chapter four
Wren
Mid-morning finds me packing items from my bookshelf. I already packed away the books and transported them to my new house’s library, but I still have to pack the little odds and ends that adorn the shelves. I am smiling at some of the funny fan merchandise I’ve picked up when there is a hesitant shuffling just outside the door. My smile falls when the shuffling leads to a knock.
Angelica mimics the knock, and I shush her. She ruffles her gray feathers to show her offense to being shushed and flicks her red tail at me. She is up on the high perch above my door. It’s the best place to scare people who enter the room. Every Jay sweeps the room with their eyes, but they never look above their heads unless they are expecting Angelica to be there.
“Come in,” I call out, and a scowl plants itself on my face.
A Sparrow opens the door and gestures for the Incredible Hulk to enter. Or that’s approximately how big he looks, standing in the hall.
“Thank you, Sparrow,” I say to the house staff member. All of our house staff are called Sparrow to protect them and they all wear the same black shirt and black pants. All our staff also wear thin black spandex balaclavas to hide their face and hair. Including Jay and Hawk.
Jay enters the room and my internal grumblings block out Sparrow’s hushed response. This guy is huge . He has to be almost six and a half feet tall and maybe three hundred pounds of muscle. A brick wall of a human being. A medical marvel. A grainy picture of him should have red text over it that says “Has Science Gone Too Far?”
But what really stops me in my tracks are his eyes. It’s all that is visible on his face and his eyes are… alive. Every other Jay I’ve seen had training to remain as dead eyed and stoic as possible. They didn’t seem like real people following me around. That’s the point, really. If I don’t see them as real people, I won’t get attached to them. My friends likened my Jays to the guards outside Buckingham Palace. It is an accurate comparison. Except for this one. His eyes are the brightest blue, and they sweep the room as if looking for danger as he steps inside.
“At ease, soldier,” I drone as I turn away from him. I flick my dark brunette hair over my shoulder. “There’s nobody in here but me, and I checked for bombs this morning.”
He says nothing. Another part of his training. Jays can only speak to me about security and logistics. It’s annoying, so I often make it as uncomfortable for both of us as possible by speaking nonstop.
I watch him in my mirror as he visibly relaxes his stance. His eyes fix on me as I wrap a glass replica of the rose from Beauty and the Beast in bubble wrap. “I don’t know if they told you, but I’m moving out,” I say to the man who makes the armoire behind him look like dollhouse furniture. “I’ll be out of here in about a week. I guess that means you, too.”
He nods once in understanding.
I glance at Angelica in the mirror. She is above him, with her feathers plastered smoothly to her body. She is unsure of him. Even she is surprised by his size.
“I’m sorry if that takes you away from your life and your family,” I say and pick up a framed picture of me and my best friend to wrap. “Honestly, I didn’t want to have another Jay, so you can blame Daddy Dearest for that.”
No response. Ugh. It’s like being haunted, I swear.
I assemble the next cardboard box as Jay moves to look out my window. It’s a wide window with a cushioned bench seat that overlooks the street below. I applied a film over the window to make it look like stained glass in the sunlight. Little streaks of colored light dance over his black shirt. He, like every Jay before him, wears a black Henley and black cargo pants with his gun attached to a black belt. The uniform is partly to show no sign of personality but also so he looks more like law enforcement. It is shocking to see a big guy wearing a mask and carrying a gun in the city. So, the more he looked like a cop, the fewer screams happened. They definitely still happened, though.
He checks the latches of the window. I roll my green eyes. I’ve lived under lock and key most of my life. Of course, my window is securely locked. Once personal drones became more popular, living on the top floor became more of an annoying spectator sport. His checking of my window latches annoys me more than it probably should. He is acting like he is the first bodyguard to stomp through here. As if I’m a child who doesn’t know how to lock her windows.
I watch as he feels the leaves of my houseplants. His eyebrows quirk up like he is shocked to see live plants in my room. What did he expect? Diamond shelves? Probably. With the way my dad decorated some of the other parts of the house, minus the bits of my mom’s style remaining, I don’t blame his likely assumptions. My bedroom looks like someone’s soft cottagecore Pinterest board threw up all over it. I love my plants and take great care of them. They are all I have until I can move into my dream home and cultivate a garden. The plants I have now are all decorative and a few herbs, but one day I will have rows and rows of vegetables and fruits.
I might as well start his torture now. It has been five minutes since he got here, after all. My personal record for getting a Jay to quit is twelve hours. This guy is new to the security firm, so he is likely going to hold out as long as possible to impress Bradley. Challenge wholeheartedly and vehemently accepted.
“SOMEBODY HELP ME!” Angelica chooses now to start her screeching.
Jay jumps about two feet into the air and spins around, his hand ready on his gun holster. Angelica flies down from the perch above the door, past him, and flutters dramatically at the closed window. I stifle a laugh. This is a routine Angelica and I perfected years ago for use during Dad’s business dinners.
“Shit,” Jay mutters under his breath as he removes his hand from his gun. I can see the startled relief as plain as day in his eyes as he notes my amusement before relaxing.
“That’s Angelica, she—”
“My name is Blade.”
“Her name is Angelica. She’s an African Gray Parrot. And she’s very dramatic,” I say and turn back to my packing.
“Dumb bitch,” Angelica says as she flies to perch on my headboard. She grooms her feathers in a way I know to be haughty.
Jay’s eyes are wide in shock at hearing Angelica swear at me. I snort.
“Bitch is her favorite word,” I explain with a shrug.
“Bitch, bitch, bitchy bitch… CUNT,” Angelica sings in a high trill and ends on a loud, grunting shout.
It’s clear Jay is fighting the urge to say something. Angelica typically inspires a lot of questions and Jay is doing well at following his orders to not speak to me.
“Big bitch,” Angelica says, looking at Jay.
“Very big,” I agree with her.
“Angelica, this is my new Blue Jay.” I tell her like she doesn’t know.
Angelica imitates a blue jay call. “You do.”
Jay doesn’t respond. I bite my lip to hide a smile, knowing what is coming next. Angelica swoops over to land on Jay’s head. She bends over to look him in the eyes upside down. His hands hover like he is going to grab her if she bites or pecks him. She imitates the blue jay call again. “You. Do.”
“She wants you to make that sound,” I explain.
He pauses before he does his best to imitate the bird call. Normally it takes a few pecks to the forehead before a Jay will humor her.
“Good boy,” Angelica croons throatily and bumps her beak against his cheek and makes a loud kissing sound. She flies back to her spot on my headboard.
With a little bored sigh, I open my nightstand drawer. Jay turns and silently watches me pull the drawer off its tracks and dump it messily into the new cardboard box that rests on my bed.
Over the last few years, I amassed an extensive collection of dildos and vibrators. I don’t use them all. It is simply a fun way to make a Jay uncomfortable when I go into a sex shop and buy one. I love going in and buying the biggest and oddest one they have. It never made a Jay quit, but it surely made them uncomfortable. Being a menace is hard work. If nothing else, my purchases help a local small business. And I sure use some of them. My favorites are simply in a different drawer.
The phallic shaped items all pour into the box and tip it over with their rubbery momentum. The dildos and vibrators all roll across my bed and onto the floor. “Oh, damn,” I say lightly, like I dropped a pen and not approximately forty-seven penises.
Jay completely stops moving. His bright blue eyes are fixated on the biggest dildo that rolls almost all the way to him. Oh, how I wish its girth would lightly kiss the toe of his shiny black combat boots. It’s massive, hot pink, and made of a soft silicone that wobbles like Jell-O. I’m petite, standing at five feet tall, and a toy that size would likely do damage to my internal organs. A clerk who had caught on to my antics specially ordered it as a “gag gift” for me, with its entire purpose being to make Jay uncomfortable. Jay looks at the toy, me, the toy again, and his eyebrows knit together.
“ Buzz ,” Angelica says, expertly imitating the sound of a vibrator. Jay and I both look at her as she lets out imitations of my voice, gasping and moaning. “Oh, yes!”
“Good job!” I say cheerfully despite my glare at the bird.
Angelica makes a kissing sound at me.
“I’ll leave you to your packing,” Jay mumbles and exits my room. He looked almost horrified. Maybe he is going to be easier to break than previously expected. Delightful.
I grin at Angelica and hold out my fist to her. She taps her wing to my fist and opens her beak for a treat. One I happily supply.