The Debt Collector (Season 1)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “Are you going to invite me in, Lirium?” Her voice is deep, somehow dangerous and sexy at the same time. It runs an electric spark through me that feels like a life hit.

  I shut my gaping mouth and step aside.

  She strides past me, shucking off her trenchcoat as she inspects my apartment with one glancing sweep. She turns to face me, standing only in the sleeveless black dress and her boots, holding her coat out to me. I belatedly take it and welcome the chance to hang it in the closet, just to be able to stop staring at her like an idiot.

  Get a grip, I tell myself. She’s a spy for your psych officer. I take my time with the hanger, then avoid her gaze as I step to the door and punch the button to close it. When I finally turn to face her, I’ve somewhat regained my composure.

  We stare at each other a moment. She looks me up and down in a way that, astoundingly, makes heat rise up in my cheeks. I am in such trouble here.

  She smirks again. “So, Candy’s worried about you, is she?”

  “Didn’t she give you my case file or something?” I put some bite into my voice. “Tell you how messed up I am? Or are you just doing a cursory visit so you can report back to Candy with cause to retire me?”

  “Whoa, Lirium.” She holds up her hands. Her fingers are pale and delicate, spread wide as if to hold back my accusations with a force field emanating from them. “I’m not your enemy. I’m just here to help you out.”

  “Help me out?” I fold my arms across my chest.

  She takes a casual step closer. “Candy’s your psych officer,” she says, very seriously. “And your psych officer always, always has your best interests at heart.” It takes me a beat to realize she’s joking, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to get the joke until she smiles.

  She edges up close enough that I can smell her oddly sweet perfume. I can’t quite place it. “So, do you have a name?” I ask. “Or should I call you Mistress Mentor?”

  She gives me a wicked grin. “Oh, you’re a one of those, are you?”

  I have no idea what she means, but I can’t help smiling in return.

  “You can call me Ophelia.”

  “Ophelia. Seriously?” It has to be her collector name.

  “You don’t like Shakespeare?” Her eyes shine with mischief again. “How about Mara? I’m always a fan of a good Death God.” She places her hands on my chest, and the scent of her bare-skinned arms wafts up. I finally place it: roses and lilies. Funeral flowers. “Mara, the wicked one, the Hindi spirit who specializes in seduction, temptation, and death.” She slides her hands up to my shoulders, and I stop breathing. “Funny how those always seem to go together, isn’t it?”

  “I think I like Ophelia better,” I manage to get out, even though all the air has escaped my lungs with her touch.

  She smiles and reaches her right palm for my forehead. I realize what she’s doing at the last moment and whip my head away, stumbling back from her. “What the hell?” I say, but my voice is soft, more stunned than angry. I’ve never had another collector reach for me that way, not even in training.

  “Oh, Lirium.” She shakes her head sadly. “I have so much to teach you.”

  She steps closer again. I’m wary now, but she simply takes my right hand in hers. Her skin is soft and warm. I don’t realize my hand is clenched until she slowly unfolds my fist and strokes my palm like it’s a kitten that she’s soothing. My hand warms with her slow touch. She raises it and places my palm flat on her forehead. I jerk back at the contact, eyes wide at what she’s doing.

  “Shhh, Lirium, baby,” she says, like I’m a dove she’s coaxing in from the windowsill. “I’m a collector, honey. You’re a collector.” She gently tugs my hand back to her forehead. “The Candy Kane Thornton’s of the world will never understand us, never know what we see, what we feel, every day, with every transfer. She doesn’t know what it’s like. And no matter what she wants, no matter what her aims are—because, believe you me, that she-devil has hidden aims you don’t even want to know—she does know one thing. Only one collector can understand another, baby. And right now, you need to trust me. I know what you need, and I’m here to help you.”

  My hand is on her forehead, and it’s even softer and warmer than her hands. My fingertips kiss her satiny black hair. I’m not sure I could pull away now if I wanted to. And I don’t. Her deeply dangerous voice is pulling me in.

  “Give me a taste, Lirium.” Her voice is a purr. My last collection is still swimming in me. The bean counters will tally it up later, but for now, I can spend my cut if I want to. And Ophelia, with her big, dark eyes gazing up at me, her forehead under my hand, is damn hard to resist.

  A trickle of life force drains through my hand into her. Her smile relaxes, her eyes flutter close, and a slow, full breath leaks like a whisper from her parted lips. Just watching Ophelia take a hit intoxicates me, and the light-headed feeling I have is unrelated to the small drain of energy I’m giving her. In fact, I hardly feel the transfer. I stop it after a tiny hit, but don’t pull away.

  Her eyes lazily open, and she reaches for my forehead again. I flinch, but stay close.

  “Trust me,” she says, and for some completely irrational reason, I do. Her palm heats my skin where she touches me, and I immediately feel the hit. She’s cycling it back to me, the same energy I just transferred to her, and it’s a warm gush even more intense than the life energy I collect through my hand. I suck in a sharp breath, and a smile spreads across my face. When she stops, I’m back to the same level of life force I started with, but the transfer has left me buzzing.

  She snuggles in closer. “Again,” she breathes. I pulse another hit into her and feel her lean into my palm. She cycles it back to me, and the second hit doesn’t add onto the first, it multiplies. I have no idea how this is possible, this passing back and forth of life energy, but the last thing I want to do is stop.

  We keep cycling the energy, and with each turn, I inch closer to her, drawn into her body like the transfer is a physical force pulling us together. Finally, my lips find hers, soft and willing. My hand slips from her forehead around to weave into her hair and bring her harder into the kiss. It breaks the connection, but I don’t care. The transfer is rushing through my body in waves, and I’m already high as it is. My other hand remembers that it can move and slips around her back, gripping the thin, silky fabric of her dress in my fist. Our tongues twist together, hot and fervent, and I can almost taste the transfer on her, small electric sparks jumping at the places we touch: our mouths, my hand on her back, the warm skin at the back of her neck.

  She pulls away, ending the kiss with a gentle bite on my lower lip that stings, but I don’t mind the pain. My lips trail after her, but she’s pushing me back with two hands on my chest.

  There’s a smirk on her face. “You are adorable, just like Candy promised.”

  Adorable?

  Her smirk turns into something more wicked. “And delicious. And a very fast learner. But I’m afraid I don’t sleep with collectors.”

  “I… maybe I… want something more than that.” What am I saying? I definitely want to sleep with her, as soon as possible, preferably right now. But that’s it. Then I want her out of my apartment as soon as Candy will allow it.

  Ophelia gives a small laugh, and wiggles a little further away, at which point I realize my hands are still trying to draw her in.

  “Oh, those baby blues eyes,” she says, patting my cheek, “and that adorable little face…” She bites her lip. “You certainly tempt a girl to break her own rules. But sleeping with collectors is a sticky enough problem. I certainly don’t make the mistake of dating collectors. Especially not a guppy like you, baby.”

  Guppy?

  I’m an adorable guppy. I drop my hands and give her my best stone cold look.

  She laughs, covering her mouth with her hand like this is hysterically funny. “Oh don’t give me that,” she says lightheartedly, pressing a hand on my chest to nudge me away. “You know we’re not that type
. Collectors in love? It would be a comedy that writes itself, if it weren’t so pitifully tragic. I can’t lead you down that path, lover, it just wouldn’t be right. And what would Candy think if I sent you back even more messed up in the head than when I got you?”

  “So… this was…” I gesture between us, meaning the transfer exchange, the cooing, the kiss, all of it. Is she just toying with me? Testing me?

  She shrugs. “Just trying to get you back on an even keel.” She turns her back on me and drifts toward the couch, a small saunter in her walk. “You looked like you needed a boost,” she calls before gracefully dropping onto the couch. She props her shiny boots up on my coffee table and looks entirely at ease in my apartment. Like she has already moved in and is just surveying her new domain.

  I swallow and decide I’m entirely out of my league with Ophelia. The best strategy is probably to follow her lead, play along, and hopefully figure out what she’s really after before she has me marching willingly off to retirement.

  I take a few calculated steps toward the couch, drawing her attention away from inspecting the bare contents of my apartment. I travel light. What personal effects I have are still in a box in the bedroom closet. She watches me with humor-filled eyes as I sit next to her, not too close, my arm draped across the back of the couch. I hope I look casual and less like a guppy to her shark.

  “So this transfer exchange we just did,” I say, the buzz still making my body tingle, “how does that work exactly?”

  She sweeps her long black hair back over her shoulder and props her head in her hand to study me. “Mostly the transfer works the same as it usually does. Same rush when you transfer in. It’s not the life energy that’s giving you the high, baby, it’s your body’s reaction to the sudden infusion of energy. If you do it enough, you’ll eventually lose a tiny bit of life force along the way, but otherwise you can cycle indefinitely. It’s called a boost, or boosting if you ride the merry-go-round more than once, like we did.” Her eyes are alight with secrets she’s not telling. “Did you notice that it’s not as draining to transfer out to another collector?”

  I nod. It almost felt like no transfer at all, just an emptying. Not unlike the mercy hit I did. “But what about the bean counters? This,” I gesture between us again, “has got to completely mess them up.” I’m also wondering about the mercy hit, and how that will show up on the tracker. Candy doesn’t want me to check in with Flitstrom until tomorrow, but I’d like to know what to expect before I get there.

  “The tracker counts every second of life energy that you transfer, yes?” she asks.

  “Right.” That was Lesson One in training.

  “Wrong.” She has that twinkle again. “I know you’re a guppy, Lirium, but really? Haven’t you wondered if anyone has ever tampered with their trackers?”

  I scowl at her. This ‘guppy’ thing needs to stop. “Some collectors might not mind someone digging into their arm to mess with their tracker, or care if they risk an early retirement if they get caught. I’m not interested in either of those.”

  She chuckles lightly. “You are so straight.”

  My scowl is threatening to turn into a snarl. She gives my arm an apologetic pat, and her warm fingertips cause drops of sensation to pulse through me. I’m so reactive to her, I have to wonder if it’s a side effect of the boost. It’s making me feel more alive than I have in… well, since that mercy hit.

  I need to know more about all of this. “So the boost doesn’t get tracked?”

  “Nope, it’s completely off the tracker, because it’s between two collectors.” She taps a light rhythm on my arm that is completely distracting, but I manage not to glance at it. “Did you know that collectors can transfer with more than just, shall we say, the conventional position of palm-to-forehead?” Her fingers continue to dance on my arm, and her gaze lingers there. “In fact, an accomplished collector can collect anywhere with anything. All you need is a little body-to-body contact.”

  Her hand stills on my arm, and she looks into my eyes. My heart lurches as I realize what she’s saying, and I jerk my arm away from her touch.

  She smiles. “I could have drained you completely with that yummy kiss, lover. If I was going to hurt you, I would have done it already.”

  The small hairs on my arm are already standing up, as if they’ve figured out—way ahead of me—how much of a shark she really is.

  “What do you want from me?” I can’t help leaning slightly away from her.

  She gives an elaborate sigh. “I’m here to help you, but I can see it’s not going to be easy to convince you of that. It might help you to know I’ve kept Candy happy for years by helping her train up her guppies, keeping them from going belly up before their time.”

  “Candy’s your psych officer?” This makes more sense to me now.

  “And Candy gets what Candy wants.” Ophelia gives me a grim smile. “Don’t be what Candy wants, Lirium. That’s my first piece of advice for you.”

  “There’s more?”

  She glances around the apartment, raises an eyebrow at my bandaged knuckles, and finally looks me in the eyes. “Lay off the booze. If you want to get high, find a collector and ride the merry-go-round. Clean life hits will serve you better any day of the week. Just make sure it’s a collector you trust.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  She smiles wide. “Yes you do, baby. Or you wouldn’t have been stealing kisses from me.”

  “That was before I understood what you are.”

  She presses a fine-fingered hand to her chest. “Oh, baby, you wound me! After all I’ve done for you.” She’s got a Cheshire grin now, but then the wattage fades. “I mean it, Lirium. Be careful who you boost with. And make sure you don’t sleep with any collectors. Boosting’s tricky enough with the conventional position and someone you trust. It gets a lot more difficult to, ah, control when you’re between the sheets and otherwise occupied. I don’t need to draw you a map about that, do I?”

  My eyes must have gone wide, because she nods sharply. “That’s a dangerous business, baby. Don’t do it. It’s a lot safer to use sex workers to scratch that itch.”

  I swallow. Definitely out of my depth with Ophelia, but I’m starting to believe that she’s not actually going to eat me, even if she’s a bigger shark than I thought.

  “I’m not sure sex workers are all that safe, either,” I say.

  “How so?” Her face scrunches, but she must have thought of the danger already.

  I’m not ready to tell her the truth, so I go vague. “What if they’re not screened? What if they sell your address to the highest bidder?”

  Her eyes go round and large. “You have sex workers come to your apartment?”

  I’m feeling more like a guppy by the minute. She runs a delicate hand over her face, then glances at the door. “Have you had one here?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “That’s why I moved. I haven’t had anyone here, in the new place… except you.”

  I can see the tension fleeing her body. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we? I’ll hook you up with a madam who doesn’t do house calls.”

  “You’re hooking me up with sex workers?” I give her a bemused look. “Was that part of Candy’s plan to rehabilitate me?”

  “Candy doesn’t know jack about collectors.” She pats my arm again, and surprisingly, I don’t flinch. “If it were left up to her and her lascivious incompetence, they’d all wash out. And I’d hate to see a cute thing like you go into early retirement.”

  That makes two of us.

  She gives a large sigh. “I think that’s enough training for one night, sweet thing.” She climbs off the couch and sways toward the kitchen. “I’m starved. Missed dinner tonight because I had to do a collection. What have you got for eats around here?”

  I cringe as she disappears into the kitchen. After a moment I hear the refrigerator open. The tap-tap sound of her boots impatiently beating my tiled floor drifts in.

  “Lirium, Lirium, L
irium,” she calls from the kitchen. She comes to the door and peeks around it, holding onto the wall. “You’re out of ice cream.”

  “Really?” I ask with a smirk. “I just got some last week.”

  “Looks like you need to make a grocery run, lover.”

  I grin and climb to my feet. In the span of less than fifteen minutes, Ophelia has boosted me high on life force, kissed me but refused to bed me, then lectured me on the finer points of transfers and trackers. She’s taking over my place like she’s lived here for years, and the strangest part is that I’m starting to enjoy it.

  I’m going to have to figure out where the grocery store is after all.

  I couldn’t decide between Rocky Road and Vanilla, so I pulled both from the frosted freezer case at the convenience store. Now I’m staring at them and debating which one to put back. Ophelia told me to get Rocky Road, but I’m not sure my stomach can handle more than Vanilla right now, not with Mrs. Riley’s life energy, the boost from Ophelia, and my own residual lack of eating mixed into the turbulence. I should just get both.

  I haven’t had ice cream since I was a kid. We didn’t have much, my mom and me, growing up on the east side, with her working two jobs just to keep us afloat and ahead of the debt collectors. I only clearly remember one ice cream event in my life, and it’s from when I was very young. Maybe my dad was still around, or maybe the world just seemed brighter because I was such a little kid and didn’t know anything about it, but I clearly remember a mountain of ice cream, a forest of spoons, and a dozen of my friends. We attacked that thing like consuming it was a moral imperative straight from God.

  “Hey pal!” a voice sounds behind me. “You okay?”

  I blink. I’ve been staring at the refrigerator case, clutching two pints of ice cream in my hands, for… I’m not sure how long. The crusty ice on the outside of the containers is sliding off and dripping on my boots. I haven’t thought about my childhood, at least not the good parts, for so long that for a moment I think maybe I am starting to lose my mind. Or maybe it’s an after-effect of the boost.