JACKAL
Sea otters hold hands when they’re sleeping so they don’t drift apart.
I take the car to the farmhouse myself, slipping out before Selfish can catch me. Yvonne was easy: cash for silence.
By the time I pull the car into the barn, it’s raining. There is a fog crawling from the valley, whorls of white barreling through the trees. I jog to the house, getting soaked, and expecting to find Phoenix in the kitchen.
“You’re dripping,” she says when she lets me in the back door. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I eye her legs as she tosses me a towel.
“How’d it go?” I ask.
“You came all the way out here to ask me that? You’ve been rather busy today with that stunt you pulled.” Her eyes bore into me with razor sharp edges.
I swallow hard and my smile is tentative. “Trying to do my part?” Her eyes are unforgiving, but I trudge forward anyway. “I came over tonight because I thought you’d be alone. I‘m going to do things to you and you’re going to make a lot of noise.” My thumb sweeps across her cheek and rubs across her bottom lip. “I want you all to myself.”
She moves until she’s standing in front of me.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispers.
“What?”
“When I saw you on the bridge...” She shakes her head, unable to finish. “I watched you jump and—” Her voice catches. “Anyway...today sucked…”
“You didn’t know what I was doing?” I ask, stunned.
“How would I?” she snaps.
I’m all over her before she can blink, my hands on her waist, in her hair, pulling it back until her face is lifted to mine, inches from my mouth…
She touches her lips to mine, carefully, slowly, and my chest jolts.
I grab the sides of her face, and her lips and tongue destroy all of my willpower. She leans up on her tiptoes and I reach beneath her cheeks to lift her the rest of the way, wrapping her legs around my waist.
I kiss her hard and then lean back one more time. “And I wanted to make sure Gwen got across okay.”
“She didn’t…” I freeze at the sound of Gwen’s voice.
Phoenix drops her feet to the floor and scuttles away, cheeks flaming. Gwen walks into the kitchen, biting her lip in amusement at the sight in front of her, and I close my eyes at the anger I’m feeling.
“Tell me I’m seeing things, Phoenix, that Gwen is not still here!”
“Calm down, Jackal,” Gwen says dryly.
“Why the hell didn’t you leave with them?” I yell.
Gwen doesn’t flinch. She purses her lips and eyes me like I’m a child as she sits down at the table.
“I’m going to get my son back.”
“And how exactly do you plan on doing that?”
Gwen looks at Phoenix, and I start shaking my head right away.
“She steals jewelry, Gwen. No. You can’t expect her to—”
“Expect me?” Phoenix interrupts. “I’ve offered my services. Gwen hasn’t asked me to do anything.”
“The last male baby born to the Regions isn’t going to be easy to just...take.”
“Who is the End Man in the Red right now?” Phoenix asks.
Her face is serious. Dead serious. They are actually planning on going through with this.
I blink at her. “Aries.”
She makes a face, like it could be worse and looks at Gwen.
“What do you know about him?” Gwen asks me.
I scratch my head. “Aries…? He’s…”
“What?” Phoenix says. “Spit it out.”
“You,” I tell her. “Are getting on my nerves, despite the way you kiss.”
“I can imagine it doesn’t feel as nice as when a woman gets on your dick,” she shoots back.
I glare at her.
“Fine...fine. Aries is batshit crazy,” I say. “Good luck with that.”
“We should be wishing you good luck,” Phoenix says. “Because you’re the one who’s going to contact him for us.”
“I’m not getting involved,” I say to both of them. “I have a pink jet and a good life.”
“A pink jet!” Phoenix says, flabbergasted. “I thought you cared about Folsom!” She picks up the closest thing to her and throws it at my head. I duck out of the way and a can of corn hits the wall behind me.
“You’re crazy.” I point between the two of them. “Dual crazies. Twin psychos.” I switch my attention to Gwen, clearly the more logical of the two.
“You have the opportunity to get out of here. Canada will provide you asylum. Why, Gwen?”
She slams her fist on the table so hard the vase of wildflowers wobbles precariously. Phoenix’s eyes grow large, and she looks between the two of us. Gwen’s tiny shoulders squared, she stands up to face me. I remember this from last time, in the hospital with Foley. She’d threatened my life and she barely reached my nipples.
“My son,” she says from between her teeth, “is with that woman…” She points to what I suppose is the direction of the Red Region. Leaning over the table toward me, her eyes are glowing with hate. I pity Langley. If Gwen gets ahold of her…
“I’m not leaving the Regions without Rebel. And that’s the end of it.”
I look at Phoenix then. She shrugs.
“All right.” I sit down at the table, head in my hands. “Say I can get in touch with Aries. Who’s to say he’ll help us?”
“Isn’t there some type of brotherhood between you guys, some oath of loyalty? Folsom and Kasper don’t like each other, but Kasper pulled through.”
“Kasper owed Folsom,” I say and then I wish I hadn’t. Gwen is looking at me curiously. “It’s not my story to tell.”
“I’ll reach out to him myself,” Phoenix says with finality.
“No.”
Both women look at me in surprise. There’s no kindness in their eyes as they wait for me to speak. I’m either here to help them or I’m not. Goddamn, how did men ever manage to rule the world with these tiny generals in existence?
“I’ll do it,” I say. “You two keep your heads low or Folsom and I will both have someone we care about in prison.” I storm out before either of them can say another word.
This is exactly why men have nearly gone extinct: women.
“Jackal!”
I’m almost to the barn when Phoenix comes charging out of the house wearing black rubber work boots over her tights. It looks like she’s about to leap into my arms; I brace myself, but she comes to an abrupt stop instead. We’re standing in mud, the smell of manure and wet grass clinging to the air. She’s beautiful; I have to catch my breath. Her eyes are bright, but there are dark smudges of makeup beneath them. She blinks at me slowly.
“Don’t go,” she says.
I see her throat move convulsively as she swallows. I reach out impulsively, my fingers caressing her throat. She closes her eyes at my touch, and I almost kiss her right then and there.
“Stay awhile,” she says. “You just got here.”
“You want me to stay?”
“No!” she says quickly. “I mean...yes. You came all this way...”
“Say you want me to stay.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. I just asked you to stay.”
“But say you want me to stay.”
She looks around exasperated, hands on her hips. The wind lifts up stray pieces of her hair, lifting them from her face. She fills her cheeks with air and lets it out slowly, eyes closed.
“I want you to stay.”
“Now say: I want you…”
Her eyes fly open. “Jackal!”
I hold up my hands, laughing. “Okay, okay! Just trying my luck.”
Gwen raises her eyebrows when we walk back through the door.
“What?” Phoenix snaps at her.
“Nothing. Geez, lay off the aggression.”
They glare at each other and I’m not sure if a girl fight is about to happen, but then they both start laughing. They make a small dinner of vegetables and bread, and we carry it to the living room near the fireplace. The rain has chilled the air, and Phoenix asks me to build a fire. I’m so honored she asked anything of me, I’m determined to build the most spectacular fire she’s ever seen in her life.
They exchange stories about the Regions, what they’ve heard is going on.
“Black pulled out of the trade treaty last week. After Laticus died, they called for the Red to be expelled, but the Statehead voted no,” Phoenix tells us.
It has to be Sean feeding her this information. I wonder what else he knows.
“The lower end of almost every Region is with the Revolution. They play your speeches on a loop,” she tells Gwen. “There are few supporters in the upper, but they fear for their quality of life if things were to change.”
She glances at the sudden roar of the fire as the sparks ignite. The small upward tilt on her lips fills me with such satisfaction, I feel more of a rush than I did with the jump I took earlier.
“You should do a broadcast while you’re here,” Phoenix says. “Keep the fire burning. The Statehead and the Society are scaring people into being quiet.”
“Talk about Marcus,” I say suddenly.
They both look at me thoughtfully before nodding.
“He’s right,” Gwen says, looking at Phoenix.
It’s almost as if I’m not even here.
“The reason they were trying to move Laticus into the End Men before he was of age was because they were down an End Man. They were trying to avoid the panic that would ensue when people found out he was suddenly sterile,” she adds.
“And now no one knows where he is,” Phoenix says. “They should have to answer for that.”
We all nod.
“The Birthing Celebration is tomorrow,” I remind them. “Maybe I’ll find out more then.”
Gwen stands up, stretching her arms above her head.
“Bed,” she says. When Phoenix isn’t looking, she winks at me and I suppress a smile.
I head back to the compound once Phoenix has fallen asleep on the couch. I have a headache and now there’s a slippery vein of worry creeping around my brain, exactly the type of thing I try to avoid. I have a bad feeling about all of this. At first Phoenix was just intriguing, different from any woman I’d ever met. It’s easy to become infatuated with something that is both hard and soft at the same time. You become determined to understand the hard so you can inspire the soft. No matter how hard they make you work for it. When I reach the compound, I park the car far enough away that I won’t wake anyone. I lean my head back and think about how her neck felt beneath my hand, the skin so soft I’d wanted to dip my head and kiss it until she moaned. I imagine her riding me, throwing her head back, the grace of her neck exposed. I’d reach up and wrap a hand around it and—there’s a rapping on my window. I crack one eye open. Selfish.
I wave, but I make no move to roll the window down. After a few minutes of standing there, she storms off to her apartment. I make a run for the compound.