Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (25 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

VIANNA MELTDOWN

I’m out of the pub before Mel notices me. At least, I don’t think he noticed me. If he did, the bar was dark and I had a shawl over my head. He wouldn’t have recognized me. And there’s no one following me now, as I walk down the street.

The sun has set and my heavy eyelids are telling me to go back to my room, to get some sleep. As much as I would love to collapse onto my bed, I need a minute to calm my nerves, first. I need fresh air. I need to walk. I need a cigarette—a cigarette to soothe the pain growing in my neck, from twisting it every ten seconds to look over my shoulder. Calm down, Olivia; he’s not following you.

A plume of smoke rises up in the distance. A woman leans over the edge of a cobblestone bridge, a black figure against the shimmering Vianna backdrop. Her thin silhouette is sunken, and defeated; each drag of her smoke is long and introspective. Closer, I can see that, like me, she has a shawl wrapped around her head. As soon as she finishes one cigarette, she lights another. I may as well be looking into a mirror.

“Excuse me, could I bum a cigarette off of you?” I ask

She holds her smoke between her lips and digs into her purse. She says nothing as she passes me her lighter and a cigarette.

I light the smoke and inhale, finally allowing my shoulders to relax. “Thank you so much.”

She says nothing with her cigarette between her lips, blowing old smoke out of her nose and, without breaking, filling her lungs with new smoke. She has effectively replaced air with cigarette smoke. Maybe therians don’t need air—I don’t know. She looks over at me with a half glance, probably wondering why I’m still standing next to her. I’m wondering the same thing. There is something comforting about the woman, the thought that, someone else knows what it’s like being dragged through the mud and the rat shit. She doesn’t seem to mind when I lean against the same stone wall, and stare out into the same black void in the water below. Maybe I’m giving her the same sense of comfort.

Each drag eases my mind and assures me that Mel is still oblivious to my existence—assures me that I’m still a dead girl, as far as any of my enemies are concerned.

The woman is already holding out a replacement as my cigarette’s embers reach the filter.

“Thanks.” As I take the cigarette, my gut turns. I think I gave a cigarette to that homeless man at the Ilium Inn, that cold night.

“Don’t mention it,” she says, breaking her silence. Her voice is low and raspy, as if she’d lost it screaming. This time, she lights my cigarette for me.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She takes a long drag, turns her head away from me, and exhales an elegant plume of spiralling pewter, showcasing her silhouette. She turns back to me and says, “Never been better.” I can’t see her face in the dark, but I can see the outline of her cheekbones as they lift up. “You too, I see,” she says.

“Oh, I’m fabulous.” I smile. “Let me pay you back for these.” I reach into my pocket.

“Keep your money.”

“Really, I don’t mind.” I offer her a couple of marks.

She looks down at my offer. “The last thing I want are more territs. Thank you, though.”

“The last thing I want is a handout. Please.”

She looks down at the offer again and laughs, reaches out, and takes the marks from me. “My husband was diagnosed with cancer—”

“Oh my God. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, no—this was years ago. He survived.” She rolls her head, as if, by surviving cancer she meant he forgot their anniversary for the third year in a row.

“Oh, good.”

She laughs. “He always gets mad when I tell people he had cancer. He says, the worst part about having cancer is people treating you like you have cancer.” I can’t even imagine. The old man’s pity was hard enough to swallow.

“Still. You must be relieved,” I say.

She places her purse on the ledge and slips the marks inside. The glow of a nearby streetlight glistens off the bag’s shining leather.

Looking at the bag, I say, “I love your purse.”

She lifts it up and spins it around, holding it away from her body as if it’s crawling with bugs. “I’ll just say, thank goodness it’s just temporary.” The same amber light gleams off the purse’s golden logo, a familiar monogram: BV. She doesn’t need to say more before my heart sinks into my gut. “Some tramp stole my nice bag.”

It’s time to go, Olivia. Force a smile; thank her for the cigarettes, and go. Go before she clues in. And for the love of God, say something. Stop standing there and say something—anything. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I manage to say.

She says, “You don’t still have it, by any chance, do you?” Her tone is unchanged. She doesn’t bother looking over at me and she doesn’t bother repeating herself.

My cigarette dwindles between my rigid fingers. I should have stayed at the inn. Why did I ever leave the inn?

“Those bags are hard to come by. They don’t make them like that anymore—even at Beaunelle. Can I ask you a question?”

Can I say no? I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “What’s that?” Her calmness is unnerving. I look around but can’t see any henchmen, anyone to chase me if I run. The absence of cronies is somehow more unsettling than the alternative.

“In what way is stealing better than taking a handout? Why is a handout somehow so morally reprehensible, but taking something you never earned so acceptable?” She waits silently, calmly for my reply. I can’t imagine the effort of self-control it takes to stand so still, act so indifferent, so cool. I haven’t forgotten Porsha was the one who insisted on my death. So insistent, she wanted to be present while she watched me die.

“I was desperate,” I say.

She lights a third cigarette, this time not bothering to offer one to me. She rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and nearly speaks, but is interrupted by an involuntary scoff. “My family was wealthy. I married into wealth. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe Carmine is right, and I really don’t have any idea.”

I look around again, expecting to see some long black coats lingering in the shadows.

“There’s no one here. Just us.” Porsha says. I shouldn’t believe her, but do. I’m no psychologist, but I do consider myself a tremendous liar—and no one is this cool when they lie, not even me. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small handgun.

No sane person should act this cool when threatening someone with a gun. “What do you want?” I ask.

“I want to kill you.” She says it with a familiar hint of pity, not for me, but for herself. She wants to kill me, but unfortunately, she can’t. She finally turns to look at me. Her manicured fingernail teases the trigger. “Carmine said the gypsies found you and sold you out,” she pauses again, biting her lip, “but that doesn’t add up. How did the gypsies know we were looking for you? You don’t look like someone who would hang around with gypsies. A gypsy can’t tell the difference between a Beaunelle purse and a plastic bag.”

Calm still, she keeps the pistol aimed at my chest and patiently awaits a response. I begin to explain everything, starting with Freddie’s fight with Hugo. As soon as I tell her about the trailer they kept me locked inside of, she rolls her eyes and sighs.

“—Darling, I don’t really care,” she says, interrupting me. “I’m not interested in hearing your sob story. I just want to know where the gypsies are headed. Tell me, and I’ll let you live. Simple, right?”

I look down at the barrel of the gun. I think about lying. It would be easy to lie, but what would that get me? Temporary freedom? I’m sick of temporary freedom. I want the real thing. “I don’t know,” I say. “If I knew, I would tell you, but I don’t know. I was blindfolded the whole way there, and I was blindfolded when they took me back to Ilium.” What do I get out of telling the truth? I don’t know.

Her finger snuggles up against the trigger and she lets out a long, dramatic sigh. “The town they brought you to—what did the buildings look like? What were the residents like?” She waves the gun as she speaks, as if to tell me to stop meandering.

“It wasn’t a town. It was a field, surrounded by a forest. The trees were all straight—”

“—Wonderful.” Her voice is flat, emotionless—as sarcastic as voices can be. “Straight trees. That’s all very helpful.” She raises the gun. Every muscle in my body tenses and I cower away.

“Wait.” I remained cowered.

There’s a long silence. Surprisingly, as requested, she’s waiting. She waves her gun and raises her eyebrows.

“I don’t know where the gypsies are, but I know where you can find a guy who does.” I try to peel myself out from my standing-fetal position, but my muscles and joints stay locked, untrusting of my intuition.

“Who is he and where can I find him?”

“At the inn—at the pub under the inn. He’s a gypsy.” I explain how I know Mel, how he and Freddie captured me, and how I overheard him explaining why he’s in town. Porsha is much more interested in my story this time.

I’m both relieved and shocked when Porsha places her purse on the ledge again, and stashes the pistol inside. She takes a black card out and says, “Good.” She hands the card to me. It has no markings, no features. “Here’s my deal. Go and turn yourself in to the gypsy. Have him bring you back to their camp. Do that, and I won’t tell my husband I ever saw you.”

“What’s this?” I ask, holding up the card.

“When my husband gets home tomorrow night, I’m going to tell him I was mugged by a gypsy. Actually…” Porsha takes her pistol out from her purse again. I cower. “Calm down.” She shakes her head, pulls out her box of cigarettes, and then throws her purse into the river.

She casually slips the gun and cigarettes into her coat pocket. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, sweetheart?” She lights another cigarette, this time handing me one.

“How are you going to find me?” Did she want me to call her? What if I couldn’t find a phone? What if the gypsies stuck me back into their trailer?

“I’ll track my territ card,” she says, motioning her head towards the black card in my hand. “Tomorrow evening, after I tell my husband I was mugged.”

I can’t count the number of ways I could escape. The minute I’m alone, I could toss the card in the trash. I could give the card to the old man at the inn, and have him send it to the other side of the country. I could destroy the card; destroy whatever sensor was inside of it.

The little smile she makes when I look up at her suggests she considered all those possibilities and she knows that I’m considering them, too. She wouldn’t set me loose unless she was certain of her plan—and here she is, setting me loose, turning around and walking away, across the bridge, without even a final warning. Her coolness is the warning. She isn’t even a bit concerned that I’ll outsmart her. She’s ten steps ahead and she knows it.

Besides, assuming she keeps her promise, it would be idiotic to default on her deal. She’s giving me an out. Maybe Carmine would never find me if I were to throw the card off the bridge and skip town. Maybe. But it’s the maybe that I’m sick of living with. My neck is already sore from keeping one eye over my shoulder.