Does this mean the plan’s working? If so, she could afford to feel a little cheerful. But it was so hard to tell.
“Yeah,” she said, a slow, sleepy murmur. “Me too.”
Oh, that’s good, Bebe. But are you lying?
At least it wasn’t Jare’s voice. The deep, vivid tinge of self-loathing was all her own.
Standing naked in a closet was not high on her list of favorite activities, even if the space could have been rented out as a studio. It was also far too soon to know if any of her efforts were bearing fruit.
Rome wasn’t built in a day—and she wondered if he’d been around for that. There wasn’t a way to ask, and Bea had other problems. He wouldn’t let her get in the shower alone, and that was embarrassing enough. But this really took the cake.
“I don’t get it.” She crossed her arms defensively, wishing she’d thought to grab a towel or something, or a robe if she could have found one. “You had someone reorganize the whole thing?” While I was locked up in that big empty room with a new toothbrush, or while I was zonked out after monster-blood high?
“You said you prefer Levi’s.” He was attending to his own clothes, which was fine—watching a man put on a suit was always an experience. But it didn’t make her job any easier, and the graceful precision of his every move was a reminder of essential difference. Somehow he looked a lot less stiffly alien; he was sounding far more natural as well. “And…I destroyed the only other cloth you liked.”
I did say that, and I meant it. But what Bea hadn’t said was buy a whole bunch of jeans and rearrange the whole closet, as well as restocking the pajama drawers. There had to be at least twenty pairs of Levi’s in various shades and styles; who in the hell did things like this?
Everything pre-washed, too, smelling of fabric softener. She wasn’t too enchanted with the idea of other people touching her laundry, either, assuming anything in here could properly be counted hers.
She literally owned nothing now. Even the necklace was possibly stolen and a little-green-man magnet besides. “Yeah, you have a habit of shredding clothes. Must be expensive.”
“Have no worries, Beatrice.” He shrugged into the suit jacket—navy today, very restrained almost-matching tie—and settled the sleeves with quick habitual tugs. Painfully formal or just as painfully hipster, even if he had become incrementally less weird he just wasn’t right in three-piecers. She was surprised he didn’t have a pocket watch, though the heavy gold cufflinks looked antique. The matching wristwatch, though—how many of those did he have? “There is enough and to spare for my leman’s comfort.”
Blood money? Swallowing the crack took real effort. She was doing really great at keeping a conversation going, but the attempt was close to agonizing. Pretending to be relatively unbothered by a monster was a very new skill; she was getting a lot of practice, yay for her. “Where does it all come from?”
He paused, examining her, which probably meant that was a wrong question. Bea grabbed for a pair of stonewashed jeans—bootcut mid-rise, not bad, but it was creepy to have her sizes just show up like this—and a fistful of neatly folded black sweater. “Never mind.” She backed for the closet entrance, shaking her head when he took a single step in the same direction. “Can I at least get dressed alone? And please don’t rip these off me.”
“There are always more. Especially since mortals…” The monster trailed off as she felt for one of the smaller built-in drawers holding underclothes and snatched a handful, still watching him. “I shall restrain myself, so far as I am able.”
Is that all I have to do—pretend you’re human, and you’ll let me get dressed behind a closed door? Bea backed out of the closet, whirled, and marched for the bathroom.
He had no fucking right to sound so forlorn. Not with what he’d forced her into.
Strictly speaking, this last episode was all you.
No. Bea refused to feel bad over what she did to survive, goddammit. Using any teensy bit of power she had in this situation had a giant, hundred-and-ten percent ethical pass. She would cling to that, she decided, even as she swept the door shut and discovered the panties were pink, lacy, thong-style, and utterly unwearable.
“Oh, Jesus.” Bea tipped her head back, her jaw working, and stared at the night-blind skylight.
What would it be like, waiting centuries to see the sun again? Always assuming, of course, that she wouldn’t end up dead well before the event.
She couldn’t figure out what to do with the panties. Commando was better than wearing that nonsense; flossing her ass was so not on the menu. In the end she stuffed them in the cabinet under the sink, since returning to the bedroom carrying pink lace was more than her nerves could take.
Her hair was drying rapidly, probably because it was so warm in here. Traces of condensation still clung to the mirror over the granite-trapped sinks—who needed this kind of space? Seriously.
Bea stopped. Her reflection wouldn’t quite meet her eyes, but that wasn’t the problem. Neither was the sheen on her skin, as if her pores had shrunk, all of her burnished to smoothness; she didn’t want to think about monster-blood beauty care. The toiletries in this suite were expensive organic stuff she could treat like a hotel, sure.
The problem was, the stuff was doing something to her hair. Bea rubbed a strand between her fingers, swallowing hard when tiny black flakes sprang free. Underneath, her stupid natural color—she hated blonde jokes with a passion—was darkened by moisture, but still apparent.
Had she cougar’d a guy with flakes falling out of her curls? Uncool. The embarrassment might be enough to kill her, if she wasn’t already dealing with so much else.
I am not okay. Her hands trembled. Every edge and color was too bright, too sharp; the noise in the house, while easily muffled, was still far too overwhelming. She watched the woman in the mirror bare her teeth—still familiar, from the slight crowding on her lower jaw and the retainer-straight chompers on the upper, years of tortuous parental-mandated dentistry paying off. But so white, and she hadn’t brushed since Don’s warehouse.
Were her canines sharper?
Until the fangs break through. What if he wasn’t lying?
Now she was even gaslighting herself. Stay strong, Bebe.
