Chapter Five
The cottage looked the same as it had the first time I’d been to visit it. That’s to say, it looked straight out of a fairy tale.
You had to drive down a long dirt road that ended in front of the cottage to get to it. It was surrounded by nothing but trees and a thick, dense forest.
The cottage was square and two stories. The front was washed-out stone. The front door was painted in an unwelcoming black and there were two windows on either side of the door. Weathered flowerbeds sat beneath each window with hanging vines overflowing out of each of them. The shutters around the windows were painted the same unwelcoming black as the front door.
The difference between now and the first time I came here? The chimney gracing the roof had no smoke billowing out of it. There was no charming, homey feel to it now.
The difference between now and the last time I had been here? The stone walkway that lead up to the front black door had been cleaned up, likely hosed off. The blood that had oozed out of Dash’s middle and then later my face, had been washed away. All traces of the horror Chucky had inflicted upon us were no longer there to see.
I fought the urge to touch the side of my face and laughed. Not all traces had been washed away. Not even close. One, or several, of the guys had likely come here and scrubbed the sidewalk clean of the blood that had been spilled. That thought made me sad for whoever had drawn the short straw and gotten stuck with that dirty job.
“I can’t believe Uncle Quint let us leave the house,” Tyson said from the passenger seat beside me in my black Range Rover.
Mr. Cole had kindly left the Rover behind for me. It had been put in my name and apparently it truly was mine now. I would rather have Mr. Cole in my life than the Rover, but you couldn’t always have everything you wanted in life. That was fact, or at least it was for me.
“I don’t know what came over him,” Julian remarked from the backseat. “Days ago, he insisted we all had to stay at the big house with him. All of us, no exceptions. We do what he wants, and he was still angry and hostile towards everyone. Now, today he just decides we can all go home. I don’t know what his deal is but I for one am thankful for it. I prefer to sleep in my own bed in my own home, a place where Quint is not. I love the guy but sometimes he drives me insane.”
“Tell me about it,” Tyson muttered. “Try being related to the guy.”
After sleeping for a day and a half straight, Quinton had woken up and decided that we could all go home if we wanted to. I didn’t know what came over him, but I didn’t want to question if for fear he’d change his mind and try to force us all to stay. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that after all that rest, Dash had gotten out of bed and moved around on his own. He’d showered on his own and made his way downstairs to eat on his own. All without looking like he was in pain. It was almost like he hadn’t been injured in the first place. He was currently on his way to a doctor’s appointment, and then Quinton would be bringing him home, to the cottage. I didn’t think he’d been back since he was taken away in the ambulance, and I wondered what it would feel like for him to return. Would he feel like he’d been violated in his own home? I mean, it didn’t technically happen in his home, but it did happen at it. Would he feel violated? I sincerely hoped not. I thought I might feel that way at Mr. Cole’s house, but it never happened. I wasn’t concerned about feeling that way here for some reason. The only thing I felt was concern over how Dash was feeling. I guess that was one way to know you cared about someone, when their feelings mattered more than your own. Even if you didn’t have any feelings of your own.
“You know what’s funny about this?” I asked as I parked the Rover next to a black Camaro that I had assumed belonged to Dash. “Quinton told us we were all free to go our own separate ways, then he goes and tells you two that you have to come with me because I’m not supposed to be left on my own right now. What’s that about? I didn’t need one babysitter, let alone the two he assigned to me. Don’t get me wrong, I like being around the two of you, but I don’t like knowing you’re here because Quinton told you to be and you’re here to babysit me. Why do I need a babysitter? I don’t get it. Chucky was arrested. He is no longer a threat to me or anyone else. What’s he going to do to anyone from behind bars? Not a whole lot, I’ll tell you that. And that’s another thing. Should he even be behind bars? I don’t think he should be. I think he should be in some type of facility where he can get help for being a crazy psycho. He needs help. He’s not going to get the right help that he needs if he’s in jail. I don’t think any of this is right.”
“Holy shit, girl.” Tyson whispered in an outraged voice. “Don’t say that in front of Uncle Quinton. Please, by all the Gods, don’t say that where anyone else can hear you. That guy put both Dash and you in the hospital, he deserves whatever he gets and if that’s him being behind bars then I’m good with that. It’s probably safer for him to be where he is now than walking free. Safer for the rest of us as well.”
“No joke,” Julian said. “He does not want to be out in the free world right now. Would be bad for his health. And then it would be one of us who ended up behind bars.”
I shook my head. I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Quinton knew where I stood with Chucky, and I didn’t think he would do anything to cause further harm. Dash was on the road to recovery and my injury hadn’t been life threatening. But Chucky? His life was basically over. Due to his actions he had flushed it right down the shitter. There would be no magical solution to erase any of this mess he’d found himself in. All because he’d had the misfortune to meet me and single me out. If he’d simply left me alone, he would have been left alone himself.
“I don’t want to talk about Chucky,” I told them honestly. Chucky was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I certainly didn’t want to think about him either. I cringed every time I heard his damn name, even inside my head. I wished I could stop thinking about him, but it didn’t seem like it was going to happen. He was always in the back of my mind, lingering.
I put the SUV in park and shut it down. I had my seat belt off and my hand on the door handle when Tyson spoke.
“I resent being called a babysitter. I also had to fight off Damien for the job. I don’t know what the fuck his problem is, but he was hell bent on being glued to your side today. I wouldn’t be surprised if you both wake up in the morning and come downstairs to find him sleeping on the couch. Or on the floor because someone else, like myself, already beat him to the couch.”
“I actually didn’t volunteer for the job,” Julian admitted. “I’m here by default. No one else can do what I can do, so you’re stuck with me. But, I want it on the record that I would have volunteered for the job had I been given the opportunity to do so.”
That’s right, Julian had come along at Quinton’s behest, so he could put his weird miracle juju cream on my face. The poor guy.
I climbed down out of the Rover without responding to either of them. What could I say that hadn’t already been said? This was the Quinton Show and we were only here to play the role he’d assigned to us. It was utter bullshit, of course. But what could you do?
Binx was in a carrier in the backseat behind the driver’s seat and I opened the back door to get his carrier out.
I had nothing else to bring inside with me. All the clothing that had been in the dresser at the Alexander house I had left behind there. I guess it wouldn’t be too bad having clothes there. I wouldn’t have to worry about packing a bag in the highly unlikely event I ever wanted to stay over there again. Then again, the chances of me ever wearing anything other than those pajamas was highly unlikely.
I looked down at the white tank top and soft yellow thin pajama pants I wore and once again found myself feeling grateful to whomever had picked them out. Without them I would be wearing dirty clothes because no way in hell was I ever wearing the rest of those ill-fitting, ugly things.
I paused at the edge of the stone pathway that lead up to the house. I stared at the black door and my vision was suddenly filled with images of Dash crumbling to the ground with his red stained hands pressed into his middle.
I felt faint.
There had been so much blood. And now it had all been washed away. Like it had never happened.
Heat hit the small of my back as a palm brushed against me. The heat was a welcomed distraction. I used to find the heat they gave off disturbing and once it had overwhelmed me to the point where I had actually fainted because of it. Somewhere along the way I had come to crave it and didn’t realize how much I missed it until one of them touched me after I’d gone a while without it.
When Quinton touched me now, the heat was down to a mild hum, not at the surface but in the background. Always present but no longer overwhelming. It was comforting to me, like coming home.
This was not Quinton touching me now.
It had been a good long while since Tyson had touched me, or at least it felt like it had been a really long time. In actuality it had been about a week. But I knew his touch when I felt it, even if it had been a while.
“Are you alright?” Tyson asked me in a low, concerned voice.
I had to clear my throat twice before I could answer him. “Yeah,” I choked out. “It’s just that I can see it happening in my head. You know, with Dash. But to look at it now, you can’t even tell anything bad happened here. I don’t know, I guess I feel like it should have left some sort of mark behind, you know? Like it did on me, like it did on Dash. Instead, the stones are no longer red, everything’s been washed away as if it never happened in the first place. I think that’s my problem. Everything here looks so normal, so calm. How can it look like this when I feel the exact opposite on the inside? I’m not normal and calm. I don’t even know what I am but it’s certainly not those two things. I’m just…”
I trailed off, not knowing how to put my feelings into words. I sounded like a hot mess. What would he think of me? That I was insane? Some days I felt insane. It probably showed.
“Things are going to calm down, girl. You’ll see. And when they do, we will find you a new normal. It won’t be filled with blood, or tears, or death, or disaster, or anything that makes you feel how you’re feeling right now and probably have been feeling for the past several months. We’re going to get to a place where there’s no chaos outside of Uncle Quint being crazy, the twins fighting with each other, Julian being spiteful and doing fucked up things to people, Dash hiding from the world and being weird and hermit like. We won’t even get started with Damien’s vanity and all the trouble that can get him into, not to mention his raw arrogance. Or, my anger issues and my, for lack of better words, temper tantrums. Before you know it, that’s going to be your normal and after a while you won’t think any of it is crazy in the slightest. But all of this chaos and blood and devastation, your mom dying, Marcus leaving, this shit with the football player? It’s all going to blow over, I promise you. And then maybe we can go out on a date like the normal people we will never be. Would you like that, Ariel? Would you go on a date with me?”
My mind blanked. A date? With Tyson? How could I even think about dating when we were just talking about blood being washed off of the pathway? And he wanted to go out on a date. Good grief.
“Um, Tyson,” I mumbled. “I don’t think I’m at a place where I should be going out on dates. Maybe like six months from now we can come back and have this discussion again.”
Or never. That sounded like a decent option to me at the moment. Dating sounded complicated. I didn’t need any more complications in my life at the moment.
“You do know,” Julian drawled as he walked past us, “if she goes out on a date with you then the rest of us are all going to ask her out on dates as well. Nobody has said anything about the kissing that you and Quint have been doing, but if you start taking her out on top of that… people are going to start getting jealous, and feelings are going to get hurt.”
My face heated in embarrassment. Did they all know about who I had been kissing? I hoped they all hadn’t sat down with each other and talked about me kissing some of them. We had more important things to deal with.
Julian inserted a key into the lock on the front door and turned it, unlocking the door. Why did he have a key to Dash’s house? And did the rest of them have keys? I felt it was important to know these things seeing as I lived here now.
“Can we forget about dates and kissing, please?” I grumbled. “I have to get my cat inside, he’s tired of being in this stupid box and wants out. And, can you blame him? He’s been displaced and uprooted from his home when he probably would have preferred to stay home by himself in the first place. Someone should have been easily able to come here and refresh his food and water every day. It’s not like the rest of you had anything pressing going on. You all were just moping around Quinton’s house.”
“It’s my house, too.” Tyson said.
“Did you just call Binx your cat?” Julian grinned at me, clearly amused by my having claimed Dash’s cat as my own. “Does Dash know about this?”
I shrugged. Binx didn’t seem to mind and that was all that mattered to me at the moment. They could judge me all they wanted.
I eyeballed Julian as I walked up the pathway and asked, “Do you have any pets, Julian?”
Tyson chuckled as Julian pushed the door open.
“No,” Julian grunted. “I can get some though, if you’d like me to.”
“What’ll it be, girl?” Tyson teased. “You want a dog? Maybe one of those little suckers you can fit in your purse and carry everywhere with you?”
“Do you use a purse?” Julian asked.
“Nope.” I said in a cheery voice, making sure the ‘p’ popped.
I absolutely did not want a tiny little purse dog. Or a big dog. Or any kind of dog for that matter. I didn’t have anything against dogs, I just didn’t want one for myself. They required far more love and attention than a cat did.
“How about a bird?” Tyson kept at me.
“A goldfish?”
“Bunny rabbit?”
“Goat.”
“Chickens.”
“We don’t live on a farm,” I reminded them as I entered the house. “And thanks for the distraction. Without you guys, I might have stood out there for an hour staring at the ground before I conjured up enough bravery to walk over that spot. Also, in case it ever comes up, I would like a hairless cat. I think they’re cute.”
“She’s joking,” Tyson tried to assure Julian. “She has the good sense not to find something that ugly as cute.”
Tyson was wrong. Good sense wasn’t really my specialty or my strong suit.
“They are cute.” Julian said as he shot Tyson a dirty look.
Julian was sweet. He lived with Damien, had honey colored hair that was always kept buzzed close to his skull and he had a gold lip ring. The lip ring was something we had in common. His eyes were always kind when they were on me and I sometimes wondered how he ended up BFF’s with Quinton and Damien. Outside of magic and being attractive, I didn’t think they had anything else in common.
I didn’t know him very well because I hadn’t had the chance to really get to know him yet. But what I did know, I liked a whole lot.
“I will get you a hairless cat,” Julian vowed in a solemn voice.
Oh boy.
Now what had I started?
“I don’t need a cat,” I told him. “I have Binx.”
Which reminded me…
A quick glance over my shoulder told me Tyson had been kind enough to close the front door behind him.
I sat Binx’s carrier on the floor and knelt down beside it. Happy, he started to purr at me through the bars on the door in the front. Binx wanted out and he knew I was going to free him from his tiny cage. He watched me through the bars, waiting patiently, and with an intelligence I hadn’t seen in another animal before.
I slid the bar free and pulled the door open wide. Binx strolled out purring, as if he had all the time in the world. He rubbed the side of his little body up against my hand and sauntered off. I grinned after him. Binx acted like no tragedy had occurred and he hadn’t been displaced for days, he was home and nothing else mattered.
I needed to adopt his attitude for myself.
I stood up quickly and muttered, “I’m going up to my room to change into some of my own clothes. As comfortable as these pajamas are, I miss wearing normal clothes. And I miss wearing my own clothing. And a freaking bra. I know you don’t understand that last one, how could you, but trust me when I say I could never be a hippie. Free-boobing it is so not the way for me to go. It’s awkward and I feel like people are constantly staring at my chest and since I’ve spent the last week surrounded by guys it’s made the situation seem all the more awkward for me. You might not have noticed, but I certainly did.”
I walked away, heading towards the stairs. Their conversation didn’t fade away until I closed the door to my bedroom shut firmly behind me.
“Did she just say free-boobing?” Julian asked in amusement.
“I wish she wouldn’t talk about her boobs at all,” Tyson remarked. “Now I want her to come back here so I can check them out, but I can’t because it would make me a dick and make her feel even more awkward than she already claims to be. Seriously, though, did you see anyone staring at her chest, because I didn’t. I didn’t even notice she wasn’t wearing a bra.”
“I didn’t see anyone staring, but she’s been locked away with Quint and Dash. I doubt they were checking her out recently. The only thing I think Quint’s capable of feeling right now is guilt. It’s eating him up inside. And Dash is in too much pain and too exhausted to get a hard on right now, so I imagine checking out her tits isn’t something he’s going to be doing any time soon.”
“I think you give them too much credit…”
I wished I had never said a thing. I didn’t want them talking about my boobs and debating amongst themselves who they thought was most likely to check me out.
With my back to the door, I paused. Boxes were neatly stacked on the floor in front of the bed. I counted six of them. My personal belongings filled up a whole six boxes. I was expecting there to be a box or two less than what was there. The light blue comforter with the large red rose blossoms all over it that had graced my bed at Mr. Cole’s house now sat folded neatly on the wicker love seat that was in front of the window. Two pillows with cases matching the comforter were stacked on the seat beside the comforter. Hopefully it would fit under my bed because there was no way I could store it in my coffin sized closet.
The comforter on the queen-sized bed in here wasn’t all that different from the one that had been brought over from Mr. Cole’s house. This one was black and covered in yellow, open bloomed roses.
I was more partial to the one with the yellow roses than the one covered in red ones. Canary yellow was my favorite color. The guys knew this because Tyson knew this, and I was beginning to think they all gossiped about me behind my back. As a result, the walls in here were painted a bright, lovely shade of yellow so I guess I couldn’t really complain all too much.
The general theme for the room seemed to be bumble bee because most things were black and yellow. The paint on the walls, the comforter on the bed. The curtains surrounding the window were black, gauzy and see-through. The pillows on the bed were black and purple. Some of the black ones were covered in sparkly, silver sequins. On the wicker love seat, underneath the matching comforter and bed pillows, were a pile of black decorative toss pillows. On the floor in front of the love seat was a thick, black hand-woven circular rug. A matching rug laid on the floor beside the bed. The rugs were the only thing in the bedroom that didn’t look brand new. I liked them. I imagined the hard wood floors could get quite chilly in the winter and I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and drop my feet down on to something freezing cold.
Continuing with the color scheme, on the wall above the tall dresser hung an oval, black framed mirror. Even the tall bookshelf beside the door was black in color.
Above the bed hung my beautiful dreamcatcher Tyson had gifted me with. The circle was black, the inside intricately woven with silver beads placed sporadically on the inside of the circle. Black and silver beads hung down on long strings with black and white feathers hanging off the ends. There were white markings and strange words written around the black circle. They were designed for my safety and protection. Tyson had put a lot of work into it for me. The whole thing was absolutely gorgeous.
It was almost my favorite part of the lovely bedroom they had put together for me, coming in second only to the framed black and white tarot cards that hung on the wall over the bed. They put even the dreamcatcher to shame.
They were priceless heirlooms that had belonged to the Alexander family for over three hundred years. The Alexander family had once owned an entire deck of poster sized black and white ink, hand drawn tarot cards. There were seventy-eight tarot cards in a complete deck. The family had lost the majority of the deck in a fire many years ago. Only eight remained. Tyson and Quinton had spilt them between themselves.
They had each given me one of theirs, something that had left me speechless the first time I had seen them hanging there on the wall. Julian had asked me at the time whether or not I knew what it meant that they were hanging on my wall. It meant Tyson and Quinton were serious about this situation with me and they were in it for the long haul. If they hadn’t thought there would be no end to me being in their coven they wouldn’t have given me those drawings. I hadn’t actually needed those tarot cards to know that the two of them were in this for the long haul and serious about me. But the gesture had been nice, sweet, and I had loved it.
The Magician and The Moon. The Magician had come from Tyson and The Moon had come from Quinton. Given their meanings, the cards were perfect choices for me.
After seeing them the first time, I had gone online and looked them up. The Magician card could mean two things. The first meaning represented control, taking control over your life and having a certain level of success. The second meaning had to do with being creative and talented. I wasn’t creative or talented, so I preferred the first meaning to the second. I loved the thought of being successful in something and hoped like hell my day was coming sooner rather than later.
The picture showed a bald man in a cape standing in the center of a pentagram. He held a sword in one hand with the tip pointed towards the ground. In the bald man’s other hand, he held a cup raised up high in the air. The words The Magician hung in the air over his bald head. He was an unfortunately unattractive man.
The card represented taking control of your life and I loved that Tyson had chosen to gift it to me.
Quinton had given me The Moon out of his collection. The Moon is the card of intuition, dreams and the unconscious. I thought this one had been given to me because of the dreams I always had. They meant something. I couldn’t always figure out the meaning, but I knew they meant something.
The card itself showed a moon glowing high up in the sky. Wolves were on the ground with their heads thrown back, howling at the bright, glowing orb in the sky.
Even though I liked them both a great deal, The Moon was my favorite.
I wished they hadn’t given me something so precious to hold on to. To me, they weren’t really mine, I felt like I was simply borrowing them for the time being. Like, I was renting them to take up space on my wall. If you could rent things for free from boys who were by far prettier than you were.
Ignoring the boxes and everything else, I moved towards the dresser. The top drawer was half full of fuzzy socks. They’d been a gift from someone. I’d assumed Dash had put them in there. I had forgotten all about them. I pulled open the second drawer and sighed. The drawer was empty. If I wanted to wear my own clothes, then I would have to go through the boxes.
My silk robe was in one of the drawers, but I didn’t want to prance around the house in my silk robe and fuzzy socks. That would be me making myself too comfortable in Dash’s home. Not that I thought he would mind, or anybody else. It was tempting and would likely be extremely comfortable. And, I was dying to put the thing on and wear it, to feel that smooth silk against my skin. But modesty demanded I find actual clothes to wear.
Without thinking, I lifted a flap on the top of the cardboard box sitting on top of the bed. Too late, I realized it was not a box full of my belongings. Instead, it was the box I had found hidden in the back of Vivian’s closet. A box half full of letters and old pictures. Letters that had told me that Vivian Kimber, the woman I had grown up with and known as my mother, might not be my actual mother after all but my aunt instead. A woman who, if the contents of the letters were to be believed, had stolen me away from her brother, my would be biological father.
I had read all of four letters out of the box so far and barely touched the photos. I couldn’t bring myself to read more than that. I closed the top flap on the box. Today wouldn’t be the day where I read the rest of them. Maybe tomorrow?
Procrastination, thy name is Ariel Kimber.
You would think I would want to read it all right away in one go just so I could know every little thing I could possibly find out.
I couldn’t do it.
I was weird like that.
I felt like if I read the rest of those letters and got to the end, I wouldn’t even come close to being the same person that I was when I started reading them. This wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing, I knew this. Part of me chafed at being denied the growth, the knowledge. A larger part of me wanted to light the entire box on fire, burn it to ash and forget the damn thing had ever existed in the first place. I couldn’t bring myself to actually do this to the damn thing no matter how badly I wanted to. Eventually, I would be brave enough to look through the rest of the box. Eventually, I would come to terms with the fact that my mother wasn’t really my mother and I would want to learn about my bio dad.
Sadly, today was not that day.
I had a feeling with the things going on around me that tomorrow wouldn’t be that day either. Maybe not even the next day.
One crisis at a time.
One day at a time.
I could do this.
Probably.
Maybe.
Shit.
Who was I kidding? Certainly not myself. I knew my life was just a few stops shy of a train wreck and it was slowly approaching.
I knew it. But, by no means was I ready for it.