SkinThief

by Sonnet O'Dell

  I stared them down and told them with my eyes to mind their own fucking business. They hurried along, and I stomped back inside to get dressed. I put on some loose-fitting jogging pants and a vest top. It was still cool, but I was going to do something that might get me all sweaty, so I figured it would be worth it in the end to wear something light. I grabbed more plastic bin bags from under the sink, took the elevator down and went into my lock-up.

  The maintenance guy had come to fix the leaky pipe, so the other boxes in there hadn’t gotten wet. I was thankful for that because it meant no more of my mom’s stuff would get damaged. I’d saved most of the stuff in the soggy box—I’d been in here to find something in Nancy’s belongings that I’d been keeping for her, generously keeping safe for her. I growled as I thought about that and threw open the door. It rattled loudly as it hit the wire wall that separated off the little cages belonging to each tenant. I started pushing to one side boxes that had “Nancy” written on them, pushing them close to the door and where I had left the plastic bags. I found one that had ended up under a couple of my dad’s boxes and started moving them out of the way when I saw something wedged behind another pile. I leaned over the smaller stack and reached behind, pulling it out. It was a miniature antique wooden chest that had belonged to my mother. I remembered knocking it down behind the boxes when Nancy—still a cat—had jumped up, startling me. It was broken, something else that was her fault. I put it down next to the boxes that were Nancy’s, I would take that back upstairs with me, and maybe it could be fixed. I opened up bags and started throwing the contents of each of the boxes into them, tying them off when they got too full.

  Her crap filled four bags. I dragged them to the elevator one at a time and, carrying the broken wooden box under my arm, rose up to my floor. I dragged the bags inside with me. I went to look for my mobile phone and found it lying under my makeup table. There were seven missed calls. I deleted the notification just as another call came in; I hit the hang-up button and went through my phone book for another number. I dialed it and let it ring, and ring and ring. I just stuck with it till a sleepy Wraith answered the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Nancy is human again,” I told him. He made a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and an uh-huh.

  “How’d that happen?”

  “It doesn’t matter, the bitch is no longer my concern, and I want you to give her a message.”

  “Let me write it down or I’ll forget.” I waited for a minute, tapping my foot impatiently while he got a pad to write on. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Tell her I’ve bagged up her shit and I’m throwing it in the Dumpster tonight. She has three days before it’s collected to fish it out, or it goes where trash like her belongs.”

  “Sheesh, Cassa babe, that’s harsh. What she do?”

  “Something unspeakable.”

  I hung up before he could question me anymore. My phone started ringing, and it was the same as the seven previous times.

  “Stop fucking calling me!”

  I threw my phone at the wall and listened as it smashed into pieces. I went over to it and picked up the big bits carefully. I shouldn’t have done that; now I was going to have to get a new phone. Mobile phones weren’t cheap, at least a decent one wasn’t. I managed to save the sim card from the wreck so at least I could have the same number, and I could always get his number barred.

  I had too many people to contact to let them all know my number had changed. Plus I had already ordered a bunch of business cards with it printed on. No, I wasn’t going to let him affect my life. He was a component of it that hadn’t worked out, and I couldn’t pretend that things between us hadn’t been rocky anyway. He was stuck in the era he’d grown up in, the fifties, when women were not like me, and the more he got to know me, the more he seemed to want to shape me to fit an ideal that just didn’t exist anymore. Not that I was against things like marriage and motherhood, or staying home and taking care of the house if that was your bag, but it just wasn’t mine. I was twenty-one, and I still wanted to live a little.

  The sun went down and I felt the change rush through me; it was somewhat painful, as part of me was hanging on to the other world. I didn’t want to come back to this place where the pain had begun. I dragged the garbage bags out to the elevator and took it down. Once in the foyer, I carried them out to the curb and round to the Dumpster. I could only lift one at a time, but I swung it up and in with great satisfaction each time. Take that, bitch! I thought. I hoped Wraith would forget to give her the message. In any case, she couldn’t get to the money I’d saved from her stuff—the account was in my name and required my signature and ID number, neither of which I intended to give her. Maybe when it wasn’t such a fresh hurt and I felt better about it, I might transfer that money to myself as compensation. I grinned a little at the thought.

  I realized that this had to be the first time I had smiled in nearly twenty-four hours, and it was nice to know that I could still do it, even if it was about something vindictive. I bounced back up the front steps, determined that this would be me turning a new page. When I let myself back into my apartment, the phone was ringing, and I was so joy filled with the idea that this would be a new start that I answered it without checking to see who was calling. Magnus’s voice came over the speaker.

  “Cassandra, please, please talk to me.” I held the phone away from my head and screamed at it.

  “Stop calling me!”

  I clicked the button that disconnected the call. Another came in straight away. I answered it, prepared to scream again, but a soft female voice that I knew very well came over from the other end. It was Incarra, and my eyes teared up a little. My best friend was calling me. I hadn’t answered her hello so she was getting a little frantic. I stared at the phone and then remembered that I placed it to my ear to hear and speak.

  “Hi, Incarra. Sorry, dropped the phone.”

  “Something’s wrong, I know it. I got this feeling that I had to call you and I had to call you right this minute. I tried your home but it was engaged, then your mobile but that said out of service, and then you get all space cadet on me when you answer the phone. What’s happened?”

  It was so good to hear her voice that I nearly choked a sob out into the receiver. I headed into the bedroom and slumped down to sit at the bottom of my bed on the floor again.

  “I broke my phone throwing it at the wall,” I said. It was a little funny, so I gave a nervous giggle through the tears that were running down my cheeks again.

  “Why on earth?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Magnus and I broke up and he won’t stop calling. I can’t deal with him.”

  “Oh sweetheart, what happened? Did you two have another fight?”

  Had I told Incarra about the fight? Yes, the first one we’d had over Aram, but she hadn’t heard the details of the second fight. I relayed them, editing to make no mention of vampires, magic or what I really did for a living now that I wasn’t in college. Incarra made a disgusted sound that I appreciated.

  “What decade did he crawl out of?”

  I sniffed and scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my hands; they were no doubt red again. I hated that when you cried your eyes got all blotchy and everyone knew what you had been doing.

  “That’s not the worse part...he slept with someone else.”

  Incarra was silent for a minute, deadly quiet. So quiet, in fact, I thought I might have lost connection with her, but a second before I was about to hang up and call her back, she spoke.

  “There was no mention of going on a break, was there?”

  I made a choking sound and tried very hard not to laugh. Magnus and I were not Ross and Rachel. It had never gotten to anything that intense ever.

  “No. No break. He just slept with someone else, and it really hurt me. All he could say wa
s he’s sorry, over and over again he was sorry.”

  “Fucking little scuzzbag,” Incarra said with true menace in her voice. God, I loved Incarra; she always knew just what to say to make me feel better. “I’m coming over right now.”

  “No,” I barked, and then toning it down, I said, “No. I’m a real mess right now, and I don’t much feel like company. Just talk to me for a little bit, please.”

  “Of course. So how would you like him killed?”

  I laughed out loud, and it filled the whole room with a warmth that, after this last day, had seemed like it would never come again.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Incarra talked a good game, even though I couldn’t tell her all of what had really happened. Sleeping with another woman was as close as I could get to the truth without involving magical amulets and non-magically-inclined ex-boyfriends. I curled up on the couch after hanging up with her and turned on the television for a little bit of distraction. Channel five was showing Lake Placid. Giant crocodiles eating people; it sounded like a hoot.

  While it played out its gruesome storyline in the background, I got to looking at the broken box that was sitting on my coffee table. It looked like the front compartment had a secret little drawer that had splintered, and something that had been in it had caught in the side, wedging it all in place. I opened the box and took out the contents, which appeared to be some letters written in a masculine hand. I smiled, thinking that they might be love letters from my father to my mother, or perhaps from a man Mom had known before or after she had lost him. Something she’d kept secret.

  I placed them gently to the side and turned the box upside down, trying to pull loose whatever was jamming the drawer. It appeared to be another piece of paper or something. I tugged at it, but it was stuck fast. The drawer was pretty much un-saveable, so I went to get a screwdriver from the cupboard under the sink. I hacked at the drawer with it till the side fell in, freeing the piece of paper and causing the drawer to slide out of its place and to the floor. I bent down to pick up the pieces; I laid the drawer down on the coffee table and looked at the paper. It was a photograph, in fact. There were two women in it. One was my mother, and she had her arms around the neck of an ash blonde woman with soft gray eyes who was laughing but trying to bat her off. They looked like they were good friends. My mom was so young that they must have been in their twenties, so the photo must have been taken in the other world. It was sort of nice to know that her life had had good parts to it too. I stared at the blonde woman wondering who she was; there was something oddly familiar about her, but I couldn’t place it. I turned back to the screen just in time to see a bloody death by crocodile and placed the photo down in the box to enjoy the carnage.

  I was just settling in when I heard a sound. I turned the volume down and recognized knocking. It was coming from the balcony door in my bedroom. I stood, walking past the TV and turning it off as I did, and headed into my bedroom. I opened the door to the balcony and Aram stood there. He was wearing black leather pants that laced up the sides with scarlet ribbon, and his shirt matched. He reached up to touch my face but was rebuffed by the threshold barrier.

  “You’ve been crying, pet.”

  I stood aside from the door and pulled it open.

  “Come in.”

  Aram stepped inside, and I left him standing at the door and went to sit on the floor at the foot of my bed. I was fast becoming attached to this spot. He entered fully, shutting the door behind him, and examined the small dent in my wall and the pieces of my phone that I had not bothered to pick up, the small fiddly pieces. Aram came to sit on the bed so that his knee was next to my head; I turned to it and rested my head against him. He started to stroke my hair.

  “You were too late.”

  I explained everything to Aram—I felt it spilling out of my mouth and I was unable to stop it. I told him how it felt standing in the doorway, seeing them and hearing Magnus finally confess his heart to the wrong person. I felt Aram tense when I retold the entire conversations with both Nancy and then with Magnus out on the street. Aram’s hand worked its way into my hair, stroking through it, and the soothing sensation came quick and easy. I wasn’t going to fight how he made me feel if it was better than the way I felt before.

  “I didn’t know either, pet.”

  I rolled my head so that I could look up at him. It was a bit painful, and like he could sense that, he slid to his knees on the floor next to me.

  “Know what?”

  “That you had never lain with a man, but it does explain a few things. Modern women seem so experienced to me that it is hard to tell sometimes who is and who isn’t.”

  I gave him a weak upturn of my lips and leaned my head against his chest. I heard his heart thud. It was possible for a vampire’s heart to thud once now and again, sort of an echo of the rhythm it had held once upon a time.

  “It was like being stabbed with an icicle that infected my heart. It hurt so much.”

  Aram held me close to him, wrapping his arms protectively around me, and for once I didn’t mind the least little bit that he was here just being with me. It made me feel so good. He stroked his hand over my hair, which was still hanging loose down my back; I hadn’t bothered to tie it back at all like I usually did.

  “A broken heart is like a broken mirror,” Aram said softly against my ear. “It can be put back together, but the reflection is never perfect again.” I gripped his shirt at the shoulders and moved back to look him in his handsome face.

  “Do you think you could put my pieces back together?”

  “Yes. Be mine, Andra, be mine and I promise you that.”

  “Okay.”

  Aram blinked at me; perhaps he hadn’t expected that, or he had expected more elegant words to match his own. He touched my chin, gripping it with his fingers, and lifted my mouth to his, and for the first time I kissed him back. It felt nice. I knew that was entirely shallow of me, to do something just because it felt nice, but I had always fought my attraction to Aram. I was sick of fighting. I wanted to give in, completely and utterly. I knew what I was promising Aram with my compliance as he laid me down against the floor and lay on top of me. I was promising to be his woman, to date him, to give him my heart and my body.

  He kept kissing me, and I let myself drown in the euphoria of it. Hormones had taken over the vessel, and it felt wonderful. I should really give in to them more often. He traced my ribs and pressed against me. I knew that right now, more than anything, he wanted to bite me. It was like I could feel him in my head; he wanted to taste me in more ways than one, but that one I could allow without rubbing any of my sore spots. I turned my head and offered him my neck. He leaned into it, kissing the scar on my neck, and I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around his slim shoulders and waiting for the strike of his fangs through my flesh.

  There was a loud hard knock on the front door, and Aram leaned away from me to look toward it. I rolled my head back and looked in the same direction.

  “I really should get that, I suppose,” I said half-heartedly. Suddenly I was sitting up against the end of the bed again and Aram was standing.

  “I’ll get it; wait here.”

  I leaned back against the bed, letting it take my full weight, and stared up at the ceiling. I would commit myself to this new relationship, and it would be great. Aram and I had been sort of friends for a long time, so it had to work, didn’t it? I heard the front door open and was curious to know who it was, so I crawled over closer to the stereo so I could see around the door. Magnus stood there, holding something in his arms. I could just about see his face over Aram’s shoulders, and he was fuming, probably over the fact that Aram had answered the door.

  “What the hell are you doing here? I should have known you would swoop in the minute you heard.” Aram turned his head slightly, and he could see into the bedroom where I was presse
d against the stereo. I felt myself shaking and knew he could see it. I didn’t want Magnus to know that I had agreed to be Aram’s now, not yet. He would attack him—I knew he would. Aram’s face became a mask of calm, and he turned back to face Magnus.

  “I am here as her friend. She needs a friend right now, and I am happy to control my desire both for her and to beat you till you bleed on her behalf.”

  “I don’t care. I want to see her,” Magnus said, and he tried to push past Aram. Aram didn’t move and kept Magnus in the corridor. He reached out, snatching what was in his arms, and he brought behind his back a bouquet of some of the most exquisite flowers I’d ever seen. They had to have cost a fortune.

  “I can give her these if she wants to accept them.” He turned his head again to judge my reaction. I shook my head. I’d meant what I said to him—I didn’t want to see him again. Just looking at him now, or the small part of him I could see over Aram, made me feel physically ill. It made my heart twist like it was being tied in a bow. Aram threw the flowers back at him.

  “She says no, she doesn’t want your flowers, and she doesn’t want to see you.”

  “You could just be saying that.”

  Aram sighed and turned his head again to the side.

  “Andra?”

  I found enough strength to open my mouth and shout a quick, abrupt “leave me alone.” It didn’t seem to satisfy Magnus, who glared at Aram with ferocity. Aram was unfazed by him. I closed my eyes and just listened to the conversation.

  “You’ve done this, come in here and driven an Aram-shaped wedge between us so we can’t reconcile.”

  “You drove your own wedge between you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you were so impatient to bed her that you...”