"Yes. Identical, though most people can easily tell us apart." I abruptly wanted to explain how Kylie's spirit had always flared brighter. I let the classroom door fall shut behind me, finally, and turned toward the main doors. Aurora matched pace with me.
"So you never pretended to be each other?"
"No. It wouldn't have worked. We never dressed the same, at least, not after our parents divorced."
"They didn't do that Parent Trap thing, did they? Split you up?"
"As a matter of fact, they did, for a couple of years." Neither of us had been the same and the bond between us had taken years to recover from the separation.
Aurora didn't voice the scorn over parental choices that showed in her eyes. Green eyes, green like a deep river. "But you live together now?"
"Yeah, it's convenient." I sucked in my breath as we went through the outer doors to the courtyard.
"Oh mother, I don't think I can get used to this," Aurora muttered. "I have never had to force myself to breathe."
"Hot drinks. Keeps the lungs open," I advised. "I'd say today the temperature is bracing. Tomorrow is predicted chilly." I zipped my vest halfway up.
"Show off." She cinched the neck of her fleece jacket tight and pulled her hat down more firmly. It once again completely covered her hair. "Hot liquids? Have a cup of coffee with me, then?"
I hesitated. Normally, I headed home to settle in and make dinner for Kylie, who wouldn't eat unless I did. "I actually don't drink coffee and the New Englander in me can't bring myself to spend two dollars for a single tea bag."
The light, clear bell of Aurora's laugh seemed to glide across the snow. I thought fancifully for a moment that I could feel it on my face and found myself blushing again. Kylie had put illicit thoughts into my head, that was all.
"How about some hot chestnuts, then? I know they're not liquid, but I'm famished and cold. Have some pity on me."
I grinned. "They're a weakness for me too. I'll take some home to Kylie."
Wax paper bags in hand, we lingered near the vending cart because it was out of the light wind. Aurora ate one of the nuts with a speculative expression. "Okay, that's rather good. I like that a lot."
"Never had them?"
"No, only heard about them in the song. Open fires and Jack Frost, et cetera. We have California almonds by the bushel in Arizona."
I stepped out of the way of a jostling backpack, then realized I knew the woman carrying it. She ignored me as she smiled at Aurora. "Hey, Rory."
"Hi." Aurora smiled congenially at one of my least favorite people on campus, but she had the blank expression of someone desperately trying to recall a name. Her eyes seemed to plead help me.
Forcing a polite smile to my lips, I asked, "How have you been, Lexi?" Aurora gave me a grateful look.
"Great." Lexi didn't take her avaricious gaze off Aurora's face. "The year is off to a good start."
"Hayley has introduced me to hot chestnuts." Aurora offered her bag. Of course Lexi had to have one. She needed no invitation to help herself to items belonging to others, so of course when actually invited, she said yes. "I don't think I'll get used to the cold."
"I was thinking about what we were talking about the other day." Lexi paused to lick her fingers. "It's such a short drive, even in the snow."
"Oh." Aurora gave me a controlled but panicky look. "I'm not ready to sightsee yet."
Not sure what was being implied, I silently chewed on another nut.
"It's really just a day trip. You can see all of Salem in an afternoon."
"I'll do that. When the weather's better." Aurora concentrated on the chestnuts.
"That won't be until April," Lexi complained. She wasn't oblivious to Aurora's signals, of that I was sure. She just had no intention of paying them any heed. "I'd have thought you'd be anxious to find those Lowell graves, you being descended from witches and all."
I shot Aurora a glance. She looked pained, so I said, "It's better to see the cemeteries without snow. Some of the markers are in the ground. At least one museum closes for January, too, and you can't see several of the gable houses until March." Lexi treated me to an evil glare.
"I think I'll wait." Aurora glanced at her watch. "I've got one more class today. I'd better go."
Lexi unexpectedly touched my arm with one of her claws. "Oh, Hayley, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be insensitive earlier."
I gave her an enquiring look, and held myself still to avoid shaking off her hand.
"That my year is looking so good. Kylie and all..." She waved an airy goodbye, leaving her knife in my heart.
Aurora was obviously puzzled, but I had no voice to explain. "I need to get home," I murmured.
"Sure. Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks. I hate being called Rory."
"I'll remember that."
She smiled then, a light, easy curve of her lips that eased the pain of Lexi's parting stab. "Good. You and she have a history?"
"No. She and an ex of mine have a history. Except the ex wasn't my ex at the time they began their history."
"She poached."
I shrugged. "I can't say the fish was unwilling. Somehow, that made me the bad guy." I had to smile a little bit then, picturing the faithless Maggie as a fish. It suited her. It had been hard work to make things a go with Maggie, and it had ended in failure. I'd not found the energy for even a date in the two years since.
"Well, thanks for the save. I didn't want to be rude to her."
"You might have to be. Lexi's approach to everything is binary. Loves you or hates you."
"What's wrong with Kylie? If you don't mind my asking."
I didn't mind, actually. Standing with her in the cold air, feeling a conflicting mix of alive and dead, I wanted to tell her. "Everything. Just about everything. She wants to be in her own bed for as long as she can make it."
Aurora touched my arm in the same place that Lexi had, and I felt cleansed of Lexi's spite. "I'm sorry. You were wanting to get home and I need to get to class. But, um, if you'd like to talk over a two-dollar bag of tea, you know where to find me. Heck, I've got tea at home now. I'd give you some for free." She winked and I felt good enough to smile back.
"Sounds good. I'll... let you know."
She walked away a few steps, then turned to walk away while facing me. "When the snow's gone I'd really like to see Salem. With a good guide."
I hoped that my expression didn't look as shy as hers now did. "I'll see if I can scare one up for you."
I watched her disappear into the swirl of coats and hats, then headed for home. My mind was overwhelmed with too many thoughts and feelings to name.
Bast and I went through our nightly greetings and I bolted upstairs as soon as possible. Kylie was sleeping but pain would wake her soon. I wanted to know why she'd told me to ask Aurora out. It was unsettling me too much, the idea that maybe, just maybe, Aurora was flirting with me. I didn't have time for that. Between classes and papers to grade, I had barely enough time for Kylie, who had no time at all.
In my office I scowled at the book. I was not going to spend another night hunched next to the fire. I didn't know how to read or write what was written in that book. I put a hand to my suddenly throbbing head.
No, I thought, I won't waste time on it again tonight. I need to do the work for which I am paid and I need to be with my sister in her every coherent moment.
I covered it with a pillow and my head cleared. I was happily working at my desk when Kylie shuffled in, complaining of the cold.
"I'll go get some more wood."
The brief trip outside cleared my head even more, and I panted up the steps to die study, cursing the architect who had thought a second-floor fireplace useful, but planned none downstairs save the kitchen.
Kylie had somehow gotten the book onto her lap and I struggled with myself not to snatch it back. It was mine.
"I could have sworn," she said s
lowly, "that this was blank."
Dumbfounded, I stared at the pages with her. The handwritten script was perfectly visible under the ordinary incandescent bulbs. "It does funny things in the light. I think the ink is old."
"What kind of writing is this?"
"I think it's someone's homemade code," I managed to say. What was with this book? I didn't need mysteries right now, and neither did Kylie. I ran my hand over the page that Kylie held open. "Today is truth. Yesterday is memory. Tomorrow is hope. Tomorrow requires time. Yesterday is water. Huh."
"Yesterday is water?" Kylie touched the page. "I guess in a way it is."
"I think this is someone's journal." My hand stilled and I decided I would read no more to Kylie.
"Tomorrow requires time—that's true, too."
"I'll get you some dinner," I said, lifting the book from her lap and carrying it to my desk. "Back in just a bit."
We didn't speak of the book again, and a few hours later I tucked her into her freshly made-up bed.
She gave me a grateful smile. "Clean sheets are better than sex. Sometimes."
"Less work, usually." I refused to let Aurora dance in my head. If she subscribed to On Our Backs she was likely an adventurous woman and I had no use for that information.
"Promise me something." Kylie slumped onto the pillow, clearly exhausted. She coughed slightly and I felt a brush of fear that she might have a cold.
"What?"
"You'll go out. On a date. Or go to that club, remember?"
"All the way in Boston? Not likely. Besides, I'm too old for that crowd now."
"You tried to shock me."
"I had no idea you'd dance all night."
"Wish I'd gone home with someone, the way you did."
The memory of that and several other college-aged trysts, no strings and nearly anything goes, washed over me. "It was foolish of me. And risky."
"You need... a life. Other than caring for me."
"Kylie," I pleaded. I didn't want to put it into words, but she waited. I finally whispered, "I'm going to have a life."
"Start now," she answered immediately, clearly having guessed what I had been going to say. She grinned. "Start now so I can enjoy it, too."
"Voyeur," I accused after clearing my throat.
"Most of my life. How I envied you knowing. Doing what you knew you wanted."
She'd envied me? Kylie had had friends by the bushel, trophies by the dozens. She'd traveled to tournaments and Olympics and everyone loved Kylie. "I never knew that."
"You weren't scared to live."
"Neither were you." I kissed her on the forehead. "You did things I never would have tried."
"When I had a cheering section. Nobody cheered you. You succeeded anyway."
I had to laugh, though tears swam in my eyes. "This is true. I'd have been quicker to ask Pam Steinbech to take her clothes off if there'd been a bunch of cheerleaders yelling 'go for it' in the background."
"As long as they're cheering the right thing for you." Kylie closed her eyes. "When it came to love, sex... My cheerleaders were all wrong. Promise me."
"I promise," I said, hoping she was so sleepy now she'd be comforted by the words, but not remember them in the morning.
I stood at the doorway to my study for a few minutes, staring at the book as it lay on my desk. I finally shook myself out of my foolishness, and carried it once more near the fire.
I don't believe in these things, and yet I'd given them power over me by not telling Kylie what else I had read in the book. If it was all nonsense and superstition, why had I not told her?
My finger tracing along as I read, I said aloud, "Yesterday is water. A spell to conjure memory." Honestly, the idea of someone sending me, of all people, an unreadable spell book was ludicrous.
"The past comes to thy mind in thy time. Prepare ye well lest ye recall ill. Think as thou would to recall to thee good." Even the poetry was poor. After so much study and effort I had in my hand the ravings of some lonely adherent to a long-dead belief system.
Good memories or bad, I teased myself, what shall it be? I recalled Kylie's earlier mention of the club. Yes, the ease with which I'd allowed that woman to pick me up had been youthful folly. I'd been trying to shock Kylie into... acting. Doing something. I'd thought our father's hold on her had lasted far too long. I remembered his mournful gaze the day he'd dramatically declared that the Lord had sent him two daughters, but only one was Truly His.
I took a deep breath and struck a dramatic pose. The next words were meaningless, so I sounded them out according to basic English rules. "Arc-nim-tah-pellum!" Then I put the book under one of the cushions on the sofa and set about doing a much needed review of this week's essays.
I worked long into the night and no memories, good or bad, came near me. Bast did not hiss at shadows, and no spirits tapped on the windows. The fire burned clear and true.
Hocus pocus, my eye. Some time after midnight I brushed my teeth, scrambled into flannel pajamas and crawled into the cold bed.
The throb of disco music stunned me awake.
Kylie shouted, "Is it always like this?"
"I've only been here twice before!" I pulled her by the hand into the throng near the bar, but by the time we were in a position to order something, she'd been asked to dance. I watched my sister, younger by eleven minutes, swirl into the pulsating mass of bodies.
We were very similar in looks, but Kylie always danced and I always graced the wall. It could make a sister bitter. On the other hand, I was certain that even my limited experience of sex had been more satisfying than hers. It was, so far, a leveling of the scales. If the night went as I planned, though, I would lose my advantage. I was willing to pay that price to see Kylie truly happy.
If her tastes were anything like mine—and I really did believe they were—that inviting, smiling woman she was dancing with might be able to succeed where I knew others had failed. Two years of that stinking Bible school would perhaps finally get washed away tonight.
"You look like you're trying to get a drink."
Smoky was certainly the word for the fine pair of eyes gazing down at me. They belonged to a leather-jacketed brunette whose stance said she was looking to take someone home. It was a posturing I had long detested in men, but in women it sometimes stirred me, like it was stirring me right now.
Condensation beaded on the beer that she bought me and I committed every inch of her face, particularly her mouth, to memory. Her lips were moist and pale, in that alluring combination of soft and firm. "I'm Hayley."
"Jane."
"Not plain."
"Nor in the rain in Spain."
I smiled as I glanced toward the dance floor where Kylie was just visible, dancing hip to hip with her own smoky-eyed companion. If I were out of the way, I mused, she might feel free to act. Who wants to get seduced with their big sister watching? "Rain is mainly a pain."
"Oh, with the right woman it can be damned fun, rain."
Relieved I didn't have to think of more rhymes, I said, "I prefer showers to rain, but I'd give rain a try, in Tahiti."
"Sorry, I am fresh out of Tahitian rain this week."
"But you have a shower, right?" The little voice reminding me I had two exams in the morning was very faint. I liked Jane's eyes and wit. I wanted Kylie to see that it was okay to say yes.
"I do." Jane's hazel eyes were sparkling with mirth. "Would you like to dance?"
It wasn't precisely dancing, but Jane had smooth moves on the small square of parquet, somehow keeping our breasts in contact as our hands roamed. She feathered kisses over my face, a few at a time. I liked her slow approach after my boldness. It was as if even though I'd practically said I'd go home with her, she still wanted to seduce me properly.
It was working. The mixture of her eyes and her mouth, the kisses, the alluring cologne she wore, and the occasional laughing comment, was all making me want to experience her as well.
When I located Kylie again, she was dancing with all the grace and exuberance that she showed at soccer. Maybe soccer was her first love but there was no reason a woman couldn't be her second. That son-of-a-bitch, our father, had done his Lord's Work. Now I was doing Sister Work.
Jane leaned in to kiss me again and the room was filled with a silence so profound it hurt my ears. I became slowly aware of a distant, steady beeping in another place, another time. That heavy, damnable voice said, "I wish it were you."
I flinched from the returned onslaught of dance music and Jane said, "It is loud, isn't it? Would you like to leave?"
Kylie was hip to hip with her increasingly attentive partner, not far from us. I waved to get her attention, then turned the gesture into a mimed, "Bye, bye." Turning back into Jane's embrace, I kissed her full on the mouth. We moved together toward the door. I hoped with all my heart that Kylie got a clue.
I welcomed the humid, warm air. The night was heavy with the scent of cut grass and jasmine. A rose bush, laden with yellow blooms gone silver in the moonlight, drooped over the fence near Jane's car. The street lights flickered in the reflection of the dark hood, and bluesy jazz piano sparkled from the speakers as we drove. Jane's hand was on my thigh and I was warm where it rested. The warmth was spreading.
The wallpaper near her bed was white with small diamonds of purple and blue. The lamp Jane left burning cast a soft lavender light on her features.
"Make yourself comfortable," she said softly.
"Okay." I ran one hand under the waist of her jacket, inhaling the tang of the leather and the sweet spice of her perfume. "This is comfortable."
Her hands moved sinuously over my body, setting my nerves on fire as she undressed me. My skin chilled deliciously at the touch of the sheets against my bare back. Jane left the light on and the reflection of a skinny woman with dark hair, hunger plain on her face, glistened at me from the depths of her eyes.
"I think this is the best part," Jane whispered. Her thigh slipped between mine, warm and muscled.
I arched up to her, feeling the shock of all my nerves jangling at the warmth of her body. "What?"
"All my skin. All your skin." With the scent of the club fading, her cologne was more pronounced, mingling with shampoo, soap and woman smells that I so adored.
Bell, Book and Dyke - New Exploits of Magical Lesbians Page 19
