The Tales of Flesh and Blood

The White-Picket Fence And Doom

We managed to make it out of the apartment complex okay, but I was not so dull in the mind to not notice the looks Jaxon was receiving when we walked out to the street. It made me wonder what kept them from jumping him right then and there, and then I decided that I really did not care. Maybe they were still shaken up from the presence of an officer to risk having one back out here. It was a good thing Hadi and I were never one to keep mementos. 

I was pretty sure that we were not going to be welcomed back here again - or at least, that we were going to get tons of trouble if we did. We were not above shootings and fights, but the way Ven's apartment had been ransacked, and the jumpy way I've been acting was enough to make everyone else nervous. Not to mention, somebody probably knew that Port was wanting me to do something extremely risky, while someone else had their suspicions about Frenice. We knew how to deal with each other. It was another thing when someone brought someone from the outside in.

Jaxon was driving the familiar lemon of a car, and he'd waited to drive until we watched Hadi and Joey leave the parking lot. I was damn tired, but I forced myself to stay awake as we drove in mostly-silence until I felt like I was going to explode.

"I'm sorry you have to go through this," Jaxon said eventually. I snorted softly, having a strange sense of deja vu. Just a little over an hour ago, I was having a conversation in much the same manner with Frenice.

"Sorry you got involved," I gruffed out in reply. Jaxon slowed down as we hit a red light. When he came to a full stop, he turned his direction on me.

"When I saw you," he pointed to his eye, "with the bruises, I thought you were with them. That maybe you did something they did not like and taught you a lesson."

I smiled. Why was I smiling?

"They tortured a child," I whispered, and I realized that I wasn't smiling at all. My lips were trembling beneath the effort of trying not to cry. Get yourself together. "And they were prepping a woman to do the same to her. And the giants . . ." I buried my face in my hands. "The fucking giants. I swear, if one more person mentions the word 'giants', I'm going to get arrested for capital murder."

Jaxon hesitated. He might have said something more, but at the gentle tug of the car moving forward, I guessed the light had just turned green again. I looked up in time for him to turn left. I gave him a quizzical glance, my eyes slightly blurry from having them pressed against my palms.

"So what was all that about, anyway? The whole it-would-be-nice-to-go-on-a-date-with-a-girl- my-parents-did-not-set-up thing. That was a setup to see where I was? Were you with Ven?"

Jaxon kept his eyes on the road when he answered.

"No - I don't know who that is. And my father approached me asking to keep an eye on you."

I slumped back in my seat and tried to let my exhaustion knock me out. I was too fed up with everything else to deal with this. People were set to kill me. I did not need to deal with boy problems, either - even if I wasn't buying what he was telling me. Especially that last part of the sentence. He knew how to bluff his way in and out of things, but he didn't sound comfortable speaking those words.

"Keeping an eye on you does not mean asking you out," Jaxon said softly, right before I was nearly asleep. 

The car stopped, and I heard him shifting the car out of transmission before turning the key. The slight rumble that had rocked beneath me for the past half-hour went to a halt. I opened my eyes to see that we had stopped in front of what looked like one of those old, antique homes that should have been reserved for historical field trips. The only reason it did not strike me as out of place was because the neighboring houses gave me a similar vibe.

It was painted a beautiful pastel blue, with a couple of flowerpots set firmly on the two windowsills next to a slim, oak-wood door. A small, tidy porch complimented the equally tiny lawn that stretched the whole ten feet from the side of the house to the picket fence that blocked the property from the street. I had no problem envisioning a petite housewife sweeping imaginary dust from her home while her kid and maybe a dog played in the grass. Why would Jaxon bring me here? 

I turned to give him a sideways look, and he shot me a shy smile. It was oddly out-of-place for his suit that gave off that let's get down to business vibe. 

"I would have done it even if I didn't know what was going on." I had to shake myself from my confusion to recognize that he was continuing his statement from a few moments ago.

"Why would you risk your life for a girl you barely know?" I asked, then shook my head. "You know what, don't answer that. I don't want to know how much of an obsessive stalker you are when I'm about to sleep under your roof."

Jaxon gave me a weird look, opened his mouth, then sighed. Shaking his head, he opted not to say anything and opened his door. I followed suit, trailing behind him as he locked the car and made way to the white-picket fence. It felt wrong, being about to enter a house such as the one we were about to go into. As if I was about to step through some sort of time-altering portal that would send us back a hundred years while I was dressed in my hoodie and jeans. When Jaxon fished out his keys to unlock the house, I half-expected to find a bunch of people clothed in dresses and tailcoats with tobacco pipes stuck firmly between the men's lips.

The interior was as old-fashioned as the exterior. A large, clean window took up nearly the entire wall on one side of the living area to let in light - and after a quick observation, I realized just how old the house really was. It had to have been built before electricity was common, because there were no outlets from what I was able to see through the dark. Watching Jaxon pulling a flashlight from his back pocket only confirmed my suspicions.

The entire area was circular, without proper hallways. An old-fashioned stove was perched in the far right, standing nearly as tall as me and just as wide. Definitely not something I've ever seen before. A sink stood next to that, with a couple of large wooden barrels perched next to the sink. The floor was made of polished wood except for the area surrounding the stove, to which smooth, carefully crafted stone took its place. A round wooden table sat in the middle of it all, big enough to seat ten chairs all around. A few bookshelves decorated the areas next to the large window with a few reading chairs and sofas scattered about.

It was all so odd. I wasn't an expert when it came to older things and styles, but I was pretty sure that whoever decorated the house wasn't one, either. A single door directly across from me was the only sign that there might be more to the place.

It was this very door that Jaxon led me to after he locked the front one, sliding only the deadbolt into place, because there was no lock on the doorknob.

And behind door number two was a long flight of stairs that curved downwards.