Page 63 of Marcus-stiltskin

“What’s going on?” I ask as my eyes adjust to the weak early evening sunlight.

“The alarm,” is all he says.

“The alarm?” I repeat, only to hear it as it echoes from some ancient speaker out in the main room. “What is it?”

He sighs. “It sounds like the baby box alarm again.” His voice is groggy. He runs a hand over his face and sighs.

That wakes me up immediately. I sit up and put a hand on his arm. “Stay here. I’ll go check for you. No point in getting up if it’s just a squirrel or a mouse in the wall.”

I hop up quickly so he won’t beat me to it and pad out into the main room, closing the bedroom door behind me against the sound that is echoing from the loudspeaker overhead. Freddie is tangled up in his favorite blanket on the couch.

“Freddie K., what’s in the baby box?” I ask, hoping he can give me an idea of what is awaiting me. He grunts and rolls over, but sure enough, I get a picture of a baby-sized shark swaddled in a blanket.

“Freddie K., if you don’t want to wake up, you could just ignore me, you know,” I say, slightly annoyed.

“We seriously need to get that alarm disconnected,” I say aloud to no one as I make my way down the stairs.

The box is locked.

I’ve checked it a dozen times since this whole incident and I’m sure of it. But I can already feel something weird seeping out from the box as I step off the last step and walk toward the indention in the wall.

A faint glow emanates from the edges, as if it is lit from within. I touch the handle and find myself pulling back. It’s hot to the touch… about as hot as the trows were on Halloween.

I hurry back up the stairs. “What is it?” Marcus asks from the bed.

“Fucking magic. Give me a second.” I pick up Freddie K., who grumbles, but otherwise behaves.

“Do I need to come down?”

I sigh. “Yeah, probably.”

Marcus groans as he sits up and begins to roll the protective sleeve over his leg. I leave him to it and head down the stairs again, holding the tiny dog in my arms.

I hold Freddie K. close as I try to clear my mind the way Esmer’s been trying to teach me. My mind runs in circles until Freddie K. shows me a picture of himself sleeping, his tiny chest rising and falling.

Is he telling me to breathe?

I decide to give it a try.

I breathe, trying to force all the other thoughts out of my head. I suck at meditation and will certainly die if I have to actually ever fight true magic because it will take me twenty minutes just to get these protections going. It’s like playing an online video game where everyone else is fifty levels ahead. I’m the real life kid sidekick making everything slow and hard.

I can feel Marcus behind me as he moves down the stairs. Marcus’s step thump, step thump has become so common during my days, I don’t even notice it anymore. Yet it still stirs something inside me, an excited energy, butterflies, like catching a glimpse of your crush smiling at you from across the room.

Of course, I’d be working on meditation and my thoughts would move toward sex. He comes to stand beside me and pulls me close. His arms are my favorite place to be these days. Muscular and comforting, it’s a safe place to just exist without having to try, without having to work hard at not messing up.

I find myself breathing easier as he holds me and I feel like I can finally take on whatever’s waiting in the box.

“I’m ready,” I tell Marcus, and he nods. He releases me but doesn’t move away. Instead, he steps forward with me. I put my hand to the handle of the box–it’s still warm but not unbearably so. Slowly, carefully, I pull on the door, prepared for anything from another baby to a rabid squirrel.

What I’m not prepared for is the tiny hideous creature laying swaddled in a blanket.

“Oh, God.” I say before I can stop the words. I slap my hand over my mouth, but the words are already out there in the universe.

Marcus just chuckles. “Is this what they mean when they say ‘a face only a mother can love’?”

“I think so.”

I was there for baby Jack’s birth, so I know and have seen with my own eyes that all newborns don’t start out so adorable. It’s hard to be cute when you’ve been squished in a small canal for hours. It’s not the baby’s or the parents’ fault, but this goes so far beyond that.

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