10
867 Words
She stumbled out of bed, feeling soft carpet then cool tile beneath her feet as she entered the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror showed evidence of the night: hair knotted and wild from tossing, red, bleary eyes with puffy lids, deep shadows beneath.
She made a face in the mirror, turned on the shower, then bent down under the sink to get her brush, thinking she would try to get some of the knots out of her hair while she waited for the water to get hot.
When she opened the cabinet under the sink, she saw her makeup bag had been moved from its spot in the wire pull-out basket. The lotions and perfumes stored next to it were in slight disarray.
She stood so quickly she almost banged her head against the countertop.
She was fastidiously neat. She had to be, the miniscule size of her apartment dictated it. Everything had its place, every space was utilized and arranged for maximum efficiency. Her cosmetics were always in perfect order.
And now they were not.
She tried not to panic. This was, after all, practically nothing. She must have forgotten to tidy this area yesterday, she’d been too tired, had felt unwell. Yes, that was it. She’d felt unwell and was mixing things up in her mind. She let the cabinet door swing shut and stepped into the shower.
After she dressed, Jenna went to make herself a cup of coffee. As she stood in the kitchen spooning coffee grounds into the filter, she noticed that one of her leather-bound photo albums, kept in a bookshelf in the living room, stood a few inches out from the others, as if it had been returned hurriedly to its place but had not been fully pushed back in.
A serpentine flash of premonition crawled up her spine.
She went to the front door and checked the lock, but it was latched securely, as were all the windows and the patio door.
Jenna stood silent in the living room for a long time, staring out toward the navy strip of ocean shimmering beyond the sand, lost in thought as the mug of coffee in her hand grew cold.
Getting into her locked apartment had been the easy part.
Leander had merely pushed himself through the hairline crack in the upper corner of her bathroom window, the one she would finally notice when it widened enough to be seen by the naked eye.
It was watching her sleep that proved difficult.
She slept with the innocent abandon of a child. Breathing deeply, body slanted across the middle of the queen-sized bed, arms flung wide, hair spilling silken, honeyed gold over the pillows. Moonlight burned white fire over the slope of her throat and bare shoulders.
He watched from the corner of the dark bedroom as her chest slowly rose and fell, her nude body outlined beneath the sheets.
He’d been through her apartment, trying to find clues. Trying to find anything that would lead him to believe she possessed any of the powers of their kind.
So far, he’d found nothing.
She loved art and music, loved to read, this was plain from the things she kept. Her books, her eclectic CD collection, the ticket stubs to the Molière exhibition at the Getty Museum. Paystubs from a French restaurant, unopened mail stacked neatly in a wicker basket by the kitchen phone, takeout menus in a drawer.
There was no sign of a lover, no photos of friends, no indication she was close to anyone at all. Her photo album contained only old pictures of her mother, of herself as a child, mementos of places she’d visited, postcards.
Her orderly and sterile apartment illustrated the life of someone utterly alone.
He’d had no thought of coming here when he Shifted, had no destination in mind as he allowed himself to be caught in the updraft of heated night air that lifted him from his veranda at the Four Seasons. The lights and noise of the city grew distant as he melded into the atmosphere, rolling and spinning through thin sapphire clouds, free upon the wind.
He knew her name, he knew her address. He had a picture, though it was a few years outdated and slightly blurry.
But he didn’t know her, this creature of gilt and satin and feminine curves, skin like roses and cream and sunlight on water where the rest of his kind were dark, with hair as dark as the forest floor at midnight, skin tones of café au lait and buttered rum.
He didn’t know that the force of his desire would make him sink to his knees, crouching naked in the dark with his heart in his throat and the scent of her flaming hot in his nose.
He hadn’t expected this.
His eyes drank her in and he wondered that she possessed the Gift of beauty all the Ikati shared. She was half human, after all, an inferior race evolved from mud, prone to violence, greed, and all manner of disease. He’d never found a single one of them attractive.
But her father had. He’d done the unthinkable and mated with a human.
- Writer
