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I fight the immediate revolt in favor of straightening my spine. “Hey, friend. That’s not appropriate behavior, okay?”
His dumb mouth opens, so I tap a finger to my lips. “Uh-uh. No, sir. I’m talking. We don’t grab people, got it, got it? No. No, we do not. It’s not nice to grab people. How would you feel if someone grabbed you?”
His grip tightens until it hurts. “What’s with that tone? Are you making fun of me, you—” He swears.
It’s usually my deescalation tone. I’m so tired I forgot it doesn’t actually have the right effect on adults… Hence, I’m left staring blankly at Dracula and wondering if my next course of action—kneeing him in the groin—is a bit too dramatic a response as of yet.
I mean.
Do I wait until he bruises me…or…?
While I’m mentally thumbing through my handbook on social etiquette, a hand larger than his reaches from behind, closes over his wrist, and pries him off me. Dracula goes more pale than he’d be in a black-and-white movie as Pollux glares down at him—lethal.
Dark hair. Darker eyes.
Murder.
The sheer force of the murder in Pollux’s eyes shouldn’t send an odd tingle up my spine, but it seems to have done just that.
Wordlessly, Pollux puppeteers Dracula, putting his massive frame between us. Dracula curses, stumbling the moment Pollux lets him go. “Sorry, man. She didn’t say she was taken. You—you should keep a better eye on your girl in a place like this.”
Pollux’s fingers stretch and close. “I know what she said.”
Dracula exhales a nervous laugh. “Right? See, so I’m not at—”
“She said no. Get out of my sight before I string your entrails around the front lawn.”
Dracula bolts while my heart does the tiniest, inexplicable leap, and I squint to make certain this person is Pollux. Sure, I’ve never seen someone quite his size before…but…
Yep. No.
It is him.
He’s just wearing a large black coat this time.
I guess everyone needs at least one redeemable quality. It’s what separates real monsters from the storybook villains. After all, real monsters are just twisted humans who still have something like a sliver of soul worth salvaging. It’s what makes them so utterly terrifying…
Pollux releases a breath and turns to face me. His gaze lowers, scanning me from head to toe, stopping at my arm on his second perusal. “Are you well, Kassandra?” Gently, he lifts my hand, examines my wrist, then seems to remember himself.
He pulls away before I can register the warmth of his skin against mine. Before I can find words.
His jaw locks, and his gaze hits me with surprising force. “Can we talk? Somewhere less…loud?”
I don’t know why I dumbly nod. I don’t know why I follow him outside, into the quiet front yard guarded by that towering skeleton. It’s the last day of October. There’s the slightest nip in the air as autumn considers winter’s approach. And all I’m wearing is a little bumblebee dress with long, thin sleeves, a pair of plastic wings, and a little painted bee on my cheek.
While a breeze skates across my back, Pollux glances warily up at the massive skeleton and grunts. “Interesting.”
“What is?” I ask, attempting to find my cordial, pleasing tones. “Does it make you feel small?”
He exhales the touch of a laugh and…smiles at me. “When I’m around you? I constantly feel small.”
I take a tiny step back.
Adjusting his stance, he faces me squarely. “Why don’t you like me, Kassandra?”
My smile might turn blinding. “What do you mean? What gives you the idea I don’t like you?”
“The droves of hatred that spill off you whenever we’re in the same room, mostly.”
