Tainted by Cyndi Goodgame Page B

just below my window balcony.  KIN!
    He stopped dead in his tracks sensing my careless thoughts.  I slid my hand to the charm and stayed perfectly still tossing only my eyes slightly back to the two at my left.  A slight breeze sent a stench of horrid body odor back over before I registered Kin through my nose.
    No one was moving.  Me included.
    I watched as Kin looked to my balcony, out in my direction, towards the shed, back to the kitchen, and back to me.  I could see my parents sitting in the kitchen through the white curtained window seat.  My eyes watered at the attempt to remain so still and I had to close them to keep from letting them leak everywhere.  I watched him walk back to the side of the neighbor’s house where he stopped and nodded at the nearest “whoever” standing with his paired buddy by the edge of where the trampoline used to sit.  They were watching my parents.
    I couldn’t just stand in wait, so I turned and started to retreat before I did something rash and stupid.  My eyes caught something out of place as I peeled them wider across the backyard I’d grown up in.  I’d catch anything out of place in my backyard.  Ian and I had spent more time there than inside the house.    My eyes searched for what was severed from my childhood oasis.  The jasmine vines.  They’d been clipped and balded to nothing but stems.  My eyes wandered the yard.  Nothing else was touched. I quickly assessed that the jasmine was also missing from the trellis climbing to my balcony, kitchen windows, and gazebo and most likely gone from the front of the house too.  My mother loves them.  Why would she cut them down?  Kin.  Why would he?
    I had taken three steps towards my destination when the famous “twig breaking” triggered a sound at the scariest of moments like in a horror movie from beneath my own foot.  I looked back slowly to see the two goons on the edge of the woods heading in my direction and took off. Not slowly at all!  Kin would know now.
    I almost made it when one of the two made ground on me and sidestepped my footing by the frog rock.  I turned fast with the dagger, felt the slice hit the target, and swung back around to almost enter the Seelie Court domain. 
    “Wait!  Please!”
    I stopped myself falling against some type of moss or plant or something that left a lingering scent.  A quick glance gave me the answer I already knew.  JASMINE!   I was distracted enough by it, I noticed that it lined the entire entrance to the court and then some.  It was everywhere.  I probably shouldn’t have but I turned slowly, my empty dagger hand still raised and bloody.  I saw that the blood belonged to the Nym standing beside Kin.  It was stuck in his arm.  I didn’t speak because I was assessing my options.   
    “I won’t hurt you.”  Kin pulled the dagger out of the dude and held it up to me slowly holding the bloody sharp edge toward his chest.  He cleaned it on his pants leg and handed it back.  I didn’t move anything or lower the dagger but did decide I could throw myself into the court entrance if needed.  He watched it as I gripped the hilt and leaned back.
    “I just want to talk.”
    Why? I only had seconds, if that, before Ian or Pike would show up.
    “Because I want you to understand why I acted that way all those years.  I needed too.”
    “Listening.  Talk!”  He can hear me.  I looked quickly to my wrist seeing my bracelet missing.  He relaxed his stance only a little and held up my bracelet.  My mouth opened little but enough to give me away.
    “I fought off too many malcontents to save you.  I know that I wasn’t always that nice to you, but sometimes I just couldn’t seem to get you to understand any other way.”  His mouth drew up into a smile unlike the cruel way he usually did.  His large size was intimidating enough.
    “By being cruel?”
    “Your little boyfriend wouldn’t let me near you,” he growled.  Rude, but right!  “I