Chapter 17
Dani doesn’t mean to hold a grudge.
Really, she doesn’t. That is not the sort of person she is. In fact, she’s already forgiven Jamie. She’s actually frustrated with herself for that because she wants to still be upset with her. She wants an apology, and not one that feels…like it’s more an apology for making her mad than it is an actual apology for Jamie’s actions. A part of Dani is fairly certain that her girlfriend isn’t sorry for communicating with the beast, that she’s only sorry that Dani is reacting the way she is – and that’s not the same thing. She wants Jamie to be sorry for the action! Not for making her mad!
And, despite all of that, Dani can’t find it in her heart to stay mad at her. She’s frustrated. It’s a little crack in their happiness.
And yet, Dani can’t help but still be mad at the beast in the jungle lying in wait for her. Its intrusion into her life seems to be growing, and no matter what Dani does, it feels like she can’t stop it – the beast is devouring her, a little piece at a time, and she hates it.
But it can’t have this. It can’t have Jamie. It can’t make her so mad at Jamie that she won’t be with her. She won’t let it have that. But she hasn’t been able to stop it from tucking her away while she sleeps, and there’s no way of knowing if the creature has continued to talk with Jamie – and, if it has, what they have been talking about.
Truth be told, Dani doesn’t think the creature has been able to talk much about anything at all. Maybe it had used Romeo and Juliet to communicate with Jamie and Owen in December, but it hasn’t tried to talk with anyone else since then. In fact, it has been almost quiet. Too quiet. She should have expected it to pull something like this. It just means that it’s gaining strength – that it’s getting closer to finally, like Peter with Miles—
No. She is not thinking about that. She is not thinking like that. She is still here.
When Dani wakes up that morning, every thought in her mind is to make up with her girlfriend. She pushes herself up off the arm of the couch and rubs her arm across her eyes, trying to push the creepers out of them. She yawns and stretches. Couch sleeping is not the greatest. She’s already sore, and it’s only been a couple of days. She can’t imagine what she’ll feel like if she does this every day. Also – why is she the one sleeping on the couch? She hasn’t done anything wrong!
See, this is what we mean about Dani not being able to hold a grudge. She can’t even get properly mad.
But as she stretches, Dani knocks a book off of the arm of the couch, just past where she had been resting her head. She flinches as it lands.
No.
She’d suspected as much, but it doesn’t make her feel any better to know for a fact that it is actually happening, that the creature is still tucking her away and taking her body while she sleeps. What if it has been doing other things with her body while it’s in control? What if—?
She can’t think like this. That won’t do anyone any good.
Dani picks the book up off the ground. It’s one that she, too, has been reading. Okay, so maybe she’s jumping a bit to conclusions. She just didn’t put the book on the side table before she went to sleep. No harm, no foul. Her eyes glance over to the window, where the sun is high in the sky. She’s overslept. For the first time in a very long time, she’s overslept. She takes a deep breath and places the book on the side table where it belongs. She can get back to reading it some other time.
Right now, she needs to get to the flower shop and make nice with her girlfriend. As much as she can, anyway.
The bell above the door dings once as Dani enters the shop. She hesitates just inside, catching the glimpse of something wrong on the glass of the front door, but she pushes past it, forcing herself to focus on Jamie instead of what she may or may not be seeing in her reflection. Jamie glances up as the bell dings. She smiles when she sees Dani, but where normally the smile is bright and excited and engaging, now it seems hesitant and uncertain. “We fighting today, Poppins?”
“No,” Dani says, but she doesn’t look downward as though ashamed of herself. “I’m tired of fighting.” She meets Jamie’s eyes and presses her lips together as she walks forward. “Let’s just…not talk about it, okay?” She tries to give Jamie a little smile, but she can see that Jamie’s has faded. Her brows furrow. “What?” Dani moves closer, standing just on the other side of the checkout counter. “What’s wrong?”
Jamie scratches the back of her neck. “We’ve got to have a talk. I don’t want to, and I know you don’t want to, but—”
Dani’s eyes narrow. “Jamie, you asked me if we were fighting, and when I said no, I thought that meant we weren’t going to be fighting.”
“Talking doesn’t have to mean fighting.” Jamie meets her eyes. “But fighting means something’s broke. When something’s broke, you got to fix it or it’ll just break worse.”
Dani sighs. “And if talking’s just going to break it worse? Does that mean things are just…beyond repair?”
“Nothing’s beyond repair, Dani.” Jamie reaches over and takes one of her hands, giving it a gentle squeeze. “We’re just talking. No anger, no fighting. Just talking. We’re friends. We love each other. We can talk with each other, right?”
Dani takes a deep breath and nods her agreement. She wants to say not right now, she wants to push this discussion off until much later, but she doesn’t think she can deal with the dread of having the we need to talk hanging over her head as well as whatever is going on with her beast. There’s only so much pressure she can take at once. She needs her relationship with Jamie to continue to be a comforting constant, the way it has been for so long. If this conversation is the only thing standing in the way of that, then she wants it over and done with as quickly as possible.
Jamie gestures to their open sign, and Dani walks over to it, slowly flipping it over to Closed. She doesn’t put any specific time on their return clock – there’s no way of knowing how long this conversation will take – and then she follows Jamie slowly to the back. Still – as much as she doesn’t want it, the dread lingers. She hates it, hates that the beast is doing this as well, as though no matter how much she tries, it is still tearing away at her life – even without having to tuck her away to do it.
No, Dani isn’t mad at Jamie anymore. She’s mad at the beast lying in wait in the jungle within her. That’s where her anger should rightly be focused, and that’s where she lets it stay.
Jamie shuts the door to the back room behind them and takes Dani’s hands in her own. “Now, I know you’re going to be wanting to interrupt, but I want you to hear what I’m saying before you say anything, okay?”
Dani takes a deep breath. She runs her thumb along the back of Jamie’s hand and then interlaces their fingers before nodding once. “I can’t promise I’ll like what you have to say,” she says, voice soft and firm, “but I’ll listen to it. Whatever it is.” She tries to smile. It doesn’t feel quite right, but she tries anyway. Then she searches Jamie’s eyes, hesitant. “So. Tell me.”
“I want you to talk with your beast in the jungle.”
Dani takes a sharp breath, but when Jamie tilts her head to one side, she presses her lips together. She’d agreed to listen to what her love has to say, without interrupting. She can do that. She can do that. At the very least, anyway.
Jamie meets her eyes and tries to hold her gaze. “I know you don’t want to. I know she’s your beast. But I think Flora is right. Your beast was a person once, and I think, living in you, she might be more woman than beast.” She smiles, a soft thing. “I think it’s impossible to know you and not be made better just being around you. And this thing is living with you.” Jamie reaches over and taps the center of Dani’s chest. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, Poppins. That means with her, too.”
Dani waits, making sure that Jamie is finished, before she says, finally, “You know it tried to kill me, right?”
“I don’t think she remembers that.”
Dani squints. “How can it not remember that?” Then she shakes her head. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.” She sighs and looks away, but makes sure to keep one of her hands in Jamie’s. “I don’t want to talk with it.” She presses her lips together. “It tried to kill me. It almost killed Flora. I think it will kill me if it gets the chance, and talking with it sounds like a pretty good chance for it to just devour me.” She looks back at Jamie. “You really want to risk that?”
Jamie gives her head a little shake. “I don’t think it’s a risk, Dani. I really don’t.”
It takes a minute – Dani doesn’t want to ask, but she needs to know – but she finally says, “How long have you been talking with it?”
“Couple of weeks.” Jamie looks up and meets her eyes again. “She’s been reading Shakespeare. Figured I’d give her someone to talk with.”
“Jamie—”
“You said she was lonely. She was. Didn’t mean to talk to her that first time.” Jamie frowns. She sighs and glances up. “Thought you’d gotten up and were making hot chocolate. Sounded like a good idea. Knew when she made me tea that it wasn’t you.” She grins. “No one screws up tea like you do.”
Dani gasps. “Are you saying that thing makes better tea than I do?”
“She should give you lessons.” Jamie laughs and rubs the back of her neck again. “Honest, at first I was just trying to see what she was like, you know? Beast lives in your girlfriend, you think she’s going to eat her at some point, maybe if you make friends she puts off the whole eating thing.” She shrugs. “I don’t think she really wants to eat you, Dani. She just seems lonely.”
Dani takes her hand out of Jamie’s and crosses her arms. “You sound like you like her.”
Jamie’s eyes widen, and she looks away. “Like her as much as I like any posh Brit who’s obsessed with plays I can’t follow.” She shakes her head again and turns back to Jamie. “I know you like him, but I said it before and I’ll say it again, his plays put me off. Seriously. He’s a bloody hazard.”
“So you don’t like her.”
Jamie sighs. “I like you, Dani. I’m putting effort into you. You’re worth it.” She leans forward to brush their noses together, and Dani doesn’t move. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I’ve got a lot to worry about, actually,” Dani says. “There’s a creature in me who may or may not be waiting to eat me, and my girlfriend thinks I should go make friends with it.”
Jamie nods. “Best thing you can do with a beast is try to tame it, if it lets you. Seems to me that this beast wants to let itself be tamed.” Then she grins. “Best thing about a tamed beast is that it attacks everyone else but you. Might be a good guard dog.”
Dani laughs, but as she does, there is a sharp, sudden pang in the back of her neck. She winces. “I don’t think it likes that analogy.” She reaches back and presses her cold fingers at the spot, but the pain is gone almost as quickly as it was there. She sighs. “If you insist,” she says, finally, “I will try to speak with it.” She meets Jamie’s eyes. “No guarantee it’ll go well, though, and if it tries to hurt me—”
“I’ll find a way to get in there and kill her myself.” Jamie presses a quick kiss to Dani’s lips. As she does, there is a sharp knocking on the front door. She sighs. “You’d think the Closed sign would tell ‘em to buzz off, wouldn’t you?” She shakes her head. “Best be getting back to work, if you’re okay.”
Dani shrugs. “I’m okay if we’re okay.”
Jamie looks at her and hesitates. “Are we okay, Poppins?”
“Yeah.” Dani nods once, letting out a deep breath and smiling. “I think we are.”
Dani spends the rest of the day at the flower shop with Jamie. The conversation doesn’t come up again; it doesn’t need to, and she doesn’t want it. It still feels a little bit like it’s looming over her head – things with Jamie are better, but she’s agreed to try and talk to the creature, and she still really doesn’t want to do it. She’s still afraid. And spending time here means she can put it off even longer.
But the work day comes to a close, and Jamie suggests she go back to the house early – she still has a few things to do around the shop, nothing that Dani can help with, but that might take a little longer. She doesn’t want Dani to be bored.
Dani sees this for what it is. Jamie knows she can’t get bored watching her work, but it’s a subtle nod to their conversation, to Dani’s agreement to try and speak with the creature. This is a perfect opening, if she’s willing to take it. She doesn’t want it to look as though she is backing out on that, so she heads back to the house. Still, she doesn’t plan on necessarily talking with the creature today. It all seems a little too soon. She wants more time to think it over.
When she gets back to their house, Dani makes herself a cup of hot chocolate (not tea) and curls up on her corner of the sofa. She’ll move her pillow back to the bedroom later, and for now, the blankets help keep her warm. She pulls them up around her, takes her book from the side table, and opens it to the spot marked by her receipt paper.
And then stops.
Okay, Jamie. This is a bit too much.
Dani thinks that, but she knows Jamie’s handwriting as well as she knows her own, and this? This isn’t it. In fact, as much as Dani wants to say that she’s never seen this writing before, she can’t say that, although she can’t place exactly where she’s seen it before. One of the Shakespearean plays, perhaps, in some of the writing on the side. She feels like wherever she’s seen it, the writing is much smaller, much tighter than it is on this page. Maybe it’s not the same at all. Maybe she’s just trying to convince herself it is.
Sometimes, it feels a bit like she’s trying too hard to lie to herself and convince herself of something other than what she knows. Dani thinks it’s a self-preservation tactic. Knowing too much might make her more afraid. She might be strong – she might be brave – but that doesn’t mean she can’t still be afraid.
Dani rubs her thumb along the piece of paper and presses her lips together as she reads it. Once. Twice. Three times.
Fine. Fine. If she just must.
Dani takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and finds herself in the middle of path through the jungle. She walks along it, wary of being watched by anything around her, and shivers as she does. There is no sound here. Jungles should be full of wind ruffling through branches, the flittering of butterfly wings that can change the world, chirps from one insect to the other, the croaking of frogs, the slithering of snakes – something. But there is nothing, and in the lack of it, she thinks that perhaps the creature has destroyed every animal that must have been living here with its bare hands, just the same way as it almost killed her. She turns around as though to return and comes face to face with a large moat, a bigger wall, and a wrought iron gate with a rusted lock holding it all together.
The creature has been busy.
Dani swallows once. She doesn’t like this. She wants to go back. But if she heads back now, just at the beginning, then she knows she won’t do this again. She’ll be too afraid. It will be harder, and it is already hard enough. So she continues down the path, further into the jungle, and as she does, the jungle slowly fades away around her. She finds the path to be lined with fruit trees – apples, plums, and a couple that appear to hold oranges, although there are significantly less of these. She picks one of the green-skinned apples from a tree and holds it in her hand, staring at it. Something tells her she shouldn’t eat it. Truth be told, she’s quite a bit afraid to do so. But she did pick it, and Jamie would be disappointed with her if she wastes it.
It isn’t real. None of this is real. Jamie wouldn’t be disappointed with her for discarding a fake apple.
And yet, Dani keeps the apple with her as she continues down the path. It gives her something to hold onto, something to toss between her hands the way Jamie might, something to focus on that isn’t whatever waits at the end of the path.
Eventually, the trees fade away, too, and the path becomes a hallway. There isn’t any real abrupt change; it all fades in on itself until she is no longer on the tree-lined path but instead in the hallway. Dani turns to look behind her, and all she can see is that hallway, stretched on as though it will never end, even though she knows that, eventually, it does and it will, fading back into the tree-lined path and again into the jungle the same way that it has the opposite. Still, she can’t help but feel horribly afraid that by walking down this path, by walking down this hallway, she is walking herself into a trap of some sort.
If it is a trap, Dani blames herself. She knew better than to give the creature either a face or a story, and she knew better than to listen to those who told her to do so. Well. She is here, and she is trying, if only because she didn’t like lying to Jamie, if only because Jamie believes that the creature is only human and not life-threatening at all.
And there is the note.
Eventually, the hallway stops, and Dani finds herself outside of a door. She knows this door. She has stood outside of it before. She knows, if she tries the knob, that she will find it locked. In fact, part of her is absolutely certain that she has been in the room on the other side of this door, too, has been locked inside the little cell with the dark windowpanes on one side, the vanity on the other, and the chest inlaid in the wall across from the large, four-poster bed, that there are bookshelves lining most of what was once empty space.
But this time, she is on this side. This time, she wears her own clothes and not the nightgown that belongs solely, wholly to the creature who she suspects lives here.
That doesn’t make her feel any better.
Dani presses her lips together, grips the apple firmly in one hand, and lifts her other hand to knock.
But a hand on her shoulder stops her.
“I was wondering,” a voice says, soft and feminine and halting and raspy as though it has not been used in quite some time, “when you would visit.”