by Tara Brown
I turn and look up into the night's sky. Atop the buildings I see their eyes, watching me. I can't stop my eyes from looking for his. His beautiful white blue eyes. He doesn’t smile or even try to. He knows about Dorian. He knows me better than anyone. He glares and then he's is gone.
I watch as the other eyes vanish one at a time.
The last face I see is Dorian's. He stands where Aleks had been. "It's done. Now you owe me and I will collect."
I flinch. "Thanks."
"He was a mess. Wandering the city in uniform. I took him home and told him to go have some fun, he needed it. I told him to take one of the girls he used to date and have a blast." He grins. "See you later." His voice is filled with promise. I shiver and wink. I try to ignore the regret that has me more full than my meal.
Lydia's kitchen table feels small with the group that is there. Missing Sam and the kids has become a fulltime job.
Our silence is heavy and painful in the house. It almost always means someone has died or lost control of what they are.
"Where is she?" Lorri storms into the room. Her blood red boots slap the floor.
Lydia shakes her head. "You have no right to do that here, Lorri. You may not take her from my home."
Lorri scowls. "Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. This mess has to be cleaned up." Her harsh eyes land on mine. "You know the rules."
I nod. I have no defense beyond my love of her.
I have no defense beyond my blame in it all.
Lorri's manicured finger is in my face suddenly. "You fix this. You have two weeks. Tristan and Ophelia and Giselle are all running out of time."
She is gone.
Lydia's eyes are on me. I can feel them.
I glance back. "I'll go talk to her."
Lydia shakes her head. "No. Leave her be. She needs to calm down. Annabelle will take care of…"
I wink out before she finishes the sentence. I choose home instead of him.
I wander town, looking in the windows of the houses. The lights inside show everything. The love and warmth they all have. The normalcy that exists in a place like this cuts me like a tiny knife. All I see is a place something like me won't ever be part of. I get lost in the clicking of my boots and when I look up I am in front of my house.
I instantly feel like I did the first week I was changing. I could feel the changes but had nowhere to go. Everything has changed and I still feel like I have nowhere to go.
I can see shadows moving around inside. My father and sister are there in the house.
I walk up to the front lawn just as the door opens.
I freeze.
"Love you too, Daddy." Alise steps out of the door. A group of people follows her out of the house. The last person closes the door.
"He seems better hey?" A voice cuts into me. I can't flash. I can't breathe. I am a lawn ornament.
"Aims?" His voice still hurts me.
I look at them walking down the stairs. Blake and Alise are hand in hand. Behind them walk Shane and Jessica Morgan, holding hands. She was his girlfriend before Alise and him dated. Before he and I dated. Before. She must be the girl he remembers dating that Dorian told him to go find to have fun with.
I remember watching them together. I had always wished I were her. I wished I were popular Jessica Morgan, holding hands with Shane. Watching him play football. Before, when I thought he was the love of my life. Seeing him, I have to convince myself he isn’t.
Now I am the only one who remembers we dated. I am the only one who remembers anything. Well, Blake and me. I smile awkwardly. "Hey."
They're dating again.
Jessica is dating Shane again.
I have to keep repeating it to believe it.
Maybe she's the girl in O's vision.
The girl he's happy with.
Alise points to the house. "Careful, he has a cold." She looks around. "How did you get here?"
I am frozen still. "I walked." Blake laughs.
"From college? Dude." She rolls her eyes.
"You home for the weekend?" Shane asks me, even though his eyes don’t meet mine. It's like he doesn’t want to look at me. I can't imagine what Dorian has said to him.
I nod and swallow my feelings. Pushing them down is hard. I want to join the group and go out and be normal. I've never been normal. Somehow I always miss the boat. Or got run over by the friggen thing.
Damned Dorian.
Shane nods and knits his brow, still looking at his feet. "That's awesome. Try to catch up with us all. Jeeze Aimes, feels like it's been forever." His face blushes and I want so badly to read into it. I have to tell myself it is the right choice.
Blake laughs again. I want to throw something at him.
Alise gives me her fake smile. "Having a nerd weekend with dad?"
I laugh.
I wish.
"Yeah. Something like that." I glance at Blake who crosses his arms.
"Yeah, we'll be playing some serious video games at my place, hey Aimes? Pew pew pew." His eyes glisten. He knows there will be pew pew pew but it'll be real. He loves it.
I nod again. I feel lost but Blake is still my beacon.
Shane pulls on Jessica's hand. "It was nice seeing you Aimes, but we gotta go. See ya 'round."
He drags her down the sidewalk and kisses her hand.
He used to kiss my hand. We used to do normal things, like watch TV or shop for food and kiss in the aisles. It was short lived but I remember every detail.
Blake flashes me a smile. He knows how much it all hurts. "See ya Aimes. I will call you later k? A little pew pew pew will make you feel better."
I nod. "It will if you stop saying that."
He laughs. I want to. They leave me, alone again.
It's painful. No matter what happens or the people he dates, it's painful. The panic in my heart is real. The love I felt for him once is real. His memories of me are not. Dorian's mind tricks have worked. Shane doesn’t even register me.
They all walk down the sidewalk and inside I cringe when he hugs Jessica and laughs. He is free from me. I know it's better and I know I asked Dorian to do it, but it still hurts.
The warm wind is there suddenly, lifting my hair into the air. My skin prickles. My heart remembers where it's meant to be.
My panic and fear and pain are gone instantly. He soothes the raw nerves and fills the gaps where I wish my life were normal.
His arms wrap around me and pull me in. I melt into him.
"I'm sorry. He kissed me."
He growls. "I know."
"Can't you beat him up or something?"
"No. He's an archangel. Impossible to actually beat up. But I can get him very drunk and humiliate him, again."
I laugh. "Wanna meet my dad?" I ask. I forget everything else.
He nods against my face and kisses my cheek.
I turn and am lost when I see him. His blue eyes melt my heart. Nothing else matters. Giselle is a ravenous psycho. Shane doesn’t recall the smallest of details. Lorri wants to eat Giselle. O and Trist have to kill their mom and I have to kill their dad. But none of it matters.
Aleks squints. "Hurts still, huh?"
I nod. I don’t mean to still love Shane. I know it was never the way I love Aleks. It never was true love, but it was love all the same.
He kisses my forehead. "It'll get better. Be grateful he's safe."
I nod again. I bite my lip watching his half smile. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss the uneven part of his lips. He watches me.
"You look sad."
I look to where my sister and the crowd are walking on the sidewalk.
"It's not him I want. It's never been him. It's what he represents. I want us to be like them. I want you to be my boyfriend and take me to a party and be my date and hang with my sister and her friends. I want us to be normal. I want to pay bills and have a house and shop for food and get a cat. It's not fair. I already have a name for the cat, Shakespeare." I know that's what I loved about Shane in t
he end. It was never that I loved him more than Aleks, that wasn't possible. Not then and definitely not now. But I loved that he was real. A real man in the real world. It made me a real girl. Even before I was part of the underworld, he was always part of the life I wanted. He was popular and his life was normal and easy.
I look at Aleks again and smirk. The fire his crooked lips create in my belly is a feeling Shane has never been able to create. Once Aleks arrived the competition for my heart only ever had one real outcome.
He kisses my cheek. "In twenty years when they are starting to age and their lives are stale, they will be the ones saying it isn’t fair. Trust me. I've been here before."
I look at him and watch his eyes in the orange glow from the streetlights. "It doesn’t feel like enough right now. I want us to be normal."
He lifts my hand in his and kisses the back of it. "It has to be enough. We can't ever be those things. You're different and I'm dead, for the second time."
I laugh. It still hurts, but he makes everything hurt less.
I step away from him and pull hard on his hand, to get him walking to the front door with me.
"You still need to meet him."
"Can't we just get the cat? I like the name Shakespeare."
I laugh and drag him in the front door, "Dad, I'm home."
Chapter Two
Ophelia
His fingers trace their way up and down my arm. I want to be somewhere alone with him, ripping his clothes off. Instead we are on babysitting duty.
She looks feral.
It's weird. She is the most beautiful girl in the world and yet she is completely taken by her hunger. She could be seducing every guy in the world and living it large. Instead her dark eyes dart around the small room like a nervous crackhead.
She moans and curls into a ball.
I look at him but he shakes his head.
I look up and whisper, "Why is it so bad for her? Are all succubus this brutal?"
He shakes his head. "No. She has the blood lust from being a vampire. She remembers what it was like to eat blood. She's been biting the people she's been sucking dry. So she is still getting blood from them and their essence. Being a succubus is intense enough on its own."
I raise an eyebrow, "Do you share the feelings and talents with her the way Dorian and Aimee are the same sort of thing?"
He nods, but doesn’t remove his eyes from her. He is so beautiful, even in the dark. I can't help but think about the shower we had yesterday. The way the water would bead on his skin or the way he looked with just the towel wrapped around his waist. I'd never showered with anyone before.
He looks at me. "I can sense you’re thinking something not good right now."
I blush. I think of my mom. Not my real mom but my mom, mom. I push the thoughts of him away. I wonder where Abbey and my parents are.
His fingers start to knead my arm, instead of trace lines up and down. He sinks his fingers deeper into my flesh and massages.
Giselle is finally asleep. She looks peaceful.
Oliver takes my hand and suddenly we are in his room at Marcus's house.
He pushes me back lightly. My legs hit the bed and I fall back on it. He climbs onto the bed and on top of me. His weight presses me into the mattress. I moan as his lips trace along my throat.
"Oliver, we have a situation."
We both lift our heads and glare at Marcus standing in the light of the open door. He's watching us, with his dark eyes glowing in the dim light. My stomach twists when I see his eyes. Sometimes when I look at him I can hear his thoughts. Thoughts of draining every drop of blood from my body, but in a naughty way. He makes me blush and cringe at the same time.
Oliver looks back at me and kisses my nose. He stands and offers me his hand. I sigh and let him drag me, unwillingly, off the bed.
I follow them down the hall of the huge creepy old castle. It's weird there is a castle in Portland that no one ever puts on the tourist stops. The hall is wide and filled with old pictures. Old paintings. I'm pretty sure I've seen a few that look like Marcus and Dorian and Aleks but in costumes.
I can't help but wonder if in two hundred years I'll be walking through my own castle with Oliver and the walls will be lined with paintings of me in jean jackets and skinny jeans.
"Look, she called a meeting. That’s all that matters."
Oliver glances back at me and winks. I melt.
Lost in the paintings and the smile, I almost don’t hear the muffled noise off to the right when we pass one of the corridors. Marcus's back straightens as we pass it. The moan fills the hall again.
I turn right and start running. I know that sound.
"Ophelia leave it." Marcus barks after me.
I run faster. "It's Hanna."
I hear a struggle followed by a scream.
The door at the end of the corridor is black and thick. When I touch it my hand sparkles. I turn the knob but it doesn’t budge. Down the hall Oliver and Marcus are fighting and suddenly they're gone. Oliver has flashed him away.
My stomach stops feeling like it's sunk into my bowels.
"Hanna?"
The moan is muffled.
I kick the door but nothing. I stand back and roll my shoulders. A wind starts to pick up in the hallway. I point my fingers and a blast of lightning hits the door. It ricochets off and shoots down the hall. It hits a painting of a house and starts a small fire.
I giggle nervously. He's going to kill me when he gets back.
I shoot a bolt of frost down the hall and freeze the flames.
The cold of the frost lingers on my fingertips. I brush them against the door and it freezes solid. White frost covers the door in an intricate frozen design.
I stand back and fire another bolt of lightning. The door shatters into a million black sparkly pieces. I cover my mouth and close my eyes and step through the black dust with my other hand out.
The room is padded and creepy. A single light shines down from above. Hanna is tied to the wall. She is wearing only a long shirt and the shackles holding her arms and legs to the wall.
"What a pervert," I mutter and walk to her. She is moaning and having trouble keeping her eyes open.
I know she has turned him down everyday since he came back from the dead, but damn. Her bracelet is gone. I notice it because of the instant contempt I feel for her.
I plant my feet and take her hand in mine. Her skin is burning. I close my eyes and envision it the way Lydia taught me to. The field of flowers and the shore of shells meet in my mind and start weaving. The flowers are the base of the bracelet and the shells are the bling. My mind weaves and as I think it, I feel it form on her wrist. As the white shells hit her skin I can feel the energy blasting off them.
She sighs and I can feel the struggle inside of her ending.
My hate for her dissipates with her fever. I am exhausted. I still haven’t learned to replace the energy I use.
Her eyes open and she smiles weakly, "Thanks. You make them so fast now."
I nod and snap my fingers at the lock of each shackle.
She raises an eyebrow, "You're getting better at this."
"Yeah. I've been practicing a lot. I only have a few days until I'm supposed to kill her and him." I don’t say their names. It burns inside of me. We need a solution and I don’t know how to fix it.
"Henry." Her lips tremble.
I look back at the man standing in the doorway. He is solid and wearing a bowler hat, which is weird. He nods and walks into the room. I know him. Somehow my body knows him. I put a hand out and he takes it. He squeezes my fingers and we speak without words.
‘You're in danger. If you must take her then you should go now. Go and don’t come back here. Dark things can come to this castle, Ophelia. Dark things that can corrupt your magic. Lydia's is the best place for you.’ His soft words whisper through my mind.
I frown. ‘Oliver told me Marcus's house was guarded.’
He shakes his head. 'It can't keep
them all out.' His words whisper into my mind and I shiver from the tickle of them.