Little Spark

40 - The Bird Lives

"Bliss—"

The 'whisper'—and accompanying shower of six-year-old spit—wake me up. I turn my head to look at the clock: 06:32AM. The sun hasn't even risen.

"Ruuuuube," I groan, pulling a pillow down over my head, "it's 6:30 on a Saturday... what in the wor—"

"That scary boy was in your room."

My eyes open. A peek from under the pillow reveals a folded, unmarked piece of paper on my nightstand. I remove the pillow and look at Ruby who stares at me with her hands on her hips like she's waiting for an explanation.

I decide to play stupid. "Huh?"

"That boy," she enunciates as if speaking to a toddler, "was here in your room. I can still smell him." She crinkles her nose in disgust.

I inhale deeply. She's right—Reign's heady fragrance still hangs in the air. He must have been here just before she woke me up. My heart falls a little at having missed him, but Ruby's stern glare snaps me back to attention.

I clear my throat and prop myself up on my elbow. "You saw a boy in my room, Ruby?"

"Well, no," she says, dropping her arms and looking at the floor.

I breathe an imperceptible sigh of relief.

"But I know he was here!" she shouts. "It was the same boy that came from my closet to scare me! He was with you yesterday, and he stole your pen."

My pulse rises again; the first thing she said to me yesterday was that she'd told Aunt Lil I was at the blue house. I'd wondered then if she knew Reign was with me. I now know she did, but whether or not she told Aunt Lil—

"I didn't tell mommy," she says, reading my mind and rolling her eyes.

I sneak another peek at the note he left. I feel a little guilty, but really wish Ruby would scram so I can read it.

She eyes me suspiciously.

"What?" I tuck an imaginary hair behind my ear, slightly irritated that a six-year-old has the ability to make me so uncomfortable.

"You want to kiss him on the lips!" she exclaims, absolutely appalled by the notion.

I clear my throat, embarrassed. "You're six years old, Ruby. You wouldn't understand."

She crosses her arm and glares at me, looking just as menacing as Aunt Lil did when I got home yesterday. I fluff my pillows in an attempt to diffuse some of the tension, but the longer she stands there, the more exposed I feel.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I huff after a minute, my resolve cracking beneath her big-eyed gaze.

She doesn't reply.

I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to figure out what to say. All I know for sure is that the Reign that tormented her in the middle of the night is not the same Reign that held me up when I discovered the truth about my nightmare victims yesterday; they're as different as night and day.

I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed then pull her close to me. "Ruby, I know Reign scared you before, but he's different now. He's not one of the bad guys anymore."

"But he has the same inside, Bliss," she whines, her eyes wide and afraid. "They hurt people like us. They took our daddies away."

She touches my wrist, and I see my dad drop to the floor in my mind. I pull my hand from beneath hers and shake the image away. "That wasn't Reign," I tell her, attempting to quell the bristly feeling spreading through my gut. "Reign didn't take our daddies away, Ruby. He's a good guy now."