Alan didn't flinch. He went still. Perfectly and utterly still. Humans couldn't be that motionless. He didn't breathe, didn't blink. Not a single muscle moved. He was a statue. I knew what I had said really bothered him.
I sighed. “I'm sorry. You haven't done anything wrong, and I'm lashing out.”
He was still for another moment, and then he hugged me. It was a slow thing, filled with velvet and lace and strength. It was an interesting person that could go from being offended to hugging in a matter of seconds. I couldn't have done it.
“These weeks have not been easy on you. I'd be more surprised if you didn't need a vacation from it.” He gave me a little squeeze. “Where will you go?”
There was only one place where I could be safe, where I could learn more about me. “My grandmother's.”
He nodded and placed a single chaste kiss on my forehead. “A wise enough choice. May I visit?”
I hugged him tighter. He was so slender that it was so easy for me to wrap around him even as he did the same with me. “Of course.”
We stood like that for another minute, and then my phone went off. It was Jenny asking what I needed. I smiled. For all the crap going on in my life, how great was it to have a friend who asked what I needed at two thirty in the morning?
I sent a single message: “Pizza and video games?”
The response was a slew of emojis that told me she was all for it.
Alan placed a finger under my chin and tilted my head up to look into his ridiculously beautiful face. “I do not wish to place an even greater burden on you, but remember that even while you take this vacation that there are still three men waiting here for you.”
I frowned. “I thought we decided that you were out of the running?”
He smiled and pressed a single finger to my lips. “While I will hardly explain to you that love isn't necessary to create a child, you are correct. We have decided that I am not for your bed. However, I am not speaking of myself.”
I don't know why it took me forever to put two and two together, but it totally did. Then, a handsome face popped into my head with a voice like liquid gold. “Zane?”
Alan nodded slowly. “He doesn't appeal to you?”
I shrugged. “Alan, he's very cute, but...but I don't know him.”
“A few weeks ago, you didn't know any of us.”
CHAPTER THREE
We were in our third hour of a Next Top Model binge watching session. It was not my first choice in entertainment, but when you had a friend, sometimes you watched what they wanted because seeing them happy made even the most catty conversations worth watching.
“You could be a model,” I told Jenny as I stuffed a pizza crust, dipped in ranch dressing, in my mouth.
“Shut up,” she said, poking me with one toe.
“You could, though,” I said. I meant it. Jenny was quite possibly the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Being sleek and tall and graceful was a big help, but more than that, Jenny had this awareness of self that I think would have looked perfect on some glossy pages or strutting down the runway. “You could take the world of fashion by storm.” It wasn't my best Tyra Banks impression, but I tried.
Jenny snorted. “Oh my god, you are such a dork.”
I shrugged. As far as I was concerned, being a dork was a compliment. “And the world broke with the truth of that statement.”
Jenny laughed. It was a good sound. Then, she went quiet and stretched out on my grandmother's couch, one foot, clad in a bunny slipper, bounced thoughtfully. “You think I could be a model?”
“Heck yes,” I said.
She shook her head. “They'd never let it happen. A black lesbian witch as a model?”
“Well, they don't have to know about the witch part.” I flopped back against the mountain of pillows I had crafted for myself. “In fact, it's probably better that they don't.”
She snorted. “It's probably best if they think I'm straight and white too, but that ain't gonna happen.”
“Get up then! Show me that walk.”
“No!” Jenny pulled a pillow over her face, smothering another laugh. “I can't do that.”
“Why not? Are you embarrassed? My Jenny? Queen of everything in this world and probably a few smaller universes.”
She threw the pillow at me, and I ducked. It slapped against the other pillows and tumbled into my lap. I wrapped my arms around it and tugged it close.
“You think I could?” she asked again.
“I wouldn't have said it if I didn't. I am a lot of things, but a kind liar isn't one of them.”
She laughed. “You do tell the truth. Tell me again what you told to Dmitri. What was it? You don't care if you smell like a whole football team?”
“I think I threw in some cheerleaders for variety, but yeah.” I plucked a forkful of Oreo fluff and popped it into my mouth. There was nothing like Oreo fluff after a crappy night.
She rolled over on her belly and kicked her feet into the air. “Tell me the truth. What was it like with Wei?”
I shook my head. “Oh no. No no no. You gotta do the walk first.”
“Hah! What? You wanna trade my runway walk for your dirty details?”
“Heck yes I do.”
Tyra Banks was talking about behavior and sensuality on the television. I could see Jenny thinking it over.
“Alright, fine. Let's do this.”
She jumped up and strutted down the short hallway between the front bedroom and the back bedroom. I don't know what I was expecting, but the incredible strut in a pair of fluffy bunny slippers and rubber ducky pajamas was not it. She runway walked in a way that made everything bounce and bobble and, by the end of it, I was sure that she could be America's next top model.
Then, she ruined it by stepping in the Oreo cream pie we'd gotten from the 24-7 mart.
“Aaack!” she cried out. “Not my bun-bun.”
I blinked. “Did...did you name your slipper?”
“Cold water!”
I went to the kitchen sink and started running cold water. She took the vegetable scrubber, shaped like a row of tomatoes, and began to clean off her slipper.
“It was great,” I said.
“Huh?”
“With Wei. It was great. Like, I've had make-out sessions before. I've enjoyed some people, but it's never been like that. That was something else entirely. That was...it was good.”
She smirked at me, and plopped her wet slipper in the sink. “So why didn't you just go for it? Why not just...enjoy him, maybe put the nail in the coffin of this prophecy?”
“I nearly did,” I admitted. “But he jumped away from me like he had touched something gross. As if I was a great big Oreo pie that he had stepped in. Like, one moment, his hands are all over my goodies, and the next, he is literally back across the room, using his super human speed to get the heck away from me. Like...I've had people say that they weren't into me, but I've never had someone dash away from me like friggen Spider Man.”
“Are you serious?”
“One hundred percent. I mean. What the hell? I was into it. Like, Jesus. He kisses like how I imagine Clark Kent would kiss.”
Jenny gave me a look. “You've imagined Superman kissing you?”
“Heck, yeah. Have you seen that farm boy smile? I'm all for that. And that protective boy scout attitude? All those Batman fangirls can keep their emo bad boy. I'll take the good guy any day.”
“I'll take Wonder Woman, thanks. And not just because she's basically the most badass female to ever be. She's got this whole...I dunno…princess thing going on. I dig that. Besides, she grew up on an island of women; don't' tell me she only digs on dudes.”
I giggled. “Fair.”
“So, what are you going to do about Wei?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
She looked unsure. “Nothing?”
I shrugged and plopped back down on my mountain of pillows, drawing my legging-clad knees up to my chin. “You know what? I'm not going to chase
after him. He's got crap to work out; he can work it out. He wants to see me? He can come here.”
“You tell him.” Jenny offered me a high five. I took it.
She plopped herself back down on the couch. “It's like...six in the morning, and neither of us has gotten any sleep.”
I frowned. “Wait. Why the heck are you still up?”
She didn't answer at first. Instead, she pulled off her remaining bunny slipper and tossed it on the ground. “Reikah.”
Reikah was another witch. Maybe witch wasn't the right word. As far as I could tell, witchcraft was organic. It was about rituals, sure, but there was something flowing and intuitive about its practice. Reikah was far more rigid than that. There was something mathematical about the way she used magic. A mathe-magician.
I rolled over to give Jenny my full attention. “Wait, what about Reikah?”
“She's....really pretty.”
I thought about that. Reikah had that Indian beauty thing going on. Long black hair and darker eyes and a sort of effervescent elegance that I couldn't put my finger on. Yeah, she was beautiful, but she hadn't said more than two or three words to me since she had helped me escape the compound for the Cult that she had belonged to, which had been weird because until very, very recently she'd been living two doors down from me at the mansion.
“Do you two...talk?”
Jenny shrugged and looked away. I took that to mean that there was some talking.
“You little hussy!” I said, tossing the recently thrown pillow back at her. “Why haven't you told me anything?”
Jenny caught the pillow and pressed it over her face. “Ugh! Because there ain't a thing to tell. I mean, we have talked, but there ain't nothing like...flirty.” I wondered if she knew her rural Virginia accent became more audible when she was embarrassed. Probably. Jenny knew herself pretty well.
“Well then, what do you talk about?”
“Magic,” she said with a roll of her golden-brown eyes. “Don't get me wrong. I am all for talking about magic. But she has this strict way of looking at it, and she's just...you know...a li’l bit full of herself.”
“And you being the queen of modesty,” I teased.
She gave me the tiniest smirk. “Shut up. You act like you know who I am.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “I totally know who you are. We are best friends.”
She placed a dramatic hand over her heart. “Oh, now you are gonna make me tear up.”
“You aren't allowed to do that!” I said, surging to my knees. “Whatever will I do?”
We held our overly dramatic poses for a whole ten seconds before we toppled over and deteriorated into enthusiastic giggles. Or maybe they were just exhausted giggles. After all, the sun was starting to come up over the mountain, and neither one of us had gotten any sleep.
“Alright,” I said, flopping back on my pillow pile. “I should sleep.”
“What?” she asked as I pulled a blanket over my legs. “Out here?”
I frowned. “Where else would I sleep?”
She used her long leg and now bare toe to point towards my grandmother's room. “That's your place, Hon.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I dreamed again. I wasn't in the car this time, but sitting at a table. It could have been any table sitting in any room in any white-walled place in America. There were no decorations and nothing that felt like a home. Just a blank slate on top of pale gray carpet. I sat in one chair, wearing a pair of jeans, faded and comfortable, and a hoodie for a college I had never gone to. I knew, in the way that you know in dreams, that I wasn't alone.
At first, I didn't see her; I just felt the overwhelming knowledge of her distinct presence. After all, my relationship with my mother was almost entirely ethereal in nature.
The moment I thought the word 'mother,' I could see her. Again, she was wearing the gray robes that I knew her to favor, without any accessories or stylization to make them stand out. The Ordo Hermeticus Fidelis, more commonly referred to as The Order of the Loyal Hermit, was the cult my mom belonged to. And, for that matter, so did my half-sister.
As soon as I thought of her, there she was too. She wasn't sitting at the table; instead, she was standing in a doorway I hadn't really seen before. At her feet was a giant dog, like a wolf but with a pointed, more vicious face. It leaned protectively against her. I wasn't surprised; animals were for her what the undead were for me: a connection to my magic. It surprised me, I think, that someone who belonged to an order who believed in strict practice in the realm of magic was connected with animals, who I thought of as the epitome of organic. Then again, what did I know? I hadn't even been practicing for a quarter of a year.
“What are you doing?” my mother asked.
“Sleeping,” I answered, knowing it was true. I may have said it a little snippily, but I was feeling a little overwhelmed to even be looking at her. What the heck was the woman who had manipulated and kidnapped me to her little cult compound, run by her Jim Jones boyfriend, doing in my dream? “What do you want?”
She sat back, the hood of her robes masking a face that I knew to be beautiful and completely unlike mine. “To say I'm sorry.”
I hated that I wanted to believe her. It wasn't a big part of me, just a tiny little part, the size of a germ, but it happened. This minuscule hope that my mom wasn't a terrible human being, that she cared about me, and that she didn't just think of me as the daughter that she shouldn't have had. A part of me still clung to the dream that I had a mom that loved me. Stupid, yeah, but true.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“I can apologize. I'm a person, not a monster.” She sounded a little offended.
It might have been the worst possible thing that she could have said. “You're right. Only a monster would use magic to manipulate her eldest daughter to go to a cult compound.”
“We aren't a cult,” Connie said. She sounded offended too. If this was my dream, why was everyone arguing with me? I liked the dreams where we all agreed and then went diving in swimming pools full of ice cream while dinosaurs danced to salsa music in the background. These hyper surrealistic arguments with the family I had barely found out I had just weren't doing it for me.
“Cults,” my mother said, going back to her unruffled tone, “strip away your identity; they take away who and what you are, make you feel important, powerful.”
It was my less than professional opinion that my mother's little magic club was doing just that. I didn't have all the details on it yet, but I eyed the twin robes that my mother and sister wore, completely lacking in personality. Taking away identity? Check. Feeling special? Well, that was totally their shtick too. Magic, according to their order, was relegated to the few, not the masses. While I understood what they were saying in theory, history told us over and over again that leaving power in the hands of only a couple of people was the fast track to riot-ville. So that was a check too.
Yup. Definitely a cult.
I sat back in my dream chair, and it shifted. It was no longer cheap plywood and particle board with a stiff cushion. It was a dark wood throne with curling armrests. It was a position of power and, I gotta admit, I liked how it felt beneath me.
“I'm not going to argue this with you,” I said with a shake of my head. My ash brown hair had been arranged into curls, pulled back with a tiara of diamonds that glittered with every movement. My pajamas shifted into a rich gown of velvet, the same shade of blue-gray-green as my eyes were. “You sit there and you tell me that you want to apologize, but already you are trying to make excuses for what you did.”
“You have to understand-”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I don't. I know everyone says it's the adult thing to do to just let people be and let them have their own thoughts so long as those thoughts aren't hurting anyone, but, Mom, you hurt me. And you wanna keep magic locked up in this neat little ball that only you and your friends practice, and I don't think I'm okay with that.”
“Would you offer nuclear
weapons to everyone?” Connie demanded. The dog at her feet snapped its teeth at me. They were sharp, too sharp for a normal dog.
I rolled my eyes. “Let's not go down that path, okay?”
“Why?” my mother wanted to know. She still sounded calm, but there was a gleam in her eyes as if she had caught me in my own web. “Because it bears a ring of truth?”
I sighed. This was a conversation that I really just didn't want to have. It wasn't that I couldn't argue my side of it. I had spent enough years in customer service to learn when to just shut up and let a person say whatever they wanted. I had also learned how to put my views in a clear and concise manner (thank you, three years on the public high school debate team), and I knew that I didn't want to walk down this path...but I was totally going to do it anyway.
House Of Vampires 2 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 4
