Alright, so. I told Uncle Henri about the napkin. But believe it or not, that conversation was only the second most interesting thing that’s happened in the last few days.
It went…okay. Henri was disappointed in me, for sure. His stern look made that very clear. But he didn’t chastise me too much. He simply sighed and said, “Well, you’re eighteen now. You make your own decisions, and you can take care of yourself. Just make sure you’re carefully thinking about those choices. Perhaps a little more carefully than you’ve been doing.”
Somehow that was worse than yelling. But I got through it, and when I showed him the napkin, he got oddly quiet. “This is concerning,” he finally said, staring into the fire.
“Do you think the murderer has been here?” I asked. “Do you think we’ve met the killer?”
“Maybe,” he answered absentmindedly. I could tell his mind was racing a million miles a minute, considering endless possibilities. “Or maybe it means something else entirely.”
“Like what?”
Henri tore his gaze away from the fire and met my eyes. “Maybe…there’s someone else out there who blurs the lines between dimensions.”
My breath caught. “Someone…like me?”
He sighed. “Similar, perhaps. I can’t imagine there’s anyone just like you, Ian.” His small smile was warm as he reached over to pat my hand. “You’re one of a kind.”
I shoved the chair back as I got to my feet. “That’s great, Henri, but if this someone who can exist in both worlds like me, do you know what that means? They could murder people limitlessly in both dimensions!”
He sighed again, clasping his hands on his desk. “Oh, I know,” he said gravely. “I hope that is not the case. I’m not sure if it’s even an option. One being with your…abilities is already unlikely. Two would be nearly impossible. That’s just not heard of. But we cannot rule it out yet.”
My own mind was now racing as pieces fell into place. “But if that’s even a ‘maybe,’ I am the best resource we have to hunt down the murderer! I can cover both dimensions so much more quickly—and safely—than sending out human and Neverland search parties! Uncle, you’ve got to let me help!” I’m not ashamed to say that I slammed my hands down on the desk for emphasis.
Henri didn’t even blink. “Your willingness to risk your own life is admirable, Ian. But it would still be dangerous for you, especially if the murderer—dimension jumper or not—realizes you’re looking for him. Taking out one individual is much easier than an entire force.”
“I wouldn’t go alone!” I argued in exasperation.
Henri tilted his head. “Whose lives would you be willing to risk, then? Who do you wish to put in harm’s way with your uncontrollable jumps and the threat of murder? Is that worth the risk?”
I thought of Milo, of accidentally pulling him to the human dimension, of some dark mysterious killer crucifying him like that poor fairy. I swallowed hard and slowly sat back down. “I don’t know.”
Henri sighed again. This one was deeper, somehow, sad and dark. “I don’t either,” he said mournfully. “We’re losing so many already. I don’t want to put others in danger, but if we do nothing, they will continue to die.” His lilac gaze had drifted to the flickering fire again. “There are no good answers.” Suddenly he blinked as if coming out of a trance and looked at me. “Thank you for bringing this to me, Ian. I’m sure you didn’t want to admit your…adventure.” He gave me a small smile. “I am glad you did, though. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
And before I could ask again about my role in all this, Henri was ushering me out the door, promising we’d talk again soon, once he’d had time to consider some things and talk to his oldest friends.
Well, a few days and another murder later—a werewolf riddled with silver bullets in her own basement—Henri agreed to let me do a little searching. He looked as exhausted as I’d ever seen him. Usually, Henri looks put together, every inch the powerful creature he is. But lately, he hasn’t been himself. He has bags under his eyes that wouldn’t qualify as carry-on luggage, and he hasn’t shaved in days. I don’t think he’s sleeping. I’m pretty sure he considers each death a personal failure of his.
Which is why, after a lot of whispered conversations late at night with his ancient friends, he told me that he’d let me help. “Not all the time,” he said firmly. “We’ll start small. I want you to be safe. Just return to doing a couple of errands, and you can extend them a bit to investigate if you see anything suspicious.”
It was enough. I was a little worried, of course, but mostly happy that I could get out of the bar without having to sneak under Henri’s nose. Besides, I’ve almost died so many times at this point. I wouldn’t say I’m used to it, but I can handle a bit of fear.
Anyway, like I said, that development is only the second most interesting that’s happened. The other one is much, much bigger.
I went on an errand yesterday. My first since Henri gave me the green light—okay, well, more of a yellow light, I guess. He made me triple-check that I had my knife, my lighter, four—yes, count them, *four—*crosses made of different materials around my neck, and one of Henri’s own pistols. Extra protection was one of his requirements for letting me go.
It was just me. We’d had an argument about the risks of going alone versus not, and for once, I won. I was more nervous about killing someone via my dimension jumping than via running into the murderer, and at the rate I’ve been uncontrollably jumping, I didn’t want to risk it. Uncle Henri didn’t like it, but he saw my logic, and he reluctantly agreed—for now. “If you get hurt, or anything goes wrong, you’re not going alone again,” he’d said in his end-of-discussion voice. Oh, and the extra protections were required.
That led to me setting out to a city in Neverland to deliver an oddly-shaped package to a gnome. I swear the package squeaked and moved as I held it under my arm, but I didn’t want to think about that too hard. Knowing gnomes, it could be anything.
I won’t bore you with the details of my travel between Griffin’s Edge and the gnome’s garden. I made it there just fine, of course. Things always wait to go downhill until I get close to successfully completing an errand. My atoms stringing me along with a sense of false hope, I suppose. Thanks, atoms.
This time, I actually passed off the package—the way the gnome smiled and stroked the package when I handed it over made me very uncomfortable—and had started to search for a gap to return through when out of nowhere, a door slammed close by.
And I jumped. I’ll give you two guesses as to where I ended up.
That’s right: the dark forests. It was a mild relief not to see Jacian again, but I think I’d still generally choose them over the monsters I might find in these trees. I threw my hands up in frustration. “Come on, really?” I shouted into the air. “What, you started to miss me after a few weeks?”
Well, yelling into the dark forest was not exactly my smartest idea. Turns out that’s a pretty good way to draw unwanted attention from beasts in the area. Which, in hindsight, I probably should have considered before taking out my exasperation on the surrounding darkness.
But I didn’t, and I realized my mistake nearly immediately as I received an angry, echoing roar in response—one that sounded awfully close.
I cursed my own stupidity under my breath and cautiously moved forward, dead black leaves crunching beneath my feet, reaching out one hand to feel for tears in reality’s fabric and keeping the other on Sgrios’ handle.
No doors. Another roar, even closer. I could have sworn that one shook the trees. “You’d think I’d get used to this after doing it to myself all the time,” I muttered. “But no.”
Another roar, and now I was sure the trees shook. For that matter, so did the ground, and a second later, a three-headed monster burst into the clearing, snapping branches in its wake. I had just enough time to process that it looked like a massive Komodo dragon with one matching head, one goat’s head, and one panther’s head before it roared yet again, close enough that I felt its hot breath. And that made me realize that I should probably stop looking at it and, you know, flee.
So that’s what I did. I spun around and took off sprinting through the trees. Unfortunately, very little light snuck past the gnarled canopy above, and the monster had much better night vision than I do. As I stumbled through the twisted trunks, beating back thick branches and struggling not to trip over layered roots, it merely crashed through the woods behind me, steadily gaining.
I cursed out loud and debated the merits of stopping to fight versus continuing to run. Maybe it doesn’t like knives. Or crosses…?
You know how people in horror stories always seem to trip and fall at the worst possible times when they’re being chased by a killer? Even if there’s literally nothing in their way to cause it?
In my defense, there were things in my way: lots of gnarled, knotted roots, some of them covered by leaves and mud and impossible to see, plus branches and tendrils of dead ivy hanging down from overhead. But yeah, I did trip. And as a nice added bonus, I skinned my knees and palms on the impact, and it hurt.
Groaning, I flipped over and tried to scramble backwards across the roots. Every touch of the rough bark cut deeper into my scraped palms, though I tried to ignore this as I shifted to an awkward, one-handed backwards crawl and pulled Sgrios off my belt with my other hand. Blood dripped down its blade.
The monster was ten feet away or so and had slowed to a stalking creep forward, all six of its eyes locked on me. I saw the anticipation in its faces as it drooled; it was a predator preparing to finish off its prey, and it knew I had nowhere to go.
I swear I experienced it all in slow motion. The monster’s muscles tensed as it crouched, readying itself to pounce; I quickly traded Sgrios for Henri’s pistol and steadied it to fire; I felt the damp soil soaking into my pants and heard its heavy breath. Then everything sped up, not only to normal speed but even faster, so that it all happened simultaneously: branches snapped somewhere overhead, the monster leapt, I fired the pistol.
And the monster exploded into flames. Roaring, screaming, it staggered backwards, stumbled into a tree trunk, and collapsed to the ground. I watched in shock as fire burned through its skin and scales. The smell was awful.
Interestingly, though, the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding trees or blanket of dead leaves. I watched as it began to die to embers, leaving behind a mess of ashes, acrid flesh, and scorched bones. My gaze drifted to the pistol in my hand. “I know Henri’s got some firepower, but I find it hard to believe you did that with one bullet,” I said to the gun.
“Oh, it didn’t,” said an amused voice. Something about it was weirdly familiar. “I did. You’re welcome, by the way.”
It was coming from above me. Suddenly, the snapping branches I’d heard overhead right before I’d fired the pistol made sense. Rather than get to my feet—I was still breathing kind of hard, and my hands really hurt—I let myself fall onto my back and, lying there on the ground with mud soaking into my shirt, I looked up.
A teenager sat on a branch, back against the trunk of the tree. My heart skipped a beat as I took him in: skin pale as a ghost, wavy hair as dark as the surrounding woods, eyes even darker. Casually lounging there, one knee up, one leg dangling. Exactly the way the mysterious eight-year-old kid I’d encountered a decade ago had perched. The kid whose very existence I’d doubted more and more in the years since, but who I was now certain was not only very real but was also sitting in front of me.
…And who had just saved me again. Which meant he’d saved my life both times we’d met. Which was honestly kind of embarrassing.
How did I even respond? It had been so long. He was probably deadly, and I couldn’t imagine why he’d appear to me again now all these years later. But for some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was a little excited to see him. If for no other reason than to figure out what the hell his deal was.
“I would have been fine,” I argued.
He raised his eyebrows, looking amused. “I seem to remember you saying the same thing the last time we met. And it wasn’t true then either.”
He did remember our first meeting! My heart was pounding. I had so many questions I wanted to ask. Respectful, I reminded myself. Don’t piss off potentially dangerous beings. “It’s been a while,” I said carefully. “I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see you again.”
He smirked and leapt down off the branch, landing as lightly as if he’d stepped down off a stair. He crossed the distance between us in two steps and stretched out a black-gloved hand. I hesitated only briefly before I accepted it and let him pull me to my feet. If he wanted to kill me, it probably wouldn’t be via helping me stand up.
Now upright, I realized that he was slightly shorter than me, and that he gave off an aura unlike anything I’d sensed before. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Darker, maybe. Certainly powerful. It was almost like a void, rather than an aura. One thing was for sure: even if he wasn’t acting murderous right now, he was absolutely dangerous.
He was also still smirking as he sized me up. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “You’ve been showing up here more and more often.” He tilted his head, his grin growing wider. “A lot of close calls.”
I looked down at the shredded skin on my palms and winced. “You just enjoy watching me almost die? No desire to help? Real nice.” (So yes, I did immediately abandon my ‘be polite’ rule. Something about him made me forget it entirely. Sue me).
He laughed, a genuinely amused laugh that sounded entirely too gleeful for such a bleak place. “Big talk from someone who I’ve saved twice. Remind me how many times you’ve done something for me.”
Well, I hated to admit it, but he had a point there. Not like I’d give it to him that easily, though. “Show up more than once a decade and maybe I’d get the chance.”
He was smirking again, though I swear his inky black eyes twinkled. “Touché.”
We were silent for a moment, considering each other. I still had so many questions, but I couldn’t seem to focus on any of them. I was still reeling at the fact that he even existed, or that teasing him felt as natural as joking around with Milo. Surely it was concerning that I got along this well with a creature from the dark forests. Surely it was a trap. Right?
So then why couldn’t I quite get myself to believe it?
Our silence was shattered by a low, guttural growling from the undergrowth behind him. He didn’t even get a chance to turn before a monster resembling a saber-tooth tiger—just like the one that had chased me a few weeks ago—leapt out from the bushes, directly at his head.
It was a blur. Acting completely on instinct, I shot at it with Henri’s pistol, which was still in my hand. Now, I’m not a bad shot—Henri made sure of that as I grew up—but I’m not exactly in practice, and firing at a fast-moving target right by someone’s head? Risky even for an experienced shooter. Even riskier for me.
Luckily, I hit the tiger. Not-so-luckily, I hit the tiger by passing through the pale kid’s shoulder. I stared in shock as the monster collapsed to the ground, smoke blossoming from the bullet hole. Thank God for whatever magical bullets Henri had in here. Guess I should’ve tried those on the three-headed guy from earlier.
I shot it again for good measure, right in the skull. Just to be safe. I’m not in the business of letting my guard down only to get attacked again. No, thank you. I get attacked enough already.
Then I turned my attention to the pale kid—only to find that he was staring at his shoulder in mild interest as thick, black blood oozed from the small wound. “You shot me,” he said, sounding almost amazed.
“Not on purpose,” I argued. “The monster got it worse. In fact, I think that counts as me saving you.”
He chuckled, still staring at the wound. The flow of blood seemed to be slowing already, almost as if it was freezing in place. “You’re not as good at it, then.”
“I’m plenty good at it,” I muttered, annoyed. The smirk playing at his lips made me think he’d heard me. Damn it.
Either way, I guess he wasn’t too broken up about it, because as I was mentally debating the risks versus necessity of taking him back to Griffin’s Edge for Henri’s healing skills, he reached up to pull the collar of his black jacket away from his neck…revealing only a dark, bruise-like smudge where the bullet wound had been a moment earlier.
Well, there went the ‘necessity’ argument. I stared in surprise. “Did you just heal yourself?”
He let his jacket settle back into place and shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “Something like that. It’s really not a big deal.”
My thoughts were rapidly becoming a racing, wild mess. What the hell was he? I couldn’t recall anything I’d ever read or heard about a creature like him. The closest I could think of was a vampire, but I’d met enough vampires to know he wasn’t one. Not enough fangs, and he hadn’t so much as glanced at my bloody palms. Plus, vampires don’t have black blood. In fact, they don’t bleed at all.
I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. “What are you?” I breathed, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Now he raised his head, and his dark eyes met mine sharply. They were unreadable, the irises as black as the pupils within them. “I could ask you the same thing,” he said matter-of-factly, as if we were merely discussing the weather.
More silence as we stared at each other. I hoped the pounding of my heart wasn’t as obvious as it sounded in my own ears. I wanted to ask what he knew, why he cared. But I was scared to give anything away. Despite the feeling I’d had earlier that I kind of liked talking to him, it didn’t change the fact that he was an unknown being native to the dark forests who had black blood; could heal himself; had a deeply powerful, void-like aura; or had been watching me.
He’s not as human as he looks. I had to remember that. Should be easy, in theory. I mean, neither am I.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I finally said, fighting to keep my voice even. I clenched my fists to hide their sweatiness, ignoring the pain in my torn-up palms.
He smiled slowly. “I’m sure you don’t.” Then he laughed. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be back. And with your skills, I’ll no doubt have to save you again. We’ll have more chances to talk.”
Like hell was I letting him get away with his little trash talk that easily. “Oh yeah?” I challenged. “Sure you’re not gonna vanish for another decade?”
He considered for a moment before smiling again. “Nah,” he said. “You’re too interesting. I have a feeling you’re going to be important.”
I swear my heart stopped for a solid five seconds. Could he sense something about me? Was he psychic? Magical? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He tilted his head, squinting his eyes as he looked me up and down. “I don’t know yet either,” he said. “But I will.” He grinned. “See you around, Freckles.”
Then he was gone. I blinked and he had vanished entirely, as if he had simply dissolved into the shadows. And hell, maybe he had. I didn’t even get the chance to respond indignantly to the nickname.
I still don’t know what he is, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell Henri about him. Just like I couldn’t when I first met him ten years ago. I don’t know. It just seems like I shouldn’t. Some little voice in the back of my head insists that this should be kept to myself.
I told Henri about the jump to the dark forest, of course. I had to tell him when he healed my hands. I just omitted the part about the boy in the tree.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him after that. I keep replaying his words in my head, wondering how much he knows or if he could help me figure out what I am. I laid awake all night, trying to make sense of him and his return. Just I was finally about to drift off to sleep early in the morning, something new occurred to me: is it merely a coincidence that he’s shown back up now, when my jumping is getting worse and when something is out there on a murder spree? Or is it all connected?
And, well, you better believe I didn’t sleep a goddamn wink after that.