by H G Lynch
“What do you want, shortstop?” Lia snapped, tapping one long nail – now painted a shockingly bright pink that made Ember want to gag – against the doorframe irritatingly.
Ember gritted her teeth against the urge to snap that nail…or the whole finger. I will not kill her, I will not kill her.
“I want you to stay away from Reid,” Ember said before she could stop herself. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say; she been aiming for a snarky comment, but she’d grasped the truth by accident instead. She instantly regretted it when she saw the look on Lia’s face, the sneer creeping across her green-smeared lips like a vine through a swamp. For a second, Ember saw another girl standing before her, one with moss-green eyes and frizzy red hair, and felt all the old anger at Kara rise up inside her, only to be crushed back down by the much larger, much fiercer fury at Liandra. Ember had thought she’d never hate someone as much as she hated Kara. She’d been wrong. Her hatred of Lia made her anger at Kara seem like a candle flame in comparison to a roaring inferno.
“Oh, so he told you, did he? About our little rendezvous in the woods? I figured he might. That boy has such an easy guilt reflex to tap for someone with his reputation. I suppose being with you has softened him quite a bit.” Liandra made a small noise of disapproval and lifted her hand to her face, eyeing her perfect nails with disinterest.
I will not kill her, I will not. She wasn’t going to tell Liandra that Hiro had been the one to tell her first – Lia would take that as a sign that Reid wanted to keep her a secret from his girlfriend. That’s not how it was at all.
“You can think whatever you want. You’re not the first girl to go after Reid while I’ve been with him. You’re no big threat, Lia.” – It was a lie but it sounded pretty convincing – “Have you heard of Kara yet? Yeah, she was the last girl to try and break me and Reid up. She was the queen of the school, the super bitch that nobody wanted to mess with, and guess what? Now she’s a shadow in the corridors, a ghost of the powerful ruler she was before. Nobody talks to her, or even about her anymore.” That much was true, and there was a certain rush of strength that came with realizing it when she hadn’t thought of it like that before. “I did that. I did that to her, and I’ll do the same to you. I can even do worse if I choose to. Nobody would call me the queen of the school, because I’m not that person. But I could be if I wanted to be. I have that power, Lia, and I will use it if I have to—”
“Yeah, well, Kara was obviously a wasp. One good sting and then she’s done. I’m more like a snake. I can keep coming back and coming back, and the thing about my venom is that once it’s in you, it works fast. It’s incurable. It spreads through every muscle and every cell until all you can think about is me. Reid has it inside him already and he’s going to come to my door one night soon and beg me for sex. He’s going to plead for me to touch him, to kiss him, to take his clothes off and wrap my fingers—”
Ember growled, a sound that barely passed for human, and felt her fangs give a sharp throb as she forced them to stay hidden, her tongue pressing them back into her gums. Liandra was enjoying her imagination way too much and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to lose that hand, the one still tapping on the doorframe.
But she just smiled blandly and raised her plucked brows into her slime-green hair. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I offend your innocent ears? I guess you wouldn’t know anything about how to properly pleasure a man. Such a shame that all Reid’s skill must go to waste, his potential unfulfilled. I mean, have you even had sex with him yet? From what I hear, you’re still a virgin, masquerading as Reid’s newest chew toy.”
Ember almost wanted to laugh at the term, wishing Liandra knew how appropriate it was. Somehow, Liandra’s uncreative comments allowed Ember to get a grip on her temper and she felt her lips curl ever so slightly upward, just one corner twitching into a humorless smile.
She shook her head condescendingly. “I’m not playing that game with you, Lia. I’ve played it before and learned the tricks. I’m not going to blurt that me and Reid do it doggy style every Tuesday or something like that, just because you make false accusations. I mean, really, what was your plan right there? Make me say something oh-so-scandalous about me and Reid’s sex life and then go spill it to the whole school? It was a nice tactic, but transparent and not very creative. Is that the best you can do?” Ember was pleased with how even and calm her voice came out, every word laced with condescension that must’ve burned like acid in Lia’s ears.
Liandra glared and drew herself up taller, leaning forward just a little to seem intimidating. Ember didn’t flinch. She blinked lazily up at the posturing girl. A flash of anger, dark and livid, shone in Lia’s eyes in response.
“You have no idea what game I’m playing, and you can bet I’ve been playing it since you got your first period. I win every time, so why don’t you just give it up and walk away while you still have a shred of dignity left? Go and get a puppy dog. Or how about that freaky kid with the orange eyes? He’s, what, fifteen, right? At least he’d be more your pace, I’m guessing.”
The thought of seeing Hiro like that was…wrong on so many levels. He was her protector, her friend, her sometimes-pet. He reminded her a little of her younger brother in some ways. No, she could never see Hiro the way Liandra meant.
I will not kill her, I will not kill her, IwillnotkillherIwillnotkillher…Ember was losing patience fast now. “Hiro is a friend and nothing more. A damn good friend, probably the only one who sees you the same way I do. You can manipulate Sherry and Ricky and Cris all you like. You can even try your little games on Reid, but in the end, you’re going to lose. We’ve faced so much worse than you, worse than you can even imagine, and—”
Liandra snorted. “I doubt that.”
Ember’s eyes narrowed. I will not kill her, I will not…Oh, hell, screw it. I’m going to kill her. She was done pissing about here. “Look, I’m not going to stand here and keep spouting meaningless words. I’m going to tell you once, and if I sense so much as the thought of Reid from your head, I will not waste my time with threats and slurs. I will do whatever I feel is necessary to eliminate you from my life. Like a rodent in the cookie jar. But if you still feel like taking me on, go right ahead. Bring it on, bitch. I’m just dying with anticipation.” And, with that, with her fangs slipping out and her fists clenched and a knot of angry heat in her chest, she spun on her heel and strode away before she really did decide to make Lia the snack of the day.
*****
When she got back to her room, Ember was not surprised that Sherry wasn’t there. It seemed she rarely saw her best friend lately – over the past three weeks, Sherry had been disappearing increasingly often to be with Ricky or Lia. Ember was surprised, though, to see that there was someone in the room. He was sitting on the floor between the beds, just the top of his bowed head visible over the mattress. Ember, confused and worried and a little too highly strung from her visit with Lia to deal with other people right now, closed the door behind her quietly and crawled onto her bed. She peered cautiously over the other side.
Reid was curled on the floor with his legs crossed, his head bowed over his hands, which he was clasping and unclasping slowly, as if he was frightened of breaking a finger. Something about the curve of his spine and the exposed nape of his neck made him look so young and vulnerable that Ember felt her anger and tension slipping away, her fangs retreating and melting into her normal canines. She didn’t say anything, wasn’t sure what there was to say, and they sat in silence for so long that she wondered if he even knew she was there. It wasn’t often that Reid got lost inside his own mind, but sometimes, just sometimes, he did, and when he did you could land a jet right behind him and he likely wouldn’t even blink.
When he finally spoke, though his voice was nearly inaudible, Ember flinched. Her knuckles hurt suddenly – she hadn’t realized she’d been gripping her hands together tight enough to cut off circulation to her fingertips.
“I wasn’t going to come in here,
” Reid said, his voice almost a whisper.
He didn’t raise his head to look at her, didn’t move at all except for the steady, shallow rise and fall of his chest. Ember waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He just…sat there, looking somewhat forlorn again. Biting her lip uncertainly, Ember fought to remember she was mad at him. It was just so hard to be mad at him when she wanted to reach out and stroke the fine, soft hairs on the back of his neck with her fingertips.
The silence growing between them was almost unbearable by the time Reid spoke again, his voice no louder than before, no real inflection in his tone, just a sort of even sadness that made her want to cry. “I wasn’t going to come…I thought you might want some space, some time to think…but I was sitting in my room, staring out the window, and my mind wouldn’t stop mocking me. It was telling me all the ways I’d screwed up, how much I didn’t deserve you, that once you’d had time to think properly, you’d break up with me for sure and…and I ended up here because I thought that being in your room would make those things seem less real, make my mind shut up.” He made a sound that wasn’t really a laugh so much as an exhalation of air accompanied by a painful, bitter noise. “I was wrong. It made things worse, sitting here. But I deserve the pain so I’m going to keep sitting here until you throw me out the window.” It wasn’t really a joke, either. His tone didn’t lift so much as an inch as he said it, making him sound even more like a sinking ship drowning in guilt and sorrow. It was painful to listen to.
Ember shifted to lie flat on her stomach, her arms folded on the duvet and her chin resting on the backs of her hands. She didn’t know what to say, so she just gazed at him, wondering if he would ever look at her or if he planned on living on that floor without ever lifting his head. Silence descended once more, a blanket of tepid air and sadness so profound it seemed to drain all the energy from her body and all the words from her head until she was weighted to the bed by her own molasses-thick misery.
Nearly two hours later, she had to give Reid credit; He hadn’t moved a muscle this entire time. Even in her heavy self-pity, Ember had had to move a few times to keep her arms and legs from falling asleep in awkward positions. But, in his infinite determination to stay on that floor and let his thoughts torture him, Reid had even stopped breathing as far as she could see. A little part of her was tempted to brush his hair back to see if he’d fallen asleep, but she didn’t dare.
It was very dark outside, no stars visible through the fog of indigo clouds coating the sky in a plush layer of insulation. The clock on the nightstand told her, in bold little numbers and lines, that it was almost ten o’clock at night. She got off the bed, slowly and quietly, and padded to the window to pull the curtains closed. They made a soft chhchhhh noise as the fabric moved against the wooden curtain pole. Then she took her pajamas, in a neatly folded little bundle, from under her pillow and went into the bathroom to change.
She wasn’t really planning on going to sleep – She doubted she could with Reid sitting there all night like a statue of an agonized fallen angel – but she figured she might as well be comfortable while she moped. After changing into the fuzzy, tartan pajamas, she brushed her teeth and left the tap running while she used the toilet, not wanting Reid to hear her pee. Normally, she didn’t worry about that sort of thing much, but the silence in the other room was so deep that it was making her shoulder blades tingle.
When she emerged from the bathroom, flipping off the light and closing the door, Reid was gone. Ember paused, glancing around the room in case he’d simply moved at last and was instead curled under the desk or something, but there was no sign of him. She was relieved and oddly disappointed at the same time. So much for waiting for me to throw him…She couldn’t even finish the thought, the words too light in her mind and being dragged down by the stone weight of her heart.
With a desperate need to break the interminable silence, Ember took her MP3 player from the nightstand, turned out the light, and plugged one ear-bud into her ear before lying down on her side under the duvet and falling asleep to the whispered lyrics of some song with a violin wailing over the sobs of a piano.
It was still dark outside when Ember rolled over in bed and automatically tapped a button on her mobile, which was lying on the edge of the nightstand as always. The screen lit up, illuminating a good portion of the room very faintly and announcing in bright, pixelated letters and numbers that it was Saturday the 29th of January, and it was 9:28 a.m. Ember squinted her blurry eyes to read the painfully glowing screen, which also told her she had a new text message. It was from Julie. Blinking, Ember hit the button to read the message and it popped up on the screen:
Hey, howz it going? Email me! X
Ember had forgotten that, back in Scotland, she’d promised Julie to keep in touch and tell her how the wardings worked out. A month later was a bit late for that update, but she’d been busy and it had slipped her mind. Julie would understand – she knew Ember had a bad memory when it came to things like that.
With a groan, Ember slithered out of bed and tripped over something warm and soft, dropping her phone. The screen didn’t stop glowing so it gave her enough light to see the pile of fur she’d tripped over shifting. One amber eye looked balefully up her. The fox made a noise to show his anger at being stepped on, but Ember stuck her tongue out at him as she shuffled to the window and yanked the curtains open, flooding the room with the kind of non-light of a winter morning – you know, when it was still dark, but a lighter darkness than the bedroom you were in. “It serves you right,” she grumbled to the fox, “what are you doing on the floor anyway? In fact, what are you doing in my room at all?”
Hiro tucked his head under his paws, covering his eyes and whining.
Ember nudged him with her bare toes, feeling his silky fur tickle the soles of her feet. He lifted a paw to bat at her foot and stood up, stretching in that fluid, languorous way that only animals can. He hopped onto her bed just as she started to make it, and sat there by her pillows.
“Move or I’m going to smother you with the duvet,” she warned him.
He didn’t budge.
Ember shrugged and flipped the duvet over him, smoothing out the wrinkles and bumps until there was just a fox-sized lump in the center of the bed. The lump squirmed and Hiro’s little black nose poked out onto the pillow, followed by the rest of his body as he slid out from under the suffocating bedcover. Sometimes, he was so much like her cat back home that she was tempted to leave out a litter tray for him somewhere.
As if sensing her thoughts – or just reading them, as only a Kitsune or another Elemental could — Hiro gave her a look that was surprisingly dark for a fox, and flicked his tail in annoyance. Ember ignored him and went to grab clean clothes from her wardrobe and dresser, the rough carpet brushing her feet and the cool air of the room raising goosebumps on her bare arms. Why did mornings always have to be cold? It made her want to crawl back into bed and stay there all day. It was Saturday, so that should have been what she was doing, but there was supposed to be a meeting about Onyx Lake again and attendance was non-optional – Well, there were choices, but the choices were A) Go and spend a couple of hours talking tactics with the vampires, or B) Sleep for another couple of ours and then have Brandon knocking on her door to lecture her later. Neither were good options, but seeing as she was already up, it seemed logical to follow through on plan A.
Once she’d changed and brushed her hair and teeth in bathroom, Ember stuffed her pajamas into the laundry basket and flung open the bathroom door. Hiro the fox was gone, but Hiro the boy was sitting on her bed instead, looking very much like he wanted to curl up and go back to sleep too. His red hair was spiked in natural disarray, clearly not brushed, and behind him, his long tail sat on the pillow. She didn’t think he realized he still had his tail, judging by the mindless way he was staring out the window.
She pointed it out to him as she sank into the chair by the desk and turned on her laptop. “Uh, Hiro, you know you’re getting f
ox hair on my bed?” She twisted in the swivel chair impatiently, back and forth, while she waited for her laptop to load up. It made that annoying sound computers make when the Windows sign popped up and she typed in her password. It dinged and her wallpaper – a picture of a crumbling gravestone with a crow sitting on top of it – crawled over the screen. Waiting for the wireless internet to connect itself, she swung back around to see Hiro, who blinked at her, as if just registering that she’d spoken, and looked dumbly behind him at his tail. He stared at it for a few seconds and then shrugged. Clearly Hiro was not a morning person.
The thought reminded her that she wasn’t usually a morning person and she slid off her chair to grab a bottle of coke from under her bed before returning to her seat by the desk. The bottle hissed at her when she twisted the cap off and she took a few sips before setting it down and clicking the Internet Explorer icon on the bottom of her laptop screen. She checked the time; 10:43 a.m. The meeting was at eleven. She was going to be late if she didn’t leave now, but she wanted to write her email to Julie before she forgot again. Brandon could wait, and if he didn’t like it he could suck it.
