(ON HOLD) Spellbound (BxB)

Chapter 3 | Whispers

Ash had never ridden in the back of a police cruiser before. An ambulance several times, and once a helicopter lift when he had suffered an ugly skull fracture at camp, but never a police cruiser.

The boy with the Latin tattoo sat beside him. The cruiser turned a sharp corner and their knees touched at the bony edges.

He looked bored, if anything. His elbow rested against the window glass, his eyes shut, his long, long lashes unmoving. "Can't you just take us back to student housing?" Even the way he spoke was with a strange degree of rough earth. His voice was shadows. The low rustle of autumn leaves. The scrape of nails on skin.

"No can do." If ever there was an award for the most eighties look in Willowbrook Cove, it had to belong to Sheriff Max Dunnings, who eyed them from the rear-view mirror, his mustache curled at the edge to accommodate his crookedly gripped toothpick. "Gotta take you back to your daddy, boy. You should know the drill by now. Been dragging your ass back to his front door since you were too young to wipe it on your own." Sheriff Dunnings's steely eyes stuck Asher like a pair of pins. "Jackal here lives a ways in the forest. Should drop you off first, probably." 

Ash tore his eyes from the mirror long enough to take him in. Jackal. What the hell kind of a name was Jackal?

"What about you, boy? Where's your place?" Dunnings asked.

"I think they'll want me back at the school," Asher said. "I skipped curfew."

"Curfew? Kingsly ain't got—Ah, you're one of those fancy mental-cases they like to keep around for societal awareness points, huh?"

For a moment, Ash thought he felt Jackal's eyes on him. When he looked, they were still shut.

"What is it?" asked Dunnings. "You a schizo? Some kinda personality disorder?"

"Jesus Christ," came a mutter from Jackal's side of the cab.

Asher had heard far worse on far too many occasions, and more often than not, he was prepared with an arsenal of sarcastic responses. "I see a man in a rabbit suit," he said. "He comes to me in visions and tells me that the world's going toend."

"Does he now?" Laughed Officer Dunnings. "How long 'til it ends?"

"Twenty-eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes, and twelve seconds," Asher said.

Officer Dunnings glanced to the window and back to the road, then his gaze dashed back to the rearview mirror. At the sight of Asher's unwaning expression, the sheriff gave a small, frightful shiver. A sound came from Jackal.

"The hell are you laughing at, boy?" Dunnings asked. "You know I'm superstitious."

"No, you're gullible," Jackal said. "And that was the plot to Donnie Darko."

Ash laid his head against the window, feeling the rattle in his skull and warring with the smile that pressed his lips. It was always nice when others caught onto his jokes. Most of the time, they just assumed he really did see a man in a rabbit suit. Most of the time, they didn't care about him enough to question it at all.

"Well, whoever this Darko Donnie kid is, I can't take you back to school," Sheriff Dunnings said. "Protocol. Gotta take you home to your legal guardians. You'll likely get a call from the dean tomorrow—I'm guessin' as one of their special cases, you might be in a bit more trouble than my nephew here."

Nephew? Ash looked to Jackal, his olive skin washed in the light of a passing street lamp. His eyes were open now—dark, lost things in the reflection of the mirror. Invictus maneo, his tattoo read. Unexpectedly, his eyes flashed open and found Asher's.