An hour later, shaking and sweating, Bryce's huge and muscled body lumbers outside my door. He pauses as he opens it, looking at me with pissed off brown eyes.
“I hate you, Miss Mitchell,” he says and means it.
I smile back. I totally get it. Bryce needs to hate me to get better. It beats hating himself. I nod. “I know.”
He walks out, and I run my finger down the patient appointments for the day. Kiki makes her loud entrance, and my lips twist. She balances chai tea in both hands, staggering in too-tall heels that sink into the nearly bald carpet.
“Gawd!” she huffs as she winds her way through the ellipticals, weight machines, and treadmills. She leans against the walking bars that run like railroad tracks for those with dual injuries. Like both legs not working.
I swallow and force my smile back in place.
“Take your tea, you ungrateful bitch,” she squeals, handing me my tea.
I blow on it. A touch of honey and ginger rise through the vapor, and I grin over the rim of the cup as I sip through the little slot.
“So?” I ask in a purr.
Kiki is pure drama. It's only Monday, so we have the entire week to build up to a crescendo. Mondays are usually sedate, so I brace myself. I have thirty minutes until my next client arrives to be tortured into wellness. Kiki smirks, sets down her tea, and moves to the pole. I give a furtive glance around the gym, hoping no one comes in.
“Got a…” She wraps around the pole and slides down it seductively, letting her butt cheeks split as she wiggles and bounces at the bottom. She springs up, the front of her hoohah a hairsbreadth from the cool metal. “Ginormous tip this weekend from a richie!”
She thrusts forward, wrapping one slender leg around the pole, and I groan. She does a little mock-hump against it and grins at me.
Kiki is so inappropriate I could die. But she's my drug and I'm hers. We fit together because we're so different. She's an exotic dancer who's also a senior at Northwestern State.
She makes great money, and she also does serious gym time, packing in an hour six days a week. It's important to not look too striated, Kiki claims. No “guy-look.” Just tits, ass, and curves with definition. I designed the workout for her because I’m intimately familiar with the human body. I didn't set out to be, but life had other plans.
The sins of the past become the direction of our future.
Kiki pouts, leaves the pole, and saunters toward me. “You're no fun.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay... I know I've got to ask the burning question or we'll get nowhere.”
She perks up. “You got it, sister.”
“Who was it?”
Kiki always takes stock of clients. Men think they know so much, but women could rule the world if we came together. I sigh. Kiki notices regulars, high tippers, newcomers and flags the creeps. She's scary uncanny. I came to watch a set at the prestigious strip club, Black Rose, and went away shocked.
Shocked by the clientele, shocked that Kiki could dance that well for such a short time, and shocked by the moolah.
“The owner,” Kiki whispers as if we have a secret.
I shrug. “So?”
“It's Jared-effing-McKenna, baby!” Kiki is offended by my deliberate ignorance. Her brows rise to her hairline, and her dark eyes are wide with clear disdain.
Mine are steady with indifference.
The wheels of my memory spin. Oh yes. Jared McKenna. The Jared McKenna. Greek god. Adonis incarnate. Hercules. Playboy, womanizer, money mogul.
I slowly nod. Let's add “strip club owner” to the repertoire. I remember the detail of why he has so much money and want to forget as soon as I do.
Kiki pouts and tears off the lid of her tea. “Anywho... he was with someone, and his pal tipped me big time.” She sips her cooling tea, gazing at me with “cat that ate the canary” eyes.
“Okay, the foreplay is killing me. How much?” I take a small slurp of tea, and she tells me. The tea sprays out of my mouth, and Kiki grins at my klutzy-ass move.
“Five hundred dollars!?” I choke some more, and tea dribbles down my chin.
“It's okay, baby... it is a mind-blower. I mean,” her hands go to her ample chest in patent disbelief, “my nipples got hard and he didn't even touch me,” she says sincerely and I burst out laughing. My headache is gone for the moment, my Monday morning lethargy lifting.
Five hundred bucks is an assload of cash, especially for one night of dancing half naked. It's more than I take home every week. Just one tip. My schooling is done, my career path set partly because of circumstance. Kiki is high on drama, but doesn't always say things without a purpose and I narrow my eyes at her.
“Spill it,” I demand.
Kiki's lips twitch and she chucks her empty cup in the trash. “This type of gig could be the thing to get you out of that dump in downtown.”
I scowl. I like my downtown dump.
“Faren!” she wails.
I shush her before Sue comes in thinking someone died. Of course, with all the sounds of torment she's heard since I began working here last year, nothing should faze her.
Kiki relents and switches to a softer tone. “You could own something. Something nice.”
I know this. I've been to her condo overlooking Pike Place and Puget Sound. Her view of downtown is magnificent. And expensive. It had to set her back five hundred K. I rent my death trap for nine hundred per month, and it's a studio in one of the tortuously small cobblestone-lined alleys of Seattle. At least it's on the fifth floor. The stairs are murder, but if I want two windows that actually face outside, that's what I can afford. Sometimes the freight elevator works; otherwise, it's exercise. The location allows me to walk to my upper-scale rehabilitation clinic. No need to use my beater car. That much.
“You don't have to give this up,” Kiki says quietly. She knows I won't budge on that, and she of all people knows why.
Rehab’s not a well-paying profession. But there's more than money, sometimes the soul needs edification.
I look at what Kiki has and what I don't. I shove those thoughts away. She's my best friend. She's seen me through everything. Dark shadows press in, and my headache returns with a throbbing vengeance.
Kiki frowns. “Another headache?”
“Yeah.”
“I don't want to argue, Faren. You've got to know that.” Her root beer eyes peg me to the spot. The sweep of her dark hair lays like chocolate silk past her full breasts. “But with your looks”—she throws her manicured hands in the air—“you could shake your booty a little and work a side job. Get a place in your same area... you could own something.”
It's an old argument. Her penthouse is nearly paid for while mine's a rental with a landlord that cares more about the rent than maintenance.
Her eyes swim with knowledge, and I set down my tea. It's too cold to drink anyway. Her words put the last nail in the coffin of my resistance. “Something secure,” she adds in a whisper and I let her hug me. I cling to her and try to believe my financial troubles and dark secret can be erased by taking off my clothes for strangers
Kiki loves me more than I love myself.
She loves me enough for us both.
*
Sue glances up when I click off the light off. The sky is darkening as I slide my last patient folder through the glass partition. She has that look in her eyes and pushes a business card through the slot.
It bears a doctor's name: Dr. Clive Matthews.
I give Sue a sharp look, and she shrugs, giving my hand a maternal pat. My eyes burn with tears from the spontaneous gesture.
Sue notices my emotional struggle and ignores it. “He got rid of my migraines. Miracle worker, I say.” She nods and glances at the card significantly.
I notice the appointment time and sigh.
Sue doesn’t drop her gaze. “How much longer are you going to struggle through those bone crushers?”
I don't answer, and she nods in her knowing way. “That's what I thought, Miss Mitchell. You'd have jus
t come in suffering worse than your own patients.”
Sue’s right. She knows it, and I do too.
I take the card and stuff it in the pocket of my smock, Dr. Seuss cats cover it in a smear of red and blue.
“Thanks,” I say grudgingly while I grab my coat.
“Welcome,” she shoots back in triumph as I hear the door whisper closed behind me.
I look at the card again as the cars, people, and city noise encapsulate me in the comforting rhythm of downtown. The smell of fish, food, and sea mingle, and I begin the short trek to the dank alley with the entrance to my apartment.
I have two weeks to prepare myself to go back into a hospital. I hate hospitals. They're all about death.
The thought of returning is almost enough to get a proper panic attack going.
Almost.
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THE REFLECTIVE
Book One: The Reflection Series
Copyright © 2013-14 Tamara Rose Blodgett
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved.
THE CAUSE
First: Right the Wrong
Second: Bear No Injustice
Third: Change Not What Must Be
Prologue
twenty years before
The midwife made her way along ancient cobblestoned streets, her shoes catching in the crevices though Principle knew, her shoes were as sensible as they come.
As was her occupation.
She would arrive in the birthing ward at exactly eight a.m. for her twelve-hour shift. Of course, it would not be twelve hours—it would be for however long the woman labored.
And if a Reflective were born ....
Just the thought of the potential for that caused a nervous thrill to flutter deep within Florence, as it did each time she worked.
The Reflective newborns must be swaddled in special non-reflective blankets. A baby would not be lost on her shift because it was a prodigy who jumped at a mirror or other reflective surface left uncovered.
Dear Principle. She shuddered, thinking about what the punishment would be for that. As it was, midwives couldn't use any surgical instruments that were not brushed stainless steel, and since the last unfortunate incident, the midwives had since moved to an all-ceramic surgical unit.
Florence swept up the massive steps. The rise of the treads was so low the stairs felt more like a gentle slope than true steps.
The sparkling flakes of charcoal that clung to the thick white granite reminded her that the sun still shone brightly, though their version of autumn would soon be here.
A shadow fell over Florence, and she twisted to look at the sky, her foot on the top step, her hand on the solid brass door handle that opened to the birthing center.
A swarm of butterflies, so thick it blocked the cerulean of the sky, dropped false night all around her as they flew through the rectangular vents that fed the ventilation system in warmer months.
The ports were a deliberate architectural feature that allowed entry to the only creature in their world that could identify a Reflective
So many.
Florence stood in stunned wonder. She had witnessed butterflies come to mark the birth of a Reflective, but never in such a great number.
Their importance was such that her world was named in their honor: Papilio, Sector Ten.
Their path created a rainbow of iridescent color, which poured like water through the narrow vents that had been carved in the solid stone of the birthing center.
All who lived in their world were born in similar structures.
However, Florence was one of few birthing center workers who had seen the highest incidence of Reflective births. She had requested placement to this one. After a five-year waiting period, she’d been assigned to the most prestigious.
She snapped out of her reverie as the last of the mingling kaleidoscope of insects funneled through the slits underneath the eaves of a copper roof, now aged a deep verdigris.
Florence tore open the heavy door.
She didn't hear it clank behind her as she ran the length of the corridor to the floor that housed laboring mothers.
*
Florence burst through the swinging doors as a man and a woman stood over a cradle.
Confused, Florence skidded to a stop.
What is this?
This... appeared to be the parents in front of a babe so new that some of the vernix still coated the wee one, her arms swinging as she howled.
Two nurses, one at the end of her shift and one in training, hung back.
Oh, for the love of all that is good. She stalked over to the newborn.
Florence halted as the sight overtook them all.
Their breath.
Their thoughts.
Everything but the scene itself melted away for those who witnessed the post-birth spectacle.
The butterflies descended, floating in a lazy spiral as the opalescent sunlight washed over their multicolored wings.
The chubby arms of the baby girl swirled and pumped, slowing as the butterflies drew nearer, and her echoing screams gradually grew quiet.
The insects lighted on the rails of the basinet in a portentous group, their wings moving in a steady sweep to maintain balance.
Their appearance froze the parents’ breath in their throats.
The moment swelled and grew in the stillness of the nursery, where rows upon rows of cradles pressed against the other. The parents watched the butterflies flutter precariously on the polished sides of the newborn's bed, landing only on hers and no other.
Their appearance was beautiful… final.
Florence strained to hear the mother's voice.
“She is Reflective,” she said in a sorrowful tone.
Her mate squeezed her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white.
“Yes,” he replied, just as gravely.
Their gaze met in perfect understanding of what the future held for their daughter: a life as mercenary, hunter and hunted.
This was an honor and privilege among their people.
Florence closed her eyes in sympathy. A female Reflective—every parents dream… and nightmare.
*
five years later
Beth shot the plain glass marble across the stretch of earth, watching the glass orb tumble and spin as it met the others she’d shot in a smack of hardened glass. It swerved at the last moment, ricocheting off a shooter, and came to stand where she'd intended.
All the other children her age could play with any marble they chose, but she possessed no mercury-coated marbles.
Beth Jasper was a solitary girl.
But not one who lacked intelligence. Beth had felt the sadness from Papa and Mama and knew she would soon leave for the building that had a big shining silver papilio above the entrance.
Mama and Papa had taken her there the previous week to meet with a man who had a nose like the water birds that gathered near her family's pond.
His nose made it very difficult for her not to giggle. Beth sometimes had a problem with laughing when she shouldn’t.
Beth had observed and stood watch over her new surroundings, remembering what her adoptive parents had told her.
Beth, you must let us do the talking. Under no circumstances should you volunteer to train for a combative role. There are alternative roles for female Reflectives.
Beth crinkled her face at the memory. She understood all of what they wanted of her,
and she would not shuffle papers and sit behind a desk, looking like the dolls she had given up playing with.
All Reflectives were far more mature than their human counterparts from the other twelve sectors.
Beth spoke like a teen, though she was five cycles. She puzzled through things that confounded adults.
She was faster, stronger, and brighter.
Beth was female.
When Commander Rachett of the Reflective Militia who operated under The Cause leaned forward and delved deep, he tried to pierce young Beth's very soul, she met him halfway.
Her small body leaned boldly toward his, unafraid.
In their people's ancient language of Latin, he posed the question: What role will you fill within The Cause, young Beth?
Beth narrowed her eyes, and Rachett's brows raised slowly.
He had studied her, no doubt because she was a half-breed, and female besides. She had met his stare with an unwavering gaze.
“A combative role, of course,” Beth said in her childlike voice, though the meaning was very adult, because she understood and communicated like one.
“No! Beth…” her mama said.
Beth swung her legs back and forth underneath the chair. Her eyes drifted to the candy dish poised at the edge of the desk before returning to the commander's.
Beth's stare matched Rachett's.
Rachett had to know what she was: a warrior. The attribute was either present, or it wasn’t.
Her papa stood.
“We can't have her fight. She is female… and not big for her gender.” Her father's face pleaded with Rachett to see reason.
Commander Rachett wasn't known as a reasonable man.
Rachett steepled his fingers underneath his chin, looking at Beth’s adoptive parents. Good people, common folk who were loyal to The Cause, believers in the Principle.
Rachett's gaze shifted to Beth. He scrutinized her face: eyes like crushed brown velvet; hair like a raven's wing; and skin like polished marble, pale but not pasty.
She is too beautiful to fight, he must have thought with regret.
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