by Ash Krafton
"It happens," I snapped.
He wasn't deterred by my rebuke. "And—something else. A different smell. You are trying to hide something from me."
I couldn't bear this confrontation, this closeness. Remembering I was no longer immune to his threat, I balled my fist, hiding the mark of Rodrian's teeth, and shuddered. "Is this really necessary? I'd rather you let me leave."
His expression didn't change but he dropped the compulsion. I owned my feet again. I stepped away, broke contact, felt him fade. The chill returned.
My chance to run. I should have been out of there. So why wasn't I? I hugged my purse and coat closer to me, covering my chest, and backed away only a step.
"Rode said..." I pretended to be on professional duty, summoning courage I didn't possess. I'd forgotten how to be Sophie and couldn't remember how to be Sophia. "You didn't leave the family business completely. You run both now."
By both I'd meant DV business and the vamp stuff he'd more or less inherited when he'd slain the Master. I didn't know too much about the latter, nor did I want to. The DV business, however, had ethical and honorable intentions behind it; not only did Rodrian own several businesses in and around Balaton but Marek also ran the private biotech research company just outside Philadelphia.
"True. I do." Marek seemed to expect an explanation as to why my nose was in his business.
"Well, I...just mean that I do a lot more Sophia work now." Since the day I received Eirene's letter, I'd been hashing out a way to tell Marek about her. She was my big excuse to reconnect with him. Now, when he finally stood right in front of me, all my rehearsed scenarios flopped. Marek's penetrating stare scoured me, scraping away the thin film of delusion that had been responsible for my boldness, and I lost the courage to say her name. "I wondered if..."
"If I needed you?" Marek finished for me, using a tone that laid bare my foolishness.
"As Sophia." My face glowed and I fought to freeze my expression.
"Thank you for the generous offer. However, I can manage on my own." His jaw was set in a stony impassive line and he looked down the smooth line of his nose at me. Cold. So cold.
I left before I could embarrass myself any further.
Marek shut the door behind him, stranding me in the dim and silent hall.
I'd plowed halfway through my second Cosmo by the time Rodrian found me. Normally I didn't go for the high octane stuff but it was as close to anesthesia as I could get without a prescription.
Despite the buzz, my brain still scolded me, feeding the fires of my humiliation. Stupid me forgot alcohol made fire worse.
Being drunk was bad. All the brain cells officially belonging to me turned mushy and clumsy and the only ones that still functioned were either my autonomic nervous system or that chunk of brain where the Sophia lived. I couldn't walk a straight line but I could still blink and feel every DV in the room.
At first it was a welcome distraction; I could concentrate on what others felt and ignore my own painful thoughts. Although I kept my eyes front and forward, I could almost see certain people around me by the emotions they oozed, kind of like infrared vision.
The small bar wasn't very crowded and I detected only a slight tinge of human. The humanity emotions were mainly a hazy kind of yuck, mostly guys looking at girls and thinking the usual scummy thoughts that most guys did in a bar. Physical inventories of tits, ass, and mouth, as well as more in-depth evaluations such as is she with someone or would she pay her own cab fare home. That sort of thing. Ah, to be single again.
Oh, wait. I was.
The few DV present were, by contrast, loud and clear feelers, and it didn't take long for me to realize I was on the radar of every single one. At least they were more polite. I caught several sidelong wishes, hesitant wonderings if I were approachable.
Well, I was off the clock. I applied myself to my cocktail and kept my eyes on the glass in front of me. Body language was universal, no matter the species. Eventually I clamped down and blocked everyone out and focused on the blanketing buzz in my brain.
I didn't know Rodrian stood behind me until he put his hand on my back. I waved a weary wrist and continued shredding the coaster. Quietly, I was relieved. Marked or not, I was tired of being alone.
"Come on." He lifted my purse off the bar and held out a hand to help me off the stool. I hopped down, testing my feet through the remoteness of insobriety, and wobbled. High octane, indeed.
He wrapped his arm protectively around my shoulders. With a familiar despair settling over my soul, I let him take me home.
Dear Lonely,
Love is a difficult thing to relinquish.
Sometimes, love is denied us, yet we cling stubbornly to belief in higher entities like hope and destiny. We believe what we'd felt as lovers is too noble and too blessed a thing to simply disappear. We try to believe separation is temporary and reunion is ordained by gods and muses.
We fool ourselves.
As hard as it is to accept, people change. Something in the workings of their souls is altered, redirecting the course of their emotion, stranding us on a barren strip of wasteland where previously had been an ocean of adoration. We get left behind. We get forgotten. We have to accept that people do change.
You suffered a painful ending of your relationship. Time doesn't always heal wounds; time causes new tissue to form over them, sealing off sensitive layers that once recognized us, separating us further. We can't go back to that happy place when the other has already moved on.
Be realistic, and protect your already devastated heart.
Sincerely, Sophie
I'd been trying to tackle this letter for weeks but, since having run into Marek, my answer has taken a completely different tone. The last week and a half had been a quagmire for me.
"Moon's up." Toby walked into the den and hopped onto a bar stool, swinging it back and forth and banging his feet into the stools on either side. Little habits like that made me feel like he was a boy to be protected, regardless of his enhanced genetics. Never mind those orange eyes, which made him look years older.
I sprawled on the couch, frowning at my tablet. The column work had me feeling rather sour. Tough material to deal with. At least my newest response sounded sincere, if overly desolate. Oh well, that's what made it so realistic. I frowned deeper, not caring if my face stayed that way.
It took a second to break my trance. "Huh?"
"The moon. She's up."
I glanced through the windows but I couldn't see anything but black night. "How do you know?"
"I can hear her."
"You can? Oh." Hey, one more nifty factoid about werewolves: their hearing was so keen, they could hear the moon. A couple jokes immediately lined up for delivery but I held them back. It wouldn't be safe to tease him so close to his change.
The difference between trust and belief in a person largely depended on how well you thought that person knew himself. I wasn't a hundred percent confident that Toby knew himself all that well. This wasn't a good time to explore the boundaries of his self-control.
"I never heard the moon before," I said instead. "What's it sound like?"
"She," he corrected. "It's definitely a she."
"I'm sorry." For what, I didn't know. "What's she sound like?"
"Music. She sings. It's soft but I know her voice."
"I never thought hearing voices is a good sign."
"Not always, no." He swung the chair again and rooted in his back pocket, pulling out a bag of beef jerky. "Especially when it's the moon. You can't ignore a voice like that."
Curiosity nibbled at me, despite my firm dislike for Were-y things. Before I knew Toby, I had a clear (albeit biased) opinion on the Werekind; spending time with him had gradually reshaped it, given it a more human impression. While there was no danger of me running to embrace all things furry, I would be willing to admit that maybe Tanner had been just a crappy representation of the rest of the species.
Plus, the moon was a pretty co
ol thing. I was a devoutly lapsed Catholic, but the cool religions worshiped it and Shakespeare wrote about it in, like, every other play. I couldn't become a moon-hater just because werewolves had such a crush on it. "What does she say?"
"See, that's the thing. She talks different to everyone. Tanner, he once told me..." He cut himself off. "I guess you wouldn't care to know."
"No, it's okay. You can say it." I shrugged to show him I didn't mind. With Toby being around and talking about him all the time, his stories had put a layer of bubble wrap around the yucky memory of the Tanner I'd encountered. A little cushion, some translucency. It softened the badness of what that criminal had done. "What did he tell you?"
Ripping a strip of meat with his teeth, he chewed with a crowded, open mouth.
"Well," he said, when he could speak around the lump, "one night, it was a couple days before full. The moon was just starting to rise. I could hear her. She comes out with a whisper, saying hello. When I'm alone, sometimes I say hello back."
He grinned around the leathery meat, the sheep in wolf's clothing peeking out.
"But not when Tanner was around. He'd just tease me, I bet. So anyway, this one time we were in the car on our way out to his running place. He didn't like changing in the city, either. We'd just turned on to the highway and, as we went over a mountain, the moon was completely up. We were talking but it just kind of died off when she came out. It was hard not to listen to her and it got real quiet in the car. Then out of nowhere, he started to laugh, real hard.
"'You bitch, you,' he said.
"'What did you call me?' I said.
"'Not you,' he laughed, 'her!'
"I didn't understand why he'd say something so nasty about her. She was the most beautiful thing in my life. When it was time to change, she tried to make it easy on me and she always sounded sorry and happy at the same time. Bitch was never a word I'd use on her.
"'Why's she a bitch?' I said.
"Tanner said, 'You'd call her a bitch too, if she talked to you like that.'
"'Oh,' I said. 'She talks to you, too, huh?'
"'Dumb ass,' he said. 'She talks to all of us!'" Toby leaned toward me. "By us he meant Weres."
I raised my hand, resisting the unnecessary explanation. "I figured."
"Oh," Toby said. "Well, 'She never said anything bitchy to me before,' I said.
"'She's not bitchy,' Tanner said. 'She's a troublemaker. She knows what kind of fun I like and she was just egging me on. There's a town off the next exit. Lots of things to chase!' And he smiled with all his teeth so that I knew he wasn't talking just rabbits.
"I never told him what the moon said to me. He probably wouldn't-a thought I was much of a man. The way he talked, the moon was like a kinky ex-girlfriend. She wasn't like that to me. She was more like..." Toby's voice trailed off as he chewed, expression pensive.
He seemed to have gotten lost in his thoughts.
"A mother?" I guessed.
He twitched his shoulders and pulled out another chip of jerky. Chewing slowly, he rewrapped the small package and turned it over in his hands.
"Yeah, maybe." He slid off the stool and stuffed the plastic bag of jerky into his back pocket. "I never really thought about it. I just always thought it was strange how she could be saying different things to different people at the same time."
"Maybe the moon is different to each of you. Maybe she's what you need her to be. Some women are like that."
Toby thunked his feet from side to side.
"Maybe," he said. "I mean, that's what you are, anyway."
I wrinkled my nose. "I guess so, especially if you need a wrinkly-eyed hag hanging around, telling you what to do."
"Don't put yourself down like that, Red. You can ask anyone to describe you and they'd all say something different and none of them would be lying. But I guarantee if you'd ask them, they'd all agree on one thing: they couldn't live without you."
Hopping to his feet, Toby waved and casually strolled out as if he hadn't just said the most staggering thing I'd heard in a very, very long time.
Euphrates woke me up when he thumped onto my chest with a sullen mroaw.
It took me a second to rouse enough to hear a car crunching on the gravel. I spied Rodrian's silver Audi through the upstairs windows and couldn't imagine what would make him show up at such a late hour. Grabbing my robe, I struggled to get my arms into it while I hurried downstairs, tying it shut just as I opened the front door.
Mr. Wrinkle-free Oxford trudged up the last steps looking like he'd just gone five rounds with a pack of preschoolers. His tie hung untied around his neck, top three buttons undone, shirt untucked. Even his hair was tousled, as if he'd just gotten out of bed. In short, Rodrian looked an absolute wreck.
My God, he's been mugged.
Before I could ask him what happened, he staggered through the door. "Hey, Soph, c'n I come in?"
I blinked. "Rode. Are you...drunk?"
"Mmm." He wobbled a little and gestured toward me, staring unashamedly at my chest. "Cold out here for that, isn't it?"
Goose bumps of thermostat proportion announced themselves from beneath my robe, and I crossed my arms to hide them. "Welcome to Sophie's Home for Wayward Souls."
He grinned and swayed into the foyer. I almost laughed as he slowly veered toward the den as if there were more than one door. Pushing the door shut, I locked it and reset the alarm. "I never saw you drunk before."
"Yeah. Sucks. My blood date was high. I didn't find out until it was too late."
"Nice," I scoffed. "I didn't know you dated junkies."
"I don't. She's a lawyer. I guess she was burning her candle at both ends tonight." He sank onto the couch and groaned with relief. "Mind if I stay the night? I have to burn this garbage out of my veins. I'm compromised."
"That's fine. You need one of your bottles?" He kept bagged blood in the house. Maybe it would dilute whatever was making his head spin.
"Nah," he said. "I'm full, thanks."
Ugh. What a mental image. "Well, if you're okay, I'll go back upstairs."
"Please, don't," he said. "I'm not tired and if you go upstairs I can't go with you." I glanced over my shoulder at him. "I just feel like talking. Stay with me?"
"Sure," I agreed. "But if you're drunk, I might as well have a glass of wine myself. That way maybe you'll make sense when you blabber."
"Oh, I never blab—abber."
Did he just hiccup? Good Lord. "Whatever. Just keep your voice down so you don't wake up Shiloh."
"Shhh," he stage-whispered. "Don't wake the baby."
I sighed as I got down a glass. It was going to be a long night.
Rodrian was a complete motor-mouth. He went on about work and women and his date in particular. He ranted about Eirene for some time before telling me how wonderful I was and how wonderful Sophias were in general.
We played Chinese Checkers for a while but gave up because he kept bumping the board, making the marbles move. Funny thing was that the marbles always ended up in more strategic places for him. I quit once I realized he was using his talent to cheat.
When I yelled, he protested so charmingly I didn't throw the marbles at him. Very hard, anyway. It sure was funny watching him try to duck them, though, and even funnier when he picked them up. As much as I hated to admit it, Rodrian was a fun drinking partner. At one point I considered asking for a good electronic dart board, the kind bars installed for darts league, but reconsidered. I'd never stand a chance against a cheater like him.
The wine loosened my tongue more than I should have allowed but I figured, since he was loaded himself, he'd forgive me. This would probably be the best time to broach subjects that were normally off-limits. Something had been bothering me long before I'd moved into the Stocks, long before Rodrian approached me.
As I slid the game box back under the couch, I attempted a nonchalant tone. "Rode, you ever wonder how Marek could have gotten taken by the Master?"
"I don't think about it." H
e sprawled bonelessly in the corner of the sofa, head back against the cushions, staring at the fire with drooping lids.
"I'm sure he was betrayed." I scooted around on the couch to face him. "Do you remember Donna, my old office manager?"
"Mmm hmm."
"She was involved with Chal and, that night when everything happened, she said he was the one who gave her to the master. Chal must have been a mole."
Actually, saying Donna was "involved with Chal" was somewhat understating it. It was like saying hookers were involved with their clients. She'd been his skank before she'd become the master's whore. Not that I was biased against the dead bitch but, anyways. Bygones.
Rodrian rolled his head from side to side and closed his eyes. "No, I don't think so."
"It's got to be. And Chal was Caen's toadie. It fits together. The motive is there. I know Caen hated Marek."
"Look, Sophie." Rodrian sat up as if he'd suddenly remembered he had a bone structure. "Caen can be an ass, okay? But he's loyal. He had a personal thing against my brother, but he didn't betray him and he didn't get Chal to do it for him."
"Are you sure? It's so convenient that Caen banished Chal before he could say a word to defend himself." The night Rodrian's men captured Tanner after his failed hit on me, the Were managed a suicide before the guards got him to talk. As a result, the DV never found out who had hired him.
Caen had put Chal in charge of detaining the Were and had been the one to discipline him for the suicide. I personally thought Caen rushed the proceedings a bit, and suspected he knew something he wasn't telling. "A hit on Marek's girl would have been a major blow. With Chal having a major connection to the Master, it only seems logical that—"
"No. Whatever Chal was, he wasn't a link between Caen and the old master. Caen has no vampire allegiance. Period." His power matched his tone, a warning that I better not push the issue.
"Then who did, Rode?" I crossed my arms and glared at him, angry that he'd get so bossy-meanie with me. Warning, indeed. "If there's a traitor out there then we're still not safe."
