by A. L. Tyler
I didn’t answer. I had tried putting it up. I had tried leaving it down. I had it pulled back into a ponytail, but quickly decided that it made my head look small and bald, so I let it back down again.
I came out of the bathroom, and checked the clock. I still had fifteen minutes.
“Wear a low-cut shirt,” Charlie teased. “He won’t even bother looking at your hair.”
“Unhelpful,” I replied.
I finally slipped out of the apartment and thirty feet down the sidewalk to the sandwich place. I saw Vince waiting for me at a table by the window as I approached, and gave a little wave.
We ordered our food, and he paid, and made a comment about my hair. I thanked him for the compliment and asked about his mother, and he said that she was happy to hear from him. We sat down and ate our food, and talked about the classes that we had signed up for, and pretended that nothing had happened. He mentioned that he might see about switching his schedule in the first two weeks to more closely match mine, just in case he had to miss any lectures. I said that would be great, because he took better notes than I did anyway.
We skirted the issue the whole meal, and when we were done eating, we went back to the apartment. Charlie blinked at me through narrow eyes, still lounging across my couch, and Vince asked me if I wanted to come downstairs to watch a movie.
His television was bigger, and his couch was less occupied.
So that was what we did.
We didn’t cuddle. We didn’t even touch. I kept waiting for him to make a move, but I guess we were both too worn out after the week we’d had. I got a little freaked out by his sallow cheeks every time I looked over at him because he looked seriously ill. It was a good movie, anyway.
I said goodbye and goodnight as the credits rolled, then went upstairs to get ready for bed.
I cried out of relief in the shower. I didn’t know how much of it he was faking—probably a lot—but the fact that he even had the will and the energy to fake it was a good sign. It was odd, because even though I’d had Lyssa and Gates with me, I had felt alone in my dilemma up until now. Charlie gave me some support, but after having glimpsed what his life as a demon was like, it was hard for me to imagine that he could really feel the same toward me.
Vince had seen me cry that day, and even though he was sick, tired, and facing an uncertain future, he had made me laugh. He had taken me out to dinner, and he had made me feel normal.
I was never going to forget what he had done for me, just for having courage in that one moment. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I might have a chance at living my life.
~~~~~~~~~
The next day Vince left for classes early. It was a little odd, rolling over in the morning to find him creeping past my bed and trying not to wake me. I was forced to admit that I might need to ask Charlie to move the door hatch into the living room, even if we would have to move the furniture to accommodate it.
I had picked my schedule to group my classes in the afternoon so that I could work in the morning, but with Charlie hiring on extra help for the greenhouse, it really wasn’t necessary anymore. I had no doubt that I would still be pulling a few hours at the greenhouse to care for certain plants and collect needed spell items. Today, I was sleeping in.
I had one class overlapping with Vince’s on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and one that overlapped on Tuesday and Thursday. If he moved his classes, we would have more together.
Around eleven I set off toward my Intro to Women’s Literature class, and then I had two astronomy classes that ran from one to three in the afternoon—the first of which was shared with Vince. I had a break between three and four, and then a Japanese literature class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had an intro to computer science class at four with Vince, and that was followed by a late astronomy lab at seven.
I found astronomy interesting, but I didn’t really have an interest in becoming a career astronomer because I didn’t think there were many job opportunities. I had always loved books, but I felt the same about becoming an English or literature major. I reflected mournfully that I hadn’t even spent any time in the reading nook that Charlie had made for me yet.
Computer Science was really the only class I was taking that I saw a practical use in, but the others filled the college’s requirements for humanities and science, so I felt good about the schedule I had put together.
The walk across campus was nice, and my women’s literature class was uneventful. The changing fall leaves were a nice distraction from my thoughts, but I kept waiting for something awful to happen. I didn’t know what, exactly, but the thought that it had been a week since Walter and Stark had dropped Vince on my doorstep weighed heavily on my mind. I hadn’t heard from them since, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Maybe Vince had been a warning to stay away, and Walter felt that he had done his piece unless I tried to start something. I hadn’t done anything to openly threaten him, even if he did have certain assumptions, which were probably normally correct, about people who kept the company of demons.
Maybe Vince had only been the beginning, and I feared that was much more likely. As Charlie said, escalating things to such an extent so quickly felt strange.
After Women’s Literature I met Vince in astronomy, and we once again exchanged polite pleasantries like nothing was wrong. I didn’t ask, but he didn’t say that anything strange had happened to him that day, either, so I assumed everything was okay. At two, he went to his math class and I went to the classroom next door for my next astronomy class, and at three I went to the university memorial center to buy a snack and start my reading assignments.
That was when things got strange.
I went to the cafeteria and walked up to the vending machines. I had a bag of chips in hand, and I had just hit the button to get a soda when I looked up and saw Stark watching me from a table nearby.
He smiled sardonically.
I got my soda and tried to calm myself with a firm reminder that he couldn’t harm me because of the charm that I had buried.
If Lyssa had done it right.
If she hadn’t, it was too late now. I took my things and walked up to his table, hoping my confidence would deter him if I didn’t have the protections I thought.
“Do you live here?” I asked.
His eyes wandered over me, and I waited for the air to suck from my lungs or the feel of claws digging into my side, but nothing happened.
“Out in public, and without Charlie, even,” he said lightly. “I saw your new dog earlier. How long do you think that’s going to last?”
“We’re managing. It wasn’t nearly as bad as you intended.”
His lips curled a little around the edges and his green eyes flashed. “There’s a fine line between courage and stupidity, Thorn, and an even finer one between chivalry and weakness. You’ve both crossed your lines.”
“We’re fine,” I insisted. He was trying to put me on edge, and I wasn’t going to let him. “How are you enjoying being the slave instead of the master?”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” Stark said, watching me closely and ignoring my question. “He’s already building an exit plan, and I think you know what I mean by that.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” he said with pleasure. “I don’t lie often, Anise. I’ve always felt that the truth cuts deeper. You can ask Charlie about me. You can ask me about Charlie, too, because he always did my lying for me. He’s good at it, as I’m sure you’ve already learned.”
I opened my soda, staring at him very deliberately as it popped and fizzed, and then I took a drink. “I know him a little too well now to buy anything you’re about to say.”
“Really?” Stark cocked an eyebrow. “Because Charlie and I go way back. Has he ever told you how he came into my service? His first mistress was killed by werewolves, and he took a great amount of pleasure in butchering them for my sake after that. I didn’t ever want for blood o
r hide or anything else, and his hatred for them ran deep right up until the end, Anise. My new colleague—”
“Your new master,” I corrected.
“—he tells me that Charlie and I clipped quite a few branches off his family tree a few decades back. We’re wanted men in that pack, and my demise has become a thing of legend in certain circles. They knew who to call on when a demon by the name of Charlie showed up in their backyard. I recognized Walter’s face the moment I saw him, because he’s the spitting image of his grandfather,” Stark said idly. “I wonder if Charlie recognized him, too. I can’t imagine that he didn’t. Demons have fantastic memories, and Charlie skinned him from head to heel. Did he tell you any of that, Anise?”
I opened my bag of chips and crunched one slowly in my mouth before answering. “So what does Walter want, then?”
“It’s not impossible to kill a demon.” Stark leaned forward, unblinking. “But nearly so. They can’t kill Charlie, Anise, but they’ll stop at nothing to take him from you and control his fate. They’ll bind him and starve him with banishment. And even though they can’t kill him, I will. He’s stolen too much from me. You’re protecting a wanted man, and it would be wise of you to get out of the way before something even more unfortunate happens.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Stark almost laughed. “You poor girl. You still don’t believe me. He must have said something to you when you met Walter. Something to indicate that he might be a threat, however vague he was at the time, because he did know. You never questioned why a total stranger would show you such hostility so quickly and readily? I know Charlie. He was my best friend, and I know what to do to get under his skin. That’s why I sent him a werewolf as a present. He remembers the blood and the beasts, and everything they did when he was still too young and unlearned to stop them. Assuming that you mean anything at all to him, he probably didn’t want to let that boy into that apartment, and he’s probably willing to do just about anything to get him to leave. I’ll bet that he’s pushing the idea that death is the kinder option.”
I didn’t move, or at least I didn’t think that I had. But Stark’s eyes lit up as he shook his head.
“Poor girl…” He stood up from the table to leave. “You’d best keep an eye on the situation. They might be in on that exit plan together, and we both know Vince has more than enough hair to spare in making that deal.”
Chapter 6
I tried to ignore the things he said. For the most part, it wasn’t hard.
Charlie’s knowledge of certain things had always disturbed me, but somehow I had trouble seeing him as the monster that Stark described. He wasn’t that person anymore, and if he ever had been, it was because of Stark.
But there was a grain of truth, like a pebble in my shoe, which threw me off balance. It was the way that Charlie had looked at Walter the first time they met. There was recognition there. At the time, I had brushed it off. Charlie had recognized Walter as a werewolf, and that was all.
But what if it had been more?
He had taken me out that night to gather the supplies that would make him a human, and then we’d gone for coffee. If he had looked into the eyes of a werewolf and recognized a man he had killed, and then gone about his shopping and socializing all the same, then maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought.
I knew he had recognized something in Walter even though I didn’t want to believe it. And I knew he was my friend, because he had used the things that we had gathered that night to bring me back to Earth after my close shave with demonhood.
It preoccupied my thoughts through my entire Japanese literature class, and wouldn’t relent on my walk back home. If Charlie decided to read my thoughts or not, he was going to know that something was up when I went back to the apartment. I needed more time to decide what I was going to say.
I ducked into the sandwich place to give myself time to think. I didn’t even know how I felt about it. Charlie lied, and he did it well. I had seen him do it too convincingly and too often. But could Stark be telling the truth?
“Rough first day?”
I looked up and realized that I had been standing at the register to place my order, and staring at the menu, oblivious, for too long.
“Oh, yeah, rough day,” I agreed, shaking my head and trying to gather myself. I smiled at the clerk, who smiled back with lips painted bright red. She had dark hair that was just a touch auburn, and it was curled into a suicide roll beneath the hairnet she was wearing.
She smiled wider and pulled a cookie from the display case, handing it to me. “On the house. What can I get you?”
“Thank you.” I took the cookie, a little surprised, and then turned my attention back to the menu. “Can I get the number four, large, but with the spread you use on the number two?”
“Sure thing.” She punched it in to the register. “That’ll be six fifty-seven.”
I paid and went to a table to wait. Vince should have already been back at the apartment, waiting, and I dreaded the thought that he might come into the sandwich shop and find me avoiding him.
I didn’t believe what Stark had said about him. At least, I didn’t think I did. The longer the words sank in, the more they seemed to bleed across the line into believability, regardless of the source.
I knew that he was trying to get under my skin. He was succeeding.
“Is that guy bothering you?”
I looked up to see the young woman who had taken my order, and she nodded toward the street. I looked again, and he was there.
Stark had decided to follow me home. He stood beneath a streetlamp that had just switched on in the impending dark, leaning back against the concrete underpass that lead to campus.
I knew that he couldn’t hurt me, and Lyssa’s protections on my apartment were still firmly in place, but his presence unnerved me.
“Yes,” I said, accepting my wrapped sandwich from the clerk. “He’s bothering me.”
When I saw that she had a second sandwich in her hand, I did a double take, and was about to tell her that she must have gotten my order wrong. She shrugged before I could say anything, and explained.
“It’s my break,” she apologized. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”
The place was empty except for the two of us. She had a point; it would be awkward if we didn’t sit together.
“I’m, um…” If I said that I was waiting for someone, it would be rude when no one showed up. It wasn’t really a reason for us not to sit together in the meanwhile, either. I decided to go for the truth. “I would, normally, but that guy out there is kind of bent on ruining my life, and he’s taken some shots at my friends recently, so I really wouldn’t want you to get mixed up in it.”
She looked down at me and smiled kindly, and her eyes flashed to Stark once more. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was the slightest hint of crows’ feet starting to show at the corner of her eyes. I had never seen someone so young with wrinkles, and I imagined it took some stress to earn them. I was probably well on my way, too.
“I think I can manage.”
She sat down, and I shifted restlessly in my seat as my stomach did a flip.
She opened her sandwich and took a bite, pointing at me. “Did you get that in Stonefall?”
I looked down, and my hand was already reaching for the sumac pendant that Charlie had made for me. I wore it everywhere without even thinking about it.
A question rose in my mind, because it could have been an innocent inquiry, but it felt like she was asking me something more. I knew that Stonefall was an area that magical folk frequented, but I didn’t know how to code anything back to this stranger. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure if it was wise to do so.
My silence seemed to confirm something for her, because she pulled up the sleeve of her shirt, flashing a bracelet. It was a simple silver circle set with a single brilliant ruby.
“Reminded me of mine.” She shrugged. “That’s all.”
Before she had finished
speaking, the gem on her wrist and the sumac in my pendant had started to flicker and glow.
The stranger’s face lit up. “Oh, I guess they like each other!”
I tried not to panic. Wordlessly, I opened my sandwich, and took a bite.
“I’m Martha.”
She offered her hand, and we shook. When she looked back over her shoulder, I followed her gaze. Stark was gone.
“Pervy demon,” she muttered. “Why’s he following you?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, fearing that the next step in Stark’s plan was underway. Martha was too distinctively styled for me to have missed her. I had never seen her working in the sandwich shop before, and it couldn’t be a coincidence that she showed up while Stark was present.
“What do you want?” I asked in a low whisper, searching the restaurant for an escape route.
Martha looked bewildered, pulling the hairnet from her brow and fixing her hair with a hand as she considered me. “Nothing. I just assumed, you know, because of the necklace, and the demon… do you need help?”
I took a deep breath and cocked my head, quietly praying that Charlie might decide to check in on me right about now, but his powers were much more limited when he was a cat. He had told me he didn’t want to leave the apartment shackled while Stark was on the loose, and I had agreed.
“Really?” I said, feeling like I was a mouse trying to make a deal with a cat. “Because of the demon, you just happened to show up here? You just happened to find me, and want to help me with my little demon problem? I’m new, but I’m not dumb. I know people don’t help with demon problems. That’s like trying to save someone from getting hit by a semi by throwing yourself in front of it. Did Stark send you?”
Martha’s eyes went cold, and the wrinkles around her eyes were suddenly a little more evident in the setting sun. She folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“You know Stark?” she asked seriously, giving a half-hearted wave in the direction where he had been. “How do you know him?”