Fairy Circle (16 page)

He leaned forward again, his manner intense, his voice husky, “What are
you
looking for?”

Saffron leaned back and made a noise somewhere between a bark and a hiccup. She turned red all over again and realized that the short window of opportunity that would have allowed her to say something cool had closed with a bang. Since there was silence between them, her mouth began working but no sound came. And so easily, he smiled again, his eyes bright and intense moving over her face.

A man and woman were walking toward Markis. The man was tall, burly. He had thick, orange hair and a beard, as if he drank much Guinness and said things like “lass,” and “bairn.” The woman at his side could not have been more opposite. She was small and sinewy, with long raven-black hair and dark eyes. Her nose was broad and prominent. Her hair was braided into one long plank which trailed down her back, almost reaching her bottom. She held the man’s hand. Saffron backed off from Markis a little more. The big man and little woman smiled at her. The woman held Saffron with her eyes longer than was comfortable. The woman’s eyes grew solemn. Saffron looked down at her shoes. The two older people turned to Markis.

“
Who’s your friend?” The man threw some popcorn at his mouth and caught some of it.

Markis moved closer to Saffron and touched her arm. “This is Saffron. Saffron, this is my mom and dad. We’re going to go see
The Last Planet
.” He watched people file into the separate theater doors. “Looks like everyone but you and the hens are going to see it.”

Saffron nodded glumly.

“
What are you going to see, Saffron?” Markis’s father could sure chomp a lot of popcorn.

“
Psycho Carnage 2.
” Saffron admitted shamefully.

Markis’s parents pulled their heads back at the same time and winced.

“
Dad, don’t you think Saffron should come with us instead and see a movie that’s actually going to be cool?”

Markis’s mother laughed. “I would definitely come with us instead, unless your friends would miss you.” Her voice was soft.

Saffron looked toward the corner where “her friends” had just been squawking and realized that the theatre was now quiet save for the low murmurs of the other patrons. There was no longer any cacophony from the Mindy-girls; they simply weren’t there. They had left her behind. Not one of them, not even Mindy, had come to tell Saffron that they were going into the movie.

Saffron stiffened with the knowledge that she was completely alone in a room full of strangers. She looked at Markis, her eyes wide and unblinking. When she realized her mouth was hanging open and she most probably looked like a close cousin to the village idiot, she slammed her lips closed and forced a smile.

“
I’d love to go see
The Last Planet
with you guys. I just have to go buy my ticket.” Saffron was straining to hold on to a cool demeanor. Inside, she was raging.

“
Mom, Dad, I’ll go with Saffron to get her ticket. We’ll be right back.” He turned to Saffron, placed his hot palm into the small of her back, and guided her to the ticket counter.

Saffron could hardly believe this was happening! She thought she might be in a dream, just not her usual crappy dreams. This was a soft dream filled with warmth, wonder, and a positive energy that cradled her. She’d believe in fairies and vampires before she would have ever believed that someone like Markis, that Markis, would invite her to watch a movie with him! And OMG - he was touching her back!

Wait. Did his fingertips feel the fatty flesh where her pants pulled into her hips? She pulled herself up ramrod-straight as she laid her money on the counter for the ticket. Somewhere along the way, from the ticket counter to the ticket line, his hand had dropped.
So yeah, he felt you, fatty. Or was it your bones? Yeah, he felt you, boney.

But what if there’s chicken stuck in my teeth? What if there’s something in my nose, just hanging there? I should have had mac and cheese for dinner. Yeah, right - with all of those carbs I could just stick a beach ball under my shirt; why wait for the fat to accumulate?

She blocked out the voices of the relaxed moviegoers that surrounded her while she rummaged in her tiny backpack for a tissue and a mirror.

Gum, too. Look for gum! Your breath probably smells like a camel’s ass! Did you shave your legs? Make sure your pants don't ride up at any point while you’re in the light, just in case…

She was completely oblivious to the buzz that had started up ahead, and was working its way toward the back of the line where she waited with Markis and his parents. Married women took a look and raised their eyebrows in pleasant surprise. They gave their husbands devilish grins. Husbands rolled their eyes
big deal,
and teenage boys were sneering. They didn’t like the view and some of them actually moved their bodies in front of their dates as if shielding their territory.

Just in front of Saffron, gushes of delight bubbled from a group of fifteen-year-old girls. One girl craned her neck to look over the crowd and swayed as she came back to her heels. She whipped around to face her friends. Her jaw dropped in mock disbelief as she pretended to faint.

“
Oh. My. God! He is Totally Hot!”

“
I have found the man that is going to make me a woman,” this from a girl no more than fourteen, sporting a constellation of pimples and enough brace-work to build a ten-speed.

“
No way girl; he’s mine!”

The banter went on. The exchanges became louder, and soon enough almost every female in line, young and old. was infecting each other with excited whispers and small shrieks.

Markis cast his father a look that said, “Oh, please,” and fluttered his eyelashes.

Markis’s father grunted, smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Who’s up there, the goddamn Beatles?”

“
Yeah, Dad, if it was 1964.”

Saffron, existing in some obscure inner universe, dug harder in her purse. She grunted in dismay when she was only able to come up with an old, stale stick of gum and half a tissue. Could she clean her nose with such a little thing?
Not MY honker
, she sighed. She stared blindly at the back of the girl in front of her and concentrated.
No! Search harder
!
There must be a whole tissue in there somewhere!

“
Do
you
think
he’ll
think
I’m
cute or is my butt too big?” Markis looked at his father with his most serious face.

“
I don’t know Markis, you’re kind of lacking, you know….” His father held his hands in front of his chest and fluffed the air with them.

“
Stop that! Honestly, you can be so vulgar sometimes,” Markis’s mother hissed. She nodded curtly at Saffron. “Remember, we are with a new friend tonight.”

But Saffron could not have been more unaware. With eyebrows knit and cheeks fevered, she dove into the leather bag for the third time. She had dropped her ticket inside and she needed to fish it out.

The girls in front of them finally arrived at their personal, temporary Nirvana - the cause of the excitement, the featured act of the evening - the ticket-tear boy. He smiled majestically upon them, perfectly aware of his Godlike aura.

“
Well, damn,” Markis’s father
was
impressed, “He’s very pretty.”

He was gorgeous. That, no one on earth could deny. None of the guys in line tried to deny it. They just looked away, very disgruntled.

Sensuality rolled off him as he kept up the banter with the girls. His voice was hypnotizing; it came in waves, washing over the girls until they quieted. He wasn’t that tall, but his manner and the way he held himself made him appear much bigger. His skin was the color of coffee made light with a generous amount of cream. It was smooth and flawless. But it was his lips that the girls locked on, feasted on. They were so incredibly full.

As he spoke to the girls, he gestured with his hands. Sometimes he dipped his chin into his chest and tugged on his earlobe as if bashful at the praise he was receiving from his new fans. When he smiled, which was often, he did so without ever parting his soft lips. He had a kind word for all and often spoke in hushed tones as if to say, “Come closer, I have a secret, I can only confide in you.”

“
You should be in movies,” gushed one of the girls as the others nodded in agreement.

“
Why be in movies when I can go to the movies every night and be surrounded by such beautiful women?"

“
Jaysus Christ,” muttered Markis’s father with one raised eyebrow as he scratched his ear and averted his gaze. They were now five people back and he just wanted to get past these cult-bound children. He was getting the creeps.

The ticket boy wore a thin, dark t-shirt, embroidered with the theatre’s logo. Where his arms emerged from the short sleeves, he exposed more creamy brown skin and perfectly muscled arms. Where the muscles were under his t-shirt, you could see them, tight and thick in his shoulders, stomach, and back.

This, of course, was more than the girls could take. They had become silent, didn’t even know what they were standing there for, just watching him as if he were a fine art exhibit. The ticket boy had to coax the tickets out of their sweaty hands as if they were invalids. The girls finally moved off as a unit, speechless and starry-eyed. When they were about ten yards away, and just at the entrance to their movie, the spell which held them mercifully quiet broke, and all at once they exploded into peals of laughter and animated chatter. This chatter between them would take them through the next four days. The topic of discussion varied little.

“
He was definitely looking at me when he said, ‘beautiful women’!”

“
No way, he only looked at you for a second, then his eyes STOPPED on me and didn’t move again.”

“
Are you out of your mind?”

“
He brushed MY arm….”

“
What a freakin’ milk chocolate god!”

“
Uh, yeah...I’ll take a bite outta that!”

Markis handed over his ticket. He noticed the guy was probably a lot older than he was. Like four or five years or something, definitely out of college.

“
Thanks, man.” Markis stared at the guy for a second, then looked down the hall to see which theater was theirs.

“
No, problem,” said the ticket guy as his eyes barely grazed over Markis, then landed with interest on the red-headed girl who made a slow, unaware approach. Markis watched the ticket-tear boy watch Saffron with much more interest than he gave the other girls. Instantly, Markis was alert. And pissed.

Markis’s parents handed over their tickets. They tried to let Saffron go first, but she was holding up the line with her spastic rummaging.
Chapped lips! And you left your lipgloss at home. Moron. Find the ChapStick. Dig!
The thoughts struck her like blows to the head.
Get some ChapStick on those scaly things for God’s sake.
She finally pinched the small tube and in a half-daze, brought it to her lips.

Markis turned around. “Saffron.”

He was amused. What the heck was she doing anyway? She seemed to be the only girl within a million miles that hadn’t noticed “Mr. Wonderful.”

Unused to hearing Markis say her name, his call cut through her self-imposed fog and her head snapped up toward the sound of his voice. He smiled broadly at her and motioned for her to give her ticket up. She nodded and turned toward the ticket guy.

He was a monster.

The train she’d been waiting for with sick anticipation had arrived. It rammed straight into her chest, causing the ChapStick to fall from her grip, where it clacked to the tiled floor and rolled around Markis’s feet. Sound was sucked from the universe, creating a vacuum so great it pulled at her as well, dragging her toward him while she strained to pull back from this thing, this beautiful vision of death that clamped on her with his eyes and held her like an offering on an ancient table. And, as if the bloodletting had already begun, she immediately felt weaker, almost unable to hold her own head up, never mind the rest of her body. She took a deep breath in and held it for a million years.

She saw them like an x-ray; four long, spiked teeth behind his soft, extra-full lips. And now, just as she knew fairies existed, she knew this thing was a vampire. The snapshot of his horrible teeth hung in her vision like the burn of a bright light. A stench filled her nostrils. It was the strong tang of copper, and under that, she smelled dust, acrid and thick. A dizzy drone swirled around her head, shot down her neck, where it whipped up the acid that festered in her gut. She started to totter. Her mouth dropped open so that she stared at him as if recently lobotomized.

He grabbed her arm and frowned. His eyes widened and hardened. Then all of a sudden, he looked…victorious.

Don’t faint. Don’t faint. Don’t faint.
Saffron pleaded with herself.
If he knows you know, he’ll probably kill you.
Saffron straightened up but her body still swayed like a nylon blowup at a car dealership. She let out a nervous giggle. She forced herself to lean close to his ear, hoping to indicate she needed to tell him a secret. Before she spoke, she realized how close she was to death, to destruction, to a monster that was probably hundreds of years old, and dead. He had probably killed thousands of people, maybe more. He was a walking corpse and she was close enough to take in his scent, which was something like her sweaters when they had been left in a box in the attic, not unpleasant exactly, but stale and dusty.