Six, p.18
Six, page 18
“Well, do you want to tie up the loose ends with your mom first or with the cheating bastard?” Nadia asked.
12
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Nadia asked as they waited in the parking lot of Paige’s apartment. Next to her Paige stared at her reflection in the passenger side mirror.
She tried her best to shape her growing-back curls into something that looked purposeful and feminine rather than a military buzz cut. She even put on a bit of lip gloss before checking that her fangs had retracted. Next to her, the purple-haired amazon sighed.
“I can do this,” Paige whispered to her reflection.
“Why exactly are you getting dressed up to tell your boyfriend to go to hell?” Lorcan asked from the backseat. He peeked over his sunglasses, showing off sleepy bloodshot eyes.
Both girls turned around. Lorcan lay across the backseat covered mostly by a flimsy plaid blanket. The oppressive odors of coconut oil, titanium dioxide, and avobenzone wafting from the backseat made Paige cringe.
“Why exactly did you go outside during the day?” Paige snapped back.
“I want to make sure you are all right,” he said before yawning.
“And I want to at least look human before I break up with him,” Paige said. “I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me look like a—”
“Powerful werewolf?” Lorcan offered.
“Lorcan may be old, but he still doesn’t understand women,” Nadia sighed. “You look nice, Paige, nice enough to break up with him. Are you sure he’s here?”
Paige pointed to the big black truck parked two spaces over. “He’s here, and I don’t see the white Mustang. I don’t see Bobby’s or David’s car either. It’s now or never, I suppose.”
Both Paige and Nadia popped open the doors of the Plymouth Barracuda at once. One of the neighbors slowed down pointedly as he drove by just to take in the sight of two young, athletic women sliding out of an early seventies marvel of American engineering. Nadia gave the man a wink and nearly sent him crashing into a badly parked minivan.
Paige smoothed out her sundress and tried not to get jealous of her taller, leggier companion strutting across the lot in four-inch stilettos and skinny jeans. When they got to the door, Nadia swung around the outside railing and sat on the steps to the second level of apartments.
“Just leave the door unlocked. I won’t come in unless you call,” Nadia said.
“You actually trust me?” Paige asked.
“I trust that I can get in there quickly enough.”
“That inspires a lot of confidence,” Paige mumbled as she fumbled in her purse. By the time she fished out her keys, her hands were shaking. She looked back at the bright spring sunshine pouring onto the Plymouth’s windows. “Is he going to be OK?”
“The windows are all treated with UV-tinted film. As long as he stays in there, he should be all right. Of course if there is an incident that requires his abilities—”
“I get why he’s here now,” Paige growled. She ran her hand down her spine, stopping just above her rear. “This is so uncomfortable.”
“Kayleigh is already researching other methods, but for now you’re going to have to suffer with control-top hose and some first-aid tape. The flare of your skirt is hiding it well, though.”
“Kyle actually suggested duct tape,” Paige grumbled.
Nadia reached over and steadied Paige’s hand. “You’re not alone, Paige,” she said through the banisters. “You have help, and you can control this.”
“What if—?” she said as she stared at the red lines under her normal nails. “What if I see him and I don’t want to control this?”
“Prove to me, prove to all of us, that you are a human being in control of your gift,” Nadia said calmly. “Above all, prove it to yourself. If you can handle this, you can handle anything.”
“Sure thing,” Paige sighed as she fought to get her key in the lock. After missing a few times, she finally slipped the little hunk of brass in the slot and turned the knob. As soon as she opened the door, she could hear the rat-tat-tat of virtual gunfire and smell processed cheese and pepperoni. Cal didn’t even look away from the TV as Paige wandered into the apartment.
“Babe, is that you?” he asked. The TV lit up with a grenade explosion right next to where his character was hiding. “Damn!”
While Cal focused on respawn, Paige walked right past him into their bedroom. Once more her nose tormented her as a faint cloud of cheap perfume and sex hovered around her bed. Every breath brought tears closer to the surface, but she grit her teeth and blinked them back.
“Work the problem, Paige,” she muttered.
She opened the closet and pulled out her suitcase. She then methodically went to the dresser and snagged her favorite running clothes and a few outfits. Each routine task slowed her breath. She next walked to the bathroom and grabbed her jewelry box and favorite shampoo. Finally, she opened her bedside drawer to grab her scrapbook and the vampire novel she never finished. She calmly clipped the straps inside her bag, leaving it open on the floor rather than letting her luggage touch the toxic bed.
She sneaked back out into the living room and pulled her father’s books off the little shelf in their eating area. She even made it into the kitchen to grab her address book before Cal finally finished his death match.
“Whoa,” he said, pointing to her tiny ringlets. “Are you joining the SEALs, babe?”
She turned around and hustled back to toss her books into the suitcase. Cal came in the room just as she slid the zipper up to the top. He furrowed his brows.
“You staying longer at your mom’s?” he asked. “Wow, that hair is different. What did she say when you came home with that? Babe? You OK?”
“What was her name?” Paige asked softly.
“Huh?” Cal asked. He laughed a little and looked to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I just wondered what her name was. You know, the girl with the white Mustang.”
“What are you talking about?” Cal said, laughing more. “You’ve been listening to your mom, haven’t—”
“Please,” she said softly, “please, do me the favor of not lying to me.”
“Wha—?”
Paige yanked the handle on her rolling bag. Cal blocked her, however, the moment she took a step toward the door.
He put a hand on each of her shoulders and leaned down to look her right in the eyes. Paige stared back into his puppyish brown eyes, but her face remained taut, unmoving. Cal, on the other hand, wobbled, his lip quivering as he searched desperately for any emotion in Paige. After a solid thirty seconds of standoff, he collapsed to his knees and wrapped his arms around her.
“I am . . . so . . . ” he sobbed. “I’m a total dick. I fucked up—”
Paige took a deep breath and lifted his arm so she could slip out of his grasp. He actually followed on his knees as Paige rolled her bag straight to the entryway. She gave one long last look at the cheap furniture and the video-game posters.
“Say something, please!” Cal begged. “We can talk about this—”
Paige furrowed her brows. Cal drew closer and stretched out his hand.
“Please, let’s just talk,” Cal said softly. “Stacy was just a stupid fling. She didn’t mean anything. I love you, Paige, so can we please just talk?”
Paige gnawed on her lip. Cal pushed up to his feet and stretched out a shaking hand toward her.
“I’m sorry, but I have nothing to say to you,” Paige said as she opened the door.
She let it slam shut in his face. She stumbled with her bag but kept putting one foot in front of the other as she made a beeline for the Barracuda. Nadia fell in step as the passenger door opened. Lorcan eased out of the backseat. Paige’s breath quickened as she tossed her luggage into the car. She could hear a door slam.
“We should go,” Lorcan said.
Paige watched the reflection of her red-faced mountain of an ex-boyfriend lumbering in the vampire’s sunglasses. The faint edges of black started to appear under her nails.
“Who is this?” Cal blustered. “Who the hell is this?”
Lorcan started to step between them, but Paige whirled around first. “Don’t do this, Cal—just don’t,” she growled.
“No, you don’t get to be all high-and-mighty while I’m begging!’
Nadia opened the driver’s side door and gave a little nod to Lorcan. The vampire grabbed Paige’s hand and pushed pointedly against her claws. “Come on, Paige,” he said.
“Just give me a second,” she hissed. “I can handle it.”
“Who the hell is this guy?” Cal asked again.
“I’m leaving, Cal,” Paige said flatly. “I’m not coming back.”
“Paige, please—”
Lorcan slid into the back and jerked back the seat for Paige. This time she followed and got in the car. She slammed the door shut.
“Good-bye, Cal.”
The engine roared to life and drowned out his final protests. She could only hear him yell “Bitch!” as they drove away.
“Oh, he has no idea,” Paige growled as her claws snapped in and out.
“You were amazing,” Nadia said.
“Well, I don’t feel amazing, so can we just go back to my cell?” she said as she wiped away a tear.
“It’s never easy to be betrayed,” Nadia said. “He hurt you, and it’s OK to be upset.”
Paige slumped in the seat and stared out the window. She watched the traffic silently all the way back to the gym. She went through the motions of dragging her bag into the basement of the gym, into the nine-by-nine Spartan room that had become her home. Once she sat on the institutional metal-frame bed and stared at her white cinder-block walls, she finally indulged the tears she had held back since they were at the apartment.
13
Paige used a claw to carefully chip away a second strip of paint. Now two neat little slashes lined up next to the “days” she had carved in her cell wall. The white of her room was now broken up with a neon-yellow, fluffy, velour throw and a plaid pillow that had already had its cover slashed. She picked at the exposed stuffing until she made a wispy little hat on her ring talon.
The prison-issue metal door creaked open. Kyle eased inside with a tray full of lunch, pills, and her cell phone. She hopped up and helped him over to her plain metal desk, helping herself to a handful of grilled chicken bites in the process.
“You know; you could have joined us out in the common room. These doors aren’t locked,” he said with a little laugh. “It’s only sealed when a code wolf is happening.”
“I’m not feeling social,” she said flatly.
“I don’t blame you. Men are bastards,” Kyle muttered. He pulled out a thermometer, a little light, and a measuring tape. “Want me to come back or get this over with?”
“That depends on where the thermometer is going,” Paige said cautiously.
Kyle smirked as he waited for her to completely swallow all the chicken. She then popped the hunk of plastic in her mouth while Kyle peered in her ears and eyes. By the time the thermometer beeped, he had run a tape measure from the base of her spine to the tip of her now majestically fur-covered tail.
“Ninety-nine-point-nine,” Kyle said with an approving nod. “Looks like you’ve settled into your new normal. In other news, you have over a two-foot-long tail that shows no sign of being reabsorbed.”
Paige swished her tail. “You mean it’s not getting any smaller?” she asked.
“In fact, it’s about three centimeters longer than it was forty-eight hours ago. It seems to be filling out with more muscle tissue and a helluva lot more hair.
Paige rubbed her temple and twitched her tail frantically. As soon as she noticed the motion, she growled and forced it to be still.
“What am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can just tuck it in some jeans. Jesus, it looks like I’m turning into a squirrel, not a wolf!”
“It’s still early days and your berserker virus is currently being suppressed by the transfusion—”
“How many more of those am I going to get? Last night I’m pretty sure I saw the French Revolution as a spectator,” Paige snapped.
“As long as you remain stable, you won’t need anymore,” Kyle reassured her. “In a week or two, the virus will start to peak again, and you’ll be able to transform again. Until then you need to focus on your self-image, what you think you should look like.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Kyle chose that moment to focus on his ever-present tablet. Paige waited a few seconds before she tapped a claw on top of his screen. He sighed, “It’s not like there are any medical journals on removing a nonvestigial tail from a human.”
Her tail curled between her legs. She slumped on her bed and halfheartedly reached for her chicken bites. Kyle sat beside her and leaned against the wall. He dared to grab a nugget.
Paige growled and scooped up the last three pieces of chicken, but her temper quickly faded as she found a way to slip even farther into her blanket. She wound up burying her face in the yellow fuzz and muttering, “Men suck.”
“And never when you want them to,” Kyle muttered.
Paige finally looked him in the eyes again. “You had boyfriend troubles too, right?”
“Yeah, my ex decided he wanted someone with a Porsche, and I think they are hideous. Ha, if only he knew what he was missing, but you can’t exactly advertise that you’re funded by an eighteen-hundred-year-old vampire, right?”
“Or that you’re a werewolf?”
Kyle laughed. “Now I just get hookups when people confuse me for Andy Dalton—” He trailed off as Paige stared at him blankly. “You’re not a football fan, are you?”
“Not to be a stereotypical girl, but I only watched the Titans play when Cal made me,” Paige said. “And I was usually rather bored.”
Kyle pulled up a picture of the Bengals’ ginger demon of a quarterback. Paige slowly broke into a smile as Kyle posed next to the picture and imitated the dour game face.
“OK, I could see it in a dark bar after a few drinks—well, a bunch of drinks.”
“It doesn’t work on Sundays, but it gets the job done. You’re not exactly my type, but why would any sane guy cheat on a smart, cute, dinky, little thing like you? He’s an idiot.”
“I didn’t want to find out why,” Paige muttered. “Are you actually giving me back my phone?”
“Nadia was impressed. She said she’d never seen such control in a rookie. My sister had to be locked up for a month after an incident at the DMV. What’s your secret?”
“Not feeling a thing,” she muttered. “Can I call my mom?”
“That’s kind of the idea. She’s worried about you.”
Paige finished her lunch rather than picking up the phone. Kyle lounged for a while with her, and they ended up goofing off and puttering on his tablet for a while until the door opened again. Both of them gawked in surprise as his tall, freckled sister came in with a bundle of clothes.
“I got every pair of cargo and palazzo pants at the thrift store. They should all fit you after I hemmed them, but let me know. They should all have a high enough waist too, so we can avoid incidents. I got you some garters too, but I think you still might need to tape the tip,” Kayleigh said as she unceremoniously dumped the lot on Paige. “Is my brother annoying you?”
“No, he’s been fine,” Paige said as she stared wide-eyed at the garters.
“Give him time,” Kayleigh muttered. “The tail goes between the elastic and your thigh, by the way.”
“I think I can figure it out—”
“Figure it out quickly. We’re leaving in ten minutes. I already texted your mom.”
“What—?”
Paige ended up talking to thin air, as the female twin was already out the door. Kyle took the opportunity to pack up the lunch dishes and his tablet and hurried for the door as well.
“I’ll let you get changed,” he said as the door shut.
Paige spent the next few minutes awkwardly binding her tail to her left thigh and switching from her comfy wraparound skirt into a pair of baggy olive green pants straight out of the nineties. As Kayleigh had promised, they landed right at her ankles, but she still had to yank on the drawstring for ages to get the waistband to not slip down her skinny little hips.
She tugged on the curls that now formed a full halo around her face and tried to make them look as long and full as possible. Once more she bothered with lip gloss before grabbing her phone and shuffling for the door. All of the other dorm doors were propped open to let the air-conditioning flow, and Toy and Nadia waited patiently in the common room at the end of the hall. Paige paused as she saw a pack of werewolves lounging on a sofa watching a movie while munching a bowl of popcorn that smelled distinctly like bacon.
Toy paused the movie just as the guy on-screen had pulled off his shirt. She grinned wickedly. “My timing is impeccable,” she said.
Kyle nodded as he came back in the room. “As always, my friend,” he said before giving her a high-five. “Oh, hey, Paige. How did the garter work?”
“I have a big rubber band pulling my tail and cutting off circulation in my leg,” Paige growled. “What do you think?”
“I think we should be going, Miss Paige,” a new voice said from across the room. “Toy, you’re on surveillance today. Nadia, you drive.”
“Roger, roger, mi capitán,” Toy said with a little salute. “What about the chatter from downtown about the missing prostitutes, though? You want me to drop a good lead?”
“No, I want the twins to do some actual work and follow up on your leads, while you make sure that we don’t have any unwanted observers today,” Lorcan said as he tossed Nadia the keys. “No one hunts like you, Miss Jackson.”
Toy rolled her eyes but hopped off the couch. “Flattery will get you everywhere, old man. Are we gonna start taking Shorty Spice along for our rides?” she asked.
