Inherit Read online

  I grab Loki and hold her slightly in front of me. “You pretty, pretty girl! Maybe your crazy luck isn’t all bad.” Her golden eyes are warm and sweet, and she licks at my hand and face when I give her another piece of chicken and kiss her ears.

  What is happening to me? I’m loopy with love.

  Chapter 6

  For the ten minutes it takes him to get to my house, I try to ice my brain. I don’t want to wish or hope or do anything that will excite my supposed-genie of a fox and mess this all up, I don’t want to project some big deal on tonight and make it more than it is, and I don’t want to imagine one moment of total unequivocal fun that might never happen. So I make sandwiches and, when Jonas knocks, the table is already set like I’m some 50s housewife excited for her man to waltz in.

  Except I’d be the worst housewife ever, since it’s just a cold sandwich and a glass of orange juice, which is all we have in the house. Oh, and a dill pickle, and some only slightly stale potato chips.

  He has an armful of dusty board games in broken cardboard boxes and a bunch of violets bound with a twist-tie. He balances the games on one forearm and offers me the flowers.

  “Thank you.” My heart pumps hard, and all I can smell is the sweet promise of violets. I put them in a teacup with some tap water, and they spruce up the table and waft a delicious smell that’s soft and, inexplicably, purple.

  “Is this for me?” He points at the sandwich hopefully.

  “Yeah. I hope you like avocado and chicken.” I go to sit, but he jogs over and pulls my chair out. It’s meant to be pure chivalry, but it winds up an almost traumatic collision. I have to just relax and let him grab the chair and scoot me in awkwardly, and it would have cast a cloud of strange awkwardness over the night, except he laughs just above my head.

  “I was totally trying to be smooth. I didn’t mean to smash your ankle on the chair leg.” When he sits across from me, he hangs his head sheepishly.

  “Forget it! I hardly use my ankles.” I smile, he smiles, I’m surprised hearts and rainbows and animated birds don’t pop out in my kitchen above our heads. “So, how was work?”

  He swallows a huge bite of sandwich in one ravenous gulp. “It was work. Today seemed to be ‘bring your really expensive car in and treat your mechanic like a worthless piece of shit’ day. How ‘bout you?”

  I finish chewing and swallow. “Good money, alright people, but my ex came in at the end.”

  All of the animated birds shut up at this announcement. And a little animated thunder cloud rolls over Jonas’s head. “What did he want?”

  “First I thought he wanted to eat. Then I thought he wanted to harass me.” When he puts his sandwich on the chipped plate in that throw-down-and-duel way, I clarify, “Not harass like bodily harass, Jonas. Just exist-to-irritate-me harassment. But none of it happened anyway.”

  “Why not? He realized he’s an asshat and decided to bother someone else?” Jonas mutters between mouthfuls.

  “Um, no. It was kind of weird.” I glance at Loki, gnawing on a chicken bone with relish, and reach down to stroke her back. “I made this wish that he would understand what it’s been like for me with Bestemor being a little mental, and he wound up being understanding.”

  Jonas looks at me like he’s waiting for the kicker. When I don’t offer anything else, his face breaks into a suspiciously smug smile. “So your big shock was that your ex-boyfriend wasn’t one hundred percent a douche and decided to have some sympathy for the fact that you bust your ass caring for your ill grandma? Enlighten me. What exactly did you see in this guy?”

  “I was young and he’s so cute.” I sigh and bat my eyelashes, enjoying Jonas’s facial twitch. “But that’s not the point. I wished it and it happened. And it wasn’t just JR being nice. He was saying—” I wave my hands around. “He was saying things I’ve only thought to myself! Things I don’t talk about with anyone, not even Nevaeh. And he used my words like he climbed into my head and took them out.”

  Jonas bites his pickle casually, then leans over and scoops up the fox. “So you think this little guy has something to do with it?”

  “Girl,” I correct. “Bestemor named her Loki.”

  “You realize it doesn’t make much sense. I mean, I saw the money and the tire. And the coat,” he adds, running a big hand over her silky fur. I love how gentle he is with her. Much as she makes me crazy, I feel incredibly protective about her. “But there’s always a logical explanation, Wren. Always.”

  I shake my head. “Nevaeh did some research, and apparently there’s a long history in Japan of these foxes being familiars. Like they serve families of…witches.” He raises an eyebrow. “I know, it sounds insane! But things have been happening. And if there’s a different, logical explanation, I really wish I could figure it out.”

  I pop my hand over my mouth. I said ‘wish’! I have to rewind and think about what I wished for, and only manage to settle down when I realize that it was a good wish.

  “Let’s use logic, then. We’ll test your wishing fox theory. We’ll use the games.” He puts the Loki down and she sits under the table like a perfect, dainty lady at my feet. I love the warm brush of her fur against my ankles and the buzz of heady calm that she seems to bring me. He clears the plates, grabs the games and sets them in front of me. They are a dusty, crumbling pile of fun turned into our own personal Ouija board, which we will use to quiz my sudden supernaturality. “Pick any game.”

  I run my pointer over the boxes and collect a line of dust on my fingertip. I finally grab Scrabble.

  “Good choice. Now I’ll set out the board and you wish.” He flops the board on the table and distributes the pieces like a dealer in Vegas.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “How about all of one letter? Like, wish for all the t’s or something.” He shakes a little black pouch and I examine the board, filled with pink and blue stars and neat, logical boxes.

  I close my eyes and wish for all the letter m’s to magically land on my little wooden letter pew. When I open my eyes, Jonas closes his, reaches into the bag and pulls out seven little wooden squares. I get two m-tiles and frown.

  “I only got two m’s.” I shrug at my lack of luck and the failed experiment.

  His smirk morphs into a smile then explodes into a laugh. “There are only two m-tiles in the game. I told you to pick ‘t’!”

  “You told me to pick ‘t’ or something,” I remind him. “So that proves it, right?”

  “I don’t know. The chance of getting both m’s is pretty decent. I mean, getting six t’s would have been the clincher. That would have helped tip the scales in this whole wish fox mystery.” His fingers are surprisingly agile, the nails rimmed with black grease that also fills in the cracks and whorls on his fingertips.

  “Should I try again?” I turn all my tiles right side up and glance at him. He’s handsome. Not JR handsome, not drop-dead, girls drooling all over handsome, but I love his sharp cheekbones and full bottom lip. I like the light eyelashes that spring around his eyes, which are too dull to be blue, too bright to be grey. I like the long, tangled look of his limbs heaped on the chair and spilling over, splayed across the faded linoleum floor and the chipped kitchen table.

  “Let’s just play. Maybe we’ll come up with a better test later.” He nods at me to put down my tiles.

  I run my fingers over the smooth wood and click flame into the slots. “What kind of better test?”

  Jonas leans forward and rubs his chin with his grease-tinged index finger and thumb. “I don’t know. Things showed up, so we know that it’s possible for material stuff to appear. Maybe. And you think JR’s sudden human reaction is part of this wish-thing, even though I think it’s just him realizing he screwed up big time.” He flicks the tiles that spell out friar off of my ‘f’ and moves his mouth back and forth. “Is there something weird you want? Something that would be a miracle if it happened?”

  I add meteor off of the ‘r’ in friar and think about what might burst on
the horizon of my life like an explosion of comets and swirling stars. “Like Bestemor getting better?” My voice registers lower than the softly clicking tiles.

  “Is she that bad?” He presses grant into the squares with over-cautious fingertips.

  I slide my tiles back and forth, annoyed with the blank I pull. I hate blanks. I hate the possibility. I wish I—

  I clench my teeth, slide the tiles a few inches away from me and look at Jonas, sitting still as the resigned letters on the Scrabble board.

  “She’s bad.” My voice is marooned, far away from my weak body which has dissolved into a mess of jerky fingers and weepy eyes. “Sometimes it’s so bad, I’m sure she’s all gone. Then so good, I wonder if I imagined the bad. Which is the worst. By far the worst.”

  His hands travel over the board, his elbows knock tiles loose, his wrists settle onto the grooves right where I’m about to build raider, off the ‘e’ anchoring meteor. He plucks my hands and holds them. His skin is scratchy and my eyes burn from the sharp chemical odor of Brake Cleen wafting off of it.

  “So wish it away.” He presses my hands like he’s pushing me forward. “Make the wish.”

  I close my eyes, but I cannot will myself to use this force I don’t trust yet on the one person I love above all others. “Did you ever read that short story ‘The Monkey’s Paw’?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jonas steadies my shaking hands. “Why?”

  “It’s about this little mummified monkey’s paw,” I explain, my voice quivery. “And you get three wishes from it. So this soldier shows it to this nice old couple with a son, and tells them it only brings bad luck. Really bad. But they think he’s just being dramatic. So they wish for money.” I stop.

  “That’s a pretty boring wish.” Jonas tilts his head and the fluorescent light casts a yellow-green glint over his hair.

  “The soldier said boring was better. But it wound up turning on them.”

  “How?”

  “The wish, it’s for enough to pay their house off or something. A few days later their son dies and the money his company gives them is exactly enough to pay the house off.” Every hair follicle on my body stands at ginger attention.

  “That sounds like a depressing story.”

  “That’s not the worst part. So the wife is hysterical, and she wishes the boy back. Like alive again, after he’s been dead and buried. So he hammers on the door, and the old man figures it out, and wishes the kid dead again. And everyone is miserable. Or dead.”

  “It’s just a story, Wren. Make-believe.” Jonas’s voice croons in my ear. He’s leaned close to me.

  “Make-believe? Like a fox that makes wishes come true?” I shake my hair out of my eyes and yank my hands from his so I can wipe the tears away with my knuckles. “What if I throw everything off whack, Jonas?”

  “But the people in Japan, the ones who keep these foxes, they don’t all bring misery down on the people they love, right?” His logic wiggles through the pages of tragic short-story that shuffle past my memory’s eye. “If this is some kind of magic wishing fox, you should be able to control the wishes, right?”

  I pull my finger under my eyes and collect the damp tears. “Control them?”

  “Maybe we can do some research?” He shakes a few Scrabble tiles in his hand, letting the smooth wood jiggle and clack. “Once you know what you’re in for, it won’t be so freaky.”

  New tears rebel against my attempts to wipe my eyes dry. They slide down my cheeks and drain all of my strength. Jonas ambles over to me and eases me out of my chair. The smell of motor oil clogs my nostrils, but under that oily smell is the warm tang of his skin. I burrow through and take deep breaths, my nose buried in his chest. His long arms bend around me.

  “Don’t cry, Wren. I’m here. I’m right here.”

  For a minute, that feels as unbelievable as a wish-granting lucky fox.

  Chapter 7

  Through all my tears and sadness, I have a sudden, pulsing desire; I want to kiss him. I want to grab him by the shirt, pull him down to my face and press my lips onto his. Everything feels so bad, so confusing. I want to fall into his arms and let him kiss it all away.

  But my tears tilt our world off of its axis, and kissing isn’t in our constellations. The minute they start falling, Jonas plays the part of amiable friend, and we head to my room for some logical research. We keep an imaginary four-foot perimeter erected around our bodies at all times. Even when I lean over to look at the laptop screen with him, he maintains a physical barrier I can’t crash through, moving away from me like we’re magnets at like poles.

  “There’re some books you can order.” His fingers slide over the trackpad and scroll through page after page. “Some of these sites have good information. Do you want me to bookmark them?”

  I nod. I want you to kiss me! Kiss me!

  He’s hunched over the screen, staring intently.

  I don’t want to think about this fox or the magic or the gifts. I don’t want to think, period. Kiss me, Jonas.

  He shakes his head at whatever he’s reading and squints, reaching into his chest pocket to take a pair of glasses out.

  Jonas! I wish…I wish you would kiss me.

  I feel like a coffee mug just out of the dishwasher, warm and empty. Ready for something to fill me. I reach a hand out and smash through the invisible wall. My rebel hand lands on his leg and breaks the cool spell.

  His head snaps up, his grey-blue eyes focused on me like he’s memorizing the curves of my face. Without looking, he slides the laptop to the floor and explodes the bonds that kept us apart. He never breaks eye contact, so I’m not sure how I wind up half on his lap, his mouth an inch from mine.

  “I want to kiss you. Bad.” His pupils are so big, his eyes have gone black.

  Instead of answering, I push my hands up his chest, over his shoulders, in at his neck. I knit my hands at the base and rub the soft hair at the nape, then pull at him and his mouth eases down and seals over mine.

  His lips move on mine like he’s mouthing words, and I press against him, eyes screwed tight until I can’t wait a minute longer. I open my mouth against his fevered lips and flick my tongue along the edges.

  Jonas Balto is sitting on my bed. Jonas Balto has his arms tight around me like he’ll never let me go. I’m crushed against him, almost bruised by his enthusiastic hold. I can smell the sharp slice of motor oil, the minty burn of his shave gel, the pure, perfect smell that’s just him, just Jonas.

  I breathe him deep, pull him close, press against him hard, take his face in my chapped hands and hold tight as we tumble onto the bed. I roll him underneath me, loving the long, easy feel of his tangled arms and legs under me. And just as I’m about to go further than I should, riding the wave of lust and escape, I catch my reflection in the vanity mirror.

  Am I just imagining it, or do my eyes look more gold than brown? And does my hair have a red sheen that I never noticed? I look sexy. I look like I’ve won something. I look smug and confident.

  Loki jumps up from the floor to the low vanity stool, and to the shiny metal top, agilely hopping over nail polishes and perfume bottles. She flicks her tail along the mirror, rubbing my reflection, and I feel the brush of her fur on my skin, even though it isn’t possible. She tilts her head, and I can see her face and mine, reflected. They’re eerily similar.

  “Wait!” I cry.

  Jonas lets his hands drop from my hips, and his head plops back. He looks dazed.

  I scurry off of him in horror.

  When I glance back in the mirror, my eyes look brown, my hair black. Did I imagine it?

  But there’s Jonas, spread on my bed, his taste on my lips and his smell in my hair.

  “You have to leave.” I get up and grab his boots, shove them into his arms.

  “Wren, I’m sorry. Did I move too fast? Did I do something wrong?” His voice scratches against my ears, transferring the ache I hear in his voice directly to my brain and heart.

  “Nothing’s w
rong. This is all me. You need to go. Now! Now, now.”

  He hops into his boots and I plant my hands into his back, press him towards the front door and out into the cool night. He stomps his heel into his boot and turns to look at me, in no rush now that he’s on neutral ground, standing on my front walk.

  I fold my arms over my chest and pray I can look him in the eye.

  “What happened?” He sticks his hands deep into his pockets.

  “I need to figure some things out. Okay? And I can’t do that with you. Okay?” I wish he would say okay.

  I clap my hand over my mouth at the thought. Wish.

  “Okay,” he says, and my stomach lurches. “But promise me you’ll call if you need anything. Can you do that?”

  He’s too tall. His nose is like a beak. He stinks like oil. He’s cold. A cold fish. But it’s all a stupid pile of crap excuses. I can’t convince myself I don’t want what I know I want. I miss him already, want him back before he’s gone.

  “I promise,” I lie. “I will.”

  He nods, stops as if he’s going to say more, then heads to his beat-up Ranger and waves uncertainly as he pulls away.

  I shut the screen door and lock the front door. I clean up in the kitchen, handling his forgotten board games as if they can transfer some kind of poison just by touching them. I check on Bestemor, sleeping soundly. I head to my room and glare at Loki.

  “What are you thinking?” I hiss.

  She flicks her tail and tilts her head at me.

  “Did you think that would be fun? Or funny? I like him, Loki. I care about him. And I know all that, what just happened? I know it was you.” I jab a finger at the fox.

  I’m accusing a fox of making me attempt to jump Jonas Balto’s bones then kick him out. My life has reached a pinnacle of ridiculous insanity I didn’t formerly believe was possible.

  I sit on the bed and bury my hands in my head. “I didn’t even want it! I didn’t want to kiss him like that!”

  Loki jumps down from the vanity and sits at my feet.