tells me that I’ve misread the situation. In response, the ball of tension in my stomach gets just a little tighter.
“Maybe the abbreviated version?” I suggest as we come to another sudden stop, this time right in front of two giant piles of snow.
“I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but I can try.” He shakes his head, runs a gloved hand up and down his thigh in the most nervous gesture I’ve ever seen from him as the silence goes on and on and on. I’ve just about decided that he’s changed his mind, that he’s not going to tell me anything, when Jaxon says in a voice that’s more wind than whisper, “Don’t get too close to her. Don’t try to shake her hand when you meet her. Don’t—”
He breaks off, and this time he runs a palm over his face instead of his thigh and, though it blends in with the howl of a nearby wolf, I swear I hear him say, “This is never going to work.”
“You don’t know that,” I answer.
His head snaps up, and this time the obsidian gaze he focuses on me is like nothing I’ve ever seen from him. Silver flames dance in the depths of his eyes, and there is a mountain of despair there as well as a host of other emotions that I don’t recognize or understand.
“You realize she’s a vampire, right?”
“Of course.” I don’t know where he’s going with this, but they were pretty clear back at the library.
“If she hasn’t eaten in a while,” Jaxon says, mouth twisted in a grimace I could never have missed, “she’ll probably have a food source there.”
“A food source?” I repeat. “You mean a human?”
“Yeah.” He swallows hard. “I want you to know that I don’t do what she does. I don’t feed from people the way she does. I don’t—”
“It’s okay,” I tell him as I realize that he’s as nervous about what I’m going to think of his upbringing and the woman who raised him as he is about my safety and the fact that his brother is now hanging out inside me somewhere.
It’s a shocking revelation about a guy who has never appeared anything but confident, and it warms me even as it makes me nervous.
Jaxon nods. “Sometimes she lures tourists in. Sometimes other paranormals bring her ‘gifts’ for her assistance.” He holds my gaze. “Not me, though.”
“Whatever happens in there is okay,” I tell him, leaning forward so that my arms are wrapped around his waist and my chin is resting on his chest. “I promise.”
“‘Okay’ is a bit of an overstatement,” he tells me. “But she is tens of thousands of years old, so it is what it is.” He hugs me back, then steps away. “Also, you need to let me do most of the talking in there. If she asks you a question, answer, of course, but she doesn’t particularly like strangers. Oh, and don’t touch her or let her touch you.”
Okay, now the warnings are just getting weird. “Why would I touch her?”
“Just give her a wide berth, I mean. She doesn’t like people very much.”
“I never would have guessed that, considering she lives in an ice cave in one of the most remote areas of Alaska.”
“Yeah, well, there’re a lot of reasons people live where they do. It’s not always about choice.”
I start to ask him what he means, but he might as well have hung a No Trespassing sign on that statement. So in the end, I don’t push. Instead, I just nod and ask, “Anything else I need to know?”
“Nothing I can explain to you in a couple of minutes. Besides, it’s getting colder. We should go in before you freeze.”
I am cold, my teeth all but chattering despite the many, many layers of clothing I’m currently wearing, so I don’t argue. Instead, I just step back and wait for Jaxon to lead the way.
And though I think I’m ready for anything, I have to admit the one thing I don’t expect is for Jaxon to raise a hand and lift an entire bank of snow several feet into the air. But as he does, he reveals a small opening in the base of the mountain: the entrance to the ice cave.
Jaxon drops the snow behind us, then moves his hands through the air in a complicated pattern. I try to watch what he’s doing, but he’s moving so fast that his hands are little more than a blur.