I wasn’t like the dog. In the metaphor, the humans were like my dogs. Perhaps, before I’d ever had one as a companion, the idea of eating one wasn’t so repulsive. But now that I knew them, now that I felt as though we were one and the same, that we were connected, the thought of consuming their flesh turned my stomach.
My metaphor falls flat on another count.
Most humans, provided they aren’t totally sick, don’t find their dogs attractive. But that’s because humans don’t take the shape of their dogs. They stay human-shaped. I’d done more than embrace humans as companions—I’d entered their world. They didn’t come to my watery domain. I didn’t try to domesticate them. Instead, I’d come to them. I’d adopted their customs.
I wasn’t like a pet owner.
I was like Romulus and Remus, raised by wolves. I’d grown up, insofar as my human experiences were concerned, with the guidance of good people. People like Donnie. And I found myself thinking about Devin not as someone I could use, a meal to satisfy my urges, but as someone who could make me feel the sort of things only humans experience—desire, passion, and maybe even love… eventually.
Definitely premature to think that way. But I could see the possibility. Finding love was no longer unbelievable, something I’d never have a chance to experience. Maybe it wouldn’t be Devin. There were a thousand reasons why it shouldn’t or couldn’t be.
But just spending a few hours hunting with him, flirting back and forth…
For the first time, I felt like love might not elude me forever.
Yes, tonight I was going to turn the fabulous dial up to ten.
Because for once in my post-elemental existence, I felt fabulous. Not just because I could leave “Nick” behind and be myself, but because for the first time I felt like I could be fabulous for more than myself, for more than my audience… but perhaps for someone, a man who might love me for me. Whoever that might be. Someday.
It was something. And I was in the mood to celebrate it, even given the odd and disconcerting things I’d learned about the Order.
There’d be time to worry about that. Tonight was about me.
I pulled off the highway at the first exit and changed my shoes. Changing out of my man-boots and into my Jimmy Choo stilettos… it was like Clark Kent removing his glasses, unbuttoning his shirt, and donning his true colors in all the glory that form-fitting spandex allows.
I mounted my bike again. Then something splashed me in the face. I cleared my eyes to see Brucie staring back at me.
“Have a smoke?”
I shook my head. “I don’t smoke. It’s bad for you.”
“You don’t have regular lungs, you putz,” Brucie said. “Everything about you is from the water.”
I shrugged. “I still breathe.”
“Because you’ve shifted into a form that breathes,” Brucie said. “But if you stopped breathing, you’d be fine. You don’t technically need to.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But I do it anyway. It feels good to breathe.”
“Exactly how I feel about my cigars!”
“Regardless,” I said, “I don’t have any. Get some from wherever you stashed them before.”
“That would be inconvenient.” Brucie flew through the air with his semi-translucent wings and squatted on the handlebars of my motorcycle.
“Why are you here, Brucie?”
“I’ve been with you all day,” Brucie said. “I just figured, you know, showing up probably wouldn’t go so well.”
I nodded. “And since you know all my thoughts…”
“Hot for preacher’s kid!” Brucie said. “Doesn’t have the same ring to it as hot for preacher, does it?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter—it’s just carnal desire associated with this form. No more real, no more human, than my lungs.”
“But it still feels good, doesn’t it, Nyxie?”
I nodded. “It does…”
“Can we stop for smokes?”
I cocked my head. “You’ve been getting your own smokes for years now. Not to mention whatever else you need. Why do you need me to buy you cigars?”
Brucie shrugged. “Old habits. I mean, it’s funny. When we were apart I felt like my own man. Now that we’re together, it’s… comforting to depend on you.”
I snorted. “That’s oddly touching. But it’s bullshit.”
“You’re right,” Brucie said. “I’ve just maxed out all my cards.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You have credit cards? How the hell… I’ve never been able to get approved. You know, since the fake ID I got didn’t come with a great credit history.”
“I’ve got a fake ID, too!” Brucie reached into what looked, sort of grossly, like a pocket in his watery body. He showed it to me.
“This is a woman named Louise,” I said. “How the hell do you get away with using this?”
“I don’t show it in person, putz! But Louise had an impeccable credit history. Until now, anyway.”
I shook my head. “How the heck do you carry that thing on you, or anything for that matter, since you dissipate into thin air and reappear at will?”
Brucie shrugged. “Water is a magical substance. Whatever is close to me, inside of me, seems to transition along with the rest of me through the three phases.”
“Ice, water, and steam?”
Brucie nodded. “See, you haven’t completely forgotten what you are.”
“I know the properties of water. A lot of humans know that, too.”
“And humans are more than sixty percent water,” Brucie said. “Being human isn’t as different as you’d think.”
I scratched my head. “You know, that’s a good point. Hadn’t thought about it like that before. But that other forty percent… it makes a difference.”
Brucie huffed. “If your glass is half full, get a smaller glass.”
I cocked my head. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“You realize that you’re all water, technically. When you shift, you are transubstantiated into a human appearance. But essentially, you haven’t changed.”
I shook my head. “I have changed. Alice, the vamp who bit me, she took…”
“Did she, though?”
“I’ve seen her use my abilities,” I said. “When I was at the asylum, she took the form of a nurse whom the doctor loved so she could blend in, masquerade as a part of the facility’s staff, so she could get close to Mercy.”
“She used your ability,” Brucie said. “Maybe she even absorbed it. But that doesn’t mean she took it.”
I cocked my head. “I’m not following.”
“You’re still water, Nixie,” Brucie said. “As am I. If I want to look like Louise, the woman on my license, I can. My appearance is fluid not because I have a special magic inside of me… it’s because I am fluid.”
“Then why can’t I shift anymore?”
Brucie stared at me, then put his watery hand on mine. “I told you before: you never finished the job. The reason for which you shifted into this shape to begin with.”
I shook my head. “Either way, it doesn’t change anything. I still have to kill and eat Alice if I ever want to change. Whether it’s a matter of getting my abilities back or just reawakening them in me, or whatever… it’s all the same.”
“But it isn’t,” Brucie said. “Because you’ve been on this mission thinking she took something from you. She didn’t steal anything from you so much as she scared you shiftless. She bit you in hopes you wouldn’t pursue her. And sure, she borrowed some of your ability by doing that. That’s what vamps do when they feed. Their special abilities come from feeding on human souls, typically. She tasted your soul, too…”
I sighed. “I’m not sure I have a soul.”
“Of course you do, Nyxie,” Brucie said. “You’re alive. You’re self-aware. You have feelings…”
“But weren’t you a part of me before?”
Brucie shrugged. “Yes and no. We pair together when you’re in the water.
I’m more like a parasite. Connected to you, but still distinct.”
“Parasite?” I asked. “Symbiote is a nicer word. Despite the creepiness of you being able to read my mind.”
“Symbiote? Is that really a thing? I think you’ve been watching too much science fiction.”
I shrugged. “All a part of my semi-futile attempt to understand human culture. But from what I can figure, a parasite leeches off its host. A symbiote is more of a partnership, a companionship.”
“Then I suppose,” Brucie said, “symbiote is appropriate. At least it used to be. We can live our own existences now.”
I bit my lip. “If that’s the case, why are you here?”
“I told you,” Brucie said, “I’m trying to mooch some smokes!”
16
IT WAS LIKE I was floating on a pink cloud. Not just from meeting Devin, or from feeling closer to having a chance at staking Alice than I’d had in years. But also because of what Brucie said.
If humans are mostly water, and I’m totally water… Well, perhaps we aren’t so different after all. I had more in common with the people I’d come to care about, the people I’d met, than I didn’t.
Even if I used to eat people.
My bad.
Either way, I was more eager than usual to take the stage. I had a thousand emotions all swirling around my mind. I’m not good at articulating my feelings, but I know how to express them. Through song.
I was frolicking around our apartment in my heels and lingerie as I brushed my hair and did my makeup. I heard footsteps. Donnie was coming. Perfect! She could do my nails.
I did a three-sixty spin on one foot as I sang to myself. “I feel pretty, oh so pretty! So pretty, and witty, and… not technically gay, despite what ignorant and narrow-minded people tend to assume!”
Donnie chuckled as she stepped through the door. “That lyric really messes with the cadence of the song.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just started singing the song before I realized where it was going.”
Donnie smiled. “What has you so… giddy tonight?”
I batted my eyes back at her. “I feel alive.”
“You met a boy!” Donnie said.
I waved my hand through the air. “Maybe. Probably won’t work out. But…”
“But maybe it could.”
“Maybe, and that’s more than I’ve felt about my chances at romance since, well… ever!” I grabbed a bottle of mascara from my makeup bag, which I’d brought out into the main living area of our apartment, and brushed it across my eyes as I leaned in toward a mirror on the wall. “Donnie, could you do my nails before tonight?”
“Of course, girl!”
“Great,” I said. “I want to go bold. Let’s go red!”
Donnie smiled wildly. “This sure is a change from the dark and broody Nicky I’ve grown accustomed to. No vampire hunting tonight?”
“Probably not,” I said. “Devin and I staked one already.”
“Devin?” Donnie pulled out her polish and such from one of the drawers.
I took a seat at our table and put my hands on top of it so she could get to work. “He’s a part of the Order. And I know what you’re thinking…”
“Those religious zealots?” Donnie asked. “How is that going to work?”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I had to go undercover, but they might have a lead on Alice.”
Donnie shook her head. “So you’re getting involved with a church boy. And when you met him, you were pretending to be a man?”
I bit my lip. “Yeah…”
“Bitch, what are you thinking?” Donnie unscrewed a bottle of red polish.
“I’m not thinking,” I said. “That’s the thing. Look, he’s totally closeted. But he’s eager to get out.”
“But you aren’t a gay man, Nicky,” Donnie said. “You just sang it yourself.”
I sighed. “I know. But maybe he’ll accept me how I am, you know?”
“Even while you’re seeking a vampire to kill so you can become someone else—the person you used to be?” Donnie asked, finishing up my pinky nail.
I shook my head. “I’ll never be able to be what I used to be. You know that. This whole life… it’s changed me.”
“So if you succeed, if you get your abilities back, you won’t change yourself?”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I mean, I want to be a woman. And maybe if I could appear as a woman in public, if I could shift… Devin and I could be together, and he wouldn’t have to lose his family.”
Donnie rolled her eyes. “Bitch, you know it doesn’t work that way. He can’t keep you a secret.”
“But I can also become whatever he desires the most!” I said. “Not to eat him, but…”
“And you think treating him like how you used to treat a meal is going to be a good foundation for a relationship?”
I bit my lip. There was an obvious problem with what I’d imagined. If what Brucie said was true—if I couldn’t shift out of a form until I ate my target… If that was why I’d been shiftless…
“Alright,” I said. “Fair point. Maybe I won’t be able to shift around. But still, if he comes to love me for me, maybe my appearance won’t matter, no matter the form I take.”
“If he loves you eventually,” Donnie said, “he’ll want you to be whatever makes you happy. But that won’t change him if he’s gay. A lot of gay men in denial get married, they love their wives, even after they come to grips with their truth. But the end result…”
“There’s no rule how things like that have to pan out,” I said. “And besides, I’m not in love with Devin. Just… infatuated. For now.”
“But you’re in love with the idea of being in love,” Donnie said. “I remember my first love. And it almost always comes with one’s first heartbreak.”
“But there’s a reason why people call it a first love and not an only love, right?”
“Of course,” Donnie said. “You move on eventually. Doesn’t change that it hurts. And are you really ready to complicate everything you’ve been trying to accomplish by letting a confusing romance bud in the middle of it all?”
“Don’t poop on my parade, Donnie.”
“More likely than that, what if you have to deal with heartbreak while hunting Alice?” Donnie asked, ignoring my plea that she avoid playing the role of Debbie Downer.
“Bitch, please,” I said. “I know what you’re saying, but tonight, for at least one night in all of my conflicted existence, I want to look at the world in terms of possibilities. I’ll face the inevitabilities later. But tonight… I know you don’t like me singing at Leotards and Lace…”
“It’s not that I don’t like you singing there, Nicky.”
“It’s the consequences,” I said. “You’re always focused on consequences. Well, fuck the consequences. I’m tired of denying myself in the now for what may never happen in the future.”
Donnie finished painting my first hand and started on my second one. “Looking fabulous, darling.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” I said. “Tonight I’m going to be hopeful. I’m going to choose to believe that good things lie ahead. No matter how complicated it might be, or how unrealistic… I need one night of wonder, one time when I can dare to dream without feeling jaded. Can you let me have that?”
Donnie smiled and nodded. “You’re glowing, Nicky. I suppose you’re right. You deserve a chance to embrace hope and everything fabulous about who you are. When they see you on that stage tonight, the boys will want to do you, and the girls will wish they could be you.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” I blew gently on my painted nails.
“All done,” Donnie said, finishing my last nail on my second hand. “Now we need to pick out a dress… and a set of heels.”
“Honey,” I said, “tonight I’m giving those Louboutins another whirl. I barely wore them the other night and, damnit bitch, I’ve never looked so glamorous.”
&nb
sp; Donnie laughed. “I’d come watch you… but you know how I feel about that place. Maybe I’ll get over it eventually. But you’re right, you deserve to be heard. And if the other clubs won’t have you… Well, it’s not right that the world should be deprived of a chance to hear you kill it on stage.”
17
I WASN’T ABOUT to play it coy tonight; this wasn’t an evening for sweet serenades. I’d convinced Tevin to expand my set—to make up for the night before.
And I had just the number to kick it off…
“Genie in a Bottle,” by Christina Aguilera.
I hit the stage, rocking what might be the most glamorous get-up I’d ever graced the stage in. My red nails and lipstick matched my form-fitting dress. And in these heels, my legs went on for miles.
And my hair… it wouldn’t hold any dyes. It was what it was. Long, white, but with a little extra conditioner and treatment, flowing and silky smooth.
Singing this song, it used to be a novelty. It showed off my voice well enough, I suppose. But now the message just hit home.
I was like a genie in a bottle. Trapped—not in a bottle, but in this body. But tonight, I was on the verge of being set free.
If only he’d rub me the right way…
He wasn’t here. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
And that vision was all I needed to take the stage to the hoots and hollers of what was an increasingly raucous crowd.
Usually a hush came over them. I typically took the stage calmly and subtly. I allowed my voice to speak for itself. Sometimes I’d sit at a piano… Other times, it was just me and a microphone.
But tonight, when the house band started playing and I heard the thump of the bass, I couldn't help but shake it.
And the crowd was eating it up!
To think, just hours ago I was hauling a staked vampire across town, dropping its body on a couch in front of the ladies of the Order. I was trapped, confined behind the image of “Nick,” who was less than a shell of what I was now.
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