Chapter Twelve #2
I carefully placed the cake on the concrete by the house.
With haste, Laken jumped up and took off, leaving me scrambling with a trash can–lid shield.
It didn’t take long to realize he ran to Phoebe and Archie, our anxiety-ridden creatures who couldn’t handle such events.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to start, what to do if I started, or how to help.
The hellblazers all left their coop. Taking a few trembling steps into their enclosure, I quickly learned why they ran in a panic. “Laken! There’s a snake!”
Laken jumped around in the air trying to catch Archie. “What?”
“A snake!”
“A rake?”
Son of a witch. “A snake!” I yelled with all my might.
Laken stood still long enough to tell me to grab the machete. But flames flew at my head. I ducked and ran in a squat away from Chicken Noodle. Then, I remembered a snake slithered nearby and I scurried backward.
“Machete? Where?” My voice cracked, lost and helpless and soon to be praying to some kind of chicken God, if such a thing existed.
“The wall!” His tone told me I should’ve known where it hung. Cluelessly, I gawked around the wall until, well, wouldn’t you know, I saw the machete. Shrugging, my clammy hands wrapped around its handle, I stood a good way from the reptile.
“Laken, what do I do?” My screams, feather, fire, porcupine—focus, Reece. In my chest, my heart flopped like a fish out of water. “Laken!”
“Kill it!”
What had the world come to, relying on Reece McCarthen to save its ass?
Me? Having to fix my own problems? This wasn’t a problem I’d dealt with.
I’d handled the raxxen, but barely. This wasn’t a broken vase, dying flowers, or heartbroken friend sobbing in her room.
I couldn’t run to the market to buy wine and fix everything with some good cheese and crackers.
“Reece! Come on!” Laken ran like a feral man after Phoebe.
The animals ran rapidly. They needed me. He needed me. Tears lined my eyes, my fingers tightened around the handle of the blade, and I gave myself a pep talk. “Fuck it.”
The chickens’ screeching clucks went off again, flames flew, the snake turned to me hissing. I screamed for life, liberty, and my chickens’ right to a safe home—and swung.
It took a couple minutes of scrambling, but we calmed the hellblazers enough to rally them into their coop. Then it was just me and Laken, panting. Facing the pasture, the rest of the creatures were accounted for except…
Something crunched behind me, something like a cake box. Butters.
Whipping around, the fluffy brown bear sat up eating the very cake I was supposed to deliver. I sank to the ground, kneeling in the grass, and everything went downhill in my mind. To complete mush. Burning and blowing away in a catastrophic storm.
I’d been a fool to think I could do this.
To think I could save money by working extra jobs and handle it all.
Running the sanctuary would’ve been a miracle on its own, but needing to pull twelve thousand macs out of my ass?
Impossible. I didn’t fix things. I didn’t save things.
I didn’t heal them! I killed them! I killed plants, I burned food, I forgot I had leftovers on the counter!
I lost Benedict, I got burned by chickens! I couldn’t… there was no way.
It was obvious why the town wanted someone else. Laken wasn’t there when my father got back after the incident. He didn’t hear his yells or see his anger. His disappointment. Laken didn’t see the way the town resented me. How they looked at me.
My heart pounded, my chest rose and fell, yet I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t save it. “I’m going to lose this place.”
I’d lose my family’s legacy. I’d lose my childhood home that held every golden memory I had. And the animals… oh Gods. They’d be auctioned to whoever paid the most, the worst of the worst, returning to the hells they were rescued from. Picked, prodded, and punctured for their magical traits.
“We aren’t going to lose this place.” Strong arms pulled me in. His hands combed through my hair and he engulfed my shoulders. “We’re going to get through this. We’re going to get the money.”
No. I snapped my head up. There was a time I’d believed in we.
When I would’ve trusted him, asked for his help, or even wanted his help.
Against all odds, I’d believed in it until we turned into me and never went back.
“We? What we, Laken? This isn’t your responsibility, this isn’t your problem, and it’s not your job to fix it. There is no we, there’s just me—”
“Gods damn it, Reece.” He spun away, dragging his hands through his hair. “When are you going to learn it’s okay to ask for help? Or to accept it when it’s being given? If you weren’t so damned stubborn—”
“Well, I am that damned stubborn, Laken.” This was my tip of the iceberg, my last sprinkle of inconvenience.
“Why do you think that I need you? Like you have to be some kind of savior coming to my rescue? I’m not some damsel and Gods know you aren’t the golden boy everyone here thinks you are!
” We heard Laken was taking over. Is Laken running the sanctuary?
“You might have everyone in town fooled, but I remember the pain you’ve caused. ”
His arms dropped to his sides. “Is it such a crime to care for you and the creatures?” His voice sounded worn, tired.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t!”
“I definitely shouldn’t! But here I am.”
“Then leave!” I erupted, molten lava pouring out of me and burning anything that dared to come close. “We both know you’re so good at that.” He said nothing. Our stares collided and I could feel myself breathing heavy, unraveling the longer my eyes were fixed to his. He stood still, unyielding.
“Why stay, Laken? Hmm? What’s the reason?” I pushed and pried. Laken spun on his heels and started making his way to the gate, but I wasn’t done. “And for the love of Gods, don’t say it’s for me because I—”
Laken whipped around, his face reddened with anger—desperation. “Because there are people out there that want your sanctuary, Reece! They want your creatures, they want Indo.”
That was not what I’d expected. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Poachers. They have their eye on this place and have for a while, but owing money makes you a very easy target.” Laken held his hands on the back of his head, the muscles in his neck swelling.
“How could you possibly know that?”
Laken rarely cried, but I could tell he came close, and it made me feel sick. What could be so bad? “Because I’m a Wraith.”
“A Wraith?” I repeated, cocking my head. Was this a joke? “Like the ghost?”
Laken swallowed, his glare darkening as he wrung his hands. “Like the assassins.”
I shouldn’t have made that axe-murderer joke that night we played darts.
A Wraith. Everyone had heard of the Wraiths, sure, but nobody knew them. Notorious and viciously known for their work, they killed and thieved in the midnight hours, unseen and unheard, never leaving a trace. They did people’s dirty work for whoever paid more.
“An assassin,” I repeated as though that would help me process easier.
“You’re a—” Murderer, but I couldn’t make myself say it.
“You—” Kill people, but again, the words wouldn’t come out.
I couldn’t put it together. It didn’t make sense.
Laken Augustus? How did he, no… Staggering back, I finally had something I could say. “Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
Laken’s gaze hardened into something more like a scowl. “What is it to you, Reece?” He stepped closer. “You’ve made it clear we aren’t friends. There is no we, right?”
Clenching my jaw, I let out a breath but said nothing. He’d give me no explanation, then. There was a reason there, or else he wouldn’t have put his guard back up. I just didn’t know it yet. Self-righteous, pompous little—
“That’s what I thought.” Laken retreated, putting some much-needed space between us.
But I wasn’t finished, and he wasn’t off the hook. “So then what the fuck does this have to do with me?”
He swallowed, drooping his shoulders as if a weight had been lifted. “That”—he hesitated—“I can explain.”
“I’d sure fucking hope so.” I was seething. Enraged. Spiraling. Confused. My hands trembled. “I suggest you start.”
Taking a deep, deep breath, his cheek fluttered, and he spilled his beans. “A year ago, McCarthen’s came up in whispers from poachers.” Oh my Gods. My lungs stopped working. Then he began again. “Out of precaution, I bought—”
“The Giblins’ place.” I laughed and staggered back. It all started coming together like pieces of a puzzle. This was rich. How pathetic, how ridiculously easily I’d believed him.
“Right,” Laken carefully replied. “Then a month ago, it came up again. Except this time, they were ready to move.”
“And so you came back.”
“So I came back.” The dagger he kept on him, his persistence in helping, the way he moved with skill, his scar from a “bar fight,” the coincidence of it all.
“Did my father know?” I tried not to scream.
“Is that why you were watching over the place?” Raking my hands through my hair, I walked in a circle as my eyes watered.
“How much of that bullshit was real, Laken? Everything you told me!” He opened his mouth to speak, but I wasn’t done.
“How fucking long before you told me my sanctuary was on a poaching hit list?”
I felt sick. Ill. Ready to fall out and fall over. My home, my creatures, Indo, Phoebe, Archie, all of them were in danger.
“Once the debt was paid, you would’ve been off their list. I didn’t think it’d come to this; I was and still am watching over…” he continued, but I stopped listening.
“The debt? Why do they care about the debt?”
“These poachers will sit it out and wait until the creatures go to auction.” There’s always interest in magical creatures. The commissioner’s words replayed in my mind. “They don’t want to raise flags by stealing a dragon right out of your backyard. They’re smart, they’re patient.”
The world around me came to a halt and collapsed in on itself.
Truly, it all made sense. My lip quivered, yet I refused to look away from him.
“So that’s what this was then. You wanted to help pay my debt so they’d leave it alone.
It was never about me.” My words were a mere whisper as I realized this.
Laken’s eyes darkened, a desperate sigh slipping from his lips as he shook his head. “It was always about you.”
“I was your job!” Every muscle in my throat and hands strained.
“You were my life!” Laken argued with everything inside of him.
That was when it sank in.
“I’m not leaving, Reece. You can yell at me, you can swear me to the Gods, and you can hate me if you want. But I will stand here. You aren’t running me off, you aren’t pushing me out. I’m right here.”
Tilting my head to the sky, I slowly began to laugh. For three years, I’d tortured myself wondering what went wrong. Wondering why he left, why he didn’t reach out, if he was okay, if he was safe. I cried into a pillow because he became… an assassin?
Closing my eyes, I rubbed my head, trying to understand what just happened.
“You’re telling me that while the whole Gods-damned town thinks you are some golden child sent from the heavens, you’ve been a literal assassin for the past what?
Three years?” I stepped back, holding my hand up to gesture for him to wait.
“That’s why you left? To be an assassin? ”
Oh, the world was definitely being ripped out from under my feet.
Laken didn’t respond, which was answer enough.
I closed what distance I’d put between us, pointing a finger to his chest. “We’re going to save this sanctuary.
We’re going to pay the debt. And then you’re going to go on with your life and I will go on with mine.
Separately.” I felt his chest rising and falling rapidly under my finger. “Are we clear?”
He stared down his nose at me, a muscle in his jaw feathering. “As you wish.”
I lowered my hand and my stare, not being able to bear looking at him any longer. Moving past him, I stalked to the door.
“Reece,” he called. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I shouted over my shoulder and shut the door behind me.