Unwilling to wake her, I didn’t turn on any lights and was rewarded for my efforts by stubbing my toe and bashing my knee on a display the way upstairs through the store. I bit back a curse and finally groped my way to my room and closed the door. I fumbled at the bedside table and managed, after a series of curses and only knocking a few things to the floor, to get the lamp turned on.
I nearly shrieked when I saw the vampire lying sprawled on my bed.
I say nearly because vampiric speed enabled him to get off the bed in time to cover my mouth and wrap an arm around my waist in one move. His hair swirled around us, and I smelled steak, soap, and man.
I closed my eyes and tried to still my heart, which had nearly leapt from my chest in terror when I had first seen him. He slowly removed his hand and I gazed into his eyes. He met mine with a look that I could only describe as loving…had I not known better.
Now I knew that he probably did not love me. Or I told myself that. But I wanted him to and I wanted to love him. Even after what I had seen him do, I wanted the happiness I thought he made me feel. But then again, he didn’t know that I had seen him with Julia, so there was no reason for him to assume he should act guilty or anything... Since I really wasn’t in a position to call the kettle black in this case, I said nothing. I had secrets of my own.
I wanted our relationship to work. I’d chosen to be with Vance, after all. I didn’t chose all the Chance bullshit—it dropped in my lap and I’d been shoving it away with both hands…mostly.
What if? What if he managed to stay away from her? I did not want Chance, not really—he was a bad guy, right? And Vance had walked away from Julia. He had come to me. Maybe…
Wait, why had he come?
I met his gaze and let the cool part of myself, the part that I had only discovered since meeting Chance, take over. I felt my eyes flash and hoped it did not show. Vance stilled and I wondered if it had. I couldn’t do anything about it, if he had seen it, so I waited.
He continued to hold me and, for a long moment, I think we both waited for the other to say something. When neither of us broke the silence, he finally sighed. “I missed you tonight.”
I settled more comfortably into the solid firmness of his arms. For sturdiness, well, nothing can beat a vampire. I rested my arms atop his and studied his eyes. They glowed the same unrelenting sky blue that had first drawn me in like iron shavings to a magnet. We had been together for a week now, officially, and part of me still marveled at the fact that someone as wonderful as him would want to be with someone as plain and ordinary as me.
Okay, half siren, half fairy, whatever-I-was-now was not ordinary. But to me, well, I was still plain Jane. Simply me. Who happened to have this entire mess slammed into my lap when I tried to help my best friend. In my head, I was still just me. And he was beautiful. The fact that I was allowed to touch him, taste him, be with him continued to be a wonder to me.
But another part of me? I must admit, that part was a wee bit angry. For one, he didn’t confess and apologize for what he’d done. Sure, neither did I, but he didn’t know I should. He wasn’t even telling me, confiding his problem, or asking what to do about it either. Which meant he didn’t trust me. Which meant our relationship had issues.
The angry part chose to ignore that I hadn’t told him about the soul mate mess with Chance or the game solution I had come up with, either. I mean, after all, at least I proactively tried to rid myself of my soul mate for the sake of our relationship—repeatedly and at great personal cost.
He had leapt into Julia’s arms. I chose to feel the littlest bit superior in this case. I had a right to be angry.
Later, I realized this was probably a major flaw in my own reasoning, but, at the time, I couldn’t see that.
On the other hand, the fact that he was with me made him weaker than me somehow. I do not know why the new, stranger part of me found this reasoning logical, but it did. It gave me the upper hand in our relationship, control in a universe quickly spiraling outside my area of control. For Vance, I can’t say as that was an altogether good change in my way of looking at things.
But all of that reasoning occurred in one tiny fragment of my mind. The bulk of me focused on being darn happy he had come to me rather than staying with Julia. Because he had chosen to be with me rather than her.
Just like I chose to be with him, rather than Chance.
All of this took less than a minute for me to process through, before I took a deep breath and answered him with a sigh rather than words. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his neck and all that dark lovely hair. I did not think about the fact that my silence, in and of itself, was not a typical Janie act.
Vance did. “What’s wrong?” When he asked, he stiffened more in my arms.
I took the stiffness perhaps to mean far more than it did. Vampires, as I mentioned, feel altogether too stiff to begin with. I took it to be physical admission of his guilt. “Nothing. Why? Is something wrong with you?”
I pulled back to search his deep blue eyes. True blue eyes, my grandmother would have called them, or so I’d once thought when I looked at him and categorized all that made him wonderful, desirable. I searched those eyes and wished I had some cool, super power to read minds.
“Did something happen at Brennan’s?” His face held interest, the perfect boyfriend asking how my day went. “Did you find the Hammer?”
He smoothed a hand down my spine and I shivered. Perhaps sirens had always reacted to vampires. Yet another question I would never have an answer for. I glared at him and tried to pull from his arms. Did something happen at Brennan’s?
Yes! I wanted to yell. You kissed Julia.
Fortunately, although Vance could do the cool, superpower mind reader thing, he respected me. Had he not, if he’d read my mind, maybe a huge yawning abyss would not have grown between us. What I spoke out loud was in the lightest voice I could muster. “No, no Hammer time tonight. Chance initiated a bar fight. Well, technically, I guess you could say I started it, but it wasn’t—”
“Chance?” His eyes turned to blue fire with his vehemence as he spit out the name. That one word had more coldness and fire in it than I had over the whole Julia issue, so it caught my attention. I smoothed a hand over his jaw. Every muscle clenched there, cold and hard. “What is up with him, Janie? You’re hiding something from me.”
My own coldness stole over me. I hid something from him? That was rich. I tried to save us, and he accused me of hiding something from him. My jaw clenched and I stilled my hand, but did not remove it.
“Something has been going on since Niagara Falls.” His eyes burned into me, and I wanted to turn away—but that would let him know the truth for sure.
I slid my hand back into his hair. He had a point. But I could not change that other than to do what I had already begun. The only way to be rid of Chance was to win the game, to prove I wasn’t his soul mate and that the connection between us would fade if I simply kept fighting it.
Not that Vance had tried terribly hard to be rid of Julia. He had run full tilt toward her. But he chose to be with me. And I picked him. I wanted this to work. At that moment, I loved Vance. I wanted something real. Something I chose. I wanted something good and wholesome and, although Vance may have been among the walking dead, he was one of the good guys.
Chance could not be a good guy. I was. And Vance was. And I loved Vance. I rose on tiptoes and pulled his lips down to touch mine ever so gently.
As before, Vance moved with me. He seemed unable to do otherwise.
I brushed his mouth with the barest whisper of a kiss. Against his lips, I spoke softly. “I don’t want to talk about Chance.”
He closed his eyes and covered my lips with his. Careful of fangs, he deepened the kiss. He was always so careful with me, it was charming really. Like he could break or best me…
He laid me on the mattress and slid onto the bed beside me. He pulled me close and held me. We lay there together. So close but with so much b
etween us that I could hardly bear it.
He held me, just held me, and the night passed over us. I slept curled in the arms of the man I wanted to be with…but I dreamed of another man altogether.
~~~
I woke alone tangled in so many blankets that, for a moment, I did not realize my aloneness. I curled around the pillow and closed my eyes again. Tuesday had arrived, finally. Tuesday could not be as bad as Monday. Could it?
My stomach interrupted my internal monologue reminding me that food had not been a high priority yesterday. As food generally takes precedence over most things in my life, I punched the pillow, crawled out of bed, and stumbled down the hall. First coffee, then the food.
I almost tripped over Vickie as she blasted out of her room, iPod in her ears. I braced myself on the wall to stay upright.
Vickie slammed to a stop and stared at me wide eyed. “What did you do to your hair!?” She yelled rather than spoke and it was startling, to say the least, first thing in the morning.
I blinked at her. “Why are you yelling?” I thought I used a reasonable maternal tone.
“Huh?” Her voice remained far louder than I would have liked.
Frowning, I stuck a hand in my hair and realized I was not wearing my wig. Well, hell. “I dyed it and cut it off?”
“What did you say?”
I couldn’t take any more of the yelling. Frustrated, I yanked one of her ear buds out.
“Hey!” Yipping, she reached automatically for the buds again before her eyes widened. “Oh, sorry! I couldn’t hear you!” She laughed as if it were hilarious, which to her, it probably was.
I gave her an eye roll. “I dyed it and cut it off.” Feeling more sure of myself, and on firm parental ground now that she could hear.
She nodded, reached up, and touched a bit of it. “It’s nice.” As she determined this, she did not miss a beat and a slow grin spread on her pixie face. “Can we do mine?” I glared at her, and she stuck her hands up in front of her. “Come on. If it is good enough for you…”
“Nice try. No unnatural hair colors at school.”
“Tell me the principal has a natural hair color and that rule would make more sense.”
“Victoria.” Warningly, I lifted a brow at her.
“I’m just saying.”
I followed her down the hall, and we went into the kitchen with my hand on her head. Mia stood by the stove in the kitchen, nose redder than ever. Her hair had progressed from Einstein to nuclear cloud and her face looked downright mottled.
From glassy eyes, she peered at us. “Oatmeal?” She offered the saucepan she had been stirring, which appeared to be filled with oatmeal…until she sneezed. Then what had moments before been a shapeless grey glob fluttered to life.
Vickie and I watched in wonder as the oatmeal, or in this case what had once been oatmeal, turned into butterflies and began to flutter around the room in a rainbow flurry.
Vickie clapped her hands in joy.
Mia clapped her hands over her face in distress.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.
Mia began to slam things around the kitchen, and I went to comfort her.
“It’s a really pretty mess up, Mia. I mean, look! They’re lovely.” I tried not to giggle. Really. I tried desperately hard. A blue and black butterfly passed near me, shooed away by a monarch which dived between us in a slow motion fall.
“Yeah, when they change back and there are globs of oatmeal all over my kitchen, they’ll be simply lovely won’t they, Janie?” She did not try not to laugh. She did not try not to be snarky either. She did try to hit me with the now empty saucepan.
I laughed. I ducked. I laughed harder. Then I ran down the hall to go to the bathroom still chuckling. And another day at Odd Stuff began. Although, we may live up to the title, most days it sure is fun to be us.
When I had regained control of both myself and my bladder, I rejoined Mia and Vickie in the kitchen.
Vickie ate granola with a butterfly perched on her juice glass. Her eyes were wide, and she smiled at me while chewing on a bagel. “I am not allowed to talk about this at school, huh?” She spoke around a mouth full of food.
I glanced at Mia, then back at Vickie. Rule number one of parenting is you aren’t supposed to lie to your kid. Rule number two is you aren’t supposed to tell them to lie either. If your kid is living in the paranormal world, however, certain things cannot go to school. “I would rather you didn’t.” I tried to hedge around the topic entirely and went on to safer parenting ground. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
She gave me an eye roll. “Mom, I am not a baby anymore. You can’t keep all of this stuff from me all of the time. And who is the short guy down in the store?”
“The short guy down in the…” I trailed off.
Mia, who was pouring a mug of coffee, returned my blank stare.
We turned on Vickie.
“Yeah, there is this short guy down there. He looks like somebody I saw over at Grandma’s once. He bows a lot when I go down, but he won’t talk to me. He keeps bowing and bowing. It was creepy at first but then I started going down to make him bow. Then I would go back up to see if I could make him bow again by going back down.”
She paused in her story to take another bite of bagel, and I glanced back at Mia to see she had continued pouring the coffee and it overflowed the mug. I put a hand on her wrist and she cursed softly, mopped up the mess and passed me the mug of coffee. I took it gratefully.
A short guy who bowed who hung out with Grandma did not tell me much. After the first sip of coffee hit my caffeine deprived brain, I remembered. Avery. I slopped coffee onto my hands and took my turn to curse softly and do some mopping.
I offered a brief lecture on avoiding strange men, even if they somehow got into the store. Apparently, even witch warded stores are not impenetrable or else there would not be a fairy downstairs. Afterward, I delivered a lengthier lecture on why we do not amuse ourselves by making people bow, though I could see how she would find that amusing. Not that I would admit that to her. Mia and I headed downstairs to see what had gotten into her store.
Leaving Vickie with the butterflies and breakfast, we slogged downstairs, coffee in hand, to confront my fiancé. At the bottom of the spiral staircase, we both paused. Mia snuffled and gave me a ‘you first’ shove.
Avery lingered in the front of the store, riffling through books. He wore clothes my mother had to have picked out. His shirt was probably something expensive. Something classy like Egyptian cotton, or was that only for sheets? Anyway, he wore a button down shirt in a rich violet color. He had left it unbuttoned at the neck and it fitted in a way that suggested she had it tailor-made. Then again, when the man in question was so short as to be childlike, I guess he would have to have a tailor to fit his broad shoulders. He also wore fitted dress slacks. He posed, the picture of a character ripped out of the pages of a cheesy romance novel. The perfect male specimen, if only I could have ignored the fact that I had to go around the display case to see him.
I studied him in all of his amber glory. His skin glittered with golden flecks. He had a nice tan color naturally, but just then, he glittered golden. His hair shone jewel black like the eyes of a serpent. His eyes, normally neither violet nor blue, glowed damn near amethyst. Stupid fairy glamour.
I glared at him. “Avery, you cannot turn on glamour topside. Humans do not react well to shimmering. Or glittery men outside of a gay club, to be honest.”
Mia, however, didn’t say a word. Mia was never silent. Mia was a wise cracking smart ass.
I glanced back at her. She stared at him wide eyed. I waved a hand in front of her face, and she batted it away. I glanced back at Avery to see his face had gone feline in his humor. “Oh, seriously, you are not to mess with my best friend’s head while trying to convince me I want to be engaged to you.”
“I am not doing anything to the witch. Apparently she is weak.” His voice still rumbled Mufasa deep, and
he looked darn good for a guy who had someone try to eat his guts out a few hours before.
Normally, being called weak would have snapped Mia out of it. Apparently, not that day. But then again, I was not altogether sure she had ever encountered a full fairy male before. I had, so maybe he impressed me less. Or maybe lately I had dealt with much heavier hitters. It didn’t matter. He could not do fairy magic among humans without drawing way too much attention. “Avery, she’s sick. Back off. Seriously, you can’t do the glamour up here.”
“Princess, if you have the power to stop me, stop me. If you are no more powerful than I am, then I have more control of this situation than I thought I did. Perhaps, I have been going about this entire thing in the wrong manner.”
I realized that even if his glamour did not work on me, he thought that he could use it as leverage. One of the primary objections I had against fairies as a people, they did not play nice. They were manipulative, spoiled brats only concerned with their priorities. Somehow, my lighthearted morning had gone deadly serious in a matter of moments. I had lost the upper hand and all control of the situation by walking into the room with my weakened best friend. Not a good way to start any relationship.
The question became, how exactly to regain a position of power? I could sing and drain the synapses out of his brain. But that seemed overkill for a bit of glam, really. Although what he did annoyed me, he was not actively hurting Mia. And if I sang, there was a very good chance I would hurt Avery. But he meant to turn this into a power struggle and singing was pretty much the only gun I had in my arsenal, so to speak. I sighed. Then again, supposedly I had other gifts. Half siren equaled half fairy, too. Actually, that was why I was stuck with the midget.
Mia tried to move past me to get to Avery.
Avery, to give him credit, not that any was due in this case, did nothing other than stand there, looking brilliant. He waited for my move. Again, fairies are cats. He began the game then waited to see what I would do. I hate fairies. Really, I hate them.
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 10
