Jealous Hall! He doesn’t know how ridiculously cute he looks, frowning like that. “We’ve all been there. Ashlee Simpson threw a White Russian smoothie out of her car window at me once when I was out jogging, because she was jealous of my custom Nikes.”
“I won’t throw a White Russian smoothie at Jake from my car.”
“That’s good. Keep a handle on those urges.”
He looks away. “Maybe a Mello Yello from a bicycle.”
Meanwhile, the fight is still going on. “Is he actuallywinning?” Kaia says, marveling.
A clump of snow in an overhanging tree bough slips sideways, falling with asplaton Felix’s head.
Felix jumps, sword slanting midstrike, and I notice, too late—
“The cap! The rubber cap fell off!”
Jake’s staring up into the tree where the snow fell from, and Felix pounces on his distraction to go in for the kill.
“For... my... marriage!” he bellows, bringing down the sword. It slices Jake’s left arm off.
“Aghhhhh!” we all scream again. Blood spurts where Jake’s arm used to be, spraying Felix’s traumatized face. Jake stares down at his own exposed bone and his eyes roll back into his head.
“Jake!” Marilou shrieks.
Felix drops to his knees. “I didn’t mean to!”
Marilou picks up Jake’s arm and smushes it against the wound as if she can reattach it. “I thought those couldn’t cut!”
“Of course they can, they’re longswords,” Frangipane yells out, scathingly. “Rapiersare dueling swords.” He and Octavian roll their eyes at each other.
Hall and I look at each other in panic. I raise my eyebrows in silent question, and he nods. He seizes my wrist, and we’re turning, turning, sucked through black space, spitting back out on the front lawn as it appeared a couple of minutes before. Jake’s arm is whole once more, all of his blood safely inside his body, where it’s supposed to be. Nobody notices our reemergence, all eyes on Jake and Felix as they circle each other. The déjà vu makes me queasy. Kaia says once again, “Is he actually winning?”
“Wait! Pause!” I wave wildly. “Felix, the rubber thing on the end of your sword fell off.”
He lifts it, twisting the blade in the sunlight. Makes a face. “So it has. Nice catch.”
“That could’ve been bad,” Dad mutters as the sword is recapped.
“Doubt it,” Jake says. “I’m too quick.” Snow falls from the tree and splats him on the head this time.
Felix backs him up against a tree (“Oh, yes,” Marilou murmurs), sword to his throat. “Surrender.”
Jake drops his weapon. “Okay, you win.”
Mom, Grandpa, and I cheer. I think the others were more excited in the other timeline.
“I win!” Felix whoops. He grabs his wife. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get a restraining order, I promise, and we should probably check the cameras when we get home to make sure she hasn’t planted morepoison ivy in our flower bed. I know I’m messy, but I love you so goddamn much and I want to be with you forever. Life means nothing without you in it.” He’s breathing heavily. “This means you’ll stay with me, right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Whomp-whomp,” Ichabod crows. To Hall, he adds, “That’s how you use ‘whomp-whomp.’ ”
Felix throws Marilou over his shoulder, marching straight into the house. Jake wipes the sweat from his brow with one sleeve, grinning. “I let him win.”
*
Chapter Fifteen
JAKE STAYS FORlunch, then gets caught up in a marathon ofWhat We Do in the Shadowswith Grandma. “I’ll give you five thousand dollars to come back and do that every Christmas,” she offers him when he leaves.
