InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Metempsychosis ❯ Fortuitous ( Chapter 17 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Jessa groaned as she rolled out of the bed she didn't remember getting into the night before.  It felt like someone was inside her head, smacking on her skull with a tiny silver hammer, and her tongue felt like someone had stuffed her mouth full of cotton at some point.

Soft chuckles drew her attention, and she turned her head a little too fast, which triggered another low moan.

Ashur leaned in the doorway, looking entirely fresh and neat, and that only made her grind her teeth together as she stifled the desire to snort out loud.  How dare he look so entirely unflappable when she woke up, feeling like utter hell on a stick?

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking Kells to town shortly.  We're ordering his uniforms for preschool and picking up a few things he'll need on his trip with Ben, so, if you'd like to come along, that's fine, but . . . Something tells me that you'd rather stay here and . . . enjoy the silence."

"I don't think I like you right now," she ground out, digging in the drawers for clothes since she figured that a shower might well be the best thing at the moment.

He chuckled again, blast him.  "A word of advice for the next time?  Liquor might help in the moment, but it's usually worse in the morning," he told her.

She grunted something entirely unintelligible under her breath.

"I suggest saltines, Tylenol, and a lot of water," he told her as he pushed away from the frame.  "And, for future reference, sake is not the best drink if you're trying to avoid a hangover."

"I thought you were going into town," she grumbled.

He lifted a hand as he turned away, waving at her over his shoulder as he disappeared from view.

She felt utterly repulsive.  With a heavy sigh as she gripped her temples between her hands, she stumbled into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, deciding that a full shower would probably kill her.

Groaning as she got a good look at herself in the mirror, she sighed.  Darkened smudges under her eyes, the overall gaunt sort of appearance to her face . . . Her skin was a rather sickly shade of yellowish, and she couldn't help the overall feeling that she looked almost as bad as she felt.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then spent a little time, applying moisturizer to her parched skin, before shuffling out of the bathroom, throwing on the first clean thing she laid hands on in her closet: an oversized, dark blue sweat shirt and a pair of black jeans.  Calling it good, she grabbed a black scrunchy off the top of her dresser, clubbing back her hair without bothering to brush it as she shuffled out of the room and down the hallway.

Ashur had left two Tylenol next to a glass of water on the kitchen counter with a note that read that she should drink at least three glasses to help alleviate the lingering headache from her overindulgence the night before.  She heaved a sigh, but downed the pills, along with the first glass of water, grimacing as they got stuck in her throat.

She stopped as she reached for the kitchen faucet to refill the glass when the chime of the doorbell echoed through the house.  With a wince since the sound of it clanged in her head, she set the glass aside and hurried to answer the door before whoever was on the other side thought to push the doorbell for a second time.

"Eh, morning," Devlin Broughton said as she opened the door.  He stood there with a bashful little grin on his face as he jerked his head toward two horses that he'd tethered to a nearby tree.  The one, she'd seen the first time she'd met him, and the other was a sorrel roan that was slightly smaller than the gray one.  Both were beautiful animals, obviously well cared for, and Jessa couldn't help the small gasp that slipped out of her as she stared at the two creatures.  "I was going out for my morning ride, and I thought maybe, if you weren't busy, you'd like to join me?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" she blurted quickly.  "Just let me get my shoes . . ."

He nodded and chuckled, loping down the steps and striding over to the horses.

She darted upstairs, hangover forgotten in the excitement of the moment.  It didn't take long for her to slip on the ankle boots, which were the closest to riding gear that she had.  Then she ran back downstairs and out the door, touching the keypad lock to secure the house before fairly skipping down the steps and over to the horses and Devlin.  "They're gorgeous," she said, her voice quiet, almost reverent, as she slowly reached out to touch the sorrel roan.

"This one's Fletch," he said, patting the neck of the gray roan.  "You've seen him already, of course . . . That one's Flicker.  Master of the stables assures me that she's gentle as a kitten, though I confess, I've not taken her out before."

"Hello, Flicker," she said, smiling at the horse as she took her time, making friends with her.  "Aren't you beautiful?"

"How good are you?" he asked as she untied the horse and stuck her foot in the stirrup.

"I'm all right," she mused, flashing him a smile as she settled herself in the saddle.  "Thank you so much . . . I've been dying to get out on a horse, ever since I got here . . ."

He chuckled and clucked his tongue to nudge Fletch into a slow trot, heading for the road.  "I thought it'd be better to backtrack to my land and go from there," he said as she fell into step beside him.  She could feel his gaze on her, assessing her skills, she figured.  That was all right.  She'd been riding longer than she could remember.  Breathing in deep, savoring the scent of the earth, the land, she could feel the strain of the last few weeks, slowly draining away.  There was just something about the feeling of freedom afforded to her when she was riding, and it was a sensation that she'd missed more than she could credit.  All in all, it felt as though her entire outlook just got a little bit better . . .


Ashur sat in the uncomfortable wood and vinyl booth, watching as Kells devoured a hamburger and fries, his gaze shifting over and over again to the play area in the small burger joint.  "Can I play when I finish?" he asked, blinking solemnly at his father.

"As long as you eat all of that sandwich," he allowed.

Kells started to stuff a huge bite into his mouth—until he caught the raised-eyebrow-ed look from Ashur, that was.   Then he giggled and took a more normal bite.  "Daddy, why didn't Jessa come wif us?"

He almost smiled at the innocent question.  "She wasn't feeling very well this morning," he replied, figuring that it was a good enough explanation for the inquisitive child.

"Then she should go to the doctor!" Kells decided, his eyes flaring wide, the expression in them a little alarmed.  "That's what they do on the TV when someone's sick!"

"It's, uh . . . not that kind of sick," Ashur replied.  "She'll be fine in a few hours, I promise."

Kells seemed to relax just a little as he thoughtfully chewed his bite of burger.  "Does that mean she's gonna have a baby?"

Choking on the sip of coffee he'd just taken, Ashur coughed and cleared his throat as he set the cup aside.  "What?"

"On TV, when Bingbong's mommy was sick, she had a baby," he said.  "Is Jessa gonna—?"

"No," Ashur insisted a little sharper than he intended.  He cleared his throat again.  "No," he repeated, only this time, in a much more controlled tone of voice.

Kells was off and running, though.  "If Jessa has a baby, would it be my brudder?"

Rubbing his forehead, Ashur closed his eyes.  "She's not going to—"

"Can I name him?"

"No—Kells, she's not having a baby . . ."

"I wanna name him Arfur!"

Ashur heaved a sigh.  "You've been watching too much Power Puppies," he grumbled.  "Apparently, so have I if I know their names . . ."

The trill of his cell phone sounded, and he dug it out of his pocket to connect the video chat.

"Hey, Ash," Ben greeted.

"Uncle Ben!" Kells hollered, hopping up and down on his knees until Ashur turned the phone so that Kells could see the screen.  "Uncle Ben!  Jessa's gonna have a brudder for me!  I'm gonna name him Arfur!"

Yanking the phone away from the little heathen, Ashur sighed and made a face.  "No, she isn't.  She drank too much sake last night, is all, and she's feeling a little under the weather because of it," he explained before Ben could say a word.

Ben looked more amused than he ought to, given the current conversation.  "That's a hell of a leap," he remarked with a chuckle.

Ashur shook his head and shooed Kells off to go play.  "Bingbong's mom had a baby after she was sick, so that's how he got there," he replied.

"Bingbong?  Oh, that annoying as hell caterpillar on the cartoon channel?"

"That's the one," Ashur replied.  "Someone ought to step on the little bastard—and his mother."

Ben barked out a laugh at that.  "We missed out," he said.  "They didn't have cartoons back then."

Ashur snorted.  "I'm assuming that you didn't call just to talk about the caterpillar bastard?"

"Nope, not really.  I was just wondering if it's possible for us to pick up Kells a little early—like today."

"Today?  Why the rush?"

Ben shrugged, downing his coffee before answering.  "Manami is in town between assignments, and she wanted to spend a little time with him—if you don't mind, that is."

It wasn't a new thing.  Manami seemed to enjoy being around Kells.  She was rather like their sister, in a sense, and Ashur was okay with that, too.  "It's not a problem," he replied.  "Well, provided I can get Kells out of the playground . . ."

"Okay.  We should be there sometime between four and five, then."

"Drive safely."

Ending the connection, Ashur spent a moment, watching Kells as the boy ferreted his way up through the bright yellow tube to the top of the huge ball pit and catapulted himself off the edge into the sea of multicolored balls, and he let out a deep breath.

'How the hell did that child jump from, 'Jessa doesn't feel well' to, 'Jessa's going to have a baby'?'

His youkai-voice laughed.  'Probably because he's Kells, and that's what Kells does best . . .'

'Yes, well, let's hope he forgets that idea sooner rather than later . . . The last thing I need is for him to go around, telling everyone that Jessa's pregnant . . .'

'We could talk to Jessa, see if she's interested in working on that . . .'

'You need to shut up.'

His youkai laughed harder.

He sighed.  After having spent a sleepless night, wondering just why her mercurial moods tended to affect him so much, he'd given up around dawn since he really wasn't any closer to figuring that out than he was when he'd gone to his room.

He'd put her to bed—she'd fallen asleep on the sofa—and had sat there, staring at her with a thoughtful frown for the better part of an hour as he'd tried to make sense of her moods, tried to figure out why she'd opted to drink herself into a stupor.

'Is it really that hard to understand, Kyouhei?  That girl . . . You know, don't you?  That horse was the very last thing she had—the last thing that tied her to her past, that gave her that little bit of security, even if he isn't here with her now.  To someone else—to us, even—maybe it's just a horse, but to her?  You're not foolish enough to believe that, are you?'

He frowned.  'It's just a horse . . .'

'Yeah, a horse she's had since she was twelve.  Think about it.  She grew up, an only child on a vast estate in Ireland.  Even if she had friends—and she's never actually mentioned having any of those, either, mind you—she had to have gotten a lot of comfort from that animal.  Think about what she's said, too: that she'd go riding to soothe herself, right?  And now, that is gone, too, along with her parents and pretty much everything else she's ever known.  If you were her, just how do you think you'd feel . . .?'

He grimaced inwardly, mostly because the things his youkai voice had said made perfect sense.  On an impulse, he pulled out his phone, scrolled through the contacts till he found the one he wanted.

It rang three times before it was answered, and Ashur drummed his claws atop the Formica table impatiently.

"Greg Halsbeck," he answered.

"Hello, Mr. Halsbeck," Ashur greeted.  "This is Ashur Philips."

"Ah, Mr. Philips.  You're calling about the O'Shea estate, right?  We haven't gotten any more information since I sent the last report yet . . . Is there something I can do for you?"

"I hope so," he said.  "Jessa tells me that you said that her horse—a gypsy cob that she called, 'Derry'—was sold?  I was wondering if there's any way for me to locate the buyer?  I'd like to buy it from them—since no one bothered to inform her of the pending sale beforehand."

"Hmm, I understand . . . Generally, they aren't allowed to divulge that sort of information, but let me see what I can dig up.  Can I give you a call back?  Say, in an hour or two?"

"Absolutely," he said, catching Kells' attention and gesturing for the boy to come.  "If I'd been informed of this prior to the sale, I would have been happy to have bought him for her myself.  That animal is more than just a family pet to her.  You understand."

"Oh, of course.  Me wife has a dog—ugly as sin—but she loves it more than she loves me, I think . . . I get it.  Let me see what I can do."

"Thank you," Ashur said.

"Talk to you soon, Mr. Philips."

The connection ended, and Ashur dropped the device into his pocket once more as Kells pushed out of the play area and dashed over to him, ducking between tables and managing to avoid the other patrons in the establishment.  "Is it time to go home, Daddy?" he asked, almost plaintively.

"Your uncle said that he'd like to pick you up early—as in, today.  Do you want to go today?"

Kells started hopping as he latched onto Ashur's knee.  "Yeah!"

"Hmm, well, you have to promise to be good, and to control yourself . . . Aunt Manami wants to see you, too, and that's why you're going early."

"Aunt Nami?  I love Aunt Nami!"

"Yes, well, Aunt Nami isn't used to hyperactive little brats who bounce around all the time, so try to keep yourself calm, Kells.  Okay?"

Kells' maniacal laughter erupted as Ashur gathered together the remnants of his meal to throw away.  The boy grabbed the cheap plastic toy that came with his food, hopping impatiently as he waited for Ashur to throw away the trash.


Jessa sat beside the pond, smiling softly to herself as the horses nickered and seemed to be talking to each other nearby where they were tethered to a low-hanging, but stout, tree branch.

"So, you're telling me that you're the Lady Jessamyn O'Shea—the one that all the ton talks about constantly—the wild, Irish rose—the absolute buzz of the season . . . That's you?"

Wrinkling her nose, she rolled her eyes and tossed a flower that she'd been admiring at his head. "That is all a bunch of crap," she scoffed.

"On the contrary, they do say all of it," Devlin insisted, settling back against a rotting tree trunk near the edge of the water.  "Oh, have you seen that gel?  Gorgeous—simply gor-r-rgeous, m'lambs!"

Pressing her lips together at his high-pitched impersonation, she couldn't restrain the little giggle that slipped from her.  "Oh, my God!  That sounded just like Countess Cortland!"

He touched his nose with his index finger then pointed at her.  "Not bad, right?"

"You spend time with that old hag?"

"No, actually . . ." He chuckled, showing off his deep dimples to a great advantage as he turned his face, stared out over the water.  Then he rolled his eyes and shot her a sidelong glance.  "Mum and I were eating at the London Astoria last fall, and she was there with her gaggle of ladies, comparing the season's debutantes.  You, apparently, were the one that they'd lay their bets on to have the greatest number of suitors—if they were the betting sorts, that was.  Did you?"

She snorted indelicately—the kind of sound that her darling mother would have hated.  "I don't know.  Ma died soon after my initial debut, so . . ."

His smirk faded, and he sighed.  "Right sorry I am about that," he muttered.  "I've never met your parents, but . . . That can't have been easy . . ."

She shook her head, forced a wan smile.  "They say things happen for a reason, right?  I'm just . . . just waiting to find out why."

He considered that, a thoughtful scowl on his face, eyebrows drawn together as he reached out, slowly plucked a sprig of small white flowers and handed it to her.  "For what it's worth, I'm glad to have met you," he said, his frown melting away as a lopsided little grin surfaced in its place.

She accepted the offering and smiled back at him.  "What about you?  Awfully far away from home, aren't you?  Here on some kind of business?"
He grimaced.  "No . . . It's more of a . . . vacation, I guess you could say.  Mum and I . . ."

"Your mother's here?  What about your father?"

He shrugged.  "Well, to be entirely honest, my father and I are having a difference of opinion at the moment, and my mum . . . She's not too pleased with him, either."

She narrowed her gaze on him.  Something about the slight tightness around his eyes . . . "Somehow, I feel like your, 'difference of opinions' is a little bigger than you're making it out to be."

He looked surprised for a second, only to sigh and grimace.  "Am I that transparent?"

"Kind of."

"Suffice it to say that we disagreed on the direction in which I wanted to go in my life," he admitted.  "He's . . . very old fashioned, and very set in his ways, so when he gets certain ideas in his head, he simply cannot let go of them, never mind that I'm thirty-five years old, so, one would think that I'd be able to make my own decisions."  Suddenly, he chuckled.  "Bloody hell, I'm starting to sound like a child, aren't I?"

"I don't think so," she allowed, hooking her hands around her ankles, locking her fingers together.  "I think that you sound like someone who deserves to live whatever life you want.  I mean, your father has gotten to go his own way, hasn't he?  You should be left do to what you will, too."

His chuckle was warm, friendly.  "So, you're telling me that I should just reach out and grab life by the bollocks?  Is that what you do?"

"No," she admitted, scrunching up her shoulders in an almost apologetic sort of way.  "Not . . . Not really . . ."

He turned to face her once more, eyebrows lifting in surprise.  "You don't?  Huh . . ."

"What?"

He smiled.  "You strike me as the kind of girl who would."

"I do?"

He nodded slowly, his smile taking on a teasing sort of lilt.  "Maybe it's the hair," he quipped.

She laughed as he got to his feet, offering her a hand up that she took.

"As much fun as I've had with you, Irish, I promised Mum I'd have tea with her," he said as he led the way back to the horses again.

"Thanks for bringing me along," she said, swinging her leg over the horse and settling into the saddle again.

"Any time," he replied, clicking at Fletch to get him moving.  "I mean, you know where I live now.  I meant it when I said that you're welcome to stop in whenever you want.  I'll leave word with the stable master that you're to be allowed to take Flicker out any time you wish."

"That's very kind of you," she said.  "I wouldn't want to be a bother . . ."

"You're not," he assured her as they headed along the path.  "Besides, I had a good time today, thank you very much."

She laughed again as she shot him a glance.  Even if she didn't know him very well, she had to thank him, didn't she?  He'd managed to pull her out of her funk, even if it was just for one day, and that had to account for something.  It was nice to be around someone that she didn't feel was watching her every movement, analyzing everything she said or did, and even though Ashur might well have good intentions, just being around someone who she didn't feel that she had to put up some strange front with was a very welcome change . . .