“I don’t do drugs. And neither does Jay.”
“We should call the medics.”
“No!” The prospect of Jay in the hands of medical staff filled him with horror. He drew on everything he had to speak calmly, firmly. “It’s a nightmare is all.”
Nessa bent to peer more closely at Jay and clicked her fingers a bare inch from Jay’s nose. “Some nightmare. We should try and wake her up. Grab a glass of water and—”
Jay’s hand shot out in a blur of motion to grab Nessa by the throat. Nessa gave a strangled gargle as Jay’s grip tightened.
“Jay! Let her go!” Tyler shook Jay's shoulders.
Nessa gasped for breath and clawed at Jay’s fingers. Her struggles became more frenzied.
Tyler slapped Jay’s face. No reaction. He pressed his mouth to her ear and yelled as loud as he could, “Jay! It’s just Nessa! She’s not a threat to you. Let her go, Jay! Please.”
She didn’t appear to be able to hear him. Her eyes had turned gunmetal gray. Tyler hazarded a guess some automatic self-defense system had kicked in and at some base, instinctive level, she viewed Nessa as an enemy. So he did the one thing he knew always affected her deeply. He kissed her. On the mouth. Hard, putting all his hopes and dreams and heart and soul into it.
And then Nessa fell to the floor in a huddle and Jay was kissing him back and Tyler knew he should check on Nessa but he didn’t want the kiss to end.
He tore his lips from hers and backed off, panting. His gaze darted to Nessa, who had backed up against the wall and was massaging her throat.
Jay sat up and scooted back to prop herself against the padded bed-head. “I’m very sorry, Vanessa. I was having a nightmare. It seemed so real that I overreacted. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Nessa’s response was an undecipherable croak and a look that conveyed she didn’t believe a word of it.
“Jay, uh, got mugged awhile back,” Tyler improvised. “It was pretty traumatic. Her unconscious must have perceived you as a threat and her natural reaction was to lash out.” The last part was true at least.
Nessa coughed and winced. “Some reaction.”
“I’m very sorry, Vanessa,” Jay said again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She sounded so lost and unsure and un-Jay-like, Tyler figured he better take charge and sort this. He crawled off the bed to help Nessa. “C’mon. Some ice for the bruising and some Tylenol should help.” He stuck out his hand.
Nessa hesitated and then grasped it so he could haul her upright. “Thanks.”
She was a bit shaky on her feet—not surprising. He steadied her by grabbing her elbows. What a damn mess. Please God he’d be able to convince her not to press charges. Otherwise….
He didn’t want to think about “otherwise”.
He glanced over his shoulder as he helped Nessa from the room. “I’ll be back soon, Jay. You just rest, okay?”
~~~
Jay watched him go. There were so many things she wanted to say but she couldn’t form the words. She felt like she was swimming in a thick, soupy fog that clogged her brain. She lay back down, rolling over to Tyler’s side of the bed and hugging his pillow to her chest. She breathed in his lingering scent, closed her eyes and let her mind drift.
Of course the drawback to letting her mind drift was that it tended to dwell on problems and search for possible solutions. And right now, because she refused to think about Vanessa, her mind flicked to another problem she couldn’t solve.
Tyler had told his parents he’d met “Jaime” after transferring from Appleton Performing Arts School to Wasserman College of Fine Arts, where he was now majoring in songwriting, and minoring in drawing and painting. Of course Marissa and Mike had approved his decision to transfer. The college had an excellent reputation—exactly the reason Jay had chosen it after Tyler expressed the desire to narrow his focus. She’d announced it was her Christmas gift to him, and the delighted expression on his face had provoked her to smile so widely in return that if she’d been human, her facial muscles would have ached.
It’d also been the perfect opportunity to muddy the paper-trail Tyler Michael Davidson had left behind at Appleton. She’d registered him at Wasserman under the name T. Michael Rowen—Rowen being his mother’s maiden name. It’d been ludicrously easy to hack into first Appleton’s computer system, and then Wasserman’s, and alter all Tyler’s records to show transfers to and from completely different colleges. Next, Jay—or Jaime Smythson, as she’d called herself—had dropped out of Appleton and seeded a paper trail that had “Jaime” transferring to a college in London. Soon she’d be off the grid, untraceable, but these things took time to do properly and she’d been programmed to be meticulous.
Tyler hadn’t batted an eyelid when she’d informed him what she’d done. She hadn’t needed to explain. He was intelligent enough to understand why she’d deemed these steps necessary. He’d even managed a convincing lie to explain to his new roommates why his surname was Rowen instead of Davidson, like his parents’.
He hadn’t been quite so relaxed about discovering Jay had paid his Wasserman tuition fees in full, however. They were still “discussing” that aspect of her gift. And surprisingly, Jay, who usually had all the answers, didn’t enjoy these “discussions” one iota. All her logical reasons to justify her actions meant nothing when it came to convincing her irate boyfriend to accept financial assistance from her.
She knew she’d angered him but she didn’t quite know why, and not knowing made her stomach squirmy and uncomfortable, like she’d swallowed a live snake that had somehow survived her digestive juices. She suspected his attitude stemmed from that illogical state human males termed “masculine pride”.
Life had been far less complex before she’d started to evolve—before she’d possessed the capacity to experience emotions. She wished she could ask Tyler’s father for some insight into his son’s often baffling thought-processes. Unfortunately, considering her fraught relationship with Tyler’s parents, now wasn’t the right time to admit she lacked such basic human insights.
The mattress dipped. Tyler crawled into bed beside her. She feigned sleep, wondering what he would do, whether he would blame her, fear her.
There was no hesitation from him. He cuddled up behind her and drew her into his embrace. “You okay?”
“Yes.” No. She was not in the least “okay”, but she didn’t know how to ask for help because she didn’t know what she needed. The way she was feeling, the way the dream still affected her—it was all completely beyond her experience.
A sob caught in her throat. And another.
Tyler’s arms tightened around her. “It’s okay to cry if you’re scared,” he murmured. “I won’t think any less of you if you’re not a kickass babe twenty-four-seven.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. Right now she hated this body. Why would it not obey her?
Tyler rolled onto his back, bringing her with him so she ended up tucked under one arm, snuggled into his chest. With his spare hand he gently stroked away the tear. “Must have been one hell of a nightmare, huh?”
A ragged laugh bubbled from her throat. “Yeah.”
“You know, sometimes talking about bad dreams can help.”
“Not this one.”
“Okay.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Try and get some rest.”
Only when she was certain he was asleep and would not witness her folly did she give in to the pain she’d been keeping locked inside her. She cried—silently this time—because she was devastated by the thought of losing him. And she knew that some day she would lose him, because he was human and that was the natural order of things.
How long would she have to live with only vivid memories of Tyler to sustain her? How long before her own “unnatural” lifespan ended? That was anyone’s guess. Jay would go on—keep on living, existing… whether she wanted to or not.
~~~
Chapter Five
Nessa tossed and turned, and finally gave up tryi
ng to sleep. She switched on the bedside lamp. The glow from the bulb pushed back the darkness and made her feel a little better.
Huh. “Better” was a relative term considering what had just gone down with Tyler’s freak of a girlfriend.
She stared at the ceiling, gnawing her lower lip. She hadn’t done anything wrong—yet. Not until she made her first report, at least. She could still walk away, leaving Sixer to shove his threats and his money up his ass. Not that she’d ever dare tell him that to his face.
She choked down a sob. God. She was such an idiot. But he’d made it sound so easy, so harmless. Get close to Tyler. Watch him and his new girlfriend. Report in daily. And in return, Sixer would give her more money than Nessa could hope to earn in a year of waiting tables at Time-Out. Was she interested?
Hell, yeah, she was interested. She could get the eff out of Snapperton for good and start afresh somewhere else—somewhere far away from the parents who shunned her no matter how hard she tried to prove she’d changed, and the kids who never let her forget the shitty things she’d done.
Everything had seemed peachy until she got nosy and asked one too many questions. She recalled his cold, bruising grasp as he held her hands across the café table. The soulless stare. The thin line of his lips as he told her to shut her mouth and do as she was told because he’d be watching. All the lovely bubbly euphoria about her luck finally changing and easy money dropping right in her lap had gone poof! She should have known it all sounded too good to be true.
What she couldn’t figure was why Sixer was so interested in Tyler, of all people. Tyler was a good guy, too nice for his own good—hardly the type to get involved with something dodgy. Unless….
Jay. This had to be about her.
Nessa had always reckoned there was something “off” about Jay. And it had nothing to do with Tyler’s pathetic case of insta-love the second he’d laid eyes on Jay’s skinny, unfashionable ass. Or Jay outting Nessa to half the school at that dumbass farewell party, either. On more than one occasion Jay had almost scared the panties off her. So Nessa hadn’t been exactly devastated by the rumors Jay might have been killed in that meth lab explosion.
And now Jay had mysteriously shown up in Tyler’s life again, using a different name and with some serious money to boot. Where had she gotten that sort of cash?
Drugs.
Yeah. Made sense. Especially given the whole Jay Smith/Jaime Smythson thing. Girls Jay’s age didn’t just change their names on a whim. Well, unless they were misfortunate enough to have hideously old-fashioned names like Martha or Beryl or… or… Winifred or whatever. Jay had to be hiding something. Or….
Or hiding from someone—someone who knew she’d been tight with Tyler, and figured the best way to track her down was to spy on her old boyfriend.
Someone like Sixer.
Nessa coughed, winced, and then gingerly massaged her throat. Traumatized by a mugging my ass. Jeez. Why couldn’t Tyler see it? Normal people did not overreact and half strangle people who were only trying to help them. Jay was like two different girls. One, unnaturally calm and logical. The other, hot-tempered and ready to go off at the slightest provocation. Shawn had been like that, on edge and real quick to lose it when he’d been popping the ’roids.
Nessa sooo didn’t want to play spy anymore, but the last thing she needed was to piss Sixer off—especially if he was mixed up in the whole meth-lab thing back in Snapperton. Jay could come off like one scary-ass bitch but Sixer…. He wasn’t playing at being a badass. He scared her to the depths of her soul. And you didn’t mess with guys involved with the drugs trade.
Nothing for it but to see this through to the end. And boy, would she have earned every damn penny of that money.
She fished the cell phone from beneath her pillow and keyed in the number he’d made her memorize.
He answered on the second ring. “I told you to text me.”
His voice was so cold and hard and emotionless that she had to bite her lip against a whimper. “A lot’s happened—it’d take way too long to text,” she whispered, hunching over the phone.
“Tell me.”
She told him everything that’d gone down, keeping to the facts, trying to be as calm and concise as possible—no mean feat when her heart was racing like she’d run a mile, and her throat hurt, and her mouth was so dry it made speaking clearly difficult.
“Interesting,” he said, though his tone gave nothing away. He could have been talking about a piece of gum on the pavement.
“What part?” she asked without thinking, and then silently cursed her stupidity. Last thing she wanted was any insights into what made this dude tick.
“The second name is so similar to the first as to be borderline pointless. Jay Smith. Jaime Smythson. It is difficult to choose a name, yes?”
“I suppose. So you got what you wanted, right? I’m outta here.”
“No. Stay right where you are.”
“But she nearly strangled me! What if she attacks me again?” Nessa knew her voice sounded high pitched and little-girl-scared-of-the-monster-under-the-bed but she didn’t care. Right now, making herself scarce and forgetting about the money was looking real good.
“Stay where you are. Continue to report to me via text. Do not ring unless you are alone in the house. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.” No! She didn’t understand any of this. And a nasty little voice in her head told her it would be best if she didn’t, either.
“I will tell you when you’re done. If you run, I will find you. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes!” She hated he knew how terrified she was. She fought for control. “I understand.”
“Good girl, Nessa.” He rang off.
Good girl, Nessa. The praise made her feel like a well-trained dog. Plus she hadn’t the slightest clue if he was pleased by the information she’d imparted. His voice had been flat, without any inflection, kinda like a robot or… or… a computer or something. Jeez, what was he—some freaking psycho?
Nessa shoved the phone under her pillow, yanked the covers up to her nose and curled into a ball. She left the light on. It’d be a miracle if she got any damn sleep tonight. She full-body shivered, and curled up more tightly. God help her if she didn’t do what Sixer told her. And God help her if Jay ever found out she was spying on them.
She squeezed her eyelids tightly shut and tried to think of something pleasant. Huh. Fat chance. There hadn’t been much that could be considered “pleasant” in her life so far. Funny, the only time she’d been truly happy had been while dating Tyler.
Tears leaked from her eyes, ran down her cheeks, were quickly absorbed by the expensive cotton pillowcase. She’d tossed away the only good thing that had ever happened to her, the one good thing she’d had in her life.
If only she could think of a way to get him back.
~~~
Chapter Six
Sharp prickly impulses needled Jay’s muscles. She ignored them, telling herself she should be content to lie in the shelter of Tyler’s arms. Faint light filtered through the blinds and crept up the comforter to tease her determinedly closed eyelids… which snapped open at the faint squeal of a door. Footfalls in the hallway.
Vanessa.
Jay considered swearing rather pointless. It didn’t make her feel better or empower her in any way, shape, or form. Consequently, she didn’t swear unless it was the most appropriate response for any given social situation. But… damn that girl.
When alone in her apartment, Jay would unselfconsciously do whatever she deemed necessary, whenever she deemed it necessary. If she felt the urge to explode into motion and run up a wall—see whether she could make it further across the ceiling than last time before gravity held sway—she did so. If she wanted to test whether vriksasana, tree pose, did indeed improve concentration as claimed, then she would stand on her left foot with her right knee bent and her right sole placed on her upper inner thigh, for an hour or two without a qualm.
Of cou
rse she made every effort to moderate her behaviors and experiments with Tyler present, confining her physical activities to more socially acceptable outlets, such as performing katas or running through tai chi forms.
Reading, too, was a pastime she enjoyed. Sure, she could scan the entire contents of a book in minutes, but for Jay, reading wasn’t about quantity. She loved analyzing and puzzling over the author’s word choices—why this particular word here and not a suitable synonym? She loved how words combined into phrases that provoked vivid images and emotions. She loved the rhythms of words, and how changing those rhythms could so drastically alter the ambiance of a particular segment. She would devour a book from cover to cover, savoring every word, every sentence, before starting straight in on the next. She bought a stack of books every week from various bookstores, and felt no need to apologize for her passion. Many humans were passionate about reading, too.
There were times, though, when she would do something extraordinary without fully considering the implications. Like rearranging all the furniture in the lounge while Tyler was taking out the garbage, because she wanted to test the feng shui of the living space as per the book she’d just finished reading. Once he’d gotten over the initial shock of rearranged furniture, Tyler hadn’t been bothered. He knew what she was, accepted those parts of herself she chose to reveal. He didn’t make her feel like a freak.
But Jay could not risk doing something out of the ordinary in front of Vanessa—not when Vanessa would be watching, judging. And now she was already up and about, and making it difficult for Jay to be herself. Again.
She slowly eased from Tyler’s embrace, careful not to disturb his slumber. There were times when possessing superb fine muscle control was advantageous and this was one of those times. Once on her feet, she glanced down at herself. Light cotton shorts, a t-shirt, and bare feet would not be considered suitable jogging attire. It would doubtless draw unwanted attention—could even lead people to conclude she was trying to escape someone who meant her harm. She eased open a drawer and pulled out a pair of sweats.
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