I bit my lip while I debated sharing just how crazy I was. I decided to ask Maximus to hand me my cigarettes, then climbed back into bed and lit one. I explained what happened with the snake and my mother, what she said, what she looked like, and then went back to the first times I’d seen her in the mirror back in BC.
“It’s getting worse,” he remarked, and motioned for me to give him a cigarette too.
“Bunch of moochers,” I muttered, but still lit one for him.
“So now do you see, even just a little, how the tears between the worlds could become worse when you and Perry are together? Just standing beside each other your energies attract amazing things, mainly malevolent things. Now…well, since you guys started screwing each other on a daily basis, that energy has multiplied. Your chemistry dissolves through walls and windows. You make a gatekeeper job much harder.”
I ignored the screaming pain my chest. That urge to find Perry in her room and make the sweet love to her that I was so damn addicted to. It figured we would make and break worlds by our coupling, because damn, when I was deep in thrusts of our souls and hearts and bodies, it felt like something so much more.
It was going to f**king ruin me to never have that again.
“You’re doing good, Dex,” Maximus said, reading my face. “Maybe a little harsher than I’d be, but I guess Perry is the type of woman to try and fight for you anyway.”
“Please,” I croaked, the cigarette shaking in my hand. “I can’t hear this anymore.”
Maximus changed the subject. “So tell me about your mother. Why do you think it wasn’t her? What was she?”
I shook my head sharply, not ready to go down that road at this time of night. “Something else I’d rather not talk about. Tell me something. Tell me about Rose.”
His features froze, his skin turning pale so that every scattering of freckles stood out. Ah ha. Now here was the thing that Maximus didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t care though. If I had to deal with Perry and my dead mother, he was going to talk about Rose. There was a story there and I had to hear all of it. I was going to go Barbara Walters on his ginger ass whether he liked it or not.
I stared at him, prodding him with my eyes. He stared right back then sighed. He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and sat down on it. It was only then that I realized he slept in a plaid pajama set, like a lumberjack Hugh Hefner. Figured.
“Rose…” He began, then puffed hard on the cigarette. “Rose was my next chance. After I screwed things up with you, I had to make good.”
“Why? What happens otherwise, does someone come after you? Jacob PD?”
“In a way. We aren’t really governed by anyone in particular, it’s just kind of instinctual.”
“So no one Jacobs the Jacobs?” I smirked.
“No. Not really. There is a network through the Veil; you’ll get images, see people you’re supposed to help. If you don’t help them, the images become more vivid. You start to hear voices and you get this gut instinct that just tells you what to do. When I…when I decided I couldn’t guide you in any way, I expected to get backlash from it. Maybe I’d get sick or something until I found you again. But I didn’t…later I met another Jacob who explained the exception. I asked how he knew that—he just smiled and said he knew and that’s all. So obviously I wasn’t as in tune with my purpose as I thought, or…I don’t know. Maybe I was forsaken.”
We were getting off the topic of Rose, but I had to ask, “So where were you born, really?”
“I wasn’t born.”
“Okay, jackass. So when did you remember coming into existence? You must have had parents…”
He shook his head. “No parents. I just woke up one day in Louisiana, in a small apartment in Baton Rouge, in almost the same body I have right now. I knew who I was, what my purpose was, and I took it from there. It sounds crazy, and now that I know your world, it is crazy. But that’s the only way I can explain it. Whoever I was before, I don’t know. How long has this body been around? I don’t know that either. But I do know I will die one day and this body will die with me. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed.”
This was just too f**king weird. Fucked up sprinkles on a slice of psycho shit cake. “Back to Rose…”
He cringed. “I tried to ignore Rose for as long as I could. After I left you, I went around the USA exploring for a bit. It was amazing, to just be living and not have any duties. I started to think that if I was forsaken or forgotten, that it would be okay. I’d be happy with that. I could live a free life like everyone else. But then the images started coming. I’d see Rose in my dreams, and hoooo-boy, I’d see her whole life flash before my eyes. Her as a young girl working on a farm, dancing with boys at high school parties, serving people at a bar. Then I started seeing the images in broad daylight, over and over again, and the Veil started ripping open and I knew that if I just walked through it, I’d be right there with her. That I had to show her the gifts she had, the gifts I could sense were starting to manifest. She had been seeing demons in the dark, things out of the corners of her eyes. Sometimes she’d be staring at a spot right before her, and I could see that demon as it made its way through the Veil and right to her feet. She knew something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t really see it. If only she knew what she could do to drive the demon back into the Veil. But she didn’t. I had to teach her that.”
“It travels between both worlds, from the Kalunga to here, through the layers, through the Veil, just like me,” I said absently.
“What?”
“What my mother said to me, about the snake she called Li Grand Zombi.”
He nodded. “Some things get through. And some people, like Rose, they have the ability to put them back.”
“And now we’re getting dangerously close to Buffy the Vampire Slayer territory,” I said.
His lips jerked up in a quick smile. “Not quite. For one, we’re missing a Giles.”
“I guess you could be Giles now. You’re getting old.”
He glared at me. “I am. But it’s still not funny.”
“Back to Rose…”
“Back to Rose. So one day I just bit the bullet and stepped through, right into Nameless. I introduced myself to her and asked if they needed help. The universe makes things happen for us. I knew I’d get the job, like I’ve gotten most jobs.”