by Ainsley Shay
“You didn’t seem like yourself last night, at Hence. Snow’s been worried about you.” He looked up at me. “Besides, that’s what friends do.”
I softened my voice. “Well, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine. So you can go now.”
“I was also wondering if you could do me this one little favor.” He pinched his finger and thumb together and squinted; his face scrunched to match the gesture.
Narrowing my eyes, I growled, “What?”
He lowered his legs and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Will you please cancel your date with—” he rolled his eyes, “Blacwin? I still think that’s a weird name. Snow and I are going to the rave tonight, you should come.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why do you care who I go out with?”
“I have my reasons, besides, you hardly know him—”
“I hardly know you, but that doesn’t seem to bother you when you’re breaking into my apartment. I still have no idea why you’re under this illusion that we’re friends, because you happened to replace my coffee last week? Or because you might be dating my best friend?”
“Neither of those reasons.”
He slapped his hands on his knees. “Well then, I guess I’ll take that to mean you’ll think about it—”
“No! Aggghhh...why are you so frustrating?”
“It’s a non-refundable gift.” He stood and walked to the door. Before leaving, he turned to look at me. His eyes were serious, and his face had lost the usual smirk that I’ve rarely seen him without. “Be careful, Iris. Blacwin might not be as good as you think.” He closed the door behind him.
I wondered if Chandler did know Blacwin, and he was trying to hide that from me. Chandler would have a field day if I told him Blacwin was here to kill someone. Or maybe, he already knew that tidbit of information. Chandler was holding back something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. He was an annoying mystery that I didn’t know if I’d ever solve. I didn’t like Snow being caught up with him, but there was no stopping her when she wanted something.
As far as Blacwin went, I was baffled there, too. It bothered me why the murdering side of Blacwin didn’t scare me. His words should have warned me off for good. But, when he had said them, told me the truth of something so horrifying, something that I could easily not be trusted with; hell, he hardly knew me, I could have gone straight to the cops. But, here I was getting ready to go on a date with him.
Exhausted, I fell onto the couch and rested my arm over my eyes, blocking out the light. Thoughts and images swirled in my mind, colliding and crashing into one another. I would give anything to quiet them.
I don’t know how long I lay there. I needed to get up and get ready, but that thought alone was exhausting. Sitting up, I reached for my bag to get my phone. It rang before I could grab it.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” said Blacwin.
The line was quiet for a few seconds. My heart shifted into overdrive.
“Are you ready for your first color lesson?” he asked with slightly less confidence than usual, surely due to my dead silence.
Hesitating for what seemed like forever as Chandler’s warning decided to jump back into my brain, I stammered, “Yes.”
“Good. I’ll see you soon,” he said in his deep, smooth voice that made my knees quiver.
“Okay.”
Committed and more alert now, I peeled myself off the couch. I lit the lavender candle and began to get ready.
Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Blowing out the trapped air in my lungs, I peeked through the eyehole and saw Blacwin. Dana from the café words fluttered into my head, “No guy should be that hot.” Damn, she was right. I opened the door. “Hi. Come in.”
As he passed me, he squeezed my hand and lightly kissed my cheek. “How are you?”
“Good... now.” The almost silent word floated off my tongue, caught in the flurry of breath leaving my mouth.
His mouth curved into an easy smile. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He wore a light, un-tucked button-down, over dark jeans with a few worn areas. I felt under-dressed in my cut-off jean shorts over leggings, and a tank top underneath a dark cropped jacket.
Blacwin took my hand, jerking me back into the present. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, forcing out a strange laugh.
Nodding, he said, “Did you want to stay here?” He ran his hand through his hair.
“No,” I said a little too quickly, looking away. God only knew what would happen if we stayed here. I would probably lose all self-control and force myself on him. Uninvited heat rose up my neck and into my cheeks.
I turned away from him and grabbed my bag off the couch. My shoulder brushed his chest when I walked by him. I hadn’t realized he’d moved and that we were so close. With keys in hand, I opened the door; he followed and stood behind me as I locked it.
Once out of the stairwell, the early evening breeze blew by me, and I consciously dropped my shoulders in relief. Blacwin helped me into the Jeep. “Where are the doors?”
“At home.”
“I’m not going to fall out am I?”
“I’d never let that happen.” He fastened the seatbelt around me.
I was surrounded by the scents of leather and amber. I leaned my head against the seat and took a deep breath.
“Where to?” he asked after getting in and starting the engine.
“How about we go to the lake?”
“Sounds perfect. I’ve got a blanket in the back.”
The drive was pleasant, filled with small talk about the town, the music we like, and random topics that had evolved from the previous one, all while the radio played softly in the background.
Soon, Blacwin launched into his lesson. “I think we should start with the most obvious color and go from there.”
“I didn’t know there was an obvious color,” I said.
“To most, there isn’t. But in your case, well, you’re one of those very rare and special people.” I sent him a sideways glance and watched as he caught it. A smile briefly flickered over his lips.
“And what is this obvious color you speak of?” I asked.
“Gray,” he said, as nonchalant as the single-syllable word itself.
I gaped at him like he was crazy and had forgotten the entire reason for these lessons. Maybe he misunderstood that gray was the only color I could see. “You’re joking—right?”
“Hear me out.” He reached for my hand in my lap and tucked it into his. “If we start with gray, then you’ll know all the things you’re already seeing in their true color.”
My eyebrows lifted, and I had to admit, his logic did make sense. When I nodded, he smiled, and I couldn’t help the smile that formed on my own lips.
At the lake, he parked and pulled out the blanket from the back seat. He held my hand as we walked toward the shore, and I loved the feeling of my fingers laced with his. He spread out the blanket, and we both sat. I crossed my legs and sat Indian style. Blacwin stretched out his legs and leaned back on his arms.
I looked out over the lake and watched the sun begin its downward descent toward the rippling water. The site was very different than the last time I’d been here during the storm.
“Lesson number one: gray,” Blacwin said
“But, I see that every freaking day!”
“I know, but I’m going to tell and show you what you’re seeing correctly.”
He did have a point. I tried not to giggle. He was taking this so seriously. I still had my doubts, but I tried to be serious. I realized how else I could relate the colors, my nightmares. As the thought completed itself a jolt of excitement passed through me and I realized these lessons might actually work.
“Ready?” Blacwin asked, snapping me out of my happy place.
“Yes.”
“Gray is a color that can have a hundred different feelings and a thousand different shades.” His tone was even and illumina
ting. “Gray can be as beautiful and alive as the color of your eyes, or angry, like when the sky is ready to open up. It can be as sturdy as duct tape, as ugly as the cat I used to have, as fragile as a moth, as light as ashes from a fire, as frightening as shadows, as hard as stone, as deadly as sharks, as mature as the hair on an old man, or as imprisoning as a spider’s web.”
As he spoke, I closed my eyes and imagined each and every one of his vivid illustrations. The melodic sound of his voice was almost hypnotizing, and I let myself be carried away into my nightmares. I saw the menacing castle built with blocks of gray stone, their surface hard and unbreakable. I thought about the servants in their filthy gray garments, and I saw the statuesque guard who stood in the darkened gray shadows during dinner.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked at Blacwin. He had a slight, but perfect smile on his face. I smiled too. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. ”
I looked out over the surface of the lake. Without realizing, the sun had managed to slip into the horizon. The sky darkened as the night took hold, unveiling its tiny flickering gems.
I felt Blacwin’s eyes on me, and I looked at him. He stared at me with those dark eyes and I wondered what he saw and what he was thinking.
Before I could ask, he said, “You’re very beautiful, Miss Iris Thorn.” His voice was soft and gentle, and the features on his face full of sincerity and seriousness.
“Thank you,” I whispered, unable to look away.
Side by side, we lay back on the blanket and talked for what seemed like hours. We had conversations about anything and everything, laughing as we made up our own constellations in the thousands of stars above us, and sang, horribly out of tune, to our favorite songs, and tried to guess the artist. We discussed books and fictional worlds we would each love to visit, then it all seemed to come to an end when it was time to leave.
I could have stayed there with him forever.
We sat up and his hand brushed mine. He looked at me through thick lashes and cupped my cheek. His eyes never left mine as he leaned into me. Patiently, I waited the three seconds to feel his lips on mine. As naturally as the sun sets in the west, and without hesitation, I leaned into him, wanting, needing to feel more of him. His mouth was gentle and unhurried. His lips barely parted before his mouth took complete possession of mine and I melted into the moment. He reached behind me and pulled me tighter to him. We melded together perfectly. Too soon, he eased the pressure of our bodies and pulled away. At the moment of separation, I felt as if every bit of oxygen had been stolen from my lungs.
Barely able to catch my breath, I opened my eyes. The thin air around us seemed to encase us like we were the only two left on earth. He stared at me with the most rueful and thoughtful smile on his swollen lips. “I had to do that, at least just once.” He looked down at his hands and then back at me. “There’s something about you that dissolves my power to behave.”
I shook my head and stared at him, waiting for him to kiss me again, but he didn’t.
Just once, his words hit my gut like a fist.
18
The sun streamed through the window. I squinted as I got out of bed and pulled down the shade. I’d forgotten to close it when I got home last night. Falling back onto the bed, I breathed out a deep sigh and relived the moment for the thousandth time, of Blacwin kissing me. I tried to block out his final words, but to no avail, they hit me again, just as hard as they did last night. Too shocked and mortified last night to ask him to explain, I had only nodded like a freaking moron.
Now, angry and completely ready to confront him on the situation, I dug in my purse for my phone. I pressed the home button to bring it to life, only to find that the damn thing was dead.
I got up, plugged it into the charger on the kitchen counter, and started to make coffee. As I took a mug out of the cupboard, it hit me that I hadn’t had a nightmare last night.
The scent of caffeine filled the air. I poured creamer into the bottom of the mug and dropped in two sugar cubes. Another three minutes passed before the fierce dark liquid finished brewing. I took my mug of coffee out to the small balcony that overlooked the main street. The balcony was just large enough for two chairs and a small table. Standing at the railing, I took a sip, and the hot liquid slid down my throat, warming the chills still lingering from last night. The bellies of darkening clouds swelled in the distance. “Great, another stormy day,” I huffed. But then, I thought it actually was great. I could spend some time researching who C.W. was.
The first drops of rain fell onto the store’s awning below and I looked in the direction of the sound. The stack of Sunday newspapers sat on the sidewalk outside the bookstore door. You’d have to be completely blind not to see the headline in the large thick letters: “BODY FOUND!” I rushed downstairs and grabbed one of the papers off the stack. There was a picture of the barn underneath the screaming headline. The same barn I showed Blacwin on our way to the maze; the same barn that held the rave last night.
I scanned the article. A woman was found dead at the barn across from the town’s cemetery. Local teens attending a rave at the barn saw the unidentified woman hanging by her wrists from one of the rafters. Witnesses say that her body appeared drained of blood, as if she fell victim to what one described as “a modern-day Dracula.” Police withheld any further details.
My hand flew to my mouth as I thought of Blacwin. Was he responsible for this? In all the time I’ve lived here, there had never been a murder—and that was exactly why he moved here, by his own admission. How could someone so amazing and gorgeous, someone with whom I had such a strong connection, turn out to be a murderer? I wasn’t sure I was surprised. I mean, he did tell me he was planning to murder someone.
A small sketch of the victim appeared beside the article. The dark-haired woman looked vaguely familiar, but then again, who didn’t in this town? I scanned my memories of the last couple of weeks, but it only took a second to remember where I saw her. She was the woman who was with Mr. Pene last weekend—the beautiful woman who wasn’t with him when he pulled to the side of the road to check on us after we nearly hit the deer.
Could he be responsible for her death? As creepy as he was, murderer never entered my head, never mind vampire. I said the word aloud just to hear the ridiculous way it came out of my mouth—“vampire”—knowing the notion was completely absurd. “Ha!” I barked out the harsh noise. Thunder sounded in the distance as if echoing the word. It traveled through the deserted street. I tossed the paper back onto the stack.
My phone was ringing as I returned to my apartment. Snow.
“Hello?”
“Holy crap! Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you since last night.”
“My phone d—”
“They found a body at the barn last night. Oh, my God, it was so disgusting! It was—”
“You saw it? I mean, her?”
“Yeah. It was naked and hanging from the—wait—how did you know it was a she?”
“I just saw the front page of the paper.”
“Oh.” I wondered if Snow recognized the woman, but I didn’t think so. She went on to say how brave Chandler had been. The night we saw the woman, she was too focused on Mr. Pene to notice. “Thank God he was with me.”
“Yeah, thank God.” I rolled my eyes and gave the ceiling my complete attention for the next ten minutes as Snow recounted every detail from last night. After listening to every piece of information twice over, we said our goodbyes. She hadn’t asked me about Blacwin and I was glad.
I left my phone on the charger, got my coffee and went to the couch to where my laptop was. Turning on the TV, I scrolled to my favorite station, Turner Classics. Seeing the movies scheduled for the day, I smiled, Gaslight, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Spellbound. Snow thought old movies were basic and overdramatic. I laughed when Miss Dramatic herself told me that.
What she didn’t understand was that I loved them not just because it made me happy to think about my dad
, but because the movies didn’t feel like they were missing anything because they were in black and white—the way they were originally made.
Eight hours later, after Spellbound concluded, it hit me that the only thing I had eaten all day was a bag of microwave popcorn. I dragged myself off the couch, trudged to my bedroom, dressed in the basics, enough to look halfway decent to get gas and dinner from the convenience store.
It was still raining when I made a run for the car and climbed inside. Minutes later, I pulled into Hector’s Gas Station—it only had two pumps and half the usual selection of snacks, but his gas station was cheaper and closer than the big one a several miles away. There was one other car in the lot; it was parked next to the building, hidden in the darkness. Dismissing it, I shoved the neck of the pump into Spike and headed inside to get dinner. I had to make a point to go to the grocery store tomorrow.
Hector glanced up from his phone when I walked in. “Hey, Iris, it’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, it has.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thanks. How have you been?”
“You know, this hurts and that hurts, but I’m hanging in there. You looking for dinner?”
“Do I look that pathetic?”
He just laughed and looked back down at his phone. I grabbed a bag of Cheetos, the crunchy ones, a package of beef jerky, and a Coke and put them on the counter.
I handed him a twenty. “Put the change on pump two.”
“You got it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Have a good night.”
I lowered my face to avoid the light mist of rain. But when I looked up, there was a man leaning on the gas pump. His arms were crossed over his chest and his left ankle rested over his right. I couldn’t see his face; it was hidden in the shadows. A loud click made me jump. He looked away from me as I removed the nozzle and replaced it on the pump. When he moved slightly to the left, the single, hanging, fluorescent light illuminated half his face.
I almost dropped my Coke as Mr. Pene smiled. What the— Questions and accusations, I had no right to ask or give, raced through my head.