Hexed

here.”
    He sat.
    I dipped the bucket into the pond, set it between us, and sat on the low stone wall of a flower bed.
    He looked around. “It’s a nice garden.”
    I nodded. “I like it. It quiet and beautiful. Most Indonesians are Muslim, but we’re Hindu. A place for meditation is important to us. The tree you’re sitting under came from the seed of a very special holy tree in Bali, the Bunut Bolog tree. It’s a type of fig. The Bunut Bolog tree is so large and so powerful that it is like a forest by itself. It has a hole at its base, and the hole is so wide, there is a two-lane road running through it.”
    “Why did they build a road through the sacred tree?” Jim asked.
    “It was too dangerous to go around it because of the cliffs. They thought about cutting the tree down, but the spirits of the tree’s guardians refused to allow it, so they just had to make the best of it. It’s not wise to piss off the tree’s guardians. They are ferocious.”
    “What sort of guardians?”
    I gave him a little smile. “Tigers.”
    Jim grinned. “Tigers, huh.”
    “Mhm.”
    He leaned forward. His face was calm and I wanted to kiss him. I couldn’t help it.
    “You looked worried after that newspaper thing,” he said. “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to make you—”
    If he said “scared,” I would make him wear this damn bucket on his head. Vegetarian and half blind, I was still a shapeshifter, a predator. I had my pride.
    “—upset.”
    Hmm, upset I could probably live with. He didn’t need to know that. “I wasn’t upset.”
    “My point is, I would never hurt you or your family.”
    I raised my chin at him. “If you tried to hurt my mother, I would totally kick your ass.”
    “Aha.”
    “Yes. You would be lying on the ground, crying, ‘No more, no more,’ and I would be kicking you in the stomach, wham, wham, wham!”
    He laughed softly. He was so terribly handsome. Here we were sitting two feet from each other, and we might as well be on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.
    “I don’t want you to do this,” Jim said. “I don’t want you to go there, I don’t want you to get hurt trying to help me. It’s not your job to save me.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says me.”
    “Look, tomorrow I’ll go in there myself, and if I choke somebody long enough, they will bring the snail.”
    “Aha. And how do you plan on determining if they’ve brought a garden snail or a golden one?”
    “I’ll spray somebody’s magic blood around until the snail lights up.”
    “Good plan.” I dipped my ladle into the bucket and tossed the water at him.
    He recoiled. “What the hell?”
    “You’re delirious from lack of sleep.”
    “Dali!”
    “The poachers are smart and a lot of them have magic. Some of them can tell what kind of a shapeshifter you are from a hundred yards just by looking at you. If you go to the Underground tomorrow, you will fall asleep there, alone and helpless, and then the poachers will kill you and cut you into tiny pieces, and then your precious werejaguar bones will be sliced into thin wafers and put into wine, so some sicko can have magic powers in bed.”
    He let out a frustrated snarl.
    “It’s just like with the tea—somebody offers you a gift, and you turn up your nose at it.”
    “You’re taking chances again. I won’t let you do it.”
    “It’s cute of you to think you can stop me, Jim. Usually you order me around and I do what you say. I might gripe and I might make a fuss, but I will do it, because you are my alpha and I respect you. On this, you get no respect. You know nothing about this world. Your rules don’t apply here, but mine do. You will follow my lead and you will let me save you, Jim.” Because thinking about you dying makes me hurt.
    He opened his mouth.
    “If it was the other way around, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” I told him.
    “I’m your alpha. It’s my job to keep you safe.”
    “It goes both ways,” I said.
    He rubbed his hands over his eyes. I tossed another ladleful of water at him.
    “Quit it!”
    “You looked sleepy.”
    “I’m not sleepy, I’m at the end of my patience with this stupid hocus-pocus shit.”
    “Whatever.”
    Fine. He could be dense and pissed off all he wanted, it didn’t matter.
    We sat in silence. Off to the side night insects chirped and seesawed sad little songs. Tomorrow would suck. It would suck so much, and we didn’t even know what was wrong with him. I