Break Away (Away, Book 1) (25 page)

Gran used to tell me that one should fear
living beings and not the dead ones, because what could they do to
you besides spook you in the night? I'd always disagreed with her,
though, because dealing with living things was easier and
more
predictable. You could get physical with them and even
stride out victoriously. With the dead, everything was
unpredictable. For starters, you could never get physical with
them. That was a hell of a disadvantage. Two, you never knew how
they would react or what they would do, because the Limbo's rules
were as mysterious to us as the Mona Lisa—and uncertainty was
pretty darn frightening. And three, there really didn't need to be
a third reason. Ghosts were the scariest thing in the world,
period.

In that moment however, with those searing,
blue eyes fixed on us, my view on the matter was definitely
changing.

“Ah, Nero, you sweet thing, don't scare our
guests,” Comus said calmly, as if this wasn't a matter of life and
death but a jovial encounter between the house pet and the unknown
visitors. “Here, kitty kitty…”

To our surprise, the beast turned its head at
the sound of those words and walked back to Comus, where an
expectant hand was waiting to brush its white fur. The animal
rubbed its head against Comus' hip in pleasure, moaning and purring
like a big cat. No, scratch that. More like releasing a soft,
gentle growl.

That's when I noticed the purple collar
wrapped around its thick neck. I took a small step around Ian and
asked in astonishment, “Is that your—”

“Pet?” Ian finished for me.

“No,” Comus smiled, looking down at it with
warmth and love. “He's much more than that. Nero is my best
friend.”

The thump of shoes clomping against the floor
reached my ears. I turned to the side and spotted a panting Midlo
climbing up the wide staircase in a rush. “Sir,” he breathed out
and bent to rest his hands on his knees. “Nero wanted to…come
and…look for you, but I told him…
not to
,” he said, directing
his accusing glare at the four-hundred-pound pet, “That you were
busy, and he still decided to dart away and interrupt you,
sir.”

Incredibly, Nero lowered his head as if
ashamed and hid behind Comus.

“But he's a tiger! A
full-fledged
tiger!” Ian said, shocked.

“A white tiger,” I added in a soft and
whispery tone, still too shaken to fill my lungs to their full
capacity.

“Yes, isn't he beautiful?” Comus said, filled
with glowing pride. Now that he wasn't growling and a tad of calm
had settled in, I could see how beautiful and majestic this animal
truly was. His fur was white as snow, with pitch-black stripes. His
nose was tipped a lovely pink and cute, white whiskers were about
his mouth and chin. The aquamarine color of his exotic eyes though,
had to be the most striking part of him.

Figuring he'd been forgiven, Nero walked
around Comus and started licking his leg.

“Yes, my friend, you haven't done anything
wrong,” Comus told him, petting his head and the spot behind his
ears. “I'm glad you joined us, in fact. Let me introduce you to our
guests.” Comus looked at us.

Nero stopped his loving caresses and laid his
stare on us.

“Don't let him come near us,” Ian said
immediately, pushing me behind him with his arm.

“He's friendly. You don't need to fear him,”
Comus said, cocking his head to the side as if amused of our wary
reaction.

“He's a tiger!” Ian said, as if that was
reason enough.
“Is it even legal to have one?”

“I assure you,” Midlo suddenly said, “that
Nero is very docile and welcoming.”

“You people are crazy!” Ian shook his head.
“That tiger is probably bigger than you on his four legs!” he told
Midlo. “He's wild in nature. You can't keep him inside a
house.”

“Oh, but this is much more than a house,”
Comus said, opening his arms to prove his point. “There's enough
space for him to run and move around as he pleases. And he
fills
this place, don't you think?”

“What I
think
is that you should
fill
this place with lots of bloodhounds instead of a giant
predator.”

Comus wrinkled his nose. “I don't like
canines. They're too whiny and needy. I'm a feline devotee.”

“Get hundreds of cats then, not a freaking
tiger!”

Nero stretched his mouth wide open and
yawned, displaying four spine-chilling fangs that screamed danger
in capital letters.

“Jesus,” Ian muttered, noticing the same
thing I had. “Just get him out of our way.”

“He's harmless,” Comus encouraged.

“Yeah?” Ian snorted. “Tell that to all the
people that thought the same thing and ended up with one of their
claws or fangs deep into their thighs or neck. I see Animal Planet,
you know.”

“Nero is different,” Comus insisted.
“Besides, the collar around his neck helps to keep his spirit
peaceful and balanced.”

I dropped down my eyes to the purple band and
looked at it in detail. The collar had large, square shaped
crystals on it that had been polished and rounded on the corners.
“Are those amethyst crystals?” I asked, recognizing the beautiful
purple color in them.

“Yes!” Comus clapped his hands in excitement.
The echo bounced off the limestone walls and made a concerto of
strident claps all around. “In fact, Smooch was the one who told me
to put it around Nero. He said the gently sedative energy of the
amethyst would bring peace and emotional stability to Nero's
spirit. It has worked perfectly until now,” he added, stroking the
crystals on the collar.

Nero stuck out his tongue in languid
approval.

Ian let out a dry chuckle. “You mean, your
friend from Chimera”—he did quotes with his fingers—”told you to
use a bunch of stones to appease a tiger?”

“They're not ordinary stones, he-fledgling,”
Comus said. “Amethyst is purple quartz, a very powerful crystal
that works on psychic and spiritual realms.”

Ian sighed loudly. “Here we go again with
that spiritual, dimensional crap.”

“Work out your potholes, he fledgling.” Comus
pointed his finger to his head. “Work them out…”

“I already told you I do
not
have—”

This time Nero cut him off with what sounded
like a soft, complaining growl.

“Well said Nero,” Comus told him with a
chortle.

If I wouldn't have been so afraid, and my
veins filled with so much ice, I would've found this funny and
laughed. But, oh God, I was so far from feeling at ease with this
beautiful and deadly animal, so far that I was going to have
trouble sleeping tonight in my stunning bed.

“Sir,” Midlo said, as if asking permission to
speak. “I also came to tell you that dinner is ready to be
served.”

“Wondeeerful!” Comus screeched, shaking his
fists in the air like they were maracas. “I'm positively starving.”
He dashed to the staircase between little, happy jumps, with Nero
following him in that languid way of his.

Midlo stayed behind with us and asked, “Are
you joining Mr. Muslo?”

Ian and I looked at each other with the same
concern flickering in our eyes. Since we had too much on the line,
like our lives, I decided to voice it. “Is Nero joining Comus, as
well?”

Midlo nodded. “He always keeps Mr. Muslo
company during dinner,” he said. “But he's been already fed if that
is your worry.”

Wouldn't we be lucky if that was our only
worry?

I looked at Ian. “It will be rude if we don't
go,” I told him, knowing my choices. Comus still hadn't told me how
to get Buffy back exactly, and the last thing I needed was him
holding a grudge against me for rejecting his best buddy, Nero.

“It's your call,” Ian said, giving me the
chance to think this over again.

I nodded.

Ian released a deep sigh and offered his arm
to escort me into the dining room with no more words. It took me a
few seconds to slide my hand inside the crook of his arm.

“Let's go, Midlo,” I said, with a
tight-lipped smile.

“Miss.” He bowed his head and strode forward,
into the grand staircase.

Ian leaned close to me and whispered, “Who
would've thought it would take a white tiger to soften your heart
towards me?”

“Shut up, will you?” I said, giving him a
look.

I loved my life too much to jerk back my hand
this time, so I climbed down the stairs with him in worried
silence, hoping dinner would be free of unfortunate events.

S
miley face
pancakes. I'd been expecting something fancy and elaborate, like
filet mignon or Lobster Newberg—two things I would've never been
able to eat anyway—but never smiley face pancakes served in plates
that belonged at a ten-year-old’s birthday party.

Not that it wasn't delicious. The Belgium
chocolate Midlo had used to make the smiley faces was heavenly, its
creaminess and silky flavor something gods would've bargained their
immortality for. And not that the plates weren't pretty awesome. I
loved the colorful glitter circles and spirals on them. It was just
the colossal contrast between all these…rainbow colors and ashen,
gothic things that was really hard to process. Everything on the
table looked so out of place, including Comus and his lollipops and
his circus-y clothes, and…and the ginormous pet of the house,
Nero.

I shook my head, watching the beautiful,
white tiger laying sphinx-like on the floor. He was next to Comus,
gazing at whatever he deemed interesting with his eyes at half
mast. I wondered where he slept and prayed it wasn't upstairs.

Four scrumptious pancakes and about a pound
of strawberries later, I asked Comus to tell me the exact solution
to my sister's problem. I knew I was the one who had to bring her
back and I wanted to know how. He answered with a satisfied sigh
that he had to take care of a few things—something regarding a
fabric business he had in India—the first real grownup thing I'd
heard coming out from his mouth—and that he had to do a meditation
to balance his chakra centers, or something like that, before
showing me what needed to be done.

We agreed to wait for him in the library,
which was in the far corner upstairs, and far away from Nero's
room, apparently. Yep. My prayers hadn't been successful. The
majestic, white tiger had, indeed, a big room on the second floor.
And though I was dying to check that out—I couldn't even begin to
imagine how the room of a tiger would look like—my survival
instinct had much more appealing ideas. But once we opened the
intricately carved door of the library, everything else was
forgotten.

“Whoa,” Ian breathed, as he stepped into the
warm light of the vast room. “Talk about making reading cool.”

More like making reading look epic,
I
thought, gaping at the floor to ceiling book-clad walls all around
me. On both sides of the room, two spiral staircases with golden
railing snaked up to narrow, mid-level floors. On them, thick and
comfy upholstered chairs sat imperially, murmuring of a special
place where mind and heart travelled together. In the middle of
each wall, rolling ladders waited to be used, some of them tall
enough to reach the ceiling and books that would've seemed
difficult to get to. And in the center of the room, as a king
wanting to be observed, rose a big globe made of bronze, its smooth
surface catching the light above and reflecting it like a shy,
elderly star.

It was the stuff of movies. Even I, who
didn't like to read, felt compelled to take out a tome and throw
myself onto one of the loveseats.

Which was exactly what I did.

“Never pictured you being a bookworm,” Ian
said, sitting down next to me.

I opened the book and started flipping the
pages. “Comus said it could take him hours. Better to start doing
something.”

“Hmm…you're right.” I heard him shift and
curiosity stirred in me. I turned to look and found him searching
something in the shelves just behind us, knees on his seat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to find something reader-friendly.”
He pulled out a book, eyed the spine and put it back again. “You
know, that might actually be interesting
and
in my own
language.” He threw me a look over his shoulder.

My tome was written in some weird language,
so what? That didn't mean it didn't look interesting. Actually,
some of the machinery depicted in these sketches was pretty cool.
Sophisticated, but cool.

Okay, not that cool, but pretty
illustrative.

I sighed. Who was I kidding? This was too
high-minded.

I discarded the unfriendly tome and joined
Ian in the hunt. “These all look fantasy-oriented,” I said, after
having spotted several renowned books.

“Yep, I'm hoping to find something about
Chimera in here.” He'd already piled seven books on his seat.
“Something that proves how delusional he is.”

I shut my mouth and didn't say that idea had
already occurred to me and that I'd been looking for the same
thing. I'd honestly tried to keep an open mind regarding Chimera,
but reason always barged in, leaving me in a tangle of doubt and
skepticism.

He pulled out one more book and placed it on
top of the pile. “I'll start with this.” He slid back on his side
of the loveseat and flipped open the first book.

As for me, I only picked one so he wouldn't
figure out what I was doing. “Are you staying here?” I said,
looking at him.

He glanced at me. “Yeah, why?”

“It's too crowded.”

“Let me solve that for you.” He hauled up the
pile of books off the loveseat and settled it down on the Persian
rug. “There, now you have more space.” He resumed his reading.

“I want to lie down and stretch my legs.”

“You're more than welcome here,” he said,
patting his lap.