairs?” Amos called.
Josie consoled herself with the thought that she would have left Pax even if Amos hadn’t called her. She wasn’t using her son as an excuse to leave.
“I have to go. We can talk later,” she told Pax, hurrying off to join Amos before he could object.
Whatever news Pax had could wait.
Josie had some decisions to make.
· · ·
“How could you let this happen?”
Raphe, Denis, and Maddy stood in a line in front of Pax, identical expressions on their faces.
“Right,” said Pax. “I should have known Number Five would react to the sound of a human child’s laughter because we have so many of them running around.”
Raphe’s head jerked back and Maddy set a hand to her chest.
“Was that…was that sarcasm?” Denis asked. “I didn’t think you had the emotional range.”
Truth be told, Pax hadn’t known he had the emotional range, either.
Sitting at his desk while the three harbingers of doom hovered over him, Pax dropped his head into his hands.
This must be why paladins were sworn to celibacy.
One night of sex, breathtaking, beautiful sex, and his emotional range was the height and length of a mountain range.
One second, he was mindless with desire for Josie, the next he was outraged by Denis’s selfishness, and the next he was practically floating with pride for understanding a joke.
Who was he and where the hell did The Butcher go and disappear to?
Pax couldn’t be sure, but perhaps the men and women of his world had more in common with the humans than he’d originally thought? Humans had names for conditions like this. “Besotted.” “Head over heels.” “Lovesick.”
There were names for it on his world as well. “Heartcharmed” and “off the ground.” “Loveblind.”
Words he and his soldiers would use as curses when someone acted the fool.
“I don’t know what ‘emotional range’ means,” said Raphe. “I do know when you’re thinking with your cock that cock-ups are inevitable. This goes beyond exposing ourselves to a little boy. Those plants are out there for any would-be burglar or even curious neighbor to walk around back and see.”
True.
“They aren’t even in the correct boxes,” Maddy added. “I specifically set aside three boxes for annuals, and of the flowers I recognize, all of them are either perennial or carnivorous. Why did I invest in a new label maker if no one takes the time to read the labels?”
“You are overlooking the importance of what happened.” Besotted or no, Pax knew when to listen and when to lead. He’d been commanding troops for decades, and although he listened attentively when his soldiers made their points, final decisions always came down to him.
“Number Five grew those flowers. Whether the boy had laughed or not, Number Five reacted to an expression of joy.”
Amos’s laugh had the shining tones of Pax’s favorite throat singers. It had been a gift, that sound, and Number Five had answered in kind by offering up a gift of her own.
“This is exactly what needs to happen,” Pax said. He placed both palms on the desk and pushed to standing. “For months Number Five has been shutting down. Since Jo…er, Ms. LaChiusa—”
“You can say her name, Pax,” said Maddy, huffing with annoyance as she sat in a chair opposite his desk and pulled off her spikey-looking shoes, rubbing the arch of each foot. “We know you’re sleeping with her.”
“What?” Pax reared back. “How do you…? What are you…?”
Denis grimaced. “The stairs to the basement vanished Saturday night and the elevator would only go up.”
“The entire building reeked of roses,” said Raphe. “Meanwhile I was stuck on the first floor all night. The couches in the common room are lumpy. I want the ballroom back.”
“Not to mention you have this goofy heart-eye-emoji look on your face all the time now,” Maddy complained.
Pax glared at her.
“I don’t even know what that means,” he said. “Goofy emoji look,” he muttered. He’d show them a goofy look after he rearranged their features with his fist.
Sparks flew from the small brass lamp on Pax’s desk and a tin candlestick appeared in its place.
“Unh-uh.” Raphe waggled his finger at Pax. “You’re going to have to rein in that temper if you want Number Five to keep getting better. Remember, hands are for helping, not for hurting.”
Denis pushed his tinfoil hat back and peered up at Raphe. “Where did you hear that nonsense?”
Raphe raised one brow in a supercilious expression. “You are not the only being who can navigate the interwebs.” He leaned down and smiled, revealing his razor-sharp bloodteeth. “I know things, gnome.”
“Can we stick to the point?” Maddy demanded. She slipped her shoe back on and grimaced. “The point being Number Five cannot let her enthusiasm cause our unintended exposure. More importantly”—she looked at Pax—“has the needle moved?”
“Yes.”
The three beings gasped.
Pax nodded. “I went to check after the flowers appeared, and the needle is up to the three percent mark. This is working.”
What he hadn’t told them is the needle had moved after his night with Josie, not because of the flowers.
“What did she do?” Maddy asked.
Pax didn’t know. It couldn’t have simply been what they’d done in his bed. There were other couples, whole families in the building. If it was sex fueling Number Five, they shouldn’t have run dry.
If it wasn’t simply the physical intimacy, that left certain possibilities. Possibilities that were none of these folks’ business. Private possibilities too fragile to take into the light and examine.
“It could be whatever the humans are made of or excrete is working to help cure Number Five,” Raphe said thoughtfully. “Like a vaccine. We inject Number Five with magicless beings and Number Five reacts in defense by making more magic.”
“They are a people, not a disease,” Pax objected.
“If this is the case, it doesn’t matter who comes to live here,” said Denis excitedly. “We can get any old human, preferably one with bad hearing and poor eyesight, to live here and it would have the same effect.”
“Yes,” Raphe agreed. “We should get rid of the woman, seeing as she’s become such a nuisance, and replace her with a less attractive human.”
Rage, dark and heavy, filled Pax’s veins.
Denis asked, “What if the woman goes public with what she knows?”
“Is the altar back up to code, Maddy?” Raphe asked. “I still think a blood sacrifice would be helpful.”
In some men, a red haze descended on their vision, a precursor of blood. With Pax, the decision to kill had never been taken lightly, and when he drew his blade, he’d always been certain his vision was clear, his mind in order, and his heart beating slow and steady.
Scratching beneath his beard, Denis nodded, then belched. “There’s more than a few guests who will pitch in to pay the penalty fee, if it comes to that.”
Right.
The little dirt-sucking conspiracy fanatic was going to die.
Before Pax could reach for Denis’s throat, the lights dimmed, and a freezing wind blasted through the office. Papers flew off the desk, Manny’s beer hat toppled over, and Raphe’s cape smacked Maddy in the face.
Who wears a cape inside at three o’clock in the afternoon?
As abruptly as it began, the wind died, leaving a chill and the smell of burnt sesame seeds behind.
“Number Five has spoken. The LaChiusa family remains where they are.” Pax’s fists clenched so hard the entirety of his knuckles showed beneath his skin. “Anyone touches a hair on their heads, and I will kill them on the spot.”
Leashing the violence coiled in his gut, Pax left before anyone could point out his hypocrisy.