by Kim Harrison
Perfunctory Affection
Copyright © 2019 by Kim Harrison.
All rights reserved.
Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2019
by Julie Dillon. All rights reserved.
Print version interior design Copyright © 2019
by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.
Electronic Edition
ISBN
978-1-59606-897-1
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
subterraneanpress.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
For Tim
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my agent Jennifer Jackson for her steadfast belief, and Yanni Kuznia at Subterranean Press for her always cheerful understanding with my questions.
One
She’d known what was real before Dr. Jillium increased her meds. Of that Meg was certain. Beyond that, nothing was sure.
The campus’s cramped roads had become black with night, and the sudden right angles made her headlights almost useless as she drove to the hospital. What Haley said couldn’t be true. Meg hadn’t done those things. How could she? It had been Austin.
Confusion-born tears started, and the car threatened to stall as she took a corner too tight.
Austin had been there. Haley was lying. She was a mean, spiteful bitch who’d pretended to like her for her own sadistic mind games. Meg should’ve known it was too good to be true that Haley actually liked her. People as perfect as Haley didn’t make friends with basket cases like her. Rorry was even worse, pretending to protect her from Austin when all Rorry was doing was protecting Haley’s “investment.”
“I’m a plaything to them. A toy.” Wiping her eyes, she bounced over the road bumps, struggling not to cry from the heartache of being used. “I can’t believe I painted a picture for him. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch!”
The canvas was beside her where Austin once sat, its lines lost in the darkness. Throwing it away wasn’t an option. It was her best work, the beginning of something totally new, and now, she’d think of him every time she looked at it.
“Damn him. Damn them both,” she whispered. Frustrated, Meg hit the dash, and her hand began to bleed again through the bandage. Meg stared at the slick sheen leaking out, her panic rising anew. Was it really bleeding or just an illusion? Had she cut her hand or burned it?
“I hate this car,” she said softly, and then louder, when she realized she’d missed the turn and was headed into the nearby park, “I hate this car! Why am I even driving this car!”
Suddenly her headlights gleamed on the ragged silhouette of a man in the road, waving at her to stop. It was Christopher, and gasping, Meg spun the wheel to avoid him. That damned little dog of his jerked his lead free and ran away, but Christopher froze in fear. Panicking, Meg hit the gas instead of the brake.
With a sickening lurch, the car angled off the road and onto the open grass toward the trees. Meg shrieked, paralyzed as the memory of her accident rose up, thick and smothering. The impact of the curb bounced her head into the wheel, and dazed, she could do nothing but cross her arms over her face as the trees flashed past bright with light. With a jaw-snapping thud, the car ran into a tree and stalled.
For three seconds, Meg didn’t move, her breath a harsh rasp as she remembered where she was. There’d been no airbag to cushion her this time, and the taste of blood slicked her teeth. Dazed, she looked at the empty seat beside her, relief pushing out the fear. It wasn’t one of her nightmares. It was real and she was okay. Austin wasn’t here, his hand mangled and his leg nearly severed at the hip by a metal fence support. There was only a canvas lying on the floor, one that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“I hate this car,” she whispered, wishing she’d gotten the airbag replaced along with the passenger side door. But it hadn’t seemed to matter if she wasn’t going to drive the thing.
Then Christopher banged on the window, and she jumped, shrieking.
“You have to kill them!” he shouted through the window, and Meg scrambled to the other side of the car and got out in a panic.
“Stay away from me!” she exclaimed as she reached back in for her purse, backing away from him as he came around the car. “You’re crazy. Crazy!”
“Like hell I am,” he growled, and she gasped as he grabbed her arm. “It’s not too late. Come with me to the fountain. They need moving water. That’s how they get here. They haven’t left. Help me. We have to kill them both or you’ll never know what’s real again. Don’t let them take you. Perfection isn’t real. They aren’t real!”
If they aren’t real, then why do you want to kill them? she thought, but there was no logic to crazy. “Get away from me!” Meg wedged his hand off her. Shoving him back, she began to run to the hospital. She had to talk to Dr. Jillium, stand in front of her and find out what was real and what wasn’t, because if Perfection wasn’t an illusion, then what she’d done wasn’t either.
Two
Three days previous
“Can you see them? Hey! Can you see them!” the homeless man on the corner yelled, and Meg walked faster, her sneakers silent on the sidewalk still damp from the morning rain.
“It’s just a crazy old man walking his dog, Meg,” she chided herself. Her anxiety, though probably warranted this time, was a comfortable sweater, familiar and worn, and oh so pleasant when life closed in—a bad habit that Dr. Jillium was trying to convince her she didn’t need. Meg had her doubts. It was her anxiety that kept her going when her art failed to remind her she was alive.
“If you can’t see them, it’s not too late!” the man shouted again, and Meg hunched deeper into her long, wool sweater coat.
The college-town street was busy with lunch hour traffic. It wound a parched path between ragged sorority houses and low-slung, seventies-modern offsite apartments, the narrow sidewalk hemmed by sun-starved grass, ancient oaks, and old wisteria slowly strangling the trees that gave them life. Timing the cars, Meg crossed the street, her pace quickening when the man’s dog barked at her.
“Nasty little ankle biter,” she whispered as she held her purse closer, but the tightness in her chest had eased. Dr. Jillium’s office was in the three-story apartment building just up the street. The new medication that her psychiatrist had given her to try last week had done nothing to alleviate her oft-times crippling anxiety made worse by Austin’s conviction that talking would make it all better. But in all fairness, it had only been a trial dose to see how her body tolerated the experimental drug. Today she’d find out if she’d get the full course and join her psychiatrist’s ongoing research—and Meg was anxious about that too.
Her pulse quickened as it always did as she rose up the three stone steps and rang the buzzer. “It’s me, Dr. J,” she said, leaning in toward the speaker and fidgeting with her necklace. Her mother had given the length of sterling silver to her after she graduated from art school; the tiny palette inset with precious stones for blobs of color was a show of pride and unconditional love. It and the car were all Meg had left apart from the interest she lived on from the veritable fortune she’d never known her mother had possessed until she was gone.
The harsh buzzing of the door lock shocked through Meg and made her jump. “Hi Meg,” Dr. Jillium said through the speaker, her high voice cheerful. “Come on up. Door is unlocked.”
As always, Meg thought, but the repetition was comforting. Shoulders easing, Meg pulled the heavy glass door open, stressing over her wet footprints on the pastel-toned vintage floor tile. Taking large steps to minimize the mess, Meg walked on only the black squares to get past the old-fashioned mail boxes and to the old oak steps.
“Hi, Dr. J. It’s me,” Meg said softly as she came in and shut the door, taking her sweater coat off as she scanned the open-floor apartment turned psychiatrist office. Wide picture windows looked out onto the wet quad, the waiting area with its outdated magazines arranged to take in the view of the campus’s clock tower. The art building where Meg taught was visible behind the tops of the oak trees, and Meg curled her fingers under her palms when she noticed she still had paint under her fingernails.
The small kitchen was dark, the bare counters and shelves holding little more than instant coffee and colorful mugs. The heart of the home had been reduced to a glorified coffee station, which had always given Meg a faint unease. There was a desk in the corner, but no receptionist. She’d never seen any other patient, either, but Dr. Jillium valued her patients privacy, and the university wasn’t so large that sheer numbers would grant that without careful timing of appointments.
“Did you get caught in the rain?” Dr. Jillium’s voice came from the open door that led to the inner office, and Meg hung her sweater beside Dr. Jillium’s rain slicker on the hat rack. Reluctant to step off the rug beside the door, Meg continued to wipe her feet.
“No,” she finally said. “The sidewalks are still wet, though.”
Dr. Jillium came out of her office in a clicking of low heels, the early-forties, slim woman looking collected and comfortable in the gray skirt and white blouse that was slowly becoming the professional woman’s uniform, the classy look mimicking the functionality of a man’s suit. “Aren’t you lucky. It was coming down cats and dogs only a few minutes ago,” she said pleasantly as she touched her tightly bound cornrows and headed into the abandoned kitchen. Meg envied her oblivious grace, her ancestry making her exotic and graceful. “I know you have a walk. You work today, don’t you?”
“After our appointment.” Face to face with her therapist’s collected polish, Meg was suddenly conscious of her casual sneakers, ankle-length skirt and white blouse. It looked as if she’d raided her mother’s closet, but it did say teacher among the students predominant jeans and T-shirts. Her lightly curling brown hair, brown eyes, and slight build made her blend in, otherwise.
“Classes just started up,” Meg said as she looked out the large window. “I have a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this semester.”
Dr. Jillium turned from having taken two mugs from behind the glass-paneled cupboard. “How’s that going?”
Meg shrugged, not wanting to bring up the nameless panic that had gripped her in the hall two days ago, rising up to swamp her before she beat it back. Small victories lead to vanquished fears. She was tired of being afraid of nothing. “Okay. I’ve got a full class and a waiting list.” Her painting had been a godsend, her run-of-the-mill oils somehow evolving into a dramatic expression while she struggled with her mother’s death. For her art she would stretch herself beyond her comfort zone—and Dr. Jillium wasn’t above utilizing that fact to her advantage.
The dim light in the kitchen glinted dully on Dr. Jillium’s smile as she handed Meg her usual slate-gray mug, full of straight black coffee, then clinked it to her milk-laden brew in salute. “Word gets around. Everyone wants to learn to catch the light the way you do.”
The porcelain was warming even as she held it, and Meg nodded, thinking it was more about defining the negative space than highlighting the light, but even she could tell her reputation was growing. “Double-edged sword,” Meg said sourly. Teaching was supposed to have been an easy way to get Dr. Jillium off her case about reinforcing her positive social interaction, but five students had turned into fifteen unsettlingly quick. Worse, her university-based show last year had done extremely well. Austin hadn’t said a word about her fleeing the champagne-and-cheese-laced accolades after only fifteen minutes, but she knew he was disappointed. For me, not in me, Meg thought, not knowing what she’d do without Austin’s steady presence in her life.
“Well, come on in,” Dr. Jillium said as she headed for the bright rectangle of her office door. “I want to assess how you’ve been handling the Fitrecepon before we go too much further.”
A quiver of excitement made her hands tremble, and Meg took a steadying breath, not knowing what to do with the rare emotion. The office wasn’t bright today due to the overcast skies, but Dr. Jillium pulled the sheers anyway to help instill a deeper feeling of privacy. A cool breath of air slipped over Meg, and she relaxed in the faint sound of the ever-present air conditioner. Dr. Jillium had allergies and the windows didn’t open.
A well-organized desk was set to overlook the quad. Meg rarely saw Dr. Jillium at it, but it was obvious this was where she worked. This was where Dr. Jillium’s heart resided, valuing ordered pages instead of flour and eggs, a laptop instead of a stove and cookbooks—and that suited the tall, graceful, dark-skinned woman very well. Meg had always imagined that the antique, frosted-glass-door desiccator behind the desk held Dr. Jillium’s experimental anti-anxiety drugs, but she’d never seen it open. A fern sat atop the old cabinet to catch the light. Another fern sat in the center of the narrow coffee table surrounded by a couch and several identical chairs.
The arrangement was meant to evoke a comfortable living room, the focal point being a gas-log fireplace instead of the usual TV, and, coffee in hand, Meg took her usual chair beside the never-lit fireplace, set her purse beside her, sipped her coffee, and eased back. Again, a faint feeling of eagerness coursed through her, just the hint of it feeling like springtime after a devastating winter. “I haven’t noticed anything different,” she said, and Dr. Jillium smiled as she sat across from her in a chair. Both women shunned the couch as a matter of tradition.
“That’s good.” Eyes down, Dr. Jillium powered up her tablet to take notes with. “The changes Fitrecepon creates in your brain are permanent, so we want to make sure they are the right ones. I didn’t give you enough Fitrecepon to visibly impact your moods, just your nervous system. We’ve run into the occasional detrimental side effects in the past, and I don’t want to make things more difficult when you’re already making good progress.”
Meg snorted her opinion, gaining a one-eyebrow look from Dr. Jillium. Meg still couldn’t get behind the wheel of her car without palpitations, and meeting new people gave her the sweats. Finding a new grocery store when her local mom-and-pop had closed had been a three-week nightmare. But on the positive side, she did still have Austin, even if their relationship was sketchy at the moment. She’d been able to handle a job again, too, managing to work with new students every year. That she might be able to drive without fear or go the movies without freaking out when someone sat behind her sounded like heaven.
“So,” Dr. Jillium prompted, stylus at the ready. “How was your week? Have you thought about your and Austin’s relationship?”
Meg’s eyes darted to the pinky ring Austin had given her three years ago after her mother had died. Her hand fisted, and she forced her gaze up to the windows beyond Dr. Jillium’s silhouette. The ring was silver so she wouldn’t confuse it with a proposal—if it fitting on her pinky hadn’t been enough of a clue. “I’m warming up to it,” she said to avoid telling her he’d up and moved out. It was no consolation that his things were still there, a constant reminder of how stupid she’d been. He said it wasn’t her, that he was just going to spend a few days across campus until things got sorted out, but Meg could tell he was tired of their bickering and exhausted from dealing with her restless sleep. Nightmares of the car accident that had left him with a soft limp and limited use of his right hand still haunted her sleep.
“Mmm
m-hum,” Dr. Jillium murmured, making a notation. “How about your goal of getting out to the mall during the busy hours?”
Meg shrugged. She’d had her coat on and had been on her way, but then it had started to rain, and knowing that she’d have to take the bus made her palms sweat and her chest hurt. It had been easier to wait until after eight, just before the stores closed and there weren’t so many people. “Sort of,” she admitted when Dr. Jillium waited. “I’m hoping that this new medication will make things easier.”
“This is not a magic pill,” the woman said evenly, but Meg could tell she was cross. “You still have to exert yourself. You’re retraining your brain to disengage from the fight or flight response. I know it’s hard, Meg.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Meg muttered from around a sip of coffee, then relented. “I’m tired of being afraid,” she said, frustration making her voice harsher than she intended. “I don’t want a magic pill. I just want to be normal.”
Expression carefully placid, Dr. Jillium swiped through her tablet. “There are no right or wrong answers to this, so don’t try to feed me what you think I want. Okay?”
Meg sat up, set down her coffee, and crossed her knees. She wanted to be normal so bad, it ached.
Dr. Jillium cleared her throat. “Have your sleep patterns changed this week? Any night disturbances? Sleepwalking? Napping in the middle of the day or possibly waking up and having forgotten you fell asleep?”
“No,” Meg said immediately. “No napping, but I’ve always woken up in the middle of the night.” Actually, it was more like insomnia, her mind not letting her fall asleep as it went over what she could have done to keep Austin from leaving, what she ought to have said, was she making a mistake, what could she do to get him back, and did she even want him back. Her mind was inventive in its endless things to worry about.