Blood Ties (21 page)

It was very early in the morning, and rush hour was in full swing. However, Catherine’s Mercedes traveled in the opposite direction of the traffic, headed east towards Grace’s childhood home.

Catherine occupied herself with filing her dragon-claw nails. With every swipe of the pointy emery board, she enjoyed a thought about stabbing Grace in the throat with it.

After a relatively short drive, the Mercedes entered an unassuming residential neighborhood. Catherine could tell from the houses that the people who lived there weren’t rich by any means. But their manicured yards and well-kept homes indicated they were hardworking folks and took pride in whatever they owned.

After a few turns, they located Grace’s house on a dead-end street lined with a scant amount of trees.

“Pull into the driveway,” Catherine said as she kept a close watch on the house.

“Don’t you think that’s dangerous? What if Grace is in there? I’m not ready to get into anything,” Chetan whined.

“Grace hasn’t seen me since she was an infant. I hardly think she’d remember my face. For all she knows, I’m just a harmless Avon lady.”

Catherine’s salivary glands squirted with the prospect of killing and eating Grace right then and there. She took a breath to regulate her growing hunger and got out of the car. She told Chetan, “Stay here. Signal me if anyone comes up.” She started to walk away, but Chetan stopped her.

“What should I say?” he asked with a profoundly confused look on his face.

Catherine was breaking one of her own rules—she was suffering a fool. This was a temporary hassle, however, as she had nefarious plans for him later.

“Just yell, ‘
The bitch is coming! The bitch is coming!
’” Catherine said with a sarcastic edge.

Chetan had no idea she was belittling him. He said in all seriousness, “Okay.”

Catherine stood there incredulous for a moment. Then she shook it off and took a few steps up the driveway. It was difficult for her to avoid getting her heel caught in the deep cracks of the paving stones, so she tiptoed to the threshold of the 1950s-style Cape Cod house.

Compared to Catherine’s humongous penthouse, Grace’s home was gerbil-cage small. The tacky aluminum siding did nothing for its plain face. It had no central air conditioning, as evidenced by two window units on the upper and lower floors. Catherine ascertained that no one had been in the house for a while by the knee-deep grass and wildly growing shrubs that needed pruning.

She also smugly noted the difference between her privileged upbringing and Grace’s humble middle-class roots. An anger rose in her as she realized a peon had the potential to annihilate her.

Keeping her guard up, Catherine got closer to the house. As she did, her steps felt more and more like she was walking in quicksand. Moreover, she could smell the remnants of Grace’s scent and see the indigo residual of her aura.

She climbed the creaky steps to the porch. Pulling open the storm door, she knocked on the scratched-up, hollow aluminum inner door. This was a show for any nosy neighbor who might have been snooping out a curtained window. She put her ear to the door and heard nothing. She decided the best course of action was to break in. So she nonchalantly made her way to the back of the house on a well-worn path through the dying grass. She passed cheap plastic lawn chairs and a card table.

“Goodness! Am I fighting bunch of hillbillies?” she said.

Catherine stepped onto the weathered deck. She traced her finger around the back door and closed her eyes to activate her second sight. When she opened them, she could see into the past, to when Grace and Julie had rushed out of the house. They looked like lines of electric currents forming vague human figures. Catherine stop-motioned the image, and the phantom forms hung frozen in the air. Catherine walked around Grace’s 3-D hologram, trying to get a clear view of her facial features, but they were just too hazy.

She reached out and touched Grace. The image zapped and knocked her back some. That profoundly disturbed Catherine. If Grace’s image was that powerful, the real person had to have phenomenal magical assets.

Wrath welled up in her, and she kicked in the door. She became even more tempestuous when, upon entering, she discovered the house had been totally vacated. There was no furniture, no dishes, not even pictures on the wall. The house was nothing more than empty rooms and stained rugs.

But Catherine knew forensic traces were always left behind. She scoured the floor for a random strand of hair, a clothing fiber, or a nail clipping. Her radar hit on something down the hall. She followed the signal until she ended up in Grace’s room. Catherine’s fangs popped out in a reflexive action to being in Grace’s personal space.

Catherine walked around the room and stepped on a loose, squeaky floorboard. That little board piqued her interest, and she lifted it. Underneath, Grace had stashed a trove of erotic photographs taken by Rafe.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty girl,” Catherine said as she shuffled through the pictures. However, she wasn’t interested in Grace posed in strange positions and various stages of undress. What she examined was the background. The walls, where a ton of pictures of Aunt Evelyn and Julie hung.

As Catherine continued to go through the photos, one stood out. This particular pictured was just a close-up of Grace’s face. As Catherine studied it, her eyes turned a demonic red. She stuffed the picture in her pocket for safekeeping. As she did so, she heard a pop of static electricity and turned around. James and Evelyn’s astral images floated across the room. They were ethereal, silvery, with the blackest of eyes. These powerful projections of James and Evelyn’s souls appeared to Catherine
without
their owners’ permission or knowledge.

“Leave her be,” James’s projection said with a ghostly voice. “You already failed once. Go on your way.”

Catherine was cocksure and not intimidated in the least. “You
are
mad. Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to eviscerate, dismember, and consume every bit of your precious Grace as I promised. And when I have all of her power, I’ll kill the rest of you just for fun. You’ll all make tasty side dishes.”

“This will be the end battle. Once and for all,” said Evelyn’s projection before disappearing into the ether. James’s projection evaporated too.

Even though Catherine was sure of her own prowess, she was daunted by how apparently strong James and Evelyn already were due to their dedication to Grace. All she had was Nick and Chetan.

“I’m going to need more protégés.”

Chapter Twenty-One

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

—Oscar Wilde

M
y father had a funny superstition he had picked up from his mother. He said that May heat waves were an omen that the devil was coming.

I could not verify or get the background on this tidbit because my father had estranged himself from our family before my birth. He’d said it was for my safety. I guess now the reason was obvious. And, lucky for me, it was May, and Massapequa was suffering from bizarrely hot temperatures.

Of course Aunt Evelyn’s bootleg air conditioning was acting up. I had my bedroom window raised in a vain attempt to find relief from the sweltering heat. The steamy breeze that gushed through did little to cool down the room, but was sufficient to clear out the stale winter air.

The blazing weather did have some benefits, though. I had been nursing a particularly strong cough, and the warmth helped me to breathe a little better. The coughing had started about a week earlier, irritating but mild. Now I was hacking so hard and so much, my diaphragm felt like it had done a round with Mike Tyson—the in-shape version that is. I tried everything to get rid of the choppy cough. Humidifiers, zinc, orange juice—none of it helped a bit. All NyQuil did was induced an awesome coma.

I had the TV tuned to one of those twenty-four-hour news channels. An exposé about violence on college campuses was running. The fresh faces of young women brutalized or murdered at higher institutions of learning scrolled across the screen. I took note of how they were all from the same cookie cutter. They were the archetypes of upper-middle class: cute, toothy, surprisingly fit, equestrian/crew team/lacrosse playing chicks. I was sure Tiffany’s face would pop up at any moment. It didn’t. Darn.

Growing tired of the news, I decided to direct my attention to the warm, living body next to me—James. Even though he was
beyond
old in human years, he was respectful of Aunt Evelyn’s surprisingly old-fashioned notions about coed sleeping arrangements. He complied for the most part, but every so often he’d sneak up to my room in the middle of the night to spend time some alone time with me. We’d watch DVDs of horror movies and play daffy card games. Our sublime and ridiculous conversations lasted all night, and even though we’d rehash the same topics, they always seemed brand new.

James was on his back, shirtless. Unfortunately he made sure to leave on his cock-blocker jeans. I, on the other hand, was trying my best to be as tempting as possible. I purposefully wore a gauzy cami top and butt-crease-exposing pajama shorts—a marked change from my usual oversized T-shirts and slouch socks.

I rested my head in the crook of James’s armpit, inhaling the slightly pungent odor overlaid with bergamot and ginger accents from his deodorant. His ankles were crossed, and he rubbed his feet together with contentment. I ran my finger up and down his torso, thinking about how he had a way of making life feel easier and lighter. With him, during fleeting moments like this one, I could relax into a state of
normalness
.

But an awful, goose-honk coughing spell ruined it.

James gave me a few pats on the back. “Whoa! You sound like you have a case of whooping cough. You okay, baby?”

“Fine,” I said right before I coughed up a chunk of salty, metallic phlegm. It tasted like blood. I let it stay in my mouth as I tried to figure out what to do with it. Spit it into a Kleenex? No, not in front of James. Like a nasty bitch, I swallowed it so he wouldn’t be grossed out. After the gulp, I said, “Whooping cough? That was just me being sexy.” He was none the wiser.

But I really was trying to be sexy. During the past few months, I had pulled out all the
Penthouse Forum
tricks I could think of to entice James. And they’d almost worked. We had gotten incredibly close to doing the do. The problem was that it was
not
close enough for me, but
too
close for him.

The closest we’d ever gotten was the other night. There’d been so much sex in the air, it was like my room had taken Viagra. The room was inky black; we couldn’t see a thing. Our playful teasing gave way to extended foreplay that was particularly intense. Instinctively, we peeled away our clothing while kissing with hyper urgency. We got up on our knees with our palms pressed together. He pulled back from me, and I felt his face like I was a blind woman. I could feel his mouth open with desire, shallow breaths leaving it. I pressed my naked torso against his, and he clutched me hard. He started pushing me down on the bed. And then he stopped…as fucking usual. He was motionless for a long time, and then quickly got out of bed.

“I’ve got to go,” he’d said. He’d put on his clothes while walking briskly to the door. As it opened, I could only see his black silhouette against the light spilling in from the hallway. He’d rattled off some apology and then retreated into the house.

I was thrilled he was back tonight. He was staring down at me like he had a million thoughts rushing through his mind. Though we had not been totally intimate, I dared to ask a strictly after-sex question: “What are you thinking about?”

James said, “There was a time, for a very long time, when I had no faith in the world. I couldn’t see any goodness in it or a reason to help it exist. Aside from my family, there was nothing to love. Then, months ago, you came back into my life. I couldn’t run or hide from what you brought out of me. Finally I felt alive. So I was just thinking about one word to describe you. Could it be
heart
? Let’s try
soul
. Or could it be
amour
? Only one came to mind:
life
. You are life itself to me. You were a long time coming. I had to go through much heartache and trauma to be here with you right now. But I’d do it all again.”

As he caressed my cheek, his faintly glowing eyes flickered. It was a relief to hear that I meant so much to him. Sometimes it was hard figuring him out. The vast majority of the time, everything seemed right between us. He was the ultimate when it came to being smiley and affectionate. But other times I’d catch him watching me with a look of sadness on his face. The kind people have when they’re about to tell you goodbye forever.

I forgot all that when James rolled over and kissed me. Joy and desire overwhelmed my body. Even though Catherine was still lurking around out there, for now James and I could be just like two
regular
lovers. I wished these moments could be bottled. That way, in the midst of chaos, I could have them at the ready, like aspirin for a heart attack victim.

As I tried to pull James on top of me, I caught a sound bite from a television reporter. He mentioned something about Long Island College. I abruptly stopped kissing James and sat up to look at the screen. “Turn it up,” I said.

James found the remote in the crumpled sheets and increased the volume. The screen filled with Long Island College’s most recent graduating class. The camera panned over all their beaming faces and the proud mamas and papas wiping away tears. The screen fast-forwarded to tight shots of graduates crossing the stage in black gowns and mortarboards studded with craft-store rhinestones reading “Thanks Mom,” “LIU,” or “Hire me.”

Off-screen the reporter spoke: “It has been three months since the gruesome death of Samantha Beckon.”

Samantha Beckon—the only girl featured on the exposé who was like me. It was a travesty that she was only profiled because of the extreme heinousness of her death.