Mort pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks at me. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because you deserve it.” I smile at him. “Because I know what it’s like to feel like you aren’t right, like the way you are is just…wrong. I spent so many years like that, if I can help someone else not feel that way I’m going to take that shot every time.”
“You’re a good person,” Mort says.
“I know. It’s one of my worst traits.”
Mort smiles at me and holds his hand out to me. “From now on we’re friends.”
Chapter Twenty Two
“Well, that’s nice. We have a new ally,” I tell Jaak. He’s back in his human form and we’re outside of Toys ‘N Things now. The door barely hangs on its hinges in a lopsided drunk kind of way, not because of the magical toy battle we had with Mort but because I nearly ripped it off the hinges when I tried to open it to leave. Superhuman strength is going to take some getting used to, I guess. We just walked out into the late afternoon sun and it’ll be nightfall soon. We spent longer with Mort than I realized, which is okay in my book. He needed us.
“We do and a useful one, even with his limitations,” Jaak says, raising a hand in a wave to Mort who’s standing in the shop front window and waving at us. I wave back and smile at the sight of him. He looks so different than when we first met him. Smiling and happy. There’s a lightness to the Oculus that wasn’t there before.
We did that.
“He’s nice once you get past the stuffy librarian thing he has going on,” I say.
“Verily. We’ll do well to keep him close. This Carol he spoke of seems formidable.”
“She does and so cool.” I loop my arm through his and keep close to him. The streets aren’t as full as they were earlier, not with how late in the day it is but that doesn’t mean we aren’t being listened to. “You think we try for the Chamber of Commerce or wait for tomorrow? Mort did say they’d be gone by now.”
“They leave at 3 on the dot. It doesn’t matter what business you have with them, if you’re even a minute late you have to wait till the next day. The bunch of bourgeois bureaucrats."
“Let me think.” Jaak rubs his jaw and looks up and down the street. I take a second to look him over while he thinks about our next move. He’s smaller now, but his human form is still big. His size or lack of horns and fur aren’t the things I notice, though. It’s the way he moves, how he holds himself, how no matter which form he’s in there’s really no difference to me.
He’s beautiful, beast or man. I don’t care which way he comes to me as long as he’s Jaak.
“If we decide to infiltrate the Chamber of Commerce now we might be caught. It’s difficult to say what wards they have. I might be able to detect enough but you are still new in your powers. I’d be far more comfortable if we had more time for you to settle into them.”
“Yes…settle is one way of putting it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it felt like I was strapped to a rocket going a million billion miles an hour,” I tell him. “Even now, I can still feel it. It’s not like it was before. I feel like I could pick up a car right now.”
He pats my hand. “Much of that is leftover battle lust. It will fade with time. It warms my heart to see how quickly you’ve taken to combat. You were formidable in there with the conjured giant.”
“It was just toys,” I tell him softly, deflecting the compliment he gives me. If Jaak notices I do it, he doesn’t let on.
“You ripped both of its arms off,” he says, making jerking motions with his hands. “You put your fist through its head. It was most impressive.”
I grin at the memory because I did do that. I was unstoppable. “Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I?”
Jaak turns to me and pulls me in in a hug. He picks me up and twirls me around in a celebratory circle that has me giggling and clinging to him.
“You did. Your instincts are strong. There will be none that can stand against us in battle. Mark my words, Meadow. You will be terrible and awesome in your power.”
I don’t know if terrible can be used in a good way but when Jaak says it, I start to change my mind. Except…terrible…terrible…
“Wait. That reminds me. When you got hurt, I felt it.” I hold out my arm to look at it and don’t see anything, just a few pink spots where the wounds had been. “Are you healed?” I ask, craning my neck and trying to get a good look at him but I can’t with the long sleeves he’s wearing.
“I am.” Jaak puts me down on my feet gently and runs his fingers up my arm. “I did not think the Oculus would get close enough to wound me. You should have never felt this. I didn’t know it was possible.”
“I don’t understand. When we bonded I saw your memories, it felt like I was there with you,” I tell him and try to choose my words carefully, “I saw your childhood. It was lovely but there was a man with a coin. He wanted to make a deal.”
Jaak’s fingers freeze on my arm. “You went that far back?”
