Jack and Jill: Shadowhunters - Chapter One

                The park is all but deserted, as would be expected at this time of night. It makes it a perfect place for us to meet, or else a really dangerous one. There is a motorcycle in the parking lot when I pull in and I park beside it. I don’t know a thing about bikes, but I can tell just by looking at this particular piece of machinery that it must have cost a pretty penny. It makes me wonder further about the man who I’ve come here to meet on this cold, winter night.

                The air assaults me when I climb out of the warmth of my car and I pull my red Moncler Alpin jacket tighter around me. Maybe I should have paid more attention to what I was wearing underneath instead of putting on any old thing I could find - which happened to be a flimsy tanktop and worn out jeans. Right now I couldn’t even be sure that the outfit I had thrown on was even clean. But it’s not like it matters how I look, this isn’t that kind of meeting. And I know that I shouldn’t be meeting this man at all alone in the middle of the night like this, but all the strange events that have been unfolding since the night of my eighteenth birthday keep my boot clad feet moving forward down the cobblestone path.

                My birthday had been pretty typical as far as birthdays go - a nice party that included all my friends and most of my family. There were gifts, great food, a beautiful three tier cake; everything you would expect at a birthday party. Temporary putting aside the broken heart I had been feeling from my two cats that had run away just days earlier, I managed to have a great time. That night after everyone else had gone home, I was feeling pretty tired so I decided to turn in a little early. I said goodnight to my parents, went to my room, and went straight to sleep. When I woke up the next day, my parents had disappeared.  There was no note, their vehicles were still in the driveway, and all of their possessions were accounted for. They had completely vanished without a trace.

                As if my parents unexplained dissappearance wasn't horrible enough, other strange things began to happen to me. Ever since my birthday, I always have the strange feeling like I’m being watched.  Wherever I go I sense that I’m being followed. And even worse than that, I’ve started to see strange things out of the corners of my eyes that aren’t there when I turn to look. I haven’t been able to sleep without a light on for weeks.

                Suddenly a restricted number began to call me. I ignored it at first, but after several calls and no messages, I answered it with the intention of giving the caller a piece of my mind. The man on the other end of the line told me he knew what was happening to me. He said he wanted to meet me at the park and, despite my better judgment, I agreed.

                And so here I am. I tread softly down the winding path, admiring the great elm trees as I go. Suddenly I see his silhouette sitting on one of the benches overlooking the pond. As I gain distance his features become more prominent. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t the man that was standing before me.

                “You came,” he says in a tone that sounds almost wistful. He looks to be in his mid-twenties, which is younger than his voice had led me to believe on the phone. He brings to life that whole tall, dark, and mysterious thing, or was it supposed to be tall, dark, and handsome? Either way he fits the bill with his perfectly chiseled features, at least from what I can see.  Normally the first thing I notice when I meet someone is their eyes, but for some reason he is wearing dark sunglasses. There could be half a dozen reasons for that so I don’t even think about it. His dark hair goes down past his round ears. Even under his clothes, which were a pair of dark jeans, biker boots, and a white t-shirt under his open black leather jacket, I could see the outline of his muscles. 

                “Of course I came!” I exclaim at him. “I have no idea what the hell is going on! My parents have disappeared, people are following me, and I swear I’ve been seeing things, unexplainable things, like the kind of things that land you in the nuthouse. So if I have to come out here in the middle of the night to meet some random stranger that has either been stalking me or possibly the person behind it all just so that I can finally get some answers, so be it. Yes, I came, and now you had better tell me whatever you know right now.” I cross my arms the way that my mother always did in that no-nonsense way of hers. Does, I correct myself. I have no idea what could have happened to my parents but I can’t give up hope that they are still alive.

                He stares at me for a minute without saying a word. I’m not really much to look at normally, but these past few weeks have really done a number on me. There are dark shadows under my brown eyes and my auburn hair hasn’t been properly cared for in days. My cheeks are hallowed and I’m much thinner than I’m used to being for lack of a desire to eat. When the people you love are taken from you and you start to feel like you are going crazy, keeping up with your appearance is not on your list of priorities. I hoped the body spray I used would mask the fact that I hadn't showered since, when was it? But even then I didn't really care.

                “We should walk,” he says finally. “It’s not safe to stay in any one place for too long when there aren’t many lights.”

                “Why?” I ask, shifting my eyes around for the shadows I’m almost sure are there.

                “Just trust me,” he says and then starts to walk further up the path. With few other choices, I decide to follow him. We walk in unison with me standing a little closer than I’d like to by his side. Being so close I get this feeling that there is something different about him but I can’t place what it is. It’s not necessarily a bad sort of different, but it’s not necessarily a good one either. Suddenly he asks, “Do you hear anything?”
               

                I try to listen, but other than the sound of our own footsteps I don’t hear a thing. I tell him as much. “Don’t you find that odd?” He asks. “It’s the middle of the night, yes, but you would still expect to hear something. We are near the pond, there are fields around us, and yet not a single sound. You would expect to hear crickets and toads at the least.”

                I shrug. With everything in my life going on right now I could care less about insects or amphibians. He seems a little perturbed that I’m not bothered by it, which is ridiculous. “Alright,” he says, “How about this: do you have any pets?”

                “I had two cats,” I admit, ignoring the eye roll he gave me. So what, I’m a cat person. I like to think of them as kindred spirits. “But they ran away.”

                “Around your eighteenth birthday, right?” I nod, wondering how he could have possibly guessed that. My heart was still broken over my babies having run away, but with my parents disappearance I didn’t have the time or energy to continue looking for them. There were still flyers up with a small reward offered for their safe return, hopefully someone would find them and bring them home to me. “Your cats ran away because they couldn’t stand to be around you anymore.”

                “Hey!” I shout, genuinely offended. “I took great care of my kitties. I loved them, played with them, groomed them, fed them the right kind of kitty food, bought them little toys…”

                “Yes,” he says a little curtly, breaking me off,  “I don’t mean that you were mean or neglectful. I mean that animals can sense things that people cannot.  They left you because they sensed that you were different and they became afraid of you. I mentioned the crickets earlier because even they can sense that, and that is why you don’t hear them right now.”

                “Okay, I’ll bite,” I say with disdain. “How am I different?”

                He stops walking and turns to face me. His lips are drawn in a grim line. He seems to want to reach out to me, but thinks better of it. With a deep breath he says, “You aren’t human anymore.”

                I stood silence for a few seconds in the shock of his words, but then I burst out with laughter so fierce that my eyes watered. He must be some kind of an actor to be able to say that with a straight face. This was obviously one of my friend’s little joke to try and cheer me up. “Oh, you are good,” I say while wiping the tears from my eyes. “You almost had me there. Who put you up to this? It was Dianne right? She is always pulling all these stupid little pranks; I should have known that’s what this was.”

                “I didn’t expect you to believe me right away,” he says in all seriousness. “I didn’t either at first.”

                “No, seriously, you can stop now,” I say, finally over my laughing fit. “The jig is up. It’s been real fun, honestly, but it’s late and I really do have things I seriously need to work out. So thank you, but you know, goodbye.”

                I turn to leave, but he grabs my arm. Ignoring my protests, he raises his free hand to his face and removes his glasses. His eyes are blue, and they are glowing.

                I roll my eyes. “Contacts? You really went all out, didn’t you?”

                He raises an eyebrow at me and I can’t help but notice how sexy the expression looks on him, which is an extremely inappropriate thing for me to be thinking at the moment. “Do they really have contacts like these?” He asks. “Well, regardless, these are not contacts babe. These are the eyes of the cursed and soon enough your eyes will be glowing every bit as bright as mine.”

                “They aren’t that bright,” I say stupidly. I’m not sure what to say exactly, I’m starting to feel nervous. He seems to be agitated that I don’t believe his little quip. Then I start to realize that although it’s most likely this guy is just acting out a prank set up by one of my friends, there is also a second, scary possibility that this guy is a lunatic who actually believes what he is saying to be true. And that lunatic is still holding on to my arm. Alarmed, I tug my arm back. “Let me go!” I begin to shout.

                “You have to listen to me,” he pleads, “they are here now.”

                “Let me go you crazy freak!” With a final tug of my arm, I am free and running away from him back to the direction of my car. My heart is pounding a mile a minute inside my chest. Adrenaline is shooting through me and I’m running faster than I ever thought I could when I chance a look back to see if he is pursuing me. That’s when I trip and fall flat on my face.

                Moaning, I roll over onto my back and sit up. I can see the man in the distance exactly where I left him. What the hell was I thinking coming out here anyway? Since when did I become so reckless? I had always been the cautious one in the family, never taking unnecessary risks and always planning everything out. I was beginning to feel like it wasn’t just my parents that I had lost, but myself too.

                Suddenly the man was motioning to me franticly and shouting, “Watch out!”

                I look around and I can see them, and not just from the corners of my eyes anymore. The shadows are in shapes that I can’t even begin to describe, and they aren’t flat like a shadow on the ground or on the wall. They are living, breathing creatures that seem to emerge from the darkness like ink and pour into sustenance. Their beady little eyes are glowing, and looking straight at me. Then, all at once, they start coming toward me at an alarming speed.

                I find myself back on my feet and running again without even realizing I had gotten up. If I thought I had been running fast before, it was nothing compared to the ferocity I was using now. Somehow I know that if these strange creatures get their hands on me that they will kill me. In my panic I find myself running back toward the man who I had only just been trying to escape. I feel a small amount of relief when he pulls some sort of weapon out of his jacket, but as I get closer I see it’s not really a weapon at all and it’s so comical I would have laughed again if not for being short of breath.

                The beam from the flashlight wasn’t very bright, but it was light all the same. I could feel that the shadows were just at my heels when I reached the man; crashed right into him is more like it. Throwing my arms around him, I cling on for dear life. In a bizarre situation where I’m being chased by shadowlike creatures and my savior is a man with a flashlight and glowing eyes, the absurd thought that was going through my mind at that moment was how good he smelled.

                “They’re gone now,” he said after a moment. “You can let go of me if you want.”

                “Right,” I say, feeling slightly embarrassed now that it was over. I chance a look around and see that the shadows have indeed disappeared. I pry myself off of him with a slight blush to my face.

                “Do you still think that this is all some stupid prank?” He asks me, as if it hadn’t just become abundantly clear to me that it wasn’t.  I shake my head, not entirely sure what to say. Or think. Or feel. I’m on the verge of tears, or maybe more hysterical laughter, I’m not sure which. He must notice it too because he asks, “Do you want to go get some coffee?”

                “That would be…fantastic,” I say graciously. “And a big slice of chocolate cake.”

                He arches his eyebrow at me again and I feel butterflies in my belly. I squash them down. “That I can do,” he says with a grin that shows he has dimples. Even with his glowing eyes, which I’m still not entirely convinced aren’t contacts, he is one gorgeous specimen. We start walking down the path again and this time I don’t mind standing so close to him, or his flashlight.

                “So what’s your name?” I finally think to ask. “I feel like I should know it now that I’ve practically fondled you and everything.”

                With a warm laugh he replies, “It’s Jack.”

                I stop in my tracks. “Jack? Seriously?”

                “Yes Jill, I am completely serious. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

                Shaking my head, I push the immediate thoughts of what had just occurred tonight out of my mind. Sure, I had a ton of questions, but I knew I would get my answers soon enough. At the moment all I wanted to think about was thoughts of mouthwatering chocolate cake and a nice smelling man named Jack. 


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