Beauty and the Wolf

by Bridget Essex

  “I did not Google myself this morning.” Jordan scowls.

  “The problem with Jordan,” Rex goes on merrily, smiling at me, “is that he's in lo-o-o-ove with himself!”

  “I am not in love with myself!” Jordan roars, though it's a lazy roar. “Anyway, I'm just saying—I'm in no mood for autographs, okay?” And he turns away from me like an annoyed little boy...even though he's not a little boy. A little boy, in fact, kind of just schooled him.

  “I'll...keep that in mind,” I say, and Rex and Lucile chuckle.

  Lucile moves around the table to sit down next to Jordan; she elbows him in the ribs. But then she glances up at me, unsmiling. “Anyway, I'm going to talk to Mel. We don't need a cook,” she repeats—adamantly.

  I gaze into her fierce golden eyes, feeling uncomfortable.

  “Mom.” Rex wrinkles his nose. “None of us can cook. And Mr. Cheese really, really likes her.”

  Lucile doesn't respond to him. She's pinning me to the spot with her probing gaze. “What's your name?”

  I straighten a little. “I'm Bella Thorne.” When Lucile says nothing in reply, I swallow, go on, “I don't know what Grim is going to have me do here, exactly. She told me to make these sandwiches and then...disappeared. And she did say this position was on a trial basis. So I...hope you like the sandwiches!”

  I laugh nervously, but no one even cracks a smile. Lucile regards the sandwich in her hand with a not-so-subtle sneer. “It's not rocket science, is it? Anyone can make sandwiches.”

  “Of course, but... I can make other things. Besides sandwiches,” I finish weakly. I'm beginning to wonder if I should defend myself.

  I wonder if I should fight for this job at all.

  But then Jordan chooses a sandwich from the stack, takes a bite, and gives a curt nod. “Not half bad.” He looks at me in a bored sort of way.

  I notice Rex pulling all of the slices of cheese off of the sandwiches...for Mr. Cheese, I assume.

  “Anyway, thanks for this,” says Lucile, her words biting, the tone sharp, as if to ask, “Don't you have anything better to do than hang around here? Scram.”

  I take the hint and leave, and the second the door closes behind me, I can hear Jordan and Lucile begin to laugh. Laughing at me.

  Harsh.

  I go back to the kitchen, dejected, and grab my purse from the counter. And then I leave Grim Tower and head home.

  So much for that.

  I blew it.

  Chapter 6: The Argument

  “How was the first day?” Pam sings at me when she walks through the door, home from her diner shift.

  I'm standing in our tiny apartment kitchen, absentmindedly sauteing some onions and staring through the window, trying to figure out what I could have done differently today.

  When Pam sees me, her face falls; she lets her purse sink to the floor as she toes off her shoes.

  “What the hell happened?” she asks, her voice strained.

  And then I'm twirling my wooden spoon in the air, trying to find the right words.

  But I can't. So I just go with, “Today sucked.”

  She watches me for a long moment before she darts forward, wrapping me up in a tight hug.

  I set the wooden spoon on the pan, and then I'm hugging my friend back. Suddenly, all of my festering fears rise up... I'm not a crier, but two hot tears squeeze past my eyes; they roll down my cheeks while I grip Pam tightly.

  “Honey, tell me about it. You'll feel better if you talk.” Pam takes a step back and holds me at arm's length, searching my face. She looks alarmed by my tears, so I use the back of my hand to wipe them away.

  “I'm not so sure about that. But it's worth a try.” I take a deep breath and give her a watery smile. “Pretty sure I lost the job on day one. Not because of Grim,” I add quickly, holding up a hand as a dark look crosses her face. “It's her family. I don't think they like me very much. No, I know they don't like me. And they certainly don't want me working for them.” I lean back against the stove. “The whole situation was really uncomfortable. I guess they're private people, and my showing up out of the blue set them on edge. They didn't want me there, Pam. That was pretty clear.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Me, too.” I pick up the wooden spoon and give the almost-black onions a nudge. “Anyway, did Andrew keep you late?”

  “What?” Pam regards me with saucer-wide eyes, still shaken up from my teary outburst.

  “Your shift ended two hours ago. Is he making you work overtime now?” I narrow my eyes, glaring down at the frying pan and stabbing the onions with my spoon. “Don't let him overwork you just because I'm not there anymore. And he'd better be paying you time and a half for the extra hours. Is he?”

  Pam's lips part; she's about to say something in response, but she stops herself, silenced, when a knock sounds at our apartment door.

  “Did you order pizza?” she asks me quietly.

  I shake my head and stare at the ashes of onions in my frying pan.

  And if it isn't our pizza guy at the door, then it's probably Mr. Fitzgerald, the tenant three apartments down who's convinced that he can convert us to Mormonism.

  “I'll get it,” I say, sounding morose. “If it's Mr. Fitzgerald, listening to his spiel won't be the worst thing that happened to me today.”

  Pam's face takes on a decidedly sympathetic cast, but I move past her toward the door.

  I square my shoulders and try to remember the talking points that I gleaned from the Internet, stuff that you're supposed to tell door-to-door evangelists when you want them to leave you alone.

  But Mr. Fitzgerald isn't standing in the hallway, eagerly clutching his Mormon tracts with a perpetually hopeful (and slightly desperate) expression on his face.

  It's Grim.

  If Santa Claus himself were here, holding the lead rope of a baby unicorn, I don't think I'd be more surprised. I stare at her, my jaw slack.

  Grim's hands are jammed deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. The jacket, I'd like to note, is unzipped, and she's still wearing that well-washed t-shirt that looks so soft to the touch—not that I should be noticing that sort of thing right now. Her hip juts out to one side, and her hair is standing up at odd angles, as if she just ran her hands through it in agitation.

  She looked decidedly frustrated as I swung open the door, but when she meets my gaze, her hard lines blur, soften. And before I can get out any words, she clears her throat, tilts her head. “Why did you leave?” she asks, the words rough, like pieces of wood that no one ever bothered to sand down.

  “I left...” My voice is shaking; I grip the doorknob with white-knuckled fingers. “I left because your family, more or less, told me to leave.” And then, instead of feeling sorry for myself, a little flash of anger ripples through my body. “You vanished. I didn't think I'd see you again. And they obviously never want me to come back.”

  A series of expressions flit over Grim's face; she's struggling with something internally. Then a calm coldness settles over her lips, her mouth downturned, her eyes so piercing that I feel pricked.

  “Were they uncivil to you?” Her voice is still gruff, but there's an added layer of grit to it now.

  I reach up self-consciously, run my fingers over the collar of my shirt, as if to draw it tighter around me. Grim's...intense. Whenever I'm in her presence, I feel this potent mix of lust and...well, something akin to fear. I'm not afraid of her, but part of me seems to believe that I should be.

  “No. Well, I don't know. Uncivil... That's a strong word.” I shake my head, remembering the encounter and trying to think of something charitable to say. “They weren't expecting me, and anyone would be startled after seeing a stranger in their house.”

  Grim considers this, and for a few seconds, neither of us speaks. Her shoulders are curved toward me, though my own body language is less than inviting. I've wrapped my arms around myself in the universal gesture of “leave me alone.”

  But...I don't really want her to l
eave me alone.

  I don't know what I want.

  “I came by to apologize for my family.” Her words are slow, deliberate, her gaze unwavering. Beneath the fluorescent lights of the hallway, her amber eyes glitter. “I'm sorry if they treated you with anything less than politeness. My family is...” She smiles then, almost sadly. “We're small, insular. We're unused to strangers.”

  Suddenly, I'm struck by the incongruity of the sight before me: this stunning, mysterious creature, so out of place in my drab apartment building. Everything about Grim is a puzzle, cryptic, as if her essence is written in a language I don't quite understand. I remember Pam's use of the word magic yesterday, and that anything-is-possible feeling washes over me again—that something extraordinary is in store for me.

  “I was hoping that you would come back and cook dinner for us tonight.”

  My brows rise, and my frown deepens.

  Do I want to go back?

  “Um...” I have no idea what to say. I'm grappling, trying to decide. Truthfully, I'm tired. I've been brooding and sauteing the hell out of onions for quite a while now. I was waiting for Pam to come home so that we could hash it all out. And I was kind of hoping, once she saw the blackened onions, that she would offer to go get us some fries.

  Fries are my ultimate comfort food.

  But now Grim is standing in the doorway to my apartment, apologizing for her uncivil family. She leans one shoulder against the door frame coolly. Her head is angled to the side, and her eyes are kind, but there's still a sharpness to her features. Something about her expression strikes me as feral, almost animalistic...and along with that comes a heady dose of animal magnetism.

  I feel my cheeks flush and realize that my inner workings are stalled; if I opened my mouth right now, pure gibberish would come out. And if I narrowed my eyes a little, I almost believe that I would see wavy lines in the air, drawing me ever nearer to her.

  But that's silly, obviously.

  A person can't exude real magnetism.

  I clear my throat, realize I haven't spoken in, like, a minute, and things have become awfully awkward, awfully fast. But Grim doesn't seem to notice—or mind. Her gaze flicks from my eyes to my throat to my, um, lower areas....

  As if she's totally checking me out.

  I feel like an overcooked noodle. I might melt into the floor if she keeps looking at me like this: not lustful so much as...omnipotent.

  I've only seen a similar expression once before in my life—and it's kind of ridiculous to even make the comparison. But when I was a kid, my parents took me to the zoo in Boston. It was one of the happiest days of my memory, full of the stuff that makes up childhood fantasies: sunshine, ice cream, and so many beautiful animals. I vowed to become a zookeeper when I grew up. (Obviously, I broke that vow.)

  The moment that stands out to me happened while I watched the tigers. There were two tigers in the big, glassed-off enclosure. They were shy, my dad told me—to prevent me from getting too hopeful about seeing them up close. The cats like to hide in the foliage, Dad said. They were annoyed by all of the nosy humans snooping on them.

  But there they were, out in the open and lounging on the rocks, when we approached the glass. They were regal, magnificent—all of those big words that denote the aura of something too perfect, too noble.

  The larger cat was the female, my dad said, lifting me up to perch on his shoulders so that I had a better view. There was a crowd around the glass, adults and kids oohing and ahhing. And as much as I wanted to squeeze through all of them to get closer to the animals, they were packed too tightly. So I gripped Dad's head, afraid of falling. My dad is pretty tall, and the ground looked awfully far away.

  But my fear of falling vanished the first time I really saw those tigers. The female was sitting on the highest rock, and she certainly wasn't afraid of toppling. She sprawled in that easy way cats do, her tongue lolling from her mouth as she panted, her striped flanks heaving.

  It was a hot day. I remember the ticklish trails of sweat rolling down the center of my back, remember how my ice cream melted all over my hands. Now I recognized how hot that tiger was as she lay there, mouth open, her eyes almost closed.

  Then, suddenly, she opened her eyes just a little more. Maybe it was because I sat head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd and offered a target for her gaze. Of course, I can never be sure why she looked at me, but when it happened, my six-year-old self felt certain it was because she and I shared a special connection.

  In truth, the tiger was likely bored out of her skull; I was just a moving object that caught her attention. But I'll never forget how it felt to have that wild creature train her watchful eyes on me. Just like that, the eons of evolved traits inside of me woke up. I was afraid of her; every molecule of my being was commanding me to run: “Hey, dummy, something big and toothy is looking at you—best hightail it out of town!”

  But we humans evolved from predators, too. And from deep, deep down inside of me, that sleeping predator rose. The tigress and I locked eyes. I was only six years old. Six. I had no idea how the world worked, thought of little more than cartoons and my parents and chocolate-chip cookies. And French fries. I was addicted even then.

  But I sat up straighter on my father's shoulders, gripping his hair so hard that he complained. My chest puffed out, and I lifted my chin, returning that beast's gaze with the most noble look that I could muster—being six and all.

  The tiger blinked, long and lazy, and then her eyes widened just a little.

  I'd seen cats before, had pet our neighbor's cat, Sassy. I knew what a cat's eyes looked like.

  But for all of her enormity, for all of her strangeness...the tigress' eyes looked surprisingly human.

  And hungry.

  And terrifying.

  She could kill me in an instant if she chose to do so. If she wasn't busy taking a nap.

  It was a scary thing to think about, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have nightmares about that zoo visit for the rest of my childhood.

  I feared that tiger.

  When you're so little, you doubt the strength of glass walls.

  But there was something inside of me that answered the question the tiger posed. I was breathless as I watched her. She had seemed as if she were about to fall asleep, but now she sat bolt upright, her tail flicking with agitation against the sun-warmed stone. She sat still, quiet, watchful.

  This was the best thing that had ever happened to me (apart from some really great Christmases). I felt as if I was talking to the tiger, even though we didn't speak the same language.

  And the way that tigress looked at me... That's how Grim looks at me now.

  There's a predator in her eyes.

  The word predator has negative connotations, obviously, but a predator got to the top of the food chain because it's strong and sleek and fast. There's nobility to a lion, a tiger, a wolf; we humans understand that instinctively. We look at them with respect, admire how they move, how they structure their societies. We even ascribe human attributes to them, call them kings.

  I never met a human being as proud and impressive as that tiger. Until Grim. She's staring at me with unblinking eyes, her gaze warm and honey-gold. There's an aura of the beast to her posture, to her presence.

  I tremble as she watches me, feel as if she's searching my depths, as if I stand naked before her.

  It's unsettling. I cross my arms over my chest, looking up at her, mesmerized.

  She blinks, then, and the spell shatters—like glass smashing against a floor.

  I put a hand to my temple, realizing that my fingers are shaking. My forehead is hot, but that's no surprise: I feel hot all over. I take a deep breath, and then I frown at Grim.

  “There's something about you,” I find myself whispering. The words pass my lips before I can consider them, weigh their effect.

  “What?” Her voice is raw; she actually takes a step back.

  An expression of neutrality washes over her face.
I've never seen anything like it before. One moment, her eyes are wide, intense, flickering. And then they're empty, carefully controlled. This is the same expression she must give the grocery store clerk or the gas station attendant.

  It's an expression for a stranger.

  “There's just...something about you...” I know I'm stammering, but the way she closed herself off to me... I was burning up, and now I feel so cold. It's unreal, how the chill encompasses me, the same chill that she now wears in her eyes.

  “I get lost in your eyes,” I flounder. “I've...never met anyone with such pretty eyes.”

  The coldness begins to warm by degrees. Though her lips are still pursed, though her expression is still calculated, familiarity returns to her gaze.

  She chuckles softly.

  “Your eyes—they remind of something...” I stop myself. No, I am not going to tell her my I-saw-this-great-tiger-when-I-was-six story.

  I think the past couple of days have done me in. Maybe I need a forty-eight hour marathon of cheesy movies—while also eating cheese. Yeah, cheese. I should think about cheese, because if I think about cheese, or the fact that I'm starving, I'll stop paying attention to my tangled-up feelings for Grim.

  She takes a step closer now, her right hip curving toward mine.

  Nope. Cheese isn't a strong enough buffer against Grim's animal magnetism.

  In a lowered growl, she murmurs, “What'll it be, Bella? Please come back and cook for us.”

  My name.

  She said my name.

  Not fair.

  I'm holding my breath, because she's standing so close that I can feel the heat radiating from her body.

  I want to be rational. I want to be strong.

  I want to tell myself that this woman doesn't attract me like a force of gravity.

  But that would be a lie, and I'm kind of the truthful type.

  If she asked me anything right now, I'd say yes.

  So that's what I do.

  I say, “Yes. I'll come back.”

  I wet my lips because they're remarkably dry as I consider talking to Jordan and Lucile again, two people who made it pretty damn clear that they resented my presence.