Bridger Page 6

  I laughed. “Can do, Memaw. I love you. Mom, I love you too.”

  Mom’s hand appeared in the screen. “Bye, hon! Don’t forget the pictures! I’ll tell Chris you said hello!”

  The last sight was Memaw laughing, trying to pull Mom back into the frame of the camera before the screen went black, ending our conversation. It made me feel good to know they were enjoying one another.

  Closing the lid of my computer, I looked back at Tess, confused. I had a feeling Tess was more connected to our family than anyone was letting on.

  Tess smoothed her apron and looked around. I could tell she was flustered. She forced a smile as she glanced between Liam and me. “I guess getting the fire started for the evening would be good. Do you want one in your room as well, Ashlyn?”

  I blushed, realizing I was about to be alone with her son. Minutes ago she and Memaw had verbally hinted at their desire to get us together. She was already making her move to get the ball rolling. “Uh, sure, Mrs. Walsh. Thanks.”

  “Its Tess, dear. Tess.” Smiling, she winked at Liam and then walked out of the kitchen, leaving us alone.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment. We were intentionally looking everywhere but at one another. Finally, we caught each other’s eyes and smiled awkwardly.

  “So. You’re Ashlyn.” If I weren’t so nervous, this introduction would have been funny. He was about as conversational as I was.

  God, this was awkward. “That would be correct. And you’re Liam.” Again, I simply stated the fact. No question, no encouragement to continue the conversation.

  The silence that ensued was pronounced and long. Tess was making things clang in the living room. I wondered if she was doing it on purpose, proving that she wasn’t listening in on our conversation.

  “You’re related to Jesse.”

  “Yeah, kind of. We’re distant cousins through Dad’s side.”

  “Your dad died last week.”

  That stung. There was no emotion in the conversation, just stating facts. He was worse at small talk than I was. At least I could draw out responses by asking questions like a normal person.

  “Yeah, it’s been pretty rough,” I said, not wanting him to state anything else he may have heard from Tess or Jesse before my arrival. I stood to go into the living room, my chair scraping audibly against the linoleum.

  As I turned to go, he threw out another fact. “My younger brother disappeared three years ago. No one ever found his body. We still hope someday he might come home. Well, my mum does. I gave up that hope a long time ago.”

  Woah. That was personal. Maybe he did want to have a conversation. I turned back around, walking over to sit beside him. He dropped his feet off the chair he was using as a footstool and made room for me. This was an odd first conversation. Weren’t there rules to this, like talk about the weather first? I tried to think of something to say. “I’m so sorry. That must be really tough.”

  His blue eyes were hard, revealing the pain he felt. Strange. Not many dark haired guys had blue eyes. It was mysterious. It worked. Shaking my head, I chastised myself for checking him out when he was discussing something so horrible. I focused on trying to be a friend to him.

  “I don’t like talking about it, but I thought since you lost your dad…” he trailed off. I finished his sentence for him.

  “That I might know what it feels like? Yeah, we kind of have losing family in common, don’t we? But you can always hope. My dad is never coming back,” I said, trying to re-instill the hope he had given up on.

  “I just wish we would find his body. It’d be so much easier if we could bury him,” he said quietly.

  Well, so much for a fun conversation starter. We’d skipped right over light and fun and went straight for the doom and gloom we had both encountered. That was one way to get to know someone; just lay out all your emotional baggage from the start and hope they didn’t run away screaming.

  I didn’t run. This dark haired, socially inept boy intrigued me.

  We talked long into the night. Liam was a great conversationalist after getting past the beginning. It seemed as though we had to put each other through the horror we’d seen before going onto other, more normal topics.

  We talked about bands, our families, our hobbies, everything. I noticed the little things. His eyes crinkled when he smiled, almost to the point that they would disappear when he laughed. He told stories with his hands. Most importantly, I noticed the fact that over the course of the next three hours we had moved our chairs closer to one another. Our hands found one another’s without even thinking about it. I liked this. I liked this a lot. Memaw said a boy would woo me. I had just been wooed in one evening’s conversation. If my hunch was right, he seemed to be wooed by me as well.

  He wasn’t even blind.

  This could be good.

  Nearing two a.m., Liam stretched and yawned, smiling at me. “Don’t you have jet-lag or something? I’ve kept you up too late.”

  His smile was impossible not to reciprocate. I could feel a smile blossoming unwillingly across my face. “It’s okay. Your mom paid me to stay up and talk to you.”

  He didn’t even miss a beat. “Well that’s good, since Emily sent a check over in advance for my services to keep you out of trouble.”

  As he got up, he pulled me up with him, pulling me into a tight hug. It felt good. “It was nice to talk with you,” he said. “I haven’t had a good conversation in a while. We’ll have to do it again.”

  “Definitely.”

  He kissed my hand as we walked out of the kitchen. I didn’t even know guys did that anymore. As he looked at his watch, he groaned. “The guys are gonna give me a hard time for being two hours late to work. It was worth it, though. I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, he winked as he pulled on a black jacket and left.

  I headed to bed on cloud nine. Not sure which room was mine, I put my ear to each door, listening for Jamie’s voice. Nearing the end, I heard her talking.

  “I’ve been keeping a journal. They’re uploading now. Let me know what you think.”

  There was silence. Jamie must be wearing headphones as she talked to Mark, because she was replying to a question I hadn’t heard.

  “You were right. No, I’ll be home soon.”

  I knocked before walking in, letting Jamie know she wasn’t alone. Intruding on her conversation wasn’t the most polite thing to do, but I was beat. “Hey James, can I come in?”

  After a moment of silence filled with feverish clicking, Jamie replied. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  Looking into her eyes, there was something wrong. “What’s up? Is Mark okay?”

  Jamie looked distracted. “Mark? Oh, yeah. Just being dumb.”

  They must be in a fight or something. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I just want to get some rest.”

  Jamie pulled herself off the ground and made her way to the bed. “Goodnight, Ash.”

  She could be so weird sometimes. “Goodnight, James.”

  EIGHT

  I was greeted in the morning by the wonderful scents of bacon, eggs, and bread being made. I rolled over to see if Jamie was still in bed. She wasn’t. The shower was running in the bathroom connected to our bedroom, so she must have been getting cleaned up.

  My ponytail had exploded during the night, so I attempted to tame it as I walked into the kitchen. The only person I could see was Liam.

  Sitting there quietly as he read the newspaper, his furrowed brow made me laugh. He was so serious for a guy our age. I liked it. I sat down beside him and fluttered the pages he was reading. “Anything mind blowing going on today?”

  He smiled and set the paper down. The headline was about a four year old boy who had gone missing. “Just the usual, depressing stuff. Just once it’d be nice to hear a good story in the news.”

  “Too true,” Tess murmured from across the kitchen. She never looked away from what she was doing, but it was obvious she was eavesdropping.

  Liam winked at me and
nodded toward Tess. “Feel like taking a walk? I think the kitchen is a little crowded.”

  My heart fluttered. “Sure. Tess, will you let Jamie know we’ll be right back? She’s in the shower.”

  Once more she didn’t look up, but her grin was enormous. “No problem, dear. Have fun.”

  Outside Liam wasted no time in taking my hand and walking onto the road. He seemed to know where he was going, so I let him lead in silence for a while.

  When he broke it, his question caught me off guard. “Do you believe in fairy tales?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, you know, leprechauns, unicorns, all that stuff?” He grinned sheepishly like he didn’t even believe it himself. “You can’t tell me your grandma hasn’t told you Irish folklore.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s all I’ve ever heard. Don’t tell me you believe that stuff.”

  He looked down. “What if I told you I knew it was true?”

  Well, here it was. No wonder he liked me. He was crazy. I kept my thoughts to myself, since it was probably rude to tell him he was nuts.

  He squeezed my hand tighter. “Look, I’m serious. Did you see that newspaper today? The article about the boy going missing?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “That’s not the first time something like that has happened. My brother was kidnapped the same way. I’d get in so much trouble if they knew I was telling you this, but I want you to know. My brother was taken by a Changeling.”

  Okay, so he was really nuts. I’d seen on TV to just placate people like him so they wouldn’t do anything drastic, like kill me or something, so I continued to walk with him. “And what exactly is a changeling?”

  “They’re nasty things. Faeries. Not like the fun ones you see in movies. Not the f-a-i-r-y variety. These are f-a-e-r-y. They exist. They took my brother.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “And you know this how?”

  “I can show you if you want.”

  For some reason, his intense gaze convinced me I wanted to know. Maybe it was just the fact that I was a sucker for him, even if he was nuts. Either way, I’d heard Memaw talk about Changelings before, so maybe it’s just in the Irish blood to be superstitious. After everything that had happened at home, though, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give him a shot.

  He took me further down the road to a dilapidated building, one that had to have been burned to the point of no repair. It sat on the property desolate, its lone company being a weeping willow tree along the right side of the house. Thick ivy had taken over what was left of the front of the house.

  Liam stopped short on the lawn. “This was where we used to live.”

  Oh. This could explain some of the darker tendencies. I didn’t know what to say, so I mumbled an apology of some sort. My inability to console someone was probably unmatched.

  He continued without my prodding. “Mum, Dad, Aiden, and I all lived here. This was before I believed in the folklore. Before things changed.”

  “What changed?”

  He sighed. “He came. Ankou came.”

  “Ankou?”

  “I don’t know who he is, really. A really, really bad faerie, I guess. One with a grudge of some sort. We don’t know what he’s after, or why he targeted us. Mum and I have been almost in hiding ever since. That’s when we met your grandmother. She’s supported us through losing Aiden. Through Dad leaving.”

  I snorted. “That doesn’t sound like the Memaw I know.”

  Liam looked at me, sincerity in every word. “Emily has helped us a lot.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to question you.”

  Liam closed his eyes, the pain evident. “So Ankou sent a Changeling for Aiden. It happened gradually, the change. Aiden just stopped being, well, Aiden. He was moody, sullen, and downright hateful at times. Then all of a sudden, he was gone. Ankou came and confronted Mum, talking about bridges and how he would make one through Aiden and her. Mum obviously didn’t know what he was talking about, then all of a sudden your grandma barged in the house. Never seen her in our lives. She…she took care of Ankou. There was nothing she could do about the fire that Ankou started when he’d come to confront Mum. Nothing to fix the fact that Aiden was gone. It was too late for that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It felt like he was being honest with me. There was no way I could swallow the story, but he seemed so fervent, it was hard not to. “And your dad?”

  “He just up and left,” Liam said, anger burning away every other emotion. “Said he was going to the grocery store the day after. Never came home. Haven’t seen him since. He’s a coward. It’s Mum and I now.”

  He took my hand once more and led me around to the back. There was a jagged hole kicked out of the wall in one area. He let go of my hand, stooped down and walked through. Smiling, he turned to look at me. “You coming?”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I wouldn’t bring you here if it wasn’t.”

  Not wanting to be left alone, I opted to crawl into the hole. Liam was leaning against the doorframe of the room. It looked like it could give way and any second. “This was my room.”

  “Do you come here often?”

  He sighed. “Not really. Only when I need to be reminded of why I do what I’m doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He didn’t respond. His blue eyes burned as he fought back the tears. “I vowed to my mum that I would kill the Changeling that tore our family apart. It’s his fault half my family is gone. We won’t find Aiden’s body, because there’s no body to be found. He’s gone to their realm.”

  I walked across the room and wrapped my arms around him. “Liam, I’m so sorry.”

  He rested his chin on the top of my head. After a moment of silence, he pulled me an arm’s length away and studied my face. “So you believe me?”

  I laughed. “My head tells me you’re completely nuts.”

  He put his hand on my chest, never looking away. “And your heart?”

  “It tells me what you’re saying is true.”

  He sighed and pulled me close to him again. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told outside of the guys.”

  “Do they believe you?”

  “They’ve all lost someone to the Changelings. They have no choice but to believe, even when they would rather not.”

  “Are all Changelings bad?”

  “Yes. Every Changeling is evil. They’re faeries that enjoy wreaking havoc on human lives. They reside in a realm called Neamar. That’s where Aiden is. The only good faeries left are the Glaistig.”

  I pulled back. “The what?”

  “Glay-stig. That’s how it’s pronounced. They’re the only faeries left that value human life. There’s others in between the two races who prefer to just stay out of human affairs. Wish they’d all do that.”

  Liam dropped his arms and walked out of the house once more. I followed suit and watched him sit by the willow tree. Sitting beside him, he wrapped his arms around me tight. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you tell me?”

  His shrugging moved me as well, causing us to laugh. “I guess I figured you deserved to know that the folklore is true. Not that anyone you ever told would believe you.”

  “No one would believe this. I still think you’re crazy.”

  He laughed. “Well, at least I have someone to be crazy with.”

  As I curled tighter into his embrace, I nodded in agreement. “We can be crazy together.”

  I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t believe a word of it.

  NINE

  The rest of the day we sat around the fire in the living room, getting to know one another. The time passed quickly. Tess was an amazing cook, so I had been eating the entire time. She seemed used to this behavior because she was totally prepared for it. She seemed to eat just as much as I did.

  A lumpy, blue armchair had become my residence for the day. M
y laptop was whirring as I typed feverishly. Today there was time to catch up with Reese and my biology partner, Mary. Chatting with Reese wasn’t as fun as it usually was. It might have been the fact that Liam was sitting across from me. I kept looking away from the computer screen to steal glances at him. He was quiet and did nothing more than stare into the fire while the rest of us talked. He was so different than the rest of them. I wished I could hear what he was thinking.

  Mary, on the other hand, was asking questions in rapid-fire style. Are there any cute guys over there?

  Maybe, yeah, I typed. I might be sitting across from one.

  Oooh! Send a picture!

  I laughed out loud, causing everyone to look my way.

  I can’t send you a picture. My webcam faces me, you dork.

  Mary was determined to see this guy. Well, I expect a picture by the end of the trip. Don’t hold out on me, woman.

  I shook my head. I would never dream of it.

  Say, how’s Jamie doing? Has she cheated on Mark?

  No, but I won’t be surprised if she does. She’s fine. Being typical Jamie.

  There was a pause in Mary’s response. What do you mean?

  Oh you know, I typed, pausing to figure out how to word it in case Jamie walked by. She’s just being a princess.

  Gotcha, Mary typed, winking at the end. Let her know the royalty over there doesn’t need any help.

  Will do. I miss you, girl. You’re so easy to talk to.

  I try. Keep Jamie in your sights. Have a good night. Don’t let the cute guy across from you get away.

  I sighed and signed off, returning to the conversation around the fireplace. They were discussing soccer match tactics. I leaned back in my chair, getting comfortable to catch up with the chatting.

  Jamie remained aloof for the majority of the day. She was probably mad I had gone off with Liam this morning. Not wanting her sullen demeanor to diminish the mood, I did my best to cover it up. No one seemed to care, so that was nice. She sat on her computer, typing away. She was probably talking to Mark.

  Looking up from her computer screen for once, she glanced around the room. Her eyes fell on me. “I’m going to go down to the convenience store. I just searched on Google and it looks like it’s only about a fifteen minute walk down the road, is that right, Tess?”