by Meg Kassel
My teeth gnash. I guess Kiera does always get what she wants. She sips her drink and starts to dance, like on him. He does shift away, but whatever. He’s here with her. The next song I was planning on was a chill tune, perfect for slower dancing, but instead, I queue up something angry and fast. Probably not going to ease the edgy vibe in here, but I won’t make it easy for Kiera.
Deno notices the change in the playlist and gives me a puzzled look.
I shake my head, but Deno can see my scowling brow above my glasses. His gaze traces the general path mine had just been on, and his brows go up. Kiera. Her friends. Reece. Obviously, Reece. Deno is thick sometimes, easily distracted, but can tune in at the most inopportune times. He leans in close. “You can’t play techno for the next hour and a half just to keep those two from dancing.”
My face burns. I should have hidden my reaction better. I shouldn’t have reacted at all. Denial isn’t an option with Deno. “Watch me,” I say.
But instead of frowning, he lets out a chuckle. “My-oh-my. I’d say it’s confirmed that our little Angie has finally found a boy she likes. A sporty boy.” He sighs. “I just lost a bet, you know.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask who he made a bet with, but it’s undoubtedly Lacey. I start up the next track, a sexy downtempo tune that’s impossible to not slow dance to. “Fine. Now we can stand here and watch them make out. Happy?”
He looks out on the crowd again. The smile on his face twists with mischievous delight. “Not about losing a twenty-dollar bet, but cheer up, kid. Your boy’s not making out with anyone. He’s headed straight for you.”
I wobble on my platform shoes. “What?”
Deno stretches. His grin goes Cheshire wide. “I need to take a piss. Be back in five. Or ten.”
“No! Don’t you dare—” I grab for his arm, but he skips out of my grasp.
“Thank me later,” he tosses back, just before disappearing.
Reece doesn’t come around the side like he’s supposed to and, with Deno gone, there’s no point. He’s so tall, he doesn’t have a problem leaning over the speakers and mixer to get my attention.
“Hey,” he says—shouts.
I hold up a finger, finish setting up a transition sequence that totally could have waited, before tilting my head at him. Even with my big, green glasses, he’s got a pretty good view of me, which makes me nervous. I will kill Deno when he returns.
Reece’s eyes are amused, like he knows I’m stalling. “I want to make a request.”
Without speaking, I hand him the Post-it pad and a pen. His fingers brush mine, and I swear he does it on purpose. He wouldn’t be the first guy here to do it, but he’s the first to send tingles marching up my arm.
Reece scribbles something on the pad and hands it back to me. I stare at him, jaw slowly hinging open. In the six months I’ve been a DJ here, no one has requested this song. Given what I experienced with him at the bus stop a few days ago, his request is more than a little unsettling. The song on the Post-it, sprawled in slanted Sharpie, is Black Wing.
“You want me to play this?” I look at him, unable to hide my surprise.
A smile plays at his lips. “Do you know it? It’s a little obscure. The guys I came here with said you had an extensive library, so…” He gives a slight, self-conscious shrug.
The guys I came here with. So he didn’t come with Kiera. My heart does an uncomfortable flip in my chest. I have this song. I love this song. I’ve remixed it twice myself. It is obscure, and one of my favorites. But still…
“Black Wing.”
I really hope this song isn’t some sort of message. I swallow thickly. “Do you want the original or one of the remixes?”
“Which remixes do you have?” He grins. “Never mind. You choose.”
I nod and turn away from him. This is usually when the civilians—even the odd ones—move along, go back to the dance floor, but Reece leans closer and cocks his head at me. He smells like Pepsi and fresh air and all I want to do is lean in and breathe deep. “Hey, you look kind of familiar,” he says. “Do I know you?”
What? We’re done here. If he sees through my disguise… I’m not ready for that. I wave him off, trying to keep my voice from revealing my jumpy nerves. “Go. Play with the other kids.”
He backs up, but his black eyes continue to study me like I’m a weird vanity license plate he’s trying to decode. I swing back to my laptop with gritted teeth.
Sloppy. I almost missed the end of the song. Almost had dead air. My fingers fly over the mixer, fading in a makeshift beat to bridge to the next song.
Deno returns, making a show of adjusting his pants. He grins, eyebrows raised and palms out as if to say Where’s my thank-you?
“Yeah. That was great,” I snap at him. “Very professional.”
“Admit it. You’re secretly thrilled I did that.”
Maybe I am. I’m also relieved that Deno isn’t being weird about it. It’s pretty obvious now that I am interested in Reece. Seriously, I couldn’t have bungled that more. “Don’t ever do that again. Or you’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me.”
Damn it, he’s right. He’s the one who talked the owner into giving me a shot here. If anything, he could probably fire me.
“I still think he’s weird,” he says.
He’s not wrong.
“Hey, you must have done something right. He’s not dancing with Kiera.”
I don’t look up. I can’t. Won’t. “What’s he doing?”
Deno’s brows draw together in confusion. “Why don’t you just look?”
He’s not being a smart-ass this time, so I do. Reece is no longer with Kiera, and it’s disturbing how happy I am about it. He’s on the other side of the room, talking with a couple of seniors on the hockey team. Kiera glances at him once, twice, then flips her hair and doesn’t look at him again. She’s never worked for a boy’s attention. Eventually, he’ll come back to her. They always do.
But Reece Fernandez doesn’t appear interested in getting Kiera’s attention. He mimics the other boys’ loose postures, leaning back against the bar. One of them raises a cup and laughs at something Reece says.
My mouth is dry and my hands shake a little, but I queue up Reece’s song. It’s something I never do—play a request right after receiving it—but here I am, sending a message to him.
Reece tips back his Pepsi like it’s a beer and splays his fingers over the rim of his cup. I puzzle over some bizarre hand gestures between him and the guys he’s talking with until I deduce the topic is sports—hockey, naturally.
His song starts. Reece’s head whips up. He looks at me from across the room, and I feel it like a touch. His teeth flash white in a smile that sends a pleasant tingle straight down to my toes. It’s all I wanted, his eyes on me. His smile, for me.
In that moment, there’s nothing else. Nothing but flashing black eyes and a slow smile and the hectic thud of my pounding heart.
But prowling in the back of my mind is another scene.
Reece surrounded by inky feathers and curved talons. Long, sleek beaks caressing his cheeks, playing with his hair, plucking gently at his coat.
“Black Wing.”
He smiles then, too.
5- the watcher
The small employee parking lot behind The Strip Mall can be creepy. Anyone could be lurking in the thick trees behind it, and although no one ever has been, my paranoia is always wondering if someone is. The peeling white and red paint and the big loading doors where trucks once backed up to are the only reminders this really was once a strip mall. What had been a moldering eyesore is now a lucrative exercise in building revitalization. If I remember what Deno told me, the main dance floor was an office supply store. The stage was the custom printing lab.
Deno and I break down our equipment in companionable silence. I’m not mad at him anymore. In fact, I would consider thanking him if he wasn’t so likely to gloat. On the floor, the under-agers filter out and the o
ver-twenty-one crowd gets fresh drinks. I run some ambient music through the house speakers while Anton, the DJ for the eleven p.m. to two a.m. slot, sets up. Deno hauls the equipment to his van while I wrap up cables and tuck little, expensive bits of equipment into their cases.
“All packed up.” Deno meets me by the door to the parking lot. “I’m gonna collect our money.” He tosses me the keys.
This is what we’ve done all winter: Deno packs the van and I warm it up while he gets our pay. Since he’s the only one who knows this labyrinth of a building well enough to actually find the owner in her back office.
Maybe it’s because of the vibe tonight, the tense bouncers, or Reece, but this night feels compressed, thick with something other than air. I’d rather wait inside. The words are there, coiled on my tongue, but I swallow them back. Deno doesn’t seem to think anything is off. Maybe I’m overreacting. “Okay,” I say. “See you in a few.”
I step through the metal door and into the parking lot. Cold claws through my coat like icy talons. No surprise there. It’s eleven thirty at night in February. The dumpster smells like vomit. The lighting is terrible—just one yellowish lamp and far too many shadows. A dark shape shifts on the dumpster’s lip, and I suck in a breath and tense up. A puffed-up crow stares back at me, eyes like shiny red beads. It tosses its beak in the air, like a greeting, and stretches its wings. One long white feather gleams among the inky plumage. I’d bet anything it’s the same one that left me the earring.
Crows are everywhere these days—lined up on telephone wires, sitting on the sign at school. This one, with the white feather, seems way too attached to me. I don’t like this—this crow hanging around all the time. This feeling of being watched. I shiver, but not from the cold. My rubbery fingers fumble through Deno’s key ring.
It’s a bird, Angie. I purposefully ignore it. The van’s only ten feet away. I head for it, but my wildly impractical shoes hit an icy patch and I go down hard, glasses flying. My hip and shoulder take the brunt of it. Nothing’s broken. That’s all I should be worried about, but I’m suddenly and acutely aware that I’m in a vulnerable position and I’m alone. Instincts turn my senses sharp and blunt at the same time. I scramble to my knees and grope for the van’s bumper. Damn these platform shoes. They’re like stilts, and they render me as agile as a newborn giraffe.
The crow opens its shiny beak and shrieks as a strong hand closes on my upper arm. Adrenaline numbs the pain from my fall. Blood rushes to my head. I’m not alone out here.
I turn to see a guy in a wool hat and a puffy jacket. He looms above me, silhouetted by that one crappy light, but I can see well enough. It’s him. The guy Reece talked to at the bus stop three days ago. He’s wearing the same clothes, giving off the same pungent smell of honey, but his face is different. Again.
My bones turn to rubber. Fear punches my lungs inside out, robbing my ability to scream. “You,” I say on a gasp.
The crow begins to caw. Its noise is grating, repetitive, scratching the inside of my skull.
He pulls me upright with such speed and force, pain shoots through my shoulder. For a slender man, his strength is immense. He turns, setting his face in the light, and my whimper turns into a gurgle of fear.
Like a mask that can’t decide what it should look like, the man’s face is morphing, constantly. Thin nose, broad chin, narrow face, brown eyes, broad nose, pointy chin, wide face, green eyes… The shifts are subtle and blurry. Sometimes the features are female. Mostly, they’re male.
The slightest of smiles curves his mouth as he holds me still and waits as I watch the horrors of his face unfold. He wants me to see this. Wants me to know I’m not being held by a human being. To know I could die by his hand at any moment.
Reece knows this thing. He knows, he knows, he knows. And in this moment, I fear him as much as the creature holding me, because surely Reece knows what this man-thing is and what it can do. Knows there’s no fighting free of it. Anger breaks through my paralyzing fear just long enough for air to charge into my lungs. I let out a pealing scream that would impress Alfred Hitchcock.
Changeable brows draw together. “No one’s listening, my dear.” His voice is low and garbled, as if run through distortion software.
My heart twists with the truth of his words. Anton’s set is in full swing, and angry techno pounds through the concrete walls. Rivulets of cold sweat slide down my back. I can’t stop shuddering.
Where is Deno? If this guy wasn’t impossibly strong, I’d be willing my friend to come bursting through the door and help me out. Aside from the hair, there’s nothing delicate about Deno. He’s big, tough. He was a force to be reckoned with in the few schoolyard scuffles I’ve seen him in, but this man holding me is clearly not a man at all. I don’t want Deno near this creature.
“Wh-what are you?” I ask. Not that it matters.
The grip on my arm loosens. He glances at the shrieking bird, then angles his head toward me in a way that suggests I should know its significance. Of course, I don’t.
“He watches you.” My question is ignored. His voice sounds as terrifying and wrong as the rest of him.
“W-who?” Who!
The face, or faces—whatever the hell it is—smiles. “He: scavenger, cleaner of bones, a black bird of the gallows.” He leans his terrible face close. Way too close. “He watches you. Why?”
My heart smashes against my ribs. His nightmare face is inches from mine, but no breath comes from that changing mouth. No puff of white in the cold darkness. Only the disorienting scent of honey and a skin-crawling drone that sounds an awful lot like bees. A lot of bees.
“I don’t know w-what you’re talking about.” Tears ice my cheeks. I’d like to wring that bird’s neck. It’s screaming like it’s the one about to die. Between the crow and this awful buzzing sound, I’m going to lose my mind. “Please, just…”
I fall silent as a new mouth and nose appear on the creature’s face. They’re female, and familiar in a way that makes my ribs contract around my heart. Full pink lips and a delicate nose with a little mole under the right nostril. The eyes are someone else’s but…
I know that mouth. I know that mole.
I saw it every day for the first twelve years of my life.
“Mom,” I rasp. Pain, fresh and devastating, unravels throughout my body. This is madness—fear driving me to hysteria, or some perfectly logical nonsense—but no. Those are her features. I know them as well as my own.
Without realizing what I’m doing, I reach for her mouth on this creature’s face. He rears back, and the instant before my fingers brush skin, my mother’s features fade and morph into a stranger’s. The mole disappears. I’m staring up at this creature who, frankly, looks as confused as I feel.
The face-shifter parts his lips and something crawls out. It’s a bee. From his mouth. More and more come. Dozens. Hundreds. They engulf the lower half of his face in a writhing, buzzing mask. He doesn’t blink. I let out another scream, but not because I expect help. This scream is a reflex, an expulsion of primal fear, as impossible to stifle as breathing.
Footfalls slap on the chunked-up pavement, fast and sure, approaching from the long rear wall of The Strip Mall. The man-thing’s head turns. His grip on my arms goes tight. Bees slither back into his mouth.
“Hey!” a male voice shouts. “What the hell are you doing?” It’s not Deno. It’s not a bouncer. But I know this voice.
The face-shifter’s hands fall away so fast, I stumble backward onto the pavement.
The crow goes silent.
I look up at my rescuer and juggle an ugly mix of unease and relief. There’s the chestnut hair, the high, chiseled cheekbones.
Reece. Of course it’s him. He came all the way around from the front of the building—no small feat for The Strip Mall. But how did he know? Anton’s earsplitting volume ensured no one heard me scream.
Reece stops a few feet away, his body a tense line. “Get away from her.” His voice is firm, lacking fear. Lac
king negotiation. I knew it—he knows this creature. I dread to think what that makes him. I shrink away from both of them.
My attacker backs up a step, but he sneers at Reece. “I have as much right to be here as you.”
Reece bares his teeth. “I’m here because I have to be. You’re here because you choose to be.”
“None of us are here because we choose to be,” the man snarls back, spitting bees into the air. “This town is marked, making her marked. Both are fair game.”
“Are you unhinged?” Reece asks him. “That’s not how it works.”
“How much time is left?” it asks.
Reece looks far older than an eighteen-year-old boy should look, and not at all civilized. “I don’t know.”
How much time for what? This is like listening in on one side of a phone conversation.
The face-shifter laughs, a terrible, warbled sound. His eyes tilt toward me, then back to Reece. “You know you are not permitted to interfere. Look what happened to the last one who tried.” The creature chuckles, a leisurely sound. “You cannot save her, harbinger.”
Color drains from Reece’s face. His nostrils flare as his black eyes bore holes through the creature he’s squared off against. “Just stay away from her,” he says through clenched teeth.
The face-shifter seems unconcerned with the malice being leveled at him. He gives me a mock bow, complete with a grotesque smile, then slinks into the dark trees behind the dumpster. Bees follow him in a lazy, disorganized cloud.
Reece releases a breath. His face clears of anger, but his features are still pinched. The crow flaps its wings, but remains silent, watchful. It starts preening its feathers.
Reece rubs his eyes, a weary gesture, or maybe a resigned one, and turns to me. “Are you okay?” He squats down, places a light hand on my shoulder. “Were you hurt?”
I pull my shoulder away from his touch. “I’m fine.”
Reece withdraws his hand, tucks it against his ribs. “Can you stand?”
I feel liquefied and shaky. Drained of everything that made me solid. I use the van’s bumper to push myself to standing. Still, my shaky knees buckle the instant I get upright.