It took effort to hide my tension from Gran while we prepared dinner. Anticipation warred with trepidation. Would I be able to touch Morik without fear? I wasn’t sure I would even manage to look at him without wanting to run and hide.
Gran looked at me questioningly a few times when my thoughts slowed me, but I smiled and diverted her attention with different topics. The most distracting one being that of our elderly neighbor, who had invited her to a card party. I grinned and asked if she would go. The happiness on her face dimmed just a little when she said the party didn’t start until dark. After that, we both quietly withdrew to our own thoughts.
I wanted happiness for all of my family, but until I chose, they had no freedom. Once they put me to bed, the house and everyone in it remained under lockdown until sunup.
Those limitations just made my deal with Morik that much more important. If I could pull off meeting him in the flesh, his new deal with me would be the proof I needed to believe his story enough to tell my family everything. Then, I might not be the only one making plans for the weekend.
Sitting through dinner tested my patience. I couldn’t ever remember looking forward to the evening chant. Yet, I was careful not to give anything away.
I forced myself to eat slowly and listened to my mom talk about her boss’s invitation to a seminar that she had turned down. Something in her tone caught my attention briefly, and I wondered if she might actually be interested in her boss.
When I finished my meal, I excused myself from the clean-up process to shower and get ready for bed. As I changed, Morik’s words repeated in my mind, and I started to panic. Was he going to knock on the door after they put me to bed? They didn’t answer the door for anyone. I could miss my chance to complete my end of the deal.
I looked around my room, trying to think of a solution. He said I would feel sleepy but stay awake. Maybe that was so I could sneak to the door and slip out. If I had to sneak out, I’d need more than pajamas, but Mom would be suspicious if I dressed in anything else.
I set clothes out on the chair near my bed. If I didn’t pass out, I’d change then listen for my chance to get to the front door. Warmth was good, but I’d need light to go outside. Using a drink of water as an excuse, I went to the kitchen and took a book light out of the drawer we used to store emergency supplies. No one noticed me sneak it back to my room.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” Mom said when she came to get me.
“A lot on my mind with school,” I said, too nervous to come up with anything better.
She stopped in the hallway and turned toward me, forcing me to stop as well.
“Are you being bullied again?” Concern laced her voice.
All the resentment over the yelling we’d done at each other vanished when I saw the fear in her eyes. I gave her a reassuring hug.
“No, Mom. It’s just regular school stuff.”
She nodded, and I felt guilty for the secrets I was keeping as I followed her to the living room. There were still too many reasons not to tell her everything, though. One more night, I promised myself. If the deal went as simply as Morik said it would, I’d have more trust in the legitimacy of the story he’d told me and be able to share it.
My family’s chanting surrounded me, and I closed my eyes. I bit my lip to keep from smiling as anticipation finally won over trepidation. Whatever happened tonight would be the result of a deal of my own making, not someone else’s. I felt each light touch on my bare arms. Mom’s, strong and sure; Aunt Grace’s light and shy; Aunt Danielle’s quick and cool; Gran’s soft and gentle. Then it was over.
With a steady arm wrapped around my shoulders, Mom led me to my room, pulled back the quilts, and helped me into bed. I didn’t feel any different. The strange compulsion to sleep gripped me as usual. I struggled to keep my eyes open as she turned off the light and closed the door.
Frustrated, I rubbed my eyes. But that meant closing them. And once they closed, they refused to reopen. I hovered on the verge of sleep.
Time slipped away from me until I heard a slight noise from the direction of the chair.
“Tessa,” a deep, rumbling voice quietly drifted to me, “It’s Morik. Open your eyes.”
My heart gave a little flutter at the sudden sound. I took a calming breath, pushed aside any fear I had, and tried to open my eyes as he said. To my surprise, it worked.
I waited for them to adjust to the darkened room. However, the light coming from under the bedroom door just wasn’t enough to see a thing. So I listened. I couldn’t hear any noises inside my room but did hear the TV in the living room. That surprised me. I’d always thought everyone else went to bed after I did.
“Can you turn on the book light on my desk?” I whispered, not wanting to turn on the bedroom light.
A quiet click later, the dim yellow glow from the light blinded me.
I sat up and mentally braced myself. No fear. I could do this. I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress and turned toward the light.
I held still and focused on slow, even breathing while I studied Morik.
He wasn’t the creature of mist and shadows that I remembered. At first glance, he was solid and very human-looking. But that was due to the small light that he still held loosely in his hand. It cast shadows over the features that made him not human.
In the dim light, the color of his skin hinted at Native American but with a subtle greyish undertone. Normal, pitch-black hair fell in soft short waves around his head. However, his hair wasn’t long enough to conceal the last inch of his pointed, very non-human ears.
I swallowed hard and pulled my gaze from them to the two worry lines that marred his smooth, wide brow. The sight of his concern gave me the courage to continue, and I met his gaze.
His eyes captivated me. Swirling prisms of color, his irises contrasted the muddied backdrop of the whites of his eyes. The difference between the two was as scary as it was beautiful.
He held himself still as I continued to study him though his wide, full lips turned down in a slight frown. I noticed his lower lip protruded slightly as if he had an underbite. Before I had time to study his mouth further, I discerned a slight dent in his chin. Not quite a butt chin but still a strong one. My gaze drifted further down.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Why wasn’t he wearing a shirt?
I did a quick peek lower, and I breathed in relief at the sight of khaki cargo pants. Calmer, I went back to his chest. No hair sprinkled his skin there, everything lean muscle. He was right. He did blend well. Better than my first glimpse of him. I forced my eyes back up to his face, not wanting to be rude.
Seeing the real him without fear? Check.
“So, where exactly am I supposed to touch you?” I kept my voice low so no one would hear.
At the sound of my voice, the worry lines disappeared, and he smiled. When he did, I saw the reason behind the prominence of his lower lip. His lower two canines, longer than the rest, extended just enough to overlap his top teeth. The slight curve of them pushed against his lip, giving the illusion of an underbite. Definitely not human teeth.
He stepped forward and extended a hand to help me stand.
Fine, dark hair dusted the back of his hand. Normal enough. Sharp, black nails neatly tipped each digit. Not normal. I stared at them for a moment and struggled to push back at my rising fear. He patiently waited with his hand outstretched.
Please don’t shred me with those nails, I thought as I hesitantly lifted my hand.
His warm fingers closed around my own, and he gently tugged me to my feet. Since he was taller than me by a foot, I found myself staring at his chest. He didn’t release my hand. Instead, he pulled it up toward his chest while gently turning it so my palm would make first contact. Before I even touched him, I felt the heat radiating from his skin.
Once he placed my hand over his heart, he let go again and stood still for my inspection. The texture of his skin distracted me from my embarrassment.
I moved my fingers slightly to test what I felt. Soft, smooth skin covered hard muscle and the steady beat of his heart. Most women would kill for skin like that. The thought made me internally cringe. The women in our family had killed enough without envy of skin texture.
I became aware that I just stood there, lightly running my fingertips over his chest, and quickly stilled my movement. The last thing I needed was a mix-up in signals.
Without removing my hand, I looked up into his strange eyes.
“Have I met my part of the deal?”
“Almost,” he said quietly, flashing me another triumphant smile as he quickly stepped away from me. “Now, I get an hour of your time.” He reached behind him and lifted a shirt off the chair. I hadn’t even noticed he had clothes there.
The shirt mussed his hair when he tugged it over his head, and I noticed his ears weren’t the only thing hidden in those waves.
He had horns. A dull, black horn adorned each side of his head. The base of each, barely hidden within his hair, started at the edge of his temple. From there, the horn arched up and then back down before tilting up once more just at the end. Channels ringed the horns and almost gave them a carved look.
Given the color of his hair and the way it fell, the horns had been easy to overlook the first time. Now that I’d spotted them, though, I couldn’t unsee their impressive lengths or how the point of each ear only reached the middle of the horn.
The worry lines returned in his forehead, and I met his gaze as I scrambled for something to say.
“What are we going to do now?”
He stepped close and tilted his head to study me, his face now carefully blank.
“Are you frightened?”
“No,” I answered quickly. And I wasn’t. Not really. I liked this version of Morik. At least, I liked it a lot more than the shadowy one and the body-snatching one. But the sight of his horns had me wondering if there were other versions of Morik I hadn’t yet seen.
He continued to study me closely.
“You touched me without fear, but this,” he reached up with his right hand and ran his fingers over a horn, “bothers you?”
As he spoke, his long teeth played peekaboo with me. He was so different. There was so much to look at that it was hard not to stare at any one thing.
“You’re just different from what I imagined.” I dropped my eyes to his shirt. Fabric was safe. It was some vintage band t-shirt, and I wondered if he got it when the band was new. He was old enough.
“I’m sorry for staring,” I added, hoping the apology would help.
“I like when you look at me, Tessa. But I don’t want you to fear me.”
Cautiously, I met his eyes. We watched each other for a few minutes as the silence grew uncomfortable. My skin started to prickle in the cool room.
Though his gaze never left my face, I still felt weird standing in front of him in only my pajamas when he was now fully dressed. Not that I wanted him to take his shirt off again. That had been worse. My attention drifted to the sweatshirt on the chair behind him as I struggled for something safe to say.
“What do you do when you’re not busy with Belinda’s line?” I asked.
“I broker deals when called,” he said softly, regaining my attention.
“People still call you? Do you always have to answer? Like a genie or something?” I glanced at the sweatshirt again, wishing I were brave enough to reach around him and grab it.
“People will always know how to call me, and no, I don’t have to answer; but I usually do. It’s the only way I can interact with your kind.”
He watched me expectantly, a slight smile on his lips. It began to make me nervous. Wrapping my arms around myself, I sat on the edge of my bed and contemplated pulling a blanket over my shoulders.
He turned and grabbed my sweatshirt. He looked at it for a moment before stepping forward to hand it to me. “Why didn’t you just ask for it?”
“Uh…”
“I saw you look at it. You’re cold. Why didn’t you ask me to hand it to you? Or, why not reach for it yourself?”
I plucked the sweatshirt from his hands and quickly tugged it over my head. My words were briefly muffled.
“Because I don’t know the rules. If I ask you for something, am I making a deal with you? I don’t want to do what Belinda did and compound an already difficult situation with bad choices.” I couldn’t bring myself to answer his last question and hoped he wouldn’t notice. The truth was that the combination of his eyes, horns, off-colored skin, and ears unnerved me.
“Difficult situation?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that not every girl has to sleep when it’s dark out or touch a boy to figure out what kind of life she’ll have with him. My life is a difficult situation. I don’t want to make it worse.”
He nodded, sat down on the bed next to me, shoulder to shoulder, and set the light to the side. Shadow covered the side of his head facing me and hid his horn.
“You can ask me for anything, and I will try to do as you request. A deal isn’t necessary unless you want one. The only thing I cannot do is cancel a deal already made before a new deal replaces it.”
Averting my eyes, I changed the subject.
“So what do people usually ask you for?”
“Money.”
Involuntarily, I glanced back at him. “Where do you get the money from?”
I was curious how a being who couldn’t interact with the human world unless through a deal could get his hands on any currency. My guess was that his deals weren’t just limited to the US.
“That’s not an issue. I have existed for so long and made deals for so many different things that I can always trade what I have for what I need to meet a deal’s demands.”
“What was the first deal you ever made?”
“A boy wanted to marry a girl several steps above him. He asked for a way to become wealthy enough to marry her. I showed him how to carve combs from shells scavenged from the sea near his home. Once he mastered that, I taught him to adorn them with decorative carvings. We worked together at night for weeks. Many of his attempts broke. But, when he had three sets of hair combs, he was considered wealthier than anyone in the village.” Morik smiled at me and shrugged. “Instead of offering for the girl, he went to a bigger town to sell what he’d made.”
“How long ago was that?”
His eyes lost focus for a moment.
“More than four thousand years ago.”
“Holy crap!” I clapped a hand over my mouth and looked at the door, holding my breath. I felt him turn and look at me.
“No one heard,” he assured me. The light under the door remained unchanged as did the volume of the TV.
“What would you ask for?” he asked hesitantly.
When I focused on him again, he watched me with cautious eyes, and it took me a moment to realize why.
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t ask for money. That kind of deal has done nothing but cause me problems.”
A relieved smile flashed at me, an abrupt showing of white in the darkness. Then, we both grew quiet.
I’d only asked what he usually did when not chasing us down to see what he might have planned for his hour. Brokering deals was obviously out. Since I’d pretty much used up my conversation, I had no idea what else to do. I glanced at the clock. Only fifteen minutes had passed.
“Do you want to do something?” I asked, hoping he had an idea.
“What do you have in mind?”
Deflated, I shrugged. With the TV still on, leaving the room wasn’t an option. Whoever sat out there would freak out if they saw me still awake. I looked around the dark room, searching for anything. What would a four-thousand-year-old creature want to do?
On my shelf, I had games but games required light. Then I saw a box label glowing lightly. Perfect. Old people loved puzzles.
“Want to put together a glow-in-the-dark puzzle?”
“We can do whatever you like,” he said quietly.
I moved to the shelf, pulled down the puzzle, then cleared space on my desk. Every noise made me cringe. I probably had the only mom in the world who’d be okay with finding a boy in my room after dark. Yet, when it came to finding a…whatever he was…demon, possibly? Well, she’d act like any other mom and start screaming. Maybe worse.
Once the pieces were spread across the desktop, I turned to look at Morik. Only he wasn’t sitting on my rumpled blankets anymore. He stood just behind me, so when I turned I bumped into him.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
He reached around me and started to sift through the pieces, his arm brushing mine. I stepped to the side to give him more space. Not that there was much to give. With a long and narrow room, the bed took up most of the width between the door and the desk. The desk occupied the wall under the window. What little room remained, the chair and shelves claimed, leaving only a comfortable walkway throughout.
Looking at Morik, the chair, and the puzzle on the desk, I saw my mistake. One of us would be standing for the next half hour.
“I didn’t really think this through,” I whispered to him. A low rumbling laugh sounded from his direction, but I ignored it. “Maybe we should plan better for tomorrow. What time did you want to hang out?”
“After school.”
I hesitated to agree.
“I need some time to talk to my mom. How about you come over for dinner?” I paused. “Do you eat?”
He chuckled again but stayed focused on the puzzle.
“Yes. I eat. Are you sure your family is ready to meet me?”
“Now? No. But they will be by tomorrow night. If not, we can go somewhere else and grab something to eat.” Whether dinner here or dinner somewhere else, it was an easy hour. Much better than doing a puzzle with him in a dark bedroom.
The book light, still on the bed, created a sphere of light that didn’t quite reach where he stood. I wondered how much of the puzzle Morik really saw. He continued moving puzzle pieces around on the desk. Even standing beside him, I couldn’t see much of what he did. Was he just trying to look like he had something to do? Wasting time?
I remembered what he said when I was cold and decided to see how honest he’d been. “Would it be okay if we cut tonight short and make up the time tomorrow?”
That got his full attention. He turned to look at me, frowning slightly.
“You’re nervous.”
“No, I’m uncomfortable. There’s a difference.” He didn’t move or say anything.
“Look, we’re standing in my dark bedroom, whispering because I don’t want to get caught before I have a chance to break…well, you…to my mom. It’s like sneaking, and I don’t like it. It makes me uncomfortable.” And it did. Just not as much as those swirling multi-colored eyes or his horns or the lower canines that made surprise appearances. I needed time to adjust.
After a moment of silence, he nodded, and I relaxed slightly. However, with everything that happened, I doubted I would ever fall asleep tonight. Again, I tested his word to help me however he could without needing a deal.
“Hey, Morik? Would you chant me to sleep before you go? I don’t want Mom to know about our deal until I get a chance to talk to her.”
He walked toward me and gently nudged me toward the bed. As soon as the backs of my legs bumped the mattress, he stopped moving and started the chant. The rhythm matched what my family had spoken over me for years. Before he even touched me, I felt the tug of sleep. He helped me lay back and pulled the blankets over me.
When he bent down and leaned close to my face, my heart stuttered in fear. For a moment, I thought he would kiss me. Instead, he whispered in my ear.
“Tomorrow, I’ll give you a ride to school.”
Wait, what? I fell completely under the spell before I could say a word.
