Odd Stuff

by Nelson, Virginia

  The problems started when we tried to enter our own country.

  They put dogs in the car, standard procedure, and we stood in the building next to the border watching. The dogs came away with nothing. I felt very visible and nervous. I still had wings, ethereal or not, sticking out of my back. On top of the wings making me feel like we were going to get busted—I could imagine their cries of, “kill the freak!”—and shot down in a hail of friendly fire, the wings also seemed to make me very aware it was January and really freaking cold. Maybe because they were naked? I mean, they didn’t have a shot of fitting into my coat. Although they weren’t flesh and blood wings, apparently no one had told the wings that—they felt very real to me.

  I kept looking nervously back and forth to Mia and Vance, sure that any moment we would hear a cry of, what in the—? followed by our deaths. My nervous twitching must have looked suspicious, especially when we crossed the border at almost twelve in the morning on a Friday night, because one of the border officers told us to wait while he took a look around the PT Cruiser.

  I shrugged this off. I mean there was nothing in the car beyond reproach… Except for Mia’s cuffs from her stint as a bad porn star.

  And a purple child’s backpack full of what to us were witch tools…but to the nice border officers were suspicious looking herbs.

  Basically, they thought we were hauling drugs into America.

  If you’ve never been held up by an American border for suspicion of drug smuggling, there is barely any way to describe the fun of it. I mean, I can explain doing the nasty on a skylight. I can describe draining the very electricity that makes people’s brains capable of function. I cannot explain, though, to any degree of accuracy the fun we had at that border.

  To make matters worse, I fumbled my version of why we were hauling suspicious herbs to begin with. Apparently, both Vance and Mia gave the same story—homeopathic remedies.

  I though, came up with nothing and stared at the officer who had taken me to a little room to question me individually.

  I just stared at him, mind blank, very aware I sported glowy wings he might or might not be able to see.

  They thought we were hauling drugs, right? I couldn’t just say, Oh, my best friend, the witch? She needed those things so that we could kill off the vampire, Vance’s brother, so he would stop killing people in his attempt to take over Ashtabula County. No, we really didn’t use many of the herbs because I am a siren, so I sang down the walls and killed them all off myself.

  So, I stared at the officer and shuffled in my seat.

  Eventually, they decided I was just stupid and not suspicious, so they let us go. By then, it was close to three in the morning, and we no longer had a shot of getting home before the sun rose.

  Back in the car, Mia and Vance were silent.

  “How was I supposed to know that we were going with the homeopathic remedies line?” I finally burst out, the silence too much for me. We were nearing the Angola exit in New York, where they’d said we were going to get a hotel room.

  “So, you didn’t say anything?” Mia scowled at me, obviously annoyed.

  “How was I supposed to know what to say?” One thing you can say for me is—I am a champion bitcher. If there was a bitching Olympics…I would get the gold medal. I would get all the gold medals.

  “You just stared at him for two hours and nothing came to mind?” she gritted out.

  “I don’t get drug busted!” I flopped back and blew out a breath.

  “They weren’t drugs. You weren’t getting ‘drug busted’ and—”

  “How was I supposed to know? I mean, your stuff does look like drugs!”

  “So does parsley, but do you go to your grandma’s and wonder if it really is parsley or if grandma might secretly be a pothead?” Sarcasm didn’t drip off her voice, it poured.

  “I don’t have a grandmother!” I yelped back. “She’s dead and so is my father and lots of other people so you should feel bad for me, maybe, instead of yelling at me for being a good, upstanding, non-lying citizen!”

  “What?” Vance looked at me. Okay, that had been a weak rejoinder.

  “Did you actually think Sven would have packed illegal drugs for me?”

  “I don’t know…I mean, you always dress kind of like a seventies hippie, and you do smell all herbal and—”

  “I am a freaking witch!”

  “Yeah, well, you made everyone cry instead of fixing things!”

  She sucked in air. “That was low. I have been held prisoner for days and beat up, and you just throw me a bag of stuff and expect me to pull a spell out of my butt and—”

  “But—”

  “Not all of us can just sing a little song and hope the bad guys stop what they are doing and look stupidly at us!” Her voice rose until it was nearly a shriek.

  “What I do isn’t easy—”

  “Oh, yeah, and it is easy to study for years to hone your art. It must be so-o hard to sing a song and have everyone stop and stare at you! And what in the hell were you singing anyway?”

  “Uninvited!” My voice had now risen as well.

  “Ohh-h,” she taunted. “Very original.”

  “Listen here, witch,” I began.

  Vance slammed on the brakes, and we all lurched forward. “I am the one who has to sleep in a frigging closet, and you two are the ones throwing a bitch fest?”

  I looked at him. So did Mia. Then we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “What?” Vance frowned at us.

  “You, the big, bad vampire, are going to sleep in a closet?”

  “Any better ideas?”

  “Nope.” I smiled back at Mia. “Let’s get a room with a hot tub and gorge on room service while he sleeps in the—” I couldn’t even get it out, I was laughing so hard.

  Mia was, too, but she got out, “I mean, picture him. Those closets in hotels are like—”

  She spread her hands about two feet apart, and we both laughed harder.

  Vance shook his head, looking at us as if we had gone daft. “I have said it before, and I will say it again… No one can understand women.”

  We proceeded to get a hotel room on Vance’s debit card. Mia informed me that he was loaded. I guess hanging around the world for God only knows how many years is lucrative. He informed me it was all in how you invested. I nodded at that statement.

  And the wings seemed to be fading, which did a lot for my morale.

  Mia said she was going down to the pool, after picking up a swimsuit, and left in a blur of my clothes and Vance’s credit.

  I flopped back onto the enormous bed. I still felt kind of tingly from Chance’s lightning bolt to the throat. I had nearly disposed of all of the rest that he had done. The brain is great like that. If you can’t handle it, it just ignores it. I read somewhere that was why newborn babies went to sleep if it got too loud, like at fireworks. Their brains just couldn’t take the stimulation.

  I felt the bed shift as Vance crawled in. As I looked at him, I was hit with the realization that I was really starting to care about him. Aside from that my body burned. I wanted him.

  A cold part of me, one that I hadn’t even known I possessed, slid gracefully into control in my head. I wanted him. It didn’t matter that I would be giving him up soon, I wanted him now and he would let me take him.

  I reached up a hand to stroke his face.

  It would be so easy. He would let me have him. He had no idea that I was planning to leave him. Why even tell him? Why not enjoy him and worry about the rest later?

  It should have occurred to me right then that was not the way I usually looked at things. Instead, I pulled into a sitting position, one hand on his chest pushing him down as I rose. He went where I pushed, and I crawled above him.

  I tilted my head at him. He was so beautiful. It didn’t matter that this bordered on using him. He would enjoy it. I dipped toward him, and he put up a hand to stop me. “Want to tell me now what Chance did?”


  I blinked at him. I did not. I began to lower myself again, a slow push-up in reverse.

  “I want to talk about what happened, Janie.”

  Well, I didn’t. I did too damn much talking and thinking. I wanted to feel. I caught his hand braced on my sternum and brought it to my lips. He stilled beneath me, and I slid more fully over him. Gently nibbling at his fingertips, I made sure what I wanted showed in my eyes.

  He sucked in air between his teeth. “Janie, this isn’t like you—”

  He had not known me long enough to know what was like me, so it was easy for me to ignore that comment. I slid my torso over his, not stopped by him this time, and raked my teeth from ear to jaw. He shook beneath me.

  Then he caught my wrists and flipped me over. Above me, he shook his head. “Not that I don’t appreciate the treatment, but are you just doing this to avoid talking about Chance?”

  I glared at him. Why did he have to complicate things? “No, there is nothing to talk about.” I slid one leg up, moving it to wrap around his waist.

  “I think there is.” His jaw was set in what I was beginning to recognize as stubborness. I bit back a sigh and decided I liked being on top.

  With a lightning bolt of Chance juice, I apparently had the strength to make it happen. I caught his wrists with my hands and, in one feral move, flipped us back over. He was startled enough to let go of me, and I used that as a chance to wiggle lower to look at him. “You want this.” I tried to look at him seductivly.

  “Not unless you are willing to tell me what the hell this is.”

  I glared at him. “This is me, Janie. Remember?” I bent to nip at his waist with my teeth.

  He breathed a little faster. “My eyes say, yes it is. My body agrees quite thoroughly. My mind and heart wonder what I am in this room with.”

  I flopped back onto my back. Time for a different tactic, said the cold voice in my head. “Fine, talk.” He could talk, I would sulk.

  He bent at the elbow to look down at me. “So, you were singing to Chance and then…”

  “And then he said, ‘look the walls are falling’ and we ran like hell.” The cool wind voice in my head allowed me to lie, easily.

  “And then?” he prompted.

  “Look, he’s not the bad guy everyone wants to think he is—”

  “You, look. I never said he was a bad guy, not once. What he is, though, is a greedy opportunistic bastard who uses the people around him as pawns. Don’t fall for it.”

  “Why don’t you like him?” I traced circles on Vance’s chest with my fingers as further distraction. He didn’t seem to even realize that I was releasing buttons as I fiddled.

  “Because no one knows exactly what his motivations are. Because he hurt Mia and she means a lot to me. Because he just gets under my skin.” I traced a line lower, along the fine line of hair running from navel to the top of leather pants.

  “Well, he got me out of there and back to the car when I was too weak and wrapped up in the song to care. He helped me, and I don’t think he is what you think he is.” A brief memory of Chance’s lips on mine ran through my head with all the substance of butterfly wings. Like a flash of light behind my eyeballs, I was there in his arms again. A lick of heat caught in my groin. That knowing. I remembered. That weird calling of his soul to mine.

  No, I couldn’t think about that. It was stupid. No one’s soul called to anyone else’s. Another flash of the gold light behind my eyes. The cool wind voice took over and reminded me that if I was in the mood for that sort of thing, Vance was right there. And I wanted Vance. I most certainly did not want Chance. I had never noticed that their names rhymed before.

  Vance looked at me strangely. “Your eyes just flashed gold twice.”

  I shook my head, clearing it. “What are you talking about?”

  He backed away from me. He looked almost afraid of me. Off the bed and across the room, putting distance between us when I wanted him closer. I sat up on my knees on the bed. Another flash behind my eyes and I was angry.

  “See! They just did it again! Chance’s eyes do that!”

  Fear. I looked at my hands. Alien hands. My hands. When in doubt, denial was good. “What are you talking about?”

  “His eyes…when you are talking to him there are these flashes in his eyes…like a flash bulb going off in his head.”

  I shook my head again, willing it to clear and become just mine. No cool wind voice, no flashes of light. “He did something to me…” I whispered, and I sank back down to my butt.

  “What did he do to you?” Vance came back toward me. Concern radiated from his voice.

  “He…he asked me not to say.”

  “Screw him. What did he do?”

  “He saved me. I couldn’t drain the vampires so he let me use him,” I muttered.

  Vance pondered this for a minute. “So, it should wear off, like the other siren stuff. It is probably just residual Chance. Like, you drained him and bits of him came off with it, but when the power from it wears off, you will go back to just you.”

  I nodded. It sounded logical. And Vance was holding me and that was my goal to start with.

  I didn’t tell him that Chance hadn’t just fed the hunger. That he had shoved a lightning bolt down my throat that burned off bits of me. That I had felt them and thought…well, I hadn’t been thinking, for starters. I had been dying.

  But looking back I wondered what bits he had burned off and what bits he had left to grow.

  I clung to Vance and let him think he was comforting me.

  But inside I had a very, very bad feeling.

  ~

  I awoke the next day at noon. Hanging out with the vampire and not sleeping until the sun rose was wreaking hell on my definition of morning. Oh, well, mu schedule would be fixed when I left town. As a mundane single mother, I would hardly find reasons to stay up until dawn.

  It was past time to start planning what to do next. Mia was safe and sound…well, mostly sound. Vance had gotten by for centuries before I came along and, with his apparently traitorous brother no longer a threat, he could go on better than he had before meeting me. A tiny lingering piece of the Janie before Chance whispered he must be hurting right now because of that betrayal, but the newer, better Janie quashed it as not my problem.

  I could safely say that my work here was done. I would leave as soon as I’d collected Vickie.

  Mia entered the room, hair wrapped in a towel, and plopped onto the end of the bed. “Finally wake up, sleeping beauty?”

  “Yeah. All last night’s craziness really took it out of me.”

  “I could hear some of the craziness through the walls.”

  “Seriously?” My eyes widened.

  “Nope, but it is fun to see you blush.” She flopped onto her back and looked up at me. “So, you and Vance have got a thing going, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a thing,” I hedged.

  “I think it is so great. I mean, two of my best-est friends hooking up…”

  “We aren’t hooking up.” I plucked at the bedspread.

  “Neither of you are the fling type.” She stretched like a cat.

  “Yeah, but I’m moving to Fort Collins to stay with Cousin Mel.”

  Her eyes flashed open and pinned me. “You’re moving to Colorado?”

  “Yeah. It has been so good seeing you, though.” At least that part wasn’t a lie.

  She studied me. “I am a good enough friend to not tell you that you’re stupid when you have a good reason. I am a good enough friend, though, that I will tell you anyway if you don’t share whatever your reason is with me.”

  “What?”

  “Spill.” She settled in to listen, so I told her my reasoning. Vance was great and there was a chance I was falling in love with him, but there was no way I would be able to avoid singing if I kept hanging around with a vampire and a witch. I wanted a normal life for me and Vickie, but I was terrified because a part of me wanted to stay because it would give me an excuse to
let go and not care about losing the normal life I wanted. One part of me wanted to be a siren, rather than dull, mundane Janie Smith.

  As I let all of my rambling out, she towel dried her hair. She got dressed. She threw me clothes. Then she rummaged in the pile of miscellany on the top of the dresser and came up with car keys and one of Vance’s credit cards.

  “Come on,” she said when I’d run out of words.

  “Where are we going? No sage advice from the witch?”

  “Oh, yeah, I have sage advice.”

  “And it is?”

  “Spa day and chocolate.” Her grin was positively evil.

  “Oh-h,” I sighed. “Spa day and chocolate…”

  “Sure to fix any bad week.” We headed downstairs and found the car. We drove to the local bakery and bought a cheesecake and had most of it for breakfast between the two of us. Laughing like kids, we earned a few glares from other patrons. Mia flicked a wrist and one, a loud man with a small battered looking woman, found he was unable to stop himself from sticking his hand in the middle of a devil’s food cake on display. That did not help our giggling, it set us off. This was the sort of thing that made Mia such a fun friend in high school. “Have you seen that old movie, the one with the witch sisters who are cursed and lime in the coconut?”

  “The one where they both have long hair?” She sipped her drink.

  “Yeah.” I grinned. “Every time I see that movie I think of you.”

  “If only,” she muttered. “I wish I had Nicole’s bod. I mean, was there a spell for that?”

  “I don’t know, but if you find one, call me and I want you to cast it on me, too. My butt has been growing the past few years. What is up with that? It’s like you pass twenty five and the metabolism just slows down.”

  She leaned over the table, looking at me. “I have heard it gets worse when we pass forty.”

  “Shut up.” I bit my lip. “Has your sex drive gone all wonky, too?”

  “Oh, my gosh, yes. I read up on that one. It turns out that men hit their sexual peaks at eighteen. Women don’t hit theirs till—get this, thirty-three. We are having the equivalent in hormone production to eighteen year old boys. Remember those groping idiots? It’s our turn to be groping idiots.”