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“
Not enough meat on those bones! Don’t see why the boys today like their girls thin as a toothpick. Maybe it cause they feel like less of a man, need less of a girl.” She cackled and I joined in agreement.

I ate politely as I knew how, but it was hard to pretend I wasn’t enjoying
myself. The food was delicious and so different from anything I had known in my past.

My eyes wandered over the rich dressings of her apartment. She had covered the cracked walls with gorgeously patterned silks. I
ncense burned in a corner and her box-shaped record player crooned the same jazzy music that Cain was so fond of. Mrs. Nguyen, who never gave me another name to call her by, had managed to keep hold of the things she loved most in life. She lived by her own code and as that required her to listen to her heart, in many ways it was the best thing anyone could do.

Over my next mouthful, Mrs. Nguyen’s black eyes narrowed again and she took a longer drag
of her cigarette. “So, you were gone for a long time yesterday. Should have seen your man, banging on the doors of neighbors he hasn’t talked to in months. Not since
she
moved out, anyway.”

I tensed at the mention of Lissa, but held Mrs. Nguyen’s ga
ze. She was a perceptive human and for this reason I trusted her.

“I went to visit Lissa,
” I said between bites.

“Ha!” The old
lady cackled and released a stream of white smoke. She brushed her finger along one persistently loose, fake eyelash. “Course you did. Have to size up the competition, eh?” Winking, she reached over to pour me another glass of vintage wine. I sipped slowly, remembering its effects on Lissa.

My smile felt tight around the edges, less than sincere.
“I do not bear her ill will. She and Cain belong together,” I said, wishing myself free of the doubt in my voice.

Did she go back to Derek last night, or
Jude?

Mrs. Nguyen sniffed her wine with a snort before tossing back a strong dose. Sighing back into her curved leather seat, she
said, “That piece of candy doesn’t know what she wants. But let me tell you, Mrs. Nguyen sees more than she tells. And that girl was a tough dish for him to swallow. Always carrying on about what they needed, what she needed. Did she ask him what he wants? No! It all about her and that poor boy still somehow found a way to love her.”

I also understood this selfless love.
For I had loved Seid even in his darkest hours, even as he cursed me and we rode upon a fine line between ardor and abhorrence. In so many ways, Seid had been every woman’s dream. But his passion could easily turn into selfish cruelty. He claimed it was part of his nature, to be turbulent as the storm.

If Cain loved Lissa
as I had loved Seid, then it was certain the truth of his love lingered beneath his pain. I only needed to find a way to resurrect it.

After brunch, Mrs. Nguyen broke Cain’s orders by dragging me to her old Chinatown haunts. Her words gave me, for the first time, a true glimpse into the human condition. Humanity had always been forced to circumvent its past failures. History might have given ample lesson to the present generation. But they were just as ignorant of themselves as their past. Few people in this part of the city cared to learn from the mistakes of fallen empires, however. They thrived off what they knew, hunger, hardship and hope.

Cain’s neighbor had no idea she was teaching me any of this, of course. She was telling me about her past and present, of the family who barely acknowledged her and the husband she
had never forgotten.

“Old age isn’t your friend in America, sugar,” she said as we browsed through
a vendor laden with meaningless items.

I paid little heed to the paper and coin she exchanged for clothes and jewelry. We had been forced in
to the back corner of the shop, hidden behind a curtain leading into a musty room. Some things had not changed, apparently. The sort of bartering Mrs. Nguyen thrived on was something I recalled from my human life. Only this time, instead of actual coin they preferred paper.

“Why do your children not visit you?” I asked once we were outside and headed back
down the road we came.

Mrs. Nguyen grasped my hand in her
s and squeezed. At first I wondered if she needed comfort, but when I turned to look down, she was reaching for the wadded bills she had slipped to me when we went inside the little shop. “Hand it over, kiddo. That’s some of my hard-earned cash.”

“I am sorry,” I
said and bowed my head low, afraid I had offended her. Her laughter startled me and her eyes were shining when I met her gaze. I often did things that amused her, beyond my comprehension.

“There!” She laughed
and poked my chest with her finger. “That is why they no longer visit. Think I’m too stingy with my money. But they never want to be reminded of how I got my dough in the first place. So I make sure to remind them, of course. See why they don’t want to hang around me?” She laughed again, but could not disguise the flash of pain that filled her eyes, or the darkness surrounding her aura.

Because of this,
when we returned home, I let her dress me in the clothes she had bought for me. I let her paint my face with coal around my eyes and lashes. She remarked as I sat on her toilet seat, “What lovely eyes you have, duckie. That why you on the run, eh? You some lab experiment gone wrong?”

“Perhaps,
” I replied with a smile.

For a while I listened to the sound of the record playing in the background, my thoughts brewing like one of Seid’s tempests.
While Mrs. Nguyen arranged my waist-length curls, I asked, “Have you ever been tempted to do the wrong thing, even if it felt right?”

Her black eyes appraised me, sparkling with the emotions she kep
t so well hidden. Her smile turned vicious when she replied, “Too few people ever know true happiness in life, Orona. Would it be so bad to grab it when fate drops it in your lap?”

“I have acted for so long on instinct, with no thought as to whether
my actions were right or wrong, I have forgotten what it means...” To be human.

Mrs. Nguyen placed her perfectly manicured nails to my chin and tilted
up my chin to meet her appraisal. “The answer been in front of you all along, sugar. You just got to be willing to look at things with new eyes sometimes. And keep in mind if it Cain you talking about, he got a say in this too, you know.”

My lips parted
in surprise and I wondered how she had known what I was thinking. Perhaps there was more to her than the gift of discernment. Before I could question her further, a heavy fist pounded on her apartment door.

Cain’s voice interrupted from the other side.
“Mrs. Nguyen? Rona better be in there with you!” I was taken aback by the fear and anger in his tone. Through the door, I could see the silvery thread extended between us reaching, grasping to touch.

Mrs. Nguyen winked at me before practically danc
ing to the door. For a woman her age, she was surprisingly spritely.

“Relax
, boy-o! I got your woman in here, all right,” she called. No sooner did she unbolt the many locks and chains than Cain brushed past her, eyes roving her den.

I peeked a
round the corner and pressed my fingers into the wood grain on the bathroom doorway to ground my flighty emotions.

Cain
looked as though he had a rough day at work. Grit still clung to his pores though I could see he had attempted to wipe most of it away. What surprised me was how much I wanted him to find me and kiss me senseless.

“Y
ou took her out today?” Cain said tersely as he plucked up a stray plastic bag and wadded it in his hand. Pausing in his search, he rounded to glare accusingly at my chaperone.

Lighting a fresh cigarette
that was now propped at the tip of her long black stem, Mrs. Nguyen sighed. “You worry too much, sugar. That’s your problem. You hold on too tight to things so they can’t leave you.”

Cain threw the wadded plastic awa
y and grumbled under his breath. “Crazy old bat…”

I muffled a laugh behind my hand and froze when his eyes
instantly locked onto mine across the room.

“Rona? Why are you hidi
ng back there, babe?” His lips had already turned up into a smile, the scar that marked his chin keeping one corner of his mouth lower. Our hostess busied herself with changing out records. Meanwhile Cain had already crossed the small space to my hiding place. “You can’t keep making me worry like that. Leave a note at least next time, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, stepping out of the door’s shadow and into the light to greet him. I felt the rush of anticipation fill me when he placed his hands on my waist. But then he froze, eyes going wide as they fixed on my face. And then traveling lower, he grimaced, his grip tightened and his
eyes were considerably darker when they locked onto mine again.

“Rona…
you look…” He paused to take in another breath and his smile pulled his cheeks up into something breathtaking, then said, “Beautiful.”

“Told you, he’d love it
, sugar.” Mrs. Nguyen said, puffing away beside us and totally unfazed by the ardor in Cain’s eyes.

I
looked into the eyes of my beloved, the eyes of the man I wanted so desperately to keep, who was everything good about my Seid and more, and said, “Do you love it?”

Tipping my chin up with a finger
, he blinked and replied, “Yeah.”

-kaitlyn

Chapter 14

All that Jazz

In my memories, he was always terribly beautiful and so much more than handsome. His features were too wild to be pleasing to the eye and yet something about his stormy eyes drew me to him. He chased me along our sand bar, the crashing waves our music and my heartbeat the percussion. “You cannot run from me, Rona!” he taunted.

I glanced back over my shoulder to discover him nearly upon me and I pushed my feet faster on the wet sand. Soon I would leave the sand bar for the sea, but I refused to let him catch me. I shrieked when the tips of his fingers grazed my side. I ran faster, until the wet sand didn’t feel like grain between my toes. Soon the waves washed over my feet and I gasped, pausing to look about. I was much farther out in the ocean than I had realized. The waves instantly calmed about my feet, so if I looked down I could see fish swimming in the deep.

Seid
laughed as he slipped his arms about my waist and began to tease the skin on my side. My awe was replaced by ire when he would not cease. “Seid, stop it! I am going to fall!”

His smile arrived the same moment as the sun
peeked through the clouds and cast the sea with the infinite reflection of precious jewels. “Why do you fear when you know I will always catch you?” he said.

I melted into him, into his kiss
, and knew this to be the nearest thing to paradise I could ever envision.

My foot tapped of its own free will to the music being played by the band on stage. With my eyes shut, I could almost remember the sound of the waves and how they had been our personal chorus. I could almost hear the way
his
voice had sounded as he sang to me. People sang to a different tune in my time. But the emotions hidden beneath those songs remained the same as their musical descendants.

Echoes of the past always
left me with an ache I could not appease.

Upon o
pening my eyes, I found my surroundings to be far cruder than my memories. The area behind the stage curtains was nothing more than a narrow strip, leading down a set of stairs that flattened into a hall that bled into to the dressing rooms. I had been waiting here, listening and savoring the hubbub of humanity, without the frustration of drinking in their emotions. With Cain so nearby my gift was thankfully dulled and for the first time in ages, I was attempting to control it. If I had known it could be so simple a solution, turning the switch on and off, I might have broken the rules long ago.

Avoiding bumping into people was nearly impossible, I soon discovered after Ca
in deposited me backstage. I leaned against the brick wall behind the curtain and wrapped my arms over the rich yellow silk dress Mrs. Nguyen bought me to avoid the flow of traffic. Music was constantly playing, sometimes loud and brassy, then soft and crooning. Jude was host for the evening and was occasionally called up to make new announcements.

He
spoke now about the next act in their evening lineup. “Now I know you’ve all heard this sweet little gem croon the greats. But tonight we’ve got a special treat for you…”

Turning my attention from his words to peek through the curtains, I sought Cain’s frame
at the entrance. When we first set off for the club, Cain had been so excited as he recalled stories of the famous people who had played and sang there in the past. Yet something shifted in his demeanor the moment the club was in sight. A steady trickle of early customers could be seen making their way in. Cain’s mask was shifted back in place, only this time with an added edge to his every look and word.