Two Lines

by Melissa Marr

  He started down the walk, but stopped when he realized that she hadn’t moved.

  “Why did you take the job, Mr. Owens?” She watched him as she twisted her hair back into a tight coil. Everything in her posture screamed “challenge.” It made him want to refuse any answer. Which works out well. He couldn’t tell her anything.

  “It’s what I do right now.” He didn’t lie, not really. Watching her was his job. His supervisors were very clear that he should accept the terms of his anonymous source’s offer—including guarding Eavan.

  “Guard people against nonexistent enemies?” She almost smiled, and the change was remarkable. She was every bit as tempting as the beautiful monster that had hired—blackmailed? manipulated?—him, and based on her family and her association with Brennan, she was also likely to be just as deadly.

  He tamped down the softness he was feeling when he’d watched her face off with Nyx.

  “Nyx seems certain you’re in danger,” he said.

  “Nyx is sure I’m in danger every time I’m not in her direct line of sight.” Eavan shook her head. “If you wanted to simply say you guard me, but not—”

  “She hired me to watch you. I’ll watch you.” He tried a falsely friendly smile. They’d do better if they were at least civil to each other. “You could make that easier on both of us if you answered questions.”

  “Sure. I’ll answer what you need to know to do the job Nyx hired you for.” She smiled again, not full of promises like the women inside, but with barely curved lips. It was a dismissal, and in case he missed the message, she turned and walked down the flagstone path.

  Yeah. This is going to be a cakewalk. He snorted and followed her. Before she had taken a half-dozen steps down the end of the walk, he was in front of her. “Guarding you means you don’t go wandering off.”

  “I’m not an errant child, Mr. Owens. I drove here on my own; I go to and from work every day on my own. I go—”

  “No. You used to. I’ll be escorting you to and from everything for the time being.” He’d hoped that Nyx had explained the extent of his role in Eavan’s life, but if she did, Eavan wasn’t cooperating. To be sure there was no confusion, he added, “Nyx was adamant about that part of my services. I’ll be accompanying you everywhere you go, every time you leave your apartment for any reason. It’s why she rented the apartment. That way, I’ll be within reach the moment you step outside your door.”

  Eavan made a frustrated sound. “What if you have other things to do? We can come up with a schedule that—”

  “Eavan?” He waited until she looked at him, and then said, “This is my job. If I’m not able to keep up with your schedule, I’ll call one of my associates, but I suspect I can keep up.”

  “This is going to be a pain in the ass, isn’t it?” She yanked open the passenger door of her Z3 and dropped her briefcase on the seat.

  “You won’t need that.” He didn’t wince as he said it, but he did draw a deep breath, bracing himself for the next snarl that was sure to follow his clarification. “We’ll leave it here to be picked up later.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “Exactly what is it that I won’t need, Mr. Owens?”

  “The car. We’ll take mine.” He gestured at his car, a nondescript black sedan that looked like the same sort innumerable car services and middle-class businessmen drove. It blended. Eavan’s topaz blue BMW didn’t. “You won’t need yours for a while.”

  “I won’t need my car?” Her hands were on her hips. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line.

  “Look. I’m not your enemy. I was hired to keep you safe…or out of trouble…or maybe just drive you crazy so you move back home. You can go back in there and talk to her, or you can cooperate.” He wondered briefly if Eavan had the same ability to hypnotize him as Nyx apparently had. If he tried to restrain her, could she control him as Nyx had done when he’d pulled his gun? He needed more answers than he had. “You need to accept that I’m like your shadow now. You aren’t going anywhere without me. If that’s going to be an issue, go talk to Nyx while we’re still standing here.”

  Eavan’s answer was a string of expletives and a glare at the close-curtained windows of her family’s house. “Talking to Nyx won’t change a thing. It rarely does.”

  He nodded once. “Okay then. So, do you want to eat while we go over your schedule? Or go to your apartment?”

  Cillian felt a touch sorry for her. It wasn’t an easy position she was in—not that his was much better. Now that Cillian had sent the data in to his supervisor and been told to work with—for?—his “anonymous” source, he had more than a few questions for Nyx. He just needed to get Eavan tucked into her apartment so he could go ask a few of those questions.

  “It’s your choice,” he added. “We could go downtown and grab a bite or—”

  “Food first,” she interrupted. “Fat Daddy’s.”

  She slid into his car, slammed the door, and stared out the window.

  “Right, then,” he muttered as he walked around and opened his door. “This should be great fun.”

  6

  Late that night, Eavan slipped out of her apartment window. She wasn’t sure if she could get out the front door without Cillian noticing. Odds were that he wasn’t staring at her door, but she wasn’t sure about video feeds. He’d mentioned surveillance in the hallway, the breezeway, the parking deck, and the back lot. Safer to slip out the window. The drop wasn’t that far. She might be predominantly mortal—and intending to stay that way—but her genetic heritage still came with a few extra benefits.

  After a surreptitious glance to assure that no neighbors were out on their balconies, she hopped up on the balcony rail so she had her back to her apartment and dropped down. The impact of the landing was muffled by the grass-covered ground.

  No one the wiser.

  With a satisfied smile, she crossed the lot and opened her car door.

  It was good that her Z was home instead of still at Nyx’s, but when Eavan thought about strangers driving her car, it felt more like injury than insult. She hated the fact that he’d had some stranger drive her car home. She slid her hand over the wheel affectionately.

  She left her car door slightly open, put it in neutral, and coasted to the bottom of the hill. Once she hit the intersection, she slammed the door and popped the clutch. The squeal of tires and almost-but-not-quite-out-of-control swerve as she slammed through the gears was exhilarating.

  Driving was one of the passions she could indulge. No sex. No murder. No stalking. Okay, a little stalking, but no killing anyone. A woman needed releases for pent-up energy, and there was only so much workouts and toys could do to let off stress. Sometimes speed was essential to sanity.

  On this, at least, Nyx had always been tolerant. She had reduced rates on a number of vices for the local police in exchange for looking the other way on Eavan’s driving habits. It had started as a sixteenth birthday present and evolved into status quo over the last eight years.

  Eavan could navigate the streets of Raleigh and Durham and a number of cities within a four-hour radius. Having the I-95 corridor, I-40, and I-85 all but at her doorstep meant that her penchant for speed was easily indulged. Finding a mechanic who disabled Nyx’s GPS tracking toys regularly added a layer of privacy the past two years that had made Eavan feel almost like a normal woman.

  Not now. Not with Cillian holding a leash. Eavan made her way to the beltline and just drove for a while before she headed downtown. It helped, but the anxiety was still riding her. She took a few side streets, turning at the last possible moment each time, focusing on the importance of control and precision. It’s not going to change a thing. I am not going to change how I live. This could be a short-term problem, a test to be passed. Or failed.

  That was the real problem: Eavan felt herself getting closer and closer to crossing lines that she swore she’d never approach. This business with Daniel had become an obsession. It needed to end so that she could regain control of h
er life. It made control of both appetites feel precarious. If she could scare him away from the drug trade or find some information to get him arrested, maybe she could stop hunting him—because she was hunting him. She knew it, even if she wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, and she needed to get it in check before Nyx found out.

  Eavan parked the car down by Moore Square and headed toward one of Daniel’s warehouses. It wasn’t any trouble to let herself inside the warehouse: she’d lifted a key one night flirting with Daniel. Soft-soled shoes muffled her steps as she crossed the concrete floor. This was what she did, who she was. Every instinct she’d had told her that she was where she should be—except the ones that told her that naked with Cillian was a better plan.

  Equally unhealthy urges.

  She could control them though. She’d been doing so for twelve years. A glaistig’s dual needs for sex and death—preferably together—coincided with the onset of menses. It had taken her six years to learn to smother those urges until they were just a whisper. She’d slipped and hunted a few times, but she’d never killed or fucked anyone. She’d walked away from every hunt before it became an obsession.

  Until now.

  Now, both of Eavan’s urges were screaming to life.

  The smart move was to stay away from Daniel, to stay out of his clubs. Something there made all of her family uncomfortable—and made Eavan feel like electricity was battering all her synapses simultaneously. That sensation had never been quite as all-consuming as it was right now.

  Because he’s near me.

  She stood in the shadowed recesses of a room, half hidden by towering shelves, peering between the wooden crates that were stacked at the end of the aisle of shelves. In front of her in a bare bit of concrete in the center of a darkened warehouse stood Daniel—her prey. He wasn’t Other, but he was tangling with things that made him resonate like he was more than mortal. She could feel it. What are you doing? There was more to her reaction to him than the actions he’d undertaken. The taint of the magicks he used wasn’t enough to explain her compulsion where he was concerned, but she had no other explanation.

  She did, however, know she couldn’t ignore what he was doing. Drugging women and selling them like chattel was inexcusable.

  He needs to be stopped.

  The .38 was heavy in her palm before she realized she’d reached into her bag. The stainless steel vein down the back of the grip didn’t burn her hands or weaken her as it would if she were truly a full glaistig. With her mortal blood still dominant, iron and steel barely gave her a twinge. Instead, the gun felt right in her hands; the desire to sight down on the tainted mortal was a compulsion inside that grew from a whisper to a roar.

  As she watched, Daniel ground the child’s bones into powder. It was an odd sight: he stood in a business suit at a table alongside an average-looking barbecue grill. On the grill were bones, a child-size skull, and several small lizards. On the table were assorted plants, an empty mixing bowl, a glass jar of what looked to be blood, and a modern electric meat grinder. Daniel was barefoot in a pile of earth that seemed more out of place than all the rest.

  Muttering something and gesticulating, he lifted the skull from the grill. Then he raised a large hammer, closed his eyes, said something in what she suspected was to be a reverent way, and smashed the hammer onto the tiny skull until it cracked. Shards of bone lay scattered in the earth.

  “What do you want?” He didn’t look at her when he said it, so for a moment she thought he was talking to someone else.

  She wondered if he could find her in that unerring way she had with him. They were bound together in a way that made no sense to her. Is it the magick? Is it because I’m hunting him? Something existed between them, and she wasn’t sure what it was—or if she really wanted to know.

  “Eve?” He tossed the hammer aside and began picking up the bone shards. Once they were all gathered, he turned to stare directly at her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I…” She didn’t have words for what she wanted, not words she wanted to share. She wanted to kill him, wanted to reorder the world, press down the chaos that buzzed in her skin before she crossed a line that would change everything. She wanted to end her hunt of Daniel with something bloody and satisfying. She settled for a socially acceptable statement: “What you’re doing is wrong.”

  He was utterly nonplussed. “Praying?”

  “That’s not praying.”

  “Sure it is. It’s just an older religion.”

  An older religion? All faiths had a place, but humans like Daniel were the reason mainstream humanity thought Old Faiths were evil. He was using the veneer of religion to sate his greed.

  “What will you do with it?” she heard herself asking, as if his admission to her would change anything. She knew exactly what he did with his poison: drugged people, addicted them, and sold them.

  He dropped the bone fragments into the grinder. The whirring noise seemed loud in the empty room. “How about I make you a deal…”

  She felt like her skin was crawling with stinging things as she stepped toward him. She wanted to go to him, despite everything. “What are you offering?”

  He was a bastard. He preyed on the innocent. He used earth and bone to enslave people, not as punishment, but randomly for avarice and malice.

  He lifted the corner of his mouth is a sardonic half smile. “For starters, drop that piece in your hand. Then tell me what you want from me.”

  She glanced at the .38; she hadn’t realized she had raised it. She lowered it with effort. Her arm hung at her side, but her finger still rested on the trigger. Did I take off the safety, too? She wasn’t sure, but she suspected she had. The habitual movement would’ve preceded raising her weapon.

  “I want you to stop mixing that,” she told him.

  The look he gave her was curious. “And if I don’t? Are you going to stop visiting me? Stop stealing my toys?”

  She had an intense craving to show him exactly what would happen if he didn’t stop. Why this one was different she didn’t know, but in that instant she wanted to let her Other heritage reign. Sex and death. The room was already filled with death; her body was screaming for sex. If she had both on the same night, she’d become just like the rest of her family—like Nyx wanted, like her mother wanted. She’d have eternity. Steal the lives of mortals, enjoy those dual pleasures, and she’d be stronger, faster, live for centuries…

  She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth and said, “Please?”

  “Please what?” Daniel gave her that same tempting smile he’d offered in the clubs so often. “I don’t like them mindless, Eve. No medicine for you. Aren’t you tired of provoking me? It’s been fun to have someone try to thwart me. Ballsy. I like it. Let me give you what you want.”

  Her hand tightened until the ridges on the grip pressed into her skin. Her tongue was slow in her mouth as she told him, “You can’t.”

  “Are you sure?” Daniel stood there with a jar of blood in one hand and the stuff of death all around him. “You see what I am, but you’re not disgusted, are you? Come closer.”

  And in that instant, she wanted to swallow his final breath more than anything she’d ever wanted. She reached out her other hand to touch him, but stopped short of actual contact. “You don’t want to give me what I want, Daniel. Trust me. Please. If you have anything good in you, change your path. Stop making these drugs. For everyone.”

  And then she ran, away from temptation, away from the room of death and blood and bone. She was a mortal. She could walk away. She’d chosen humanity. She just needed to keep choosing it.

  Eavan went to her car and began one of her tried and true reordering plans. Absently, she drove out to Chapel Hill. There was the first stop. Step one. Routine. It was a strange loop she’d adopted when she was a student—like walking her perimeters, demarcating territories. Like an animal.

  No, she reminded herself, proving that I am not an animal.

  It made her feel more fo
cused.

  I am not a monster.

  At UNC, she measured her steps, pacing them out just so as she crossed campus to reach the courtyard outside Davis Library. That bricked vista felt reassuring—line after line of red bricks. There was order, structure. She clung briefly to that. Order. Follow the lines.

  They’d just opened for the day.

  How long was I driving?

  She went inside and wandered through the wide open layout. People, regular mortals, were already going back and forth between shelves and tables. Some were curled into cocoons of their own projects—papers and books and furrowed brows. It was normalcy. It was her world—the one she chose.

  The one I’m staying in.

  She’d find another way to deal with Daniel—talk to Muriel or one of the lupine-clan or even Nyx if necessary. She had found a limitation she wasn’t going to test.

  I can’t keep stalking him.

  She crossed back over the campus, smiling at the green spaces. Even those were in order. The paths were angled. The layout was defined and orderly. Sure, there were people who weren’t walking down those paths, but they were following other guidelines. They wore their school colors or their Greek letters on their clothes. They defied grouping by assigning themselves another group. It gave form to the world. It was not-chaos.

  She drove past Durham, not wanting to stop by Duke’s library when she was feeling so tentative. Step two. Choosing. The Perkins Library building was gorgeous, and the order she craved was more obvious inside, but walking through the stacks made her feel predatory. But I will not hunt. Good mortals, smart humans, didn’t stalk and attack. Knowing what she could be wasn’t always reason enough to resist. She wanted it to be, but it wasn’t.

  For that, she needed her routines, her tried-and-true tactics. She hadn’t needed to work this hard in years. She left the library and drove to Raleigh.

  NCSU was twisted among the city; the campus twisted between houses and restaurants and stores. University buildings nestled around tattoo parlors and coffee shops and convenience stores. Students and professors ate next to construction workers and strangers. Everyone is welcome here. Sure, there were those that wore letters and insignias, but those who didn’t could still blend. It was a feeling more than a quantifiable element, and the feeling was one that soothed her unease. Here, she could restructure herself. Here, she could create the order that kept her anchored to the world that she had chosen.