(ON HOLD) Spellbound (BxB)

Chapter 6 | Cobra

It was with a sudden, unexpected hunger that Jackal Riley consumed his life.

It started with a pillow on the floor, several nights a week. He brought his book and nothing else, and for the first few days that he appeared, Asher started from his sleep, expecting the figure at the foot of his bed to glare down at him with a hollow face and devil eyes. But the ghosts he saw in his dreams were torn asunder by the faint outline of that Latin tattoo.

Asher couldn't understand why he tried so desperately to hide from Josephine at night. During they day, they walked the halls entangled in one another, her long, painted fingers curled in his hand or wrapped around his bicep, or sometimes dipped in the back pocket of his slacks or the jeans he sometimes wore in place of them. Asher thought it must be with some kind of revolt that Jackal wore those jeans. Surely the dean's son could afford a closet full of black luxury slacks, but he wore them still. A ragged hole in the knee and a stain on the right thigh that looked a lot like engine oil.

He'd asked before why Jackal hid away in his cramped, cluttered dorm at night when he likely had a mansion of his own outside of Kingsly, but instead of answering, he'd throw his pillow down on the floor and mutter something like "Clean up your goddamn room, Greenly."

To which Ash would reply, "This is clean."

And Jackal would grumble again about cockroaches and moldy food before eventually settling into his novel and falling asleep, wreathed in filthy clothes and wrappers from the snacks Rodger dropped off every week. Usually, Asher slept too—though not comfortably in Jackal's presence. He trained himself to breathe through his nose in case he might snore, to hold in his gas until his stomach ached, and any chance of self-relief was completely off the table, as Jackal would appear at different times every night and throw the door open without so much as a knock. Asher's only saving grace was the soft beep of his passcode on the door lock that gave him a maximum of three seconds to jump beneath the sheets, put his pants on, or exit whatever niche porn video he'd been watching before anyone might see.

But no matter how he tried to conduct himself in Jackal's presence, Asher couldn't control the dreams that'd plagued him in the passing days. Night terrors, of dying faces and bleeding eyes. Of hands around his throat while he drown in boiling water. On most nights, he shot out of sleep, sputtering for breath and wet with sweat. Jackal woke often when he did, but scarcely made more than the sound of rustled clothing as he turned sides.

Then one night in particular, Asher had a dream so ghastly, it triumphed every dark, wicked terror before it. This time, he dreamed of a woman, sitting in a rocking chair, her pale, bony fingers clawed tight around the wooden arms. She was pallid and still as a frozen corpse, and when Asher went to touch her shoulder, inches of her skin broke away from the bone, crumbling in his hands like dry cake. And when there was only the wire-frame of tiny bone beneath, her pale eyes wriggled to Asher and she smiled like a witch—mouth stretching wide and terrible, eyes gone dark beneath and black within.

Then Asher realized who she was from all the photos he'd been shown. And in his dream, he whispered, "Mom?" And as he reached for her, she bit down on his fingers and the bones cracked beneath her teeth, and blood wet her skinny demon smile, and Asher tore lose, clutching his severed bones.

That was when he woke, heaving in terrible breaths, cheeks cold and wet with tears. Something pressed him hard between the brows and when he opened his eyes, Jackal stood above him, curled slightly over the edge of the bed. He held a thumb to Asher's forehead, and it pulsed wildly, like a heartbeat. Asher imagined himself young again, playing in the house with empty tin cans, attached by the string. He remembered Rodger shouting, "Pull it tight!" from the other room, and Asher would stretch out the string and hold the can to his ear until his father's voice came through. He felt the vibration in his palms and his fingers, and Asher thought, I can hold sound. I can do anything.