A Cup of Normal

by Devon Monk

  She made her way through the hall, stairs and garden, toward the magicked doorway. She stepped into the darkness, her prize clutched tightly in her hands.

  Nathe waited on the other side of the doorway, the wall sconces in the old armory ablaze with flame. Ethra stepped through the doorway and watched surprise, then horror twist his face.

  “I told you to bring me his hands!”

  “I have.” Ethra pulled Talon by the hands through the doorway behind her.

  Nathe skittered to the wall, his arms raised, stumps guarding his face. “No!”

  Ethra released Talon. He approached his brother with a growl, dagger clutched in one hand.

  Nathe’s will pushed at her. She pushed back. She had served him. She had done as he commanded. She would be his puppet no longer.

  Talon stumbled toward his brother. “I should have killed you years ago.” With surprising speed, he thrust the dagger into Nathe’s throat.

  Ethra gasped as Nathe’s will clawed at her soul, then faded, the bindings between them becoming as insubstantial as his last breath.

  Talon fell to his knees next to his brother’s body. He began coughing, then retching. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth. The poison was killing him, slowly, painfully.

  Ethra knew the bond between them had broken the moment Nathe had taken her from the king and reforged her. She knew she was free.

  She walked to the king and touched his shoulder.

  Talon looked up.

  His eyes widened. Ethra pulled her fingers across his throat, ending his life and the bloodline that summoned her. She stared at the brothers for a long moment as an empty feeling spread through her. She had found no pleasure in their blood, their deaths. She did not understand why they had craved it so.

  Ethra turned and walked away, ready to walk the world with her own legs, and see it, for the first time, with her own eyes.

  This is the only vampire romance I’ve written. It hints at a full world with all sorts of fanged shenanigans going on. What was I thinking when I wrote it? That it was high time someone mixed vampires with knitting.

  SKEIN OF SUNLIGHT

  Maddie’s hands shook as she angled the visor mirror and applied her lipstick. Even with the make up, she felt naked. Why had she let Jan talk her into going out tonight?

  Jan sat in the driver’s seat finishing off a cheeseburger. “You aren’t nervous are you?” she asked around a mouthful.

  “No,” Maddie lied.

  Jan stopped chewing to suck up the last of her diet cola and squinted at the quaint Victorian house just up the block from them. It was bathed in light from the street lamp, and practically glowed from the lantern beside the door.

  “Might be the most dangerous looking yarn shop I’ve ever seen in all my days on the force,” she said.

  Maddie laughed. “Stop it. This is hard.”

  “No,” Jan wiped her mouth with a wadded up napkin. “Chemo was hard. And you got through that. This is fun, remember? A real night out. A little adventure.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just . . .” Maddie touched her hair, long enough now, it was styled short and spiky in what Jan called a “vixen cut.”

  “Why you picked a yarn store is beyond me,” Jan muttered. “There’s a bar just a couple streets down. That’s where you’ll find adventure. Good beer, lots of hot young ’uns. We could go Cougar for the night. Lord knows it’s been a long time since you had a man in a meaningful way.”

  Maddie cut her off before she could launch into the sex-fixes-everything speech. “Sounds great. You go check out the young ’uns. I’ll prowl for yarn.”

  “You don’t want me to go with you?” Jan tried, but failed, to sound disappointed.

  “Like you’d last five minutes in a yarn store. Plus, I want to touch, stroke, savor.”

  “So do I,” Jan said.

  “Yeah, but I want to fondle yarn. See you in a couple hours.” She got out of the car and started up the street before Jan got any other bright ideas.

  It didn’t take long to reach the shop, but Maddie’s heart rattled in her chest. She had a thing about yarn stores. She didn’t know why, but she had always wanted to own one. Every town she visited, she made sure she tracked down the yarn shop. She’d never found the perfect store — the one she’d be willing to offer her life savings for — until she set her eyes on this beauty.

  She didn’t know who the owner was, but if she was there, and if the conversation turned that way, Maddie was going to ask if she’d be willing to sell.

  Maddie pulled her shoulders back, opened the door, and stepped in.

  The store was a lot bigger on the inside than it looked from the street, walls covered by wooden shelves held skeins upon skeins of color and fiber and texture. There was enough walking space to be comfortable, even with the two cozy love seats on either side of a small table that took up the center of the room. At the far wall was a counter, cash register, and no one behind either.

  Maddie took a deep breath and smiled. She didn’t know what it was going to take, or how she was going to do it, but this was it. She belonged here. This store was going to be hers.

  “Hello,” a soft baritone said from somewhere above her.

  Maddie looked over to the left of the room where a staircase arched up. There, in the middle of the staircase stood a man.

  Tall, wide shoulders, lean. His black and gray hair was a little longer than was fashionable, his mustache and beard trimmed tight around his lips and shaved clean along his jaw. He smiled. Laugh lines curved at the edges of his eyes, hooked the corners of his lips, and set his age at somewhere around old-enough-to-have-tried-it-all and young-enough-to-do-it-again.

  His wore a dark green sweater rucked up at the elbows, his muscular forearms bare. No watch. No ring. Yes, she looked.

  She also looked at the sweater. Handmade, cabled in a complicated Celtic knot up the arms where it wove like vines across his wide chest. Slacks for his long legs. But a pair of those deck shoes the skater kids liked to wear made her re-think his age again. Thirty? Fifty?

  He waited, not moving, while Maddie took what she realized was a little too long to stare at him.

  Okay, a lot too long.

  Forget the young ’uns. One look at this man had her wanting to stroke and savor a lot more than yarn.

  “Come in,” he said. “You are welcome. Most welcome. Are you here for the class?” He said it slowly. She walked toward him, paying absolutely zero attention to where she was going, each word drawing her in, closer and closer, until she bumped her knee into the arm of the love seat.

  A rush of blood heated her cheeks. That got an even wider smile out of him. He showed his teeth, straight, white, strong, the incisors pressing into the soft flesh of his bottom lip.

  Sexy.

  What was wrong with her? She never acted like this.

  He strolled down the stairs, paying particular attention to his shoes.

  Released from his gaze, she found her voice again. And her brain.

  “Class?” she asked.

  “Mmm,” he agreed. “Knitting. No need to have brought supplies.”

  He crossed the room, moving like a cat. He paused beside the love seat and rested one hip against it, his arms crossed over his wide chest. He was so close, she could smell his cologne. Something with enough rum and spice to remind her of the Jamaican vacation she’d taken just out of college. The one time in her life she had really felt free and alive. Every day she had let the sun drink her down, and every night she had let the darkness, and the passion of a man feed her soul.

  In all these years, she had never once thought of that man, that pleasure. She couldn’t even remember his name. How could she have forgotten that? And how could the scent of this man’s cologne bring those memories back to her?

  He looked into her eyes, smiling, enjoying his effect on her. “We have everything you could possibly desire here.”

  He means knitting, she told herself. He means yarn. Still, the op
portunity was too good to pass up.

  “Everything?” she asked. “I have an insatiable appetite for fine fibers.”

  A small frown narrowed his eyes, and he studied her face.

  “Have we met?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sure we haven’t. I would remember you.”

  His response was cut off by the sound of the door opening behind her. A group of people, chatting, laughing, paused in the doorway.

  The man in front of her gazed over her shoulder. He still smiled, but his demeanor shifted to the look of someone tolerating a pack of puppies wrestling over a toy.

  “Dobry vecher, Saint Archer,” a younger man’s voice called out.

  “Saint?” Maddie said.

  “Good evening, Luka,” the man in front of her said. “Come in, all of you. Welcome.” To Maddie, “Please. Call me Archer. And your name?”

  “Maddie,” she said. “Madeline Summers.”

  Archer raised one eyebrow as if he hadn’t heard her correctly, but Maddie had to move out of the way for the newcomers filing into the shop.

  Luka, thin, young, beautiful, had that teen heartthrob smolder going, marred only by his polo shirt uniform with the emblem of the local movie theater over his heart and sleeve. He smiled at her, looked at Archer as if they were sharing a secret, then away.

  Father and son?

  No, Luka was an angel boy — light-haired, dark-eyed, while Archer was dark-haired, blue-eyed. Plus, Luka had delicate features, while Archer’s wide shoulders and nose (which looked like it had been broken at least once), spoke of a different heritage.

  Next to Luka was a girl who probably still went to high school. Her black hair shifted with stripes of pink and red like pulled taffy. Cute. Another, slightly heavier girl wore a gorgeous knitted beret and matching scarf. She held up a hand in wordless greeting as they tromped off across the room, heading toward the stairs.

  “My apologies,” Archer said. “For the children. They can be rambunctious.”

  “Are they yours?” she asked.

  “Oh, no.” He chuckled. “Students. They come here to knit.”

  “There’s a class tonight? Now? I only came to look —”

  “And why not stay?” he asked. “For the time we have. Tonight.”

  That was familiar. A voice she had heard in her dreams.

  “I haven’t put my hands on balls for years. Of yarn,” she corrected, “on a ball of yarn for years. I just came to touch them, not to do, you know.” She made a fake knitting motion with her fingers, which only came off looking obscene.

  God, she hated it when she went into idiot mode.

  He took a step forward, and she was struck by how tall he was.

  “What is there to lose?” he asked softly. “Some things, our bodies never forget.”

  This time, Maddie managed to look away from his smoldering gaze. “Like knitting?”

  “That too.”

  She grinned and looked up at him. “So how long is the class?”

  “An hour. Sometimes people linger. Will you?”

  “Stay for the class?” she asked.

  “Linger.”

  She couldn’t think of any place she’d rather be. Certainly not hanging out in the bar while she watched Jan find boys half her age to buy her drinks. It was quiet here, except for the students upstairs laughing and arguing over a movie they’d just seen. It was comfortable here. And she liked the look in Archer’s eyes as he pulled out all his manly charms to lure her into his knitting lair.

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  “Excellent.” He looked happy, and something more — relieved. “Let me gather a few things. I’ll follow you upstairs in a moment.”

  Maddie walked around the love seats and over to the stairs. Just as she reached the first step, the door opened again and two more women, women closer to her age — no, she realized with a wince, younger, maybe even still in their twenties — walked into the store. They greeted Archer warmly. Maddie bit her bottom lip, wondering if he was going to lay the charm on thick with them too, if maybe him flirting with her was just an act he used to lure in the female clientele.

  Oh, he was a charmer all right. Kissing them both on the cheek and holding their hands just a little too long while complimenting them.

  Great, Maddie thought. He’d been playing her, that was all. She’d been suckered in by a guy who flirted with every woman who walked through the door. And she’d actually believed him. She must have looked like an idiot. How could she have been so stupid?

  Or maybe she was just that desperate not to be alone, even for only one night.

  She almost turned around and left, but she had come here looking for the owner of the shop, and she wasn’t going to leave without her name.

  The room upstairs was filled with skeins of yarn and cozy couches. It also had a small kitchen nook where pots of coffee and tea were set out. The teens were clumped together on a couch too small for the three of them. To her surprise, they were already knitting. Even the angel boy Luka had needles in his hands and was quickly working his way through a lace- patterned shawl in blood red fingering weight.

  When Maddie was young, there wasn’t a boy in a fifty mile radius who would lay a finger on knitting needles, much less knit in front of his girlfriends. Although with the way the girls, especially the one with the multi-colored hair, looked at him, Luka had a good thing going.

  He caught Maddie looking at him and grinned, showing a row of straight teeth, his canines just a little too long, his eyes just a little too old in that young face. A chill ran up her spine. She rubbed her arms and walked away from the couches to a row of shelves with skeins of bamboo and silk yarn.

  She got in a fondle or two, savoring textures and colors, feeding her senses through fingertips and eyes. Why had she stopped knitting? Probably the same reason she had stopped taking hikes, going to concerts, eating at fine restaurants. Somewhere in her battle to make her body her own again, she had lost touch with living in it.

  No more of that. Her new life started tonight. With the owner’s name.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs punctuated the teen chatter, and soon the two other women were in the room, taking their places in cushioned armchairs, and setting their knitting bags — more like stylish purses than grandmotherly baskets — by their feet.

  She wondered which of them was the teacher.

  Then Archer climbed the stairs. She could feel him, every step he took, like an extra heartbeat in her chest, a pulse in her veins. She could feel him drawing near even though she kept her back stubbornly toward the stairs and her fingers plunged deep in the silky softness of a pliant skein of cashmere. She held onto that skein of yarn like it was her only anchor to her own resolve.

  And it was. Jan was right. It had been a long time since she had been with a man. Much, much too long.

  Archer paused at the top of the stairs. She could feel him looking at her, watching her, a warm pressure against her skin that made every nerve in her body remind her she was alive.

  Was it getting hot in here?

  “I think this is everyone,” he said. “Maddie, are you ready to join us?”

  This was it, her chance to make a break.

  She turned away from the shelf. No eye contact this time, that man had some kind of power in his gaze. She stared very solidly at the middle of his forehead.

  “I can’t. I . . . I have a date.”

  Even though she stubbornly stared at his forehead, she could see the rise of his cheeks as he smiled.

  “Ah. I see. I’m sorry you won’t be able to stay.”

  Maddie nodded, gaze on the forehead and forehead only. So far, so good.

  Archer apparently, had not gotten the memo that she was avoiding eye contact. He strolled over to her, his shoes quiet on the plush rugs scattered across the floor.

  Without wanting to, Maddie’s eyes slipped, shifted, and her gaze met his. Her lips parted, and all she could think of was him kissing her, tou
ching her.

  “I hope you will reconsider my offer,” he said.

  Then the powerful gaze, the mind-numbing draw, were gone. He looked like a man, a very handsome man, but just a man. A little concerned, maybe a little uncomfortable. Vulnerable.

  He pressed the handle of a small paper bag into her hands. “A token. If you ever wish to stop in again.”

  “No, no. I don’t think —”

  He stepped back, quickly and smoothly out of her reach so she’d have to follow him around the couches to give him back the bag.

  That was when she noticed everyone in the room was silent, knitting. They were all smiling. Enjoying this. None of them looked at her, but she could tell they all thought this little exchange was funny. Fine. She’d come back tomorrow and get her answer. Let them have their laugh.

  “Thank you,” she said, pouring on the sugar, and not meaning a word of it. “It’s been lovely meeting you all.”

  She walked down the stairs without stomping, and stormed across the floor. All she had wanted was some time to browse, and maybe a chance to buy the store. Was that too much to ask?

  She yanked the door open, and nearly ran into the woman standing there.

  “May I come in?” The woman was beautiful. Even when Maddie was young and in great shape she had never been that pretty.

  The woman’s long, straight hair was so blonde it was silver in the lamplight. Her kitten-wide eyes were green and lined with thick lashes. Her lips were full and perfect, brushed with red lipstick. When she smiled, Maddie realized she could not look away.

  “Please,” the woman asked. “May I come in? There’s a class tonight.”

  “Oh,” Maddie said, catching her breath. “Right. Come on in. They’re all upstairs.”

  A wicked light sparked in the woman’s eyes, and was gone before Maddie could blink. “Thank you,” the woman purred.

  Maddie moved out of the way and the woman stepped over the threshold and into the yarn shop. She moved like a dancer, smooth and silent, her face tipped upward toward the stairs as if following a string. She licked her lips and smiled.