Jar of Souls (25 page)

I motioned for Henry to transfer the call to my personal line, and closed the door behind me. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good, and really I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. Why could things just never remain simple? I had a war to fight, not elbows to rub.

I picked up the phone. “Stillman, what can I do for you?”

“Damn it, Adam, I’ve been waiting on hold for twenty minutes. I was just about to hang up.”

“Well, obviously you had something important to tell me or you would have.”

He let out a sigh of frustration. “I heard that you handled your little problem over there, rumor is with the assistance of the Lycans.”

“I wouldn’t call it a little problem; if we had failed to stop him, it would have been catastrophic.”

“I’m sorry that you had to go it alone. The council as a whole still has the west coast off limits for any active personnel. I’m working on it, but frankly most of them are just waiting for things to fall apart so they can swoop in and take over.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it, Stillman. I could never get the council to agree on anything either. They are too set in their ways to embrace any kind of change. I expected more from you, though; don’t forget you are serving there because I let you.”

“Yes, yes, we all know that Adam will smite us if we step out of line. It hasn’t happened yet, though. Also, the council isn’t as opposed to change as you think. Once they heard you were working with the Lycans, they banded together quickly enough.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“They have put measures in place to end your little experiment if they think it is getting too big.”

“You mean they are threatening to kill us if we don’t follow their orders.”

“Well, yes, that is exactly what I mean.”

“Damn it, Stillman, you are there to specifically make sure nothing like that ever happens.”

“Well, I can only steer the ship so far when every other member of the council votes in favor of a measure. The good news is right now they are content to sit and wait.”

“That’s not much of a bright side. They have forgotten their oaths. The gifted are not meant to war amongst themselves. They fight together for one cause. Only once has the council overstepped that order, and it nearly ruined us. A good man died that day.”

“John was my friend as well.”

“I know. That is why we need the council to stop this madness.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, and then the line went dead.

Doing what you can might as well mean doing nothing at all. No one ever said this battle was going to be easy. The council would come after us eventually, and I probably alienated an ally by insulting his son. Sarah staying with us was an unexpected bonus, though. Jackson and his friends proved themselves to be formidable in battle. As long as I could recruit a few more assets, we may actually be able to stand against the demons when they attack.

Something told me that it would be sooner rather than later. We had to be ready. Jackson had to be ready. That meant he needed to keep training and start spending more time in the field with our seasoned warriors. The time for classrooms was done for him. From here on out, he would learn by doing. It was a risk, but one that needed to be taken. The demons wouldn’t wait until we were ready to strike.

W
hen I woke up
, I had April pulled tight against me, and my arms were wrapped around her. My first thought was it felt good to sleep for an entire night without having the same horrible dream. My second thought was what in the hell was I doing? I had a girlfriend, and here I was in bed, albeit a hospital bed, with another girl. I was going to have to make a decision on my feelings soon before someone got seriously hurt.

I still wasn’t sure that if I broke up with Britta that April would even have me. This world was so different than the one I grew up in; sometimes I just couldn’t be sure of anything. I mean, I knew she liked me as a friend, and she probably liked me as more than that, but what if she didn’t? Should I just stay with Britta? If I stayed with her just because it was easy, was that the right choice?

Britta hadn’t really done anything wrong; in fact, she was the best girlfriend I ever had. She seemed to want to place my needs in front of hers most of the time, and she was smoking hot. Not just hot, but nice, funny, and a little geeky at times. All of that made her even better in my book. But here I was in bed with April. Sure, we hadn’t fooled around, but it just didn’t feel right to me somehow.

I guess the only good news was that Britta was still gone and hadn’t come to check up on me. If she had seen this, I’m pretty sure she would have flipped out. I mean, April was just a friend, right? And we were both wounded from battle. It made sense that we would cling to each other for comfort. Isn’t that what people did?

Seriously, where was Britta, anyway? It wasn’t like her to run off when I was hurt, let alone be gone for an entire night. I hadn’t seen her for almost a day. What could she possibly have been doing? I mean, I didn’t expect Marcus to come check on us. He was a guy, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was seeking some comfort of his own, but Britta had always been there at every turn, and now, after our biggest victory, she was gone.

April stirred next to me and let out a little moan while she stretched. She looked into my eyes and whispered, “Good morning.”

I shifted, trying to put just the tiniest amount of space between us, still feeling massively guilty even though nothing happened. “Good morning to you too. Feeling any better?”

I could still see the bruises on her body, but the rest had returned some of the life to her eyes. “Nothing the healers won’t be able to fix, I’m sure. I’ll probably head to the gym later and get some yoga in. After that if you want to spar, I’ll be ready.”

“You want to spar, today?”

“Well, yeah, if you aren’t working every day, you get slow, and slow means dead.”

“Don’t you think we deserve a little time off?” I said, cracking a smile.

“We had that, last night. Now as long as your wound gets healed, it’s time to go back to work.”

“All right, you win. After the nurse fixes me up, I’ll make an appearance. How about today, though, we just work out and maybe work on some forms?”

“Your forms are fine.”

“Really? In a couple of them I still feel like I am overextending or not quite in the right place.”

“Fine, back to basics, then, but you owe me at least one round.”

“Now that I can do.”

“I’m heading to the shower before I check in with the healer. You coming?”

Oh man, not this again. That still made me feel weird, and I wasn’t ready to repeat it just yet. I was going to have to talk with Marcus and figure out if that was really a thing or if, well, she might have just suckered me a bit. It didn’t seem like something April would do, but hey, all was fair in love and war.

“I’m going to lay here for a bit, but I’ll meet you in the locker room.”

“Suit yourself.” She patted my chest before getting up and leaving.

It wasn’t the first time in the last day that I thought to myself it’s a good thing she is wearing those super baggy sweats. Thoughts of what I had seen in the shower the night before drifted through my head, and I tried to squash them down mercilessly. It didn’t quite work, but at least if they only stayed in my head, it wasn’t so bad, right? I waited about ten minutes, trying to pull my thoughts together, before heading toward the showers myself.

When I walked into the locker room, April was just heading out. “Don’t take too long to pull yourself together and get to the gym, ok?”

“I just have to check in with Britta and I’ll be there.” She winced a little as I said the other girl’s name, and I knew I had screwed up, again. Right now, though, I was with Britta, and I had to think of her first before anyone else.

“See you then,” she said, walking away with her head down.

“Hey, April.” She spun back toward me with a hopeful look in her eye. “Thank you for everything. Without your help, I wouldn’t have stood a chance out there yesterday.”

“Seems to me that training you worked out in my favor.” She continued to walk away, but this time her head was held high.

After a rather quick and decidedly more boring shower, I headed over to check in with the nurse who saw me yesterday. She ripped off the medical tape with sharp, fast, jerky moves. I was pretty sure she was trying to rip out as much hair as possible. Maybe I should have asked one of the other nurses to look at me. This one seemed to like seeing me in pain a little too much for my own liking.

She removed the final piece of tape and took off the bandage. “This can’t be right,” she mumbled.

“What’s not right?” I said, looking down. The wound on my chest was gone, except for some bright pink scar tissue which the nurse immediately poked, making me wince again. She ran her fingers down most of it, making me wonder if I would have been better off trying to just sneak out of this place.

“If you could heal yourself with magic, why did you stay here?”

“I’m not good with healing magic.”

“Then your friend maybe?”

“She really isn’t either.”

“Interesting. No one else has been here since you came in, so unless you saw one of the other nurses”—she gave me a glare—“then one of you had to have done it.”

“I’ll have to ask April, but I’ve never been able to do anything like this before.”

I’m pretty sure the sound she made next was a
hurmph
, but I wasn’t completely sure.

“You are going to want to take it easy for another day or two and then you should be fine.”

“Is this going to leave a scar?”

“It probably will. You’ll get used to them, though.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to having claw marks across my chest.

The nurse just slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re free to go, and remember the saying, chicks dig scars. In your line of work, you will probably end up with a lot of them.”

I walked out of our little clinic and headed back to my place. A quick change of clothes and I would see if I could track down Britta, and then it was gym time. I wanted to get that training done so I had some time to rest before dinner. I was putting my faith in Marcus that he could make this meal happen, and make it special. Somehow I just knew he wouldn’t let me down.

* * *

M
y search
for Britta didn’t prove as fruitful as I hoped it would. I went to her place and knocked on the door to no answer. Some of her friends I bumped into said they hadn’t seen her since yesterday. I was starting to get a little worried and frustrated when my stomach decided to make its presence known. The growl it let out resonated from the stone walls around me; at least that was how I imagined it. I hadn’t checked the cafeteria yet, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

The cafeteria was almost empty when I came in. A quick scan of the place didn’t reveal Britta, but it did reveal some delicious food. I scanned the offerings, and because I knew I was heading to the gym right afterward, I decided to go light, kind of. There was one thing to be said about the disadvantages of using magic; it burned calories like nothing else. Sometimes that was a plus, but I could see how it could lead to problems.

So when I say a small amount of food, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Small after a day in which I probably burned ten thousand calories was relative, especially when April was going to burn a few more for me later. I sat down with two huge blueberry pancakes, four breakfast sausages, four pieces of bacon, three eggs, and an English muffin with peanut butter on it. I loaded the steaming pancakes with lots of pecan maple syrup and dug in. I wasn’t ashamed to say I ate all of it, not ashamed at all. I let the food settle for a minute while sipping on a glass of orange juice and then headed in the direction of the gym.

I took my time walking there, hoping to maybe catch sight of Britta in the halls and to give my belly a few more minutes of rest before I started to work out. Ten minutes and no Britta sighting later, I walked into the gym. For once, it was actually kind of crowded. It had been a while since I had been here during peak hours, but everyone was in full force today. There were at least four sparring matches going, the gun range was seeing some use, and Sarge was putting someone through their paces.

I hopped onto one of the free ellipticals and started with a slow walk; I wasn’t ready to kick it up into anything resembling a real workout yet. I kept scanning the room, hoping to catch a look at my girl, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Finally I gave up, assuming she wasn’t here, and tried to focus on my own thing. I was still moving slow when I saw April come out of one of the training rooms; she was dressed in her standard skintight leggings and a sports bra. She did toss a half shirt over herself as she walked toward me. It didn’t hide anything, and she didn’t need to. If anything, it just made her look a little bit cuter.

She jumped onto the machine next to me and glanced over at my stats. “Pushing yourself hard today, I see.”

“Just waiting for breakfast to settle before I kick it up a notch.”

“Oh, the excuses you men come up with. Let’s get things going so we can spar. I’d like to get a nap in before tonight.”

“I thought we were just doing forms today?”

“Changed my mind. Yoga will do that for you sometimes. I was thinking of a little hand-to-hand combat if you think you can handle it.”

“I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”

“Good.” She smirked and put her earbuds in. Before she turned on the music, she looked over at me. “Does an hour sound good?”

“That should be just about perfect.” I set my timer and put in my own earbuds. Maybe the music would help drown out all of the thoughts spinning around in my head. I hoped it would help to at least take my mind off of Britta. Just where in the hell was she? Had Adam sent her on another mission? I tossed the idea around for a bit and then lost myself in the heavy beats of the music.

* * *

A
pril hadn’t been joking
when she said she wanted to get in a little hand-to-hand combat. After my fourth time finding myself on my back, I’d had enough. I waved off her hand when she offered to help me up. Something about being helped up by a hundred-and-twenty-pound girl after she laid you out for the fourth time just didn’t seem right. I flipped back up to my feet and moved to the edge of the ring.

“What’s up, Jackson? You seem distracted,” she asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I knew she wasn’t the person who I should talk to about Britta, but she had asked and I knew Marcus probably wouldn’t care. “I just haven’t seen Britta since we got back. It’s not normal for her to not stop by and at least say hi. Something is up. I just don’t know what it is.” April seemed to be thinking over what to say. She looked up into my eyes, and I almost melted on the spot. Those green eyes just wanted to suck you right in, they were so comforting.

“I’m sure everything is ok. Maybe she just needed some alone time. She did almost die, after all.”

I could tell that was hard for April to say. The last thing she probably wanted to do was offer Britta any support. It showed me a lot of her character to know that she would put my feelings before her own. “You’re right; it’s probably nothing,” I said with a shrug, not really believing what I was telling her. “Hey, I meant to ask you something. Last night you didn’t use any kind of healing magic on me, did you?”