Neon Blue E Frost (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📖

a passing cyclist to break the verdant silence. “Do you remember everything you see and hear?” And steal out of my brain.

“Nope. My head woulda exploded by now if I did.”

That makes me laugh a little.

He reaches out and puts his arm around my shoulders. The warmth of his body soaks through my sweater. I’m glad I didn’t put on the velvet jacket. Between his infernal heat and the fall sunshine, I’d be roasting. “You used to come up here a lot,” he says.

I nod. Before I made my pact with the Squire, I’d walk up the bike path to gather herbs at least once a week. Not as easy as the magic horse-method, but I could usually find the basics. I do now, too, as I spot a tuft of dock leaves growing at the base of a chain-link fence that separates the path from someone’s back yard. I disentangle myself from the demon, collect the leaves, and when I straighten, find him holding open the jute bag I brought from the car.

I didn’t even feel him slide it off my arm.

With a sigh, I lay the dock leaves in the bottom of the bag, careful not to crumple them, and take the bag back so he’s not carrying everything. He slides his arm around my shoulders again. “Just ‘cause I’m not in your head don’t mean I can’t tell what you’re thinkin’, sweetness. What’s got your panties in a twist?”

I shrug, but when he continues to eye me, I try to put my irritation into words. “Everything in my life is upside-down.”

Jou nods. “An’?”

“And? Does there have to be an ‘and’?”

“Is there?”

I lean my head against the solid warmth of his shoulder. “This thing . . . you wanting me to be your seggurach. I don’t know what to say, Jou. It scares the hell out of me.”

“Hell scares you, or I scare the hell outta you?”

I think that through. “Honestly, both.”

“Mmm.” The demon’s silent for a moment, like he’s considering. While he’s mulling, he drifts across the path, dragging me with him, and examines a brightly-colored flyer stapled to an electrical pole. “Fanelli’s Fabulous Flying Circus,” he reads off the flyer. “Relatives of yours?”

I glance at the flyer incuriously. My family rarely comes north of Pennsylvania. Another reason I decided to live in Boston. “No.”

“Mmm. Wanna go?”

I hunch one shoulder. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Get real. Going to a circus with you would end up like something out of Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

He chuckles. “I was thinkin’ more Johannes Cabal.”

“What?” I’ve never heard of that one, not even in any of my mainstream lit. courses, and I thought I’d read most books about magical circuses.

“Oh, yeah, that hasn’t been published yet. Never mind.”

“Jou!” I push away from him, but he reels me back and tucks me tight to his side before we continue up the path.

“Listen to me for a second,” he says, in his deepest tone, and I do listen, both because that dark-treacle voice is so arresting and because I know when he uses that tone he’s serious. “Th’ way I know about a book that hasn’t been published yet’s the same way I know about you. I got just enough foreknowledge to be annoyin’. Comes from being half-Noctil.”

I shrug. I have a touch of precognition, too, although mine’s not very useful. “What’s a Noctil?”

“Type of demon.”

“I thought you were Butter Pecan.”

He grins hugely. “I can see enough to know you’ll be important to me. Not how or when, but you will. That’s why I bound you. That’s why I want you t’be my seggurach. So I can keep you by my side. An’ I swear to you, I protect what’s mine. I’ll keep you safe.”

His idea of safety and mine are so far apart. “I was safe, Jou. I was perfectly fine. You want to know why I’m angry, well, there it is. You’ve crashed into my life and turned everything upside-down because I’ll be important to you at some point. Don’t you see how self-centered that is? What about what I want?”

“The things you’re clingin’ to, this vision you got of a perfect life, it’s just an illusion, sweetness.”

“But it’s my illusion, Jou.”

He hangs his head. Scuffs his boots a little as we walk. “Yeah, I hear you.”

I hate it when he does this. Looks vulnerable and unsure. Because it undermines all the anger that I’m clinging to. “Jou, dammit. Okay, I’m not saying ‘no.’ I’m just saying not yet. Please, I’m not ready. Everything I saw and your harem and everything? It scares the life out of me. I know you want to go back—”

“I’m not in any rush,” he interjects.

“But your family?”

“They’re doin’ just fine. Probably safer without me there, since the Old Man’s pissed at me. I got no reason to hurry back.” He steers me to the other side of the path, and then up a small grassy hill. The houses that border the bike path are set back here and there’s a long expanse of browned lawn overlooking the path, screened from the houses by a row of pine trees. “Forget all that for now. This looks the business,” he says and begins unpacking the hamper. A plaid blanket goes down on the grass. Plates and napkins, silverware and glasses. No plastic for this picnic. Jou fills the plates with fried chicken, dill-flecked potato salad, roasted corn, a green salad, and, just when I think the plate is going to shatter under the weight of all the food, a wedge of pecan pie.

“You did not make that,” I say, nodding at the pie.

“Nigella,” he says. “Extra vanilla; no corn syrup. It’s the shit. Have a seat, sweetness.”

I sit, and pick up my plate, and descend into gastronomic paradise. The fried chicken has a buttermilk crust. Light and crunchy. Dearie dubbleskey, it’s even better than my Dala’s, which is heresy. I try to banish that thought as I chomp through a second piece, and then a third. Yum.

The demon finishes before I do, stretches