It turns out Justin is right, surprising no one: Mason, it seems, is a dog in more ways than one.
Heartbroken, Alex hugs her pillow tightly as she tosses and turns, playing the night's events over and over again in her head: the lame, anticlimactic not-fight with the mummy in his lair; the discovery and freeing of Juliet; the sweet reunion of Justin with his (gag) Shnuggly Boo-Boo McCutiekins; the unexpected yet awkward discovery that she and Mason used to date, like, three centuries ago...
And, oh yes, Mason's sudden declaration of undying love for Juliet, right in front of Alex. That was the real show-stopper, right there. Brought the house down. And cue the applaaaaauuuse!
Jesus Christ. Of all the werewolves in all the cities in all the world, Alex manages to pick up the one who's Juliet's sloppy seconds? What were the odds? OK, so Mason was always saying that he didn't believe in luck, that destiny worked in strange ways, but sweet holy fuck... did destiny have it in for her, or what?
And OK, maybe Mason did kinda sorta start out as a bit of a rebound thing—a way to distract herself from the naughty!bad feelings she was beginning to have for her brother, no less—so yeah, there was a certain irony there. Maybe destiny felt she had it coming. But wasn't it enough that Juliet already had her fangs into Justin? Did she have to take Mason away from her, too?
Sniffling into her damp pillowcase, Alex dimly becomes aware of the soft, pink light filtering into the room through her curtains, and the chirping of a few distant birds. Raising her head slightly, she squints at her alarm clock. Almost 5:30. She hasn't slept a wink all night. And though she normally stays in bed until well after noon most Saturdays, clearly this is a lost cause, and she could use a change of scenery, anyway.
Throwing her blankets aside, she drags herself out of bed, pulls off her pajamas, and gets dressed entirely on auto-pilot, without even really paying attention to what she's putting on. She really should shower—she still has last night's trek through the Transylvanian forest all over her—but to hell with it. She pulls her hair into a sloppy pony tail, tucks her wand into her back pocket, grabs the box of tissues off her nightstand and clutches it to her chest like a teddy bear as she pulls open her bedroom door and steps out into the hall.
OK. So where to now?
Not surprisingly, Alex finds her eyes drawn to Justin's door, at the other end of the hall. He won't be up to talk to, yet—even Justin doesn't get up this ridiculously early on a Saturday—but she doesn't really feel like talking, anyway. She just doesn't want to be alone. Maybe he'll be OK with her crawling into bed with him, the way she used to when she'd have nightmares as a kid. It's been a few years, and their dynamic has changed just a bit since then...but if a broken heart isn't a good excuse for regressing, then what is?
Creeping down the hall, Alex instinctively dodges around all the creaky spots in the floor with a skill born from years of subterfuge. And though she knows it's completely innocent, that she's just going to her brother for comfort and nothing more, she still feels a subtle, illicit thrill run through her as she lays her hand on his doorknob. She hesitates a second, remembering Justin's penchant for security wards where his sister's concerned. Without even bothering to pull out her wand, she mutters "Please, not now. Just open, OK?"
And this time there isn't even a pause before the lock clicks beneath her hand. Alex sighs gratefully. Destiny might have it in for her, but at least the laws of physics and probability are sympathetic. Twisting the knob, she eases the door open with her shoulder, peers through the slowly widening crack into Justin's room, careful not to wake him...
...and then stands upright and pushes it open the rest of the way as she gawks at his empty bed, still made up and unslept in since the day before.
Fresh tears spring to Alex's eyes as she lets out a long, shuddering sigh. Well, duh, stupid. Dude just got the love of his life back after months and months apart. Of course his self-imposed bedtime was going to go right out the window. They'd probably spent the night together somewhere, secretly making love and—
Alex wrenches her eyes shut, tears spilling down her face as she presses her hand to her mouth against the sob that threatens to escape her. Turning on her heel, she scurries down the hallway as quietly as she can and bolts down the spiral staircase before she can wake up Max or their parents. She doesn't stop running until she's at the freezer door in the Sub Station. She tugs it open, darts into the lair and hauls the door shut behind her. Then she presses her back to it and collapses, sliding all the way down until she's a sobbing heap in the fetal position on the floor.
She stays like that for a long time—she completely loses track of how long—awash in grief, choking on anger and jealousy, her thoughts a jumble. She's not sure who she's crying over more, Mason or Justin, which is confusing to say the least. After awhile, she stops caring. What does it matter? She's lost them both, anyway.
Gradually, her body exhausts itself for the time being, and long shuddering sobs subside into sniffles, even if the tears don't stop coming. Hugging her knees to her chest, her forehead resting on her knees, the quiet of the lair begins to press in on her as her breathing slows.
And that's when Alex finally notices it: a faint, nose-whistling snore. Justin's snore.
Alex picks her head up off her knees with a start, her heart dropping into her stomach as she realizes she's not alone in the lair. Oh God, how stupid could she be? Of course Justin would have brought Juliet down here! How many times had she walked in on them making out in the lair? Down here, they could be as loud as they wanted, without fear of discovery, and Justin could disenchant the door so that it would simply just lead into the freezer instead of the lair... not that he'd done that, but maybe he'd just forgotten, in the heat of the moment.
Feeling nauseous, Alex hurriedly wipes off her face and stands up, grimacing at the pins-and-needles feeling in her calves, then dries her palms off on her jeans as she turns to the door. Telling herself she has to get out, get away before they wake up, she braces her hands against the door to push it open...but hesitates. Her heart thuds in her throat and her ears as she glances over her shoulder, deliberating, the need to escape warring inwardly with a sudden, overwhelming sense of morbid curiosity.
How many times has she wondered what Justin would look like, the morning after? And how many chances is she going to get to find out?
It's sick, she knows. Even worse in a way—way worse—than that night she got herself off while watching him punish himself in the basement...but now, just as then, she finds she can't help herself.
Almost before she realizes she's made her mind up, Alex tiptoes away from the door and eases her way into the lair. Hugging the wall, bracing her hands on the corner, she tells herself that she's just going to peek—one quick look to burn the image into her brain forever—then turn tail and run for the hills. Holding her breath, she peers around the corner...
...and finds Justin, alone, sprawled asleep in their dad's recliner, fully clothed and covered haphazardly with a blue blanket.
Alex blinks in surprise, and breathes a sigh of relief, wrapping her arms around herself against the sudden chill she feels from within. Despite the heaviness of her heart, she smiles a little at the peaceful look on Justin's face as he sleeps, his mouth hanging open, a thin trickle of drool leaking from the corner to pool on the cushion beneath his cheek. For the first time in weeks, he's not wearing his Monster Hunter's uniform, dressed instead in jeans and a white t-shirt, with a plaid flannel shirt over top, hiding his physique.
She glances down to his lap, where a yellow legal pad sits propped up at an awkward angle between two large, open volumes of spells. She looks around at the table and the vinyl bench across, and sees them also covered with books, some left open with their pages dog-earred, others clearly discarded in disorganized stacks. Frowning, she tilts her head to the side to read some of the titles, and finds them to be a mishmash of different subjects, with no apparent rhyme or reason to them. Shaking her head, her eyes flick back up to her brother's face.
"You finally got your girlfriend back, egghead," she murmurs quietly. "Aren't you supposed to be done with this obsessive bullshit now?"
Coming around behind him, she leans one arm on the back of the recliner above his head, then bends forward to squint at the legal pad in his lap, scanning the notes he's made in his careful, deliberate handwriting. Most of it's gibberish to her, out of context—the names of wizards, the titles of books, hastily-scrawled snippets of spells, most of them crossed-out—but a few lines here and there jump out at her, giving her some clue as to what he's after.
"Remove desire, but leave affection intact—possible?"
"De-lustifying versus de-loveifying—see: Pseudonomicon, vol. XI"
"Change emotion instead of expunging it—transmorphication discipline?"
"May need to resort to djinn...but how to word it w/o backfiring?"
Shaking her head at that last one—because, uh, Justin actually considering the use of a genie kind of blows her mind a little—she peers at the two spell books open to either side of the pad, skips past the introductions and any cautionary text or fine print like she always does, and reads through the spells. Turns out they're just different means towards the same end: removing the target's love for another.
And with a start, Alex realizes what Justin is trying to do, and why he's so desperate enough to consider resorting to a genie.
Fresh tears well up in her eyes as she turns her head to look at him, her lips caught somewhere between an affectionate smile and a grimace of pain. God, he can be such an absolute doll, sometimes. Overcome with emotion, her heart feeling like it might burst right through her chest, she leans forward and brushes her lips lightly against his.
Not lightly enough. Startled, Justin jerks awake mid-snore, arms and legs flailing briefly, which dumps the pad and two spell books off his lap and onto the floor. He blinks his grey eyes blearily at Alex, struggling to focus on her, then narrows them in confusion.
"Alex? What are you—? Have you been crying?"
"No," she lies, even as she reaches up to wipe the tears out of her eyes. She nods down to where the books and the pad lay at his feet. "Are those for me?"
"Are what for you?" Justin asks, pressing the heels of his hands into his own eyes and stifling a yawn. Scrubbing his hands across his face, he sleepily follows her gaze to the floor with lidded eyes...then jerks his head back up and stares at her in wide-eyed, horrified panic.
"It's not what it looks like!" he stammers, then winces and shakes his head at how terribly clich that sounds. "I mean—"
"Really?" she cuts him off wryly. "Because it looks an awful lot to me like you're looking for a way to make me fall out of love with Mason, without me realizing you did it."
Justin blinks at her, then slowly leans back in the recliner, an unfamiliar expression settling across his features. "It...does, doesn't it?" he says hesistantly.
Alex nods, then closes her eyes and lets out a sniffle as the tears start to come again. Coming around to the front of the chair, she clambers up onto the padded arm and wraps her arms around Justin's neck, pressing her forehead against his as she draws him into a hug. A few heartbeats pass before he awkwardly brings his own arms loosely around her.
"Thank you," she murmurs into his neck, "but you shouldn't be worrying about me, egghead. You just got Juliet back. You should be focusing on her."
"Yeah, well..." Justin says quietly, then trails off.
"Where is she, anyway?" Alex asks, picking her head up and glancing around the lair. "I thought you two would be joined at the hip for the next few days, doing your weird little Eskimo kiss thing everywhere I turned..."
"She was here," Justin replies with a shrug. "She...left."
Alex frowns at this. "Why? Did you have a fight? About Mason?"
"No, not about Mason," Justin snorts. Then, off her confused frown, he shakes his head and waves one hand dismissively. "It wasn't a fight, exactly. And she's completely over Mason anyway. We had a long talk about it...well, about a lot of things, actually...and then she went home to see her parents before the sun came up."
"Things? What kind of things?" Alex asks.
"Y'know...things," Justin shrugs again. "Just stuff that, realistically, might stand in the way of us being together the way we want to be."
"Are you kidding me?" Alex asks, incredulous. "Justin, you just saved her from being trapped in a wall in Romania by the super-powerful mummy who'd turned her into his zombie minion! What could possibly be more insurmountable than that?"
The corner of Justin's mouth quirks up a little as he looks at her, impressed. "Insurmountable? Nice."
Alex lets out a little groan of exasperation. "Justin..."
"Lots of things, Alex," Justin sighs, pushing himself up off the recliner, tossing the blue blanket covering him aside as he begins to pace. "So many things: the difference in our ages, the fact that she's lived entire lifetimes when I've just barely started one. Then there's the whole vampire thing. I mean, if the council frowns on wizards marrying mortals, how are they gonna feel about me marrying a vampire? Plus we don't know if it's even possible for us to have kids together..."
"Woah, woah, woah...dude, aren't you getting just a little bit ahead of yourself there?" Alex asks. "I mean, marriage? Kids? You're not even done high school, yet! You're thinking too much, Justin, just like you always do. Can't you just...I dunno...enjoy each other, for awhile?"
"That's exactly what Juliet said," Justin groans, shoving his fingers back through his hair. He stops pacing and looks down at his feet. "And then she asked me what was really bothering me."
Plucking at the edge of the blanket where it lays bunched up in the recliner, Alex draws it up and wraps it like a shawl around her shoulders. "And?"
"And I told her that Mason said was kind of a wake-up call for me," Justin replies quietly, without looking up.
"Yeah, tell me about it," Alex says bitterly, sliding down the arm of the recliner into the seat, her legs tucked beneath her. "How do you mean, though?"
Justin doesn't answer right away, and for a few seconds all that fills the silence between them is the sound of their breathing, and the dim hum of the furnace from the exhaust vents in the ceiling.
"Feelings you thought you were over, or that you'd buried...they never really do go away," he says finally. "Even after years and years, they're still there...eating away at you, waiting to come out and get you when you least expect it. When you truly love someone, deeply...you never do get over them, really. Not ever."
"I guess not, no." Alex draws the blanket tighter around herself and sniffles into it.
Justin glances over at the sound, then winces.
"I'm sorry, Alex. I'm an idiot," he says, quickly closing the distance between them in two strides and crouching by her side. He lays a hand on her shoulder, above the blanket. "Are you OK?"
"You said Juliet was over Mason, though," Alex says, ignoring the question. "So what are you worried about? That there's some other boy from her past out there who she's still not over? Who she'll never really give up on?"
Justin smiles at her tightly and tilts his head to the side in a slight shrug as he strokes her arm with his thumb through the blanket. "Something like that, yeah."
And the way he's looking at her, with his puppy dog eyes and sad little smile, Alex knows that she's supposed to tell him that he's crazy to worry. That Juliet loves him dearly. That they'll be together forever.
"Yeah, keep an eye out for that," she says instead, her voice breaking just a little, "because it hurts like a bitch."
"Oh, Alex...," Justin sighs. He pushes himself up off the floor and half-sits, half-leans on the arm of the recliner as he gathers her into his arms. Alex wrenches her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry in front of him, and presses her forehead against his shoulder, tilting her head into his neck. He holds her tight, strokes her back up and down through the blanket, kisses the top of her head and murmurs that everything's going to be all right.
And for just a moment, in the quiet that follows, everything is.
But then his phone rings.
His hand freezes in the middle of her back as the first few notes of his special 'Juliet' ringtone shatter the moment. (The chorus of Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely', if you can believe it. Seriously. If it wasn't so heartbreaking, it'd be fucking comical.) To his credit, though, he only hesitates for a second before he resumes.
"That's her, isn't it?" Alex asks into his shoulder, her voice muffled.
"It's OK," Justin replies. "I'll call her back later."
"Don't be stupid," Alex says impatiently. "Answer it."
"I don't have to—"
"Grah!" Without taking her head off his shoulder, Alex reaches around behind him to yank his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. Jamming her thumb down on the 'answer' button, she thrusts it up above her head to his ear.
She feels the quiet sigh he lets out more than she hears it. "Hey, Juliet."
Justin removes his hand from her back, brings it up and lays it over hers, accepting the phone from her.
"No, I've been up for awhile," he says, as she slips her hand out from under his, and lays it in her lap, clutching the edge of the blanket. "Just talking to Alex."
He pulls his other arm away from her, then, holds that hand up to cover his phone's mic. "She wants to know how you're feeling," he whispers.
Still not lifting her head from his shoulder, Alex holds both hands up to either side of her head, giving him a sardonic double thumbs-up.
"About as well as can be expected," Justin says into the phone. "What? No! Shnuggly Boo-Boo, of course she doesn't blame you!"
Alex lowers her hands again, and shakes her head against Justin's shoulder. No, she can't blame Juliet, as much as she might want to. It's not her fault The Powers That Be saw fit to turn her into Vampire Barbie. She's just playing the hand she's been dealt, same as everyone else. We all have our crosses to bear.
(OK, so maybe she grins evilly a little bit at the thought of Juliet and crosses...)
"Juliet, please don't cry...it's not your fault...no, I don't think you scratching him behind the ears was leading him on..."
Heaving a heavy sigh, Alex finally raises her head up off Justin's shoulder, to find him looking at her helplessly. He gestures at the phone with his free hand, then flails it a little.
"Justin...go," she murmurs quietly.
His eyes tighten at the corners a little, before his eyebrows raise above them in askance.
Alex nods lightly in response. "Yes, I'm sure. I'll be fine."
Justin frowns and exhales through his nose, clearly not thrilled about the idea. Still, he leans forward to kiss the top of her head one more time, then pushes up off the chair and heads for the door.
"Juliet, I'm on my way over, OK? We can talk this all out over breakfast. You want I should to pick up some jelly donuts on the way?"
She hears the click of him pressing against the push bar on the freezer door, listens to the squeak of the hinges as it swings open, then closes again with a solid ka-chunk. And then she's alone.
In the silence that follows, Alex glances around at the books strewn around the lair, forgotten, half of them open to spells that could pull her out of this hell she's found herself in. Just the flick of her wand, a few muttered words, and her heart would forget all about Mason. Or Justin. Or both.
And, she's not gonna lie, it's really damn tempting.
She sits there for a moment, deliberating, then reaches back and tugs her wand out of her back pocket.
"Books know your spaces, back to your places," she says quickly, before she can change her mind. The end of her wand glows yellow as all the books scattered about the room magically levitate up into the air and proceed to shelve themselves.
As the last volume settles itself in place, Alex sighs, and sets her wand down on the table next to her, then lays her head against the back of the recliner. The blanket still smells like him. She pulls it tighter around herself and presses her nose into it, inhaling deeply.
There's a line from an old movie she saw on TV once—some stupid romantic comedy that she only watched because Robert Downey Jr. was in it—which stuck with her, even though she never quite understood it:
"To almost love a woman, and then lose her...enjoy the pain."
Yeah. She kind of gets it, now.