Jaz Parks 5 - One More Bite

“You are not helping.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just—”

“Aaaah!” Raoul’s cry of pain made my shoulder blades ache. And how did Vayl choose to distract him?

“Raoul, I just broke your bar.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It turned out that Raoul was so relieved for Colonel John to have put his knee back right that he didn’t mind much about the bar. “It came with the room,” he told us as we sat on the couch that met his at a forty-five-degree angle, staring at the bit Vayl had torn off as it balanced in the middle of the coffee table. “I’ve been thinking of replacing it.”

“With what?” I asked.

He laid his head back. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll lose all respect for me, and then how will I ever get you to believe anything I have to say?”

Before I could even begin to think of begging, Colonel John said, “Come now, Raoul. This hedging is paramount to torture. You must let us in on your secret now.”

Raoul raised his head. “I want a train set.” He waited. When we didn’t laugh he allowed a hint of excitement to enter his eyes as he said, “I could build one all along that wall. Two levels. With a working yard. And at least five engines running at once. I had one when I was”—he glanced at me—“well, you know.” Boy, did I. I wondered, had Colonel John brought him back from the dead long ago, to fight as an earthly Eldhayr like I was now? And then, how had he finally ended up here? A blast from some suicide bomber he just couldn’t come back from?

“Do it,” said Colonel John so decisively it sounded like an order.

“Really?” Raoul eyed the bar like it might attack him if he tried to dismantle it. “I don’t know. It seems kind of —”

“You do understand that is what makes us different from them.” As Colonel John waited for Raoul’s full attention he fished a pipe out of his pocket and began to fill it from a roll of tobacco he pulled from his boot.

“What do you mean?” Raoul finally asked.

“The ability to play. Nothing we fight, be it demon, kloricht, slyein, or faorzig ever indulges in lighthearted amusement. Every single creature that calls itself our enemy has lost its power to laugh. To joke. To have fun. Which is why we must hold to it as if it were the most treasured part of our souls.” He looked at each of us, one by one. “Perhaps it is.” He lit the tobacco he’d packed with a match struck on the side of a battered red box.

Raoul jumped up, standing on one leg like a flamingo who thinks the water’s a tad too cold for both feet today. As he hopped toward the hall he said, “I have to get some paper. Where’s that pencil? It was just here! If I design it in a U-shape I should be able to—no, that won’t work. Or will it?”

“Raoul.”

He stopped, teetered so precariously I half rose from my seat before he finally caught hold of one of the white chairs that surrounded his dining room table. He turned around. “Yes, Colonel?”

“Are you forgetting something?” Colonel John squinted over the cloud of smoke he’d puffed up, which smelled sharp and yet sweet, an aching reminder of Gramps Lew.

“Oh.” Raoul pogoed back to us, only a shade of guilt marring the anticipation on his face. He plopped down on the couch between me and Vayl. “Colonel John couldn’t locate Samos’s contract, but he has found your father’s attacker.”

I sat forward on the couch, watching the colonel enjoy his smoke. One bit of me found it amusing to note that even here, so far removed from his time, the man had found it impossible to lose his old habits. But the rest felt like a tabby clawing her way up a curtain, yowling because the dude holding the catnip wouldn’t freaking share!

Finally the ancient veteran squinted at me through the haze he’d created and said, “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, young Jasmine, but I’m afraid your mother has escaped from hell. She seems to be the one who hit your father with the van. And, ah, the incident with the pineapple cans?”

When I gave him a blank look, he nodded wisely. “I supposed your father had kept you in the dark on that one. No sense in worrying the children unnecessarily. Well, it seems she was trying to gain his attention, and in her frustration at being unable to do so, she knocked over a large wooden pineapple that had been erected by Albert’s favorite grocer. If Shelby had not quickly pulled him out of the way, a sea of Del Monte chunks in their own syrup might have crushed the life out of him.”

When the colonel first gave me Mom’s news I’d shoved my hands in my hair, prepared to yank out handfuls as she’d pushed me to do so many times in my adolescence. I froze, fully aware I was giving myself mini bunny ears, and began to laugh.

Colonel John traded puzzled looks with Raoul. “I fail to see the humor here. The Gatekeeper has unleashed the dogs. And if they catch her before she returns voluntarily, I can foresee no end to her tortures.”

I felt the laughter burn to cinders in my throat. Nearly choking on the ashes I said, “According to my count, she’s done exactly four nice things for me in the past twenty-five years. You Uiveerswant to tell me why I should give a shit?”

When all three men winced at my four-letter-word choice I jerked myself off the couch and stomped to the window. What the hell? Is this your idea of a joke? You put me in the most stressful situations you can imagine, where you know I’m going to need to swear, and then you surround me with old-world prudes? Matt never cared what I said. Matt liked me just the way I was. I was talking to the Big Kahuna, but I addressed the broad expanse of skyscrapers and twinkling lights hiding masses of pissed-off poor people who thought the only way to make life better was to give all the power they didn’t realize they had to the biggest dickhead they could find.

Vayl’s hands, warm on my shoulders, let me know he cared despite my potty mouth. I looked up, caught my breath as his amber eyes met mine. Maybe even a little bit because of it? The heart- crushing longing I’d felt for my dead guy eased as I stared up at my undead one.