by Lena Fox
He rocked backward in his chair, his eyes narrowed down to slits. “That ain’t nice, Kitty. You could get hurt playing like that.” His voice lost some of its oily charm, a hint of a rougher accent creeping in as his composure slipped.
I saw his hand just then. He had a new ring. Black tarnished silver and a bloody tear-drop shaped ruby twinkling malevolently.
I blinked. Could it really be real? And did Harvey really deserve it? If the legend was true, then he did. Maybe he did a lot worse than sending porn stars to rough games. God knows what fates he’s been sending girls to. Or could its appearance here have something to do with Owen?
I almost considered warning Harvey, but knew I’d just sound crazy even if I tried. It made me pause though, and he started talking again as though I really cared what he had to say.
“Kitty, Kitty. It’s all water under the bridge anyway. You’re here, you’re fine, and I think I got a part for you,” he said, leaning back in his chair so hard it creaked. He must have decided we were still friends after all. Of course he believed I was there to see if he had any other work for me. He really thought I still needed him. His arms lifted to reveal sweat stains under his pits. Large yellow tinted patches that made me curl my nose. Had I ever really been so naïve as to think this guy had my best interests at heart? He shuffled through some of his papers and started telling me about some minor gig, the same D-list crap he’d always given me. I wasn’t listening anymore.
“I’m getting a new agent, Harvey,” I said and walked out the door. “Enjoy your evening.”
The door closed behind me, cutting off his retort and I leaned against it. My heart was pounding and a goofy grin creased my face. It had been an odd day, to say the least. I had left my prison, and left my home and roommates. And now Harvey was dealt with.
I dusted my hands and headed out into the twilight. It felt like starting over, a fresh new try at life. Owen might not have bled me dry, but he had killed the old me. I was still getting to know the new one. I think I liked her. As I was getting into my car I saw a thick clot of shadows gathering around the doorway to Harvey’s office. I stared at them in horror, remorse filling me. Then I cranked my engine. Harvey would face the ones he hurt, as we all do eventually. I had not brought that on him, he had done it to himself. I tried not to think about what those shadows stood for or what they might be.
It only took a week for me to make the decision to go to Owen’s club and try to see him. The façade was boarded up, under renovations. I could see the large chrome letters reading “Dark Raine” being taken down, and a new neon sign going up. A banner pasted across the front of the boarding said, “Under New Management. Re-Opening Soon.”
I went into full on stalker mode. I hunted down any information about Owen Raine I could find online. There were a few basic entries about his business life, and one new article which did little more than say that the reclusive businessman had recently become more reclusive. There was nothing in public records saying what property he owned. It was as if he hardly existed at all, just a ghost passing through. I spent a whole weekend pouring through the vast archives of the internet, filing away any snippet I could find. And I eventually found more. I dug farther and farther back, collecting scans of old articles, obituaries, anything where his name was mentioned. There were small notices from old newspapers announcing the company being passed on to a ‘son’ or other male heir, an obituary for the old man saying that he had become a hermit after passing on the company and had died quietly in the company of his only family in their home. Owen, trading in one identity for another, father to son, as he lived through the centuries. It wasn’t much to go on, but I obsessed over every scrap. Even though I was the only one who used my computer, I hid it all in a folder called ‘whatever’ and pretended it didn’t exist unless I was putting something in it.
I told myself to get over it, to forget him, move on, and consider myself lucky he was gone. But I couldn’t. God, I missed him so much I thought my chest could implode. Every night as sunset fell I waited for him, expecting him to walk into my life again. Maybe I just needed counseling, but it felt like more than that. Besides, what would I say? Hi, my name’s Kitty, I fell in love with a vampire that kept be prisoner because he loved the taste of my blood? Fat chance. I hadn’t known love before, but if this isn’t what it feels like, I don’t know what it would. Nights stretched long and lonely, and I was having trouble sleeping. I took to swimming in the pool of my new complex. It kept me fit at least, even if it didn’t keep the dark circles at bay. I missed the smell of roses and jasmine.
I drove by Owen’s house every day. It was always empty and abandoned. It had begun to take on a sort of derelict appearance by the time I saw a man outside of it. I pulled into the drive, eager to find out what was going on and he came to meet me, his eyes taking in my crappy car with something like dismay.
“Hey there, Walter Longbow,” he said, reaching out a friendly hand.
“Kitty French.”
“Are you here for the house sale?”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware it was on sale.”
“Oh well, it still is a private listing,” he hastened to add, his face saying he doubted I was there to buy.
The house was being sold. Another tie to Owen severed. “I was actually here to see Owen.”
“You know Mister Raine?”
“Sort of. I don’t suppose you know where I could find him?”
Walter shook his head and raised an eyebrow skeptically. “I wouldn’t be able to share his private address, even if I could.”
I tried to laugh casually and not seem like a stalker. “Oh no, I didn’t mean like that. I meant right now, like, if he were just around the back or something.”
“No. I only really deal with Mister Raine by email. I handle a few of his properties for him, and to be honest, I was surprised he decided to sell this one. It’s been in his family a long time.” Walt loosened up. “You know Mister Raine’s great-grandfather built this house in the nineteen twenties. He was a heavy player during the prohibition, then one day he just retired. He retreated to this house and shunned everyone. Nobody knew why.”
Because he was not aging would have been my guess to why he’d retreated from the world. Because the isolation suited him. Because he had grown weary of trying to fit into a world in which he did not feel he belonged. I said none of those things. I could only guess, and know that all of them were partly true. And there were probably a dozen other reasons I couldn’t fathom.
“Anyway he left it to his son, who left it to his son, not that they ever came here except on the rarest of occasions. The house was only used a few months of every year which seems a shame given it’s so lovely. But Mister Raine has properties all over the country, and abroad. This one was renovated just last year. It was a bit in need of it, but he took care to make sure the original character of the place remained. I understand he did much of the work himself, and he takes as much pride in his work as the man who built it.”
He is the man who built it, and he could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world.
I stared at the mansion, using it as a distraction while I fought to hold back tears. It was lovely in a stark and forbidding way. I wondered, briefly, if the tennis court was still stained where Loretta had fallen. I had never dared look down to see what he had done with it. I tried my best not to think about it at all really. “It really is an amazing house.”
Walt touched one hand to his too-perfect-to-be-anything-other-than-fake hair. “Since you’re here, would you like to look at the inside of the home?” He was putting on his best realtor face. It was habit for him, just like it was habit for me to pretend that Owen didn’t exist, despite the fact that I looked for him in every brown haired stranger.
“I’ve seen it. I lived here for a short time.”
Walt perked up, leaning toward me conspiratorially. “Is it really haunted like they say?”
“Not anymore,” I said and climbed back into my car. I
gave the house one last look because I knew I would never come back. There was no longer any need to. All hopes I had that Owen would return had been dashed by a real estate agent in a toupee and off-the-rack suit. Dreams get killed by the most mundane of things sometimes.
Chapter Fourteen
Six months later I was walking in a farmer’s market, basking in the smell of flowers and freshly baked bread and a last few moments of anonymity.
It had been a hell of a time for me in many ways both good and bad. I had marched into the office of John Kurtz, the best agent around, darting past his security and secretary like a baby mama looking to score some DNA. I made it into his office where he was talking with a well-known director.
I looked at both of them and said, “I’m Kaitlyn French. I’m your newest client. You may not remember taking me on, because you haven’t yet. But I know you will.”
John had laughed out loud. The intense little man sitting in the chair across John’s rosewood desk had asked me to stand in the bright sunlight coming from the windows. I had and he had gotten very close to my face, surveying it like it was a work of art and he was looking for minute cracks. Then he handed me a script and asked me to read a few lines with him.
I did. The part called for me to be angry and I was plenty that. It called for me to be hurting and I damn sure was. It was a role made for me. When I’d finished reading the few lines he’d asked for, I was shaking from adrenaline and emotion. The looks they gave me had been cautious, like they weren’t sure if I was crazy or not. So I pushed all my feelings into a little box and put on my best, winning actress smile. The director handed me his card. John shook my hand and told his secretary to get the necessary paperwork.
The very next day I was screen testing for that role. They wanted to see how I looked on film and lo and behold I got the part. It was a supporting role, but a major one, in a major film. It would be released in cinemas worldwide tomorrow.
Filming had been exhausting. Because of the time crunch, I had been on set pretty much non-stop. In the beginning of the movie I had just played a bitchy goth girl. Easy enough. It was the end that had been hard, playing too close a parallel to my real life. The screenplay had my character falling in love, as it turned out, with the villain of the story. She disappeared for half the movie, and when the main female and male leads found her again, she’d been used and abused, imprisoned and driven insane so that she believed she was still in love with the man who had hurt her. The director praised the complexity I brought to the role, the character’s struggle to know what she really wanted or needed. Yeah, I wonder where I pulled that from?
It had only taken a few takes to get it down, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could do it again without breaking apart completely in front of the whole cast and crew.
I’d kept to myself for a few weeks after filming ended but now I was finally starting to feel better. I was starting to feel more myself and damn if I wasn’t excited for the premier. That and John had me working hard. The work kept me from dwelling on my past too long. From dwelling on Owen, and the hole he’d left in me.
Things were good. I had a brand new agent, one of the best who was determined to push me to new heights. I had just finished filming four television appearances and John was already negotiating my role in three new films. More than that, I liked him. He seemed like a genuinely good man. He’d called me up once or twice once filming was over, asking how I was doing and checking if I was ready for more work. I never had to ask, as long as I said I could take it he always had work for me. Frankly, I wasn’t turning down anything at this point. I wanted to the work, I wanted to be busy. I was living more comfortably than I had in a long time. I still hadn’t told my parents that I thought I was going somewhere. I didn’t want them to say ‘I told you so’ if I failed. Still, I was making the effort to call them, and to mend some of the relationships I’d ruined when I left home.
Harvey, on the other hand, was found dead in his office. The coroner ruled it a massive heart attack. I don’t know if the ring was buried with him or not and it is not a question I ask myself. Some things you can’t explain or find logical little boxes for. Some things you don’t want to have to answer. Or answer for or to. Life was mostly normal though. I still jumped at shadows, but I hadn’t seen anything supernatural since my release. I sometimes felt like I was being followed, particularly at night. I sometimes thought I saw people who looked like they didn’t belong in this world but to be honest it’s hard to tell in Hollywood. I don’t ever try to get close enough to look in their eyes. I’d started to see all kinds of things in the dark, now that I knew vampires were real. That meant anything was possible. It was enough to make me jumpy after dusk, and sometimes kept me awake at night. Not that I could sleep anyway. I was always too busy waiting for the night to bring Owen back to me.
I still have a scar on my throat.
“Strawberry?”
The single word knocked me from my reverie. I turned back to see a grocer holding up a tray of strawberries to sample. “Try one. Best you’ve ever tasted. Get two punnets for the price of one.”
The man standing in the stall held out the plump and juicy fruit. I stared at it, my heart aching. He called again to another passerby and my eyes closed, remembering the way that word had fallen from Owen’s lips.
Had anything ever been as sweet as that? In all that had changed in my life, in all the good I’d found, I still missed him. My eyes opened to see the stallholder looking at me carefully. He held out the sun-warmed fruit. “Here, try it.”
I placed the ripened berry between my lips. It broke open between my teeth. Juice spilled across my tongue, filled my mouth and tears broke from my eyes. I turned away to hide them.
“It’s so sweet.” I licked the juice from my lips, savoring the flavor.
I waved the stallholder away. I wasn’t going to buy from him, not today. Maybe tomorrow I’d be back and pick up enough to make something divine. Or perhaps I’d just eat them as they were while I read a book in the bay window.
Truth was though, I just couldn’t eat strawberries anymore without crying my eyes out, wishing Owen would come back to me.
I turned my back quickly so I could wipe my eyes, and behind me I caught sight of a familiar face, staring at me through the aisle between stalls. My heart stuttered to a standstill.
I’d had false sightings too many times before. Owen haunted my dreams and my waking life, too. I thought I saw him everywhere but when I chased him down it would be some perfectly ordinary guy looking back at me. One of them had asked me out, one had given me a look that said I was nuts, and one had been so startled he had dropped his bag of groceries.
The man turned away in an instant and started heading off through the market. It was broad daylight. I knew it could not be him, but I had to follow him anyway.
His hair was a lighter shade than I remembered Owen’s being, and shorter. He was muscular without being bulky and moved with a lithe grace. It was the way he moved that inflamed a tiny bit of hope in me and impossible desire. Owen had always moved with such precision. He was never clumsy or out of sorts. The set of his shoulders and length of his strides just seemed familiar. He wore a grey shirt rolled up to the elbows that showed his tanned arms off to perfection. Tanned? It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. There was no forgetting the pallor of Owen’s skin.
I almost left it at that, when the man flicked his face around quickly to check behind him, meeting my gaze.
It was him. My heart clenched like a fist then bloomed back open. My head spun. It was him. There was no mistaking it, no mistaking those lips or high angles of his cheeks. Even from a distance I could see the blue of his eyes. I remembered how they had faded away from black to periwinkle. It was him, of that there was absolutely no doubt. He was as magnificent a man as...
He was human. That thought hit me and staggered me. That was what his grabbing his chest had been all about, his heart had begun to beat again for the first time in ce
nturies! My blood had restored him to his human form and what had I gotten in return for that? Two grand, a new wardrobe and abandoned like a one night stand? I have lousy taste in guys. I should have known he would be no better than the rest of them. Anger suddenly ripped through my heart. It didn’t override my desire for him, it just made me want to smack him as much as I wanted to kiss him. And I really wanted to kiss him.
Why was he here? It had looked as if he had been following me but as soon as I spotted him he had turned away. Had he been keeping tabs on me? Was it possible he missed me as much as I missed him? I wasn’t sure it was possible.
He was walking away faster than before, his arms swinging by his side. I could not hesitate because if I did I would lose sight of him, perhaps forever.
I pushed through the crowd, throwing apologies over my shoulder to those I bumped. He crossed the hot parking lot and I ran after him, my heart beating so hard and fast I was sure I was going to simply topple to the ground. I wet my lips with my tongue and called out.
“Owen.”
He kept walking. My heart plummeted. I caught up and grabbed his arm. He swung around to look at me, his face carefully blank and his eyes inscrutable. I may have been an actress, but he had always been able to mask his emotions so well. I faltered a little, but I knew it was him. Unless he had some progeny in the world he’d never told me about that was his spitting image in human form...