… The soft rap at his door was not unexpected. Charlie sighed, throwing his pencil down on his math homework and spinning around to face his bedroom door. “Come in,” he called with only a slight rasp of exasperation in the words.
The door opened slowly and Mike’s boyish face appeared in the doorway. He was getting taller, but Charlie still saw a tiny little kid that was somehow his to protect, even though Mikey could hold his own and had more charm than men three times his age. Mike was the most popular kid in his class and at Little League. He even had every teacher in his school in raptures over him.
He should also be in bed by now.
His chocolate eyes were wide as he shuffled in and closed the door behind him, his smile sheepish.
“Mom and Dad wake you up?” Charlie asked him quietly, hating that his parents’ constant arguing upset Mikey so much.
Mike shrugged. He was at that age now where he thought he had to pretend to be OK about everything. Especially in front of his big brother. “I wasn’t asleep.”
Another curse word floated up from downstairs as their mom and dad started arguing again. He winced as his dad accused his mom of spending too much money on clothes for Mikey. Charlie knew what her shrieked answer would be before it came. “You should go back to bed, Mike.”
His little brother shrugged again and jumped onto Charlie’s bed. “What are you doing? Talking to Ari on Skype?” he teased, his grin far too knowing for a twelve year old.
“No,” Charlie huffed, a little affronted that even his little brother thought all he did was think about Ari. He got enough crap about it from his friends at school. “Math homework.”
Mike wrinkled his nose. “I’d take Ari over math any day.”
“I thought you liked math.”
“It’s OK.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes on Mike. His brother had that look. He hadn’t just come in to see him because of his parent’s fight. He wanted to talk to him about something. Knowing that with Mike you had to wait it out of him, rather than press him about it, Charlie whistled softly and swung a little on his chair, his eyes trailing over the familiar posters in his room.
“So…”
He raised an eyebrow at Mike. “Yeah?” Holy crap did Mikey just blush. Charlie grinned. “What?”
Squirming a little, Mike exhaled like a forty year old with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He couldn’t meet Charlie’s eyes. “Something happened at Sarah’s party on Saturday.”
“Oh really,” Charlie tried to hide his grin. Mike had been invited to a eighth grader’s birthday party over the weekend which was almost unheard of, but she was the big sister of one of the kids in Mike’s class. “And?” thinking he knew exactly what was coming next.
“We played Seven Minutes in Heaven,” he mumbled hurriedly.
He couldn’t help it. Charlie laughed. “Who did you have those heavenly seven minutes with?”
The shy awkwardness melted away as Mike looked up, finally meeting his gaze. He grinned mischievously. “Sarah.”
“Kissing and everything?”
“With tongue.” Mike nodded, his grin taking on a cockiness that cracked Charlie up.
Once he’d stopped laughing so much, Charlie shook his head in amazement. “Score. An older woman, little bro. I’m very proud.”
Having told his big brother and received such accolade for his exploits, Mike straightened his shoulders, his eyes glittering with confidence now. “I think I have a thing for older women.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He took a moment, thinking something over before he finally asked, “Are you and Ari dating?”
Charlie choked, surprised by the unexpected question. “What makes you ask that?”
“She’s hot.”
Groaning, Charlie covered his eyes in mortification. “Oh man, it’s too weird for my kid brother to be calling girls ‘hot’.”
Mike snorted. “I just said I made out with someone.”
“Yeah, but she was a kid I don’t know. This is Ari, man. Don’t call Ari hot.”
“But she is hot,” he replied indignantly.
“I know, stop saying it.” Charlie laughed. It was too weird.
Mike made a face. “So are you dating?”
Did Mike have a crush on Ari? He started chuckling again. “Not yet.”
“Aw man, that means you’re going to.”
He started laughing harder and Mike got up with the sole purpose of punching Charlie on the arm. That only made him double over.
“Come on, stop it,” Mike whined.
“Wait until I tell her.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Oh I would.”
“Biggest mistake you’ll ever make,” Mike predicted, heading for the door.
“And why’s that?”
“Because once she knows I’m interested she’ll dump you faster than a hot potato.”
Charlie nearly fell off his seat this time in hysterics. When he finally pulled himself together, Mike was grinning at him with a familiar stubborn glint in his eye. “You think I’m kidding.”
“Stick to girls in the eighth grade, Mikey. You’ll have an easier time with them.”
Seeming to think a minute, Mike sighed. “OK, dude, you can have her if you really like her. Just be really cool to her because she’s really nice. She doesn’t talk to me like I’m five.”
Yeah, Ari was cool. She was the most patient person he’d ever met. She could sit and listen to the most annoying people drone on forever, like that irritant she’d started hanging out with from her chem lab class, Rachel something or other. But Ari was just like that. She was kind. The nicest girl he’d ever met. They just had this bond. Like no one else knew the other as well as they did. Add the fact that she was, as Mikey put it, ‘hot’, kind of made it hard to keep their relationship platonic. Holding back another grin, Charlie nodded. “Thanks. You had me worried there.”
Mikey rolled his eyes. “Yeah I can tell.” He turned to leave, missing Charlie’s silent chuckles. Then just as he was about to step out he turned back and asked, “You still picking me up from Little League on Saturday?”
Aw crap was it this Saturday he was on Little League duty? Charlie frowned, thinking about the big plans he had for Ari’s sixteenth birthday. He was having this big bouquet of red roses made up for her and he’d booked a table at one of the nicer restaurants in town. Then he thought they could drive out to the Ridge and he could finally tell her how he felt. He was hoping by the end of the night he’d know exactly what her mouth tasted like, how her lips felt, what the curve of her hip felt like under his hand. He shifted, feeling warm at the direction of his thoughts.
“Are you blushing?” Mikey asked, suspicion in his gaze.
Remembering he was not alone, Charlie shuffled around in his chair, facing away from his kid brother. “I can take you on Saturday but you need to be ready real quick because I’m taking Ari out for her birthday.”
“Can I come?”
“No. But I’ll drop you off at Sarah’s if you want?” he teased.
“Sarah’s not my girlfriend,” Mikey snorted, pulling the door open. “She’s just one of my many women.”
“Get out of here, Casanova.”
With a sigh, Mike closed the door behind him. Charlie had only just begun to let his mind wander into fantasy land where Ari played a prominent part when the door opened again. “What’s a Casanova?”
“A walking STD,” Charlie growled playfully, throwing his pencil at the door so Mike hurried to slam it shut.
His muffled words filtered through the woods. “What’s an STD?”
“You’ll find out in health class, munchkin. Now. Go. To. Sleep.”
The huffy retort faded as he ambled across to his bedroom, “The name is Mike.”
Shaking his head in wonder, disbelieving that little Mikey was already making out with girls in closets, Charlie pushed his math homework away. He had better remember to tell Ari he was pushing their date back half-an-hour. Oh, and that she now had two Creagh’s crushing on her…
… Mikey had died that weekend. Everything had changed. Everybody had changed. And no matter how much Charlie wanted to let go, he knew the only way to put Mikey’s ghost to rest was to find the bitch that had killed him. There in lay his problem with Ari.
Ari still hadn’t returned his phone calls. It burned that she’d asked Jai to throw him out. It had burned to let him. But somehow he’d hurt the one person he’d never to meant to hurt. Again. He needed her to call. He needed to know that, despite her being upset at what he’d done, she understood, understood what he needed to do. And also… that she didn’t regret that amazing kiss. He’d played it over and over in his head the last few days trying to remember if he’d ever felt like that with a girl before. He hadn’t. Maybe it was because he loved Ari. He’d never loved any of those other girls.
Before Mike, before everything went to hell, Charlie had had these big plans for him and Ari. They would finish school, maybe take a year out to travel together, and then come back home and go to the same college, maybe get an apartment together. Before Mike, Ari had been Charlie’s world. He’d watched her turn into this awesome girl and God, he didn’t think he’d ever meet anyone as beautiful as her. He wasn’t the only one who noticed. Guys at school had started asking him if they were together because if not they wanted to ask her out. The possessiveness, the jealousy that had torn through him woke him up and he’d realized then that he wanted Ari to be his and only his. Her sixteenth birthday was supposed to be the night it all happened. She’d known it was coming, he’d made it pretty obvious by talking about their future a lot in those weeks running up to it, and Charlie had been gratified to see that she wanted to be with him too. Such grand plans. To protect her like he’d always done, to take care of her and never neglect her like Derek had. But then Mikey happened… and Charlie hated himself so much he couldn’t bear it. He’d needed everyone else to hate him too.
But Ari wouldn’t.
He pushed her away, kept her at arm’s length, and yet she’d still loved him. He’d pushed harder. For a while she dated a couple of other guys and that had killed him to watch but he’d convinced himself otherwise. He’d drowned himself inside countless other girls, using them deplorably, not even really aware of anything but the need to disappear for a while.
And then the relief to discover he wasn’t responsible for Mike’s death. Relief replaced the pain. Revenge replaced the hate. Discovering the truth about Ari, that she was some important mystical weapon in a Jinn war, didn’t faze him. OK. It was weird. And it had taken time to adjust, but once he came to terms with the facts about everything, it didn’t change the way he felt about her. He wanted to protect her again. And this time he wanted the means to be able to do it. The power the Marid had given him would aid him in hunting and killing the Labartu that had killed Mike. And after that, he’d use those powers to help safeguard Ari.