Twice as High, page 7
This time I was testing out the comfort of the carpet.
Change was hard.
“Are you okay? There is no way to get a medic up here, even if you needed it,” she explained and pointed to the window.
I pushed myself up and wobbled over to the window. The intern opened the blinds and pointed at the crowd that couldn’t be missed even from this distance.
“Sorry, it must have been low blood sugar,” I said, making an excuse.
She nodded as if understanding. “Yes, we throw more of that granola stuff away than you might believe. Nothing helps low blood sugar like chocolate, good dark chocolate.” I was hoping she wasn’t going to pull out a piece from her pocket.
Even from my position, staring down on to what was an otherwise semi-quiet street, instead of the usual New York bustle with its yellow cabs, was a throng of people. They all chanted and waved their colorful poster board signs that declared the end to be nigh.
This was no ordinary day in Manhattan for sure.
Although their message was the same, I’d seen this often on the way to one subway station or another, but this time, they had a synergy.
I couldn’t help wondering if they were right.
Instead of a television show, somehow the impossible had converged into this reality. According to the news anchor’s report, which blared on the television behind me, mass extinction was inevitable.
It would hit us all, and the supernatural might not be able to stop it.
The annual UN Summit meant the world and its media might be listening—“might,” depending on what else might be happening in the news cycle. If some of Hollywood’s elite got a new face, decided to get height surgery to turn a five-foot-five frame to that of a towering giant, or suddenly wrote a song about their ex, all talk of saving the world would be diluted with the gossip over science.
Of course, science never solved any of our problems. Now that thought just made me sound bitchy, but I wasn’t. I was starving, hangry even.
I licked my lips as if to cement my point. Blood might just be blood. I didn’t have any of Sethos’ powder with me. Human blood was never on the menu, and when I’d been changed, Alistair had been in his water-dragon form, so my body required the delightful fish juice.
Before I’d been changed, I’d been a vegetarian, and after reverting to eating meat, I’d had little physical consequences, besides smelling like decomposing animals. Shrug.
Of course, knowing my luck, if I bit someone and took a small sip, I’d probably smell like pumpkin spice.
The protest shut down Manhattan, the street below had only wiggle room—a march toward the summit where that of climate change and its initiatives were to be discussed. It made sense since the UN building was on the East River.
I was on autopilot, watching the city through the tinted glass. I’d have to wait it out.
My stomach grumbled loudly. I tried to recall all of the lessons on patience. Maybe if I could remember the importance of delayed gratification, I’d not contemplate murder.
Unfortunately, the climate change activists headed straight toward the East River where I’d get my nightly meals from the fishmongers. So far, I’d not willfully bitten a human, but the longer they blocked my way, the more the blood whooshing through their carotid arteries and jugular veins were starting to sound yummy. If I closed my eyes, I could practically hear the chorus of blood humming like waves lapping on a beach, a waiting buffet.
How long would it take to snap a neck and drink deeply, sort of like snatching up a can of cola to drain it? But instead of a cold container, it would be warm, snuggly, and dance on my tongue just like yummy hot chocolate or warm brownies freshly out of the oven once did.
Again, my stomach growled.
I didn’t wish to concentrate on why I’d passed out.
“Just think of it as sushi,” the uninvited voice said. “It is time you listened to your true voice.”
I wasn’t going to ask questions to encourage it. Whatever those roses did, it unlocked something within my mind. With it came a desire for death, and I had no idea who she was, or what the purple sigil had meant.
Why hadn’t Alistair answered?
Chapter 11
Leslie
Exiting the studio, I cradled Saga in the crook of my arm and unconsciously stroked her fur.
Tired, I dragged myself forward, convinced I just needed to make it to the car. Now, I felt disconnected. Stepping back into my old life, my life had gotten troublesome. Who was I fooling? I’d been lying to myself.
Nothing said that you’d been lying to yourself like your lie slapping you in the face. I was in this supernatural tango, and the more I struggled to break free, the tighter it clutched on to me.
The air hummed, vibrated as adrenaline mixed with dread.
I steeled my spine. Maybe I could just cast it off as a bad day. Yep, despite the Fates throwing me a twist, I still hoped to find a way to live in between these two worlds. The longer I stroked Saga’s fur, the more understanding dawned on me. Something or someone wanted to make sure the supernatural came to the surface.
Suddenly, the cacophony of the city seemed overly loud to me, like a migraine was forming right behind my temple, ready to split my head in two. Claudine stood oblivious at my right, still swiping on her smartphone. Seeing Joe, my driver, I weakly waved and headed toward him.
“Go to an interview and bring back a cat. Only you, Leslie,” Claudine snarked.
Joe opened my door, and the radio blasted the latest news update. Before the change, I used to love to start the day listening to NPR, have a pulse on what was going on around me. But the more I stayed in this new world, the more the things of human society faded as I tried to navigate my way.
Scooting in, I placed Saga on the seat next to me. She turned around in a circle to then close her eyes. She, too, had had a morning and a half.
What the hell had happened? I reached for the necklace I’d had on, only to find it missing. That name? Who or what was Ásgeirr?
“The American Museum of Natural History is excited to present such a stoic and important part of Norse culture and history,” the female radio news anchor began. “Although thought lost on the recent tragedy with the Titanic Replica, we are happy to have the—” Joe changed the station.
Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” played on the town car’s radio. Maybe the universe was trying to placate me through earworm-catching tunes. I hummed along. My tongue glided over my teeth that still needed a good brushing after attempting to consume the undrinkable coffee. Claudine, who sat beside me, thumbed through a magazine she’d swiped from the talk show’s audience waiting area.
“I can’t believe they didn’t let you join me backstage,” I said, hoping that this would at least allow me to focus on anything else besides the gnawing pain that continued to grow in the pit of my stomach.
“Alistair and his crew should have been a little more welcoming, a little more accommodating.” Claudine must have heard my stomach growl. “Like in that play on Broadway with that Doohickey woman.”
“Eliza Doolittle?”
“Yeah, doesn’t that play teach that the English are to help us?”
I bit my cheek so as to not laugh out loud. “Firstly, Alistair is Scottish, and that brings with it much historical and political debate that I refuse to even mention. Additionally, the play was not about some English guy saving some woman.”
“I’m sure it was about him seeing something in her and pushing her to conform.”
Claudine must have caught the bad Cliff Notes version for My Fair Lady.
“No, it was about a wager, a bet that the snobbish professor could make a poor woman presentable to high society. They just happened to fall in love, too.”
Claudine took a deep breath. It was almost like a red neon sign flashing: Alert, Alert. She’d been doing “the sigh” since we were kids. It usually was accompanied with her hands on her hips and her feet planted. Yet, in the town car, she didn’t have the room to try to dominate the space.
I waited patiently. That which would now come would be her version of the double-edged sword, a deep slice to get to the point of this entire conversation. “Well, you are not presentable to the supernatural society. You don’t know your ass from your fangs.”
As if on cue, my fangs suddenly descended. Claudine smirked and flipped another page, unafraid of the monster I’d become.
“If you think these new shenanigans are going to make me cower, then you needed your new pet.” Claudine pointed to Saga sleeping, again. “Maybe you should have gotten a mouse, like the one you had in college.”
The mouse I’d had in college during my one semester of living in the dorms wasn’t a mouse at all, but a brown rat. My boyfriend had interned in the biology lab and rescued the pup. It was one of the first things we’d saved. I’d named him Daniel, and he’d lived in my pocket.
You can only try to save so many monkeys before your own life became a circus. I was the ringmaster. But my name wasn’t Barnum.
The savior illusion quickly dissipated. Nothing freaked out a dorm of girls like a rat scurrying about. All it took was one ill-fated swat.
That was when I knew I couldn’t save the world.
Of course, that was also only one reason I’d been expelled.
I moved back home after that. Back to the safety where the days bled together, and words became my reality.
“Yeah, because every vampire walks around with rodents,” I snapped.
The path I’d laid out for myself was never an easy one. I should have just given up long ago, and maybe I wouldn’t be suffering the consequences of this bitter, undead symphony.
“You’re not one of those, are you, though? You’re this weird combination of supernatural creatures, and who’s to say what that Alistair guy is?” Again, Claudia loudly flipped a page in her magazine and didn’t look up.
It was the metropolitan way of ignoring someone, how to halfway be present and still be a dick.
“Maybe instead of snapping at me,” Claudine continued, “you should force Alistair to man up and ensure that you don’t fall victim to your own stupidity. Hey, I'm just real.”
Did real imply being mean?
My thoughts automatically drifted to Alistair. Why hadn’t he answered me? Maybe it was for the best. He’d get overprotective, and all I could tell him was that I’d collapsed. Sure, I could explain it as low blood sugar, especially since such could cause hallucinations. No, it did not explain the cat resting next to me or Professor Mason’s epileptic fit. It definitely didn’t explain this new voice in my head.
“You need help I can’t provide.” Claudine turned toward me and stared. “The way you’re acting, you’re either going to do something even more imbecilic, like appear on a TV show hungry where there are tons of people you might attack—”
I glanced forward toward Joe, but luckily the car’s partition was up. “I’ve never attacked anyone.” The words rushed out through clenched teeth.
“Yet. And what are you going to do when there’s no one there to save your ass from your own feral behavior? You’re untrained, a menace waiting to be unlocked. And I feel sorry for you when the monster comes out to feast.” Claudine closed her magazine. “I can only hope that I won’t be on the menu.”
Claudine’s phone buzzed, and then so did mine. I pulled it from my purse and saw the message: Local Psychic didn’t see it coming: Sunflower Flaxen found dead.
The article’s headline was tactless.
My shoulders slumped. The anger I’d been feeling quickly dissipated. Life was so fleeting.
The article was dated weeks ago. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t. Still, the world stopped spinning for a moment. How could this be? My throat burned. She’d been bitten by vampires, I recalled, but that didn’t mean she was dead. She couldn’t be dead.
My emotions spiked, building a toxic mix of blame and lust for revenge. If I was getting this news, that meant that the Order knew, and no one had the decency to tell me.
“Sorry, Sis.” Claudine reached out her hand to take mine, patting it lightly.
A tear escaped before I could wipe it away.
The car pulled up to my building, and silence filled the tense void.
“Thanks, Joe,” I called out, and the doorman opened the car door. Claudine would follow, but right now, I couldn’t focus on what she’d mentioned. There was much truth in her words, and they stung. Had Alistair’s blood placed my family in danger? What happened to Sunflower?
Chapter 12
Leslie
Wednesday
It was almost three in the afternoon, way past time for vampires to sleep, even ones who could barely walk in the sunlight.
Foreign emotions battered me as if life had become abrasive. I wanted to cry, curse, and strangely hit something. The wisp of a shadow clawed at my mind, like an insidious infestation waiting for more than a moment of my attention.
Did Claudine’s fear echo my own?
“The monster is only just being born, dear Leslie,” the strange voice whispered.
I pushed against it.
Like iron curtains locking down into place, I yawned and headed toward the golden elevator in my building, the building that my family had lived in since my gran had stumbled upon some money to land the apartment.
“The superstar is home,” Gran said, holding out her cigarette on its 1920s cigarette holder. Today, she was dressed up as a flapper. I squinted and wondered why. “Looks like you had a horrible day, dear.”
“What’s that smell?” Claudine came in right behind me and turned up her nose, only to then cover it. I wasn’t sure if she meant the smoke or the fish. Unfortunately, Claudine couldn’t see Gran like I could. Then again, Claudine wasn’t dead like Gran and me.
“I don’t know why you do that like you’ve never been down to the docks before.” Gran was in a piss-poor mood. It took all I could to remain as if I’d not heard Gran’s retort.
“Leslie, while you were out, you got a parcel. I couldn’t pick up the package, but I did open the door so he could scoot it right in.” She pointed to a stinky pile of newspaper-wrapped fish.
“You need to clean this place up.” Claudine pinched her nose and spoke in a high-pitched voice. “I’ve never known you to be so trifling. And seriously, who leaves fresh fish on the floor? People are paying thousands of dollars for a place like this in Manhattan, and you’re living in squalor.”
This was a time I surely wished that Claudine could see Gran standing there, and know about what was happening, but Claudine would wig out. She didn’t have the sight and hadn’t been invited to the entire paranormal party on the cruise. Instead of spelling it all out, I just sighed.
It seemed to be my thing now.
Claudine moved to the kitchen and returned with a can of disinfectant.
“Don’t!” But before I could say anything else, she’d sprayed it full of a lemony-lime stench that made all of the fish, and its blood, useless. My stomach grumbled loudly in protest. Shit.
“You should be thanking me. One, for helping you get rid of that smell.” The fish carcass still laid there.
“Are you going to move from this place now?” Claudine asked.
“Over my dead body you will.” Gran interrupted.
“You’re already dead, so hush,” I whispered lowly.
“What?” Claudine asked, confused.
“Nothing, it’s filled with lead…paint. I’m just going to strip it away and do some other stuff with it. It’s our family home. I can’t let that go. It’s where Gran lived after she left Virginia.”
“You mean after I had the adventure of my life.” Gran shimmied over and plopped down on the couch. “I used to be able to do the Charleston with the best of them. Don’t get me started on that good Caribbean Rum that we ran up and down the East Coast.” As if her bottom was lit on fire, she hopped back up and kicked out her right foot, twisting her left foot behind her. Yep, the Charleston, and all the while, I had to keep a straight face and act like my ghostly gran wasn’t there.
“Yeah, how Mom raised a family of seven here beats me,” I said.
“It’s because of my blood. Can’t be weak with Black Myrtle’s blood racing through your veins.” Gran then hummed and danced some more.
“Why are you shaking your head?” Claudine asked.
“Just wondering what I should do next. It’s been a long day, and I have some stuff to accomplish.”
“You’re kicking me out?” Claudine asked. “I was thinking about sending Professor Mason some flowers. That poor man. What would have happened if you weren’t there to save him?”
The conversation had drifted exactly where I didn’t want it to go.
“What happened?” Gran demanded.
“We don’t need to get into this.”
“Of course we do. You’re a snare for bad stuff, like a magnet attracting bad things.” As if realizing what she said, Claudine raised her hands and crossed her index fingers over each other, as if her finger crucifix would protect her from my bad aura.
“Don’t put that on me. I’m walking in the light.”
“Your new spotlight doesn’t count. Weird stuff has been happening a lot around you, and I don’t know how much of it is truly a coincidence.”
My sister didn’t know enough to figure this out, and I wasn’t going to give her any more fodder. “Whatever, but I do have some stuff to do.”
Claudine pouted, and Gran whispered, “That is not a good look for a woman in her late twenties.”
I had no idea if she expected it to work, because it didn’t.
“Well, I have to go get my nails done, anyway. Being your assistant means making sure you’re on track for the next engagement, including drinks tonight with the agent from the Fabio Pinkerton’s Literary Agency that you’ve wanted to be with forever. They’re finally interested, but we have to meet them tonight, or it’s off the table.”
