by Liz Schulte
“Yes, definitely.” Stephanie glanced around the café one more time. “I just love what you did with this place and so fast, too. I don’t even miss the pizza.”
I laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.”
When they were finally gone, I started toward Callaghan’s, tucking my hands inside my jacket pockets. Two strange men in the neighborhood. Call me crazy, but I believed Mr. Court. After all, the man in the shop today said Valefor had been looking for me. Whoever that was. Crap. I needed to talk to Holden. Maybe he’d recognize the name. My nose scrunched at the thought. Or maybe I’d talk to Phoenix instead. He was the next best thing, plus he wouldn’t rat me out to Holden, if I’d accidentally done something wrong and pissed this Valefor guy off, because he owed me. That was a much happier decision.
I opened the glossy wooden door to what used to be my and Izzy’s favorite hangout. It was close to the building we both used to live, before I became a monster. A stream of longing for those simpler times ran through me. Izzy was at our regular table, but she didn’t look like herself. Her usually round face was thinner, and her mouth was settled into a frown as she stared into her glass.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I said. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
She pressed her lips together, eyes liquefying. “I had a fight with Kyle.”
“What happened?” I sank into the chair across from her. Izzy had a tendency to be dramatic. She had been with Kyle pretty much forever. They were high school sweethearts, managed to stay together through college, and it was only a matter of time before they got married. They were my idea of the perfect relationship. Whatever happened, they’d work it out. It was who they were.
She shook her head. “He doesn’t love me.” Her words were slurred as she spoke. “I’m not going back.”
My mouth sagged open. “Why? What happened?” I glanced at her drink. Izzy wasn’t a drinker, especially not hard alcohol. She was more likely to end up with alcohol poisoning than to feel better. “Why don’t we go back to the bakery? We can get ice cream, I can make you a cup of coffee, and you can tell me everything.”
She shook her head hard, picked up her glass of amber liquid, and took a large drink. “I like it here. Just like old times. You promised things would go back to normal and I’m holding you to it. Get a drink.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, I waved down a waitress and ordered a glass of wine that I didn’t want. Izzy stared into her drink, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“At least tell me what the fight was about.”
She shrugged.
I loved Izzy, she was one of my best friends, but I couldn’t help but sympathize with Kyle. She could be a little high maintenance. Not in a bad way, just in a she-wasn’t-willing-to-settle-for-less-than-she- wanted way. Usually that meant anytime she was unhappy about anything, she told me in great detail and we worked out a plan. She wasn’t a wallower. This time was different, though. She wasn’t talking and that worried me. Had he cheated on her? Did he hit her? If he hurt her, I’d put the fear of God in him. Not that I believed Kyle would do either of those things, but what else was there? She looked defeated.
“He’s never going to marry me.”
I tried to keep my face passive. The marriage thing. I really didn’t have time for this. “Of course he will.”
She shook her head again, taking another drink. “Nope. He won’t. And he wouldn’t even fight for me.” She blinked several times, her lower lip quivering.
None of this made any sense. “You wanted him to fight someone?” Kyle wasn’t a big guy. He was five-eight at most, and, as far as I knew, never worked out. He was a computer programmer, so he spent most of his time sitting at a desk or playing video games. He had no business fighting anyone. “What does this have to do with marriage?”
She threw up her hands. “No, I wanted him to fight for me—not fight someone. I’m tired of waiting. Every time I bring up marriage, he gets really vague. So I told him I had feelings for someone at work and that something had to change. He just nodded and poured a bowl of cereal. He didn’t care. I’ve bet on the wrong horse.” She wiped her hand under her eyes.
“Wait. What? Start at the beginning. Who do you have feelings for?” Izzy and I used to work in the same office, that was how we met. I did a quick mental inventory of all the guys there, and no one stuck out. There was one of the managers, Todd, who resembled a rat. There was a John or Jake who took my position when I left, and from the brief glimpse I’d had of him, he was nondescript and about twenty years older than us. Everyone else was pretty much married. The waitress delivered my wine.
Izzy dropped her head into her hands. “No one, but Kyle doesn’t know that. Our relationship stalled a while ago. I don’t know what happened. We both got comfortable and stopped trying or something. It’s just…” She shrugged. “We don’t do anything together. He doesn’t talk to me. I wanted him to react. I wanted to see that I meant something to him, so I lied.”
I made a sympathetic noise. “So things have been going down hill for a while?”
She shrugged. “Yeah—but today was the last straw. I got dressed for work this morning, and Kyle was in the kitchen, getting a bowl out of the cabinet—a bowl. Just one. He knew I was home, he knew I would eat, but he only got himself a bowl. I don’t know why that upset me so much, but it did and I just blurted out that I had feelings for someone else. He didn’t even pause. Just filled the bowl with cereal and opened the newspaper.”
Wow. Not good. My stomach sank. “What did you do?”
“I said, ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’ He said no. So I put the milk away and left for work. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to go home and tell him I lied. How am I supposed to explain that when he didn’t even care to begin with? How do I go back from here? I can’t.”
I sipped my wine. This was way out of my league of advice giving. It wasn’t like my love life was anything to envy. Baker spent most of our short and crushing relationship lying to me. When he finally did tell me the truth, it pretty much ruined my life. “You can’t give up,” I said. “You guys are perfect together.”
She snorted. “If this is perfect, I want a refund. I’d rather be alone. The man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with should, at the very least, care whether or not I’m in love with someone else. I want him to want to be with me. I want to know that someday we will get married—and it won’t mean spending the rest of our lives as roommates who can barely tolerate spending time together. If that’s all our future holds, then I don’t want it. I deserve more and so does he.”
I nodded. “And you haven’t spoken to him since?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t care.”
I drew in a deep breath and watched her finish her drink. “Did you at least tell him you were going out tonight?”
“I need another drink.” She looked around for the waitress.
“No. You’re done. Let’s go home.”
“I don’t have a home. Kyle’s there.”
I stood up. “You can stay with me. We’ll figure all of this out tomorrow. Maybe a good night’s sleep and a little distance will make everything clearer. I know he loves you. You just need to be honest with him. We’ll come up with a plan. It will all be okay.”
She nodded. I helped her pay her tab, and practically carried her outside, hailing a cab. She collapsed into the seat, but didn’t scoot over, so I climbed over her to the other side.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
I gave him my address. Izzy was sprawled out, her head lolling back against the seat. “I don’t even remember the last time I was single,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.” She closed her eyes.
“You aren’t single. Everything is going to work out.” If Izzy and Kyle couldn’t make it work, what hope did the rest of us have? They were perfect on paper and I know that didn’t mean anything, but it felt like it should. There had to be a miscommunication somewhere.
She sn
orted, then slapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes popped open.
I knew that look. “Pull over!” Just as I reached around Izzy to open the window, she let loose. Her shoulders heaved as she turned and threw up on the seat next to her, on my arm, and partly in my hair.
“Hey,” the cabbie shouted.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, rolling down my own window before I vomited too. Izzy was crying next to me, wiping off her mouth, and mumbling apologies. After the longest ride of my life, I hauled her out of the vehicle, gave the cabbie a huge tip with one last apology, and walked/dragged her inside.
She clutched my arm. “I’m going to be sick again.” She closed her eyes and weaved. I ran her, faster than humanly possible to the bathroom, just making it. I grabbed a hair tie, pulled her hair back, then stepped out of the room to get her a glass of water and to clean myself up. The stench of vomit burned the insides of my nose.
When I was as clean as I could get without taking a shower, I checked on Izzy. Her head was resting on the toilet seat and her eyes were closed. I helped her clean herself up and put her in bed with a trashcan next to her and a glass of water on the nightstand. Absolutely disgusting.
I texted Kyle from her phone, letting him know where she was, and then hopped in the shower and scrubbed my skin until it was pink. When I got out, I tossed my clothes in the washing machine. A cell phone chimed in the living room. My phone was in my purse, which was in the kitchen next to Izzy’s. I stepped into the kitchen, listening. The floorboard in the living room creaked.
Could tonight get any worse?
Chapter 4
Three beastly men, who looked like they had more performance enhancing drugs in their bodies than brains, dwarfed my living room.
“Valefor will see you now,” the one with a goatee said.
I was strong, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that there was nothing in the world stronger than me. I wasn’t invincible. There were still plenty of things that could kill me. Not to mention Izzy was just down the hall. Even if I could defeat them, I couldn’t begin to explain any of this if she woke up. I didn’t advance. “Get out of my house.”
They fanned out, walking toward me, slowly. “No one has to get hurt,” the leader said, holding up a hand.
My muscles stiffened as nervous butterflies fluttered in my stomach. “I couldn’t agree more. Leave.”
The leader shook his head. “We can’t leave without you. If you value your friend in the back, you will come quietly. There is no need to involve her, is there?”
They kept coming, forcing me to take a couple steps back. Despite the vampire enhancements, fighting didn’t come naturally to me. I had never been in a fight in my life before all of this. All I really wanted to do was run away, but I couldn’t leave Izzy. I had to stay.
A big hand swiped at me, knocking me into the edge of a bookshelf. Blood trickled from my temple for a moment, then the skin healed itself and my blurred vision corrected itself. Energy and hunger stirred to life beneath my skin, my body sensing something I couldn’t see. The leader grabbed me by the shirt, and I reached out, placing my hands on his neck. The moment I touched him, I knew he wasn’t a human and his soul sure as hell wasn’t light. My hunger took over; I drained his dark essence in ten seconds flat. The next guy locked his forearm around my throat, but I reached behind me, planting my hands on either side of his cheeks. Seconds later, he fell too. The door slammed behind the other two men as they bolted from the house.
I stared up at the ceiling, breathing heavy as I fought back the guilt that always came when I hurt someone, demon or not. They would have taken me and probably killed Izzy. And they knew where I lived. I didn’t have a choice. It was unavoidable. My fingers were already dialing Holden, though I had no idea what to say. I still didn’t know who or what Valefor was, or what I’d done to get the attention of him and his demon henchmen.
The phone rang and rang and rang until finally Holden’s voicemail picked up. Damn it anyway. What was I supposed to do with two corpses in my living room? I called him again, and then again—and finally he answered.
“I’m in the middle of something,” he snapped when he finally picked up.
“Yeah, sorry. I have a bit of a problem here.” He didn’t respond, but even his silence felt impatient. “A couple not-so-nice guys came by my house and now there are bodies and—”
“Okay.” He hung up.
Holden wasn’t one for conversation, but this was ridiculous. What did that mean? Was he coming? How long was I supposed to wait? I sat on the arm of the couch, legs bouncing as I looked down at the bodies. Seconds went by like hours. What if Izzy woke up? What if a neighbor came over or looked through a window? What if someone heard and called the cops? None of those things were likely, but I couldn’t stop worrying, nonetheless.
I was just about to call Holden back, when Phoenix appeared in my living room. “Holy cake balls.” I shot up, standing between him and the bodies. “What are you doing here? Haven’t you heard of knocking? This is my home.”
He smiled, but his eyes went to the dead guys, then to the bookcase with my blood stain. “You should have called me instead of Holden. He’ll have questions. I don’t care what you do. Some party. Who are these guys?” Teasing laced his words.
“I don’t know. They came to the bakery earlier, saying something about Valefor. I don’t even know what or who that is. Then they came here tonight to bring me in.”
“Just these two?” All ease had melted from his stance at the word Valefor. Phoenix obviously knew who or what that was.
I shook my head. “The other two ran away. Do you know who that is? Why are they after me?”
“Shit,” he said. “Wait here.”
“What about them?” I said, but I was speaking to the air. Phoenix was already gone. He vanished, leaving me in the same predicament I started in. I had a backyard and I could bury the bodies, but one nosy neighbor and I’d be on the nightly news, as police excavated my backyard. The demons would have possessed actual humans with families and friends, so it wasn’t like I could explain to the human authorities that I had actually only hurt the demons inside the bodies, and that the humans had been dead for a while. I was already working on my insanity plea.
After twenty minutes of nervous pacing and checking on Izzy, there was a soft knock on my door. I peeked through the peephole; a tiny old, grizzled woman with glasses and a flowered housedress stood on the other side. Her slightly blue hair stuck out at odd angles around her head. Her wrinkles were deep all over her face and neck. “Can I help you?” I said.
“Somebody call for a cleanup?” Her voice was every bit as rough as her appearance.
I hadn’t called for anything. Heck, I wouldn’t know who to call for anything like that. It could be a trap, or maybe Phoenix called or Holden. This was exactly why I didn’t want to be in this world. It was complicated and impossible to navigate.
I cracked the door open. “Who are you?”
“Ethel as in Ethel’s Eaters. We can erase any crime scene, restore the entire area back to nearly original condition, and rid you of any pesky, unwanted bodies.” She sounded like she had smoked twenty packs of cigarettes a day, every day of her considerable life, which only made it stranger that she was pitching body disposals to me.
“Ethel’s Eaters,” I echoed, then it hit me what she meant. She was a ghoul. They ate dead bodies. That’s what they did. “But what about their families?”
She gave me a baffled look. “You weren’t my only call.”
I stepped back from the door, not really knowing what else to do. Izzy couldn’t wake up and see two dead people in my living room. How was I supposed to explain that? But this didn’t feel right either. “Fine, but you have to be quiet. There’s a human sleeping just down the hall.”
Ignoring me completely, Ethel dropped her quilted bag to the ground and circled the bodies, lifting their arms and dropping them back down, poking her finger against their skin, and finally sniffi
ng them. “No blood.”
I pointed to the bookcase. “Just that.”
She glanced over. “That wasn’t what I was talking about. This won’t take long, if you have something else you need to do.”
I didn’t respond because what was I supposed to say? I killed two people, but apparently it wasn’t a big deal to anyone but me.
“Just as I thought,” she finally proclaimed, looking up through her two-inch thick glasses that made her eyes look enormous. “The bodies that were inhabited were dead before possession. Does that make you feel better, dearie?”
They looked fresh enough to me. “How do you know?”
She rolled one man over and tore his shirt open, revealing a Y incision on his chest. I nodded and got out of her way. The woman might have looked a hundred and fifty years old, but she didn’t move like it. She pulled two large squares of plastic from her bag, spread them over the floor, then dragged a body onto it.
“You look like a strong enough girl. You do the other,” she said, once again digging through the sack.
I lifted the other man easily and placed him in the center of the other sheet of plastic. That’s when I noticed what else she had pulled out of her innocent granny bag: three separate handsaws of various sizes. “You aren’t going to saw them in my living room,” I said. That was the line in the sand for me.
She glanced around. “Why not? They’re easier to transport in pieces.”
“Because I live here and it’s—”
“Let her work,” Phoenix said, finally back. His hand touched the arch of my back. “She’s a professional, Maggie. She knows what she’s doing. Ethel, how have you been? How’s the family?”
“Can’t complain,” she said. “Work’s been steady, but I always appreciate the call, even if it is for someone like her.” She looked back at me with what I believed was supposed to be a smile. “Don’t worry, dearie. The first kill is always the hardest.”