Come To Me (Owned Book 3)

by Gebhard, Mary Catherine

  Soon the entire place was engulfed in flames, the accelerant I’d used doing the job. For an instant I balked at the irony. Only months before I’d nearly been by felled flames, and now there I was returning the same kind of punishment. It wasn’t meant to be vengeance or some kind of biblical eye-for-an-eye, I was simply covering my footsteps. The easiest way to erase something is to burn it.

  Char filled my nostrils and I turned, unwilling to watch the world burn. Still, I could feel it even with my back to the building. The night was hotter. Bits and pieces of ash and cinder floated in the air like hellish dandelion wisps. A part of me wanted to turn and look back, but I stayed my course, the fire on my neck like a dragon’s breath.

  I shimmied down the fire escape, landing on the ground in seconds. Sirens were already in the air so I knew I needed to get the fuck out of Dodge, quickly. I wouldn’t bother with the car, it was stolen after all. It would stay on the side of the road, maybe to eventually meet again with its owner, but most likely to meet with another thief. With GEM, Alice, and Seven officially out of my afterlife I would—

  “Vic Wall.”

  I spun around at the voice. Soot covered her cheeks and her pantsuit was burned and mangled, but she looked absolutely stoic. Alice leaned against the brick wall, as if she had just gone for a walk and not escaped a burning death.

  “You really are a fucking cockroach.” I spat, unable to withhold the hate I had for her any more. Alice shrugged herself off the wall.

  “I got out of there quickly…maybe not quick enough.” She glanced down at her wrist, and I could see the beginnings of blisters. “I knew Dom couldn’t be behind this.” Her eyes darted to mine, sharp, as if knowing that was some kind of victory.

  “But you shot him in the head anyway,” I bit out.

  Alice laughed scornfully. “It’s not like the world will mourn the loss of that moron.”

  I let my bitterness, my resentments, and my hate drain from my body. If there was anything Alice hated, it was impassivity. She couldn’t stand the idea that anyone would look at her with apathy, that there was someone out there unaffected by her.

  I shrugged. “Just like they won’t mourn the loss of you.” Her face transformed and the mask she wore fell. Alice lunged at me and I stepped aside, but not before her nails grazed the skin on my neck. She screamed at me, the sound like a banshee. It was the first time I’d ever seen her come undone.

  It would be the last.

  “You ruined everything,” she yelled, grasping at my shirt. “All for what? Some cunt?”

  Maybe it was because it was the sixth day in that muggy, sepia colored motel room, or maybe it was because that fucking bastard was right, something was stronger than love: hate. When Seven gave me the keys to that stolen car, I took them. Still, I had to get my last word in.

  “Killing Alice isn’t going to end GEM’s wetwork division. Where one head’s severed another will grow.” Seven puffed his cigar in response. “But you know that,” I pressed. “Who do you have in mind to put in the position?”

  “Keep asking questions like that and you’ll really end up a dead man, Vic.” Pressing the round nub out on the bed, he signaled an end to our conversation.

  “I didn’t ruin anything that wasn’t already razed,” I said, crushing the memory and throwing her off me. She staggered, falling back into the shadows. There was a part of me that wanted to prolong it, to say a few words. But I think when divorcing lasts longer than the marriage, you’ve already said enough.

  Alice and I had gotten a divorce, but that wasn’t what we’d needed. Our marriage needed a funeral. We’d been dancing around death since the day we’d said “I do.”

  I pulled out my SIG and aimed it at her head. Behind her the fire lit up the sky, just like I’d said it would—only for a moment though, because the smoke trailed after, darker than night. Alice leapt at me and I pulled the trigger, watching with no satisfaction as it lodged into her skull.

  Our dance ended the day Lenny came into my life, but now the music had finally stopped.

  Lenny slept soundly in Grace’s bed. In all the years we’d been together, I’d never seen her sleep through the night. Now that I was gone, she was sleeping soundly. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Her hair fell across her face like a crimson curtain. I reached down and moved it away to get a better look at her pale cheeks. Blood still covered my fingers from Alice’s death. I should have gone somewhere—anywhere else—besides Lenny’s bed that night, but I had to see her.

  She stirred slightly and moved to the other side of the bed. I folded my arms, wishing I could crawl in with her, wishing more than anything I could hold her to me. I felt like Orpheus climbing my way out of hell with Eurydice at my back. I knew she was there with every sense of my being, but if I did anything to try and get her, she would disappear forever.

  It was maddening. I was starting to wonder why I hadn’t just let myself die in the fire.

  Lenny stirred again, kicking up the sheets and exposing one long, moon colored leg. I examined it from the arch in her foot, to the arch in her knee, to where it connected at her hip. Everything about Lenny was poetry. It was almost as if she was designed by Da Vinci.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, watching to make sure her sleep didn’t waver. Allowing myself liberties I shouldn’t have, I reached my finger out and traced the lines of her leg. Her skin was just as smooth as I remembered, singing in harmony against the pad of my finger. It was just a little touch, but to me it was like giving water to a dying man.

  I began to wonder if the myth was false. Perhaps I could turn around, grab Lenny, and rush us out of hell before Hades noticed. I snaked my finger higher, pushing the nightshirt past her hips so I could see the curve of her waist. It felt like I was being pulled apart not crawling in there with her. I pressed my palms into the mattress, daring to crawl closer…but it was too close.

  The door flung open, streaming pale yellow light. “Vic? Vic, is that you?” I pulled Lenny’s nightgown back down, prepared to make the descent out of hell alone.

  “What happened to you?” Grace asked, reaching a hand out to me. I looked down at my body, not sure how to answer that question. I felt like I’d gone to hell and crawled back out; I was sure I looked it too. I was covered in blood, and not all of it was mine.

  Grace patiently waited for an answer. It was the only question she’d asked since finding me gawking at Lenny. Even then, she’d waited to ask it. She brewed coffee, she pulled out a chair for me, she practically threw a fucking blanket and swaddled me. Grace waited.

  There hadn’t been any shock in her when she found me. In fact, she’d regarded me with disappointment. It was almost as if she expected it, which might sound insane, but if you’d had the life Grace had, the parents we’d gotten stuck with, it seemed insane not to expect it.

  Not the coming back from the dead part, the disappointing family member part.

  I sucked down the coffee, looking around the studio apartment. It was small, but that didn’t seem to matter. There were little pieces of Eli and Grace littered about, and there were pictures everywhere: Eli and Grace at the beach, Eli and Grace at Disneyland, Eli and Grace kissing in front of a wall, Eli and Grace kissing on the very chair I sat in.

  “Where is Eli?” I asked, noting his absence in the small studio apartment. Grace blinked, her expression slowly turning from patience to rage.

  “Where is Eli?” Grace repeated my words, fury dripping from her tongue. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?” As if the way her pale cheeks reddened wasn’t enough of an indicator, Grace never swore, so I knew she was angry. From behind the slab of granite that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house, I shrugged.

  “It’s an honest question.”

  Grace scoffed, turning from me to the cabinets. “Probably the only honest thing about you.”

  “I guess I had that coming.” I looked into my coffee. It was almost empty and I could nearly see the bottom of the w
hite porcelain cup.

  “What the hell, Vic?” Grace demanded, slamming something down on the counter. I raised my brow at the tiny box of Band-Aids, but reached in and took one still.

  “It’s a long story,” I explained as I placed a small Band-Aid over one of my cuts. It was cartoon themed.

  “Well, we have all night—unless you have to be gone before sunrise.”

  Ignoring her quip, I stared at the closed door that separated Lenny from us. “I can’t talk here.”

  Following my gaze, Grace said, “She thinks she’s the reason you’re dead.”

  “How could she possibly think that?” It wasn’t a question I expected an answer to—I said it more to myself—but Grace was the kind of person who took things at face value; call it a quirk. She sat down next to me and poured the box of Band-Aids out, organizing them by size as she prepared to explain. Holding one up, she looked to me.

  “Pick a reason.” Grace slapped a Band-Aid on my neck. “She blames herself for everything. She blames herself for makin’ you leave the job and for them comin’ after you, and she blames herself for takin’ your will to live.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. Lenny had taken plenty of things from me. She’d taken a few shirts, she’d taken my sanity some nights, and she’d taken my heart. My will to live was not among those things.

  “Lenny saved me,” I said, voice low. Looking away, I focused my attention on the small slice of black between the door and the carpet that separated us from Lenny. Most people who worked for GEM like I did didn’t live to see their thirtieth birthday. I’d already passed that point and was living on borrowed time when I met her. Lenny had come into my life like sunshine on a rainy day, like light in a cave. Without her I would have disappeared into a black hole.

  Grace laughed, but the sound was hollow. Sticking a Band-Aid on my wrist, she said, “Maybe you should have stuck ’round to tell her that. She’s collapsin’ without you. She sees a psychiatrist every week and a therapist every day.” I thought back to that weird building I’d seen her entering. It was starting to make sense.

  “So she’s on meds again?” I asked. I knew she was getting meds for the squirrelly kid, but not for herself.

  “Yes,” Grace said.

  “Good.” I finished the dregs of the coffee, nodding to myself.

  “You need to tell Lennox you’re alive.”

  “You said yourself she’s seeing a psychiatrist. She’s getting help. She’s doing better.”

  “Did you listen to a word I said? She blames herself.”

  “She’s sleeping through the night. She’s on meds.” She wasn’t doing those things when I was around, I added in my head.

  “You’re an idiot, Vic.”

  “Well don’t sugarcoat it.”

  “I won’t. So what if she’s goin’ to work and sleepin’? That’s not livin’. She’s dead in her life—more dead than you, apparently.”

  I stood to leave, but a Band-Aid on my finger stuck to the counter. I frowned, slowly unpeeling it until I was free. I must have been covered in at least twenty Band-Aids at that point. Still bloody as fuck, but now a hundred little cartoon Band-Aids were stuck to my skin.

  Children would definitely run screaming.

  Pushing out from the counter, I walked past Grace’s disapproving gaze. Arms folded, even in her pajamas she had the ability to call my regrets to attention. I walked by them on my way to the door. My hand was on the knob when Grace pressed,

  “She once told me that you were the only one who loved all of her. That you loved without thought to your wellbeing, but maybe she had it wrong. Maybe you loved without thought to her wellbeing.”

  I kept my back to Grace, letting silence be my answer.

  Feeling like an ass, I stared at the door. I could feel Grace’s disapproval on my back like a hot sun. Her sighs, her little ticks of disapproval, didn’t go unnoticed. Far from it. Still, I didn’t turn around. Instead, I turned the knob. Just as I was about to open the door, Eli burst through like something out of a fifties TV show.

  “Honey I’m home! Sorry about all the late nights. This new professor is really—” His eyes landed on me and stopped dead. “Zombie!” Eli yelled, pointing. “Zombie!” he said again, falling against the door he’d just come through. I raised my brow and looked at Grace, but she was already walking toward him.

  “It’s not a zombie, it’s Vic.”

  “Vic is dead!” Eli shouted, looking around Grace’s slight frame and at me. I looked down at my body again. I was still covered in blood and looked like death; I was supposed to be dead. I could see where Eli was coming from.

  “Keep your voice down,” Grace said. Turning to me, she explained. “We’ve been watchin’ a lot of The Walkin’ Dead recently.” She turned back to Eli. “Don’t make it true!”

  “Well what the fuck?”

  “Don’t you cuss at me!”

  “The dead has shown up in my goddamn living room; I will cuss if the situation permits it, Bug!” Shrugging, Grace took her hands off Eli and allowed him entry. I wasn’t sure what to say. Hey, I’m not a Zombie, but I’m not alive didn’t sound too great.

  We all stood in awkward limbo. No one sat down, but we didn’t make ourselves comfortable either.

  “Well, is someone gonna say somethin’?” Eli asked.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “The hell you should,” Eli said.

  “Look, I came here to see Lenny,” I explained. “I’m not here to start playing charades and acting like family again. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Maybe not,” Grace said. “But you did, and you have to face that. Running away ain’t gonna solve nothing.”

  “I’m not running,” I snarled. I’d crawled out of the grave to make sure everyone I loved lived a peaceful life. That wasn’t running. Maybe it wasn’t good. Maybe it wasn’t honorable. But it sure as fuck wasn’t running.

  “Sure looks like it,” Eli said under his breath.

  “Mind your own business,” I growled.

  “I will mind my business when said business isn’t showin’ up bloody and lookin’ like death in my own goddamn living room.” Eli stepped to me, jaw clenched. He was a few inches taller, but that didn’t make him any meaner than the demons I’d just faced. I tightened my fists, meeting his stare eye for eye.

  And the minute I looked into his eyes, my steam ran out. He was protecting his home, protecting Lenny even. Like the soldiers who’d died first, he had honor. It felt odd staring into the eyes of someone with honor. For the past few years I’d been looking into nothing, staring down men and women whose gaze reflected the abyss they lived and reveled in.

  Shaking my head, I left, muffling their protestations with the door.

  Lenny sat at the café we’d eaten at so many times before, and I sat a few tables over, the shadows my constant friends. A day later, Grace’s words still played in my head like a stuck vinyl. Was I running away? Was I a coward? Maybe. I wasn’t sure if that changed a damn thing. We were outside, but Lenny didn’t look at the sunset. Instead she worked on spreadsheets while sipping at a coffee. She didn’t even notice as a man approached her.

  He looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him. He had a weak chin, brown eyes, and a calculating gaze. I sat up from my perch in the shadows.

  “Do you remember me?” The man asked the question, but he wasn’t looking for an answer. I could see by the look on his face he only wanted one thing: to make Lenny squirm.

  Lenny crinkled her brow, as if trying to search through her mind. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  “A couple of years ago you took me home and then told me to fuck off.” At his words the memory hit me. It was before Lenny and I became us, back when I was trying to fight our magnetism. She brought home the fucker and I remembered watching him paw at her with unskilled hands.

  I hadn’t known she’d told him to fuck off, though. I’d thought she’d taken him to bed. Clearly, he’d held on to that rejection like a dog d
oes a bone.

  Lenny scooted back a bit in her chair, uneasy. “I’m sorry…”

  “You’re all alone now. Want to pick up where we left off?” He didn’t smile as he made the offer.

  “I was actually just about to go meet a friend.” Lenny stood up. Shuffling the papers into her hands, she brushed past him. A look of fury flashed across his face. Quick as lightning, it was gone, and just like lightning, I could see the harm it intended to do.

  I made sure to turn my face into my palm when she walked by me. Her stride was so quick that she blew up my napkin. It fluttered to the floor, kissing her heel as she walked out of the café. Seconds later the man crushed it to the concrete as he followed her out. Leaving a few twenties for the bill, I joined them.

  Lenny turned the corner, oblivious to the man trailing right behind her. I noticed she purposefully avoided our old street. I’d only walked by it a few times myself. The ashes had been dusted away, the debris swept. Now it was just an empty lot.

  I never did take good care of the building the way I should have. It was an antique, an historic building dating back to the eighteen hundreds. I’d purchased it because it was cheap and afforded me a good cover. I might not have been the best landlord, but I kept rent low. Now the lot would undoubtedly be purchased by a developer and the units sold for millions.

  It was California, after all.

  Because Lenny purposefully avoided our street, she turned down all types of alleys as she made her way back to Grace’s. She picked up her pace and so did the asshole from the café. I lost them when Lenny crossed the street and I missed the light. As much as I wanted to try my luck at playing Frogger with the cars, it was rush hour, so it made more sense to wait.

  The light turned red and I sprinted. I looked left and right, trying to see if I could spot her bright red hair. The sun had dropped beneath the waters and it was full dark. A dusky, cobalt color now blanketed the sky, but her hair always shone no matter the time of day.