Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)
Page 15
“That I understand.” A shiver surged through me as I took a sudden chill from the air around us. Fine hairs rose from my skin, white against the gray stone. I pushed my toes across the ornate rug and angled them at the fire-warmed stone.
“Right. At de moment you’re not a fortress, you’re fully stocked larder with an open pantry door.”
I nodded, appreciating his willingness to work in food metaphors. “I don’t know how.”
“It starts wif de intention. You can’t keep le’in people take from you. Especially Mark.”
“But Mark doesn’t—”
“Oh yes he does.” Reflected flames danced across the surface of Allan’s glasses as he leaned closer to me. “You fink cause he’s de king of de werewolves and a four hundred-year owd pain in de ass to boot that he’s above takin’ what he wants?”
“No, it’s just,—”
“’ere’s what,” Allan said. “Next time he reaches into your mind, you’re gonna fink the word giraffe.”
“Giraffe?” I asked, blinking at him.
“Yes, love. Next time you sense him reachin’ into your foughts, you’re going’ta go on de offense. You fink the word giraffe as loud as you can.”
“I don’t know if I can,” I said, remembering the overwhelming, all-consuming, world altering effect that Abernathy’s presence always seemed to have on me.
“You can,” Allan urged. “ And you will. Believe me, I’ve known Mark since he were a pup. You need to give ‘im firm boundaries.”
The dreaded word. “This would probably be a good time to tell you.” I exhaled. “I kind of have boundary issues.”
Allan erupted into a gale of spontaneous laughter. “No, love,” he said, catching his breath. “You have to have boundaries a’fore you can have boundary issues.”
“You sound like my therapist.” I collapsed forward, elbows on knees.
“Only I’m an ‘ell of a lot cheaper and probably better lookin’.” He dusted the shoulders of his smoking jacket and tucked his ascot further beneath the satin lapels.
“Also you’ve never slept with my ex-husband.” A flame of irritation licked at my brain. “Which only recommends you.”
“Weww we boff know what a right git he was,” Allan said.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Don’t need to.” Allan favored me with an endearingly rabbitty grin. “But he let you go, di’in’t he?”
Warmth twice as intense the fireplace before us flared in my heart. “Kind of you to say,” I said.
“Trust me, love. Someone needs to tell you de truth, and Mark don’t seem to be de man for de job.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For pretty much everything.”
Allan reached out and captured my hand, giving my fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“Don’t mention it, love,” he said, rising. “Now, I be’er make sure Joseph ain’t chasin’ around the scullery maids. Dinner’s in ‘alf an hour. Get yourself dressed and come down.”
“Will do.” I gave him a little salute, making a note to text Joseph to see if any of my clothes survived ASAP.
Then his voice was bouncing off the walls of my mind, more voluminous than a cathedral choir. And remember what I said.
GIRAFFE! I mentally belted.
Allan clapped his hands to his temples and rocked back against the doorframe. “Good God, girl! Blow out me fuckin’ eardrums out why don’t you?”
“I’m so, so sorry!” I said, getting up from the chaise. “I didn’t know you could hear me too.”
Allan dropped his hands from his ears. “No need to apologize.” His mouth quirked up in an amused grin. “Mark’s in for a bit of a surprise I’d say. I pity him when you figure out just how strong you are.” He winked at me behind his black-framed glasses and closed the door behind him.
And what did he mean by that? In this world of creatures with unlimited power and sophistication, I felt like a stick figure. A cipher. A non-entity. What kind strength could I possible bring to the party?
A brisk knock at the door almost had me running up the wall. I opened it a crack to find Joseph standing there, clutching my suitcase. “Looks like I got here just in time,” he said.
Were I not already acquainted with his son’s habits, I might have missed the quick flick of his dark eyes down to the robe and back to my face.
“Was any of it salvageable?” I asked, reaching for the suitcase.
“Most of it, actually. The suitcase itself wasn’t stained, though I’m afraid your nightgown had to be sacrificed.” At this, Joseph’s handsome face wrinkled with mirth.
“Don’t judge,” I said. “I’m sure plenty of women have nightgowns with mice and cheese on them.”
“I’m sure,” he said, clearly humoring me.
“My pleasure. You’re coming to dinner, I assume?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” It may have been the truest thing I’d said all day. Not much could come between me and meals. Vampire heads and vengeful spirits included.
“See you then.” His face was a mirror reflection of Mark’s—everything opposite of the man I knew. Lines carved from smiling rather than worry. A brow lifted in levity rather than anchored by suspicion. Lips shaped by humor instead of solemnity.
I flung my suitcase on the bed and unclipped it, receiving a knuckle thwack for my efforts. I peeled the lid back slowly, noting that my clothes had been refolded. The fresh scent of fabric softener and the faint aroma of bleach wafted upward. Had it really been long enough for Joseph to launder my clothes?
The strangeness of this day, of the events within it, had been enough to relieve me of any kind ability to accurately gauge time.
Pawing through the contents, I was delighted to find my little black cocktail dress thankfully free of wrinkles. And blood. I pulled it out of the suitcase along with a matching pair of black panties, bra and my make-up bag. The clothes were still warm as I hugged them to my chest on the way to the bathroom.
I wriggled into the underwear and slid the dress over my head, inspecting my reflection in the full-length mirror flanking the tub. The ornate, gilded frame surrounded my image like something that belonged on the blood-red walls of the Louvre’s Baroque collection. Not bad, I decided. If a little pale.
What else was new?
But this hair, though. I’d made the grave mistake of sleeping on it wet from the shower and throwing it in a messy bun for my post-ghost bath. Now it fell from my head like shoulder-blade length manic fusilli. No choice but to curl the everloving shit out of it.
Seating myself at the vanity, I decided that sex kitten make-up was definitely called for. Black liquid eyeliner, blood red lips.
While I painted, I replayed every word of the verbal and mental conversation I’d had with Abernathy, right up to the point where he quit the room so fast it had been like his tail was on fire.
Can you blame him? Asked the little voice in my head.
Castle Abernathy, it seemed, made it so even I could hear my own thoughts more clearly. Which, to be honest, is about the shittiest gift I could possibly imagine. Before, I could bop them away like so many balloons. Now, it was like having a conversation with an actual person.
Me.
“For what?” I said aloud, settling in the damask upholstered chair in front of the luminous vanity.
For running. You thought the L-word.
A tightness gathered in my chest, at once familiar and unwelcome. I’d felt it before.
When Morrison told you he loved you.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, trying to concentrate as I slapped own face with a blending sponge
What do you suppose he’s doing now? Mental Hanna (has there ever been a more appropriate descriptor?) asked. While you’re gone?
“I don’t care.” The contents of my makeup case spilled across the vanity as I upended the bag. I caught the eyeliner as it rolled toward the counter’s edge and set it upright. Seizing the big fluffy brush, I began to dust mineral powder across my face.
I’ll bet he’s fucking her again.
“Who?”
Tinkerbell. Goddamn, she was dumb, wasn’t she? How much you wanna bet she moans like a porn star?
“Nothing,” I answered. “I don’t care. What he does is his business. He can fuck whoever he wants.”
Then why are you so upset?
“I’m not upset!” Dragging the fluffy brush across a rosy disk of blush, I raised it to my cheekbone. Problem was, I didn’t know where it should land. My cheeks were already pink. Fuck.
Right, Mental Hanna taunted. Not upset.
Slightly Less Mental Hanna: “Fuck you. I already told you I don’t want to talk about this.”
Then stop talking.
I moved onto eyeshadow, creating an artificial sunset over my lashes. Matte black eyeliner streaked across the sky, followed by a heavy application of mascara. Tracing the outline of my lips with blood red lip liner, I slicked an equally viscerally-hued matte lipstick across them. Satisfied with the face looking back at me in the mirror, I flipped my head upside down and began to brush out the waves.
How come Morrison hasn’t called, do you think?
“I don’t think.” Blood rushed to my face as I massaged my scalp as I’d once watched on a YouTube Sex Kitten Hair video tutorial.
Through the curtain of my hair, my glance strayed to my purse, still on the antique sideboard where I dropped it in my exhaustion. Flipping my hair over my head, I floated over to it and extracted my phone. One missed call, once voicemail, and two text messages. All from Steve, who had graciously volunteered to watch my cats on short notice.
Nothing from Morrison.
Feel that? Your heart just sank.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I asked.
I could ask you the same thing.
I ignored this and instead clicked on Steve’s voicemail. Silence, then the sound of background noise. Had Steve butt-dialed me on accident? Then, a whispered voice. “Come on buddy, say hi.”
A low, worried meow sounded in my ear, and my face split in a grin.
Steve’s voice came on the line. “Gil just wanted to say hi.” He paused. “What was that? Oh, right. He also says, bring him back a haggis. He’s always been curious.” And with this, he disconnected.
I shook my head. I talked to my cats too. But they actually answered Steve.
They answer you too. And you could hear them if you were a—
“No thanks,” I said, turning my thoughts to Steve.
Steve, my brother. Steve who still believed he was an orphan. Did Abernathy expect to keep this secret indefinitely? How was that even possible? True, our father was dead, along with both sets of grandparents. But I had become accustomed to being the sole genetic link of a dying line, and now I knew I had a brother. Another human being in the world shared my blood, my bones, my DNA, and I had to pretend he was just a friend?
Irritation at Abernathy rose anew. Who the fuck did he think he was, anyway?
The man you’re in love with? Well, one of them, anyway.
“I’m about tired of you.” I slammed my phone back down on the lacquered wood.
And what are you going to do about it?
The bottle of Balvenie forty year-old scotch beckoned from the antique sideboard like a siren cast in amber glass against the lead-paned windows. The dark shapes of the moors around Castle Abernathy rose within the liquid like a miniature sunset captured in seductive sepia hues. The glass tumbler tipped rim side up on the creamy linen looked like a personalized invitation.
You don’t even like scotch.
“I could. I’ve never tried it.”
Are you really going to open a thousand-dollar bottle of liquor just to shut me up?
The cork squeaked as I extracted it from its glass embrace. I lifted the tumbler and poured it full. The glass floated up to my lips as if conjured by some spell. The smoky, honeyed liquid burned a path down my throat, building an artificial fire in my belly. I closed my eyes and waited.
Something tugged the muscles of my belly and hips toward the earth as warmth suffused toward my fingertips.
This won’t solve anyth...
The words stretched into fine threads and dissolved like spun sugar on my tongue. I drained the rest of the glass. Silk, not blood, flowed through my veins. I felt reasonably certain not even Hemingway could draw away the power throbbing from my heart.
Blessed silence followed the taste of burnt wood on the back of my tongue. I swallowed not just the scotch, but every thought that lived in the shadows rendered on my palate by smoke and sin.
“Okay,” I said to no one. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 15
“For God’s sake, suck it in!” Allan yanked at the silky black strings of the corset currently doing it’s best to perform an impromptu dissection of my liver. It was the most intimate contact I’d had in two days, during which everyone but I had somewhere to be and something to do in preparation for the state dinner. Not that I was complaining. The solitary stretch of time had somewhat salved the emotional angst proceeding it.
“I am sucking it in!” I gripped the bedpost with both hands, drawing my belly button toward my spine with every ounce of my might as the ornately carved face of a mermaid bit into the meat of my palm.
“Stop talkin’. You have to breave to talk. Now. On de count of free, you’re gonna blow like you’re sucking off a bloody gladiator! Ready?”
I nodded, having very little idea of exactly how much pressure would be required to stimulate the aforementioned entity.
“One. Two. Free!”
Air shoved up my throat in one long gust, and with a triumphant shout from Allan, I was fastened. Inside the dress’s black velvet cage, my lungs rebelled against a sharp inhale, causing a momentary panic as I scrambled to catch one of life’s most elementary rhythms.
“I can’t breathe,” I announced.
“Meanwhiwe,” he said, turning me around to face the full-length mirror. “Your tits look bleedin’ brilliant!”
And to my great astonishment, he was right.
Above the corset’s ribs, my cleavage was a creamy swell. The long lines of my neck and shoulders were unbroken by sleeve or collar. Allan’s tugging had narrowed my waist to a gentle curve that fed into the gown’s full skirt like the stem into the head of a flower. He had managed to give me in cloth a measure of the grace I lacked in person. I turned sideways, then back, transfixed by the satin’s whisper around my legs.
“Go ahead,” Allan invited. “Say it. I’m a bloody genius.”
“You’re a bloody genius.”
“Good. Now let’s do somefink about ‘at hair.”
I perched at the vanity in my palatial bathroom and offered Allan bobby pins as he hovered behind me. Heat from a handful of curling irons breathed onto the delicate skin of my wrist as I leaned forward and turned my face right to left, checking my make-up.
“Quit faffin’ about,” Allan said, releasing a long, red coil of hair, warm against my collarbone. “You look lovely.”
“He hasn’t spoken to me in two days.” Even as I said it, a sharp, metallic tang punctured my heart.
Mark had seen to it that I would be sequestered in this one wing of the castle. Banned from the official meetings and assigned my own security detail, I had wandered the halls like a planet dragging satellites. At least my uninvited entourage had been kind enough to make themselves scarce when I discovered the library. There, in front of windows overlooking cliffs on the River Tay, I’d snuggled down into an overstuffed velvet armchair, stroking and sniffing my way through book after leather-bound book. Meals had materialized under silver-domed dishes. Steaming pots of strong tea and dainty plates of rich, buttery shortbreads became my afternoon companions.
Mark? Mark who?
I kicked off the stilettos beneath the itchy tulle of my skirt and ran my toes over the rough stone wall behind the polished wood. At least part of me could move.
“My gawd, do you ‘ave a lot of �
�air.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“A’right,” he said, releasing one last curl from the iron. “Hold your breaf!”
“As if I had a choice,” I said, shifting within my corset cage.
Allan took up a can of hairspray and shrouded me in a cloud of aerosolized fixative. “’ere!” He tugged at a few of the dark copper curls, arranging them around my face and neck with an architect’s scrutiny.
“Tailor and stylist,” I said, admiring Allan’s handiwork. He’d managed to coax my unruly mop into a romantically chaotic upsweep, half of it piled on my head, the rest falling down around my neck and shoulders. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Women,” Allan said. “Much to me mom’s disappointment. I’d put a necklace on you, but I fink it’d be best not to draw any more attention to ‘at area dan is strictly necessary.”
“Right,” I said, remembering. I hadn’t met any of the other guests, half of whom would be vampires, or so I imagined.
I rose as stiffly as a statue. Allan grabbed my shoes from under the vanity and carried them out to my bedroom, where I slid back into them with his assistance.
Allan leaned back, hand beneath his chin as he evaluated the final product. “Mark Abernathy ain’t going to know what hit him.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, knowing that the only thing I wanted to hit him with was a two-by-four.
If James Bond had ever seen Mark Abernathy in a tuxedo, he would have turned in his gun and cock at MI6 and become an accountant.
As I floated down the stone stairs on Allan’s arm, I scanned the crowded ballroom and found him in an instant. His silhouette burned a space in my memory no other body could fill.
Allan helpfully flicked a finger under my chin to shut my yawning yap seconds before Mark’s amber eyes fastened onto mine. His nostrils flared, finding my scent even from this distance. Heads began turning in my direction, working across the crowd like a wash of dominoes.
“Shit,” Allan muttered. “Dis is goin’ ta be a fuckin’ nightmare.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
Abernathy cleared his throat, and suddenly every gaze in the room jerked in any direction but mine.