The Trouble with Fate (6 page)

“More,” she demanded, without opening her eyes. Carefully, I stood to dribble another
mouthful of syrup into her. She swallowed and then rolled her head to look at me.
“There are a lot of mortals here,” she said.

“I know.”

She focused on me, her fingers plucking at her bed coverlet, her forehead creased.
“I want to go home.”

Chapter Three

Bob keeps the keys to his aqua ’93 Taurus wagon in the drawer under his counter. That
was the first thing I went for when I arrived home and found his shop empty. I left
him four books from the café, my tips for the day, and a stethoscope, which had turned
out to be kind of a one-trick pony. I relocked the shop’s back door on the way out.
My legs felt like lead as I climbed the stairs to our apartment.

Our home is nothing much. Four-room apartments that don’t cost an arm, a leg, and
a kidney are hard to come by in our town, so you don’t bitch about niceties like new
paint or better floors. You pay the rent, and keep your head down, and try to blend,
blend, blend.

A good landlord doesn’t notice that you never go to school. A great one is mostly
blind and completely unaware that his tenant’s kid uses his store like a lending library
without due dates. Sometimes I wondered how oblivious one human could be. Sometimes,
I wondered if Bob was just a nice man instead, which made me feel all kinds of squirrelly
inside.

So, our home. Four rooms, all connected by one long hall. The kitchen used mostly
by me, though Lou sometimes stepped inside, her lip curling fastidiously, to pick
up a new can of maple syrup. Beyond that, two small bedrooms and a rectangular living
room. I had furnished the living room slowly over time, exchanging lawn chairs for
real ones as my muscles grew along with my ability to grab things before the garbage
man got them. I had two mismatched armchairs book-ended by two beat-up matching side
tables. In the corner was my entertainment center: an RCA and a $40 DVD player.

It had taken me a long time to find a working television that didn’t need a remote,
as they were problematic for Fae-born. Not only remotes, but cell phones, a computer
when connected to the Internet, and weirdly, intercoms were just some of the things
that worked on the maybe-yes, maybe-no basis around our kind. On the free wall was
a faux-wood shelving unit from Goodwill. It was cheap and I could lift it, and it
did the job of displaying my paperbacks and my growing collection of pirated movies
that I bartered for with a high school kid named Melanie.

That sounds sparse, but it wasn’t. I’m a thief with poor impulse control, a fact that
would have surprised Mum and Dad if they were still around to register their disapproval,
because of the two of us, it had been Lexi, not me, who’d shown a certain Fae-bent
talent for acquisition. Relatively speaking, I had lived a virtuous life before the
Fae stole my brother. Then, two months to the day after I lost Lexi, I stole a pair
of salt and pepper shakers from a diner on Spadina. There wasn’t any premeditation
to it. I was thinking of my twin, and felt myself sinking downward into that awful,
aching hurt, and then the neatest thing happened: I became Lexi. Not for very long.
Just long enough to slide the condiment containers across the laminate table into
my lap, and then from there into my coat pockets.

It filled the Lexi-sized hole left in me. Well, maybe not filled; nothing seemed to
do that. But stealing stuff shrank the gaping wound until it was nothing more than
a wistful, whistling tear in my armor. And that was good enough. That afternoon, I
tossed my inconvenient conscience over my shoulder and became a thief. Now, whenever
my nerves start to jangle, and that hole starts to widen, I take something. Other
than a fascination for anything in pairs, I’m fairly indiscriminate. Consequently,
there were a lot of shiny things in that room to brighten it up.

We needed to make tracks, and we needed money. It took a lot of convincing, plus the
threat of being left in the hands of the pestilent mortals—nicely inserted into the
argument after another visit from the nurse—before Lou told me where to find my mum’s
bride belt. When I think of all those hours I’d spent searching her room for it, I
wanted to smack myself.

I’d pinned a poster of four dogs playing poker to the living room wall as a taunt
to my aunt, who rarely let an opportunity go by without making reference to my mixed
blood. The print had stayed there ever since, even though humidity had long ago curled
its edges.

Lou had quietly delivered her own insult, and I hadn’t even known it.

I ripped the poster down and studied the wall. There was no dimple or crack to say
“here be magic,” which meant that she’d spent good money purchasing the spell from
the local coven. Which, if I cared to think about it, was a double slap, as my paycheck
had probably paid for the magic. I repeated the word Lou had whispered into my ear
at the hospital, and immediately, the illusion melted away, exposing a four-inch hole
in the wallboard. Inside the dark cavity, Fae gold gleamed.

With a trembling hand, I pulled my mother’s bride belt into the light.

How many times had I seen this thin gold chain around her hip? Ran my finger over
the gilt embellishment that decorated the small leather pouch that hung from the sleek
supple links? The belt had been a gift from
her
mother, a token to remember her Fae heritage, and an open acknowledgment of Mum’s
transition from child to woman, on the occasion of her marriage.

I drew open the delicate leather strings and peered inside the pouch. Lou hadn’t sold
them, after all. Nestled at the bottom were five tear-shaped pink stones. I inhaled
deeply, and caught my father’s scent for the first time in ten years.

Move,
I told myself, as everything inside me stiffened into want.
Move.
I fastened the belt around my own waist and let it fall low. Mum was taller than
me, but I’m sure I’m rounder; despite my curves, the chain hung low on my hips.

Merry unfurled a strand of gold. The chain around my neck tightened with her weight
as she slipped free of my bra. I ignored her, tucking the belt inside my cargo pants
as I headed for my bedroom mirror. For the first time, the cost of the pants was justified.
No matter which way I turned, the belt was invisible, the pouch nothing more than
one more wrinkle amid a mind-boggling number of wrinkles.

Merry’s head popped free of the V of my blouse as I made my way to the kitchen. If
she wanted out, she could do it herself—I was still pissed about her silent routine
at the hospital. I bent to retrieve some garbage bags from under the sink, and fast
as a snake, she took advantage of gravity, snapping out another strand of ivy to catch
the other side of the chain. She was already efficiently twining herself around both
sides, each revolution hiking her higher until she was hanging from the hollow of
my throat like a goth choker.

I crossed the threshold to Lou’s bedroom. “It’s too late to talk,” I told Merry, tossing
Lou’s clothing into a bag. “I’m not leaving her there. So, we’re going to take her,
and then we’re hitting the road. We’ll start over again somewhere else.”

Merry’s stone slowly warmed as I found Lou’s shoes and coat. I stripped the bed and
threw her pillow and comforter in another bag. Then I did a slow turn. A bed, a lamp,
curtains, and one chair. Lou wasn’t leaving much.

My room had fewer clothes and more clutter. I was standing there, thinking hard, when
someone knocked on the apartment door.

Shit. Was it Bob? Or Lyle? Or, just-shoot-me-now, the police?

I went up on my toes and squinted through the door’s peephole. He’d been smart enough
to tuck himself to the right of the doorway so I couldn’t see him, but he hadn’t taken
the time to have a bath. The Were who stood out of sight in the hall needed to be
spritzed with boy cologne. I didn’t know him, clean or dirty: his scent didn’t trigger
any recall.

So I had to ask myself, was this a T-rex situation—you’re only on the menu if you
move? How soundlessly had I tiptoed to the door? If I stayed frozen, with my nose
flattened against the door panel, not making any noise, would he decide I wasn’t there
and go away? As my air ran out, I began hoping he had a short attention span.

He did.

I saw a flash of a gray shirt through the peephole; I jerked backward as his fist
exploded through the door. A bloody hand shot through the jagged hole, showering wood
splinters onto the carpet, and started to fumble for the lock.

I turned and ran. Behind me the door thudded against the wall. I sped up, running
as fast as my size sixes could take me to the kitchen and its knife collection. I
didn’t make it far. Size twelve always trumps size six. He grabbed the back of my
shirt, I heard a whoosh of air close to my ear, and then my head exploded.

*   *   *

I hurt. Merry felt hot and anxious against my chest, and the dog in the apartment
downstairs was barking “danger, danger.” I rolled my head experimentally, and then
moaned at the resulting spear of pain.

Dimly, I began to separate the smells into three different cues: Rover’s fear, seeping
like natural gas up the stairs, cheap carpet, and Were. This one had an unpleasant
layer of musk over the usual woods-and-fields smell I associate with Weres. His boots
had walked through some nasty things. I kept my eyes closed and faked dead.

“Get up,” he growled, unimpressed. I worked a little harder on being limp.

“Up.” He kicked me. I curled tight as a hedgehog, one hand pressed against my ribs,
as pain and shock ran up and down my side. Merry shot out an alarmed spike of heat.

“No,” I grunted. Merry stilled but her tension furled her gold into furious prickling
spikes that bit into my cleavage. “Not helping,” I muttered to her.

Then he pulled back his boot and did it again. In the same freaking spot. “Don’t make
me tell you again, bitch.”

When I got my breath back, I raised a hand. Past his scuffed heels I could see the
curved leg of my easy chair. I crawled to the chair to brace a hand on the seat cushion.
With its help, I heaved myself up as far as my knees. That was as far as I could go.

I’d been hit. By a Were.
He’d hit me.
And I hurt.

“All the way up.”

One glance at him and I was inspired to stand. I wobbled to my feet, feeling my broken
ribs scream. He’d hurt me. I’d never been hit before, unless you counted Lexi, but
he was my twin. Twins do that, fully expecting to be hit back.

Lou was right. There was no upside to being around Weres.

A couple of days ago, when his clothing was still clean, and his eyes didn’t look
like he’d been smoking crack, he might have been hot. He was young, he was built,
and he was good-looking, in a sort of studly, teenage way. Too young for me, but still,
a great body is a great body, until the owner of it uses one of his body parts to
kick you. Then you change your first impression, and start noticing things like red-rimmed
eyes, and scent; in his case, a ripe, unpleasant combination of unwashed Were, male
musk, and hot emotion.

Downstairs, Rover was trying to scratch his way through his door. “You stink of coffee
and you live around dogs,” he said, thumbing open his phone. Loser, his gaze said,
as he waited for the phone to be answered.

It was short and sweet, his phone conversation. It went like this: he had the amulet.
Some girl had it around her neck, but he’d encountered some problems taking it from
her. Should he just take her head off or should he bring her in too? Both of us waited
for the answer, but I bet his heart was still beating, whereas mine stopped somewhere
after the phrase “take her head off.”

“Right,” he said, nodding as if he were right in front of the guy on the other end
of the phone. “We’re on our way.” The man on the other end hung up first.

“What do you think you’re going to do with my amulet? You’re a Were. It won’t do a
thing for you.”

“Doesn’t have to do a thing for me. My Alpha wants the amulet, and I’m the Alpha’s
boy. His
top
boy. I get the job done,” he added with a superior smirk. His phone chirruped again,
startling Rover into another chorus of “danger, danger.”

“What?” The Were’s voice grew testy. He yanked the lamp cord out of the wall socket
as he listened. “No, tell them not to wait. Take the old lady straight to the Alpha.”
Casually, he tore the electric wire from the base. “Rolled her right past the nurse,
eh? And the cops? What did you do … yeah, that was smart. So, what about Trowbridge?
Not yet?” He started advancing toward me, the wire swinging from his grip. “What’s
your problem? Just follow his trail.” He stopped to adjust his jeans and roll his
eyes. “Yeah. No problem. I’ll toss this bitch into the trunk and swing by.” He closed
the phone.

“Good luck getting me into the trunk, asshole,” I said.

He flexed his hands. The fingers on the right one were blistered, as if he’d seared
them on a hot frying pan.

“You couldn’t even get my amulet off without burning your hand.” My mouth twisted
into a smile I knew I was going to regret. He growled, low in his throat, and shifted
on his feet. “And now you have a sore paw—” His hand swung out and slapped me hard,
and I went flying across the room. It wasn’t a big room; I didn’t have far to go before
I hit the wall and slid down it into an awkward heap.

Enough.

My power was waiting for me. It had been coiling inside of me ever since that first
boot to the ribs, waiting for me to mean business. Waiting for me to use it in a way
my mum never let me do. No more half measures.

I meant to hurt.

I gave that churning mass leave of its fetters, and it surged up my arm in an exultant
stream to collect at the ends of my fingers. Hot. It was like I had fire ants trapped
beneath my skin, which goes to show—malice burns hotter than mischief.