by T. G. Ayer
In the wake of the staring match between me and the damaged creature in the mirror, half-formed thoughts flitted through my mind, ragged images barely formed, spurts of fear that refused to identify their origins, just fading in and out, one moment crowding my mind, and the next leaving it a hollow cavern, a vacuum of blackness.
And I’d relished that blackness.
I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant that I’d enjoyed the dense nothingness of what was likely the beginning of some form of mental incapacitation, wasn’t eager to define it either. And yet, even with everything I had to do, all that I was responsible for, my deepest desire was…nothing.
Was it the freedom I yearned for?
The thought flickered through my mind as I blinked, vision blurred then cleared, then sharp enough for me to wince. Then gone again. But that desire returned, a shadowed creature lurking in the darkness, its low purr an almost seductive siren call.
And then I gasped softly.
Frantic now, I search for her, sinking deep, breath catching, heart tripping, terrified this stroke could mean more than just a physical destruction, that it could mean something worse than beating swallowed by that darkness without a fight.
Where was she?
But even as the thought writhed within my mind, I felt her again, another low purr, a soft reassuring vibration that sends waves of calm over me. She was there. She was alive.
I let out a slow breath and moved to my feet, each action slow, deliberate, all the while holding tightly to the thread I’d latched onto that assured me she was okay. Swallowing slowly, I checked the condition of my face and was relieved to find the signs of the stroke had dissipated.
I’d regained control of my face, and I looked normal.
Or as normal as a person could look with a cheek that I was sure was broken. But injuries were okay given what I’d just been through. If Dad asked I’d just say something about makeup and forgetting about the pain, and pray to Ailuros that he couldn't figure out that something was wrong.
But, such concerns no matter how strong was no match for my fatigue. Maybe it was brought on by the stroke—who am I kidding, it was most definitely a result of the seizure—and was hitting me like a wave, full force, sucking the energy from me so suddenly that I almost didn’t make it to the bed in time.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I’d made there at all, but I did. I found myself, moment last, sitting on the side of the bed, head lolling to the side.
I didn’t fight, only flexed and tightened only the muscled needed to allow me to follow the direction of my falling body, to land on my pillow. The last reserves of my energy were used to bring my feet back up onto the bed.
The last reserve of my consciousness regretted the inability to pull the covers up over me.
It didn't matter though. An unconscious person wouldn't really miss a blanket. She’d be too busy enveloped by…nothing.
I shivered, the fear an icy web enveloping me slowly steadily. Then I clenched my fists around the edges of the tub, tightening the grip of my white-knuckled fingers. I looked down, cheeks throbbing, head sparking pain, and I knew then no matter what, I couldn’t fathom a life without my panther.
That inner creature defined me just as much as my human form did. As much as I’d run from my duties, and rebelled for so long against the use of my feline form, I’d grown to understand how important it was that I embrace who I was.
And how strange it was that the person who’d convinced me to accept myself had given that advice on the assumption that he knew who he was—and that I knew who he was.
Logan had been wrong on both counts.
And how strange it was that I found this moment, within the ragged black hole of fear that I’d lost her, to think about Logan’s love and support. Something I didn’t have right now. Something I didn’t have even though I desperately needed it.
Needed him to help bolster me against the rising tide of fear as I cast about for my panther and found only dark silence.
Still frantic, my mind spun as I forced myself to slow down, to breath and pull a shroud of calm around me which—though fashioned of a breathless desperation and a tattered calm—seemed to have helped. For the first time in a while, I wasn’t sure again how long—I sensed the low rumbling purr of my panther, the warm throb that told me my inner cat was still alive.
Though I could be certain of the physiology of a walker brain and how it functioned in terms of the connection between human mind and that of the creature that resided within me, some inner fear screamed out in warning—What if the seizure had severed the connection?
What if I can’t shift again?
I shook my head and focused on showering and dressing, finding fresh clothes inside my closet, everything neatly folded or hung meticulously alongside Logan’s clothing.
Heat seared my eyes, and I blinked it away, fueled by a blend of anger and loss and hurt, and ignored his clothes as I grabbed black tights, an oversized jumper and a pair of fluffy knee-high boots.
Soon, dressed in my comfy clothes, I left my room and walked slowly, carefully toward the landing, sending up a prayer to Ailuros that I’d make it down the stairs without falling on my face, or at least without breaking something.
Ailuros heard my prayer.
I didn’t fall. Neither did I break anything.
Thank you, goddess.
Chapter 16
A low hum of conversation drew me to the kitchen where seemingly the entire family was busy with dinner—the preparation, the production and the presentation of it.
Only Mom sat away from the mob, ensconced in a large rocking chair and covered in a large red-and-blue tartan blanket. She was leaning back, allowing the chair to rock slowly back and forth, though she did control the movements with the tip of one toe placed solidly on the floor.
Even in relaxation, Mom needed control.
Although, when it came to the rocking chair, I didn’t blame her; I still had nightmares from my spectacular altercation with the thing—yes, a bit of an exaggeration but given the circumstances, I figure I’m allowed.
And it seemed I wasn’t the only one who was taking that particular trip down memory lane. Dad looked up from the open door of the over where he’d been inspecting the crispness of an overly burdened thin-base pizza.
He had a smudge of flour on the edge of his nose, and a scattering of polenta on the left side of his head where he had the tendency to fidget with the strands when he was thinking too hard.
Or, from the looks of it, cooking too hard.
Now he laughed softly. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said, voice loud and brimming with amusement to match the mischievous look in his eyes as he glanced over at Mom—who’d turned to smile her welcome at me—then said, “Hey, kiddo. Want Mom to let you go for a spin in the rocker? Just make sure the chair doesn’t capture you again, okay?”
Mom sent him a ferocious glare, though she failed to hide the slight uptilt of her eyes that hinted at hidden laughter.
Dad, on the other hand, slammed the oven door shut, weaved his way between Lily—who was rolling out pizza dough and only took a quarter of second to throw me a sneaky wink with one generously floured eye—and Grams who stirred onions in a pan at the stove, her expression determined as though the onions needed to know who was boss.
Dad scurried back to the other side of the table and fiddled with something—the identity of which was hidden by Baz’s torso as he bent low and cut impossibly thin slices of jalapeños, anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes.
“Baz? I hope you didn’t use the same knife to cut the anchovies and the tomatoes,” I said, my tone containing a fair amount of a threat.
Baz lifted his head slightly, looking up at me from the tops of his eyes. “Eh?”
I sighed—fatigue hitting me hard within the space of a few seconds—but I allowed the expulsion of air to fake exaggerated weariness with the vamp’s lack of understanding. “Anchovies, Baz. Did you use the knife, contami
nated with that…” I made a face that I knew conveyed my disgust with striking clarity, “…stuff, and then cut the tomatoes? Or did you—like a normal person with a modicum of common sense and taste—use a clean knife?” I raised an eyebrow, discreetly reaching for the nearest barstool and sliding into it while still maintaining my stern glare.
Baz blinked, still motionless in his half-stooped position. “Huh? Oh. You don’t like anchovies?” he asked, staring at her now, as though she’d grown another head. Eyebrow still curved, I tilted my head in a what-do-think motion. To which Baz replied with an eye-roll, a snort and then, “Who in their right mind doesn’t like anchovies?”
I huffed. “Who in their right mind likes anchovies? It’s a fricking bunch of stinking rotten fish stuck in a jar of gloopy oil. That stuff wasn’t made to be eaten by modern people. It belongs back in the ancient times...where it came from.”
Baz chuckled, then bent back to his task, slicing the rest of the jalapeños before dropping them into a small white bowl. “I think you're confusing anchovies with rakfisk. Now that stuff will put hair on your chest and then some.”
I rolled my eyes. “Listen, kid. I know the difference between anchovies and rakfisk. I’m just sad to see that you’re tastebuds fall into the category of malfunctioning. I honestly thought you were better than that,” I said mournfully.
Lily choked on a laugh, Baz grunted then mumbled something I was sure he’d have gotten grounded for—though Dad seemed amused rather than stern and ready to serve him a plate of discipline—and Grams giggled. Then she snorted.
Yes, the immortal-fae-walker-secret-agent-daughter-of-a-queen succumbed to a fit of very-unroyal, decidedly un-adult giggle-snorts.
“Well, that’s just fabulous. Thanks, Grams.”
Grams composed herself long enough to say, “Whatever for, dear?” then spluttered into a laugh again, eyes sparkling as she waited for a reply, all fake innocent.
I waved a hand at her. “That thing you’re doing…the whole laughy-snorty-chokey thing. It just killed the argument.” I sighed, unable to hide my grin.
“Oh, I’m sorry dear,” Grams said, “I just couldn't help myself.”
With a snort inelegant enough to top Gram’s most recent performance, I said, “Not like it was all that funny. I don’t see why you’re like almost dying with amusement over an argument about stinking fish.”
Grams—now done with her onions which had probably been stared into submission faster than their usual cooking time—took her saucepan off the stove and set it beside the stove, in line with the rest of the toppings all prepared and waiting for the next pizza. Then she dusted her hands, wiped them on her apron and said, “Oh I wasn’t laughing about the anchovies,” glanced over at Mom in the rocker, then giggled some more.
“Ugh, not you too,” I groaned and was about to drop my forehead to the table when a hand appeared in from of my nose bearing a tall glass of orange liquid. Thick orange liquid from which wafted the sweet-sour scent of yogurt, cardamom and mango. “Oh wow! Lassi,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the glass and inhaling the aroma.
The kitchen was silent for a few moments as everyone paused to watch me sniff the mango-flavored drink. I straightened, glass in hand, staring from face to face as I frowned. “Now what?” I asked, my voice snapping at them.
Lily cleared her throat. “You just sniffed the lassi,” she said, holding back her laughter. “There’s this picture in my head right now…I can’t get it out.”
I shrugged, refusing to smile. “If all I have to do is get zapped a bunch of times and that gets me a lassi, no sweat. I guess I earned it. And earned the right to sniff anything I want.”
“Long as it’s anything and not anyone. I just got a new cologne, and I’ve heard it’s like pheromones in a bottle,” Baz said, expression dead serious.
I choked on my first sip of lassi. “Seriously Baz, you do realize you don’t need pheromone-laden cologne to have the ladies falling at your feet right?”
Baz scowled. “What are you going on about? I thought members of the fairer sex were quite entranced by a gent whose scent was attractive,” he said in his gentile British drawl.
I nodded. “You're quite right, Baz. A gent’s scent plays a key role in reeling in the birds. Only thing is, you don’t need anything artificial. You can have every woman—and guy, whatever floats your boat—you want. All with a mere crook of your finger.”
Baz stared at me, then looked over at Dad. “Are you sure that shock therapy she got didn’t scramble her brain? She sure sounds like it to me.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Lily said, chuckling. “You're a vamp, you dummy. What has your secret vampire mentor person been teaching you anyway?”
Baz straightened, looked from me to Lily and back again. Then, all he said was, Oh.”
Everyone laughed. I sipped my mango lassi. And then I sniffed my mango lassi.
And I smiled, feeling a lot less like I wanted the safety of the black nothingness.
Here, in the kitchen of my childhood, with Mom back and healing, and the family—blood and not—gathered around me, I was home.
And I felt the shroud around me grow a fraction warmer.
Maybe there was hope for me yet.
Chapter 17
Dinner was a rowdy affair, part of it spent listening to my reputation being dragged into the mud as Dad regaled us with a retelling of my altercation with the rocking chair, way back when I was eight and was made up of long skinny limbs and not much else.
I watched faces around the table and smiled as they heard how I’d demanded to be the first to sit in the rocker which had been made by my father in an attempt to find a way to channel his stress and calm himself. He should have taken up a different hobby, at least then I wouldn't have been embarrassed to death.
He’d put the chair together and announced it done, then called us around to have a look at his creation. I was impressed and excited and demanded to be the first to sit in the chair.
Bad idea.
The intrepid carpenter had forgotten to glue the rods for the backrest, and he’d made a couple of miscalculations during the cutting process. Long story short: I sat, I rocked, the chair crumpled a little.
I rocked more.
And I rocked faster.
Too fast.
The meager glued-together spots snapped, the pieces of the legs shuddered on the forward swing, and as I put my weight into the backswing, the rocker tilted a tiny bit too far back.
Okay, let’s be real. It wasn’t a tiny bit. More like a whole heckuva lot back.
Enough to tip over and deposit me against the backrest where my arms and legs ended up twisted among the narrow rails, entwined so badly that I was unable to extricate myself and had to wait for five hours before someone wondered what had happened to me.
Greer found me, intertwined with wooden rods, skin coated with sticky glue, unable to move. My sister laughed all the way to fetch help, returned with Grams who attempted a removal and failed for fear of breaking bones.
In the end, I spent another three hours waiting for Dad to return home, screaming my refusal to call in the fire department.
And I waited, finding that I possessed the unparalleled art of consuming a full meal while trapped between rods of wood. I discovered too that a girl's body can hurt in the strangest of places when braided together with a rocking chair. I also found that a girl’s body had the strangest ability to contain her bladder for hours while within the chair’s embrace, though that same bladder could lose all control all of three steps away from the toilet.
The story had spurred a round of most embarrassing stories as dinner progressed and I understood that nobody wanted to broach any subject that required the necessity of being serious or considering life-threatening ramifications.
I found I quite agreed with them, and I found too that I was able to take their good-natured teasing in my stride, and give as good as I got.
All in all, that dinner was one of the best meal
s I’d had in months.
And I discovered then that a girl was well capable of keeping an awful secret, even in the face of all that love.
Or perhaps because of it.
“I thought I’d find you out here.” Lily’s voice wafted toward me, and I sighed, shifting from the shadowed depths of the gazebo and into a buttery band of light the shone form the living room window into the little wooden rotunda.
I’d come to find a place to hide from the bustle of people, but I knew it wouldn't last. I was amazed it had taken Lily all of twenty minutes to find me.
She scurried inside and plopped herself down beside me. Despite the apparent uncaring flailing—which was normal for the lynx shifter—I hadn’t missed the way she’d been ultra careful not to bump me with her hip, or the way she’d curved her torso in order to avoid hitting her elbow or arm against mine.
Kid gloves from everyone.
Lily smirked, honey eyes glowing bronze in the golden light. “You do know you have easier ways to escape doing the dishes than head-butting a billion volts of lightning, don’t you?”
I sighed deeply. “Shit. Could you not have given me a heads up?” I gave her a glare filled with mock-reproach. “Could have saved all the parts of me that got fried. Repeatedly. What a waste,” I said with a long morose sigh.
“Aww.” Lily rubbed my back, holding back her laughter. “It can’t be all that bad. You still have your lady bits. And a whole lotta people—and I mean like aaallll the cops in the CPD who were on the extraction team—will happily verify the non-friedness of the…er…”
Lily made a swooping figure eight motion with her hands in front of my chest, and I swatted her palms away. “They’re called boobs, you ninny. And quit the whole wax-on wax-off action before you really do injure the non-fried parts of me.”
Lily snorted and said, “Girls,” with a very straight face.”