by Eileen Wilks
“No, that was unpremeditated assholery. I . . . mmm.” That low hum came from what she did next, not what he was saying or thinking. Or not thinking, she hoped. “This is not an order, absolutely not an order, just . . . ah, that’s good, that’s lovely. But unless you want to do this on the table—?”
Wrong room. They needed to move this one room over. “They’re all downstairs, right? The guards?”
“One downstairs. The rest outside, patrolling, or at the barracks.”
“Let’s go, then.” And not worry about the bits of clothing undone or . . . wait, when had he done that to her shirt? How could she not have noticed? Hastily Lily tugged it back down and grabbed his hand.
The hall was dark. Rule flicked off the light in their makeshift office, and the whole house was dark. Dark and silent. Though his eyes would find light hers didn’t, and his ears probably picked up all sorts of small sounds from the others in the house. Who were all asleep, but . . .
“You’re thinking,” he told her and lifted her into his arms.
“Bad habit,” she agreed, and now she could reach his neck just fine. She did that as he carried them into their bedroom, closing the door behind them.
It wasn’t as dark here. The blinds at the windows were old and ugly as sin, with bent and missing slats, so mostly they left them pulled up. Outside, the sky was full of stars. No moonlight, but enough starlight to lessen the dark. It was just as quiet, though, so quiet she could hear the slight rush of Rule’s breathing as he set her on her feet and the rustle of fabric as he slid his hands up her sides beneath her shirt.
Rule would hear the catch of her breath. Did he hear her heartbeat pick up, too? Could he hear those sleeping nearby? Grandmother and Li Qin and Toby and the woman who wasn’t a woman now, but a young girl . . .
“Shh,” Rule said as if she’d spoken that thought out loud, and he stroked soothingly down her hips.
. . . her mother, who wouldn’t wake to hear her daughter having sex because she didn’t have a daughter, and besides, she’d been placed in sleep by the black dragon after he knit together her fraying mind. She wouldn’t wake for hours. Julia Lin—no longer Julia Yu; there was no Julia Yu—would not be sleeping in this house now, her plundered mind wandering whatever dreams were left to her, if not for Lily. Her destruction might be no more than a pleasant perk for Friar on the way to whatever goal he’d set, but she had been included among the victims on purpose. Because of Lily.
A shudder took her.
Rule’s hands paused. “Lily?”
“Don’t let me think.” She pulled his head down and kissed him hard, and if there was more desperation than desire in the kiss, she didn’t care.
Rule did her bidding, but not as she expected. Instead of a hot, hasty race to the top, he was thorough and deliberate and ruthless. He stripped her quickly enough and laid her in their bed, but then he wanted to taste. With mouth and teeth and touch he took her up and shoved her off that high sensory peak—then dragged her back up the cliff so he could do it again. This time with him inside her.
Oh, he was ruthless, all right. And deliberate and thorough. Also effective. For a long time she didn’t think of anything but sensation, need, and Rule.
In the cool, close darkness afterward, with her skin slick with sweat and her breathing beginning to steady once more, she lay with her head on his shoulder. “I’ll probably go back to work in a minute.”
He was stroking her back. “Will you?”
Her head moved in the tiniest of nods. Her eyes were heavy. She’d rest them for a bit. “She never wanted me to be a cop, you know.”
“So you’ve said.”
“She wanted all of us safe, but also . . . prestige. Wanted us to have prestigious careers.”
“Many parents do want that for their children.” He kept stroking in long, slow slides.
“For us or from us. Do right by the family, y’know.” The outer darkness was seeping in, dragging her down, making a mumble of her words. “I never thought about the price. The price to me, yeah, but my choice, so I pay the price, that’s okay. Didn’t think about the price others would pay. Expected them to pay it, but didn’t think about it.”
“No one could have thought this would happen. That it even could happen.”
“Not the point.” What was the point? She couldn’t remember, not with all that heavy darkness dragging her down . . . oh, yeah. “Can’t face her. ’S my fault. Can’t look at her like this.”
“Okay.”
That roused her. “What d’you mean, okay? I’ve got to. She’s my mother, and she’s here.”
That soothing hand never stopped petting. “But you won’t be, most of the time. You’ll be busy working yourself into exhaustion again. That’s why Madame Yu and Li Qin are here. Let the rest of us deal with her. You don’t have to.”
There was a flaw in that reasoning. She was sure there was a flaw, but the relief was so intense it unmoored her. With a sigh, she let go and fell off into sleep.
NINETEEN
SHE lay in an exhausted heap against his side, and even now, flattened by a succession of climaxes, the warmth of his breath on her skin made her tingle with longing. It took so little for her senses to be overwhelmed by him . . . all of them save one. His skin was smooth and warm and slightly damp with sweat, but she couldn’t smell it. Couldn’t smell at all in this place.
“You are troubled,” he breathed into her ear. “Tell me.”
“It’s wicked to allow any sadness in when I’m with you.”
“And yet, you do.” He sat up abruptly and fear spiked sharply—she’d displeased him, angered him—but no, he was smiling down at her. His face was always his somehow, though it changed to suit his whim. Tonight his skin was dusky, his nose long, and his hair as brown as a mink’s, only curly. His eyes remained fathomless black. “By your own logic, then, you are wicked. Confess to me.”
She had to smile back. “I’m foolish. It’s just that when I wake, you won’t be there. You won’t be anywhere in my world, and the ache grows hard to bear.”
“Ah.” He touched her nose playfully. “But that time is almost over. Soon you will bring me fully into your world.”
“Soon?” Her heart lurched. “I don’t experience time as you do . . .”
He laughed. “Very soon, even as you measure time, my sweet mortal. Tonight I will give you the rest of your instructions. Pay close heed, for after I act I will be too weak for a time to call you to me.”
Alarm stiffened her. She sat up. “Too weak? You didn’t tell me—oh, beloved, don’t spend yourself too freely and leave yourself open to—”
“Do not?” he said very softly. All the light and laughter fled as winter rushed into his face, his voice—a chill as absolute as the empty sky above them. “You would tell me do or do not?”
She hung her head, shame mingling with terror. “I fear for you. It makes me foolish. That’s no excuse, but I . . . I’m so flawed. You’ve blessed me beyond reason with your loving. I should make my life a song of gratitude, and instead I—I spoke as if you weren’t so far beyond me that—”
“Child.” Not winter in that voice now, but no merriment, either. He placed a hand beneath her chin and tilted her face up. “I will not punish you this time. It would distress me to do so, I admit. Already you are dear to me. But you will remember, won’t you? You must not speak so to me.”
She nodded, dizzy with fear and relief. She listened carefully as he told her exactly what she must do . . . and what he planned to do. Some of it he’d told her before. Some he hadn’t, and parts of it frightened her deeply, and yet . . . she peered at him out of the curtain of her hair. “You said you must do this in order to wrest the path from the other one, the one she wants. You have to—to tip that path toward you before I can act. I know that’s true, but I think it—it’s not the entire truth.” Breathless with daring, s
he let her own small portion of mischief tilt her lips up. “I think there are many ways you could do that, some of them easier, less costly. But this will be more fun.”
And his laugh rang out merry and full, rewarding her for having risked so much. “It will, oh, it will. I give her all that she wants, or thinks she wants . . . in a way she will surely hate.” He stroked her cheek. “You do delight me. We will make much pleasure between us, you and I, when you are my high priestess and we meet body to body.”
Heat shivered through her, lust as pure and potent as whiskey, and sweeter by far. They would make love in the flesh . . . surely she would have that much, before he betrayed her. For he would, one day. From spite or anger or simply because that was what he did. What he was. He might laugh then or mourn, just a little, for he said she was dear to him . . .
“Ah, sweetheart,” he whispered as he stroked her between her legs, “do you not yet know that much about me? I can do both.”
TWENTY
JULIA woke up in yet another bed that was not hers. There was a window by this one. It didn’t have any curtains, so sunshine poured in. Early morning sunshine, the kind that looks like it’s been brewed up fresh for the day. On the other side of the glass, birds were making a fuss about dawn.
Stupid birds. They were used to not remembering much. For them, everything was now. They didn’t have much then. But she bet even a bird would be really sad if you took him out of his place and put him someplace else, a place where everything was strange and he didn’t know any of the other birds.
Somewhere a floorboard squeaked. She heard voices, but not clearly. Not enough to tell for sure if one of them was Mr. Turner, but probably so. This was his house.
Julia didn’t remember coming here, but Sam had told her she’d wake up at Mr. Turner’s house. She’d forgotten so much, but she remembered everything Sam told her, which was funny because it felt like she’d learned those things a long time ago. She knew it was just yesterday, but she felt as if months and months had passed. Sam had told her she would feel this way. She remembered that, too.
Most of what he’d told her was pretty awful.
Mama, I miss you so much. I wish you were here. I wish it a lot.
That thought was familiar, as if she’d had it thousands of times. The grief was familiar, too, like an old blanket worn thin by use and washing. So was the way her eyes leaked some of her sorrow. There was comfort in that familiarity, like knowing where the cracks were in the sidewalk she walked every day to go to school. Even when a path took you somewhere you didn’t much want to go, knowing where the cracks were made you feel a little better. But there’d be no more counting the sidewalk cracks for her, would there? No more school. At least she didn’t think so. She was fifty-seven years old, even if her memories were only twelve. They didn’t make fifty-seven-year-old women go to school, did they?
Someone turned on a radio or a stereo. Music, anyway. It was the classic kind of music her dad liked, so she pretended to like it, too. Not that it seemed to matter to him.
Why couldn’t it have been him who died, and not Mama?
Guilt bit hard. She sat up and started to throw back the covers, wanting to run, just run, until she didn’t feel so much of everything. And she saw Fluffy.
He’d been pink once. Now he was a dingy sort of no- color that just looked old. But the scrap of ribbon around his neck had held on to some of the pink, and his face and the insides of his ears were black—faded, but still black. Someone had left him here for her. Someone had put him on the bed next to her pillow. Julia grabbed the little stuffed lamb and hugged him tight.
She was way too old for stuffed animals. She didn’t care. Memories were stacked up in him, piled up in layers she could feel, weighty and dense, when she hugged him. She didn’t think, remember when. She held that memory, all sorts of memories, in the rough, tactile form of a scruffy stuffed lamb.
There was a TV table next to the bed. It held a flashlight and a glass of water. The flashlight made her eyes sting. It made her a little bit mad, too. That had to be Mequi’s idea. Mequi was the only one other than Mama who knew she’d slept with a flashlight until she was ten, but she wasn’t ten anymore. Either way you counted up her age, she was too old to need a flashlight to feel safe in the dark. Mequi shouldn’t have told anyone she needed a flashlight, and besides, she didn’t anymore.
But maybe Mequi didn’t remember exactly when Julia stopped needing a flashlight at bedtime. For her, that was a very long time ago.
Julia sniffed and scowled and reached for the glass of water because now that she thought about it, she was really thirsty. She drank most of the water and sighed. Now she’d have to find the bathroom.
She put Fluffy on her pillow and got all the way to the door before she realized she’d almost gone out of the room in her pajamas. In someone’s pajamas, anyway. They were white with little blue flowers, and they weren’t what she’d been wearing when she went to Sam’s lair, which meant someone had put them on her while she was asleep. That creeped her out.
She bit her lip, then put her ear up against the door, wanting to know who was out there. At first she didn’t hear much, but then someone spoke, and it was him. Mr. Turner. She couldn’t hear very well . . . mumble, mumble, few more minutes, mumble. Then someone else spoke. A woman. Her voice was familiar, but even if it hadn’t been, Julia knew who it had to be.
Miss Yu. Lily Yu. The FBI agent she’d met yesterday . . . no, not yesterday. Two days ago. Sam said he’d spent twenty-six hours fixing her, then she’d slept, and now it was morning. So it was two days since she found herself outside the restroom in the wrong body.
Miss Yu lived here, too. She was Mr. Turner’s fiancée.
Julia’s stomach felt sort of clenched and curious at the same time. Miss Yu was living in sin with Mr. Turner. He said people didn’t think of it that way anymore because the sexual revolution had changed things. Well, he hadn’t said those exact words, but she thought that’s what he meant. Julia’s mother had not approved of the sexual revolution. She said it was just a bunch of silly hippies who thought they’d invented sleeping around, when really people had been misbehaving that way for thousands of years only they didn’t talk about it all the time.
Miss Yu was trying to find the bad guys who’d hurt Julia, which meant Julia ought to like her. But she was going to marry Mr. Turner, which made Julia not like her very much, even though that was silly. Julia was either too old for Mr. Turner or too young, depending on if you went by her body’s age or her real age, so there was no point in being jealous. But that wasn’t what made her straighten away from the door, rubbing her stomach.
Miss Yu was supposed to be Julia’s daughter.
This body . . . this too-tall, too-old body . . . had had sex. Had borne children. Three of them, she’d been told. Three daughters. This body knew about those things and Julia didn’t, and when she thought about that her stomach felt weird, like it couldn’t make up its mind if it was sick or excited.
She wished she was still sleepy so she could go back to bed. But she wasn’t, not even a little bit. And she really did need to go to the bathroom. She might as well get dressed. She sighed and looked around the room.
It was small and clean and didn’t look finished. The bed she’d slept in was a double, and it had sheets and a blanket, but no bedspread. No rug on the scuffed wooden floor, either. No curtain on the window, and only that TV tray for a bed table, and no mirrors. She was glad of that. She didn’t like looking at herself.
There was a chest of drawers, though. With a bunch of stuff on top. Familiar stuff. Julia’s feet took her there without her even thinking about it.
There was her Magic 8 Ball and the little porcelain figure of a Chinese girl that her grandmother on her mother’s side had given her for her ninth birthday and the silver-plated mirror her grandmother on her father’s side had left to her when she died three years ag
o. Forty-eight years ago, now. Next to them were two books—the little-kid storybook her mother used to read to her, with stories about Peter Rabbit and the Little Red Hen, and The Secret Garden, which she’d read three times. On top of the books sat the white New Testament she’d been given when she was confirmed in the church, and below them were two photo albums.
When Julia was nine, her parents had given her a Polaroid camera for Christmas and a photo album. After Christmas, she and her mother had put the snapshots in the album together. That was the album on top, with a pink velvet cover. The other album was from their trip to Disneyland last year, or forty-six years ago, depending on how you counted. She’d bought that album with her own money and had embroidered “My Trip” on the green brocade cover ever so carefully, but she wasn’t very good at embroidery. The letters leaned all over the place.
Everything looked old. Old and tired. Except for the sheet of folded white paper on top of the books. She picked it up and opened it. The writing was small and precise, almost like printing:
When I met you, you were twenty-one and long past needing help to ward off the darkness. We dated for several weeks before you trusted me enough to tell me that you used to sleep with a flashlight under the covers. Perhaps the darkness has become frightening again. If not, please forgive me for guessing wrong.
You’re obviously past the age for needing Fluffy, yet I know you cherished him. I hope having him and a few other familiar things nearby will help a little as you adjust to what has to be a very strange new life.
It was signed Edward.
It hadn’t been Mequi who thought of the flashlight. It had been him. Edward. The man she was married to. The man she’d made those three daughters with. Her stomach felt tight and anxious, but some other part of her felt easier. She didn’t understand.