by Lynn Red
People joked of course about the human, about how I had to drive to get places and couldn’t fly, but I took them all as, well, jokes. Good natured ribbing.
And now I was supposed to believe it was all deep-seated anger at me for who I was?
I took the last turn around the long, slow slope of Maine Avenue, and stopped, staring at the front of the old Gothic-style courthouse. It was built sometime after the Civil War, Duggan told me once. The old one either burned down or got blown up in some kind of wizardry accident, but he thought it more likely that there was a kerosene spill.
The way this town went, I wasn’t so sure.
If the walk to the front of the courthouse felt like eternity, somehow turning the knob was even worse. An almost physical pain thumped into my chest when I put my key in the door, and groaned with effort as the lock clunked open.
Turning the knob and opening the door – for what was probably the last time – was an exercise in pain management. This place had turned into home for me; it had replaced a place I never wanted to be.
Luckily, Erik called a day of planning, so the town security council was meeting somewhere else. The old courthouse where our offices were was completely empty. If I’d had to look at anyone I probably would have screamed.
The house shoes I’d refused to change out of scuffed along the marble tiles. I passed an old statue of Davis Gerton III, the founder of Jamesburg. He was a werewolf back before it was cool. He came with pilgrims from England, evidently, but managed to keep himself human the whole time. No one ever knew about his lycanthropic condition even though there were two full moons during the journey. He was a symbol of self-reliance, toughness, and the single-minded drive to be solid and strong that the whole town used to build itself up.
He also wasn’t real.
But like Duggan said, sometimes reality doesn’t matter. Rather, the most important thing about a story is what we take from it, the lessons we learn.
I stared at Davis for a second. His long snout, his crooked back, if he was real, a wolf that looked like he did in the sculpture would be four-, maybe five-hundred years old. I shook myself and nodded to the statue in deference. “See ya ‘round,” I said to him, and went on my way.
By the time I got to the end of the hall, went up three flights of stairs, and got to the mayor’s office, which was across from mine, I’d just about resigned myself to what was happening. But when I opened the door, and the first thing I saw was Erik’s leather jacket thrown haphazardly across my desk, I almost came undone.
I grabbed the single framed picture I had – me and Erik and the miniature golf course two towns over – and dropped it face down into the shoebox I brought with me. Opening my drawers, I grabbed the folders full of paperwork and pictures that never got framed and pulled them out.
“Somethin’ got ya down?”
“Holy shit!” I cried out, jolting so hard I dropped a folder that burst all over the floor. A cascade of documents and stamps that were too old to use anymore slid halfway across the room. “Jamie?”
I looked up and sure enough, the bat lady was hanging from the vaulted ceiling above my desk. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She shrugged and gave me half a grin, then sneezed. “It’s quiet here when there are breaks. Government shuts down and the bats come home to roost.”
I snorted an empty laugh. “What brings you to my corner of the world? Seems like there’d be more comfortable places to go if you needed a nap.”
Jamie bared her little fangs in a Cheshire grin and then shrugged. “I thought something like this might happen.”
“You thought? You sure you don’t mean that you read my mind?”
She unrolled her wings and stretched, then wrapped back up. The way she was, it reminded me of a mummy, but a strikingly beautiful one with milk-colored skin and jet-black hair. Oh, and also not dead. As I watched, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I stole one of your oranges. Really good this time of year.” She paused for a second then apparently noticed my open mouth. “Well I can’t live on blood all the time. You have no idea how old it gets. Anyway, you’re too smart for me to pretend like there’s no reason I’m here.”
“I’m done,” I said. “I’m not doing this anymore. I’m leaving. Erik can go to hell for all I care.”
Boxing up three folders full of unframed pictures, I looked over at Jamie, whose wings were hanging limp at her sides.
“How do you keep your hair from falling when you’re upside down all the time?” Curiosity strikes me at the weirdest times.
“Tight bun,” she said. “Anyway, you can’t leave. I won’t let you.”
“Excuse me?” I said, taking her a little aback. “You won’t let me?”
She let her arms fall down and stretched them until her shoulders popped, then wrapped herself back up in those leathery, velveteen wings. “Maybe that was a little bit strong,” Jamie said. “But I won’t let you leave without at least knowing why.”
“Why what? Why I’m leaving? Why do you even care, is my question. I’m just a pureblood human. I don’t fit in here, right?”
I dropped my box of folders with a little more of a thud than I expected then blew a fallen curl out of my face. The half day since I last saw Erik was starting to get to me, I guess. As much as he’d gone on about addiction, it was me who was feeling the pangs of withdrawal. This was the longest I’d gone without... well, gone without, since we started in with the torrid, secret affair.
There was an ache in the middle of me, and it wasn’t just one that needed physical satisfaction. I missed the way he threw his hair around. I missed the way he looked at me, and the way he made me feel. But most of all, I missed his voice, soft sometimes, and sometimes gravelly, lusty and hard.
“You’re torn up, and that bothers me because for all my cool acting, I hate seeing people sad,” Jamie said. “It’s not just about Erik, either. I’ve been around long enough to know that look.” Jamie took a deep breath. “Christ, have I been around long enough. And the reason I care is because I always liked you, even if it isn’t really my thing to act like it. Semi-related to that, you’re good for Erik. He’s my friend, and besides; what’s good for the alpha is good for the town.”
She took a deep breath, reached out, and tapped me on the head when I looked away. “Scratch that. You’re the best thing for Erik, not just good for him.”
“Really?” I said.
I happened to look down into my box and see a picture of my preacher uncle. Immediately, my thoughts turned to Ohio, back to my family, and all the things I’d left behind.
“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked. “Something in the box got you upset?”
“No,” I said. “It’s just... pictures of people I haven’t seen in a while.”
With smoothness that would make an Olympic gymnast jealous, Jamie pulled one clawed foot, then another, off the rafter where she hung, and flipped to the ground, landing without a sound. She slid her hand around my face and turned me toward her.
“I’m not going to read your mind,” Jamie said. “Haven’t. That’s rare. Usually the first thing I do is plumb the depths and see what there is to see. You’re different, though.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied again and took another short glance at Uncle Ted. I shook my head just a little from side to side in a way that I thought imperceptible but that obviously wasn’t. “It’s just pictures.”
Jamie sighed heavily. “Suit yourself,” she said. “I can’t make you talk. I’ll let you keep your secrets, whatever they are, but I have to say something about the other thing. Erik is... well, I know about you and him, because I’m not an idiot. And I’ve never seen him this happy. But... you have to understand what a huge thing it is to go from the two of you being a casual item to you being the alpha’s actual, official mate.”
I looked up at her, my eyes pregnant with tears though I wasn’t entirely sure why – I guess a mixt
ure of bad memories, everything with Erik, and the impending possibility that I was headed right back to Ohio and right back into all those terrible memories was just too much. “I don’t want this to be over,” I said. “I can’t take it. I can’t take all the drama and the politics and...”
I sniffed and trailed off.
“This shit did come on pretty quick, huh?”
“It’s all this... Oh my God, why am I telling you this?” I groaned and ran my hand through my hair.
“Because you obviously need to tell someone, and I’m here,” she said. Jamie paced to the door, and then returned. She moved like a shadow gliding along the floor, her clawed feet seemed to just slide along the ground.
Her fingertips on my cheek were strangely warm. “Sit,” she said. “Let me guess, this is about the old alpha’s...”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to bother. I sat, let out a long sigh and turned my eyes upward, staring at Jamie and waiting for her to talk so I didn’t have to acknowledge the insanity running through my head.
Instead, she just stared back. “Any day now,” she said.
I took a deep breath, concentrating on the beat of my own heart to try and calm my thoughts. “It’s... I don’t know. This is so embarrassing. I feel like a high school reject.”
She stared at me, blankly.
“Not familiar with that around here?”
“Well, we’ve got high school, but I’m not sure what you mean. Remember, I don’t really know why you’re leaving, so maybe start at the beginning?”
“It’s just that when I came here,” I took a deep breath that rattled a little bit in my chest. “Okay, well, I left home because yeah I needed a job, but also because I’d never fit in a single place in my whole life. I mean, look at me.”
I shook a lacy sleeve at Jamie and pushed my hair out of my face. “This hair? I used to dye it blue okay? I’ve never fit in anywhere. And then in college, I wasn’t enough of a lunatic to fit in with the whackos. Right? I went from being the crazy girl in high school to being a bore.”
“Jesus,” Jamie said softly.
“And all the while, this asshole,” I pointed at the picture of my uncle, “told me how all the music I listened to, and the, I dunno, the shit I put in my hair, and the nail polish I wore... he told me how it was all just wasting time. He had me convinced that I was just a big, giant waste of time.”
When tears came, they came in a flood.
Jamie sat there without talking, more patient than I ever imagined her being, though I guess I never gave her much of a chance.
“I don’t... sorry,” I said, sniffing.
“No, no, no apologizing. I’m the one who asked.” Slowly, she rubbed her hand on my shoulder.
“Then,” I continued, “I came here, you know? I met Erik and then... it just all fell into place. As stupid as it might sound, Jamesburg is the first place I’ve ever felt like home. And now, because of some zombie reminding everyone that they hate humans, then that’s it? I’m just supposed to suck it up and either say goodbye to this place, or be fine living as a second class citizen?”
My shoulders trembled, and my breath came in short, hard bursts.
For a moment, Jamie just stroked my back and let me shake.
“You know, Isabel,” she said, slowly easing us back into conversation. “You told me things that I didn’t know, but I knew, if that makes any sense.”
I nodded. “I guess so, but what does it matter? It can’t ever work between us, can it? If the whole town thinks I’m some kind of thief waiting to happen, how can we ever be together?”
“Well if you put it that way,” Jamie said softly, “it sounds a lot worse than it is. Look. Erik is who he is. Right? He’s big, and strong and rough and has those muscles and...”
“Uh, right, yeah, that’s all true,” I said, grinning slightly, despite myself. “He certainly does have that going for him.”
“And he told you he loves you. Right?”
“Wait, how did you know that?” I asked.
“I might’ve taken an accidental peak into your noodle. But I swear that was all I saw.”
I nodded, closing my eyes. “Yeah, he... he did, right before I left.”
“One thing I know about Erik,” Jamie said, “and remember, I’ve known him a lot longer than you – is that he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He isn’t the type to give you compliments he doesn’t think are real. I’m sure you’ve noticed that, too.”
“Ugh, yeah,” I said.
“I dated him for a few years,” Jamie said. “I know all about that one.”
She laughed, which loosened me up some. “Listen,” she said, continuing, “I know this is hard. I know it is. I know what it’s like to be in love with someone and have to keep from full on for whatever reason. It’s terrible.”
“Well I’m just stuck,” I said. “If I stay here, I’ll cause problems – Erik says that the whole town will riot in the streets it comes out that he marks a pureblood human to be his mate. The playing around, I guess, is just fine. But if it’s official, that’s apparently the end of the world.” I took a long breath. “Or I leave, and I don’t want to leave but I guess I have to.”
“You give up too quickly,” Jamie said. “How bad do you want this?”
“What? What do you mean?” I asked. “I want him worse than anything. This place is my home now. I don’t want any part of going back to all those bad memories.”
That was the first time I said it out loud. I mean, I’d thought the same thing plenty of times before, but saying it made it feel more real, somehow. I didn’t want Ohio, I didn’t want my creepy uncle, or my nasty sister in law, or any of them. My place was Jamesburg, among all these completely improbable creatures that no one else on earth knew to exist. In a backward, funny way, it all made sense.
The weird, curvy girl with the blue hair and the slightly wonky outlook on the world moves halfway across the country to the only place even more cartoonish than she is, and she falls right into place.
“What do I need to do?” I asked. I sat up straight, steel in my nerves. “I’ll do anything to make these people trust me, if that’s what it takes. I’ll do anything to stay here, to be with him. But,” I stopped for a second, considering my words. “That’s not it. That’s not all. I want to be with him, but there’s more. I want to do it for me, you know?”
A smile crept across Jamie’s face.
I kept on before she could interrupt. “I’ve never had a home, not really. I had my shitty Uncle Ted and Ohio, and I guess some friends in college, but I’ve never had a place before. It might sound really weird, but I feel like this is home to me now.”
Without noticing what I was doing, I had taken all the folders out of my little box and put them back in my desk. Jamie watched with great interest as I pulled one of the photos out and showed it to her. “He was awful, Jamie,” I said.
“What did he do to you? This is Ted, right? The uncle?”
I nodded. “He raised me, yeah. Raised me, made me feel like hell every second of every day. I was never good enough for him. Wasn’t religious enough, wasn’t fit enough, wasn’t smart enough. It wore me down.”
“That kind of thing would wear anyone down, even a vampire bat,” Jamie said. “But you know who doesn’t think any of those things about you?”
“Erik?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Erik,” Jamie said.
-7-
Erik was early to the office the next day. Like really early.
It was just past six when I looked up from the papers I had spread out on my desk at the sound of his giant road hog motorcycle shutting off outside.
I got up, a little surprised, and crossed my very small office to the window. Erik’s eyes were so sunken and black-ringed that even with his tanned face, they were readily apparent. I watched him for a second, until he looked up and gave me the world’s most half-hearted smile when I saw me in the window.
He looked like he wanted to say something, so I pushed open the window, hoping he would.
Instead, he just looked to the ground and walked through the door.
The last few days had been some of the hardest I’d ever dealt with, and I knew the hard times weren’t over.
I could understand. Erik needed to keep the council happy, or he might end up run out of town or dead. But at the same time, I wished more than anything for him to realize that I wasn’t some kind of dangerous liaison. I was just the same me I’d always been – that he apparently fell in love with.
His footsteps coming down the hall sent a jolt up my back. I looked over at the clock again, and barely a minute had passed since I first heard his bike outside. In two or three hours, this whole place was going to be buzzing with activity.
Today was the day that they decided to reconvene to discuss the options about the ex-alpha’s return, and judging from the look on Erik’s face, he wasn’t very excited about the meeting.
“Didn’t expect to see you,” he said, walking in behind me. “What happened that made you stay?”
“You did,” I said, turning on a heel and facing the man I’d wanted to see since the night before the long weekend, when it all blew up. “You made me stay, even though you tried your best to get me to leave.”
Somehow though, now that I was facing him, I felt a pang in my stomach, like I’d been starving and then plopped down in front of a pizza buffet.
It was too much, way too much, all at once.
Eyeing me cautiously, Erik circled my desk. “What’s all this?”
“The pictures?” I asked. “Just people from home. Actually, looking at them made me want to stay. I don’t want to go back to that world. I like this one just fine.”
“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes in thought. “I meant the papers, but...”
