Predator

by Liz Meldon

  Incubi weren’t exactly high on the demonic food chain, and the rest of them just loved to remind him of it. Rolling his eyes, he hurried up to his rented room as discretely as possible. With no other clients scheduled, Severus tidied up, rubbed down all the surfaces to remove fingerprints, and then left a tip for the housekeeper on his pillow. He never stayed the night, but he always tipped. Just another way to ensure he was a welcome face around the hotel.

  Then, with five hundred dollars burning a hole in his pocket, he left, energized and refreshed, to see where the night might take him.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Sinking deeper into her roomy twin bed, Moira Aurelia dragged her finger across her tablet’s screen, whizzing through the services page of Russ Tanner’s website for the umpteenth time tonight. She had gotten the link from the one “high-end” escort agency that promoted itself around town; when they didn’t have a male escort available the night she requested, they had recommended him.

  As far as she could tell, nothing about his website suggested he even did anything sexual. There was a lot of talk about massage and reflexology, but the prices were beyond outrageous for those kinds of services. She nibbled her lower lip, brow furrowed. He was her only hope—her only option, more like.

  On his About page, he stressed that he preferred to work with referrals, but would consider taking on new “clients”—yuck—on a case-by-case basis. Moira wasn’t looking for a forever sort of arrangement. She had spent the last year building herself up to this, and this thing was happening next Friday night, a week from tonight, or not at all.

  She just couldn’t bring herself to do more research into the sex industry of Farrow’s Hollow—nothing ruined childhood memories of an idyllic hometown like learning prostitution ran rampant in certain areas of it. Although it had taken her way longer than necessary to find its official website, the one legitimate local escorting company had been very professional about the whole affair. Their website had been clean, upfront, yet it too claimed this wasn’t about sex. It was about companionship. Right. Why hire an escort unless you wanted to pay for sex?

  The careful, precise language on both websites was likely there to avoid any legal ramifications. She tapped back to the About page, wishing Russ had posted a picture of himself. Not that that would be a selling feature, but it would be nice to know what she was getting herself into. Moira had already tried Facebook-stalking him, but when nothing became of it, she figured Russ “Tanner” wasn’t his actual name. Which made sense—given that what he did for a living wasn’t exactly legal.

  Well, more of a grey area, if she understood the law correctly. One could hire an escort as a dinner date. You could bring them to a high school reunion, use them as a beard to hide your sexuality from judgmental relatives. But Moira wasn’t interested in any of that. Her request, her purpose for hiring Russ Tanner should she go through with it, was decidedly not a grey area.

  Moira wanted sex.

  Good sex. Sex to an orgasm, which, at twenty-three, she still hadn’t had—either with a partner or on her own.

  And if she was actually dying, she wanted to go out with a bang, you know? See what all the fuss was about.

  “Moira?” True to form, Ella barged into her room without knocking, throwing the door open like she owned the place. Moira’s tablet went flying, and she slammed the thing facedown on her bed, startled, cheeks red and eyes wide. Her housemate and best friend arched a thin black eyebrow, tawny brunette curls especially enormous tonight, and leaned against Moira’s bedroom doorframe, hip cocked and arms crossed. “Well, hi there. Why do you look like I just caught you watching porn?”

  “You didn’t,” Moira said tersely, sitting up and rearranging her squishy purple duvet cover, then reaching back to fluff her pillows. “And I wasn’t.”

  Ella snorted, shifting her weight to her other foot as she pushed off the doorframe. “Right. So that guilty look on your face is for what, exactly?”

  “You know, most people knock,” Moira told her with a grin. Ella, of course, wasn’t most people. They’d been best friends since the first grade, after a tumultuous kindergarten rivalry turned into something completely unexpected when they’d been forced to be desk buddies at the start of the following school year. They had done elementary school, high school, and undergrad together, and were now a semester and half into their respective Master’s degrees together. Ella had even lived with Moira and her mom for their last two years of high school, back when her parents proved to be less than up to the task of caring for their kids. Never in their history had Ella knocked before breezing into Moira’s room—and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

  “You coming?” Ella asked, skirting the issue entirely. She blew a bubble with her neon-green gum, snapping it noisily as she waited for a response.

  The whole house was going to a movie tonight; on top of Ella, Moira had three other roommates living in their old two-storey Victorian home in the student suburbs surrounding the Farrow’s Hollow University campus.

  “No. I’m not really in the mood.”

  “Moira—”

  “It’s just a movie,” she said with a shrug, knowing her forced nonchalance was wasted on Ella. “Seriously. I have work to do.”

  They all did. On top of a full course load, all five housemates were teaching assistants in various university departments as they worked toward completing their graduate degrees. However, tonight was the premiere of some new slasher flick at the campus duplex, and Simone, genetics PhD candidate, had bought tickets for everyone. When she’d told them about it over breakfast yesterday, Moira had been quick to find an excuse not to go, even going so far as to insist that Simone bring her boyfriend instead so the ticket wouldn’t go to waste.

  “He’s the biggest baby with horror movies. He’ll be hiding inside his hoodie the whole time,” Simone had said with a giggle as she slathered her pancakes with syrup, “but I guess I’ll drag him into it. Just let me know if you change your mind, okay?”

  At the time Moira had smiled and nodded, but she’d already known she wouldn’t change her mind—still hadn’t.

  And from the look on her best friend’s face, Ella was not pleased with the final decision.

  “Just…leave it be,” she said softly, shooting Ella a pleading look as the woman glared at her from the doorway. They’d discussed Moira’s slow but steady withdrawal from their social circles many times over. At this point, the conversation was just going around in circles.

  She appreciated Ella’s concern, but at the end of the day, it was Moira’s decision. With everything that had happened to her, that was still happening to her, she chose to step back. She chose to be introspective. She chose to focus on herself, forgoing the ultimate frisbee team they’d all played on, the pub bingo nights every Tuesday, and Sunday hangover brunches. All of it. A movie was innocent, just two hours of her time, but she had a game plan for tonight: she’d either book a session with this Russ Tanner, highly recommended male escort, or she’d chicken out for good.

  “You look cute,” she offered, hoping her tone sounded friendlier, more their usual style as her gaze swept over Ella. Clad in a pair of dark skinny jeans, her luscious thighs looked ah-mazing—her obsession with squats probably helped. Up top, she was wearing the good ol’ FU sweater, which usually made Moira smile no matter what kind of mood she was in.

  For a brief time in the eighties, Farrow’s Hollow University had rebranded to just Farrow’s University, until the geniuses in charge realized that the name change meant all their gear suddenly had FU blazed across it. Moira’s mom had held onto one of the few pieces of old memorabilia from her days at the university, and after she’d died, this sweater was the only thing Ella had chosen to keep from her possessions.

  She hadn’t wanted to take anything at all, but Moira knew Ella loved her mom almost as much as Moira did. At the time, it hadn’t seemed right for her to help Moira sort through the woman’s possessions, choosing what
to donate, toss, and keep, without allowing her to take something to honour her mom’s memory—to remember the woman who had been more of a mother to Ella than her own.

  Ella had fought it at first, arguing it wasn’t right, but, at Moira’s insistence, she’d chosen the sweater. Sometimes, fresh out of the dryer, when it still smelled like Mom, Ella would crawl into Moira’s bed, the sweater between them, and they’d just breathe her in, reminiscing.

  It had been two years since her death in the winter of Moira’s third year of undergrad. Two years since the illness without a name struck. Two years since Moira had sat by her side in the intensive care unit, watching her wither away, listening to her rant on about Moira’s twenty-second birthday and onions. Over and over again, twenty-two and onions.

  Two years since her world had fallen apart.

  Two years to try and rebuild herself, only to have her body fritz out without an explanation. But she had endured. Grieved. Tried to move on. Two years later, Moira was finally able to look at that sweater without her eyes watering and her chest tightening—now, she was finally able to smile again.

  Because Ella looked good in it. Navy blue, FU in gold. It suited her, attitude and everything. Just a plain crew-neck sweater, no bells and whistles for someone so fashion conscious, but Ella wore it at least once a week.

  “Thanks,” Ella murmured, tugging it down over her hips with a sigh. Her caramel gaze drifted listlessly around Moira’s bedroom for a moment before landing on her cluttered desk by the door. Moira knew right away what had caught her attention, and she braced herself when Ella snatched the recently purchased box of hair dye off the desk, eyebrows crinkled as she read the side. When she was done, she shot Moira one of those girl, please looks before tossing the box back onto the mess. “You need to buy better-quality dye. That shit will ruin your hair.”

  “My hair’s already ruined.” Without thinking, Moira reached for the wool cap on top of her head, then forced her hand back to her tablet. She’d been wearing it, or some variety of hat, ever since her naturally warm, thick, beautiful chestnut-brown hair had fallen out last summer, just before she’d started her grad studies, and grown back in white, coarse, and straight. Ella kept insisting that she could get away with it, that white and pastel and even grey were on trend, but Moira couldn’t stand the thought of seeing it in every reflective surface throughout the day.

  “I can stay,” Ella said softly. “We can just watch TV or something.”

  “Oh my god, go,” Moira told her, laughing and hurling one of her smaller pillows at her friend. It nose-dived about a foot from the end of the bed, and Ella snorted.

  “You sure?” She sauntered in and picked it up, then chucked it right back, hitting Moira square in the face before she could block it.

  “It’s a fucking movie. Of course I’m sure.” Moira hugged the pillow to her chest. “Seriously. I actually have stuff to grade and pictures from the art show my first-years did to upload to the class website. I won’t even notice you’re gone.”

  No, she most definitely would. Living in a creaky old house with thin walls and four other women, her home was seldom quiet.

  “Fine, I’ll just spoil everything for you when I get home,” Ella teased, skipping back to the hallway at the sound of the others getting ready downstairs.

  “Bring me some popcorn!” Moira called as Ella shut her bedroom door. Then, grinning, she added a long, drawn out, “Love you!”

  Three sharp knocks on the wall outside her bedroom, which sat at the top of the stairs, was Ella’s response. Shaking her head, Moira flipped her tablet over and found that, in the kerfuffle, she had somehow navigated away from Russ’s website and was now four pages deep in her university inbox.

  So, she sorted through that for a little while, half listening to the chaos downstairs as four women got ready for the movies—one searching for her phone, another the snacks she wanted to sneak in, a third complaining that her boots leaked and it might rain, then Ella, over everything, ordering the lot of them to hurry the hell up. It was like a whirling tornado anytime they all went out together, and when the front door finally slammed shut, the telltale sound of the lock clicking into place following shortly after, Moira let out a soft sigh of relief.

  Unable to drag herself back to the escort’s website just yet, her stomach knotted with anxiety, she locked the screen and clambered out of bed. She’d been in there since after dinner, leaving Ella and Hannah in front of the living room TV for the sanctuary of her bedroom upstairs—to research escorting services. She stood there for a moment, picking her wedgie and adjusting her hiked-up FHU track pants, then padded out of her bedroom and downstairs to the kitchen.

  When they’d moved into the house last fall, Moira and Ella’s first time living outside the two-bedroom campus dorm apartments, it had been eerie being in there alone. The whole place creaked and groaned at all hours of the day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. She’d heard things that she knew weren’t there. She’d seen things in the shadows, her mind playing tricks on her. Now, a semester and a half into living there, the house and its habits were old news.

  After making a mug of hot chocolate, noting that her section of the shared fridge was looking a little sparse, Moira trudged back up to her room. Along the way, she fed Steve, the house betta fish, and turned off the TV, which the girls had left on mute. Both Simone and Hannah’s bedroom doors were closed as she passed them on the way back to the stairs, and she knew Lee’s and Ella’s would be the same upstairs, but she caught a flash of her reflection in the dark bathroom mirror down the main floor hallway just before she started up the stairs.

  Clutching the railing, she stared, her skin paler than it had ever been, her eyes a vibrant blue when they’d once been a muddy green. Unlike the hair, which she hid under her vast collection of wool hats, Moira couldn’t pretend the change in her eye colour was due to the latest trends.

  One morning five months ago, she had woken up and her eyes were a different colour. Poof. Just like that. Blue. And not just any blue—the most fucking intense shade of blue she had ever seen, and she had a bachelor’s degree in art. She had seen a lot of blue in her time.

  Her hand went to her cheek and she pushed at the skin, hating the sight of her reflection doing the same. It was like staring at a different person.

  All her life, she’d had a cluster of freckles across her nose that matched her hair colour. Now, her skin was freckle-free. She always thought she looked sickly now, too pale compared to the natural tan she’d always sported, but Ella argued that her skin had an oddly exuberant glow to it—like a star.

  Whatever it was, it was different. She was changing. No longer did she look like her mom, who’d had the same chestnut-brown hair and muddy green eyes. Even her eyelashes and eyebrow hairs had fallen out, at different times, which had been great, and then grown back in white.

  She bit the insides of her cheeks. Gaunt. Strange. Different.

  She had stopped looking in mirrors entirely these days.

  Hand gripping the old dark wooden bannister, Moira flung herself back up the stairs, hissing when some of her steaming hot chocolate sloshed over the side of her FHU mug—and ignoring the fact that the scalding liquid didn’t burn as much as it should. She cleaned the spilled droplets with her socked feet, then barricaded herself in her bedroom as the house continued to settle around her. Hot chocolate on her bedside table, she tugged the blankets up, sank into the pillows, and logged back in to her tablet.

  Russ Tanner. Premiere male escort of Farrow’s Hollow. If anyone was going to solve her little climaxing problem, it was probably him. And if she was going to pay some obscenely high fee for the services anyway, she may as well splurge on the best.

  Still, she couldn’t help but balk at the prices on his services page. Moira was frugal by nature. She had been all her life, even after inheriting a cool million from her mom after she’d died. When the lawyer had explained the situation, Moira had thought she was having a stroke. Her mo
m couldn’t have had that much money. They had lived in the same two-bedroom bungalow all her life. Moira had worked part-time during the school years, full-time in the summers, since she was fourteen, and her mom’s job as a nurse had never paid as well as it should have. But there it had been—1.2 million dollars, all passed on to Moira. Out of nowhere. As if things couldn’t get any stranger.

  So far, she had invested half, then tucked the rest aside for a rainy day in various accounts that let her grow interest. She could have afforded to rent this entire house on her own, but she’d always wanted to live with other people, with Ella.

  And then everything had started to change. Her eyes. Her skin. Her figure. Then her hair fell out. In the last six months, she had morphed into a completely different person—literally. Nowadays, Moira couldn’t help but wonder if she ought to use that huge chunk of cash and just buy a place all to herself. She spent enough time hiding herself away these days…

  But if she was going to die from the same unknown illness that had taken her mom, what was the point?

  Because what else could this be? Her body was losing its pigmentation just about everywhere. Only in her early twenties, she wasn’t supposed to still be changing this much, and none of the doctors she’d seen could make heads or tails of it. They’d just concluded she wasn’t contagious, that her immune system was stellar, and then offered to refer her to specialists with year-long waitlists.

  Shaking her head, she realized she’d been staring a hole into her bedroom door for at least a few minutes, lost in thoughts of money and houses and her bright white hair.

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered, tapping around the screen again with renewed interest. “Contact page…”

  No address. No phone number. Just a button that said Schedule Your Phone Consultation Now. She pursed her lips—which had also turned from a naturally burnt red to pale, dusky pink.