The Law of Nines. Terry Goodkind
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sorry, Jax.” Alex looked away from the pain in her brown eyes and took a sip of water. “But you’re not alone. Tell me what’s going on?”
She let out a calming breath. “I’ll do my best, but you have to understand that for now I simply can’t tell you everything. It isn’t just that I don’t have the time to explain it all right now, it’s also that you aren’t yet ready to hear it all. Worse, we’re in the dark about a lot of it ourselves.”
“Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?”
She turned cautious. “Friends of mine.”
“Friends.”
She nodded. “We’ve been working for years, trying for years to figure some of it out. They helped get me here.”
“Get here from where?”
She looked away and said simply, “From where I live.”
Alex didn’t like her evasive answer, but he decided that there was no harm in just letting it play out for the moment.
“Go on.”
“We finally came to a point where we thought it would work, so despite the risk we attempted it, but we don’t yet know how to make it work reliably. Not like the others do.”
“You mean work to get here, to where I live, from where you live?”
“That’s right.”
“What would have happened if you hadn’t gotten it right, if it didn’t ‘work’?”
She stared into his eyes for a long moment. “Then I would have been lost for all eternity in a very bad place.”
Alex could tell by the tension in her expression how real the peril was—to her, at least—and how much the thought of failure frightened her. Considering that this woman was not easily intimidated, that in and of itself gave him pause.
He was about to again ask who the others on her team were when a waitress came up to the table and smiled warmly. “Can I get you two something to drink? Maybe a glass of wine?”
“I could really use some hot tea,” Jax said.
The tone of that simple request revealed how weary she was, and how close she was to her wits’ end.
“I’m fine with water. The lady doesn’t have a lot of time, though. Maybe we could order?” He turned to Jax as he picked up a menu. “What would you like? Chicken? Beef? A salad?”
“I doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re having is fine.”
It was clear that she didn’t care about food, so Alex ordered two chicken salads.
As the waitress left, Alex’s phone rang. He reflexively asked Jax to excuse him a moment as he pulled the phone out of his pocket.
“Hello, this is Alex.”
He’d thought that maybe it was Mr. Martin calling to say that he’d changed his mind. Instead, Alex was greeted with garbled noises. He heard a strained, disembodied voice torn by howling that sounded like it said, “She’s there. She’s there.” Otherworldly whispers and strange, soft moans underlay the crackling static.
And then Alex made out his name in the background whispers.
Jax leaned in. “What’s wrong?”
He was going to flip the cover closed and tell her that it was nothing, but for some reason he decided that maybe she should hear it. He held the phone up to her ear.
She leaned in closer, listening.
And then the blood drained from her face.
“Dear spirits,” she whispered to herself, “they know I’m here.”
“What?” Alex asked. “Do you recognize it?”
Stricken with alarm, she stared wide-eyed at him as she listened to the sounds. “Make it stop.”
Alex took the phone back and closed it.
“They’re tracking you with that thing.”
“Tracking me?”
Her face still ashen, she said, “From the other side.”
Alex frowned. “The other side of what?”
When she only stared with a haunted look, Alex turned the phone off. Before putting it in a pocket, just to be safe, he popped out the battery and put it in a different pocket.
The waitress swooped in and set down a cup for Jax and a pot of hot water along with a small basket of tea bags.
After the waitress left, Jax poured herself some hot water. Her hands were trembling.
For a moment she sat staring at the cup of hot water, as if she expected it to do something. She finally picked up the cup, brought it close, and peered down into the water. She set the cup back down.
Jax nested her hands in her lap. Her brow wrinkled as she fought back tears.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
For a woman who had the presence of mind to put a knife to his throat when he had unexpectedly shoved her up against the wall, she seemed pretty shaken.
“How do you make the tea work?” she asked in a broken voice on the ragged edge of control.
Alex was baffled. “Make the tea work? What do you mean?”
“I never imagined how hard this would be,” she said, more to herself than him.
“The tea?”
She crumpled her napkin in a tight fist as she fought back tears.
“Everything.” She swallowed and then with great effort summoned her voice. “Please, Alex. I want some tea, but I don’t know how to work it.”
Seeing her genuine distress made his heart hurt. He wouldn’t ever have imagined that this woman would let herself be seen as helpless. Something was bringing her to the edge.
Alex gently touched his fingers to the back of her hand. “It’s all right, Jax. Don’t let it get to you. We all have days when we’re overwhelmed. It’s no big deal. I’ll help you.”
He pulled a package of tea from the basket, opened the paper flap, and pulled out the tea bag. He held it up by the square paper at the end of the string.
“See? The tea is in here, in the tea bag.” Her gaze tracked the tea bag the whole way as he lowered it into the cup and draped the string over the edge. “Just let it steep for a little bit and you’ll have tea.”
She leaned in and looked down into the cup. As she watched, the water started darkening.
Jax’s sudden smile banished her tears. Her face took on the look of a child who had just seen a magic trick for the first time.
“That’s how it works? That’s all you have to do?”
Alex nodded. “That’s it. You obviously don’t have tea bags where you come from.”
She shook her head. “It’s very different here.”
“You like it better where you live, don’t you?”
She considered the question only briefly. “Yes. It’s home. Despite the trouble, it’s home. I think you would like it there, too.”
“What makes you think that?”
She reached over and trailed her fingers tenderly across the painting. “You paint such places. You paint beauty.” She looked back up at him. “This will help me convince the others.”
“Convince them of what?”
“Convince them to trust my choices.”
“Who