Lover Unveiled, page 10
Her clothes were the halo that she, by her nature, would never possess metaphysically.
But fuck it, she could look good while she did evil.
And yet . . .
As her silverware clinked softly against her plate, there was such silence here, a reminder that what she adored might be grounding for her and an important source of hunt-and-peck, acquisitional excitement, yet in the end . . . these fashion masterpieces couldn’t touch her. Hold her. Laugh and cry with her.
She was alone in a crowded room.
Shoving her plate away, she sat back with her wine, swirling the yellow wash around the inside of the clear glass.
Chianti and fava beans, huh? she thought as she regarded the golden color. How common.
Then again, human organs were hardly a delicacy, were they. And worse, the shit was not working.
She wasn’t eating this for her health, for fuck’s sake.
Not her physical health, at any rate.
There just had to be a way to capture the love that was out there, the love she saw between others who were coupled up, the love that everyone else on the planet but she had managed to find. Just because she was a demon didn’t mean she had no emotions. No need to be cherished. No desire to be seen as valuable, distinctive . . . significant . . . by the one she found valuable, distinctive, and significant.
It was a natural instinct.
As well as one hell of a Dr. Phil show.
Devina, you know, I’ve been doing this close to forty years now, so I know what I’m talking about. How’s your life working for you?
“Not great, Phil,” she said aloud. “I just want what you and Robin have.”
Her mental Dr. Phil leaned forward in his suit and tie, his big gold watch winking from under his cuff, his bald head covered with makeup so it didn’t reflect the studio lights. If you look back on your previous relationships, how would you say your behavior was? Were you a good partner?
“Of course.”
Devina, we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge.
She thought about her one true love, Jim Heron. “I only tried to kill his girlfriend once.” As Phil gave her that look, she cursed. “Fine. A couple of times. But she was so fucking annoying, and I don’t know how in the fuck he picked her over me.”
Relationships are a two-way street. And it sounds like he was on a different road than yours.
“Well, then he needed to read his goddamn map right. Get back on course. Get with the program.”
Look, I may just be a country boy—
“Oh, will you drop the Southern poverty bullshit. You have a net worth of over four hundred million dollars. It’s time to give up the relatability-signaling of overalls you haven’t had on your fat ass for half a century.”
Imaginary Dr. Phil stared her straight in the eye. If you were in a relationship right now, would you contribute or contaminate?
“Fuck off, Phil.”
With a lackadaisical fork, she poked at the heart muscle. How long had she been doing this? Hoping to find fate through her digestive tract?
She was running out of patience. And Gas-X.
On a wave of frustration, her eyes swept around her lair. And it was hard to pinpoint exactly when the thought occurred, but the next thing she knew, she was getting to her feet and going across to her display of Birkins.
The Hermès handbags were on display on a lovely partner’s desk she had five-fingered from a French count with whom she’d had a lovely little dalliance that had satisfied her for a fortnight . . . and ended up with him disemboweled and hung on an iron fence.
But why focus on the unpleasant stuff.
Besides, her ending had been fine. She’d moved on to bigger and better things. Specifically a blacksmith who’d been hung like one of the war stallions he’d shod.
Now that had been fun. But again, not anything that had lasted. Lot of hair on the back—and she wasn’t talking about the hooved mammals who were supposed to be sporting a saddle.
And this was her problem. In fact, nothing had lasted. Not even Jim Heron—because he’d never been hers to begin with.
For fuck’s sake, she wasn’t getting any younger.
Of course, she also wasn’t getting any older.
Immortal, hello.
The most expensive of all her handbags was the iconic Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Birkin 35 with the diamond hardware. The white-and-gray masterpiece was given pride of place on an inlaid antique bed stand that had two drawers—because come on, she had to put it on some kind of pedestal. And as she stood before the bag, she took a moment to appreciate the pattern of scales and the bilateral markings that meant the darker sections of the skin were on the outsides, the creamy white center a perfect contrast.
So beautiful.
And yet not her most valuable item—even though on the secondary market, because it was a 35 with the diamond hardware, it was worth a cool $400,000. Or more if she sold it with the matching diamond bangle. Which she had.
Below its white gold feet, she pulled open the antique stand’s top drawer—and it was with piercing defeat that she reached forward. She supposed she was kind of like a guy in the way she never wanted to read the assembly instructions, ask for directions, or be told what to do at a crossroads. So for her to use an aid, even if Dr. Phil always referred his guests to experts for help, seemed like—
Devina frowned.
Leaned farther forward.
Patted her hand around the inside of the drawer. Which was totally fucking empty.
With an explosive curse, she ripped out the bed stand’s top level. Nothing was in it. And even though her eyes were functioning just fine, like a fucking idiot, she turned the thing over and shook it.
As if what she’d expected to find in there was somehow stuck to the bottom.
The Book was gone.
In a frantic whirlwind, she opened the drawer underneath—in case she’d misremembered which one she’d put it in. Also empty. The drawers of the partner’s desk were likewise Book-less, the silk thongs and bras bearing no resemblance to the human-flesh-covered tome she was looking for.
With shaking hands, she started to go through her other bureaus, the shelves by her bedding platform, the kitchen cabinets, the shit in the bathroom area. She even went to check under her bed before remembering that it was a fucking platform with nowhere to store anything underneath.
“Where the fuck is my Book!” she yelled into the silence.
And then she remembered . . .
Wheeling around to the far corner, she glared at the five-by-five metal pen with its water bowl and pallet. The goddamn thing was empty because the fucking virgin idiot she’d had in there had escaped.
“You sneaky sonofabitch,” she breathed as she walked over.
It had been her fault, really. She’d obviously underestimated him—probably because she hadn’t actually needed him. The abduction had been a compulsion rather than something demanded by her circumstances, a relic of past behavior that was no longer required. With her mirror destroyed, she didn’t have to worry about protecting her privacy here as much.
She’d been lonely, though.
“You little shit,” she said as she stared down at where she’d imprisoned him. “Did you take my fucking Book?”
He was the only one who’d been here since she’d seen it last.
The fucking bastard must have watched her flip through the pages that one morning.
Devina turned back around to the antique bed stand, now emptied of its drawers. There was, of course, another explanation, one that was utterly unthinkable. So she promptly discarded it.
The Book loved her. Of course it wanted to be with her.
No, he had taken her Book, the little shit, and even if she wasn’t thinking of using one of its spells to bring her true love, she was still going to need the fucking thing back.
It was hers, after all. And she was nothing if not possessive.
“Motherfucker,” she muttered.
Now she needed to find the goddamn thing.
The following evening, Mae was back at her garage door, car keys in hand, purse up on her shoulder. She hadn’t slept at all during the day, and First Meal had been a single piece of dry toast that had gone down like sheet metal.
“I’ll be back soon,” she called out to Rhoger.
Why did she wait for a response? Like, did she actually think he was going to sit up in that tub of ice water, and put in an order for Jimmy John’s?
In the back of her mind, a little warning bell went off. When you were talking to your dead brother and expecting him to answer, you were probably out of your mind.
Take out the “probably.”
“I’ll give your love to Tallah,” she said before slipping through the door and relocking it.
As she drove off, she had to fumble in her bag for her sunglasses. The fact that the other cars on the road had their headlights on, and her neighbors were once again streaming home from work, didn’t mean much to a vampire when it came to that barely-there glow on the western horizon. The fact that her eyes were stinging and her skin was prickling in warning under her clothes was a good reminder of exactly how nonnegotiable the whole no-sunlight thing was for the species.
But she couldn’t have stayed in that house for a moment longer.
And yes, dematerializing out was an option. She needed fresh ice, though, and the driving also helped calm her down.
It was amazing how you could be trapped even when you were free to go where you pleased.
Tallah’s cottage was on the far outskirts of Caldwell, a little stone jewel nestled in a glen of maple trees. The trip there took anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes depending on traffic, and Mae put the radio on to distract herself from stuff she didn’t want to think about. NPR didn’t work, though. Her mind still chewed on things like the fact that vampire bodies sank, not floated, in water—something she hadn’t known until she’d started taking care of Rhoger in his current state. She was also keenly aware that time was running out for her and her brother. And she worried that maybe that Book Tallah was talking about wasn’t the answer to the problem.
Maybe all she had for an answer was a Fade Ceremony, a permanently empty house, and the crushing realization that she was the last of her bloodline, left alone on the planet.
If shared memories were the best kind . . . then memories you could no longer share with the collective that were in them were the worst. That kind of solitude turned you into a reference volume rather than part of a story, and she had a feeling the losses made every thought a platform for mourning.
To keep herself from tearing up, she cast a mental line back into a sea of undesirables, and guess what came up on her cognitive hook?
That fighter from the night before.
Great.
Still, as she followed the curving roads into the country, and the population density of humans drained away in favor of cornfields and small dairy farms, she chose him to focus on. It was the best of a bad lot, as her father would have said—and it wasn’t like she had to work very hard at the preoccupation. She could picture Shawn clear as day, from his obsidian eyes, to the tattoos that covered his body, to his aggression . . . to his spilled blood on all that concrete.
How someone could go from nearly dying to just going about his business, she hadn’t a clue. Then again, she had a feeling his little leak hadn’t been the first one he’d sprung. God, if that had happened to her, she would have screamed until she lost consciousness even after she recovered.
Meanwhile, he’d seemed like he was merely stuck in the wrong lane at a supermarket.
And FFS, if she had told him to, he would have brought that male, the Reverend, back for her.
Maybe she should have taken that route. But then what? If the Reverend didn’t know about the Book, how would dragging him back to that garage have helped? And maybe the offer had just been hyperbole on the fighter’s part, a bluster courtesy of his chest-thumping complex.
Right?
As she pulled onto a dirt road that was choked with bushes and overgrowth, she was still debating the pros and cons of a decision that had been made the night before. But at least she was almost to Tallah’s and then—yay!—she had other things to think about . . . like Books that may or may not exist, and may or may not be helpful when it came to her brother’s situation.
In the meantime, she had the bad condition of this goat path to focus on. There were potholes to fight through, her headlights bouncing up and down as she tried to avoid the worst of them, and the brambles that grew up along the shoulder were so tight, the most aggressive of them scratched at the Civic’s paint job.
But then the cottage made its appearance.
As she rounded a final turn, her car pinpointed her destination, the headlights blasting the old stone of the outer walls in an illumination that was kind of unkind. The place was in a genteel state of disrepair, the front door painted in a faded red that was partially chipped away, one shutter hanging cockeyed, the slate roof showing a missing tile here and there. The grounds were likewise a shaggy mess, the rose garden nothing but a tangled circle of thorns and weeds, the front path ragged and frayed by tree roots and mole tunnels. A fallen branch big as a car was in the side yard, and that old birch tree looked like spring’s CPR of warmth and sunshine might not pull it through the winter’s cold coma.
Putting her car in park, she canned the ignition and took a deep breath. She really needed to help more around the property, but between her full-time work online and taking care of her own house, the last year had gone by so fast. Previously, when her father had been alive, he had come here and done a lot of the handyman stuff, and her brother had helped out like that, too. It was amazing how fast things degenerated, though.
Three years without upkeep and things were nearly unrecognizable. And it was hard not to find a parallel in the collapse of Mae’s own life, everything that had once stood strong and true now decaying and lost.
Her parents had seemed so permanent. Rhoger, too.
Youth and a lack of exposure to death had meant her family was immortal and the details of her life—where she lived, who she was related to, what she did—were written-in-stone facts, as immutable as the night sky, as gravity, as the color of her own eyes.
Such a fallacy, though.
Getting out, she almost didn’t lock her car. But an echo of the fear she’d felt in that crowd of humans had her putting her key in the door and turning it.
As she walked over the flagstone path, Tallah opened things up, and the sight of the stooped older female standing in that familiar archway made Mae blink quick. Tallah was always the same, dressed in one of her loose housecoats, this time in a periwinkle blue, and she had on matching blue-and-yellow slippers. Her cane was likewise coordinated, a pale blue ribbon wound down the metal stalk of the support, and there was a corresponding bow at the end of her braid of white hair.
“Hi,” Mae said as she came up to the front step.
“Hello, dearest one.”
They embraced across the threshold, with Mae being careful not to squeeze too hard—even though all she wanted to do was pull Tallah close and never let the old female go.
“Come,” Tallah said. “I have tea on.”
“I’ve got the door,” Mae murmured as she entered and closed things.
The kitchen was in the back, and as she followed Tallah through the tiny, familiar rooms, everything smelled the same. Fresh bread. Old leather armchairs. Faded fires in the hearth and fragrant loose tea leaves. The furniture was all too big for the small house, and it was of absurdly high quality, the tables marked with marble and gilt, the secretary set with fine inlaid woods, the chairs and sofas clad with faded and now-worn silks. Oil paintings in heavy gold-leafed frames hung on the walls, the landscapes and portraits executed by Matisse. Seurat. Monet. Manet.
There was a fortune under the roof of this tiny cottage, and Mae frequently worried about thieves coming out here. But so far, things had been okay. Tallah had been living here since the eighties and had never been bothered. It was a shame, though, that the female had refused to sell even one of those paintings off to better her living conditions. She had been steadfast in keeping her things with her, however, even if it meant that necessary improvements couldn’t be afforded. The obstinance didn’t make a lot of sense, but then it wasn’t anybody else’s call, was it.
Neither of them said anything as Mae took a seat at the kitchen table and Tallah busied herself at the counter with the plug-in kettle and two teacups. The urge to help the female with the tray was nearly irresistible, especially as Tallah hung her cane off her forearm and seemed to struggle with the load of creamer, sugar, and filled cups. But self-sufficiency was the pride of the elderly, and no one needed to take any more autonomy away from the female before it was absolutely necessary.
As Tallah set the things down, Mae nodded to the far corner of the table, where some kind of display of objects was covered with a threadbare monogrammed towel. “What’s under there?”
Usually, the female kept everything neat as a pin, the minimal amount of stuff out on the counters, tables, shelves, mantels.
“Tell me again what happened last night?” Tallah said as she lowered herself down into her chair and passed a cup and saucer over.
The porcelain twosome rattled in her unsteady grip, and the sound reverberated through Mae’s entire body. It was a relief to take the tea and end both the acoustics and the risk of a total spill, and she covered up her rush by giving a factual this-then-that of everything. Naturally, the report had redacted parts. She cut out the part where she roughed up that human woman in the wait line, and yeah, boy, there was a whole lot of gappage when it came to Shawn.
“The Reverend lied about the Book,” Tallah said as she poured some milk into her tea. “He knows exactly what it is. But perhaps not where.”
“Well, he’s not going to be a resource. He was pretty clear on that.”
As they fell into silence, Mae watched the curl of steam rising from her tea. With the cooling of the Earl Grey, the breadth of it was diminishing.
