“Did everything go okay?”
“It did. All is well.”
That makes me happy. I want to ask what he did with the monster head after I lost sight of him but when I open my mouth again, I yawn. Jaak lowers me down to the bed and pulls the covers over me.
“Rest now, my heart.”
I wakeup once during the night. It’s a normal occurrence for me. Sometimes I wake up after a dream and things feel wobbly, like it could be real or not. Those are the worst nights when I have to figure out if I’m awake or not. I hate that when I open my eyes I’m not particularly sure. The bed feels normalish but I can’t be sure. It’s new. This room is not mine. Across the room the fire still burns but it’s low, just a muted orange now instead of the bright red and yellow it was before. Seeing it calms me though. I’m so used to that warm light meaning I’m safe.
I start to push myself up to get a better look around the room and that’s when I see Jaak. He’s sitting in a chair by the window. Feet propped up on the window ledge and his chin in his hand. He doesn’t move a muscle, so much so that he looks like a marble statue.
I clear my throat and half expect him not to answer me when I say his name, but all it takes is me barely getting out the first sound of his name before his head is turning my way.
“Jaak, what are you doing over there?”
“Keeping watch, my heart. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“Sometimes I wake up,” I tell him and push myself up into a sitting position. The massive wooden headboard is cool against my back. The bed is a sleigh bed style affair, heavy and wide, the mattress is so big that I could roll five times and not hit the other side. I didn’t even know they made mattresses this huge.
He nods once and rubs his jaw. “So you do. I’d forgotten.”
That has my attention. I tug the blankets up around me and watch Jaak. “When you say you saw my memories, you really did see everything, didn’t you?”
He dips his head in a nod. “I did. It was fragments at first. Just a moment here and there but the dreams, you called them night terrors, those made the difference.” I bite my lip when Jaak says night terrors. I’ve been the only one calling them that for so long. My mother got the diagnosis somehow. I don’t even know how much she paid that Outsider doctor to take a look at me when she was meant to be working in the Founders’ offices but she did. My family was one of the more respected ones, not a Founding Family but close.
I guess that kind of proximity to the top came with some perks for my mother to use to figure out what was wrong with me. She thought I was demon-possessed when I was a kid.
“You’re not right. There’s something wrong with you. You didn’t get this from me.”
I’d been six the first time she said that.
The doctor had made things a little better. Not much but it was something. At least my mother stopped trying to convince my father I was possessed. I know that if she hadn’t been banking on me being chosen as a Blossom she would have ratted me out to the Founders and let them decide what happened to me but having a Blossom for a daughter was a prize in Sweet Tooth. Buffy had found the records they’d kept, the money sent to families of Blossoms, the increased rations and only the bestwork assignments. If you wanted the high life in Sweet Tooth all you had to do was murder one of your daughters. Easy peasy.
I pull my knees close and wrap my arms around them before I rest my chin on them. “Why?”
“I’m not sure,” he says and shifts in his seat, tilting his head to the side to look at me. He’s relaxed, languid, like a big cat stretched out in the sun but in this case he’s a demon basking in the moonlight. “Maybe it was because the night terrors were memories of beings closer to me that made it easy for me to find you. Whatever the reason, when you had a night terror it was like a beacon. It pulled me completely out of the madness and brought me straight to you. Before the hexes and time had stolen my mind, I’d been able to planeswalk. I was strong enough to do this even in such a place as this. Little by little I lost my ability to do it. I was confined to that Hell Maw just as the Fates intended until you called to me.”
“There was a light. The one that I saw in your cave…it was in my dreams and I get that it was you now but I think I still don’t understand why. I mean, on a level I do, you said you didn’t like an unfair fight but why would a demon care about a random human girl.”
Jaak drums his fingers against the arm of the chair. “You are not random. No one is. Even the most insignificant souls have a purpose and a place in the worlds. You were no different. You were important to me because you existed. Even more so when your presence lifted the fog of my lunacy. I knew then that you were well and truly special, and I did my best to protect you even with my limitations.”
I smile at him. “In the Before Times only one other person has ever told me I’m important.”
“Who was it?”
“My best friend, Buffy. She was the one they thought they were ambushing tonight to sacrifice to you,” I pause and then add, “You’d like her.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She’s strong, a lot stronger than me. She would have caused major chaos and destruction all on her own to those mages, and because she’s brave, too.”
“And what are you then? You stepped forward tonight,” Jaak says.
“I did.”
“That is bravery, is it not? Why would you do this?”
I give him a rueful smile. “Maybe it’s bravery and maybe it’s stupidity, because even if I’m not that useful, I will always protect my friends. Besides, she saved me before when I almost got offed at my first demon sacrifice. It’s only right that I risk my neck for her.”
