Down With the Shine (12 page)

“L
ennie,” Smith murmurs against our nearly joined lips.

“Present,” I whisper back, fully complicit in stretching this moment out like taffy.

Our joined hands are trapped between our bodies and I swear I can feel his heart’s mad thumping against my knuckles. Meanwhile, his free hand travels up my spine, pressing me closer. Unsure what to do with my own hand, I wrap it around Smith’s bicep, which I’ve admired more than once. His fingers curl around the back of my skull, tilting my head and tangling into my hair.

And then Smith freezes. His mouth goes still and he jerks his hand from my head so quickly that he yanks a chunk of my hair with it, while making this noise in the back of his throat that sorta sounds like
blech
.

“Ouch!” Rubbing at my aching skull, I pull away from Smith.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, reaching up to pull me back toward him.

I press my hand against his chest, stopping him. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“The thing with my hair just now.”

“It was nothing.” He reaches toward my hair as if to reassure me, but then stops and lets his thumb trail across my lips instead. “Forget it, okay?” He uses our linked hands to coax me back toward him until we are close enough for his lips to brush against mine and continue right where we left off.

Except. I can’t.

“Touch my hair again,” I murmur.

Smith pauses and with a sigh, touches one finger to a strand curled against my shoulder. As he does so an unmistakable shudder goes through him.

Grabbing hold of his wrist, I yank his hand up and press it to my skull. He immediately tears it away and springs up into a sitting position.

“It’s the Cheetos. Okay?” He wipes his hand against his leg. “Don’t be offended, but when we were shampooing our hair outside, you weren’t really scrubbing the
way you need to do when—”

“Hold up,” I interrupt. “Are you seriously giving me a lecture on how to wash my hair?”

Smith pauses, no doubt considering if this might finally be a time when he should suck it up and apologize. But no. “When you get something like that in your hair, you can’t just do your usual wash technique. At your scalp it’s still kind of gritty and . . .”

“Gross?” I fill in for him.

“No, not . . .” Smith hesitates as my eyes narrow. “Okay, yes. A little gross. When I touch it, a faint wet cheese smell sorta drifts out. . . . It’s not that bad, really.”

“Oh, clearly. You’re practically gagging.”

“It’s not you. I’m sort of a hair freak. It’s a thing—”

“I know. I’ve seen your hair-care collection in your bathroom.” I roll my eyes, trying not to feel crushed. Even though I am.

“Well.” Smith clears his throat, “Do you have any dry shampoo? I could help you comb it in.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to touch my disgusting hair again, Smith.”

“Come on, Lennie. Don’t be like this. We were having a good time and—”

And that’s when I lose it. We were having a good time?
That’s it?
“You know what a good time would really be?” I
demand. “Almost kissing someone who isn’t a shallow asshole. You know some guys would be like ‘Ooh, is that new perfume? I like it.’ Not because they think wet Cheetos smell good, but because they like me enough to lie.”

“Yeah,” Smith spits right back at me. “All the best guys lie to get into a girl’s pants. That’s how you know you got a winner.”

“I’d rather have someone who tells me nice lies instead of being cruelly honest,” I throw back at him, even though it’s not even true. But it sounds good and pisses Smith off, which is what I really wanted.

He mows a hand through his own perfect cheese-dust-free hair, probably intentionally trying to rub my nose in it. “That must be why you like Larry. He seems like a guy who could sell that type of bullshit.”

“Ugh. Newsflash, Smith. Larry and I are not a couple! Or friends with benefits. Or benefits with friendship. Or anything else.” I close my eyes, feeling more exhausted than ever, while Smith says nothing.

“Let’s just do your power nap thing, Smith. I mean, if you can stand having my disgusting hair so close to yours. If not, give me a plastic bag or something to wrap around my head. Okay?”

I can actually feel him staring at me in that intense way he has. Then the couch shifts as he leans back beside me.
I do the same, although now I’m so tense it’s hard to relax.

Thank goodness the couch is huge. I scooch as far away from Smith as I can.

Distantly, I hear the coffeepot dinging, letting me know the caffeine is ready. My eyes drift closed, though, and I decide to give myself a few minutes. Five, tops. Then I’ll get up.

“Hey, Lennie,” Smith says. I am already half asleep and his voice seems to come through a long, echoing tunnel before reaching me. “You know what the craziest thing about today was?”

My limbs are heavy and my tongue is thick with sleep. Still, I am curious enough to make my lips form the word, “What?”

“Not one person made a genie in a bottle joke. Not one.”

I am too mad to give Smith my laughter. And too tired to argue that moonshine comes in jars.

A moment later, though, when he whispers, “Good nap, Lennie,” I find the strength to murmur back, “Good nap, Smith.”

And seconds later when I fall asleep, I am pretty sure I do so with a smile on my lips.

I
wake with a sudden jolt. The cable box clock tells me it’s 3:23. Which means I’ve been out five minutes, tops. Beside me, Smith groans.

“What was that?” I ask at the same time someone goes
BAM BAM BAM
on the front door.

Oh, no. This is how the day began. And the day began badly.

“Why is it always three knocks?” I ask aloud. At the same time I remember who was knocking this morning: W2. I hadn’t given him another thought after he got locked up in the basement. Did my uncles set him loose? Is he here looking for revenge?

Smith rubs at his eyes sleepily. “I dunno. How many times do you want people to knock?”

“How about not at all?” I snap at him.

“So you’re one of those types who wakes up grumpy,
huh?” He asks the question while in the middle of a huge yawn, with his eyes at half-mast. His bruising has, if anything, only gotten worse as the day’s gone on, and yet for some reason he keeps looking better and better. Damn him.

I glare and resist the urge to slam him with, “And you wake up sexy,” ’cause that’s not actually an insult. “Let’s just go see who it is and what they want before they knock the door down.”

We pull ourselves from the couch’s cushiony embrace and go to answer the door. But it turns out we don’t have to, because at that moment it flies open and a big dude with an eye patch plows his way into the house.

“We’re here for Lennie,” the pirate man announces while his hard gaze darts back and forth examining us both. The guy is only a few inches taller than me, but what he lacks in vertical stature he more than makes up for in width. Every inch of his body is packed with muscle.

“I’m Lennie,” Smith immediately answers.

“No,” I say, at the same time the big dude says the same thing. Then he adds, “What you are is in the way.”

Then he very calmly jabs a short little syringe into Smith’s upper arm.

“What the—” Smith reaches for the syringe, pulls it out, and then his eyes roll up into his head and he falls to
the floor, bringing me down beside him.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I yell as I struggle to sit up.

Something darts out from behind the big guy and slams into me. My head hits the hardwood floor and I close my eyes, feeling dazed.

“Damn it, Jules,” Pirate Man says.

Jules doesn’t reply. She’s a bit busy, I guess, grabbing hold of my shirt with her two tiny fists and shaking me so hard my teeth rattle.

At last she stops and makes this deep growling noise. I stare at her, speechless. Jules looks like Tinkerbell gone bad, complete with a bleached pixie haircut and lips painted an otherworldly shade of blue.

Being the sensitive person that I am, I say the only thing possible in such a circumstance.

“Arrgghh. The pirates get ya, Tink?”

Her fist slams into my face, causing some tinkerbells to go off in my head. I open my eyes in time to see good old Pirate Man reaching in to pull her off.

Tinkerbell growls at him, while I sigh in relief. Until I realize that now I have to deal with Pirate Man—aw, hell, I’ll just call him Captain Hook to keep things consistent—instead.

But no, he turns away from me to argue with Tinkerbell
again. “Come on, we talked about this. No roughing her up. Delivery only.”

She shrugs, crosses her arms over her chest, and turns away.

Captain Hook throws up his hands. “Fine. You want revenge? Go ahead and cut out her tongue. But you get to explain to Cash why she can’t say, ‘I love you, Daddy’ anymore.”

Tinkerbell spins back around and points at her eye, then shows four fingers and finally jerks her finger toward Captain Hook’s eye patch. He nods. “Eye for an eye. I get it. But Jules, you know this isn’t gonna change anything, right?”

She looks up at him with these big, pleading eyes.

By this point I’ve scrambled to a half-crouched position, which is as high as I can get with Smith still passed out on the floor. I swallow, realizing it’s up to me to keep the two of us safe. And apparently away from my father, who after all this time seems to be looking for me.

Balling my free hand into a fist, I wait until Tinkerbell stops in front of me and pulls out a syringe that looks exactly like the one that just took down Smith. She hesitates for a moment to remove a stubborn plastic cap from the tip of the dart, and I take my chance.

I throw myself at Tinkerbell and am pleasantly
surprised when my fist connects with one of her delicate cheekbones.

Boom goes the dynamite. I have to admit there is a certain amount of satisfaction in watching her stumble sideways. Sadly, it’s short lived, as Tinkerbell quickly recovers, using the wall to bounce back toward me.

Damn. It’s gonna take more than one hit to bring her down, which is not great since my whole hand is still throbbing from the first one. Still, I curl my aching fingers into a fist once more, ready to hit her as many times as it takes, when Tinkerbell suddenly sags and hits the floor.

“Holy shit,” I say, shaking out my hand and fighting off tears of relief that I won’t have to hit her again. “I knocked her out.”

Captain Hook, who I’d stupidly forgotten about, laughs. Then he leans down and plucks the syringe from where it is stuck in Tinkerbell’s leg. Pinching it between two fingers, he holds it out to me. “Not exactly.”

I take the needle from him. “I’m guessing this is a one-use-only thing, or you wouldn’t have just handed it over.”

“That’s right,” he says as he folds his arms over his chest and stares at me. It’s not exactly a nice look, but at least he’s not advancing, because if Tinkerbell’s tiny face
bruised my knuckles, his would definitely break them.

“Soo,” I say. I attempt a smile. “What do you say we call this a draw? We each have a friend down for the count. Why keep going? I’ve got better things to do, and I bet you have a pretty busy schedule. Right? So let’s call it a day. It’s been nice to meet you and I’d show you to the door, but, you know, I’m attached to an unconscious person.”

His face is impassive. His lips don’t twitch. His eyes don’t blink. He is either frozen or built from stone or perhaps simply unfazed by my attempt to make him go away. Yeah, it’s probably that last one.

I try a different tactic. “Hey, you hungry?”

And finally this gets a reaction. His eyebrows shift upward, slightly but unmistakably, before quickly slamming back down as Captain Hook realizes he’s given himself away.

“There’s pizza bagels in the freezer,” I tell him, and then to sweeten the pot, I add, “a family-sized box of them, not even opened yet.”

Captain Hook blinks. Aha! I’ve got him. He picks up Tinkerbell like she’s a feather pillow and heads toward the kitchen. As I sit there in shock, Captain Hook strolls back in and lifts Smith with as little effort as he used to grab
Tinkerbell. Having no other choice, I trail behind him to the kitchen.

After he settles Smith onto a chair next to the one that Tinkerbell’s slumped over in, he microwaves a plate of frozen pizza bagels and sets them on the table between us.

I push the plate toward him. “They’re all yours, big guy.”

He accepts with a nod and starts eating. Less than five minutes later, every last one of them is gone.

“Now you want to leave?” I try.

Captain Hook shakes his head. “Sorry, kid, it’s time to go have a daddy-daughter reunion.”

“So you work for my dad?” I ask, trying to stall. “Like that Rabbit guy?”

“That weasel? Are you kidding?” This comparison seems to bother Captain Hook, for reasons I don’t understand. “I’m not a bad guy.”

“Really? Because my unconscious friend and your stated intent to kidnap me say otherwise.”

He sits there mulling something over, while I sweat and curse myself out for being unable to resist back-talking someone who is in the position to quite literally crush me. Finally, Captain Hook leans forward and says, “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have
two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.”

“Um,” I say, because what kind of answer is that even?

Luckily, Captain Hook fills me in. “That’s the bible passage your father quoted while removing my eye.”

My stomach clenches. My father. Of course. “Oh.”

Captain Hook nods. “Yeah.”

I gulp. “So what did you do to piss him off?”

He pauses, giving me another one of those assessing stares before answering, “I failed to find you.”

“You . . . you . . . what?” I stutter.

“I failed to find you,” Captain Hook calmly repeats. When I continue to gawk at him, he takes pity on me. “You’re not the only special person in the world, you know.”

“I’m not special,” I blurt out automatically.

The Captain impatiently waves this away with one massive hand. “You have special abilities. While your specific powers are rare, there are people all over the world with equally strange abilities.” He pauses significantly.

“Like you?” I guess.

“Yes,” he confirms. “Like me. And like Jules. And many, many others who your father keeps as pets. There are even more who your father is simply content to keep tabs on from a distance. And then there are his obsessions. The ones he knows of, but can’t find. A girl who has stayed forever seventeen by stealing other girls’ bodies and lives.
A boy with the power to absorb bullets and magically heal. And . . . you. A girl who can grant wishes through moonshine.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not right. This is the house where I was born. He knows where I live. I’ve been here the whole time. Not hiding at all.”

“You haven’t been hiding, because you didn’t need to,” Captain Hook corrects me. “Someone put a very powerful protective spell over you.”

By this point I’m sure the Captain is just as sick of my gape-mouthed confusion as I am. His eyes narrow and he leans across the table. “You can’t be this clueless. You’ve granted too many powerful wishes to be innocent.”

“I am that clueless!” I say. “Really! I didn’t even know I was granting wishes. It was all a big stupid accident.”

Captain Hook shakes his head. “That’s impossible. There’s a ritual that must be completed. How would one know the ritual without understanding the consequences?”

You’d be surprised
, I think.

“Besides,” Captain Hook continues. “It’s clear these wishes were granted by someone with experience and . . .”

“And what?” I demand.

He sighs, clearly annoyed by my constant interruptions,
and I think he’s not gonna tell me anything more, but then he finishes, “By someone with too much experience and too much power to be innocent.”

“What does that even mean?” I slam my hand on the table, feeling agitated by his words even while I don’t fully understand them. “Stop with the cryptic bullshit already.”

“Cryptic!” Captain Hook’s mouth purses in disapproval. “All right, then. How about this? A normal wish maker can’t raise the dead. Nor can they grant more than a few wishes in the span of a single evening. There’s only one way for a wish maker to gain that sort of power and that’s by taking it from another wish maker. And a wish maker, once stripped of their powers, is a shattered person, unfit for anyplace other than a mental hospital.” With every word Captain Hook leans in closer. I’m not bothered by his imposing physical presence at that moment; instead, it’s his little speech that’s slamming into me, making me cringe as I absorb the not-so-subtle subtext: the person who granted those wishes is a monster.

I am a monster.

Suddenly, my mother’s words from earlier come back to me.
“I gave you everything.”

Oh, please, someone tell me that what I’m thinking is
not possible. That I didn’t take my mother’s powers. That I’m not the reason she’s a total nutcase. And yet all the pieces fit.

Well, except for the one where I remember actually doing something to Mom.

“So what do you and Tinkerbell have to do with this?” I ask.

“Tinkerbell?” he asks, looking amused for a moment. Then he glances her way and sobers up once more. “I wouldn’t let her hear you say that. And I’m Benji, by the way, so you can forget whatever cute little nickname you’ve given me.”

“Captain Hook,” I admit.

“Hmmph,” is his reply, but again he struggles to suppress a smile. Then he shifts back into business mode. “As I’ve already mentioned, Jules and I were two of your father’s pets, kept for our abilities. We both have the ability to find people, specifically people with powers. When we failed again and again and again to track you down . . . Well, he took my eye and her tongue as a sort of motivation. And when that didn’t deliver the results he wanted, he threatened to take our lives. Then you resurfaced with a veritable tsunami of wishes granted all in one evening. Suddenly our task became much easier. Cash sent us to
fetch you with the promise of our freedom as payment.” He says this last bit somewhat apologetically. And I get it.

It’s them or me. And they think I’m a monster exactly like my father.

“What if”—I stop and take a deep breath and then make myself push on—“What if I didn’t do any of it on purpose? What if I’m trying to make up for all those crazy wishes? To fix them somehow? You think then that maybe you could take your friend and get outta here? Just take off running in the opposite direction of wherever Cash is?”

“Can’t,” Benji answers, instantly crushing the slightest glimmer of hope. For a long moment he stares off into the distance as if lost in his own thoughts. When he speaks again, it’s in the low voice reserved for confessions. “I’m sorry. If it was only me . . . ” His gaze drifts toward Jules and the picture becomes clearer. He’s got a thing for her and there’s no way he’s risking Cash refusing to let her go.

He pushes his chair back and stands. “Come on,” he says. “We’ve wasted enough time. It looks like Jules is starting to come around, and you’ll want to be safely locked in the trunk before that happens.”

As he reaches for Smith, I do the only thing I can think of. It’s the same move I saw a two-year-old at the grocery
store use the other day when her mother refused to buy the stuffed animal she had clutched in her chubby little hand.