The necklace settled naturally around my neck and the key slipped into the open collar of my shirt and came to rest just above my breasts, almost as though it was coming home. Despite the fact that it had been lying out in the bright, hot sunlight, the metal felt strangely cool against my skin—almost cold in fact.
“Looks good.” The old woman nodded approvingly. “The blood stones are almost the color of your hair.”
“Not really. It just looks that way because of the light.” I put a hand to my long, wavy hair self-consciously. It’s brown but it looks wine-red in the sun—not that I got out to admire the effect very often. With my pale complexion I exploded into freckles if I spent too much time in direct sunlight so I pretty much avoided it like the plague. It had never been too much of a problem in Seattle, where I grew up. But after just a few hours in the intense Florida heat, I was beginning to think it was time to invest in some serious sun block.
“It looks good on you,” the old woman insisted, nodding at the necklace. “You should buy it.”
“That’s really nice of you to say but I don’t have much money on me.” I tried to sound regretful but honestly, I just wanted to get away. The old woman was giving me the creeps and the sun seemed to have gotten even hotter in the last few minutes. It pounded against my skull like a golden hammer, making me feel vaguely nauseous.
I hate being hot.
“I need to go find my aunt,” I gave as an excuse, as I pulled the necklace over my head to return it. Or tried to anyway.
Because the necklace wouldn’t come off.
I tried again. Hadn’t it slipped over my head with the greatest of ease just a moment before? The chain had been long enough that the key pendant settled almost between my breasts. But now it didn’t seem long enough to come off and the key was higher—nestled in the hollow of my throat.
“It likes you.” The weird old woman eyed me with bird-like interest as I fumbled with the necklace. “A lot, it seems.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I slid the fine-linked chain through my fingers, feeling for a clasp of some kind. There wasn’t one. “It’s just a necklace.”
“With blood stones in it. Very rare. Very precious.” The old witch leaned forward, eyeing my neck in a disturbing way. “And it’s not the necklace—it’s the key, dearie. It’s the key.”
“What about the key? Is this some kind of a trick?” I was beginning to panic. I yanked at the necklace, which responded by growing even smaller. It was almost a choker now, the cool black metal encircling my throat like icy fingers.
“No trick,” the witch-woman snapped. “The key has chosen you.” She held out one gnarled hand. “I’ll give it to you for a hundred.”
“Dollars?” Her words shocked me so much I forgot to fight with the necklace for a moment. The minute I stopped pulling at it, it loosened its grip and settled with the key in the hollow of my throat again. “I told you I don’t have much money on me!” I said.
The old woman got an obstinate look in her faded brown eyes.
“If you can’t give back the necklace, you’ll have to pay for it. It’s rare and precious—a hundred is a bargain.”
“But I don’t have a hundred,” I protested. I was beginning to feel dizzy and the nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach was growing. If only I could get out of this heat! Living in cool, gloomy Seattle all my life hadn’t prepared me for the muggy oven that was a Tampa late-September afternoon. Back home temperatures were in the low seventies and high sixties—beautiful fall weather. Here summer still reigned supreme and it was in the high nineties.
I yanked at the necklace again which tightened so much I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Stars danced in front of my eyes like phantom sunspots and I stumbled against the rickety table, knocking some of the fake jewelry to the ground.
“Now look what you’ve done!”
The old woman knelt stiffly in the sandy dirt, scrabbling to pick up her spilled treasure. Loops of glass and plastic beads hung from her claw-like hands, reflecting stray darts of sunlight into my eyes.
“Please!” I twisted my fingers in the fine-link chain, feeling like I was being strangled. Or maybe garroted. If only the damn thing would let up for a minute so I could breathe…
“Meggie what’s wrong?”
The cheerful voice of my Aunt Delilah made me spin around, still clawing at my throat. She was dressed in her usual thrift store splendor—a pale blue caftan dress imprinted with rainbows and clouds which floated around her plump figure like the robes of some strange priestess.
“Aunt Dellie,” I managed to gasp. “This necklace…choking me. Won’t come off.”
“Oh my, that is pretty.” Completely unperturbed by my distress, Aunt Dellie leaned forward to examine the key. “Let go now, dear—let me get a good look at it,” she said.
She moved my hands gently but firmly out of the way. At once, and to my relief, the necklace quieted, the key settling once again in the hollow of my throat.
I drew in a ragged, relieved gasp and then another. Now that I could breathe again, I was a little calmer. My hands still itched with the instinctive need to yank at the necklace, to get the strangling thing from around my vulnerable throat. But fear stopped me. What if it tightened up again the minute I touched it? Reluctantly, I kept my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
“It won’t come off,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “It went on fine but now I can’t get it off.”
Instead of expressing concern, Aunt Dellie smiled. “Well, it suits you. Just leave it on.”
“But…” I stared at my aunt, uncertain how she could miss the obvious point. “But it won’t come off. And she wants a hundred dollars for it.” I nodded at the old witch-woman who had risen and resumed her former place behind the folding table.
“Blood stones,” the woman snapped. “They’re not cheap.”
“I see,” Aunt Dellie said thoughtfully. “As one practitioner to another, would you take fifty?”
The woman gave her an appraising look. “You walk in the ways of the Goddess?”
“Always.” Aunt Dellie beamed at her. She had never made a secret out of being a pagan, even though the rest of the family mocked her for it. I didn’t mind her weird religion, although to me she looked less like a witch and more like one of those eccentric old ladies who lives alone and keeps about a thousand cats for company.
“Ninety then,” the woman said, nodding as though she was doing Aunt Dellie a favor.
Aunt Dellie didn’t bat a lash. “Sixty.”
The woman got a mulish expression on her wrinkled face. “Eighty and that’s my last offer.”
“All right then.” Aunt Dellie reached into the oversized bag printed with uber-cute kittens she carried everywhere and dug around in it. A look of concentration creased her plain but kind face and at last she pulled out three crumpled twenties, a ten and two fives. “Here.” She held out the bills to the old witch-woman who snatched them and made them disappear.
“Thank you,” she muttered. “Blessed be.”
“Blessed be,” Aunt Dellie said gravely and took me by the arm. “Come on, Meggie honey—we need to get going.”
I’d asked her again and again to call me Megan or at least Meg but she seemed to think I was still six instead of sixteen. She started off into the crowd, pulling me along behind her.
“Aunt Dellie…” The key around my neck felt heavy and the heat made me dizzy. I stumbled and nearly fell but my aunt dragged me up by the arm.
“Are you all right?” She dropped her voice, scanning the busy booths of the flea market around us. “Are you on your cycle, Meggie?” she asked, her green eyes concerned.
“No,” I hissed back in a horrified whisper. I had always been what people call “mature for my age.” If asked, I would have said that I was well past the age where everything an adult said was mortally embarrassing. But though I can deal with my aunt’s weird religion, loud clothes, and kitten bag, this topic was beyond the pale.
> “All right then, sorry.” Aunt Dellie patted my arm. “I just thought that might be why you were looking so peaky.”
“It’s the heat. And this necklace.” I reached for the black chain again and dropped my hand to my side when I remembered the consequences of yanking on it.
“Yup, it’s a scorcher.” Aunt Dellie looked up into the remorseless blue sky and shrugged. “Better get used to it, honey. Now that you’re gonna be living here, I mean.”
My heart sank down into my shoes and for a minute I forgot all about the necklace. Living here—I was going to be living here.
I was going to be stuck.
And not even stuck in Tampa which is at least a decent sized city. I was going back with Aunt Dellie to Frostproof.
Frostproof was a tiny town right in the middle of central Florida. At the last census, it had less than three thousand residents. Which meant my old high school in Seattle had more students than my new hometown had people. Great.
It was located right between two lakes—Lake Clinch to the west and Reedy Lake to the east—and the main industry was the orange groves that surround it. According to the Wikipedia article I read, that was how it got its name. The town fathers were trying to lure citrus growers there by promising the weather would never get cold enough to ruin their crops—hence the name “Frostproof.”
So I was pretty sure it would probably be hot there all year round, which I was going to hate.
The only interesting thing I had found when researching my new home was the cultural make-up of the town. It was mostly White and African American and Hispanic—which came as no surprise—with some Pacific Islander, Asian, and Native American thrown in for flavor. Which was great—being from a big city I craved diversity. But 14.35% of the residents listed themselves as other.
I could be wrong, but that seemed like a large percentage of the population that claimed to be different in such a small town. I couldn’t help wondering what nationality they were. What exactly did other mean? And what would I find when I finally reached my destination, the freaky little town of Frostproof?
Well, if Google Earth was any indication, mostly just a lot of orange trees.
“Yup, looks like we’re stuck together for the next couple years,” my aunt said, mirroring my thoughts in that uncanny way she had sometimes. “Come on, let’s get back to the car and crank up the AC. Now that you found something nice to wear on the first day of school, I need to be getting back home.”
I followed her, picking my way through the milling crowd, my arms crossed tight across my chest. The key sat like a lump of ice in the hollow of my throat but it wasn’t going to be there for long. The minute we got back to Aunt Dellie’s house, I was going to find some pliers and cut the damn thing off.
There was no way in hell I was wearing the weird key necklace to my new school or anywhere else.
Two
The pliers broke.
I sat there on the faded blue bedspread of the room Aunt Dellie had designated as mine and stared at them in horrified fascination. There was a huge notch carved out of the rusty metal, as though I had tried to cut a diamond instead of the thin, fine-linked chain. And they weren’t dainty jewelry making pliers either—they were heavy duty. I had found them in the tool shed out behind the huge antebellum mansion which Aunt Dellie called home. My home too now, I guessed.
What the hell was going on here?
I lifted the pliers to try again but the necklace chose that moment to tighten warningly. I put the pliers down and it loosened, the key settling in the hollow of my throat like an unwanted lump of ice.
I laid the pliers on the bed and stood up, crossing the creaking wooden floor to the full-length mirror in the corner of my new room. I wasn’t sure who had stayed in this room before me, but it was made up like an old-fashioned nursery. There was a rocking horse in the opposite corner and several china dolls with blank faces crowded each other on top of the bookcase.
Actually, it was kind of spooky.
Ignoring the blank stares of the dolls, I examined myself in the mirror. A girl with long, dark brown hair and green-gray eyes looked back. All the woman in my family had the same eyes. My mother had them too, but she’d been dead almost two years now.
I pushed the morbid thought away and looked at the necklace which felt heavy and cold around my throat. If I painted, I would have done a self-portrait and entitled it Girl with Key. Or maybe Girl with a Freaky Necklace that Won’t Come Off. Ha-ha, Megan, very funny.
Hesitantly, I reached up and brushed just the tips of my fingers against the jewel-studded black metal. The key throbbed at my touch like a live thing and I jerked my hand away with an indrawn hiss of breath.
I’d read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy—not because of the movies or for AP English but because they were the kind of books my Dad used to recommend to me. Before Mom had died and he became an absentee parent, that was. Anyway, the key around my neck reminded me of Tolkien’s one ring. Especially the way he described it as Sam and Frodo got closer to Mordor. The way it got heavier and heavier—the way it seemed to have a mind of its own…
The comparison freaked me out. It was bizarre and more than a little scary.
I thought about trying to talk to Aunt Dellie again, but when I opened my bedroom door, I heard the faint sounds of Middle Eastern music drifting up the broad central staircase. Oh right, she had told me she was teaching a belly dancing class this evening—that was the whole reason she was in such a hurry to get home. Well, that and the fact that she wanted me to get plenty of sleep on the night before my first day of school.
Like that was ever going to happen.
I closed the door and decided to try and forget about the necklace and its weird key and concentrate on my clothing options for tomorrow instead. Not that I was some kind of a fashion maven, but school had already been in session here in Frostproof for a couple of weeks so I was walking into hostile territory.
It’s always best to be prepared.
Of course, I had always gotten along fine back home in Seattle. I more or less blended into the background—just another college fast-track academic nerd. But there was only one small high school in Frostproof and I was sure most of the kids there had been friends since kindergarten. Any hope I had of fitting in, or at least going unnoticed and being left alone, might depend on a good first impression—or maybe no impression at all.
What I needed is a nondescript outfit that didn’t draw attention to me, I decided. I began to unpack my one large suitcase, hanging clothes in the single dusty closet. I considered my options as I went along.
Unfortunately, everything I owned had long sleeves.
There was a good reason for this. I pushed up my Henley’s sleeves and looked at myself critically. The neat rows of tiny pinkish-white scars marching up and down my inner arms looked like a ladder. They were much too visible against my pale skin—much too noticeable.
I didn’t need to spend my first day at school being labeled and judged. So it looked like I’d be wearing a long sleeved shirt no matter how hot it was. I sighed as I look at the scars again. But I didn’t regret a single one of them.
Yes, I was a cutter—or I used to be, anyway. But not for the reasons you might think.
I had started back when Mom was dying. Dad and I both knew she was going and she knew it too. That was awful—too awful to think about and yet it was all I could think about. I literally couldn’t turn my mind off.
That was why I started cutting. The physical pain seemed to release the emotional hurt somehow. When the blade sliced my flesh, I had a brief moment of respite from the never-ending loop of Mom’s dying, she’s leaving me, I’ll never see her again, she’s dying that ran over and over inside my head constantly. It always came back, of course, but in that brief moment of bright, sharp pain, I was free of it.
I’ll take physical pain over emotional agony any day.
So yes, I did start cutting for the usual reasons. (Well, if you can call your mom d
ying of terminal lung cancer usual.) But that’s not why I kept it up.
Near the end, Mom was in so much pain that nothing they gave her helped. The cancer had metastasized which is a technical way to say it spread all over and it was eating her up from the inside out. She would lie there in bed, her face shiny with sweat, and try to talk to me like nothing was happening. But I could see the pain in her gray-green eyes. And I could hear her moaning when she thought I couldn’t hear.
It was awful.
One day it was too much. I was sitting with her when she woke up crying, the pain was so bad. I rang for the nurse and then ran to the bathroom. I knew I ought to wait until I got home but I couldn’t help it—I needed to cut.
I took out the tiny, thin razor blade I had wrapped in tissue and hidden in the folds of my battered Choco Cat wallet. Mom had given it to me for my twelfth birthday when I was still into all things Hello Kitty. Remembering that made me want to cry, made me need to cut even more.
With trembling fingers I drew the blade across my arm, making a shallow slice just below the crook of my elbow. And suddenly, I felt it—an agony so deep and throbbing it took my breath away. It filled me like water fills a cup, pouring into my body until I didn’t think I could stand any more.
But at the same time, my mother’s cries lessened and then ceased. Despite the weird pain, I had a moment of blind panic—was she dead? Feeling like I was one big ache, I opened the bathroom door a crack to reassure myself that she was still all right. To my surprise, she was breathing peacefully, a look of relief on her thin, wasted face.
“Mom?” I made her name a question and she turned her head to look at me and smiled.
“Megan,” she whispered, smiling. “It’s gone. I don’t know why but the pain is gone.”
I frowned. “Did the nurse come already to give you something?”
She shook her head. “No, no one came. They’re giving me everything they can but up until now it wasn’t helping. Maybe…maybe it just kicked in.”
I had my doubts about that. But it seemed too far fetched to believe anything else.
Brides of the Kindred Volume One: Books 1-4 Page 170