by Chant, Zoe
From there the talk went to the wedding, and stayed there until Mrs. LaFleur set down her cup with a distinctive tink that was a hair more noticeable than before. Mrs. Willis got to her feet, her mother, daughter, and the in-laws popping up like jack-in-the-boxes, Jan among them.
After polite thanks and glad-to-meet-yous, they were ushered out and piled into the cars with a great sense of relief. As the deal had been that the Willis moms would take the kids after the tea so the dads could go to Mick’s party, they all decided on an early night.
Once Shelley’s family had been unloaded at the motel, where Mrs. Willis retired to the sports channels and the grandmother to a nap, Shelley and Jan walked back down the street toward the Volkovs’.
Jan realized now that the general noise was over that Shelley had been uncharacteristically silent. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Sure,” Shelley said.
“I know it’s none of my business, but it doesn’t seem like you’re okay.”
Shelley grimaced down at the ground, then said, “Everything is great between Mick and me. It’s just, now that he’s here, he feels like he has to help with local stuff. And so he’s kind of tired.”
“Parking lot drama again?”
“Something like that.”
Jan heard that now-familiar note of restraint in Shelley’s voice, so she dropped it. After they reached the Volkovs’ and Jan accepted a cup of coffee she didn’t want, she said, “I think I’ll call it an early night, too. Rehearsal tomorrow. Want to save my voice.”
“I’ll walk you back,” Shelley said.
Jan had firmly resolved not to mention the shape-shifters she had seen. But she sensed that yet again Shelley was being pulled away from her, by secrets she was honor-bound to keep. Jan respected that. Mick’s business—especially small town politics—had nothing to do with Jan.
Yet she was losing the friend with whom she had shared so much, the plucky sidekick trotting off to her lonely life after the wedding bells for the hero and heroine.
Fuck that shit.
And so, once they’d gotten past the house, Jan slipped her fingers into her purse and pulled out the tissue containing the feather.
“Look what I found the other night,” she said, holding it up.
The feather gleamed pale in the moonlight. Shelley said, “It looks like a feather. A really big one,” she added, with that note of constraint in her voice.
So Jan nipped the feather between her fingers, and pulled hard. The golden glitter was nearly gone, but there was enough of it to sparkle dimly, causing Shelley’s breath to catch.
“What kind of feather do you think this is?” Jan asked. “It sure doesn’t belong to any bird I’ve ever heard of.”
Shelley took a few slow steps, then said in that constrained voice, “Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure,” Jan said, her heartbeat quickening.
“You understand this isn’t about anybody. Just a story,” Shelley mumbled. A short sigh, then: “Do you know what a phoenix is?”
Jan didn’t say, That’s not a story. Shelley had never been any good at telling stories—anymore than she was at lying. So Jan said only, “The bird in Greek myth, was it? Rises from the ashes?”
“In my story,” Shelley said firmly, “there are all kinds of dragons. Like Chihuahuas and wolf-hounds and bulldogs are all kinds of dogs. A phoenix is a smaller, lighter, very fast dragon. Like all dragons, it has fire, but it’s an inner fire, kind of like, oh, radiant heat. They don’t breathe it.”
“Oh-h-h-kay . . .”
“Phoenixes are really good for growing things, the earth, water, and so on. They radiate what you might call healing properties. In the story land, people want phoenixes to live among them. Crops will prosper. And like many story beings with two natures—human and bird or animal—phoenixes mate for life. When they find their true mate.”
Jan turned to stare at her friend, whose expression was shadowed in the darkness. Had Shelley put an emphasis on true, and why? That note of hidden meaning was definitely there.
And gone again as Shelley finished, “Anyway, they have golden feathers.”
Jan fingered her feather, then said, “In your story, do phoenixes have giant nests? Do they eat people?”
“No, and no. At least, in this story, they take human shape. They live as human, rising at certain times in their phoenix shape. They don’t eat people, and as for the nests, they don’t make those. They might have sanctuaries somewhere outdoors, above their hoard.”
“Hoard. You mean that stuff about dragon treasure is part of your story?”
“Well, precious metals in specific. Gold. Dragons are all about the precious metals. In this story.”
“Cool,” Jan said, wondering how much of that was true and how much myth.
They had reached the motel. Shelley stirred, as if she would say more, but then a door opened, and a long rectangle of light lanced out across the parking lot, silhouetting the capable shape of Mrs. Willis.
“Shelley, is that you? Come in here. Your grandma forgot her allergy medicine, and she wants some other stuff at the pharmacy. My feet are killing me after being stuffed in those heels all afternoon. If you could run her over to wherever the local pharmacy is . . .”
“I’ll take care of it, Ma,” Shelley called, and glanced apologetically back at Jan over her shoulder.
Jan nodded. She knew that this errand could easily take a couple of hours.
“I’ll say good-night then,” Jan called, and let herself into her room.
Chapter Nine
She turned on the water to run another bath, a great luxury because her apartment bathroom only had a shower. She couldn’t resist putting in a precious drop of her favorite perfume, Shalimar Ode à la Vanille.
As she relaxed into the tub, she thought about the phoenix feather, then turned her thoughts to JP, the kisses, and the promise. Today was definitely a dead loss. There was always tomorrow.
Still, when she came out of the bathroom she didn’t put pajamas on, but slipped into a fresh dress scoop-necked dress with a lace-up front, and set her sandals by her bed. It wasn’t all that late, she told herself when she heard a little kid’s muffled voice, and the noise of a car in the parking lot beyond the window.
Feeling distinctly silly for crumpling a perfectly good dress, she stretched out, and was reaching for the channel changer when she heard a light knock at the door.
Her heart banged against her ribs as she sprang to open it—and there was JP.
“Hi,” she said, opening the door wide.
“I know it’s late,” he began apologetically.
“You promised to meet me later,” she said, smiling up into his face. “This is later.” And when he smiled back, “Um, you want to come in? Is Mick’s party over already?”
“I haven’t been there,” he said quietly, still standing on the doorstep. He was dressed in slacks, good shirt, and jacket, and he looked tired. “I’ve been at the hospital most of the day, while someone was in surgery.”
“Oh, I hope they're okay,” Jan exclaimed, aware of the thin walls of the motel—she could hear the TV burbling some sports event next door.
“On the mend, I am glad to say.” He lifted his head, and she knew he heard it as well. “Would you like to take a drive?”
“Very much,” she said as she slipped on her sandals and grabbed her purse and key.
He led her to the black Porsche, which he had parked around the corner. “Nice ride,” she said.
“My father gave it to me when I graduated from Juilliard.” He opened her door for her.
“Are we going to meet him?”
JP gave his head a shake. “He’s in London right now. Part of a concert tour. He’s a violinist.”
Jan sank into the expensive upholstery. JP joined her, and her nerves shimmered with anticipation at how close he was.
He started up the engine. It sounded like a racecar, but he didn’t drive it like a maniac. At a perfect
ly sedate pace they proceeded out of the residential area, downshifting and accelerating only when they reached a lonely road.
“Whee,” she exclaimed, pressing back into her seat.
His brief smile flared, tight but there. “I have to admit I like speed, and Alta Alvarado was made for speed. Or so I as a teenage driver always thought.”
“I love speed, too. Especially in a car like this. It’s as close we can come to flying. Without a plane,” she said.
He sent her a quick look that shot another bolt of lightning through her. “This is a private road, so we are unlikely to meet any other traffic, but if you want me to slow down, just say the word.”
He still had not told her why he had to wait all day at the hospital, or what had happened. Secrets. The guy definitely had layers. She wanted to peel them like she wanted to peel off those elegant clothes of his, but he had to want her to. He had to trust her.
So let me begin. “I trust you,” she said.
He reacted slightly, as if the words had tapped him in the chest. “Talk to me some more about music.” His voice climbed a half note. Passion or stress? She couldn’t read him, especially in the dark. She reached for an easy subject.
“Gladly. I’m always up for opera as a subject, because I get to so seldom. Most people under fifty don’t know opera, except as something satirized on the Comedy Channel,” she said, and as a street lamp flashed by, briefly lighting his profile, she glimpsed a smile. Good. Music wasn’t stressful. “When did you discover it?”
“A performance of The Magic Flute when I was in grade school. Mick and Dennis were bored stiff. I was into it, but I already knew the language of classical music, growing up with a musician as father.”
“The three of you were inseparable, I take it?”
“There was a group of us. But we three were tight as boys, through high school, and into the service. Wild about film. Though we shared other interests. Like the summer Dennis’s dad rotated back from overseas and ran a bunch of us like a Marine boot camp. We were about fourteen. Through various causes we’d become somewhat wild. That settled us down fast.” Again she could hear the amusement that warmed his voice.
“You also rode dirt bikes?” Jan asked, remembering what Shelley had said about Mick.
Another layer, she thought as he said, “No. Oh, I did it a few times, but I preferred martial arts. How about you?”
“Before my dad dumped my mom and me, we used to have season tickets at the Music Center. I saw everything, but it was the voices that got to me. Started singing as a girl, first school choirs and later voice lessons. After Dad left I saved up my babysitting money, and took the bus to LA whenever there was an opera on the schedule.”
“Alone?”
She shrugged. “No one to go with me. After dad left my mother turned against music. She was angry. About him leaving us. When she remarried, it was to a guy who thought the only musician worth listening to was Johnny Cash. And none of his good ones.”
JP uttered a soft laugh as he slowed for a left turn. “That must have been rough.”
“Well, it was my senior year. Next year was college, and I got all the music I wanted. I went to every concert UCLA offered or sponsored . . .”
That led the talk to touring companies, and then to travel. She felt a sense of victory at every smile, every answer he supplied—another layer coming closer to revealing who he really was.
His voice smoothed as he talked about great performances he’d seen in London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. She blatantly expressed her intense longing to travel, and he said, “You should. You really should,” in a slow voice that she sensed the I will take you hovering there.
Or did she just want to hear it? She caught herself, trying to determine what she heard and what she wanted to hear. The only thing she was sure of was that he glided past certain subjects. Her trained ears caught the shift in his tone, and she felt occasional appraising glances from him, as if it was important to him to gauge her reactions to subjects that didn’t sound important to her.
He was waiting for something, some response, some hint. She had no idea what it was, but she told herself, That can wait. I’m with him.
Because the simmering attraction was getting stronger by the minute.
Once more he made a left onto what she thought was rough ground but turned out to be another narrow road, overshadowed by a granite outcropping.
She had been so closely focused on him that she didn’t notice the car gradually climbing until it rounded a tight curve, again to the left. She glanced out, startled to see the straight lights of a highway winking in the distance, and beside it a star cluster of town lights, like a reverse of the heavens. Everything else was dark.
He noticed her startled look out the window, of course. “My idea was to show you a special place,” he said. “We’re almost there. But if you don’t like that idea, say the word. We can head straight back.”
“No, I’d like to see it,” she said, wondering why his hands had tensed on the wheel again. Two steps forward, one back?
He downshifted steadily, until they rolled into a small clearing, and stopped. When they stepped out, Jan was delighted to find the air somewhat cooler than it had been in town.
JP was a silhouette against the darkness. She heard his footsteps crunch, then lights sprang into being: tiny lights hidden among the foliage in trees.
“It’s an old family retreat,” he said. “We call it the grotto.”
He offered his arm. She took it, sliding her hand over the fine fabric of his sleeve. Under it she felt the hardness of his forearm. Yeah, he was tense, all right, and she caught another anxious, assessing look from his shadowed eyes.
She smiled up at him, causing a smile in return. Relief? Expectation? All she knew was, that tension in his forehead relaxed, and her awareness of him sharpened to include his steady breathing, his precise footfalls, his clean male scent. She tried not to sniff loudly as she breathed it in. Again she thought of leather and wood smoke and pine and . . . him.
A glow ignited deep in her core.
“Careful with the step here. These slate stones are uneven. We fix them, but every time there's a really good gully washer they shift a little.”
Jan glanced around, her focus shifting. She became aware of the rush of water, its source hidden behind the deep foliage of shrubs, sheltering trees, and aromatic wildflowers.
They stepped down in a half-circle, and the shelter widened, revealing a deep pool under an outcropping of rock in the side of a hill.
“This end, under the waterfall, is cold,” he said. “This is the very last of winter’s runoff from the mountains up north. That far end of the pool is warm, fed by an underground stream. The meet-point is through a fissure at the bottom of the pool, low enough that the sulfur smell dissipates.”
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
His smile lit his face. “You like it?”
“I love it!” He led her to a mossy natural seat near the edge of the pool. She sat down, the clean smell of the moss rising refreshingly. It was so deep and thick it felt like a cushion.
He turned to her. His pupils were huge in the soft twinkling lights overhead. Somehow, she thought hazily as their gazes blended, they reflected gold, though the lights weren’t gold. “I want to talk to you . . .” He frowned, shook his head, glanced away. “But the choice is up to you,” he whispered. “We can talk, or sit and watch the stars—”
She was done talking. Her entire body burned with desire. If he didn’t kiss her she would burn away to ash.
So she leaned up and kissed him.
Warmth flared into heat. He groaned, and she sighed with happiness as he gently bent her back against the sweet moss, raining kisses over her face: eyebrows, eyelids, forehead, chin, throat, always coming back to her lips.
Her mouth opened eagerly, adoring and desperate both as he took his time exploring. When they paused to catch a shaky breath, it was her turn to plunder, and she did, running her
hands through his silky hair and pulling his head closer.
While they kissed and kissed again, she did what she had wanted to do almost from the first time she saw him: her fingers found the top button of his shirt between the stiff collar points, and she began to undo them, one by one.
He uttered a soft laugh, and when they briefly broke apart to breathe, with a quick motion he shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it over a nearby rock.
She admired the smooth skin over taut muscle in the half-unbuttoned shirt, and lifted her hands to finish the job. She wanted all of him.
But he was too impatient to sit while she did it. He leaned down to kiss her again, his hands playing over her, caressing each curve as if he couldn't get enough of her.
He began to kiss his way down her throat, and she leaned back, afire with yearning as he teased all along the neck of her dress with nips and long, soft kisses.
His finger ran under the neckline, then pulled at the laces of her bodice. Her top fell open, exposing her lacy bra.
“You are so beautiful, my Zaide,” he whispered.
“And so are you, my adored slave. Or are you the s-s-s . . .” She lost the word sultan in a long hiss: he had undone the front clasp of her bra.
Her breasts sprang free, her nipples sensitized in the cool summer air as he looked his fill, his eyes flashing ruddy. Glowing? Or merely a trick of the light?
But he bent down and all she could see was his night-black, glossy hair as he kissed a trail of heat from her collarbones down. His hands molded and played with her breasts, holding them so he could tongue each nipple, licking around and around until it tightened.
The warmth inside her tensed into a wire of passion, vibrating deep into her core as he teased her nipples with a slow, concentrated care, as if there were no greater pleasure in the world. He kissed, and nibbled, and then began to suckle with slow, exquisite heat. The plucked wires rang in chords, a crescendo building rapturously.
“Don’t let me come until I feel you insssi-i-i. . .” She gasped, breathless.
“You think you’ll only come once?” he retorted, smiling down into her eyes. Again, deep in his pupils, she caught a flicker of ruddy light, very much like fire.