Monster In the Mirror, page 3
The full pull of the change didn’t usually come on him until around midnight. The closer he got to that dreadful hour, the more he’d know if this new drug would have any positive effect or not.
“There’s nothing wrong with your work being the most important thing,” Izzy said. “It’s commendable. You’re driven by a need to solve a problem. A problem most of us probably wouldn’t even understand. It’s people like you who make the world a better place for the rest of us.”
He smiled. “Thank you. For understanding.”
She lifted her Coke. “You’re welcome. Cheers.”
He clinked his ginger ale against her glass. “Cheers.”
After they’d both taken a drink, he set his glass down, straightened his silverware, and sat back in his chair. The more she said, the more interesting she became. He wanted to know more. “Where did you come here from?”
She stared at him, eyes rounding a bit, and he instantly realized that simple question was more than she wanted to answer.
He held up a hand. “Never mind. I don’t need to know.”
“East,” she said softly. “What about you?”
“The Midwest by way of Northern England, a long, long time ago.” He was an open book. Or at least about as open as they came in Shadowvale. His name made it nearly impossible to hide who he was.
It was safer for everyone if they knew, anyway. During daylight hours, it wasn’t such a big deal, but now, as the sun was setting and darkness was taking over, it was just better if everyone knew who he was and what he was capable of.
And they did. He could feel it in the gazes that weighed heavy on him. It wasn’t judgment, not in a town like Shadowvale, but there was pity in those eyes. A healthy dose of fear, too. And in some, straight-up revulsion.
She ran her finger through the condensation on the side of her glass. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Is your focus on work the reason you’re single? Because you’re not a bad-looking guy. And you’re a doctor, which most women would find pretty attractive. You have a sense of humor and the ability to string words into sentences. So why don’t you have a girlfriend? Or a wife?” She smiled. “Just to be clear, I’m not fishing. I’m celibate and plan to stay that way.”
That worked for him. Relationships were out of the question. All the same, he really didn’t want to explain who he was in the midst of the pub. “Like I said, my work consumes me. What little free time I have is spent doing things like this. By which I mean feeding myself. Otherwise, I’m in my lab conducting experiments or doing research.” Or shifting into a hideous, brutal form that existed only to destroy.
She nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
Their food arrived, giving him a reprieve from sharing anything else. He would, eventually, just not here. Not where she might cause a scene.
She picked up her roasted chicken and ate it with her hands, which made him smile. She didn’t seem to care too much what people thought. Good for her.
He wasn’t quite there.
People already treated him like an invisible force field surrounded him, making him untouchable. They moved around him the way water flowed around a big rock, close but without any real engagement. He got plenty of friendly nods, waves of acknowledgement, a little small-talk here and there, but he had no true friendships.
No one invited him to parties. None of the guys had him over for poker nights. There were no guys.
No one wanted to get close to a monster. He understood. After all, his life’s work was centered around separating himself from that monster.
Only then would he truly be able to live. And he’d long ago come to terms with the fact that it might never happen. It didn’t stop him from dreaming, but even that seemed pointless at times because of how unattainable those dreams were.
So why not work as much as possible? What else was he going to do? Try to fit in somehow?
That would never happen. He wouldn’t risk it. In fact, he often thought that being allowed to live in Shadowvale hinged on him keeping to himself.
He didn’t know the curse or affliction of every resident that called this place home, but he still felt certain that none had the potential for damage and destruction he did.
Hendrick Jekyll might wear a white coat and strive toward an honorable goal, but Edgar Hyde was a beast that craved ruin and mayhem.
Izzy was wonderfully full, which made her happy, but that fullness was making her sleepy, and she knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until her apartment was squared away.
She pointed to the coffee shop just ahead. “Would you mind if we stopped in there? I don’t have any coffee for tomorrow.”
“No problem.”
She knew exactly which boxes held her coffee maker, filters, and cups. All she needed was a bag of grounds. She selected a dark roast and took it up to the register.
“Will that be all for you?” the clerk asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
Henry was at her elbow. “I’ll take a salted caramel hot chocolate when you’re done.” He looked at Izzy. “You want one? We didn’t have dessert.”
He hadn’t let her pay for dinner, either, although she’d tried. She nodded. The sugar might help perk her up for the job ahead. “Sure, but I’m paying.” He opened his mouth, but she raised her brows and cut him off. “No arguments.”
He laughed. “All right, you win.”
She smiled at the clerk. “Make that two salted caramel hot chocolates, please.”
“Coming right up.” The clerk went to make them.
She leaned on the counter. “How soon are you interested in having me start on your office and lab? Allowing that we’re able to come to an agreement on the pricing, of course. Like I said, I need to see the job first.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. “One look and you’ll run screaming in the other direction.”
Her mouth bent in a lopsided smile. “You don’t know me very well yet, but I can tell you this: Very little frightens me.” Other than the darkness that lived inside her. Other than that brutal legacy.
He seemed unconvinced. “You haven’t seen it yet.”
She shrugged. “I’ve probably seen worse. I’ve actually helped in a few hoarding situations. Are you a hoarder?”
He thought about that. “I don’t keep random piles of trash or old newspapers or arbitrary things I think I might need one day. But if it pertains to my research, then yes, I keep it.”
She nodded in understanding. “It sounds to me like you really just need to get organized. Which is what I do.”
The clerk came back with their salted caramel hot chocolates. She paid, grabbed her bag of ground coffee, then they each took their drinks and went back outside.
Izzy gestured to the bench in front of the shop. “Do you mind if we sit a minute?”
“No, that’s fine.”
They sat. She sipped her hot chocolate, which was somehow not too sweet, making it very delicious. “This is good.”
He nodded. “I haven’t found much in this town that doesn’t meet or exceed expectations.”
She smiled. He had a curious way of looking at things, but she supposed that was how an analytical mind worked. The streetlamps cast a warm glow over everything, leaving puddles of light along the sidewalks.
The air was crisp, but the evening was beautiful. Most of the shops were still open, and a few people walked past. Enough that it surprised Izzy. “This town doesn’t close up early. I like that.”
“Not all of it, no. A lot of the shops keep later hours to accommodate the more nocturnal citizens.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly. That was a curious thing to say, but then, as she was finding out, this was a curious town.
They sat until she finished her hot chocolate. Henry beat her by a few sips. He held out his hand. “I’ll take the empty.”
“Thanks.” She gave him her cup as they both got to their feet. He tossed them in a nearby bin, and they started back toward the apartments. A little fog had rolled in, creating a cozy atmosphere.
“What business is under my apartment?” They’d gone the other way, so she hadn’t had a chance to look.
“Noble’s Pizza,” he answered. “Pretty good place. I end up getting my dinner from them on the nights I don’t end up at the pub. Great pizza and subs.”
“That could be bad for me. I love pizza. What’s under yours?”
“The back half is my lab. The front half is my office, which technically isn’t open. I work there, but I don’t see patients anymore. I could, I guess, but …”
“That would interrupt your research.”
“Right.”
“Totally get it. So that’s the space you need organized.”
“Yes.”
“I could take a look tomorrow. Just let me know when. I’ll give you my number before I … I …” Something was coming out of the fog on the street ahead.
She stopped walking, unable to do anything but stare. And listen to the pounding of her heart.
He looked at her. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted her hand to point, filled with disbelief at the word about to come out of her mouth. “T-tiger. Tiger. Tiger.”
Henry shifted his gaze to the striped killer walking down the middle of the street as though that particular expanse of pavement belonged to him. Which, at the moment, it did. “Oh. That’s just Thoreau.”
Izzy couldn’t move. Her feet were frozen to the sidewalk, her body somehow keeping her upright despite the fact that her bones had turned to jelly and her muscles had the tensile strength of tissue paper.
“Tiger,” she said again, this time in more of a whisper. It was all she could manage under the circumstances.
The great cat never stopped, just kept walking. Its feet were the size of dinner plates, its head and body the size of a sedan. Its feet made no sound on the pavement as it went past, but the creature let out a soft, low snuffling that seemed more of a greeting than a threat.
But Izzy wasn’t taking any chances. Her free hand inched toward her purse and the pepper spray she kept there.
“Hey,” Henry said. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you.” He cupped his hand under her elbow. She knew he could feel her trembling. “Izzy?”
She kept her eyes on the cat until it disappeared into the darkness once again. She couldn’t get herself to stop shaking. She finally looked at Henry. “Why was there a tiger in the street? Why did you know its name? And why were you so unconcerned?”
Henry took a breath, the smile on his face very sympathetic. “I think we should have a talk.”
“Not here,” Henry said as Izzy nodded. He hadn’t realized until just that moment that she was so completely unaware of Shadowvale’s true origins and the sort of folks the town was a haven for. And since he’d already planned on explaining who he was, he figured he might as well explain it all.
If she was going to live here, she had to know.
They were nearly home. He turned in to the alley, then walked with her up to their joint landing and took a seat on the last step. “I figure this is as good a place to talk as any.”
Once she knew the truth about him, she probably wouldn’t want to be inside his apartment. And she definitely wouldn’t want him inside hers, either.
“Okay,” she said with a little reluctance in her voice. “We could go inside, though. I do have a couch, you know.”
“This is better. For now.”
She sat beside him, still looking unconvinced. “What if the tiger comes back?”
“I’m pretty sure he was headed for home, and even if he does return, I promise he won’t hurt you. He’s never hurt anyone.” Outside of a few who had it coming.
Izzy leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “And you know that because?”
“Because he’s the pet of Amelia Marchand, the witch who created this town, and Amelia would never keep an animal like that if he was a danger to the people who live here.”
Izzy blinked at him. “You just said so many things that I don’t understand.”
Was she really a hundred percent human? He was starting to think so. “Start wherever you like. I’ll explain as best I can.”
“That tiger is a witch’s pet?”
“I don’t know if ‘pet’ is the right word. He’s more like her guest, I suppose. She found him as a housecat, but he was under a spell, and when she removed the spell, Thoreau appeared.”
“The tiger was a housecat. But the woman who found him and started this town is a witch.”
He could tell she was really just humoring him at this point. “Yes. Countess Amelia Marie Antoinette Marchand. She’s a very powerful witch. Powerful enough that she created Shadowvale as a safe place for her beloved to live.”
“The tiger.”
“No, her beloved was a man named Pasqual. Unfortunately, he disappeared without a trace, although Amelia believes he’ll come back someday.”
“Why did Pasqual need a safe place to live? And how is Shadowvale that place?”
Henry took a breath, knowing the conversation was about to take an even sharper turn to the left. “Because he was a vampire, and the sun never shines in Shadowvale. You might have noticed that yesterday? Anyway, it’s become something of a haven for vampires for that reason.”
Izzy’s eyes narrowed. She stared at him for a few long, hard seconds. Then her lips pursed, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, ha ha, I get it. Big joke on the new neighbor. Very funny. Well done.”
She shifted forward like she was going to get up.
He shook his head. “It’s no joke. I swear it on my research.”
“You expect me to believe that a tiger was disguised as a housecat? That vampires and witches exist? Not only that, but that they live in this town? Where, somehow, magically, the sun never shines?”
He nodded. “It’s really all because of the magic. But look, there are humans here, too. Mortals, like you. Assuming that’s what you are. I’m not the best at figuring out if someone’s a supernatural or not.”
“A supernatural or—you really believe this, don’t you?” She got to her feet.
“It’s easy to believe something you know is true. I get what a shock this is when you’ve lived your whole life thinking the monster under the bed is just a fairy tale, but it’s not.”
Her expression went steely as she crossed her arms. “I know very well that monsters are real.”
He stood up, leaning against the railing across from her. “Good. Because I need to tell you something else.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “What else could there be?”
“It’s about me. You deserve to know who you’ve moved next door to.”
She looked him up and down. “And who’s that? Are you going to tell me you’re a vampire?”
“No. My full name is Hendrick Jekyll.”
She shrugged. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Dr. Jekyll?”
Her eyes narrowed. “And Mr. Hyde. I’ve heard of the story. Seen the movie. The Spencer Tracy one, not the Julia Roberts one.”
“It’s not just a construct of Hollywood. It’s my family’s curse. The curse of all the firstborn men in the Jekyll line. My father, me, my brother’s firstborn son.”
She shook her head. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that most nights, sometime after midnight, I turn into a creature unfit for human interaction. It’s nothing you really have to worry about. I lock myself in the basement of the building, which I have had reinforced to hold Edgar Hyde. But it’s just one of those things you need to know now that you live next to me. If, for any reason, I don’t make it to the basement before Edgar appears, do not engage Edgar. Lock yourself in your apartment and wait for daylight.”
She stared at him, anger flashing in her eyes. Kind of like she thought he was playing another joke on her.
“I mean it,” he said. “I become a monster.”
Her mouth bent in a crooked line of pain. Disbelief spilled from her gaze. She fished her keys from her purse and unlocked her door. “I came here to escape all of that, and now this? Here I was thinking you were such a nice guy, but you’re a real jerk, you know that?”
“Izzy, I wasn’t—”
She went inside and slammed the door.
He wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but he’d had worse responses to sharing the truth about himself. He let out a heavy sigh. At least he’d told her. It didn’t make him feel much better, though.
They’d had such a nice dinner that he’d let himself believe Izzy might be the first person not to care who he really was.
He wasn’t a jerk, but he was an idiot. He flattened his hand on the screen of the key panel next to his door. The panel recognized him and unlocked the door. He went inside, feeling worse than he’d felt in a long time.
Not because Hyde was tugging at him but because of Izzy. He should put her out of his mind and focus on how the dopamine inhibitors were making him feel so he could take notes and record any effects, but that was easier said than done.
He was an expert at calm breathing, something that did nothing to keep Edgar contained but did help him in times of stress. He did a little of that now and brought his senses inward to take the measure of his situation.
The need to shift wasn’t as strong as it usually was. Maybe because of the new drugs, but it might also be because he’d been distracted with Izzy. Or maybe this was one of those occasional nights when he just wouldn’t.
Whatever the case, he was awake, thanks to the small dose of sugar and caffeine he’d had. Not one to waste an opportunity, he changed into a clean set of oversize scrubs meant to accommodate Edgar’s bulk and went down to his office to work. There was no better distraction.
He accessed his ground-floor office the same way he did his apartment, through a security panel beside the door that read his palm print before granting him access. He wasn’t all that worried about anyone in town gaining access so much as he was worried about Edgar getting in and destroying the years of work Henry had done.
