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Chapter Eight: A little trickery on my part...

Precal, Sarah decided, had to be one of the most desperately boring things on the planet.

I don’t even know why I have to take it, she grumbled to herself, taking notes on a sheet of paper. I may not know what, exactly, I plan to do with my life, but I know that it won’t include calculus. Seriously—since when is a degree in mathematics required to balance a checkbook?

She sighed to herself as she scribbled down formulas and equations that she didn’t understand and cared nothing about.

Sometimes life just sucks, she thought to herself, using a pause in the teacher’s monologue to glance at the clock. Just fifteen minutes left! she rejoiced, impatient to hear the final bell. And Karen’s working late tonight, so she’d never know if I dropped by the bookstore on the way home and got something to take my mind off this impossible homework...

She snorted at the thought of her stepmother’s job. While she claimed that it involved extremely important and delicate matters of style and taste, Sarah wasn’t convinced.

Ripping people’s new design ideas to shreds is definitely “important” and “delicate,” she thought with scorn. She’s nothing but a jumped-up editor of some old lady’s magazine...

* * *

Half an hour later, Sarah stood before the tall, sliding glass doors of her self-declared haven and took a deep breath. A sign loomed large over her head, though she didn’t look up to read it. She had been here before; the words were not new to her.

As the doors whooshed open of their own accord, she let her breath out in a happy sigh and stepped inside.

She loved this place.

She snagged a small cart as she passed their racks, then wandered deeper into the store, passing by several shelves while inhaling the unique scent that filled the air—part dust, part coolant tang, but mostly yellowed paper and faded ink.

Other customers browsed the shelves of books, and she glanced at them with impersonal disinterest as she guided her hand basket on its small metal trolley toward her favorite section, announced by a large blue-on-white sign above the shelves: SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY.

She was halfway there when one of the other patrons caught her attention. The man was tall and slender with his white-blond hair pulled back with a hair tie, from which several wisps had already strayed. A royal blue shirt matched his pale skin tone to perfection, though she couldn’t have said how, and from the way it hung loosely about his shoulders, he had left the top few buttons undone; the cuffs she could see he had neatly folded up to his elbows, as though for some important task. Gently faded jeans—designer? she didn’t recognize the label—made his lean legs look even longer, and the subtle stitching on the back pockets...

He crouched, his back to her, and began examining the contents of one of the shelves, twisting his head sideways to read the titles. A low, absent-minded humming sound floated to her ears, and she had to blink for a few moments to clear a certain, stubborn thought from her head.

Damn, but he has a nice ass...

The man straightened, glancing over and noticing her for the first time. His handsome face lit up with a surprised—but pleased—smile.

“Hello Sarah,” Jareth greeted her. “How have you been?”

She had to blink. The hot stranger in her favorite store was Jareth?!?

“What are you doing here?” she blurted out suddenly, astonished. She’d never expected to see him outside of the Labyrinth...or her bedroom, of course. (Hopefully not Toby’s room again, at least.)

Jareth waved a hand in an expansive gesture, managing to take in the shelves of books, the other customers, and the small caravan of filled carts behind him. “Shopping for books. What does it look like I was doing?” he asked pleasantly. “You mortals fascinate me.”

She almost choked, but hoped that it might escape unnoticed as he turned his head to peer at the shelves again with a distracted expression. “And how is that?” she asked, leaning against the end of the bookcase gingerly, ready to move if he came after her.

He shrugged, still gazing at the row of books before him. “Well, the goblin castle’s library starts getting old after a few thousand years,” he answered, ignoring the stunned expression he knew she wore behind him. “And since I keep getting called off to your world, I thought I might as well know something about it.”

Sarah was still digesting his first sentence. “Wait—you have a library? And how old are you?” she demanded.

“Of course I have a library, Sarah,” he said patiently. “Though I will admit that needing to keep it padlocked to prevent the goblins from reducing it to confetti rather detracts from the appeal, but it does exist. And did you never learn that it’s rude to ask a fae’s age? Really, Sarah.”

But his eyes glittered with friendly teasing rather than reprimand, though his smile did rather take her breath away...

“In any case, your world’s history makes up our mythology and fairy tales, just as our world makes up yours,” he continued blithely.

Then he winked and plucked a book suddenly from the shelf. “You have it completely wrong, you know,” he confided, tossing the book with one hand and catching it suddenly with the other. “To be fair, though, so do we. Comes of having almost no traffic between the two worlds.” He whirled suddenly to lean against the bookshelf and began flipping through the book, strands of blond hair falling forward to partially obscure his face.

Sarah stared at him in silence for another moment, still trying to process the sudden flood of information that he’d just thrown at her. Her world was a myth to him? And thousands of years old?!?

She sidled closer, trying to ignore how the familiar clothes made him seem less intimidating, more...sexy. Not that his other clothes were bad, mind you...they were just so...different. She could never forget that Jareth was from another world, whereas now—she was dangerously at risk of doing just that, and reacting to him as she would to any other hot guy she met...who liked reading and talking to her and was nice... That really wasn’t a safe thought to have around him...

“So that’s why you’re reading about...” She glanced at the shelf behind him, trying to decipher the topic. “the Roman empire? If you’re thousands of years old, wouldn’t you have been alive then?”

He placed a finger in the book to mark his place and leaned back to regard her with something like amusement. “Yes. But being alive back then and knowing about all the politics going on is different—or at least, it was then. They didn’t have newspapers and CNN, you know.”

Now he did look amused, Sarah decided, and was cut off when she would have attacked his unspoken assumption that she didn’t know that daily news was strictly a modern invention.

“But in any case, it’s quite hard to travel between worlds when I’m not being summoned,” he continued smoothly. “I can manage it around you easily enough because you did summon me once, which creates a sort of link—think of it as a mystical sort of ‘frequent flyer pass,’ if you’d like.” Again that amused smirk. “Which is why I chose this bookstore, of course. Same town—similar rules.”

And he shrugged, flipping suddenly to the title page of the book. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know if this...‘Mark Farmer, Ph.D.’...is a reliable source, would you?”

Sarah stared at him blankly. Is there something wrong with him? she wondered. He’s never been quite so...capricious. Or un-pushy.

The last, however, was not a change which she would regret, merely wonder at.

“No idea,” she said, blinking.

Jareth shrugged, reaching up to run it through his hair. “Ah well,” he began, and then frowned as his hand’s motion was arrested by the ponytail.

He seemed to have forgotten that he’d put his hair up.

“Bloody Aboveground hair...” he muttered to himself, shoving the book back on the shelf and reaching behind his head to the hair band. “Bloody hair band...”

Sarah leaned against the bookshelf opposite him and watched in silent amusement, tempered with slight confusion. “Have you really never put your hair up before?” she asked, arms folded loosely.

Jareth spared a glance her way. “No,” he answered shortly. “And I really don’t like the way this...thing...is tugging on my hair. But if I leave it down, everyone stares at me, which becomes distracting when I’m trying to look at books.”

Sarah simply rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d have liked being the center of attention.” He certainly seemed to demand that in the Labyrinth... she thought to herself.

Jareth rolled his eyes. “I usually do. But occasionally I have other priorities—like finding something to distract myself from the goblins’ territorial wars over the feral chickens that they insist on bringing into the castle.”

Sarah gave him a look he recognized from centuries of dealing with the goblins’ idiocy. “Why,” she asked slowly, “would they want feral chickens? Are domesticated ones not good enough?”

Jareth sighed heavily. “Feral chickens lay eggs,” he stated succinctly. “And they peck. Apparently, this makes them the pinnacle of chicken desirability.”

Sarah continued to look disbelievingly horrified. Jareth decided to distract her. “Look—can you help get this thing out? It’s trying to pull my hair out from the roots.”

He was usually not so helpless, but if seeming pathetic and needy convinced her to stop trying to hit him...then he could afford a little helplessness.

Sarah sighed heavily and pinched his sleeve to turn his back to her, peering into the—now tangled—locks of platinum hair. “A rubber band?!? You used a rubber band? Jareth, do you have no sense at all? Of course it’s pulling on your hair!”

Jareth just grinned, his expression safely hidden behind the masses of silky-soft hair his beloved was now carefully inspecting. His day was improving by the second.

He let her rant at him, knowing that it would make her feel better, and only tuned back in when she made a legitimate complaint.

“You’re too tall. I can’t see what I’m doing.” She huffed with exasperation in his ear, and he repressed a pleased shiver. She had no idea how sensitive his scalp was...and in all sorts of tingly, toe-curling ways...

“There’s a bench at the end of the aisle,” he purred, his voice seductive. “Shall I go sit there?”

Sarah pretended desperately not to notice, extricating her fingers from his silken locks so he could move. “Yes,” she replied, attempting to sound firm and decisive, but only managed to sound slightly out of breath.

Jareth smirked to himself but made no comment. Instead, he sauntered, lean hips swaying in low-cut denim, to the short wooden bench near Sarah’s abandoned cart. Once there, the royal poured himself onto the seat, stretching his long legs over the length of the bench. He propped himself up on his arms, waiting until Sarah had raised her hands once more to his golden mane to drop his head back and gaze up at her.

“Thank you for helping me, by the way,” he drawled lazily. “I do appreciate it.”

Sarah snorted. “Can’t you stop being insufferably smug for two seconds?”

He didn’t bother to dignify that with the obvious answer. He let her tip his head forward again and closed his eyes, smiling like a contented cat as he felt her fingers reenter his hair. He was perfectly determined to enjoy every moment of this, and considering that his hair had a natural tendency to disobey all attempts to control it—and rubber bands were, by all accounts, the most diabolical way to tie hair back—those moments could be lengthy.

Her hands were unexpectedly gentle, teasing the strands of hair away from the thick elastic a little at a time, and he had to concentrate to remain still beneath her clever fingers. One lapse, and he’d be purring and rubbing against her like any common feline...

He gave in to the slight tugs as she painstakingly teased apart the different loops of the stubborn rubber band, sighing in frustration as they kept snagging on his thick locks. He imagined that those sighs were, instead, for him, and had to begin counting his breaths so as not to pull her into his lap, willing or no.

She mumbled something about cutting the rubber band, and he hummed in acknowledgement, low and throaty. Sarah raised an eyebrow at how very still he was sitting, but pulled a pair of nail clippers from her pocket and made the careful snip before he could protest. She wasn’t sure what the almost-growl had meant, but it had a strange effect on her knees...

Jareth smiled to himself when she propped herself on the bench, the heat of her body more intense as she leaned closer to him.

“I—just curious,” she quavered, trying to distract herself from the way the fine down of his hair slid over her hands like a caress, “but...”

“Yes?” he invited slowly, drawing the word out as though tasting it delicately.

“Those books—where do you get the money to pay for them? I mean...” She dithered for a moment, unsure of how to ask what she wanted to know. “I can’t see you working somewhere, though I guess you could always magic up the money from nowhere, or...”

He chuckled darkly, enchanted by her innocent curiosity. Of all the things about him, she worried about his finances...

“Sarah...darling...do you have any idea how many coins get dropped, or roll away somewhere, and are simply forgotten? They all add up after a while, and part of ruling the Labyrinth involves taking away lost and unwanted things. Coins, old toys—you saw the junkyard, I’m sure—embarrassing, old relics of the past...”

“Baby brothers,” she interjected bitterly, pulling unnecessarily hard on the remaining coil of elastic.

Jareth grunted, but somehow, it didn’t seem an unhappy sound. “If someone decides they want it back, I give them a challenge equal to the forsaken object—or person. You passed the test, so I returned young Toby. I also,” and here he lowered his voice, as though inviting her to share a secret with him, “grant wishes.”

Sarah scowled. “What? Like ‘please steal my baby brother; I’m sure I don’t need him anymore’?” she taunted.

“Mm... Not as many of those as you might think,” he chided lazily. “Though you would be amazed at what some people wish for at a wishing well. One of my favorite entertainments when I’m bored.”

Sarah made an incredulous noise in the back of her throat, and her hands stilled in his partially liberated mane.

“But as long as I fulfill their wishes, I deem it only natural that I take their offering. After all, that was why they made it.” He shrugged languidly, his head slowly tipping back so that it almost rested on her chest. “Don’t you agree?”

“I...” She hadn’t expected to be asked for an opinion, and her fingers scrabbled blindly at the still-captured locks for something to do. “What kind of wishes do they make?”

“Oh, lots of the usual—things born of jealousy, or desire, or greed—rarely from altruism, at any rate—and then there are the strange ones. A little girl once asked for a pink rhinoceros.” He paused for a moment, savoring the memory. “Her parents were quite surprised when they got home. So were the zookeepers who came that afternoon.”

Sarah couldn’t help it; she choked on her laughter even as she tried to scold him. “You didn’t! Jareth, that’s dangerous!”

“Oh, no one was hurt,” he breezily assured her. “It was only a small one, after all, and I made sure it was too indolent to charge anyone.”

He nestled his head between her breasts, silently elated at how well he had managed to keep her distracted. “And what about you?” he purred. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school? I thought it lasted late into the afternoon.”

“No,” she refuted. “We got out at four, half an hour ago...” She pulled her hand from his hair to check her watch, then dangled her wrist in front of his nose, where he caught it to check her assertion.

“So you did,” he agreed, stroking the inside of her wrist and laying her hand at the opening of his shirt. “I didn’t realize how long I’d been here.”

She snorted. “You’ll be here even longer if you don’t let me finish untangling your hair,” she challenged. Jareth simply grinned.

“And lose the chance to see you in a good mood? Why Sarah, you wound me...”

“Melodramatic prat,” she accused, pulling her hand free and pushing his head forward again to reach the remaining snarl of hair and elastic.

“If you insist...” he replied, sounding terribly put upon. She snorted again, and he lapsed back into quietly enjoying the feel of her fingers running through his hair, humming quietly to himself.

Sarah concentrated on the Gordian’s knot of his hair, barely aware of the distant humming that vibrated in her patient’s throat.

But I’ll be there for you...as the world falls down...

Sarah frowned. Why were those words popping up now? “What are you humming?” she suddenly asked, freezing with half the rubber band wound around her fingers, freed from his hair.

Jareth almost groaned. Of course she would—and right when he was enjoying it so much, too! “Oh...just one of my favorite songs,” he said breezily. “Do you like it?”

Sarah glared. “You know I recognize that song,” she pointed out. “You sang it during that messed-up drug dream of a ball.”

Jareth grinned wolfishly. “I know. As I said, it’s one of my favorites.”

Sarah tched. “You’re impossible,” she huffed, jerking on the rubber band to try to pull it free.

Jareth growled quietly. Gods...the things she does to me... “So is magic. And other worlds. And wishes coming true—but you know that all of those exist, don’t you, my dear?” he purred.

She muttered something under her breath. It might have been “insufferable git.” He didn’t bother to ask for verification.

Sarah went back to his hair, tugging at the strands more brusquely, and Jareth let his eyes slip closed again. He could feel the tendrils of magic react to her touch, twining themselves around her fingers and holding her close. It was...deliciously stimulating.

He didn’t even realize when he began humming again, though the set of Sarah’s jaw indicated that she did.

She wrenched the last of the ill-fated hair tie from his mane and stepped back. “There. It’s gone.”

Jareth uncoiled from his pose on the bench and ran both hands through his hair, smiling down at Sarah in an indefinably predatory way. “Thank you,” he purred, eyes strangely captivating, “again.”

She seemed flustered, and he purred to himself in satisfaction. “I... I should go, since you’re done,” she protested, glancing around for her tiny trolley as though it could offer any protection from his burning eyes.

“Wait,” he called, laying a hand on her arm as she was about to disappear farther into the store. “I mentioned that I have books about real magical, mythical history—would you like to borrow them sometime?”

She seemed startled at his sudden offer, unsure of what to think of it. “I...maybe? I don’t know, Jareth; I have to go—”

He shrugged elegantly at her excuses. “Call me, then,” he told her, “and I’ll bring you whatever you like.” He bent low over her hand—when did he take my hand?—and brushed her knuckles with his lips.

Sarah watched with astonishment as he cheerfully turned on his heel—one last, cheeky smirk in her direction—and walked back down the aisle, his little caravan of trolleys following him obediently toward the checkout counter.

It took a few minutes for her to collect herself enough to remember how to walk, and even longer before she could make her own purchases, but as she walked out of the store, the black-lettered sign with the store’s name caught her eye.

By Its Cover.