Madly & the Jackal (15 page)

Aidan looped his arm around my shoulders, chuckling in surprise. 

“Not that I’m not a fan of PDA, but what’s this all about?  I thought your heart belonged to another and all that?”

I looked up into the hazel green eyes I’d seen on and off my whole life, the teasing light in them like a balm to my chaffed soul.

“Yeah well, that’s not working out so well for me,” I confessed spontaneously.  I hadn’t planned on telling anyone anything about Jackson and me, but it was out before I could stop it.  Not that it was such a bad thing.  Aidan was one of my very best friends, even more so now that we’d better-defined our relationship.  And of course, there was all that we’d been through together that lay between us.  Events like the ones we’d seen and survived had a tendency to create some pretty strong bonds.

Grabbing his tray, Aidan stepped out of line.  “Come on.  Come bend my ear,” he said, dragging me with him to the cashier.

“Finish getting your lunch,” I said, feeling guilty for dumping on him.

“I’m good,” he assured.

After he’d paid, we made our way to a private spot and sat in a patch of sun-drenched grass.

“All right, spill,” Aidan said, taking a bite of a foot long sub he’d chosen. 

As he chewed, he held out his sandwich to me, raising his eyebrows.  I shook my head.  “No, thanks.  I’m not very hungry.”

With a shrug, Aidan continued eating and I did as he asked.  I spilled.  Or poured.  Gushed. Flowed.  Whatever it was called, I opened up the dam and I let it all out.

When I’d finished regurgitating all the emotional poison of the previous forty-eight hours, Aidan was staring at me.  His mouth was pulled to one side and he shook his head slowly, back and forth.

“Girls and their drama,” was his only response.

My jaw went slack and I saw red.

“Are you kidding me?  That’s all you have to say?”

“What?” he asked.  He actually had the nerve to look confused.  “It’s true.  And it’s not just you. I’m not saying that at all.  I mean, seriously, look at my girlfriend.  Dude, she’s a frickin’ werewolf.”

“Like she can help it!  Like either of us can help all this!”

“I’m not saying that either. I’m just saying you’re so dramatic about it.  You just need to calm down and think—”

“Calm down?  Calm down?”

I was livid.  How dare he?  I actually looked at his tray for something to throw at him.  Something steaming hot would’ve been perfect, but something messy would’ve worked, too.  Unfortunately, he’d already cleaned his tray but for the apple in his hand.

“Madly James!  Are you looking for a weapon?”

Just as he said that, my eyes lit on his utensils.  I thought of jamming his fork into his hand just to hear him howl.  I lost myself in the fantasy for a few seconds before my inner rational person came to the rescue.

Good grief, Madly!  Have you lost your mind?  Can’t you see that
this
is what he means?  You’re thinking like a crazy person!

Balls!  She was right.  And so was Aidan.  Being dramatic and overly emotional was getting me nowhere.  Logic and calm, cool, collected thought would win the day.  I should’ve learned that long ago.  My father had been drumming it into my head practically since birth.  In essence, he’d always taught me that being royal meant taking the emotion out of things and doing what was right and what was best.  Duty.  If I kept that as my focus, it would never fail to guide me in the right direction.

Something inside me wanted to argue.  Some
one
inside me.  She was the heart of who I was as a person.  She was also a new wife and a new mate.  She wanted to know where love fit into the equation.  I wanted desperately to hear what she had to say.

But then, as she had a habit of doing at the most inopportune times, my inner rational person arrived and quickly bound and gagged that girl then smiled innocently back at me. 

Balls!

All this took place in the blink of an eye.  Meanwhile, Aidan was staring at me, half surprised, half amused, awaiting my response.

“No,” I denied on a sigh.  “You’re right.  I need to cut the drama and just
think.”

Smug, Aidan took a big bite of his crunchy apple.  He looked down at it and grimaced.  “Ick.  Now all I can think about is rotten apples.  Or rotten apple pie.  Hand-picked for the perfect evil recipe,” he grumbled, referring to my dream. 

As I watched him chew, something occurred to me.  I sat up a little straighter. 

Click.  Clack.  Clickity clack. 
Puzzle pieces began to fall into place.  My dream had been the first step in working out part of what the Seers had given me and Aidan was the next. 

“Rumpel’s picking Lore,” I whispered.

“What was that?” Aidan asked around his mouthful of fruit.

“Rumpel is picking certain Lore for a reason.  He has a plan and he needed each of the ones he chose to pull it off.”

“Um, and how do you know this?”

“The Seers.  They’re helping me to work it all out.”

“Seers?”

I nodded.  He grimaced.

“So what’s his end game then?”

I frowned.  “That I don’t know.  Not yet anyway.”

“And how are you supposed to find out?”

I shrugged.  “I guess it’ll come to me soon enough.  I hope so anyway.”

“And in the meantime?”

For a moment, chaos ensued in my mind.  A thousand things clamored about.  Rumpel, Leviathan, Hyde, the Jackal, Jackson’s love, Jackson’s life, my family, my race, my home, the traitor.  There was so much going on and so much at stake.  All of it wrenched my heart, my very soul. 

But then, bowing to the instruction of my father and the guidance of my rational self, I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing, centering breath.  And I used my head.  Not my heart. 

“In the meantime, I focus on beating Hyde at his own game, on capturing him and the Jackal and sending them back to Atlas.”

Aidan looked a bit uncomfortable.  “I hate to tell you this, dude, but you really need Jackson for all this.”

I knew he was right.  But that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it.  “I know,” I snapped.  “But there are things I can work on by myself, things I can get in order before I
really need
his help.”

He snorted.  “Like what?”

“Well, I need to visit Kellina.  I need to see how she fits into all this, what she knows.”  Aidan frowned and I could almost see his hackles rising protectively.  “Don’t worry, Merewolf.  I’m only going to talk to her.”

He relaxed, albeit only a tiny bit.  “Merewolf?”

“Eh, Jersey was picking out names for you.  I liked it better than Wolfmer.”

Just the thought of where Jersey’s train of thought went after that made me smile. I missed my friend.

“I won’t even ask,” Aidan said, rolling his eyes.  He knew how Jersey’s mind worked, too.

“How ‘bout I go pick up Jersey after school and we meet you at Kellina’s?”

He sighed.  “All right, but take it easy on her.  She’s been through a lot.”

“I know, wolf boy.  Give it a rest.  She’s my friend, too, you know.”

“You two are never going to let this werewolf thing go, are you?”

I snorted.  “Of course not.  That would be a travesty.”

********

My mood improved considerably after my lunch with Aidan.    He’d always had a fairly positive effect on me. I’d once thought it was because we were destined to be mates.  Now I could see that we were just destined to be friends.

I had almost dug my way out of my funk by the time I arrived back at my dorm.  The single red rose that lay in front of my door didn’t even set me back.  I was puzzled, yes, but I gave it no more thought than that.  In fact, it just then occurred to me that the flowers might not even be for me; they might be intended for Jersey.

Careful not to make a sound, I unlocked our door and opened it just a crack.  The curtains were parted, spilling light onto the floor and Jersey was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a book spread across her lap.  She looked up and smiled.

“You are so gonna love me,” she said, smiling widely.  Her statement was punctuated by a
bling bling. 
In her hand, she held the bike bell she’d found on the beach a few days prior.  I was so happy to see her smile, to hear her enthusiasm, I couldn’t bring myself to be irritated by the sound. 

Jersey hid the hand holding the bell behind her back. I looked up at her face.  She was eyeing me suspiciously.  “Stop it!” she commanded.

“Stop what?”

“Plotting.  I can see it in your eyes. You’re devising an evil plan to take my bell.”

“I most certainly was n—”

“Liar!” she cried theatrically.  “You may take my life, but you’ll never take my bike bellllllll.”  The Scottish accent was a dead giveaway.

“Have you been watching ‘Braveheart’ again?”

Jersey giggled, ringing the bell twice. 
Bling bling. 
“Oh, you’re good, James!”

“So,” I said, walking to the bed, dropping my bag onto the floor and setting the rose atop it before plopping down beside Jersey.  “Why is it that I’m going to love you?  Because I just don’t see it happening.”

“Ha.  Ha.  You say that now,” she said, flipping pages in the book and then holding it up to me when she found what she was looking for.  “But what if I told you I found a way for you to find the Jackal?”

I gasped.  “I really would love you,” I said, taking the book from her fingers.

I scanned the first page of what Jersey had found.  It was the end of the one of the human explanations for the Jackal.  I was familiar with it, as I was familiar with most human fairy tales.  I always thought it amusing that they had no idea their stories arose from reality rather than someone’s imagination.

I was just about to tell Jersey I already knew the story when I got to the middle of the second page.  It described a lesser known tale, a variation of the most common story of Jekyll and Hyde.  In it, the good doctor developed a twitch.  It was described as an incessant scratching of his neck, to the point there was an unsightly sore there.  The author of this particular story explained it as a sort of allergic reaction the human body of Dr. Jekyll had to the presence of Hyde. 

Resting the book in my lap, I looked at Jersey.  She said nothing for several moments.  Neither did I.  When a slow smile began to curve her lips, I knew she’d already come to the conclusion I was making my way toward.

“So, since the humans had it sort of backward, that means if the Jackal has its own body, there is a chance that it will develop the same tick.  Is that what you were thinking?”

Jersey nodded, smiling broadly.  “I did good, right?”

“You did great!”

“Yes!” she said, pumping her fist in the air.  “I cracked one!  I knew I’d make a brilliant detective.”

“Oh, yes.  You’re practically Sherlock Holmes,” I quipped sardonically.

“I know, right?”

I chuckled.  “And it’s great that you’re not prone to exaggeration, ya know?”

“Give me a moment with my moment.  I must bask,” she said regally, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

I rolled my eyes lovingly.  “You’re a hot mess, Jersey.”

“Stress on the ‘hot,’” she purred playfully.

“And let’s not forget humble.”

“Yeah, yeah.  That, too.”

We both giggled and then I got serious.  “Okay, so now we have to find the person with this tick, with this sore and then…and then…”

“And then you’ll know who the spirits are in,” she supplied.

I chewed my lip.  Jersey was missing a butt load of information, mainly because I hadn’t told her of my relationship with her brother.  She didn’t know about my suspicions about the Mountain Dew, Jackson’s love, Dustin Hyden, none of that.  But, she was on the right track with the Jackal.  At least I was pretty sure she was.  It was something anyway.  It was a lead we could actively pursue.  Maybe I wouldn’t have to tell her the rest.  For a while anyway.

“Right,” I said brightly.

“You should really tell Jackson, you know.  I mean, he
is
like Sentinel Supreme.  The Lore Wrangling Wizard.”

She was right.  I probably should tell Jackson.  And in a way I wanted to.  I just dreaded it.  I knew if I caught him alone, I’d have to ask about the one thing that was more important to me than anything else. I supposed that’s what I dreaded most—his answer. 

Just then, I heard the door in the next room close. 

I sighed.  There was no time like the present.

“Look at that.  It’s almost like he could read your mind,” Jersey teased.

No, with no love for me, with a broken tie, there would be no mind reading.  But I didn’t tell Jersey that.  I just smiled.    

Wiping my suddenly damp palms on my skirt, I got up and crossed to the adjoining door, knocking once before testing the knob.  It turned easily.  He’d warned me never to lock it, but so much had changed, I didn’t know if
he
might be locking it now.