“Do I need to remind you of the doghouse or the mailman?”Jen asked, bringing out her two aces. Decebel was still growly about the mailman giving Jen his number, and the fact that she’d kept it.
“You can remind me all day long, as long as it means I can still communicate with you through our bond.”
Jen sighed. And then he went and said stuff like that.“I love you, B.”
“Always, baby,”he said, and she felt his hand run down her hair.
The tapping on the wall started again, and she listened to what Costin was saying.
“How’s Thia?”
“She pulled herself together pretty quick once they gave her back to me. She gave the fae, who wasn’t Alston because he must have known I would have maimed him, a glare as soon as she was in my arms. Now, she's sleeping through this nightmare because she’s got nerves of steel,” Jen replied. “Which of course we all expected because I’m her mom.”
“Naturally,” Costin tapped back.
Jen felt Decebel like a shadow in her mind as she and Costin continued their morse code conversation. At one point, Thia woke up. Jen held her and used the girl’s tiny fist to tap on the wall. Thia must have thought this was fantastic because she giggled like she was high on something other than life. “Whatever you’re smoking, kid, you need to share,” Jen said to her daughter as Thia threw her head back and laughed.
Titus had joined in on the other side, and Costin was teaching him to communicate as well. Jen didn’t care how long she had to do it. She’d stay up twenty-four hours a day if that was what it took to keep Costin from going feral. When she began to get tired, she could feel Decebel sharing his energy with her through their bond.
Food was brought to her and Thia, and Costin said they’d also been brought something to eat. There were no windows so they had no sense of time. She couldn’t guess how much time had passed since Sally had been taken. The minutes and hours seemed to run together. Thia toddled around entertaining herself with the rattle a fae had brought when they’d brought the food. A rattle? Did they think her kid was an idiot? She needed something more stimulating than a rattle.
“Dada,” Thia said as she shook the rattle in the air and laughed. Okay so maybe the trauma of the events had stunted her genius and a rattle was suddenly stimulating.
“Dude,” Jen huffed, “how about you say momma once in a while?”
Thia glanced at her and pointed. “Not dada.”
“I love you too, kid,” she sighed as she smiled.
“Hold on,” she told Costin at one point. “I’m going to knock on the other wall and see if Jacque’s over there.” She’d been so focused on keeping Costin sane that she hadn’t even thought to see if Jacque was next to her. She might be on the other side of
She utilized the same code Sally had used with her, the one they’d used when they’d snuck out as teenagers. That felt like decades ago now. After a minute, there was a response. It was Jacque. Jen smiled but then cursed. “Why the hell don’t you know morse code?” she spat at the wall as if Jacque could hear her.
“Hell, hell, hell,” Thia chattered as she knocked on the wall next to where Jen stood.
Jen looked down at her. “Really? Out of that whole sentence you couldn’t have chosen literally any other word?” The kid was too much like her.
There was no point in just knocking nonsense on the wall. Jen went back over to the wall where Costin was with mini-me following behind her all the while alternating between ‘dada’ and ‘hell’. Dec was going to be so thrilled. She knocked on the wall and told him that Jacque was next to her and at least healthy enough to knock back. She changed Thia’s diaper, fed her, and then rocked her to sleep, all the while responding to Costin or asking her own questions.
Thia seemed to know when to sleep, thanks to her schedule, despite the fact that there were no windows and no way to tell what time of day it was. Jen only knew because Decebel told her. She and Costin occasionally fell asleep, but inevitably one of them would wake up and start the tapping again, waking the other up.
“How long can we do this?” Costin asked her at some point.
“We do it for as long as we have to. We do it until we have calluses on our knuckles and we’re tapping out morse code in our freaking sleep. We do it until our kids know morse code better than they know English. We do it until our hands are so bloody that we have to use our elbows. We don’t stop. We don’t give up. We don’t back down.”
Costin tapped back, his knocks a little firmer. “Okay, Jen. Okay.”
* * *
Myanin had figuredout that the city where Thadrick’s house was located was called Indianapolis, which she’d immediately decided was a ridiculous name for a city, or anything for that matter. And the city was located in the state of Indiana. The states appeared to be similar to territories in her realm, and the cities were like tribes. Once she’d figured out where she was on the map, and then determined where Arizona was located, it was a breeze to make her way in that direction.
For the most part, she simply walked. Granted, her walking speed was more like running for the humans. And if she ran, well, the humans couldn’t even see her. They’d just feel a breeze as she passed them by. Once she began to see all the colorful, interesting things in the human realm, she decided Ludcarab could wait. She was free. She’d rescued herself, and she wasn’t about to become someone else's slave, especially after discovering this wonderous food called cotton candy. How in holy djinn babies did they not have something as brilliant as cotton candy in their realm? They could keep the entire history of the universe, but they couldn’t make this delicious treat? “That just ain’t right,” she muttered and then grinned at her words. She’d also been picking up on the human dialect, listening to humans talk and sometimes asking them what they meant.
Humans always seemed—she had to search her brain for the right word—freaked out. They always seemed freaked out when she popped up to them and asked what they were saying and what it meant. “They all need to be cold,” she said and then shook her head. That wasn’t right. “They all need to freeze. Dammit,” she huffed because that wasn’t what she’d heard one of them say to her. “Chill,” she practically yelled and ignored the stares. “They all need to chill out,” she said with a grin. She was totallydying itas a human. People probably couldn’t even tell she wasn’t human—that’s how bitchin she was at it.
Several days had passed since she’d arrived in the human realm. She imagined the elders were up in arms because they would have discovered Lyra’s body a couple days ago. The thought made her smile. She smiled as she skipped, walked, and ran across the human realm called the United States. Perhaps Thadrick had done her a favor in some way. She had been ignorant of how amazing the human realm was, but now she was free. She could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
At one point, she’d been running and crossed what she’d learned was a state line, which meant she was going from one territory to another. The sign had read “Welcome to Iowa.” She had no clue who was naming their stuff, but they needed to remove them from their position and appoint someone who understood that some words were just dumb. She looked around and thought, instead of Iowa, this land should be called Land of the Golden Corn. That had a much better ring to it.
