The look on Jackie’s face worried me and once she started divulging the events of her past, I knew why she grew so serious. She’s much older than I am and the breadth of her experience dwarfs my knowledge of the world. Even before our tale became the stuff of legends, my fairytale creature status made aging infinitely slower than other beings. We exist in partial stasis for much of our lives, allowing our tales to gain notoriety over many generations. Her existence in multiple rhymes, tales, and cultures means she’s lived many centuries longer and survived more than I ever realized.
This is the first time she’s opened up about all of her past posts and it’s quite daunting.
“When you were Nimble, your companion was a vampire named Galen and his twin, Trace. He blamed you for his arson habit and then they cheated on you with a leprechaun and a pixie?”
Her lip curls up in disgust. “Yes. I almost ended up in a supe mental hospital afterward.”
“And before that, you were with a gorgon named Natalia who got you both cursed with eating disorders because she insulted a demigod?”
Jackie sits up, holding her arms out. “You see what now? That’s normal for someone with giant’s blood. I’m curvy, thick, muscled, and over two hundred pounds. After Nat’s bullshit, our curse was to become the opposite of our natural selves. She gained a hundred fifty pounds, and I dropped to a little over a hundred. She couldn’t stop eating and I couldn’t stop dieting. That motherfucker she pissed off had a sick sense of humor.”
I blink. I can’t imagine what Jackie looked like so thin and frail. She’s perfect exactly how she is—no matter what insensitive remarks my sister has made in public over the years. Her frame is solid and comforting when I need it, but soft and warm as well. At that weight, she’d be a skeleton. “It’s hard to picture. You must have been miserable.”
“I was. Nat and I weren’t very good for each other anyway, but I hadn’t realized it yet. The curse simply amplified our differences. She did nothing but hide and bemoan her fate, but she wouldn’t seek the asshat out and apologize. The only way I became exempt was when I finally left her.”
“The other mess—the one not long before you came here—was Jill?”
She swallows hard and nods. “Jill was the most painful. It’s why I showed up here, determined to allow no one into my heart again.”
I will not like this; I can feel it.
“Jill…” My love gathers her knees to her chest, hugging them as if she needs to protect herself before she continues. “I’ve dated many species and genders over the years. Jill was the first human. Her mother was a vengeance demon and her father was human. When her mother killed her father for gambling away their family fortune, Jill was only ten.”
“That’s very sad, but I don’t understand why that matters,” I say softly. “My parents died when I was… oh.”
Jackie nods and gives me a sad smile. “None of that was kept from her and her mother took her along on her ‘business’ as a child. She spent her entire life seeing the worst in every person she encountered—both as targets and clients.”
I place my hand on her knee. My strong, capable defender is trembling like a leaf in the breeze. Whatever she did to help herself get through this pain did not heal entirely. The fear is radiating from her in waves that are spiking against my magic. Even her tone of voice is less confident.
“Growing up with a parent who has a severe mental disorder is very difficult and warps the child’s love map. Or… that’s what the therapist told me when I took the job of being her guardian. Her mother made me visit Jill’s doctors before I accepted the job to ensure I had a realistic expectation of how difficult my position as guardian would be.” A single tear runs down her cheek and she swipes at it. “I didn’t believe a human could be capable of being so dangerous to someone with my magic and experience. That was my first mistake.”
“What happened, Jackie?”
“The manipulation her doctors warned me about was as powerful as any magic. She spent the first few months working her way into my heart and mind by putting on the perfect mask. We even started a wildly popular YouTube show together called Jack & Jill that made us internet famous.” Her head drops to her knees and a muffled sob echoes in the room. “Once she had me hooked, that’s when she turned the screws. Her shower of love, affection, and support were all a ploy to find my weak spots. I shared all my past pain, my insecurities, and my dreams with her. And then she used them to break me down, little by little, until I was a shadow of myself. “
My eyes fill with ice and the temperature of the room drops by twenty degrees as anger courses through me. I can’t allow Jackie to stop to comfort me, though, so I touch the necklace with my free hand, hoping she’s right about its power to soothe my magic. “Tell me the rest, love.”
“Once I was under her thumb, I wasn’t her friend or confidant or lover anymore. She molded me into her plaything—a vessel for either making her feel good about herself or a victim of her fury whenever anything in the world made her angry. If someone criticized her or her mother behaved like the sociopath she was, I endured her pain—emotionally at first, but as time went on, physically, too.” Jackie looks up for a moment with red eyes, biting her lip as she waits for it to dawn on me.
The scars.
My rage propels me off the bed, and swirls of ice and wind fill the room. When my feet lift off the ground, I know my eyes have gone wintery white, and it covered my hair in snowflakes. The Queen of Ice and Snow in her full glory is not something many people have witnessed, but the power is flowing over my skin like an old friend. When I finally speak, my voice is a loud, booming demand. “Where is she? I will wrap her in ice until each of her limbs falls off and her organs turn to popsicles. No one is permitted to harm what belongs to the Snow Queen!”
“Holy shit, Q,” she whispers in awe. “You… I’ve never seen your magic like this. You’re floating and I’m pretty sure you might be freezing the entire castle.”
“Jackie! Tell. Me. Where. She. Is.” I can’t seem to curb the magic emanating from my pores, nor can I focus on anything but destroying the woman who hurt my love so deeply.
“I don’t know, Queenie. I have to tell you the rest of my story for you to understand. But you gotta calm down, or this is going to draw attention we don’t want.”
I suck in a breath and close my eyes, picturing my magic coming back to me instead of pushing out into the world. It’s the technique Jackie taught me and it usually works with the small bursts, but I don’t know if it’s going to with this amount of power.
Her voice is soft as she continues. “Everyone knew we were a pair, and we were quite the social media darlings. Jill was very careful to keep her mask on in public—so she looked like the most amazing partner I could have when everyone was paying attention. All her cruelty was behind closed doors, even the nasty scars on my backs from her favorite knives. Her mother turned her into a psychopath and I should have asked more questions in the beginning about why her previous partners were no longer around.”
A bolt of ice shoots from my fingers at that statement and I watch as it shatters the mirror above our dresser. How dare that woman convince Jack she was at fault for not realizing she’d committed to a sadist? Another deep breath allows me to curl my fists to prevent my magic from lashing out again, and I nod for her to go on.
“By the time it got that bad, I couldn’t figure out why no one could see all of her subtle and not-so-subtle abuse. I tried to find help, but no one wanted to see the famous Jill from the Jack & Jill show as anything but the quirky, funny persona she’d built. I ended up so depressed that I thought my only way out was to cut all ties. I went to her mother and requested to be let out of my contract—I even offered to buy it out. She refused. Having me around meant she didn’t have to deal with the monster she created, and she said I would have to stay until the contract ended in two years.”
Jackie’s face darkens, and the room goes silent. “So I had to wait to escape my abuser. It was both a blessing and a curse that Jill’s mother informed her of my request. Her outrage at my attempt to save myself caused her to lose control of the carefully maintained facade, even in public. It started small—vague insults that only I would understand—but by the end, she graduated to more hurtful things, like fat shaming, accusing me of using her, and insulting my abilities. It was like the public ‘good Jill’ and the private ‘evil Jill’ melded into a bitter shell of the woman I thought I knew.”
Five things I can see, four things I can touch, three things I can smell, two things I can hear, one thing I can taste… blood from biting my tongue.
“It got worse and worse. No one called her out on it and I knew if I said anything, she’d twist it and make me the villain. I stayed quiet and took the blows so I could finish the deal and move on without her destroying my reputation anymore than she already had. That is… until the implosion.” Jackie sighs and runs her hair through her silvery strands, the weight of what’s coming making her look utterly defeated.
“The implosion?” I ask carefully. My feet haven’t touched the ground yet, but I’ve been controlling my magic better than ever before, so I don’t ruin our chances of getting away. It’s hard, but I’m managing—for now.
“We hadn’t started filming season two because of all the problems. I was a mess of anxiety and depression, so I couldn’t bring myself to even try to work on it, but we had to keep up appearances for the fans, so the advertising continued. One night, we were at a media event for the show and a reporter approached us with questions that suggested my popularity with the fans was increasing. He didn’t say Jill was less popular—everyone knew she had her own little armada of ‘Jillies’—but he said the polling showed I was gaining my own fan base.”
Considering the way my sister behaves when our people talk to me instead of worshiping her, I know what’s coming and why Jackie knew about her before I did.
“She had a total meltdown in front of the entire party and they kicked us out. The next day, the footage was everywhere, and everyone saw the person I saw in private on every platform imaginable. Advertisers and fans abandoned her like moldy bread. I knew the show was dead, and I hoped she’d talk her mother into kicking me to the curb. When she asked me to meet her in her room, I thought she was going to fire me, but that’s not what happened.”
My hand shoots back to the snowflake necklace, praying to Freya that it works because I know this is the worst part.
“I found her on the balcony, waiting for me with a smile that reminded me of the old Jill. The discussion of the future of the show was fairly normal until I made the mistake of mentioning how thoroughly the media had covered her tantrum. She did not like the notion that it couldn’t be saved. That’s when she grabbed me and threw us both off the balcony.”
I can’t help but gasp, and a flurry of snowflakes fills the room. “She did what?”
“We were pretty high in the fortress, so the ground came flying at us fast. I did everything I could to cushion the fall, but…” My love turns away, looking at the shattered mirror. “I survived and Jill didn’t. Her human body was too fragile and mine was damaged, but not destroyed. When I got out of the hospital, my things were boxed and shipped to my brother’s house and the media had received the note she emailed before I got to her room. She accused me of everything she’d done to me and hinted she feared for her life. One final manipulation almost landed me in jail, but luckily, there was no proof of which one of us was lying. I ran as far as I could, covered myself in tattoos to remind me of why I shouldn’t ever get involved with a client, and waited until it all blew over to look for jobs again.”
My poor, scarred Jackie. No wonder she acted like she did until now—she’s terrified to allow herself to care for anyone.
She turns to face me, and all the rage dissipates from my body. My feet land on the ground and the ice disappears as I watch the tears roll down her cheeks. Her pain is so palpable that I can feel it vibrating in the air like a force unto itself. It’s obvious she blames herself for all of it and has never healed the trauma that crazy bitch caused.
That stops now.
“You were going to finish your job here and leave me, weren’t you?” I ask as the reason for her deeply personal confession comes to me.
“Yes.”
I walk over and wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her neck. “Now we’re going to escape this frozen hellhole together.”
Even if I have to kill my sister to accomplish it.