Inherit Read online

  “I’m not really going out,” I protest. “I just wanted to change my clothes.”

  She clucks her tongue. “You’re young and beautiful, and you got all dressed up! Go out! Go out! Before you’re an old wrinkled prune like me.”

  A week ago, Bestemor saying that would have driven me to tears. But now it comes out like what it’s meant to be; a joke we can both laugh at. I kiss her cheek and head out to the kitchen.

  My happy glow fades when I notice Loki sitting at the kitchen door, twitching her tail and challenging me with her gold eyes.

  She runs over to me and rubs at my legs, forcing me to pick her up. “No way,” I hiss. “I know exactly what’s going through your little head, and you need to stop.” I can’t resist rubbing my nose in the short, velvety fur at the top of her head. “Bad fox. Bad.” I put her back down and take a deep breath. I need to stop blaming this fox for all my problems. I am a perfectly sane person in charge of all my own decisions.

  And I know what I have to do; I march into the kitchen and intend to tell Jonas that he needs to get lost.

  But he’s already scrubbed all of the dishes and has them in a neat stack on a linen dishcloth by the sink. He leans one hip against the counter and regards me with a raised eyebrow.

  “How’s your grandma?”

  “Great. She just told me to have fun. You know, on my date.” I narrow my eyes and, without really meaning to, lean close to him.

  He pulls closer, and I don’t trust the smile that’s twisted on his face. If he kisses me, I won’t have the strength to pull back. I feel the purr work through my body, fill my mind with images I can’t blink back; Jonas kissing me, Jonas’s hands on me, Jonas picking me up and carrying me to my room, quiet so my grandma doesn’t hear.

  His eyes gleam like he’s reading every dirty thought that races through my mind. He looks like he has every intention of following through with all of my crazy ideas.

  I have no plans to stop him.

  Chapter 9

  Warmth fills me, a swirling heat that burns like Loki’s gold eyes, tipping me into sexy, sweet territory where I have all the control. Jonas’s arm tightens on my waist, and I lean my head back so he can kiss my neck. My hands move over his shoulders, down to his elbows, and pull him closer. I push him back onto the kitchen chair, and he pulls me on top of him, his hands crooked around my legs behind my knees.

  The chair is a solid base for all of our twining, pressing movement. “Wren,” he breathes as his lips drag across my jaw. “You make me crazy.”

  Crazy. Crazy hot. Crazy wild. Crazy stupid.

  This is not Jonas Balto.

  “Stop!” I jump off of his lap and walk backwards until my back hits the edge of the cold porcelain kitchen sink. I drink in his face. It’s wide open. I can read every hope and desire, and they’re all about me.

  “Why?” he asks, following me up like we’re attached by the hips. A piece of overlong hair falls from his forehead, almost in front of his eye. It should be mine to brush back, but I cork that possessive feeling and tighten my grip on the sink’s edge. He gets up and walks as far as the fridge and leans close, the blue of his eyes swallowed in the deep black of his pupils. “I get close, you pull back. Why?”

  “Because this isn’t you.” Loki slinks around the refrigerator and licks her chops expectantly, and I throw her a glare that she ignores with a lick of her paws.

  Jonas opens the door and the cool blue light washes over him as he tosses a little piece of Kjøttkaker in front of her. She rubs her head on his ankles, and he sinks down to press his fingers into the fur behind her ears. She shoots me a look that, I swear, is mocking.

  “Don’t feed her that,” I say as she swallows the meat defiantly. “You’ll just encourage her to beg.”

  “She’s not a beggar.” Jonas’s fingers swirl in her dark red fur. “So, what’s the problem, Wren? You still have a thing for JR?”

  “Not even remotely.” I hike up onto the counter and let my boot heels tap lightly against the white cabinets. I want to stop looking at him, his tall, lean body buckled into a neat heap, but he sucks my vision his way with a force stronger than gravity, stronger than magnets, stronger than any crush or infatuation I’ve ever felt before.

  “Is it the whole mechanic thing? You don’t want to slum? Cause I won’t be a mechanic forever.” His jaw squares off hard because he’s gritting his teeth.

  “You shouldn’t be ashamed about being a mechanic. I’m a waitress. I’m not ashamed.”

  He looks up and gives me an unhinged half-smile. “I never said I was ashamed.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I think you’re a liar.”

  He tosses it out carelessly, like another rich lump of Kjøttkaker for Loki to gobble up.

  “I’m not a liar.” I stop drumming my feet on the cabinet. “I’m not ashamed of who I am or what I do.”

  “Why date someone like JR then?” He stands back up and his full height puts him a few inches over the top of the fridge. He takes up way too much room in this tiny kitchen.

  “I liked him. I thought he was cute. And smart. And funny.” Now I’m pushing it, stretching the little bit about him I really liked into something more substantial.

  “If you really believe that, you’re stupid and a liar.” He looks down his beak of a nose at me.

  “Not a liar. Sometimes stupid. Here’s a total truth for you: I thought you were obnoxious when you were mauling me.” I hop off of the counter and glare at Loki. “Look, I have a date, like I said. So if you don’t mind leaving, I’ll be going. On my date.” To prove it I slide my keys out of the bowl on the counter and head toward the door.

  He balances his weight on the toes of his boots and runs his fingers in quick circles behind Loki’s ears.

  She looks up at me, her bright eyes assessing, and I lean down to pet her before I leave. For a minute, I expect to hear that strange, other-wordly taunting voice, but I must be blessed with a night of pseudo-normalcy. The only sounds in the kitchen are the thump of Jonas’s boots as he walks to the door, the jangle of my keys as I lock up, and the bump and flap of the moths hitting the glass of our front porch light box.

  “Thanks for helping Bestemor.” I stick my hand out. Jonas smiles and shakes his head, shakes my hand, and goes to his Ranger. He leaves the door open, one leg hanging out in the street while I get in my truck and turn the key in the ignition.

  Nothing.

  I let my forehead bump onto the steering wheel and try to reign in my total humiliation. When I look out the windshield, Jonas has both feet on the ground and a smile splits his face.

  “Car trouble?” he calls.

  “Did you do this?” I lean out the window and gesture at my traitorous truck.

  “No one has to do anything to make a piece of shit run like a piece of shit.” He’s clearly enjoying this. “Wanna jump?”

  His innuendo hangs between us.

  But I do need a jump. Holy hot boy, do I need a jump.

  I tighten my hands on the steering wheel. “Yes. Please.”

  Ten minutes later, the engine purrs to life. Jonas looks at the battery with his eyebrows low over his eyes. “When’s the last time you changed this battery?”

  “It came with the truck,” I admit.

  “When did you get the truck?”

  “Bestemor bought it four years ago for a really good deal.”

  “Was it free? Because if it was, you guys got ripped off. You have to change the battery, like, yesterday.”

  “I will.”

  “It might not make it tonight on this one. Let me drive you.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “So, who is this shitty date who doesn’t even come by and pick you up?” He keeps busy wrapping his jumper cables up neatly, but I can see the aggravation sketched all over his face.

  “He’s someone I met at the restaurant. And it’s normal for a girl to drive, Jonas. What if he’s a freak? I need my own vehicle so I can leave.” I know that once a l
ie gets all detailed, it also starts taking on a life of its own, and I can feel it slowly strangling me even in its untrue infancy.

  “You’re going on a date with a guy you just met who might be enough of a freak that you need to escape him in your car? Stupid.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “Then stop being stupid!” He slaps the coiled cables against his palm and mutters to himself.

  “What? More insults? Go ahead and tell me how you really feel, Jonas! I honestly couldn’t care less what you think of me!” I slam the hood of my truck down and head back to the driver’s seat.

  He puts both hands on the hood and leans against my truck. “You’re bad news, and I should definitely know better than to get all involved. I should just stay the hell away. But something in me can’t stand to see you get into more trouble. So, yeah, I was saying what a little idiot you are, how you’re practically asking to get date-raped and dumped on the side of the road going off with some asshole you don’t know and that it would be smart for me to just find some other girl to hang around like some pathetic love-sick puppy.” He bounces the front of the truck up and down and groans. “But I can’t be what I’m not!”

  “Nice?”

  “Smart!” he bellows back. “Please let me drive you to your date or stalker meeting or whatever it is, okay? It would make me rest easy, and if you promise to change your battery, I won’t bug you again. Do this for my damn sanity, okay?”

  I turn the key and kill the engine. I was worried that if we hung out too much, he’d fall under some spell, but it seems like the opposite might be true. Maybe Loki’s strange power can get us together, but our natural head-bumping lack of chemistry will make it impossible for us to stay that way. I guess that’s a win for me.

  So why do I feel so crappy?

  “I’m actually going to a party,” I confess.

  Jonas wrinkles his brow.

  “I’m going to Elijah’s party,” I clarify.

  “I thought he and Macie were together.”

  “They are. I think. The guy thing…I’m not not meeting a guy tonight.”

  He rubs his temples with his forefinger and thumb. “Good god. I never thought you were insane like this, Wren.”

  He sounds a little disappointed. I feel a little disappointing.

  “I’ll just take my truck.”

  He reaches a hand through my window and holds the steering wheel still. “No way. That battery is going to crap out on you again, and a random party at Elijah Strazar’s isn’t a good place to get stuck.”

  “You don’t like Elijah?”

  “He’s alright. But he’s been in a lot of fights and there’ve been a lot of sketchy characters hanging around with him, so I’d rather not see you get involved in all that.”

  “I don’t need you protecting me.”

  “Really? I promise I’ll stop being your knight in shining armor when you remember to get a new battery and learn to change your own tire. Hell, I’ll even teach you.” He opens the door and doesn’t move back when I step out, so we’re standing aggravatingly close.

  “I appreciate all this. I do. I just don’t want to date right now. Not you. But not because of you. It’s complicated.” The smell of him, part car oil and part cologne, makes my brain tilt inside my head. But I can’t let him know how completely crazy he drives me. If I encourage him, knowing full well all this crazy luck stuff might be part of it, our relationship would be a huge question mark when I desperately want an exclamation point. Or maybe a nice snug pair of parentheses.

  He already has my elbow in his hand and is half dragging me to his truck. “You don’t need to explain. I obviously misread some stuff between us. I’m not after any complications, so consider yourself safe from me. To Strazar’s?”

  I nod and he drives, his eyes pointed straight ahead, straight on the road. I let a long breath loose. So he’s not going to pressure me about dating. Good!

  Good?

  Good.

  Although, if he manages to stay away on his own, I guess Loki’s jinx doesn’t work the way I thought. Maybe these strange powers only take temporary hold over people. Maybe Jonas will manage to keep his head after all.

  And if he likes me after all this, and I know for sure it has nothing to do with all the crazy witch-fox business, maybe I could have a chance with him after all.

  Why does my life have such awful timing?

  “I have the worst timing.” Jonas jiggles the shift stick impatiently.

  “What?” I’m surprised to hear my own sentiment echoed back at me.

  “The train.” He points and sits back heavily in his seat.

  The train passes by slowly, one crawling spray-painted cargo container at a time.

  “You don’t have to stick around at the party. Nevaeh is supposed to go, so she’ll give me a ride back.”

  “Trying to get rid of me already?” When he smiles I can see every glinting tooth.

  “I don’t want you to feel like you have to hang around for my sake. That’s all.” I smooth my skirt over my thighs. He follows my hands’ movements, and I wish the skirt were a few inches longer so I wouldn’t feel like such a heinous tease.

  “Have you made any headway with the whole fox thing?” His voice is measured and guarded.

  “I read some articles. Ordered some books. The ones you showed me.”

  “Anything weird happen?”

  I count to ten before I open my mouth so I don’t blurt out that I think he only came on to me because he’s under some kind of magical fox spell. “I made a ton of money at work today.”

  “You’ve been waitressing for a while now. Isn’t it possible you just had a good day?”

  “It’s possible.” I pause. “I can hear her.”

  “Who?”

  “Loki.”

  “Hear her what? Do foxes bark? Purr?”

  “I can hear her talk.” I cross and uncross my legs uncomfortably. We watch the train inch past. I will it to go faster with jiggling heels and gnashing teeth. Jonas is so still and silent, I wonder if he’s cemented in place.

  I wait for him to make fun of me. Mock me. Tell me to get out of his car because he doesn’t cruise around with mental patients.

  “So?” He turns his head to watch me expectantly with golden-lashed eyes.

  “So what?” I squeeze my hands together until they sting from the pressure.

  “So, what did Loki say to you?”

  He’s serious. He believes me! Relief floods through my brain.

  Until I realize what I have to tell him.

  Chapter 10

  “She said…she said that what I want is what I’m going to get,” I paraphrase. “That I should stop working against myself. That if I send her back to Japan, Bestemor will get worse again.”

  Jonas sucks his breath in through his teeth. “And she said all of this out loud?”

  “Not out loud. I think I’m the only one who can hear her.” I close my eyes against the next ridiculous fact. “I can only hear her in my head.”

  Jonas nods. “Okay. Well, that’s not so bad.”

  I stare across the dim cab of the truck. “‘Not so bad’ how, exactly?” I hold my hands up, at a loss. “A magic fox told me that I’m going to get every single desire I have, whether I like it or not, and if I don’t go along with it, the sweetest woman in the world sinks into dementia!”

  The last car on the train struggles past and Jonas pulls forward. “You’re a pretty level-headed person. Well, for the most part. So you have this lucky fox? And it grants your desires? Do you know how many people would kill for that? I just don’t see what’s so bad about all of this.”

  “You don’t know my desires,” I mutter, and he hears and turns his eyes on me with a look that feels like it pierces through my clothes and skin and bones right to my heart. “It’s scary.”

  “I’m sure Peter Parker was scared, too. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.”

  “Are you talking about
Spiderman?”

  “You’re like Spiderman now.”

  “Seriously? Spiderman? I’m nothing like Spiderman.”

  “He got bit by a spider and got superhuman powers, right?” Jonas asks. I nod. “And then he goes a little nuts because he doesn’t know if he can handle the pressure of having all of these powers all of a sudden. He has to learn to accept them.”

  “Except I didn’t get bit, and I don’t fight crime.”

  “You could. Fight crime.” He stops at a yellow light I would have rolled through.

  “But I probably won’t. See! I’m too selfish for this.” We’re coming to Elijah’s street, and I wish we weren’t. I want to talk to him some more.

  The truck turns left at the right that would take us to Elijah’s, and a minute of confusion flickers through me, until I realize I wished.

  I slap myself on the forehead. “No! No! This is a bad thing! Just bad!”

  “What?” Jonas asks.

  “Why did you go left instead of right?” I demand.

  “The whole street was backed up. I turned left so I could go around the block and come down the other side. Why is it such a big deal?”

  “I wished it!”

  “Wished for a different route to the party?” Jonas laughs. “I wouldn’t worry about your wishes wreaking havoc on the world. No offense, but they’re pretty crappy.”

  “I didn’t wish for a different route!” I snap. “I wished for more time with you!”

  Jonas sheds his smile, flattens his brows low over his eyes, and slows down to a pace that would make Bestemor antsy. But no matter how slowly he drives, we get to Elijah’s party. He parks with more focus than I gave my SATs.

  When he kills the engine, we’re stuck in the truck, each of us unwilling to make the first move.

  Finally he reaches a hand over and takes mine. He looks at our entwined hands and nowhere else. “I’m cool with more time. If you want more time driving or talking or playing Scrabble, I’m fine. It doesn’t have to be more time…you know…uh, making out or whatever.”

  I’m not positive, since the only light is the orangey glow of the streetlight, but I think Jonas might be blushing.