by Liz K. Lorde
There was a door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY and I looked over my shoulder to make sure that nobody was watching me. Placing my hand on the door’s handle, I turned it.
Locked.
I’d already spent a minute or two in here, and I decided that Connifer probably wouldn’t give me more than five in totality.
Dammit.
Stepping away from the door, I turned around to face where the front counter and employee were. I stood there for a moment like a deer in the headlights, unsure of what to do next. I had to think of something. Some way of convincing that man out front to help me.
There needs to be a story that I can spin.
I hope he doesn’t hate me for this…
Taking brisk strides, I retraced my steps back to the man who was reading his newspaper. I moved up to his counter and when he didn’t immediately turn his head and put his paper down, I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me.”
Finally I got his attention. He put the newspaper down and looked to me, “Yeah?”
I looked over towards the store’s windows where Connifer was parked outside, trying to look nervous but not explicitly so. Glancing back at the clerk, I leaned in a bit closer and whispered, “I have a small problem, that car outside?”
The man leaned over to look, and then nodded.
“That’s my boyfriend and,” I looked down towards my shoes trying to feign embarrassment, “I think he’s going to do something bad to me when we get home. We just had a big argument at dinner, is there any way you can sneak me outside without him knowing?”
The man perked up immediately and put his newspaper down on the counter. “Come along to the back,” he told me and picked himself up from the stool.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JUST LIKE THE CROW… YOU CHASE THE BUTTERFLY
LEONARDO
Knew that I was dreaming, because I could feel the weightlessness of my body – could feel the dread that gnawed at my gut like worms shimmying through the dirt. It was going to be one of those nights again, I could just feel it. Waking felt impossible, but I didn’t want to have to go through it all again and again; it pained me to think that Tabitha might notice me.
Might notice my waking terrors.
All the pussy that I’d slept with told me how consistent I’d been with it. I didn’t want her to see me like that. Why? Why was the way that she did or didn’t see me so important? Fire crept through my mind, and I saw Pops bloodied face. He didn’t say it, but I could feel it. The words that he wanted to say.
You failed her. You failed me. You’ve done nothing but squander your skills and money and time and heart.
You’re the one that should have died that night. Not her. Never her. You didn’t work hard enough, didn’t love fast enough. Didn’t reach high enough.
From out of nowhere, my arm yanked itself and my eyes shot open to a familiar blackness. There was a voice that I didn’t immediately recognize, and my heart pounded in my chest.
“Leo! Get the fuck up my boy,” Con. Christ had he heard me while I was asleep? Wait, where is she? Where’s Tabitha? I sent an arm that he wasn’t pulling on to look for her.
Nothing. I know she fell asleep with me. She fell asleep in my god damn arms, I know that she did.
“What the fuck,” I told Con, as I one part scrambled to my feet and other part was hellishly pulled from the comfort of my bed.
“Girl ran,” he told me, still clutching my wrist like I was a child needing to be taken from the house because of a fire.
“Wha—“
“The girl ran,” Connifer insisted before I could get a word in edge wise.
I pulled my arm free from his clutch and looked at him in disbelief. My heart was thundering in my chest and I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that she’d given Connifer the slip. “How?” Realizing how naked I was, I cursed beneath my breath and quickly put on a pair of boxers.
Con shook his head, “Don’t know,” he said, “just snuck out while we were at the drugstore.”
Something hot in me splintered in my chest and I grabbed hold of Connifer, pushing him up against the wall. “You let her out?”
“Get’cher hands off of me,” Connifer exploded, breaking me off of him and managing to shove me back a step. “Yes I let her out,” he said, “I let her out and now that she’s gone I’m to thinking it came off suspicious for a reason.”
“You don’t say,” I nodded my head with eyebrows raised.
“I went after her—“
“Oh you did, did you?” The heat started rushing all to my head and I turned away, putting my hands on my hips. Stupid, I should have never left her out of my sight – just what was she thinking? Even if Killaine moves slow, she’ll be easy prey alone and outnumbered. Not to mention out gunned.
“Couldn’t find her.”
“How’d she get you to get her out,” I said in a more even tone, turning back to face him.
There was a look of embarrassment on Con’s face, and I could see that he was trying his hardest to not let his cheeks redden.
“Well?” I pressed.
He shrugged his shoulders, “Said that she needed women’s product.”
I glared at him and knew that I was going to have a real hell of a day starting at just three in the morning. I’ll have to round up some muscle and get Myra to help me find that damn girl.
Knew she was going to be trouble the second that I kissed her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOUR HOURS
TABITHA
I’d taken a cab straight to Fiona’s after hitting up the apartment for my wallet.
Sad that the one and only friend I’d ever made were estranged family. But I guess it was safer that way, anything that orbits me too long is destined for destruction.
The living room of her place was of upper middle class wealth at a glance. I pushed up my constantly fighting-with-me glasses; Fiona was in the kitchen making apple sugar tea, her sincere specialty. The olive colored couch was a mighty beast for only me to occupy, with its sprawling frame and mighty wooden shoulders it sat like a crouched dragon, threatening to take up the whole living room if it truly dared.
I sank back into its cushions.
Long, deep breaths.
The shadows around me played tricks on my worn and partially sleepless mind, those few hours I’d gotten were sweet – but they were also fleeting. Only the ceiling light was on, and it cast down a sunset orange light, which cascaded against the green and white striped walls. Feeling the musty air fill my lungs, I watched the walls. Watched them, as if I looked for long enough it would keep them still – would keep the stripes from moving.
Creak. I jolted to my side.
Fear clutched at my gut, and fire kissed at the soles of my feet – which shot up to my chest and demanded to swallow me whole. Immediately after this I started to rationalize that the sound was nothing, that it was only Fiona.
Not a second later and she rounded the entrance to the kitchen, where white light came pouring in. Everything eased, but I perked up on the couch regardless – I was endangering the only family that I had left.
Fiona placed her tray of special tea atop the modest wood and glass table, craning her head to look at me with those old, appeasing eyes. Still, there was some degree of comfort in them – some small hope that all was not lost in my crumbling world. I didn’t see her much, not because I did not miss her, but because the pain of remembering Mom and Dad was just a bit too much.
I could always see Mom’s sorrowful eyes in Fiona’s, and I think that pained me the most of all.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this time,” she sassed before looking away from me and back to her tray, starting to pour us each a cup of deliciousness.
“I did nothing of the sort,” I shot back in reply, lurching forward in my seat. It irked me that she could say this was somehow my fault.
Then again, I did sleep with the man. I wasn’t entirely free of blame.
She tutted me. Tha
t sent a thorn of heat right to my heart and I could already feel my head beginning to wrap itself in the fires of anger; if there was one thing throughout all of my life that I couldn’t stand about dearest aunt Fiona Friedrich, it was that incessant, strip your bones of their flesh, cut you down for your stupidity kind of noise that she made.
“Tut tut tut,” she sighed afterward and finished her pour, setting the steaming kettle aside and offering me a scalding hot cup. “Trouble just seems to find you, my child, no matter where you go or what you do.” She said it in a kindly sort of way, in a sense that it wasn’t meant to judge – but rather to point out.
Still, it stung regardless. It hurt to hear her say it, to say what I was thinking and feeling at all times – that life for me was just… warped. Like I was spellbound for disaster at all times, and that nothing I could ever do would change the fact that I ruined the things I found dear.
Leonardo would have just been another casualty…
No, no. You didn’t hold feelings for him, you didn’t, I thought. Even as such, I felt the warmth of his fingers across my skin like ecstatic electricity; it was like we were there all over again, in his bed, devouring one another and fucking like a pair of animals that were made for only one another.
It was wild sex. Frenzied love making or as close to that as I’d ever managed to come.
And come I did plenty. When I shivered at remembering the way that Leo made my pussy clench from orgasm, I noticed Fiona look at me with a raised and positively suspicious gray eyebrow.
Now was not the time for her mind reading powers to pry. “Cold chill, sorry,” I tried to hide my embarrassment, and so I looked away as I grabbed the teacup.
“Right,” she drawled. “I know you’re keeping something from me, and we can do this dance until the sun comes up if you prefer – but I’d rather you be clear with me instead of having me wrestle it from you.” Fiona was a proud woman, nearing her mid-fifties. Peculiar was one word that I’d heard people use to describe her. Eccentric another.
I just knew her cold heart had flecks of gold still to her.
She was different from my mother; where Mom would barely bother to put on anything more than a nightgown or pajamas – anything that required minimal effort really – Fiona had only one style: High class. I’d never once seen her in anything even remotely close to casual, not even in her sleep. Sometimes, I honestly wondered if she wore clothes while doing the deed.
There wasn’t a chance in hell she wasn’t getting plenty of action, even at her age. Way more than I’d ever gotten, for sure.
Fiona’s long and silver hair spilled down to her neck when she sat down beside me on the sprawling couch. She was wearing something that I hadn’t seen her have on before, not that it was so surprising, she was always trying out something new. She had on smoke colored, super slim pants with front panels; this was accompanied by a black pleated travel tank, which looked like it was made from polyester and possibly spandex. Finally, there was a matching-in-color gray sweater, with an open front and a spectacular fringe trim.
“Well, there is one little thing…” I started.
“It’s always something,” she rolled her eyes.
“I may have—“ a rock formed at the base of my throat, it was embarrassing to even consider telling her – not that I hadn’t told her about worse. “Slept with the man.”
“Ligotti’s kid?” She raised her brows and crossed one leg over another, sipping on her apple tea. There was a loud, audible sip at her doing so.
She said nothing for a beat of time and I thought for true that she was getting ready to berate my ass from here to hell.
A smile walked along the lines of Fiona’s face slowly, “I’d have done the same thing.” She glanced my way and laughed softly.
I shook my head and joined in laughter with her. “You’re absolutely terrible.”
She sipped her tea again, “Ah, but I’m allowed to be,” she sat her cup back down on the table and turned to better face me, “I’m older. Wiser.”
“Sure of the first,” I jabbed.
“It’s a good thing that you came to me instead of blindly going to the police,” she ruminated aloud. “Their criminal network goes deep, deeper than you or the average blowhard of Chaos would even fathom. I always hated the name of this place,” she said in a bitter tone, “it’s like it’s asking for trouble.”
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to admit that I was scared. That I just wanted to see a familiar face, a familiar place. “I figure they’ve got to have one cop in every station.”
“No,” Fiona said it with a reprimanding voice. “It’s much more than that,” she warned, “your grandmother told me stories when I was growing up. Back when Raphael Ligotti was coming into power, his father, Minamino Ligotti was revered by the public. Cops wanted to work with them. He provided tomatoes as legitimate business – not that authorities and public opinion didn’t see the inklings of their empire – but the man was a vehement philanthropist. Spending, spending, spending on the public.”
I hadn’t told her that Leonardo’s dad was dead. The image of his father and mine seemed to swim together as one in my mind; one bloody in the face, and another with a bottle pressed to his small lips – some of the liquor spilling down his chin and clinging to his white shirt.
“I never knew,” I confessed, pulling myself from those terrible thoughts.
“You slept with his grandson, you’d better know. Judges and court officials are in their pocket. Your best bet is witness protection.”
Witness protection? I’d have to leave everything behind… “What I just ring up the FB-freaking-I?”
Fiona straightened her back as she sat, “No, I will. I’ve got connections that I can tap into, and if they’re willing to try him in court – they can throw him in jail for kidnapping.”
“You have connections.” Mom never told me precisely what her sister was involved in – but it was the reason that she was kept away for so long and only ever saw us a few times out of the year.
She shrugged as if it were the most casual thing in the known world, “I do. I don’t go about flaunting the fact, you think I’ve sat around and done nothing in retirement? Please. I would sooner die of boredom than old age.”
“So much for official retirement,” I felt the lack of sleep in my bones, and I knew that if I put my head down for just a few moments, it would be as if sipping cold water from a quiet stream. There would be nothing sweeter.
“I’ll make the call right now honey,” Fiona put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed, and for just a second, I wanted to cry and sink into her familial affection. “You can start over.”
“I-I don’t know,” I sputtered, circling my thumb over my index finger in a nervous tic. I knew that I should know, that I should be sure – but for some reason, there was something holding me back.
“These are dangerous beasts you’re dealing with,” Fee warned.
I locked eyes with her. “I know,” I said softly, thinking back on the pain that Leonardo went through – the remembrance of his lips on mine overpowered me. It was like I was tasting him all over again, losing myself to that bliss.
But it wasn’t real. Was it?.
Fiona said nothing, but communicated all her pain and worry and concern with just the look of her silvery eyes.
“I’d be leaving you behind,” I told her.
“I’ve lived here for three years and you only see me once a season,” she wasn’t wrong. “You may text and email me a lot, but I don’t see why it would be me keeping you here.”
“You’re all I’ve got left in this messed up world,” a flash of Leo’s eyes and his smile wormed it’s way inside of my head for a moment. “If I lose everything that makes me, me, then what’s left?”
She emphasized with the wag of her head and said seriously: “You.”
It wasn’t something that I was used to, trying to live for me.
“I need time to think about it,” what exactly did I need t
o think about? I’d be losing Fee if I went through with it. Lose my job, and even though I never connected with anyone there it was… it was still mine. Some part of me. The apartment I’d cultivated for so long, the places that I went to eat.
They were the only parts of me that felt real. I wasn’t sure if I could start over.
“You won’t have long,” she bobbed her head from side to side, “you know that.”
“I just need a few hours of sleep,” I said wanting to collapse, wanting to bawl my eyes out in privacy until I was too exhausted to think anymore. Laying down on the couch, I didn’t even want to bother finding a bed – everything felt fuzzy and I knew sleep would take me with ease, no matter how messed up this whole thing was.
There was a phantom feeling then. Leo’s hand on my breast.
Why couldn’t I just push him from my head and heart?
“I’ll give you four hours,” Fiona assured me, picking herself up off of the couch. She strode off to the half spiral staircase and vanished upstairs, returning a moment later with a long black case, she placed it on the wooden living room floor and unlatched it; Fee turned her head and gave me a wry smile, bringing her head back to the case she opened it and pulled out a black object that was about half the size of her person.
Turning to face me, she held the rifle with its black strap hanging at her side. A spare magazine of ammunition was attached to it. “You hear this, you best wake up.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FRIENDS
TABITHA
“You hate me… don’t you?” He asked in that terribly desperate voice that came out to be more of a whisper. Why did it have to be this again? Hadn’t I bled enough over it? Shadows of dreamy mist surrounded me, him, the apartment – this was me throwing stones at the pond, watching the images morph by the ripples. This helpless game I couldn’t stop myself from playing when I shut my eyes.
