Chapter 9

Both sat and looked at the computer monitor; the list was too long. Randy gave Jareth a speculative glance. “We could try all of them.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You would like to speak to all fifty fortune tellers?”

She shrugged. “No, not really. But how do we figure out who to talk to about your...uh, problem without sounding like weirdos?”

“Weirdos?” Asking her for explanations had become so common it no longer bothered him.

“Odd, bizarre, strange...”

He laughed. “You are troubled by seeming strange to someone who claims they can read your future from looking at your hand or in a ball of glass?”

She giggled. “Okay, good point.” She looked back at the list. “I can’t really afford to try all of them, so how do we pick?”

His brow furrowed as he studied the list in front of him. “I am uncertain how we should select appropriate—”

“Just say you don’t know.” She tilted her head and looked at him.

“I don’t know,” he stated blandly and then frowned. “Why is it speaking has come to such shortened words in these new years?”

“Maybe we don’t have time to be so proper all the time.” She typed into the search bar and hit enter. “Check out text short forms.” She pointed to the screen.

Jareth leaned closer and studied the screen.

l8r – ttyl – :) – Idk – ur...

It continued on for the whole length of the screen. “These are words of today?” He gave her a wide-eyed look.

Randy nodded. “Yep, when you’re texting you really don’t want to have to spell out every word...”

“There are no words spelled out on this screen.” He did not even want to ponder what texting could mean.

She looked at the screen. “I guess it could seem a bit much, huh?”

Once again he did not understand all of her words. He just looked back to the screen. “Shall we go back to the fortune tellers?”

Randy stretched her arms above her head and leaned back. “I say we send out a mass e-mail and see what responses we get.”

He watched her breasts pressing against the shirt covering them. Nodding without being certain what she had said, he continued to let his eyes move down the length of her body. When he realized he was boldly staring at her, he glanced to her face to see that she was, in fact, watching him. He cleared his throat. “Are you certain you are well after the earlier events?”

“Yeah, I’m just stiff from sitting here so long.” She turned and looked out the window. “If it wasn’t raining, I would suggest a walk.” She sighed again and turned back to the keyboard. “Why don’t you pick a movie and we can go relax upstairs and watch something for a while?”

“A movie?”

Nodding, she pointed to the cupboard beneath her shelves. “Yeah, pick something that might interest you and we can just kick back for a bit. I’ll get these addys pasted into an e-mail and send it.”

Addys, kick back, pasted...he was certain he would not ask this time. He got up and went over to the cupboard and looked at it. “Miranda, I cannot see through the door to inside.”

She tapped her hand against her forehead. “Sorry.” She jumped up and went over and opened the door. She gave him an apologetic look. “You’re so real to me, I keep forgetting.”

He smiled down at her. “I am pleased I am real to you.”

She knew she was standing there looking at him like an infatuated schoolgirl, but she didn’t care. “I’ll get the e-mail done and grab a snack.” He nodded and bent down to look inside the cupboard. She went over and sat back down, clicking quickly to copy as many addresses she could manage to get it sent faster.

“You have pirate movies, little one, from the Caribbean Sea, truly?”

She continued typing. “Yeah, I can’t wait to see what you think of those.”

“Would it be fine, then, that we watch the pirate movies before the others?” He kept skimming his eyes over the words, wanting to pick one up and look at it completely.

Randy nodded as she read what she had written. Hopefully that would weed out the wack jobs and help them find someone who was seriously one of those people with a little something extra. She sent it and then turned to watch him look at the movies. “I almost asked if you wanted anything to eat.”

He leaned on his knee and turned to look at her. “I would love nothing more than something to eat. I will just have to yearn and watch you do so.”

Was it his voice that did this to her every time? She studied him, kneeling there with his black hair half-covering his face as his soft blue eyes looked at nothing but her. Nope, it was the whole package that did it to her. His mannerisms, words, language, tone...the whole damn deal. “I’ll just go get something to make you yearn for, then.” She got up and hurried out of the room. The man was so freaking hot she felt burned every time he looked at her!

Standing quickly after she exited the room. His mouth had come close to declaring out loud that it was she that he yearned the most for. You always were one who stepped up to a challenge, Blackwood, he thought, but mayhap the price of your own torment is going to cost you well this time. He sighed and glanced back to the movies, curiously marvelling how they went about watching something in a small package. He felt much like a young lad again, having to learn his letters when it pertained to the new modern objects.

~

Jareth could not recall when he had laughed so much in a short space of time. They sat on her bed watching the television she had shoved the movie into. This pirate depiction was utterly nonsensical. If he had, in fact and body, attempted such things as those on the television were said to be doing, he would not have lived beyond his twenty-fifth year.

Miranda watched him laugh more than she watched the small television. She would smile at him each time he looked at her, and he could see her enjoyment of her time with him in her eyes.

She leaned down on one arm and looked up at him where he rested back against the pillows. “They really exaggerated it, didn’t they?”

He blew out a breath to stop from laughing. “Very much so. They have the facts of it here and there, yet if I were to behave in such a manner as this I would have found my grave long before I had the opportunity to claim the gypsy’s valued item.” He looked down at her upturned face and adored the light-hearted glint in her eyes. “I find I am more and more pleased by being cursed than in years past.” His eyes flicked down to her mouth hesitantly and then returned to her eyes. “For if I had not been cursed, to be here in the now, I would not have had the pleasure to know of you.”

Her cheeks flushed slightly. She cast him a soft look and smiled. “It sucks that it’s true, but I’m so glad you’ve been in my life, even when I thought I was crazy and you were a mere child’s hallucination.” Her eyes traced over his mouth.

Clearing his throat, he sat up straighter. “I should take my leave...”

She bolted upright and knelt to look at him. “Why? Do you have somewhere to be?”

He shook his head, the very idea of such seeming foolish. “I do not wish to outstay my welcome.”

She snorted. “As if you could! Stay; you don’t have to leave. In fact, you can make this your home, too.” She smirked at him. “You can haunt, or whatever it’s called, my house as your own.”

He swallowed slowly as he attempted to assemble the multitude of words that rushed to his mind at the same moment. “Miranda...”

“Don’t. Just say you’ll think about it, and you can let me know.”

He stood up and looked down upon her before him, on her knees, brown eyes pleading. He sighed. “Very well, I shall consider it.” He glanced to the window. “I find the need to seek solitude once again.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Is it something I keep doing to send you away?”

Turning, he gave her a shocked expression. “You are doing nothing incorrect, little one. I have just been isolated for far too many years. All is so new to me at this moment I have a difficult time comprehending such vast changes in such a small space of time.”

“Okay.” She may have said out loud that she understood, but she didn’t get it as easily as she made it seem. If she had been alone for over two hundred years, she wouldn’t ever want to be alone again. She straightened up on her knees on the bed and looked up at him. “When are you coming back?”

Jareth looked out the window, placing the time of day. He turned back to her. “I shall, if it seems proper to you, return later this eve?” His mouth spoke words his mind was not thinking. He knew he should wait until the morrow to return again and yet the very thought of too many hours passing until he could look upon her again was bothersome to him.

Randy beamed. “It seems more than proper.” She straightened up and mimicked his prim tone. “We do have a curse to ponder solutions for.”

Jareth could not stop the wide grin from reaching his mouth. He stood there looking down at her and felt the strong urge to enclose her in his arms...if only he truly had arms to do so. Placing one of his hands on either side of her head, he paused for a brief moment to feel the sensations in his palms. “I do not know what to do regarding you, little one,” he spoke softly. Every ounce of his soul wanted to lean down and kiss her mouth, but to give in this one time would have been the wrong time, his mind told him. “Until later,” he whispered and dropped his hands as he stepped back from her.

~

Watching the direction he had vanished in this time, she dropped back onto her pillows and looked at the TV. The movie she had watched eagerly at least a hundred times suddenly didn’t seem all that interesting to her. Why watch actors when you have the real deal all to yourself? Sighing she pushed herself up and turned it off. Looking around, she realized she didn’t even want to sit in here now that he was gone. “If it would stop raining for ten minutes, I could at least go outside,” she mumbled, heading for the stairs. At least the drip was still gone.

Figuring she’d better start polishing up her resume, she sat back down at the computer. The phone rang, startling her half out of her skin. “Hello?”

“Randy, I’m so glad you’re there. I just got word of a job opening and it would be so perfect for you.”

Randy flipped the notebook open and grabbed the pen. “What are you, psychic? I was just going to work on my resume.”

Jody giggled. “Not that I know of. Got a pen?”

“Yep.” She copied down the contact information and dropped the pen onto the desk.

“Doesn’t this weather suck?”

“Yep. I had to go up on the freaking roof earlier. Water was dripping from the ceiling.”

“Oh my god, are you crazy?”

She had to smile every time Jody used that phrase. It came out in a high-pitched squeak every time she said it. “Probably, but it was either that or wait until the leak became a flood.”

“You could have called Ralph and whined or something. He might have come over to help.”

A chill run down her back. “I’m done with Ralph. I have no interest to even hear his voice again.”

“You are my hero. Even when I break up with someone I’m way past wanting, I cry my face off for days.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve witnessed that before. It’s not a pretty sight, Jode.”

Her friend laughed. “Thanks a lot. Anyway, I am so booked solid right now with all the previews at work I wanted to let you know we’ll have to bump dinner until maybe next week.”

“No biggie. I’m keeping myself busy and entertained.”

“I really am sorry. If you need me, though, I’m only a phone call away.”

“I know. I’m good.”

“God, I wish I could be more like you. I’m an emotional wreck all the time, and you’re so laidback I often wonder if anything gets a rise out of you.”

Laughing, she spun in her chair to look at the Sloop model named Calico. “Some things do manage to.”

“I haven’t seen it yet.” Jody gasped. “Look at the time! I gotta go. I have ten minutes to get ready for another meeting.”

“All right. I’ll give this place a call and let you know how it goes.”

“Good luck!”

Randy sighed and hung up the phone. She picked up the pen and circled the name and number. She laughed. A few weeks ago she had needed something in her life to take her mind off her frustrating job...now she needed a job to take her mind off her frustrating pirate ghost. And he was. Hers.

~

Jareth stood in the trees across from Miranda’s home. Figuratively he was alone. What he had said was not untrue. He just hadn’t said he needed short time away from her so he would not give into urges that constantly plagued him. If the truth be known, he did not wish to spend one moment away from her presence. It was this very notion that chewed away at him without pause.

He turned his back to the house and stared out beyond where his eyes could see. He could not allow himself an attachment to her. Yet he could not seem to avoid it. She was so resolute that she could release him from the curse...a small piece of him wished for it to be true. How could he grow used to her and look upon her with more fondness, only to watch her fade from his sight as humans do in age? He had once felt the sorrow of such loss with a male child he had watched grow to a man, age to become old, and then die...he had vowed to never do so again.

On the other hand, he had once lived in his solitude without her there. The time spent while she was away for learning had been longer years than previous decades.

Turning, he looked back to her home. She did, he concluded, need someone to watch over her, if her actions earlier this day were any sort of illustration. He might not be of flesh, but he could surely try to prevent her from bringing harm upon herself, for now. Nodding, he turned to wander for a short while to pass some time before he returned to her once more.