Chapter 20 Freedom, Sweet Freedom #2
I squelch the shot of happiness that runs through me.
Because I can’t be glad to hear his voice; this is obviously very, very bad.
I allow myself to slump against the wall, wondering if I can imagine this away.
The answer appears to be no, I can’t—so I bang the bedroom door all the way open, choosing the path of righteous anger.
“How!” I cry, announcing my presence. “And why!”
Jane Doe sits in the velvet chair beside my bed, her shapeless chin cupped in a French-manicured hand.
She stares with fascination at the top of my bed, where a head with a luxuriant, auburn-red hipster beard lies face up on my pillow, the bedsheets and blankets tucked right up to the chin.
Said head doesn’t rest there, silently feigning sleep. Oh no. It’s chatty.
It is—he is—always excruciatingly chatty.
“Bulan!” I hiss.
It should be obvious I’m horrified and angry. Yet Bulan grins over at me with unchecked jubilee. Only Jane, for her part, looks embarrassed. Great. Now, layered on top of my anger sundae is a dollop of guilt for being a bad roommate.
“Sammy, I hadn’t realized your boyfriend was staying over,” Jane says. “I must’ve missed your text.”
My boyfriend? He’s not my… no. Bulan wouldn’t tell her we were dating.
Unless he did.
I point at him as angrily as my finger will allow. “Since when were you my boyfriend?”
“Since forever, Sabby!” he answers. Bulan’s smile is bright as sunlight, and I glare in its ultraviolet, cancer-inducing warmth. That lying, trespassing head. With Hanry’s and my breakup less than forty-eight hours old, it’s nothing short of cruel.
And the fact that he’s here, invading my precious, paranormal-free space?
If Jane weren’t present, I’d punt him all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge.
But since she is here, I have to come up with something quick. It’s bad enough Jane thinks Bulan is naked or something. The last thing I want is for her to discover his ruse and end our friendship permanently; to spread an office rumor I’m dating a headless ghoul.
“A juvenile, immature prank,” I say aloud. “That’s why you’re not wearing any clothes, isn’t it?”
“Indeed, yes! That’s it!” crows my grandmother’s stupid head.
Jane gives him a second confused look and stands. “Well, anyway, I, uh, guess I’ll go to the kitchen now. Got to refill my Stanley. I look forward to hearing about your first day later, Sammy.”
“Yep, sounds good,” I say. “Bye!”
Once the door to my room clicks shut, I rip the blankets off.
Piles of unfamiliar dirty clothes—presumably Jane’s—have been formed to create the lumpy appearance of a six-foot man’s body.
It’s honestly a feat of engineering. Bulan must have dragged the clothes in his mouth and jumped onto the bed with them in his teeth.
But I refuse to applaud his ingenuity. How did he even get in here?
“I was telling Jane that I meant this as a fun surprise!” says Bulan, presumably in explanation. “You didn’t warn me she’d come home ahead of you.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here at all,” I remind him. “Now get out.”
Bulan rolls his face into my pillow. He takes on a mournful air.
“I went to all this trouble to visit, and this is how you treat me?”
“You can’t just come visit me.”
“Well, technically I’m not visiting. I moved in with you. In fact, I moved with you. My crows were hard-pressed to carry me the whole distance, following those trains of yours. They’re fast, aren’t they? Did you know dragons were once that fast? They were. It’s true.”
This is a lot to take in. “I thought you were going to stay with Mandy.”
“Mandy’s apartment is extremely sketchy,” Bulan says, mostly muffled by the pillowcase. “You should pay her better.”
“She’s no longer on my payroll. I’ve refunded everyone whose deposits I didn’t need to give to Baldy, and I made plans to refund the rest. That’s what it means when you close a business.”
“So you say.”
“Yes. It is what I say.”
And that should be the end of it, but there’s something to his expression I don’t like. I fold my arms. “What don’t I know, Bulan?”
“She’s still planning to put on all your weddings.”
I balk.
Mandy can’t do that. She is—was—a talented assistant, sure. But she needs someone to give her directions. To keep her from eating the cake ahead of the bride. These commonsense things, they don’t come to her naturally, desire for seriousness notwithstanding.
“Why?” I ask. “Just—why?”
“She wants to prove she’s a serious sort of pixie,” Bulan explains proudly. “That she’s much more than just a seductress and a charmer! And I couldn’t be happier for her, Sabby. This is a big step. Surely you can see that. Can’t you?”
It’s a fair question.
I mean, the first thing that pops into my head is that this probably won’t work out well for Mandy.
Or me, whose brand name she’s presumably doing this under.
But if she ruins my reputation, what does it matter?
I’m not going back to Salem. If anything, maybe this is good: no one can accuse me of failing to follow through in providing the services they placed deposits for.
They can blame Mandy instead. Unless, more happily, Mandy proves me wrong and turns out to be a success.
“Fine,” I say at last. I throw up my hands because that seems like what people do in these situations. “Mandy can do what she wants.”
“And so can I,” says Bulan, face rotating back into the pillow. “Which is why I’m staying here with you.”
No. Absolutely not. The last thing I need is to be haunted a second longer than necessary by Grandma Rose’s paranormal world.
But I can’t quite bring myself to turn him out, despite all this. I’m a little bit—just the tiniest bit—happy to see him. And I’m sure Bulan will get bored of staying here eventually. Once he runs off with his crow friends again, everything will be fine.
And normal.
So very, very normal.
Please.