Chapter Two
Jareth wearily ran a hand over his face, then brought it around to massage the back of his neck. Every way he looked, he was greeted with boxes still waiting to be unpacked.
Moving out of the city had seemed like a good idea; there had been too many distractions. He had figured that if he put himself in a position where he had nothing to do but write, he could somehow overcome his writer's block. His agent had snickered and said he was running off to the woods to find himself. Jareth had bristled at that; there was nothing wrong with change, and if something didn't give soon, he'd be a very famous dead man. He could just picture the hordes of angry readers storming his Boston loft, looking for blood or books, whichever came first.
Moving to Maine had been the right decision; he just hoped it would pay off.
It had been difficult to explain to his neighbor and occasional friend, Hoggleston, why exactly he was relocating, and ever harder to convince the stout man that he didn't need to tag along. Looking at the boxes, Jareth now wondered if it would have been better to let the old man have his way; at least he wouldn't have been unpacking alone.
Despite his fatigue, Jareth smiled. Freedom, at last! Away from the hustle and bustle of the city, away from the pressuring agents and editors, nestled undisturbed in the quiet woods by the ocean, he figured it was only a matter of time before his inspiration came flooding back. He had loved the attention his talents had garnered at first, but fame did funny things to a man, like making him feel that the more people he was surrounded by the more cut off he really was from the world.
It was time to remind himself that Jareth Corbett was his own man and not just another talented pen. It was also time to remember why he wrote in the first place.
But first he had to make the small cabin livable, which meant unpacking. A weary sigh rent the air as Jareth finally set his procrastinating bones to work.
Sarah frowned at her ancient computer screen; profits were down this month, and that was worrying considering autumn was tourist season for the northeast. She was counting on her Christmas earnings to do some repair jobs around her house, but if the shop didn't pick up soon it would have to wait another year.
That was one of the many things she missed about living with her family. She'd never had to worry about her pipes being old or if her sinks were cracked; her father had taken good care of them. At 25 she was lucky to have her own house, even if it was an extremely old one, but damn if the endless list of repairs wasn't driving her up the wall. Last month it had been the furnace, this month it was leaky pipes, next month it would probably be the roof. She needed to sell a couple of those hundred dollar vases at the back of her store, or she was afraid she'd be coming back from Christmas with her family to find a collapsed pile of rubble where her house had once stood.
With a shake of her head, Sarah set her worries aside and began to close the store for the night. She had promised to welcome her new neighbor tonight and, despite her reluctance to play into Liz's meddling hands, she wanted to make a good impression.
The ride to the outskirts of town didn't take long, and soon she was parking in the semi-familiar driveway. Though Owl's Head had been empty for years, Sarah had come to this place a few times, admiring the view of the ocean from the cliffs or hiking through the woods. It was strange to see lights on in the cabin though; it was like seeing a ghost suddenly come back to life.
Sarah shook off her momentary unease at that thought, and made her way to the door. If the boxes stacked against the windows were anything to go by, it looked as though Liz had been right; the poor guy probably didn't have any help moving in.
Knocking on the solid wooden door sounded strangely ominous to her, the creaking of the old hinges raised the hair on the back of her neck, and the man behind the door had her jaw dropping.
A pair of black jeans and a white dress shirt covered a figure that was lean and commanding. One set of elegant, gloveless fingers curled around the door handle, while the other set played around the belt loop of one hip. Blonde hair was pulled into a messy braid, keeping it away from an angular face that had haunted her dreams for ten years. Sure, the clothes and hair were different but the face wasn't, the piecing, uneven, ice blue eyes sure as hell weren't.
"You!" the accusation burst from her lips. What was he doing here?
Jareth sighed. He hadn't even been in Rockport for a whole day yet and crazed fans were already hounding him. Still, he though, as far as crazed fans went the woman was pretty easy on the eyes. She was petite and curvy, probably only coming up to his chin, with thick chocolate colored tresses, and wide expressive eyes. Eyes that were currently shining with horror, if he wasn't mistaken.
He watched in confusion as she stumbled back a few steps. "You stay away from me, Goblin King!" she shouted, dashing back to her car and speeding off into the gathering dark.
Jareth stood at his door, dumbfounded by the adorable woman's bizarre retreat. Goblin King? Well hell, the woman was nuts! He sure knew how to pick them, he thought with a snicker; lush body, squirrelly mind. He'd have to find the poor girl later to figure out what the hell she had been going on about.
Perhaps Rockport would prove to be more interesting than he had anticipated, he thought with a chuckle.
The instant flair of attraction Sarah had felt upon seeing Jareth for the first time in ten years had been expected. The panic had not. Some instinct had fired in the back of her brain, warning her about the nasty details she had been trying to forget. He was dangerous, an opportunist, and nothing from him had come without a price; wonderfully seductive though his company had been, he was not a safe person to be around.
Now, sitting in her cluttered kitchen, Sarah began to mull over the details of what had happened. His stance had been filled with arrogant grace, his lips pulling into that familiar mocking smile, but his eyes… he had seemed surprised, perhaps a bit bemused, and more than a little confused. Had he not been expecting her, of all people, to show up on his doorstep? Or…
Her mind shuddered at the thought.
Had he not even recognized her? How cruel a fate that would be, to pine after one man for a decade only to find he hadn't even bothered to remember her.
And what was Jareth doing in Rockport anyway; didn't he have a kingdom to run?
Fantasy had never really left Sarah as she had grown, it had been too much of who she was to give up. But now, taking a close look at her thoughts, she couldn't help but feel utterly ridiculous. It was true that something had happened that night she had been late coming home, but nothing magical had ever happened to her before or since. Karen always said that she had a nasty habit of painting everything with fantasy, perhaps she had been right. Maybe she had dreamt the whole Labyrinth up, and spent an entire decade trying to recapture something that had never happened. Still…
A new neighbor who looked almost exactly like Jareth was highly suspicious.
A sigh burst from her lips. Sarah grabbed her latest Corbett novel, Trials of the Wicked, and settled in for another long night. There would be no sleep this evening; her thoughts were ready to keep her up by running circles around themselves. A good read would keep her mind busy, and with any luck she'd nod off in the early hours of the morning and awaken to discover that she had been laughably mistaken about her new neighbor. Just a trick of the setting sun perhaps, or a hallucination brought on by working too hard.
As she began to read about Lionel and Carla getting into some heavy action, Sarah got the niggling feeling that her peace of mind wasn't going to last long.
It was 4am and Jareth was sorely tempted to hurl one of his freshly unpacked mugs at the nearest wall.
The dead of morning had always been his favorite time. A silent world stretched out beyond his windows and if he closed his eyes he could almost believe that nothing else existed but him and his writing. He wasn't sure if it was the seclusion that appealed to him, or if it was simply easier to think when the rest of the world was sleeping. With a few lit candles and a cup of tea for company, his best scenes had been written while the morning hours bathed in starlight.
But not today.
"Goblin King," his cultured voice murmured restlessly.
Today he was being tormented by the words of a woman he didn't even know, words that probably wouldn't have made any sense if he hadn't once been involved in the production of a play called Labyrinth. It still didn't explain why the green-eyed beauty had called him the Goblin King and then run away as though the hounds of hell had been chasing her. It was more than that, though. Something about her words had brought his latest story to mind but, for the life of him, he couldn't wrestle a single sentence out of his overworked brain.
The manuscript had been giving him trouble since day one. Something about his ethereal hero, Darrow, had always been off, but no matter how many revisions Jareth went through he hadn't been able to fix it. There was something missing, a tiny shred of personality, a certain aspect of his identity that simply wasn't there. And Vivian! Dear god, he'd never had so much trouble writing a leading lady! The book hadn't originally been his idea, he'd taken it as a commission and, if this was how things were going to go, it was damn well going to be his last commission.
"Goblin King," he muttered, unable to get the idea out of his mind, unable to shake the image of shocked green eyes.
Truth be told, Jareth had been somewhat obsessed by that short play. It had been his first real foray into the world of fantasy. Granted, he had only played a minor part in the production, having more to do with the workings of the backstage, but it had been the catalyst for his writing career. His first few books had been pure fantasy, dripping with intrigue and magic, but he had moved on to more contemporary subjects, and so this commission was the first work in a long time that had taken him back to the intricacies of fairytales. Perhaps that was his current problem: he was simply out of practice. No, he shook his head, it always came back to the characters.
"Goblin King…"
And then it hit him: Darrow was weak. He was a foppish, well-bred gentleman who didn't have a single predatory bone in his entire hulking frame. But a Goblin King, Jareth mused with a spreading smile, could be just as wicked as he wanted. He wouldn't have to play by any rules because he was the one who made them. The possibility opened a number of different options to the writer; the story would have to be re-written from the beginning, but the plot had just opened considerably. It wasn't a flood of ideas, but those starved by drought learned how to make due with a drizzle. It seemed that Maine was paying off, after all.
Tomorrow he would have to find his little green-eyed muse so that he could thank her properly.
A/N: Only a little interaction so far, but things will get rolling soon.
A special thank you to Leben ist Magie for correcting me on Rockport being one word instead of two (I went back and fixed it in the last chapter), and to Vaelru for catching my semi-constant mistake of mixing up lose for loose (which I also went back to fix).
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Disclaimer: Labyrinth: Not mine. Rockport: Real place. What is mine? Just the words.