Furious

Chapter Seven

The panic attacks had been the worst in sixth grade, right after Dad left for the last time. I was having them so frequently that the doctors wanted to put me on medication for it—anxiety meds to counter whatever was causing me to panic so often, so severely.

Enter my therapist and a whole lot of breathing exercises, meditation, and mantras. The therapist I saw for a year, hated for a year, who gave me the tools I needed to deal with the fear of being left behind. Recognizing and acknowledging it lessened the panic attacks to virtually zero. Even considering recent events.

"I thought that might help but I never expected you to knock yourself out. Training you is going to take a significantly larger effort than we anticipated." His goading was ignored. Consciousness regained, I gently pushed myself up into a seated position. My knees must have given out right after I cracked my skull against the mirror. I rubbed the back of my head and frowned. Can't say I've ever knocked myself out before.

The lamia lapped up the juice from his fingers as he stood and retreated into the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, "Didn't know you were so strong, did you. If you're done being panicked for no reason, I wasn't finished. I'm Jasper, friendly neighborhood lamia, here for all your comfort needs and cooking."

I almost laughed; Jasper was far from comforting. Luckily he had disappeared into the kitchen and missed the choked guffaw I stopped in my throat; otherwise he might try to offer me another bleeding fruit.

"I'm not hungry, thanks," I called sarcastically to Jasper. Then I couldn't stop myself from asking, "What are you going to do with it? The fruit, I mean."

One hand busy massaging my head, I used the free one to search. There had to be another way out, a secret passage or hidden door, I just had to find it. I tipped back each book on the nearest shelf in turn, upsetting the dust that lay peacefully on the wood planks. Nothing. My free hand ran along the wallpaper, searching for a tear or hinge or cold spot.

"The pomegranate? I'm going to dig its insides out and serve it to you on a silver platter," came Jasper's deadpan reply, followed by a bark of genuine laughter that didn't belong in a monster's mouth. "You sure you don't want any? Pomegranates are a fall fruit where you come from, you know."

I did not; I'd never eaten a pomegranate before. Mom was never big on fruits. We ate a lot of macaroni and cheese and pizza—so I could identify a pineapple when it was covered in grease and cheese, but not so much a pomegranate. Yet the orange and red fruit was oddly familiar. "How did you know aroma therapy would make the panic attack stop?"

Jasper took too long coming up with an answer. I didn't know if he didn't have one or chose to ignore me. Either way my curiosity wasn't strong enough to ask again.

Using both hands to strengthen the search, I opened drawers in the tables only to find more dust. No clues in the bookshelves or the tables or the dust; I rushed to the nearest painting—a dark city, the yellow-gold specks of paint depicting lights shining out into the night air—and gingerly lifted the corner of the gilded frame away from the wall, enough to peek behind it.

Nothing but wallpaper.

Jasper's voice startled me and I dropped the painting, which thudded against the wall, chiding me for touching it in the first place. "Regrettable, really." Was the pomegranate regrettable? "He should have managed this better."

"What do you mean?" I asked, scanning the room for anywhere else that a hidden door might hide, knowing I wouldn't find anything.

"Come in here so I can stop yelling at you and I'll tell you," Jasper called, sounding very much like my mother. I mentally vowed to continue the search when I had more information and walked over to the kitchen doorway.