Chapter 18 – Reunion
Juniper
I’m…wordless. Completely without words. All I can do, in the entire world, is just…gaze at my boyfriend’s lifeless body.
Because it’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.
Not creepy, or rotten, or gross in any way. It just looks like he’s…waiting. Not sleeping – no, whoever said that dead people look like they’re sleeping is a damned liar. Because he’s not alive at all. He’s grey and still and his face is slack –
He’s just…
There.
And it’s fantastic and a miracle and –
And fucking horrible.
Very suddenly I burst into tears, burying my face against my palms.
“Oh heavens, June,” Anton murmurs, stepping as close as he can. “Come on, kid, wait a bit – at least until I can hold you through it –“
But I just shake my head, blubbering into my hands – hating it so much, seeing him lifeless like that. So, so much more dead than his ghost, which is him – his spirit, his wolf, his smiles, his personality –
Seeing his fucking corpse drives home his death so much more than anything else I’ve ever seen. Tony dead is just – it’s horrible – I never want to see it ever again –
Once we get him alive again he’d better let me die first because I am never going to be able to handle looking at his corpse – never again –
“Oh my god,” Anton murmurs. “Can – can someone…?”
Warm arms suddenly wrap around me and I feel myself pressed to someone’s body, my face against their chest. I lean into it, comforted by the sharp scent of pine, and cry my eyes out. Trying – the whole damn time – to pull myself together, to stop making this all about me.
But it was just – he’s so dead – it’s so horrible, it was nothing like him –
A few short minutes pass where Jackson just lets me cry. But when it starts to abate, when I start to get control, I feel him nod. “It’s all right, June,” Jackson murmurs.
I sniff, and lift my head, staring up at him.
Jackson nods down to me, stroking a broad hand over my hair. “I get it,” he says, nodding to me. “If I were in your place? I wouldn’t be able to handle it either.”
A trembling little smile takes my lips as I sniff, feeling…slightly less foolish.
Jackson loosens his arms and nods slightly towards Anton, who I can still feel close behind me. I sigh, feeling horrible and selfish again, and turn to see Anton standing there just looking helpless and devastated. Everyone else bustles around, clearly making a big bumbling fuss to give us privacy. Cora performs a quick medical inspection while Jesse and Roger strategize ways to lift Anton’s corpse. Midnight peers curiously at the body, trying to get close, while Laila and Daphne try to talk her out of it. Mom and Ari step away with Marigold, who might be too little to see yet another dead body in her young life.
“I’m sorry, June,” Anton says, his face fallen with guilt. I focus only on him, ignoring everyone else.
“Don’t be,” I say, stepping towards him. Jackson waits for a moment, but when I don’t go to pieces again goes to help with the corpse transport process. “I’m the one who’s sorry – I’m just being ridiculous –“
“You’re not,” Anton murmurs, shaking his head at me, lifting a hand to tuck my hair away from my face. He pauses, then sighs, and shakes his head, dropping his hand. “God, I hate not being able to touch you again.”
“I know,” I say, wiping away the last of my tears. “It’s lame here. Let’s go back to the Underworld.”
He smirks at me, I think liking seeing some of my snarky side come back. “So,” he says, nodding towards the body which I know is being lifted behind me. “Was I that bad?”
I twist my mouth to the side, seeing how he’s setting me up for a joke, wanting to make me laugh. I play along, sensing I need it. That we both need it. I shrug, pretending to be underwhelmed.
“What was it?” he asks, sighing dramatically. “Am I shorter in real life than you thought I’d be?”
“I think I just like you all blue and sparkly,” I say, shrugging. “I didn’t realize you were such a dull, normal skin color. Just…no flare. No pizzaz.” I sigh, crossing my arms.
“Oh no,” he says, his shoulders slumping. “Is this the end of the road for us, Juniper Sinclair? Are you only attracted to me when I’m hardcore macabre? Do I need the spooky to make all of this work?” He sweeps a hand down over himself, indicating his whole being.
“Yeah,” I say, sighing, fighting my smile even as I sniff. “Normcore Tony is just very beige and dull. Maybe I’ll just stick with the vintage ghost edition of my boyfriend. Though,” I perk up, my eyebrows raising. “Maybe we can keep corpse-Tony around for fun. He seems…posable. We could dress him up for the holidays and stuff.”
Anton bursts out laughing, tilting his head back, his eyes crinkling with mirth. A smile bursts out on my lips at that and I again stare at him – the real him this time, not just some shell his spirit inhabits. Nah, I find myself entranced with the spirit himself.
When Tony brings his eyes back to me his face softens a little, surprised. “What?” he asks, stepping closer – close enough that I can feel the sparkly tingly hum of him, elemental and real. He bends lower, close enough to kiss. “What’s that expression for?”
“I just love you,” I say, shrugging, meaning it. That’s what I was thinking, after all. “I love you so much, Anton.”
He smiles, slow and pure. “I know. I love you too.”
I grin, opening my mouth to say more, but Jackson clears his throat.
I turn, going a bit pale when I see him standing there with the whole group, Tony’s body slumped over his shoulder in a fireman carry.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Jackson says, quite soft, I think truly meaning it. “But…Cora wants to get this upstairs.” He shrugs his shoulder, indicating the corpse, jostling it a bit.
I pale again and take a deep breath.
“Upstairs?” Anton asks.
“Mom got a medical suite all prepped for you,” Jesse says, beaming at his mother. She nods, smiling at Anton and me. “So we can…figure out how to enact this ghost/body reunion. Or whatever.” He pats Anton’s body lovingly on the back like an old friend.
I groan a bit, shaking my head and closing my eyes, not really understanding how everyone isn’t as disturbed by this as me.
My sister beams at me, stepping close. “Ready?” she asks, looking between Anton and I.
“Oh sure,” Anton says, grinning at her and smiling, slipping his hands into his ghost pockets. “I guess now’s as good at time as any.”
As a group, we all turn and start to walk back towards the palace. I do my best to avoid looking at my boyfriend’s body bobbing grotesquely on my sister’s mate’s shoulder, instead keeping my eyes on his ghost.
After all, very soon he’ll look quite different and I’ll miss my ghost boy.
But…I have a feeling I’m about to get something much, much better.
I beam at him and Anton smiles right back.
“All right, move it, love birds!” Ariel says, laughing and giving me a nudge. “Let’s go see dad!”
Anton’s face falls as he snaps his head forward, looking up at the palace that looms before us, remembering that not only does he have to be reunited with his body today.
He also gets to reunite with my dad.
_ _ _
Ariel
“No no no,” I say, my voice light and sing-song as I grab Juniper’s hand, holding her back. “Let him do this on his own.”
“What!?” Junie gasps as Anton steps forward in one of our spare receiving rooms, still all ghosty, bowing deeply to dad as mom steps to stand by her mate, Marigold still perched on her hip. Juniper snarls and whips her face to me, tugging at my hand. “Why!?”
“Because it’s more fun!” I say, grinning. From the corner of my eye I watch as Jackson carries Tony’s body into an adjoining room, Cora, Roger, and Laila following, wanting to be helpful. Midnight and Daphne head for a buffet against the far wall, Midnight’s eyes flashing with delight.
I feel absolutely no surprise to see the loads of food piled there. Of course mom set that up.
But Juniper won’t be deterred. She scoffs at me, spinning away and trying to stand with Tony again. But I laugh and hold tighter. “Seriously, June!” I hiss. “Let him…be a man! Or whatever! He has to stand honestly before dad sometime and Tony doesn’t need to hide behind your little baby skirts!”
Juniper sputters incoherent words, totally disbelieving, but Jesse comes up on her other side and slings an arm around her shoulders. “Ariel is right for once,” he says, nodding and looking on as Tony talks calmly with my parents. “He’s a big boy ghost. Uncle Dom will respect him more if he does this one-on-one.”
Junie scowls and stops tugging.
I squeeze her hand, kind of pissed. “Why do you listen to Jesse and not me!?”
She snarls and flashes her teeth at me. “Because he didn’t routinely give me prank candy that turned my teeth black when we were kids –“
“Who do you think gave me the candy!?” I hiss, leaning towards her.
“Now, cousins,” Jesse says, smirking but remaining calm. “If you keep bickering, we can’t eavesdrop.”
We both fall silent, realizing he’s right. The three of us stand perfectly still, all sending out our wolf hearing, picking up on the conversation.
“I owe you a debt, Davis,” dad says, making me grin. “I believe that it is now both of my daughters whose lives you’ve saved.”
“I mean, only barely,” Tony says, smiling awkwardly and running a hand through his hair. I grin, thinking that I so rarely get to see him dispossessed and pleased that he’s kept all of his same gestures even though he doesn’t have a body at the moment.
“Bullshit,” Juniper snarls. “He totally saved me – I never would have made it without him –“
“How’d he do that?” Jesse asks, frowning at her. “When he didn’t even have a body?”
“Well, sometimes he did,” she snaps, glaring even as she keeps her eyes fixed on our parents. “And when I was about to drown he came into the water and passed me oxygen –“
“Oh yeah?” Jesse asks, wicked. We both turn to stare at June, delighted. “And how’d he do that?”
She goes still and then turns beat red and snaps her mouth shut.
“Come on, June,” Jesse says, laughing and pretending to step forward. “You’re right – let’s go tell your dad how Tony passed you oxygen in the Underworld – really get into all the details –“
“Oh, you shut up,” she snarls, red as a tomato.
I squeak, thrilled. I love it when June gets all red.
“I hate you both,” Juniper hisses, still not looking at us. “I hate you both so much. When you’re dead I’m sending you to the worst parts of the Deadlands and letting you rot there for eight hundred years.”
Dad lifts his eyes from his conversation with Anton, fixing his gaze on Juniper’s face, taking in her anger, her embarrassment, and her very tense body language as he greets and thanks the young man he doesn’t know is her boyfriend.
We all go still, the laughter fading from us as dad’s eyes narrow, returning to look over Tony with a much different, much darker expression.
“Oh shit,” Jesse whispers.
I gulp, thinking that those words might be…precisely right.