by Alice Bello
Chapter 12
LUCY sat in the dim light that shone from the small wall lamp over the stove. It had red roosters on its shade. Her coffee had turned cold long ago, yet she still held the cup in her hand. Her arm lay limply against the waxy plastic of the tablecloth covering her grandmother’s kitchen table. Too many things drifted and raced and throbbed in her head. Each thought sizzled with its own heat, pulled at her with its own weight.
There was the kiss: the feel, the taste and scent of that memory, when Gabriel had held her and kissed her in front of his entire family. It hadn’t felt like just part of the act, the game. But it was connected to the little spectacle in the alley. How she’d almost been killed. How his real lady love had nearly strangled her to death. Maybe she was even going to tear her throat out? That’s what vampires did, wasn’t it?
And Lucy couldn’t blame her. She wasn’t really anything to Gabriel, not anything real, and she felt jealousy flaring hot and unwanted in her soul, in her heart—all for a man she really didn’t know. No, she couldn’t blame the vampire for her reaction.
She actually smelt Lucy on Gabriel, and the other way around—and she’d been able to smell their want, their lust for each other.
Creepy!
Lucy shook her head, sitting there in the dim warmth of the kitchen. She felt so safe in her grandmother’s kitchen. She wanted her to be there with her, more than anything, so she could tell her about the crazy, horrific things that had been happening to her. But she couldn’t.
For one thing how could she tell her sainted grandmother there were such things as werewolves and vampires… and who knew what else?
Gram would lock me up for sure.
But then a really terrifying thought crossed Lucy’s mind, sending a chill up her spine and making her stomach sink to her buttery Italian leather heels: I’d have to tell her that the werewolf was my fiancé…
Hell no! Lucy would rather face a battalion of love scorned vampires than have to tell her grandmother that she had been engaged for the last month… and hiding it, and lying about it… and that she was being paid to do so.
Nope. Gram would kill me for sure. Repeatedly.
She finally got up and poured the cold coffee out into the sink, washed the mug and set it on the drain-board to dry. She dried her hands on a dishtowel and then noticed she was still wearing the red silk dress. There was amazingly little damage from her violent encounter with the vampire. A smudge here, a beveling in the threading there, but overall the dress could be mended, and after dry cleaning it would be as good as new. But did she really want to wear it again? It had seemed so beautiful and romantic looking, and she’d felt so wonderful in it, like she was in a chic, modern-day fairytale. But after what had happened to her while she was wearing it, she wasn’t so sure anymore—the monsters in the fairytale being real made the tale less alluring.
She had to smile though. This has to be the most expensive dress anyone’s ever washed dishes in.