Storykiller (16 page)

“Shere Kahn the tiger from freaking
Jungle Book
?!” Brand asked, his voice pitched high.

“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Tessa mused.

“No,” Micah confirmed. “Just a crow.
Yours was a tiger?”

“First a tiger, and then it shifted into a crow, took some hair, then
disappeared.”

“Yeah, minus the tiger—and thank God for that—we had the same,” Micah said. “So what does it mean?”

“I don’t—” Tessa began.

“Magic,” Brand said, cutting her off.

“Magic?” Micah echoed.

“They use hair in magic all the time, it’s like a standard ingredient, I see it all the time in magic stories,” Brand said, his voice sounding not remotely pleased with himself for knowing it.

“Damn,” Tessa breathed into the phone. “That can’t be good.”

“I’d say that’s an understatement,” Brand said. Everyone was quiet.

“Anyone have any ideas?” Tessa asked finally, and the line was so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.

“Maybe we should try to get some sleep, talk tomorrow?” Micah offered.

“Yeah,” Tessa said, glancing at the clock. She had to get some sleep, she hadn’t slept a full night through since she’d gotten here. “Why don’t you two come over here tomorrow. Maybe noon?”

“Okay,” Micah and Brand said together.

When they hung up, Tessa remained sitting and listened to the sounds in her house. Nothing was ever quiet anymore, her “superhero package” had taken care of that. Life was loud now and, she guessed, forever. Tessa tried to identify each of the sounds bouncing through her house: wind against the front door, rain drops hitting the plastic sheeting over the dining room window, the tick of a clock in her father’s room, a creaking spring in her bed when she breathed too deeply.

The sounds were all mundane and Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. She was alone.

She laid back down and pressed her eyes closed tightly. She could hear her eyes swivel in their sockets. Gross.

Micah and Brand stood on Tessa’s front porch ringing the bell for a full five minutes before they got worried and snuck into the back yard, which was still somewhat torn up. They climbed into the house through the broken dining room window. Creeping into the sunlit kitchen, Brand whispered, “Maybe this was a bad idea, she did just buy a whole mess of weapons.” And before Micah could agree, Tessa jumped out at them with a raised dagger.

“AHHHHHH!” they screamed together. Tessa blinked at them sleepily and lowered the dagger.

“Oh. Hey,” Tessa said, her shoulders slumping, while Micah and Brand clutched at their chests and tried to hold off heart attacks. Brand fell into a nearby kitchen chair.

“We ring the doorbell for five minutes, and you can’t hear it, but you sense us climbing in the window?!” he asked, incredulous. Tessa shrugged.

“Guess I’m not used to hearing the doorbell but getting super-
used to hearing the sounds of a break-in.”

Brand gestured at her appearance. “Sleep in much?”

Tessa put a hand through her mussed hair and pulled absently at her tank top with the other one. “Hey. Judge much? I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep. Trying to catch up before the next thing that tries to kill me shows up,” Tessa said. Micah opened the fridge.

“I’m starving. Do you have any food?”

“Not much,” Tessa said, “There’s juice.” Micah rooted around inside while Brand continued to stare at Tessa. She pulled self-consciously at her clothes again, wondering what she was missing, fearful it was something crazy-embarrassing.

“What?!”
Tessa snapped.

“You do know you have itty bitty chickies on your pajama bottoms?”

Tessa glared back at him. “Yes,” she said and there was an edge to her voice, a
‘don’t you dare even go there’
edge. Brand put his hands up in defeat.

“I was just going to say that I like that you’ve paired it with a skull and crossbones tank top. Nice juxtaposition.” Tessa looked down. She hadn’t even noticed. She smiled and laughed a little.

“Make yourselves at home, I’m going to get dressed, maybe brush my teeth, a few other luxuries. Back in a second.” Tessa disappeared, and Micah and Brand took her at her word, but in different ways. Micah began pulling things out of the fridge and cupboards and cooking something legitimate
for them to eat while Brand walked around the house exploring.

Tessa came down some ten minutes later to find the kitchen smelling sublime and Brand and Micah talking about her. She felt guilty but eavesdropped anyway. I
t was hard not to with super-hearing.

“Find anything interesting?” Micah asked, more than a little teasing, as Brand re-entered the kitchen
having made a full circle of the bottom floor of the house.

“It’s kinda like a museum,” he said, still touching and examining things in the kitchen. “Like nobody lives here. Like it belongs in another time or place, one slavishly devoted to something that maybe doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“Well, that’s a four-dollar answer,” Micah said taking three plates out of the cupboard.

“There are some great books in the den though, awesome collection, even some I haven’t read.” Brand said.

“There are books you haven’t read?” Micah asked in mock horror.

“Har-har,” Brandon shot back. “Found a picture of Tessa’s mom too, total knockout.”

Tessa cleared her throat and walked into the kitchen. “That smells amazing, Micah. I can’t believe that was in my kitchen all along,” she said, looking shocked at the three steaming plates of food.

“Yup, it wasn’t as grim as it seemed,” she said, taking the plates to the table as Tessa and Brand pulled out chairs for themselves. Micah brought juice to go with the eggs and toast and sliced fruit and then sat down herself. The friends ate in silence for six straight minutes until Brand downed his juice, wiped his mouth, and started talking at a Brand-like clip.

“So what are we going to do about this witch situation, or magic situation, or whatever?”

Tessa shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “God. I have no idea. Did you come up with anything? Either of you?”

Brand and Micah shook their heads.

“Maybe the books I stole will help?” Tessa suggested.

“What books?” Brand asked.

“A bunch of research books from Bishop’s office.”

“Great!” Brand exclaimed and then looked around. “Where are they?”

“Snow has them at her place.”

Micah and Brand groaned.

“I’ll just tell her to bring them over,” Tessa said, pretending to herself and everyone else that it would be just that simple while Micah and Brand exchanged skeptical looks. The doorbell rang,
and Tessa looked at her two friends. “Maybe that’s her?” Brand and Micah continued to look skeptical. “Pretty much everyone else I know is already here,” Tessa said throwing up her hands. “And the ones I don’t know tend not to use the doorbell.” The three friends walked into the living room and Tessa opened the door, expecting to see Snow before her.

Instead, it was a lean figure in torn well-worn jeans and a black motorcycle jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. His back was to Tessa and the hood was up, but when he turned around,
she nearly fell backward through her front door.

“Holy hell in a goddamn hand basket,” Tessa said under her breath, as the striking stranger peered back at her from under the green hood. His eyes were a clear green that pierced clean through her, and he had a sexy scruff of facial hair, like he had just rolled out of a sexy bed and thrown on some sexy clothes. He smiled at her and pushed off the hood to reveal short dark hair, a mohawk that was growing out, just the right kind of messy, and a face that probably made people do whatever it wanted. Tessa could make out the edges of a dark tattoo crawling up his neck and part of one on his hand, creeping out from underneath his jacket sleeve. Some silver piercings and chipped black nail polish completed the requisite bad boy/punk rock/anarchy thing that Tessa couldn’t even begin to pretend wasn’t right up her alley. She felt something inside her draw her forward dramatically, while from behind her, Micah made a sound that resembled a
“woof” more than anything else.

“Scion,” he said, never breaking Tessa’s gaze. Tessa felt quite literally spellbound and only a too-sudden kick to the back of her leg from Micah shook her out of it.

“Um. Yeah? I mean, yes, yes. Tessa,” she added, dropping her head and blushing. He politely ignored her awkwardness.

“I’m Robin,” he said, his already bright smile somehow becoming more so, and his outstretched hand looking like maybe the most delectable thing Tessa had ever seen.

“Robin?” Tessa trailed off, trying to pose it as a question and outstretched her own hand.

Just as they touched, he said, “Robin Hood.”

And Tessa could swear that a little spark of sexy electricity shot through her.

Tessa chuckled. “Of course.
I mean, who else would you be?”

He smiled again and they broke off the handshake, though Tessa felt like a little bit of her died when they released one another and she all but swooned. She blinked and shook her head a little as if it could wake her from the sexy trance. Who was she? She didn’t swoon. She’d never swooned. She just wasn’t a swoon-er. Who was this guy that he’d turned her into a swooning kind of girl in under ten seconds. Well, he
was
Robin Hood,
perhaps it was as simple as that.

“Um. Come in,” she said, stepping to the side to let him into the foyer. He ducked inside, his movement silken and controlled. Tessa remembered her friends standing not three feet away. “Um…Robin, this is Micah and this is Brand, my friends,” she said, standing just behind him and making ‘can you believe this?!’ faces at Micah. Robin shook both their hands, and Tessa ushered him into the living room. Brand and Micah hung back, and Brand hissed at her under his breath.

“I don’t get what the big deal is, he’s not all that, I mean, handsome and athletic, sure, but otherwise like Joe Average, even. He’s not even that tall!”

Micah stared hungrily after Robin as Tessa offered him a drink less than a dozen feet away. “Again, I say WOOF,” she murmured, mostly ignoring Brand,
who sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets with a scowl. Micah and Brand joined Tessa and Robin in the living room on the silly overly formal couches that none of them looked comfortable sitting on.

“So, what can I do for you?” Tessa asked, hoping that indeed there was something she could do.

“I hope it’s what I can do for you,” he said, “I was sent to train you—weapons, hand to hand combat, battle strategy.”

Tessa couldn’t help but feel pleased, but she raised an eyebrow wondering if it was Snow or the handsome stranger who had sent him,
or maybe someone else entirely.

“Well, that’s incredibly generous of you,” Tessa said, feeling weirdly girlish and blush-y. “But can you tell me who sent you?”

“Mmm. No. The message was passed to me from Tuck, but we don’t know the origin point.” He paused. “And we did check. I wanted to know too.”

They both nodded together, as if sharing some secret. Micah and Brand stared at them. “Um. Anyone want to clue us in?” Micah asked.

They began to speak at the same time. “Knowing who—”

They both stopped and laughed a little. “You go ahead,” Robin said.

Tessa smiled and pushed some hair from her face nervously. “Knowing who sent him could help us know who’s really trying to help, or who might be trying to hurt—” Tessa looked back at Robin. “Of course, if your intentions are pure, then it doesn’t really matter where you came from, or what the sender’s intentions were.”

“I agree. That’s why I came anyway,” he said, smiling back. “And they are—pure.”

Now Tessa blushed for sure. “Well, thank you. I’m grateful to have you.”

Robin smiled back at her, and Tessa sprang up out of her seat, worried she would next catch herself nearly swooning, again. She was almost thankful when the doorbell rang.

This time, it
was
Snow. When Tessa opened the door, Snow ungracefully (and it was the first ungraceful thing Tessa had seen Snow do and thus she made a mental note of it) pushed the giant bag of books into Tessa’s house. But even ungracefully pushing a bag across a threshold, she was dressed in an all-white leather catsuit and knee-high leather boots. Her hair was loose behind her, and she had big silver hoops in her ears and several very sculptural silver rings on her fingers. The clothes this woman had. Tessa wanted to hate her for wearing a white leather catsuit, but it was impossible. She rocked it like, well, like a freaking rock star. Snow straightened up and kicked at the bag angrily.

“Ugh. That’s the last minion-like task I do for you, Scion,” she said, putting her hands on her slender hips. She caught sight of Brand and Micah. “Oh, hello minions,” she said, waving her hand at them dismissively.

“You have just GOT to stop calling us that,” Micah moaned. Snow was about to reply when she noticed Robin standing next to them.