Chapter 14

It was a typical gray and gloomy day in the Black Hills, though for once, no wind. That was almost a minor miracle in this place.

I was tempted to head back to my trailer, try and take a nap and then maybe call Grace a little later, but honestly, I had no desire to be alone. I didn’t think, but headed where my feet guided me, which just so happened to be our version of the chow hall. It was a large, nondescript, army green tent set several hundred yards behind the carnival proper.

I walked inside, dropped my cold box of doughnuts onto the nearest bench with a loud thud. Several heads turned in my direction.

Bubba got up, mug of something in his hand—you never know what it is with him, coffee, cocoa, blood—and nodded at the box. “What’s that?” he asked, voice sleep roughened, yet no less sexy.

His eyes were blood shot, his skin pinched. He looked ashen; clearly I wasn’t the only one suffering from a case of insomnia. Bubba yawned while scratching the back of his head, looking at me curiously, as if wondering why I stared at him so long. I couldn’t help but wonder where he’d been that he should look so bad.

“Doughnuts, whoever wants can have,” I finally said with an indifferent shrug.

He flicked open the box, grabbed two, placed one in his mouth, then grabbed another. I shook my head; we should be the fattest people on Earth.

I grabbed a foam cup, poured some hot water into it, grabbed a tea bag—all they had left was Earl Gray, not my favorite, but I could force it down when I had to—then I stalked over to one of the empty benches and sat.

My head was pounding, felt like someone had taken a blunt object to it and kept pounding away at the base of my skull. I groaned, steeping the tea and tried to ignore the chatter around me.

I felt movement beside me. I glanced up to find Vyxyn sitting down.

“What do you want?” I growled, rubbing a circle at my temple.

She sat a Tupperware bowl down on the table, popped open the plastic seal and proceeded to pretend like I hadn’t even talked. In the dim twilight of morning her hair looked an even more absurd shade, more like a cotton candy pink. She had on no makeup and wore a pair of Hello Kitty flannel pants and sweater top. She began eating.

I wrinkled my nose when I caught a whiff of the food, my stomach complained violently. “That smells like rotten fish.” I held my cup up to my nose to try and mask the odor with the lemony zest of the tea.

“It’s called seaweed salad.”

I eyed the stuff. It was green, slimy, and smelled even worse that it looked. I ushered her away. “Well get it away from me, makes me feel like I’m gonna yak.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a baby, Pandora. If anyone’s gonna move, it’s not gonna be me.”

In that moment I hated her. All I’d wanted was peace and solitude, why had she come and sat down next to me? To make me more miserable? Actually, now that I thought about it, that was probably why exactly.

I snarled and scooted to the far end of the bench, all the other tables were taken up, or I’d have moved to a different one completely.

Vyxyn laughed, curled a long length of slime around her fork and made a giant show of slowly dropping it into her mouth with a happy sigh as she chewed. “Mmm...mmm,” she said, “sure you don’t want some?”

Bubba, Stryker, and a few others came and sat down on either side of us, sparing me the sudden urge to snap my fangs at the wench.

“That stuff reeks,” Bubba said a few seconds later and pinched his nose shut. “I think you oughta take it out back and put it out of its misery.”

I chuckled, raised my brows and pinned Vyxyn with an I-told-you-so look. She twisted her mouth.

“I’ll have you know I got this stuff at Neo’s. A five star restaurant, I might add.” She said it as if we should be envious of her.

Bubba’s brows gathered. “How much money you pay for that garbage? Why I’ll go to one of our dumpsters out back and pull out some slop for ya if you’re hard up for turd salad. I’ll only charge half a what they do. What you say?” He grinned, and Stryker elbowed him in the rib, laughing as if he’d never heard anything funnier.

I sipped on my tea, but the biting banter between Vyx and Bubba was only making my headache worse. It had been a bad idea to come here.

When I left, no one noticed or tried to stop me. I still didn’t want to be alone though, Luc was out of the question, the tent was a no go, there was only one person I hadn’t seen. Before I left the tent, I checked to see if there were any leftover doughnuts. One. I grabbed it with a napkin then walked toward Kemen’s place.

It was one of those silver bullet looking trailers, a little rusted around the undercarriage, he rarely got up the energy to keep up with the maintenance. I knocked on the door. No response.

I peeked inside. “Kemen,” I called, “you here?”

I heard a faucet running.

It was dark inside. He’d hung several thick blankets over the windows to keep out almost any trace of light. I swatted at the flying dust motes when I stepped inside. His living room was a sea of clothes; it cluttered the floor so you could barely make out the tan carpet. His table might as well have been a giant waste bin. It was riddled with empty pizza boxes and cans of beer.

By the lack of smell, I knew the laundry was clean, just not folded. He’d thrown away any food before it had a chance to rot and stink up the place. But that was the extent of his cleaning. My lips twitched, poor thing, maybe I’d help him organize before I left.

I took a deep breath, already feeling some of the tension creep out of my body. There was something about being around Kemen that soothed me. He wasn’t like the other demons and it was a nice change of pace.

The faucet turned off, then Kemen stepped out of the bathroom. “Pandora.” He sounded startled. He ran his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture. “What are you doing here?”

I kicked a pile of clothes to the side, cutting a path to the couch. “I...” I frowned. “Well, I’m not sure. First I was at Luc’s, then I went to the mess hall, and now,” I shrugged, “I’m here.”

“You can’t sleep can you?” he asked, knowledge evident in his liquid amber gaze.

My shoulders slumped. “Guilty as charged.”

He smiled, eyeing the bundle in my hand. “What’s that?”

I held it up before me. “Peace offering?”

He ushered me toward him. “C’mon.” Then he headed into the bedroom, which again, aside from the bed itself, was a veritable pig sty.

I handed him the doughnut. He polished it off in three bites. I crawled onto the bed, glancing at the floor around me. Instead of clothes, it was books that littered the carpet.

Things like: Journey of Souls. Tackling the Afterlife. So, you’re dead; now what? Gods and mythology. Major Gods of the Ancient World.

I frowned, picked up a thick book, never realizing Kemen liked to read and also a little wigged out by the titles. “What’s all this, Kemen?” I asked, waving a copy of The study of Hubris as it relates to Gods , under his nose. “I never knew you to be a religious sorta guy.”

He took the book from my hand and tossed it back to the floor. “Don’t you ever wonder about that stuff? What happens after we kick the big one?”

I hugged my arms to my chest, rubbing my hands up and down. “I try never to think about it.” I looked at him, and saw in his face the raw truth of the pain we all grappled with. Could a thing who’d never had a choice to be good or evil, someday find peace? I shook my head. “No, I never think about it. I never want to know.”

He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. I wasn’t going to ask him if he’d ever contemplated suicide. We all have at some point. Life isn’t fair, it isn’t perfect, but it’s all that’s guaranteed. I’d respect Kemen’s decision to decide for himself; but it would never mean I’d stop caring. I grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

He looked at me then, gave a lopsided, half-hearted grin and shook his head. “Of course, Pandora, I know that. I just wonder.”

He stared at the wall over my head and I couldn’t stand it. Not from him. “Would you like me to grab my guitar?”

I don’t know why, I don’t think I’m a particularly good singer, but he’d always loved listening to me. Especially when mired in an existential crises.

“That’d be nice,” he said.

I nodded, ported back to my house, grabbed my guitar and rejoined him a second later. I grabbed the chair from under his computer desk, sat down and started to tune it. “Any requests,” I asked, around the pick in my mouth.

“Three Libras?”

“Ahh yes,” I nodded, taking the guitar pick out of my mouth and gave him a wide grin, “the depressing angst of A Perfect Circle, just what we need to hear on this fine morning.”

He snorted and I started playing. The song wasn’t really designed for an acoustic, but I made it work.

Kemen laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes, a semi-formed smile on his lips. His chest rose and fell, his breathing grew longer and more steady. Sloth began to work its magick on me. I had to fight to finish the song, my eyelids felt so heavy, my eyes full of grit and painful to blink.

I’m sure my voice warbled at the end, but somehow I managed to finish. I set the guitar aside and hung my head, pretty sure I could fall asleep right there on the chair.

Kemen cracked an eye open, then patted the bed. “I got room,” he said.

I smiled, because I knew with him this wouldn’t turn into an invitation for more, Kemen understood me in a way others couldn’t. I crawled onto the bed; we shifted around for a bit until we got comfortable.

I laid my head on his big chest, soothed by the sound of his beating heart and slow and steady breathing. He played lazily with my hair and I smiled, snuggling in deeper and inhaling the masculine cool scent of his body.

“Sandman,” I whispered, almost too tired to speak, “I think I love you.”

My cheek vibrated with the rumble of his laughter. “Sleep now, Pandora. I’ll keep you safe.”

I sighed, and tucked myself deeper into his body, my foot played along the length of his calf.

He pressed a gentle kiss on the crown of my head and I slept.