by Fiona Zedde
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Sadness leaks from her like her tears. She’s shaking. Mercy’s red half-mask bursts to the surface of her face, then disappears. Skin the color and hardness of a turtle’s shell morphs over her throat. Sharp, dagger-like spikes erupt from her forearms before melting away. Her skin ripples with change after change, one right after another. All her control is gone.
The human girl must be dead.
I risk a look into her mind, and it says how pissed I am that I’m not as precise as usual, or as careful. She winces at my clumsy mental probe and jerks wounded eyes up at me. The deep red of the Mercy mask slips over her features, then falls away in the next breath. Talons appear in place of her fingernails.
“Stay out of my head!”
I feel a push, then abruptly nothing. None of my Mai’s thoughts. None of her feelings. She’s a blank wall to me, as if I never loved her. A gasp spills out of me.
How did she do that, and why?
My feet take a single, stumbling step toward Mai. “What did you just d—?”
She jerks two steps back and confronts me with the flat gold of her eyes. “Yes, she’s dead.” Her voice is a low growl, half-transformed into something bestial. “And you could’ve stopped that, too.”
The blank wall where the cool ripple of her thoughts and feelings used to be twists my stomach with dread and fear. Like someone has suddenly taken away the safety net from beneath the trapeze of my life.
Doubt. Fear. Uncertainty. Things that were unknown between us now grip me in a merciless vice.
Although I am frozen on the inside, my mouth runs away from me, propelled by the pain breaking me into little pieces.
“No.” A snarl of self-defense twists my lips. “I will not take responsibility for that. You run around this city in a costume trying to save every human from themselves and each other, not for once accepting you’re fighting a losing battle. That battle isn’t one I’m fighting. It’s not one I’ve chosen. Do not put that burden on me.”
A spasm of pain wracks her face, and she spins away from me. “I can’t…I can’t look at you right now. Just…”
“Just what?” I can already taste the bitter poison of the words waiting on the edge of her tongue. “What exactly do you want me to do, Mandaia-Pili?”
Say it. Although Mai isn’t listening anymore, I force my thoughts at her, daring her to finish her slow annihilation of me.
Although I can only see the side of her face now, the flinch jerks her whole body. “You always know just how to twist the knife, don’t you?” Fresh tears pour down her cheeks to wet the fabric of her T-shirt. As if she isn’t the one who started this. “Out of the two of us, you are the one who’s like my mother.” Then she turns and walks away, heading for her bedroom where I always felt welcome before. But not now.
Her back is iron. Everything about her posture says “Don’t follow. Stay away.”
All because of the fear I felt for her and the useless anger of some puny human who felt mighty with his gun. I turn. I grab my things and leave. The hurt is hard to swallow, but I do it.
The elevator takes forever to arrive and then, stuck inside, it leaves me staring at my stone-faced reflection for longer than I can bear.
A muscle tics in my jaw.
My eyes look black.
The hole inside me where Mai has yanked herself loose throbs like an open wound.
Six floors and dozens of heartbeats later, I finally reach the lobby and do my best not to stumble out into the too-bright sun like someone with no center to keep them upright.
Then the back of my neck prickles.
Someone is watching me. The alien gaze burns into my back and the side of my face like acid. Who the fuck…?
My head jerks up and I look around, nostrils flaring, my hunter senses spreading out to catch the scent. A familiar and comforting rage roars in me, and I welcome this transformation of my pain. My hands burn hot with the lust to burn everything to ground. To hollow out the bastard daring to watch me like I’m some self-destructing beast for their entertainment and later dissection.
There! A pulse of color, a hint of an unknown spice in the air. Another Meta.
Without conscious thought, my body bursts into motion, darting in the direction of my stalker.
When I find you, whoever you are, I’ll burn you from the inside out and make you wish you’d never set eyes on me. I’ll rip the screams out of you. Your carcass will bleed.
My feet fly across the pavement. I feel heat trail in my wake. The streets aren’t empty, but I don’t care. Let the humans stare and scurry out of my way. Let them see me in a way Mai doesn’t.
My feet stumble.
Sudden tears blind me, and I’m running through a veil of wet, tracking a Meta signature I can barely see through my pain. I race through a maze of buildings on a side street, down a sloping avenue. The signature of my prey abruptly changes, and I turn to chase it. And slam into the side of a building. Bricks explode around my body. Dust from the impact billows up and I choke, sobbing out a cry. A scream of frustration.
“Come back here!” But they’re gone.
Fuck.
Humans are watching; some have their cell phones pointed at me. Double fuck.
The broken wall shudders as I drop back against it, my insides dirty with hurt and my breath heaving. All this effort for nothing.
I swallow to try and catch my breath, but it feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The broken wall digs into my back through my clothes. Shivers click my teeth. Like the bricks at my feet, I’m crumbled to pieces and only Mai can put me back together again.
But will she?
Chapter 14
It’s been two days, and Mai has not come back to me.
Technically, I haven’t gone back to her apartment, but from the way she’s kept her mind firmly closed to me, it feels like she doesn’t want me there. She hasn’t whispered a single word through the bond we’re supposed to have. It hurts.
While huddled in my overpriced room at the Ritz, I thought over and over again about what happened at the school, about my argument with Mai afterward, and then my later stupidity. At least I had the presence of mind to ask Farr and Caleb to scrub any digital and mental records of my lunatic sprint through Mai’s neighborhood. But that was as far as my clear thinking went.
My thoughts were otherwise rabid but didn’t change a damn thing.
Which is why I’ve decided to search for her the human way.
Pushing aside my feelings of humiliation, I open the door of the classroom where she’s supposed to be.
Of course, Mai isn’t here.
The room isn’t empty, though. Three of her students linger, their belongings packed away but their bodies draped across chairs in the back of the classroom like they’re in no hurry to leave. There’s not another class scheduled to be here for another two hours.
“—and that skank Elisa was telling everyone who would listen that Professor Redstone is sleeping with one of her students. Basically implying that she’s the one munching on the prof’s muff after hours.” One of the students, a thin boy with a bright pink undercut, makes the bold statement. He’s sitting on top of one of the desks, his profile to the door, obviously irritated.
A mischievous-looking girl in cut-off shorts and a Black Lives Matter T-shirt laughs as though what the boy says is comedy gold. “As if.”
“Right! I wish the prof was down to fuck one of us. I’d be the first one in line.” This comes from Beatrice Aarondale, a student of Mai’s who I stupidly thought she was screwing before we met. “But everyone knows she doesn’t get down like that. Sadly.” She sags across her desk in a belted dress short enough to be a shirt.
“What does that even mean?” The boy makes a sound of annoyance and waves his hand in truly dramatic fashion. His swoosh
of pink hair falls over one eye in his agitation. “Professors sleep with students around here all the time and nobody ever gets busted for it. It’s like there’s some kind of Scout badge to screw your prof and blog about it. They don’t have a shit ton of student/teacher porn out there for nothing.”
“True,” Cut-off says.
The door of the classroom opens and then falls shut behind me as someone peeks in. It makes a soft, squeaking noise, bringing an end to my accidental eavesdropping.
Beatrice sits up from her slouch and narrows her eyes at me. I don’t have to read her mind to know what she’s thinking.
“Are you the one who started those stupid rumors?” she asks me.
This girl has a set of ovaries on her. If I didn’t know for sure that my woman doesn’t want her, I’d be tempted to rip her apart with words alone. But her obsession with Mai is completely one-sided, and Mai has let her know that more than once. Beatrice’s loyalty to my woman in the face of this personal rejection is one of the sweetest things I’ve seen from a human in a long time.
It doesn’t mean I’ll allow her to come for me, though.
I fix Beatrice with a cool stare. “Why would I start rumors when I’m the one who has the pleasure of munching on her muff after hours?”
Why did I just say that? Because I’m apparently a jealous idiot.
The boy lets loose a dramatic gasp, and his other friend’s mouth drops open. Beatrice looks like she wants to kill me with her bare hands and then piss on my cooling body.
“You’re lying,” she finally growls. Her eyes narrow to slits, and her arms cross tight under her breasts. The little trouble-maker knows I’m not lying, though.
“Of course.” I make my smile as insincere as possible. “If you happen to see Professor Redstone, will you tell her I’m looking for her, please?” Since Beatrice would rather see me under a literal bus than tell Mai anything on my behalf, I make sure to aim the request at her friends.
Beatrice makes a rude noise. “If you’re sleeping with her, shouldn’t you know where she is? Or at least have her phone number and oh, I dunno, communicate with her like normal girlfriends?”
Okay, I take back every good thing I ever thought about this girl.
“Normal is relative, as I’m sure you very well know, Ms. Aarondale.” I give her a look that tells her I know all about her kinks, from mild to wild. “Anyway, thank you for the lovely conversation. I’ll leave you all to it.”
Just as my hand reaches the door handle, it turns and the door slowly begins to push open. A young-looking girl stumbles through it.
“Oh!”
Pale eyes. Sun-kissed skin. Thick black hair down to her waist. A face full of disappointed expectations.
These impressions come to me in a flash, but I’ve been enforcing for too long to focus only on what someone looks like in the moment. Being with Mai taught me more of the same. The girl’s eyes are wide with surprise, and she reaches out with both hands to stop her fall into me. Turning quickly, I avoid the touch of her hands altogether and grab her by the shoulder to stop her from falling on her face. Her skin is hot to the touch even though the layer of her T-shirt separates her skin from mine.
“Excuse me!” She jumps back from my touch, her side slamming into the wall. “I thought there was a class in here now.”
“Professor Redstone canceled it.” Beatrice comes up behind me, frowning and curious. “She sent the cancellation notice to all her students last night.” She peers at the girl as if Beatrice is the jailbait version of a TV detective. “You don’t look familiar. Are you sure you have the right class?”
“I’m not one of hers, at least not yet,” the girl says with a smile that’s trying a little bit too hard. She toys with her hair, pulling the entire thick length over one shoulder and petting it like a good dog. “I just wanted to check it out before making my mind about taking it next semester.” Her eyes don’t stop moving around the mostly empty classroom.
Lured by the promise of a bit of drama, the pink-haired boy and his giggling friend move up from the back of the room. Though I’m not trying to listen in on their minds, I sense their curiosity. Their amusement.
With her hands shoved into the pockets of her so-called dress, Beatrice blatantly looks the girl over. “She’s not teaching the same thing next semester. The 202-level course is next semester, and that’s a continuation of what we’re going over now. If you sign up next semester you won’t know what’s going on.”
“Sorry! I didn’t know that.” The girl jerks her hands from the hypnotic stroking of her hair and lifts them in the air in surrender. Her eyes are big and wide. Aggressively innocent. “Thanks for telling me.”
“No problem,” Beatrice says, apparently appeased by the girl’s apology and submission. “You can just email her and tell her what you’re interested in. In regard to her classes, that is.”
Behind us, her friends are having a giggling fit.
The byplay between the girls is strangely fascinating. Beatrice is treating the newcomer like she’s trespassing. Was I ever this territorial about any professor in college? I hope not.
Anyway, enough of this. I’m not a student to play games when it comes to getting what I want. And I’m certainly not going to guard Mai like a jealous pit bull.
“Excuse me, everyone.”
With a pointed step toward the door, I once again wish the students a good afternoon. Mai is out there somewhere with whatever resentment she has still burning in her heart. I need to extinguish it before it completely incinerates this precious thing we have between us.
Chapter 15
Escape has never been my thing. When something tries to corner me, I fight to their death to get free. But an escape is exactly what I’m looking for now in Mexico.
Half-dreading the reception my aunts will give me after my weeks of absence, I walk out to the backyard pool after teleporting into the house. Sweat and honeysuckle-scented Caribbean heat immediately prickle under my leather jacket. A breath of relief pours out of me.
I’m home.
“So, we finally get more than a weekly phone call from you.” Lying back in her over-sized hammock near the pool, Tia Ana sways back and forth in the light breeze while the sun glints over her tower of silver hair. Sunglasses hide her eyes, but her attitude is on full display. She barely responds to my hug.
“I don’t know why you say ‘we’ since I’m okay with our niece living her own life.” Her sister, Carmen, speaks up from her massive rainbow-and-white-unicorn floaty in the middle of the pool. Her short midnight-black hair is wet at the edges. She blows me a kiss and takes a sip from her margarita glass before putting it back in the cupholder built into the floaty. A similar glass, only empty, rests on the floor near Tia Ana’s hammock.
With my socks and ankle boots off and jeans rolled halfway up my calves, I drop my leather jacket on the lounge chair next to Ana in her hammock and try to defend myself. “I call you more than once a week.”
Tia Ana throws me an unimpressed look but responds to her sister. “I want her to live her own life, but it wouldn’t kill her to visit more often. Why have the power to be anyplace in the world if you don’t come home?”
“You know my power doesn’t work like that.” I can teleport just about anywhere I choose, but my use of the power is limited. One shot and I can’t use it again for hours. Which is the reason I usually only use it for work.
“Still…” Tia Ana refuses to let it go.
Carmen flicks her fingers in the water toward her sister. “Leave her alone.” Then she turns a smile to me. “Anyway, Xóchitl. This one may be set on giving you nothing but tears for visiting, but I for one am glad to see you.”
“Thank you, Tia Carmen.” I give her floating unicorn a playful nudge with my bare toe.
“If we knew you were coming, we could’ve made tamales,” Tia Ana grumbles. “You d
on’t even allow us to spoil you anymore.” Tamales are my favorite, and nobody makes them like my tias.
“We can make some together later if you’re in the mood.” The tamales take forever to make, but it would help settle my mind to fall into the rhythm of cooking and conversation.
“Later sounds good. Doesn’t it, Ana?” But Tia Carmen doesn’t wait for her sister to answer. She turns immediately back to me. “How long are you staying?”
Good question. “A couple of days. Three, maybe. Depending.”
“Depending on what?” Ana pushes up her glasses to her forehead. Her steady brown gaze would make me confess to murder if she didn’t already know everything I’ve done.
“Depending on how much grief that woman of hers is giving her, obviously.” Tia Carmen’s smile is far too knowing. She drinks down the last of her margarita and tucks the empty cup back in the cup-holder of her unicorn float.
“Is this crazy sister of mine right?” Tia Carmen asks with a hint of glee. “Are you girls actually breaking up? When Mai was here, you acted like you’d never let her out of your sight again, much less your life.”
God. Was I that obvious back then?
The one and only time Mai has been to my house was a few months ago when I asked her to come and think about being my woman. On that weeklong visit, she met my aunts who fed her and told her stories about me they should’ve kept to themselves. Everyone got along.
Despite the cockiness I showed Mai, I was shocked she took the chance on coming to Mexico to see me. In the time we were apart, I missed her and hoped she missed me, too. With the promise of getting answers to the questions she had about my identity and my reasons for being in Atlanta, I lured her here into my world.
We managed to work everything out between us, and Mai ended up in bed with me that night.
“I don’t think we’re breaking up,” I finally say after a hard swallow. “Mai just needs some space right now and I need…” My throat clicks, and the sudden desire to hide under something dark and cool makes me want to hit something.
