by Hannah Jayne
Ophelia’s eyes still looked wide and innocent; there wasn’t a wrinkle or a shard of splintered wood on her twin set, and her pearls had barely moved.
I gaped at Ophelia as she stood in my foyer, arms crossed in front of her, a delicate purse hanging from her pinkie.
My front door hung limply from its hinges just over her left shoulder. I was so not going to get my security deposit back.
“I was going to let you in, you know,” I said, my hand massaging a new hot spot on my cheek.
Ophelia shrugged. “Patience is a virtue.” Her eyes narrowed and sparkled with something that sent a cold chill down my spine. “And I’m not very virtuous. Now come on.” She held out her hand, palm up, fingers beckoning. “I don’t have all day. And frankly”—she looked around my apartment distastefully—“your decorating is giving me hives.”
I crossed my own arms in front of my chest and widened my stance, determined to stare her down. I heard a high-pitched giggle reverberate through my head and then Ophelia’s rich voice. Cute, I heard her say—although her lips stayed pressed together in a pale pink line. You think you can stand up to me?
“Don’t do that,” I said, my teeth gritted.
“Do what?” she asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.
A second tinkle of laughter swept through my head. I wanted to clench my eyes shut, but I knew better than to take my gaze off Ophelia.
“Stop.”
“Then give me what I want.”
“I don’t—” Before I could finish my sentence, my thought, Ophelia was nose to nose with me and then her hands were on my chest, shoving me hard. I was off balance, reeling backward, groaning when I felt my back make contact with the floor, my head thumping against the carpet. “Oaf !”
“Don’t screw with me!” she snarled, advancing toward me.
I yelped when Ophelia’s foot made contact with my thigh and a wallop of pain ached through me.
She lunged for me again and I rolled out of her way, but not before her hand grazed the top of my head, her fingernails raking through my hair. I howled and turned instinctively, and was surprised when I felt the back of my hand make contact with Ophelia’s cheek. There was a satisfying crack and I retrieved my stinging hand.
We both stood looking at each other in stunned silence—her rubbing her reddening cheek, me rubbing my new bald spot. She lunged for me again, barely missing me as I crab-crawled to the bookshelf and used it to pull myself up, the ache in my leg tightening like a fist. I used the back of my arm to swipe at my nose, and my stomach lurched when I saw the bright red ribbon of blood on my arm. Other people’s blood never bothered me that much, but my own was a different story. I felt woozy and Ophelia seemed to know it, her face breaking into a satisfied half-smile.
“This could go so much more smoothly, you know,” she said, picking up a lamp and smashing it on the coffee table Van Damme style. She held the broken shards to me, her baby pink lips distorted into a gruesome snarl. “Give it!”
I shrunk against the bookcase, feeling the wood pressing against my shoulders. Ophelia held the jagged glass edge of the lamp against my neck, pressing the tines in for effect. I winced as I felt them cut my skin.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I wailed, my head feeling tender and raw. “The Vessel. I know you want the Vessel.” I took a deep breath that made my bruised chest scream with pain and carefully, solemnly slid a pale green milk-glass vase from the lower shelf. I discreetly upturned it and brushed away the parade of crumpled gum wrappers that lived inside of it and then turned around, cuddling the dollar-ninety-nine IKEA vase to my chest reverently.
“Okay, Ophelia. You win.” With shaking hands I held the vase out to Ophelia, who stared at it, wide-eyed, wanting. “Here is the Vessel of Souls.”
Ophelia raised one sculpted eyebrow and jabbed at the air in front of her. “That?”
I nodded. “Yes, this. The angels often charm things so they can be hidden—”
“In plain sight, blah, blah, blah.” Ophelia finished. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
I licked my dry lips. “Of course. So, here it is. You win, fair and square.”
Ophelia reached out and smacked the vase with the back of her hand, sending it hurtling to the ground, crashing against the hardwood floor. Thick shards of pale green glass splintered in all directions; the one that held the dollar ninety-nine IKEA price tag skidded toward me and landed a quarter-inch from my sneaker.
We heard the gentle ahhhh of souls ascending to Heaven.
Ophelia stamped her foot, one hand on her hip. “Stop that!”
I snapped my mouth shut and the wailing ahhh stopped. Then Ophelia smiled. A grotesque smile of delight that twisted her normally lovely features into something awful.
You really don’t know, do you? Her voice was in my head again.
“Don’t know what?” I snarled out loud. “And stop with the head talk!”
“Sophie!”
I cut my eyes to our front door hanging askew, anchored by a single hinge. Nina flung it open and the bent hinge gave way, the door flopping to the ground.
“You stay the hell away from her!” Nina screamed, her dark eyes fierce and intent on Ophelia.
“Oh, wow.” Ophelia glanced from me to Nina. “And her toothy pal comes to the rescue. If only you knew what you were guarding.”
Nina was between Ophelia and me in a heartbeat, standing nose to nose with Ophelia, the jagged piece of lamp hanging limply at her side. “Don’t you have a harp to strum?” Nina spat from between gritted teeth.
Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “A harp, that’s cute.” She narrowed her eyes and elbowed Nina hard in the chest, sending her skittering to the ground. Nina landed on her back with a thud. I tried to lunge to Nina, but Ophelia clamped her hand on my shoulder. I heard myself cry out as her fingers dug into my muscle, forming heat against my skin.
A low growl escaped from Nina’s chest and she flung herself against Ophelia, who deftly stepped aside, taking me with her.
“Knock, knock!”
We all seemed to freeze, openmouthed and panicked, as we looked at Mr. Matsura, who stood in the doorway, his wrinkled lips turned up in a quizzical smile.
Mr. Matsura lived across the hall in an afghan-festooned apartment that was stuck in 1952. He wore a cardigan sweater over his button-up shirt and neatly pressed slacks with his house slippers when he went out at dawn and at dusk for his daily walks. In the waking hours in between, he ate takeout and watched the game-show channel, the volume turned up to an ungodly level. I credit my ability to correctly guess the prices of a catamaran, a set of Calphalon pans, and an electric skillet to his faulty hearing aid.
He let out a low whistle as he slid his palm over the cracked door frame. “Looks like someone did some damage here.”
Mr. Matsura looked like a smiling beacon of hope—or the next victim in Ophelia’s domestic destruction.
Without loosening her grip on me, Ophelia grinned, her smile dazzling and welcoming even as her fingertips continued to burrow into my shoulder. “And you are?”
Mr. Matsura jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Neighbor. Right across the hall.”
My heart started to beat again and the blood was returning to my extremities. Nina was pushing herself up from the floor and Ophelia snaked her arm across my shoulders, making our threesome look more like a group of overzealous girlfriends than a battle for the fate of the humankind.
“We just got a little out of control,” Ophelia said, sweet innocence dripping from her voice. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Mr. Matsura opened his mouth to speak, his hand gesturing toward the broken door.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” Ophelia said again, this time slowly, her crystal-blue eyes focused hard on Mr. Matsura’s. He closed his mouth and nodded, his eyes taking on a dull, vacant glaze. He turned slowly and disappeared into his own apartment.
“How did you—”
“Shut up,” Ophelia hissed. She frowned.
“That really harshed my buzz.”
Ophelia loosened her grip on me, and I shrugged away, trying to rub some feeling back into my shoulder.
Nina gaped. “Your buzz?”
Ophelia narrowed her eyes and they glittered a sinister blue. “Violence makes me giddy.” She shoved her way between Nina and me and stepped backward, heading toward the front door, the crumbles of our vase and shards of splintered door frame rustling under her feet. She hung in our broken doorway, her hands on what remained of the frame.
“Well, you know what they say about three being a crowd. Nina, it was just precious to meet you in person. Sophie, you and I will pick this up later.”
And I can hardly wait for that. Ophelia’s voice rang in my brain, her eyes brimming with intent and focused hard on me.
Once Ophelia disappeared out the front door Nina rushed to me, gathering me in her arms and crushing me against her cold, marble chest. “Oaf,” I groaned, feeling the bruise from Ophelia’s push.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Nina said, pushing away from me. “Are you hurt? Did she get the Vessel?” Her dark eyes traveled to the shards of broken milk glass on the floor. “Was that it?”
“No. Yes. I mean, I’m fine.” I massaged my chest. “Mostly. And no, that’s not the Vessel.”
Nina crouched down, gathering up the glass pieces. “Well, that’s good.” She picked up a piece, scrutinized it. “I’d hate to think that God shopped at IKEA.” She brushed the rest of the glass into her bloodless palm and dumped it into the trash in the kitchen. “So you’re okay?”
“I will be.” I went to the kitchen for a wet rag and caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror: bald spot slightly visible, black marks already starting to blossom under each eye, blood caking and starting to dry at the corner of my mouth. I checked my neck and groaned at the constellation of tiny bloody pricks there and Nina came up behind me, frowning.
“Wow, she really got you good. Are you sure you’re okay? Can I get you something—a Band-Aid, a transfusion ?”
I wet a rag and pressed it against my neck, then gingerly laid a package of frozen corn across my head. The sting of the cold seemed to counteract the sting of my lack of hair.
I slumped onto the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Now I’m just confused.”
“Confused?” Nina brushed her hands on her skirt and pulled a second package of frozen vegetables from the freezer. She sat down next to me on the couch and carefully laid the bag on the purple handprints peeking out of my shirt. “About what?”
“Ophelia.” I pressed the frozen peas to my chest, held the corn against my head.
“She’s a class-one nutter. What’s there to be confused about?”
“When I handed her the vase—which I tried to pass off as the Vessel—”
Nina grinned. “Nice strategy.”
“Thanks. Anyway, she knew right away that that wasn’t it.”
“So Ophelia knows what the Vessel looks like.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “But then she seemed almost amused. She looked me up and down and said, ‘You really don’t know, do you?’ Why does everyone seem to think that I know something I don’t, or that I don’t need to know something I should? Or you know, maybe should.”
Nina shrugged her small shoulders.
“It wasn’t even what she said was so weird. It was the way she said it. It was like I was a piece of meat. It was weird.” I shuddered. “Gave me the heebie jeebies.”
“Well, didn’t the fallen angels used to drink the blood and eat the flesh of man? So, maybe you were, like, dinner?” Nina grinned triumphantly.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Not that I’ve ever thought of you that way.”
“I know. But it wasn’t hungry-like; it was ... appraising, almost.”
Nina looked thoughtful. “Well, Alex said the Vessel could be anything or anywhere. Maybe you do have it and you don’t even know it. Maybe it is here.”
I looked around the apartment. “You said yourself you don’t think God shops at IKEA. That doesn’t leave much else around here.”
Nina sprang up from the couch and walked toward the bookcase. “Maybe it’s this.” She held up a porcelain elephant with gold tusks.
“Doubt it. My college boyfriend gave me that.”
She studied the figurine, then dumped it into the trashcan. “It’s definitely time to let go of that one. What if it’s this?” Nina snatched up a tattered copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “Wouldn’t that be hilarious?”
I stood up and took the paperback from Nina, returning it to its spot on the shelf. “No.” I glanced at everything on the bookshelf, my hands on my hips. “I can’t imagine it’s anything here. And most of this stuff I’ve had forever or picked up randomly along the way. I would think that the Vessel of Souls would have come into my possession in a more regal way—not from an old boyfriend or from the used bookstore.”
“So IKEA is out then?”
“Wow,” Alex said from the hallway as he gingerly stepped over our crumbled front door. “Did I forget to tell you that you put the key in and then turn the knob?”
I rolled my eyes. “Ophelia was here.”
“Ophelia?” Alex’s eyes widened and he came inside, setting his slick leather jacket on the table. He crossed the living room in one swoop and rested his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you at all?”
“Did she hurt me at all?” I pointed to my mask of bruises. “I look like a prizefighter. Who lost.” The frozen corn slid from my head and thunked on the floor.
“You dropped your corn,” Alex said, pointing at it. “Really, Lawson, are you going to be okay? Should we take you to the emergency room?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I’m okay.”
Alex pulled me against him and I melted into his warm chest, shivered as I felt his strong arms slide across my back, encircling me, protecting me, melting the bag of frozen peas between us. “I couldn’t stand it if she hurt one hair on your head.”
“Well,” Nina said from over Alex’s left shoulder. “She hurt our vase. Where have you been? We could have been dead! Or, you know, dead ... er. Don’t forget, you brought that psychopath into our lives.”
Alex ignored Nina, and held me at arm’s length, his cobalt eyes intense and locked on mine. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “I’m okay.” For the first time I noticed that Alex was dressed in dark jeans cinched with an expensive-looking brown leather belt. He was wearing a butter-soft deep green cashmere sweater that V’ed at the neck, a bit of his white T-shirt peeking out from underneath. The thin sweater was formfitting, and hugged the muscles across his chest and broad shoulders in all the right places. His hair—a usual jumble of chocolaty dark curls that spilled this way and that—was brushed back and gelled.
“You gelled?”
A flush of crimson went across Alex’s cheeks as he reached a hand up to pat his hair. “It’s stupid. I—”
“No, it looks nice. You look nice. Why do you look so—?” I slammed my mouth shut, knowing flooding over me.
My date. My big date.
Alex’s smile was polite. “You forgot?”
Nina stepped in between us. “Yes, she forgot. Can you blame her? She’s been tenderized by hurricane Ophelia!”
Alex looked pained and gingerly tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “Does it hurt much?”
I rubbed the sore spot on my cheek. “I told you, it’s fine. It looks worse than it is. I’m pale; I bruise easily.”
“I would feel better if you were protected.”
“Like with a bodyguard?” I nodded toward Nina. “I’ve already got a vampire.”
Nina put her hands on her hips. “So that’s why you keep me around?”
“Geez! And you say my friends are messy!” We all swung to look as Vlad stood in the doorway, his calf-length velvet coat swirling in a nonexistent breeze, his jacquard ascot puffed against his silk vest.
“Sophie got
attacked,” Nina filled him in.
Vlad frowned. “Wow! You look terrible.”
“Yeah, but you should see what the other guy looks like,” I joked.
Nina’s eyes were wide. “Yeah, she’s really pretty. I love her hair.”
I tried to glare, but my face was sore. “Geez, sorry,” Nina said, threading her arm through Vlad’s. “Come on.” She dragged Vlad toward her room. “You’re helping me organize.”
Alex leaned in toward me. “Do you still have the gun I got you?”
In Alex and my previous relationship incarnation, I found myself the victim of things going bump in the night. Alex’s gift of a lethal weapon wasn’t just romantic, it was practical.
Still, I would have preferred chocolates.
“Yeah, I still have it.”
“Somewhere close by?”
I went to the kitchen and retrieved the gun from its special hiding place in the junk drawer. The slick, black .357 Magnum kept my packets of takeout soy sauce, bubble gum, and twist ties safe.
Alex took the gun and released the magazine. “It’s not loaded. Do you still have any bullets?”
I dutifully went to the freezer and scooped a handful of silver-tipped bullets from their hiding place in an ancient box of Skinny Cow ice cream bars—ice cream bars having been eaten to make room for bullets. From the exasperated look on Alex’s face as I dumped the frozen ammo into his palm, I figured it was best to keep to myself the fact that I had, on occasion, used the butt of the gun for some light fix-it projects around the house.
Alex frowned down at the butt of the gun, picking at something white stuck into the grooves with his fingernail. “Is that plaster?”
“Either that or the sugar coating from the bubble gum in the junk drawer,” I said. And then, noticing the sheer annoyance marching across Alex’s face, “I don’t know. It’s your gun.” I batted my eyelashes attractively before Alex had the chance to roll his eyes.
“You know what,” he said, putting the gun aside, “we’ll deal with firepower later. We have a game to get to. Are you still up for it?”
I slapped my palm to my forehead—then winced. “That’s right! My Giants!”
