by Kiki Howell
She hurriedly dressed in a bathroom, putting on a dab of red lipstick in the hopes it looked a little like the era. When she was done, she checked her reflection.
Lately, her skin seemed to shine. Even Madde asked about it, saying, “You buy some expensive face cream or something?” She hadn’t. She wondered if it was merely because she smiled more. Her hazel eyes sparkled, almost looking like they glowed. She was so happy.
Heartbreakingly happy.
She knew this couldn’t continue. She’d just assumed Aaron would eventually tell her to hit the road. But he seemed more and more excited to be with her. Like she was about him.
Their relationship couldn’t go anywhere. But, she’d told herself, mere friendship was wonderful. She smiled at the mirror, thinking about friendship, about Aaron.
The creamy white dress was divine with its millions of beaded fringes. And she’d tucked her hair into the headband in such a way to give herself a faux bob. Checking down her legs, she smiled at the light stockings with the white seam in the back. They were...sexy. Not friendly. What on earth had Sam been thinking? Or had Aaron picked these out?
Her nipples beaded at that. They always had a mind of their own, concerning Aaron.
Adala had to admit, many of her thoughts about Aaron were sexy. Not at all friendly. She’d dreamed about him kissing her. She’d never been kissed, but it sounded wonderful. It looked dreamy in the pictures, as a flapper might say. They also called movie theaters “petting pantries,” dark places where a couple could explore each other’s sexual boundaries.
Adala had daydreamed of touching Aaron, which was silly. But she couldn’t seem to help it after getting to know him. She liked his broad shoulders, so different from her own. She wondered if they would feel like muscular mountains in her hands. They’d accidentally gotten close dozens of times, and she’d felt his body’s warmth. It magnetized her to him. She wanted to touch that warmth.
She’d tried very hard to stop herself from physical thoughts about Aaron. They were getting in the way of a great friendship. But the more time she spent with him, the more she thought about it. She’d even imagined sex. Yes, she was a virgin, but it didn’t mean she didn’t know a thing or two. There were randy dísir who had porn. Often, porn looked...angry. So she didn’t like to watch it. But she’d seen enough to wonder what it would feel like to have Aaron’s weight on her, to have him look into her eyes and push himself into her.
She swallowed and noted the pink over her cheeks and her chest. The dress had a deep scoop neck, showing off non-existent cleavage. Just her sternum, all bony ridges.
She was being ridiculous, thinking such thoughts. One, she could only be his friend. And, two, he probably only wanted to be her friend. She wasn’t exactly human, after all. Sure, she had a very similar biology to every human female. But she’d looked the same for more than nine hundred years now. She’d grown into an adult and seemed to stay looking about twenty-six or so. Same as every dísir.
And, yes, her kind could, apparently, have functional relationships with his kind. Maybe. But she had the added curse of being a Valkyrie, not exactly a dís and not exactly wanted by anyone. She had to watch her attachment to Aaron. She could keep falling for him, and then what? Death like her mother, who had died from heartache? Or would she survive it because she had Madde?
“Just friends,” she whispered to the mirror. Why did her heart feel like it was breaking at that?
She left the bathroom she’d changed in and heard Aaron downstairs in the kitchen. She also heard a great ragtime beat. She smiled thinking about being in Aaron’s arms as they danced.
Stupid, Valkyrie. Can’t keep thinking things like that.
Her heels made a clicking noise as she reached the linoleum and Aaron came into view, in a dark suit, light tie, and fedora. He did look like a mafia wise guy. The fedora killed her, the way it shaded his face, making his square jaw all the more angled, the hollows of his cheeks seem deeper, more cut. Only his blue, blue eyes shone out, making her wonder if they were so bright as to cast shadows in their wake.
Goddess, he was beautiful. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. And yet she had a strange impulse to rub her body up and down his. She squeezed her inner thighs closer, something aching in them. Low in her stomach, she felt she glowed. Something golden and tender growing within her. And, of course, her blammed nipples overreacted, contracting. Hard.
He released a gust of a breath, smiling. “You...you look beautiful.”
“So do you.” She flinched. “I mean—”
“I gotcha. That’s nice.”
She licked her lips, her mouth feeling too dry. He watched her. The pupils of his eyes expanded and already they were larger than normal. His gaze grazed her body, caressing down, noticing her almost bare shoulders, chest, hips, legs that the dress did so much to reveal, her chest again. Once more her legs. She smiled, liking the way he was looking at her. There was such warmth in his gaze. Heat. Gods, she ached to be closer to the heat.
Wondering how she’d become a moth to a flame, she chided herself for her feelings. No, she was no moth. She was the killer here. She was the flame.
Taking a clarifying breath, she asked, “Ready?”
He shook his head, his ocean-blue gaze slowly snagging away from her legs again. “I want to dance with you.”
Billie Holiday came on, all sugary and soulful—honey for the ears. Not exactly period, but perfect nonetheless.
She silently chuckled, looking down at his shiny black shoes. “That’d be nice.”
He stepped forward.
She screeched and jumped back onto the stairs. “Aaron!”
He held a hand out, glanced at it, and winced. “Just trust me.”
“What?”
“We can dance.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Give me a try.”
“You know I can’t touch you.”
“Who said anything about touching?”
She blinked, her lids fluttering in confusion.
He smiled reassuringly. “Just stand right here,” he said, indicating that she was to stand close, but as she stood, she wouldn’t get that near him. He kept smiling though. “Listen to the music.”
She tilted her head and couldn’t help but smile as she watched him sway side to side. Very slowly at first, and hardly noticeably, but there he was, dancing in the kitchen. So she joined him, swaying side to side, grinning, and trying not to feel her heart pound in her chest the way it did. It never thumped like this—full of ache, full of wanting something she knew she couldn’t have. Oh, how she wanted to hold his hand and place her other hand on his shoulder like a normal woman would do. She’d never been envious of human women, but she was then.
And she had driving around in a Tin Lizzie to look forward to. Alongside Aaron. Sweet, perfect Aaron. They would picnic and laugh and she was going to have the best time of her life.
She closed her eyes and kept swaying side to side, feeling his warmth, sensing his body move, smelling his scent of male that was amplified by a touch of cologne. He’d put that on for her. He put himself into a twenties-style suit and fedora, his hair brushed carefully with something that polished it to a high shine. He was beautiful and was doing all of this for her.
Her heart broke with the thought, but she knew it was all for naught. He was a good and kind man, but she knew this had to stop soon. She was falling for him. Falling so hard. And there was no way she and Aaron could have any kind of normal relationship. Guttentaug, he couldn’t even touch her.
With her heart shattering all the more, she knew she had to end this.
Maybe after the dance.
Chapter Seven
MADDE DÍS WALKED into a human bar, assessing her surroundings. The last time she’d frequented a place like this—a dark dive that smelled of tobacco, spilled beer, nut shells and other discarded foods thrown on the dirty floor—it had been called a tavern. She’d had a grog, a sweet rum drink, and there’d been talk of se
dition against the British crown in the form of a rebellion in the Massachusetts colony.
Good times.
This tavern had motorcycles parked outside alongside pickup trucks. On the inside, it was hard to make out the people from the furnishings. They might have been sitting so long they blended, maybe they melded into their seats with their heavy humanly worries. Who knew.
But it felt like a breath of fresh, albeit stale, air.
Madde picked a seat near an elderly man with a white buzzcut.
“I ain’t buyin’ you a drink, case you’re sittin’ there thinkin’ I would.” His voice was all gravel mixed with an out-of-place Texas drawl.
She turned to the crotchety human. These were her kind of people. “Look like I want you to buy me a drink, old man?”
There was a twinkle in his eye and a very slight twist of a smile. He’d been challenging her. She toed up to the line. He quieted, hunching over a beer in a pint glass.
The bartender slowly ambled close, didn’t ask if she wanted anything, but just lifted a shoulder slightly.
Yes, is was a good decision to come here. Other dísir wanted loud parties, lots of club dancing. That wasn’t her or Adala’s speed. Adala’s speed was quiet evenings filled with classical music and lots of intellectual reading and talking about what she’d just read.
Madde loved her sister. Beyond words, she loved her. But after so much sitting around and talking, centuries of it, and the last few decades which had been even more intense with science booming, she’d gotten a wee bit exhausted, trying to keep up with an intellectual conversation she wasn’t sure she wanted to have in the first place.
Yes, coming here was good because Madde knew Adala was keeping a secret, and she needed to blow off some steam about that. But without ABBA.
Madde knew what the secret was. She’d decided to follow her sister, move in to the Salem stable with her. In one night, Madde found the answer: Adala had been sneaking out for, probably, three weeks straight to talk to that human, that Aaron who had tried to save his unit about six years ago. Madde had always wondered if it would come to this. She’d seen the look on Adala’s face when she’d been watching Aaron back then. Still, it hurt that Adala was keeping a secret from her.
Ah, but it was so like Adala to keep her infatuation a secret, so similar to courtly love. Only, it wasn’t illicit. Or explicit. It couldn’t be. Adala couldn’t touch the man she had a crush on. And Madde wished so much she could give that to her sister, to be able to touch the human she most liked.
In the bar, Madde sensed a human approaching, coming at her six. He was a big male. Over six feet. Heavy, from the sound of his footfalls, but the kind of sturdiness that came from muscles. Perhaps he might be intimidating. Although, Madde hadn’t been intimidated by a man even before she’d been transformed into a Valkyrie. And now...it was more than a tad reassuring to know that with one touch, he’d be literal dead meat.
He sidled beside her, so close to tempting fate.
“Hey, baby.”
She glared, even though the man was a tad more handsome than she’d guessed. “Does it look like I want company?”
His shoulders slumped.
“Seriously? Does it look like I want to talk to you? At all?”
He backed away quickly, calling her a bitch under his breath as he left. Coward. Calling her a name to her face was one thing, but that was just juvenile.
Her beer came without the bartender saying a word. He plopped a bowl full of peanuts in the shell in front of her and left. Excellent service. Truly. Talking and making sure she was all right was overrated. She’d pipe up if she wanted something.
The older man closest to her was softly chuckling.
“What?”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Nothing. Nothing. I just never saw the likes of you. Don’t mean that in a bad way either.”
She sipped her beer and glared over the rim at the man with the twinkling blue eyes and white hair. Setting her drink down, she shrugged. No, he probably hadn’t ever seen the likes of her.
“Had a bad day?”
The way he asked, the way his voice intoned caring, made her take a second glance at him. He had great eyes. So blue. Arctic ice blue, which sounds cold, but she’d seen that kind of ice turn a luscious, deep, rich cobalt. Just like his eyes. She gave in to those blue depths. “Yes.”
“Sorry ’bout that.”
“Thanks.” Her voice softened.
She looked more closely at her accidental companion. He’d been a soldier. It was obvious from the habitual haircut to the broadness of his shoulders and the muscles swarming his back.
She guessed his age, what combat he’d seen. “’Nam?”
He straightened a little, looking surprised but covering it quickly. “Kids your age even know about Vietnam?”
She smiled. “I’m a little older than I look.”
He rolled his eyes, which made her laugh.
“Hell yes, I was in ’Nam.” He glanced her over a little more thoroughly. “You serve?”
She turned back to her beer. Combat for her had been a long time ago. Oh, she’d snuck away and joined the French Legion in the forties, which had changed into the French Resistance in the blink of an eye. World War II, they now called it. It seemed like a noble war to be in, so she’d taken it upon herself to join, keeping it a secret from Adala. Her sister might be her best friend and only confidante, but they both kept secrets from each other, making life a tad lonelier than it should be. But she never wanted to make her sister uncomfortable, never wanted to cause any unease for Adala. She’d cut her own wings off again and again to ensure Adala was at peace. Only, maybe that hadn’t been the answer to give her sister.
Madde shrugged.
Her companion grunted, probably had a problem with females being in the service. Men of his generation seemed to like odd roles for genders that, given a few hundred years of life, meant nothing to her. It seemed just another way to put people into boxes. And the two shall never blend. It must drive him crazy how androgynous people of the younger generation are nowadays. He would have died during the sixteenth century with all the lace, silk and powder a man had to wear. Just died.
The bartender ambled around as the white-haired man pointed at her. “Get that girl another drink from me.”
Madde arched her brow at her companion.
He didn’t look at her but said, “We gotta stick together, military men, er, people.”
She smiled, not able to stop herself, and somehow found her legs moving, her body swinging closer to the male. She sat next to the older vet. He smiled, his blue, blue eyes a tad mesmerizing.
The bartender handed Madde another beer, and she was surprised the other was empty. Oh, but it was good—cold, crisp, the dark tang of malted barley mixed with hops.
When the bartender got lost once again, the man said, “Frank. McCartney. Former Master Chief.” He didn’t extend a hand in the polite gesture to shake, which Madde was grateful for. She would have hated to refuse to touch him, although she didn’t understand why she felt that way about a stranger.
“Madde. Dís. Former...I can’t tell you.”
He nodded. “Intel?”
She took a sip of her beer, trying not to smile.
“Yeah,” Frank nodded. “I’m in one of those woo-woo group-therapy setups. Though, I’m missing it tonight. Anyway, we got a spy in there. Nice guy.”
“You go to a woo-woo group therapy?”
He glanced at her, a white brow arched. “You don’t? Get with the times, old woman. It’s the cool thing to do, talk about your feelings and shit.”
She laughed.
“We got a woman in the group too. Man, she saw...things.”
Madde grunted, nodding.
“You want to go to our group?”
She shrugged.
“But, ah, fraternizing between group members is discouraged. So, you’d have to stop flirting with me if you did.”
She laughed again, rea
lly liking this Frank McCartney. She liked how his eyes kept twinkling. He was handsome. Very handsome, no matter what age he was. Something odd happened in her throat, making it hard to swallow, making her think her heart had lodged itself there. But worse, her body simmered with a long-dead feeling.
Attraction.
To Frank?
Flinging flanging idiotic attraction.
But she’d overcome all her attractions to men before.
She tried swallowing again, wondering why her heart was racing.
“So, Madde, you want to tell me what’s going on? Want to talk about your bad day?”
Oddly enough, words spilled out. She was cryptic because she had to be, but she told him how she and Adala were dependent on each other, how she knew Adala’s secret about seeing a man, about how alone she felt.
Frank nodded. “That’s tough.”
“It sounds silly and juvenile, me being...whatever it is about my sister wanting to have a...friend.”
Frank shook his head. “Been around as long as me and you learn nothin’ is silly and juvenile. If it matters to you, it matters. Period. I can judge you, sure. And you can judge me for all my worries and concerns. But what good does that do?”
His slow-cantered Texas drawl was incredible—soothing, soulful, seductive. No, not that last part. Where had that thought come from? She focused on what more he was saying.
“Besides, I get it. You and your sister are tight, even for all your differences. And she’s changing the rules. That’s tough no matter how old you say you are.”
Madde smiled, wanting to push her shoulder against his. She wanted to touch him. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had understood her. Oh, Adala always did. But it was then Madde realized she often didn’t share as much as she should with her sister. She always wanted to protect Adala, but how much had Adala really needed that protection? How much of it was just getting in the way?
“Thanks, Frank.” She shook the smile away. “Your turn. I poured out all my bullschmitt, now you gotta do the same.”
He smiled, deep lines around his eyes like he’d looked hard into the sun for a number of years. “I didn’t have a bad day, though.” He took a sip of his beer. “In fact, my day’s getting damned good. Have a real pretty girl, and, yes, girl, even if she says she’s older than she looks, talkin’ to me. So I’m a-okay.”
