The strangeness of my reaction bothered me the rest of the day, enough that I looked at my punk-haired boss halfway through my short shift at my real job and asked, “Am I an asshole?”
The music was blaring some kind of death-metal-techno crossbreed crap, and of course I had to repeat myself three or four times before she could hear me.
Kristyn grinned at me from under her locks of pumpkin-orange hair. “Is this an essay question?”
“Come on, I’m serious.” I stuffed my armload of novelty T-shirts on the appropriate shelf and reached over to turn the music down. “I’m pretty easygoing, right? I don’t fly off the handle for no reason, do I?”
There was a long pause there, one of those that answered more than her words could. “You’ve… had your moments, lately. Why?”
“Yeah, but… general grumpiness aside, do I normally dislike people immediately? I mean, I like to think I give people a chance, y’know?”
She paused to think that one over, clicking her tongue piercing across her teeth. “Nope. Normally, you are one of the mellowest people I know, old dude.” She tilted her head curiously. “Why?”
“Just… thinking.” I went back to rearranging the novelty wall, and she let it drop. I, on the other hand, couldn’t.
I pondered on it all the way through a really domestic dinner with my wife and the kids (It was just easier to think of Esteban as ours. It saved time in the long run). I mean, I’m normally an easygoing guy. You don’t bother me, I don’t kick your ass. That kinda thing. But the events of last spring had changed me, and not for the better.
A guy tried to kill me. That was a given. Two people, actually, though only one of them remained at large. So I suppose I was entitled to a bit of natural wariness. But somewhere along the way, this cynical, borderline paranoid grouch took my place, and he was starting to annoy even me. I was trying to manage it through my usual meditations and katas, but… it wasn’t working. So, was my reaction to Cam just a byproduct of post-traumatic stress disorder, or was there really something wrong with the guy? God, I hated not trusting my own instincts.
Later that night, Mira and I lay in bed together, her head nestled in the crook of my neck where I could smell the strawberry-ness of her hair. Still bogged down in my brooding of the day, I mentioned my less than charitable feelings toward Cam-short-for-Cameron.
Mira chuckled softly, her breath warm on my chest. “It’s like a new dog in your territory. Go sniff each other’s butts, you’ll be fine.”
“That’s… distinctly unappetizing.” I tilted my head to look down at her and she gave me a grin. “But seriously, you don’t get a weird vibe off of him or anything?”
She rolled her green eyes. “I don’t scan every person that I run into, Jesse. Next thing I know, you’ll be having Cole run a background check on the guy.” I know my eyes lit up, and when I opened my mouth, she put her hand across it. “No. Do not do that.”
There was a very disappointed little boy deep inside me. “But it would be cool!”
That earned me another roll of her eyes. “Leave it alone. This is the first guy Bridge has dated in forever, and I kinda like seeing her happy, okay? Try to get to know him before you call out the dogs.”
My head flopped back to the pillow and I sighed. “I’m just being a jerk again, aren’t I?”
“I wasn’t going to say that…”
“You were thinking it.” I rubbed my gritty eyes, trying not to think about all the sleep I would not be getting that night. “Maybe I should skip this trip. Stay home, get some sleep, do some stuff around the house.”
Mira sat up and looked down at me, her wealth of sable, curly hair falling around my face like a curtain. “Jesse, I’m going to say something, and I want you to understand that it comes from a place of love, okay?”
Slightly worried, I said, “Okay?”
“If you don’t get out of this house for a few days, I’m going to do you grievous bodily harm.” She leaned down and kissed me once, then rolled over and turned off the bedside lamp.
In the darkness, we curled up together, both of us knowing it was only a matter of time before I woke us both with my nightmares and spent the rest of the night on the couch. Mira’s fingers traced up and down my forearm where it rested across her waist, like she could memorize it just by touch.
She was right. I was being a jerk. I’d been a jerk all summer, touchy and quick to anger. Part of it I could chalk up to frustration at being injured, but… not all of it. I mean, I’d been hurt before, and worse. I’d been blown up, stitched together, taped down, and stapled shut. I couldn’t blame it all on that.
Deep down, I knew it was the fear of the unknown. It was the lingering mystery of who tried to run me off the road a few months ago, of where my last client had disappeared to after the tornado took us on our brief tour of Oz. It was the uncertainty, the inability to do anything. I was great with an enemy to fight. Just point me and I do the slice and dice thing. But with just doubts and what-ifs? Not so much.
That’s where the dreams came from. Always the same one, with silver claws and red eyes materializing out of nothing, killing me again and again because I simply couldn’t see it in time to save myself. He was the Yeti, and the ugly scars down the left side of my rib cage were only a small part of what he’d left me.
I’d tried to find something in my bushido texts, some snippet of wisdom or piece of advice to set me back on track. The Hagakure said that a samurai should never joke about being afraid, lest their true heart be revealed. Since humor was one of my chief defense mechanisms, I was pretty much screwed.
Of course, it also said that in order to ease nervousness, you should rub spit on your ears and kick everything in your path. Hadn’t tried that yet. Maybe next week.
“What did he really want?” Out of the darkness, Mira’s voice startled me, and I jumped a little. She sounded smaller somehow, and I held her tighter without really knowing why.
“Who, Cam?”
“No. Him. The… thing, yesterday.”
“Ah.” She wouldn’t say a demon’s name, not even the mocking one I’d assigned to him. But I knew who she meant. Last night, we’d carefully avoided mentioning Axel and his party crashing, but I guess my reprieve was over. “I don’t know. Like I said, he was being weird, even for him.”
“What did he say?”
I frowned a little, though she couldn’t see it. “Not much. He seemed really excited that I was going on vacation. Enthusiastic, even.” Too enthusiastic. Yet another thing that had bothered me ever since.
“How do you feel about that?” Her hand was still stroking up and down my arm, and it finally occurred to me that she was looking for goose bumps. I was and always would be the magic-less wonder, but my earlywarning system was finely tuned.
“I don’t know. My first instinct is to do exactly the opposite of whatever makes him happy. But then I think, maybe that’s what he wants me to do, and I should go after all, and then I get all confused after that.” I nuzzled her ear a little, hoping to distract her. “Ignore him. He’s a douche.”
She turned in my arms, facing me though neither of us could see in the darkened room. “You’d tell me, right? If you thought something was wrong, you’d tell me?” Her fingers stroked through my hair, combing the strands out straight over and over.
I had to think long and seriously about that. Lying by omission had become all too easy for me of late, and I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t do it anymore-not to her. So, was something wrong?
I really thought about it, bringing Axel’s face to the front of my mind, rolling the idea of the vacation trip through my head. There was no twisting of my innards, no painfully cold goose bumps along my arms. Just my natural antidemon revulsion where Axel was concerned.