Coveted (3 page)

But am I destined to live like this for the rest of my life? Alone in a house with ornaments in boxes to occupy my time?

Why do I dwell on things like this? I cleaned up my food and went upstairs. Might as well head to bed and concentrate on surviving tomorrow.

But after tomorrow? The months to come would include the possibility of seeing Thorn, yet not being able to be with him. In the meantime, I’d continue to live here with my friends. Yeah, my “friends.” I snorted.

Pretty sad that a nutcracker couldn’t warm a lonely bed.

Around three a.m., the sounds of footsteps outside my house forced my eyes open. I froze. Heavy footsteps stomped on my flowers near the front bay windows. I angled my head to catch any scents but, from my downwind position, all I could smell through my upstairs bedroom window were the fall-blooming flowers in my garden.

The subtle sounds of fingers gripping the living room windowsill doused me in fear. Of all the houses in this town, I bet the Long Island werewolves had picked the house without a decent weapon. (And I most certainly couldn’t use my reindeer cake-cutting knife. I refused to soil my cutlery, and even butter knifes were sharper.) And what if they broke into the house? Tore through my things to search for me? They might step on one of my boxes or knock a figurine off the fireplace mantel.

Did I have anything deadly to use other than my claws or bare hands? I could see the local paper now:
Crazed Woman Brings Down Burglar with Hordes of Holiday Cheer
.

Without a sound, I crept from the bed and opened my door. Of course, it squeaked. I winced and mentally added a can of WD-40 to the grocery list.

Since my sneak-attack plan was squashed, I thundered
down the stairs and swung open the door. Instead, my attack would come on strong. After all, I had boxes of ornaments to protect.

The stone porch chilled my feet as I plodded down the steps. To my keen eyes, the front yard was alive with late-night activity. A single fox scurried toward the far grove, while a cottontail chased after another. But I detected nothing large moving—until something stirred in the dark shadows among the ivy that clung to the side of the house.

Light blue eyes peeked from around a corner. A scent drifted to my nose—one that I’d never forget, since it brought memories of a more pleasant past.

Cheetos
.

“Come on out, Aggie. I can smell the Cheetos crumbs on your jeans from a mile away.”

A groan from the distance. “Hey, Nat. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“With that racket, you’ll wake up half the Jersey shore.”

Agatha McClure walked up to the porch with a small bag in her hand. Eyes the color of shiny sapphires peered back at me and I quickly remembered her from my teenage years. Aggie was tall, rich, and outspoken, but from our past experiences together, I knew something more swam underneath that shiny veneer.

I took a step forward as she advanced toward the house. “What are you doing here? I thought you moved back to New York.” I hadn’t seen her in over five years. All this time I would’ve expected her to be married and socializing in the Hamptons, not standing here with a single suitcase. How time had changed for everyone.

“I did. I couldn’t take the negative vibes up there anymore.” She pushed her red hair behind her ear. A streak of blonde highlights framed her face. “I’m moving out west to Vegas.”

I nodded with a wry smile. “The city of opportunity.” She wanted to come inside, but I didn’t plan to invite her in.

“My Greyhound bus stopped here and I need a few days to build up my reserves to buy another ticket.”

“Well, I can drive you to the Motel 6 down the road. They have comfortable rooms.”

She took another step toward the porch. My heartbeat accelerated.

“Nat, I don’t have a place to go. If I had the money, I would’ve gone there.”

I rolled my eyes. Oh, why didn’t she have some well-to-do relative up north in Englewood who could offer her a place to stay? My home was my sanctuary, the one place where no one judged me.

She smirked. “You act as if you’re hiding dead bodies in there.”

If she only knew the truth.

Aggie tilted her head and gave me a knowing smile. “What’s wrong, Nat? You’re acting funny.” She’d known me so well once—during the darker days and the lighter ones.

I released a long sigh. After all, this was Aggie—not some stranger who’d judge me. “Come on in.”

Aggie bounded for the steps and let out a soft squeal. “We’re going to have so much fun. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other.”

She continued to ramble as we entered the house. On any other day, I would’ve wished I’d had time to shift the boxes in the foyer to make more room for visitors, but this time I didn’t.

“Did I catch you at a bad time? You moving?” She peered at the boxes.

“No.” I left it at that. She’d figure it out soon enough. A fog of silence fell over us and I led her to the kitchen and turned on the light. As a hostess who was also hoping
to distract her visitor, I knew I had to offer her something to eat. I opened the fridge and pulled out some deli meat. “You want a roast beef sandwich?”

I didn’t glance at her face after I asked the question. From her body language, I perceived her concern. The tilted head and the thin line of her rouged lips spoke volumes. She didn’t need an explanation. Most homes didn’t look like mine.

“I’m not too hungry.”

I tried to find my voice so I could scramble out of this awkward situation. “If I remember correctly, you were never one to turn down a roast beef sandwich with all the fixings.”

“Nat …” She approached me. Her shoes scraped against the shiny floor. I didn’t dare check to see if she’d trailed in mud.

“I even have fresh dill pickles from Barney’s.”

If she’d had ears on the top of her head, they would’ve gone up. “Barney’s still sells those things?”

“Yep, and if I remember right, other than Cheetos, you ate those things every time you visited me.”

I pulled out the items I needed to make the sandwiches. With the subject of my home temporarily tabled, Aggie set her bag on the floor. I abandoned the food to put it someplace other than the middle of the kitchen.

She frowned. “I can take it to my room.”

I picked up the bag and headed for the guest room off the living room. “No need. I keep an efficient house.” I shook my head after I said it. Oh, the irony.

She followed me but stopped cold when she reached the guest room. “Where do I get to sleep?”

I placed her bag on a box on top of the bed—a bed covered with ornament boxes, plastic-covered doodads, and other holiday stuff like gaudy sweaters and lawn ornaments. The only thing missing from the scene was “Jingle Bells” playing in the background.

“You can sleep here. While you eat I can clear this little bit of stuff out. I have room … in the garage.” This was my overflow room. Oh, shit.

“Nat, where did all these things come from?”

I squeezed past her to return to the kitchen. “You know, lots of places. The Home Shopping Network, flea markets, brief trips to New York.” I waved my hand as I spoke. I offered her that, “Oh, everyone does this kind of thing” look.

She leaned against the counter and frowned. I briefly inspected the floor and was relieved to find it free from mud.

“Nat, I thought you’d improved. It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?”

I turned on the radio to the local jazz station to calm my nerves. I knew this would happen. “The last couple of years have been a bit hard, but I’ve managed okay.”

With a flourish, I added condiments to her sandwich and placed it on a perfect plate with a dill pickle on the side. The meal was almost good enough for a professional photo in a magazine. She took the offered food and sat down to eat. On the surface, I knew she wanted to press further. But Aggie rarely turned down food, and I used her own vice against her.

We’d met each other years ago at a camp for “troubled” werewolves. At the time, my parents had told me the place would help me focus on important things. I didn’t do well among the others until I met Aggie.

Her rich parents couldn’t find a regular therapist to help their daughter with her overeating problem, so they sent her to Camp Harold for the summer. I had fond memories of the ten whacked-out werewolves who’d sat in a circle around the campfire talking about their problems.

Aggie tore into the sandwich, grinning widely between bites. If someone
had
to show up at my door, the best person in the world was her.

With Aggie settled, I left the kitchen to figure out where I could move the ornaments I was storing in the guest bedroom. I couldn’t use the bathroom. (No way in hell.) The attic was out. (Filled to the hilt.) And so the last possibility left was the tiny shack I’d bought a year ago.

While Aggie slept into the early morning, I lumbered about outside. I’d originally bought the tall tin shed at the local home-improvement store as a place for my stuff. But then a few years ago, a flood drove me to bring my precious ornaments into the house.

One hour later, as the sun peeked over the horizon, I assessed my work. I’d have to suck in my stomach to enter the tiny space, but I’d done my job and created a box-free space for my guest.

But what bothered me the most was the certain knowledge that, by tomorrow, I’d be sneaking some of the boxes back into the house.

M
ost
people slept in on weekends. But since I worked in retail, I woke up early in the morning like clockwork to perform my duties at The Bends. So it was quite unfortunate that I’d spent the past three hours moving boxes around. Now I had only thirty minutes to rest before work.

As the alarm clock droned, I stared at the flashing digits with disdain. I could’ve hit the snooze button, but such a move was completely against my nature. I had never arrived late to work.
Never
. Even if I’d participated in a triathlon before work, I would still show up on time.

After a brief shower, I dressed in my usual outfit—a champagne-colored blouse and black pencil skirt. The way I saw it, why spend time deciding between clothes?

The guest-room door was shut when I left my room. Only the sounds of the humming refrigerator filled the room while I prepared a perfect cup of coffee.
Anyone
could start the day off right—all it took was two tablespoons of coffee to six ounces of water.

As my hands moved, I went over my last-minute details before work. I left Aggie a note that I’d stop by with lunch from Archie’s. Before I departed, I said a few Hail Marys, praying the house would remain in the same state until I returned.

Reluctantly, I entered the garage. But I paused three times before opening the car door.
Leave the house
. It wasn’t as if Aggie would burn the place down.
Don’t think about stuff like that!
She didn’t smell like smoke last night, so I convinced myself to climb into my car so I wouldn’t be late.

Most flea markets opened later in the day on Sundays. But Bill, the clever and greedy goblin that he was, opened his establishment at nine a.m. on the dot. I arrived promptly at eight-forty-nine to see three cars waiting in the lot.

As I left my car, I waved at one of our die-hard customers, Mrs. Weiss. The eighty-year-old witch showed up every three days in a suffocating wave of lavender perfume–laden clothes. As a fellow supernatural creature, she ought to have known about my keen sense of smell—and how offensive her lavender perfume would be to a werewolf. But it’s not as if proper conduct around werewolves is advertised on cable television. Like most of The Bends’ other supernatural shoppers, we hid our true nature in the shadows.

Other than Mrs. Weiss, all our supernatural customers had a good reason to shop early. Every Saturday night, Bill received a shipment of magical items, which he put out first thing Sunday morning. I entered the showroom to find him grumbling over those very same boxes.

“Bill, we’re opening in ten minutes. Couldn’t you have opened these things in the back office?”

Not only had he strewn brown wrapping paper all over the cleared pathway, but he’d also left bits of white packing peanuts all over the floor. What made matters worse was Bill’s lack of organization.

“Did you catalogue any of these—wait, why do I bother asking?”

Bill grunted a reply while he placed a set of wands in the display case. With a bit of goblin magic, he cast a spell to spread glamour over them. By the time he finished, the wands would look uninteresting to regular folk like humans.

In the meantime, I watched him carelessly cram the merchandise inside. My anxiety rose with every careless move he made. What if he damaged a wand? Hell, how could the clerks figure out how much anything
cost
if he didn’t label them properly? Before I started hyperventilating, I shoved him out of the way.

“Go open the registers!” I hissed.

From behind his glasses, the goblin’s eyes twinkled. He snickered and strolled away to the back office. Did I hear that mischievous man whistle a lively tune while he loaded the cash into the registers?

I had five minutes to pick out three or four wands for Mrs. Weiss. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to photograph and catalogue the multitude of bristly twigs. But I did have one thing on my side: The elderly witch bought her wands as gifts, and picked them solely by appearance. The darn thing could’ve shit magical bricks, but if the twig sparkled in the noonday sun, she’d buy it.

By the time Bill opened the door, I’d managed to photograph three of the wands and add them to the computer system. Seven customers filed into the showroom, with Mrs. Weiss bringing up the rear. With seconds to spare, I placed three wands with price tags in the display case just as she lumbered toward it.

“Got any new pretties this week?” Her voice rattled in her tiny five-foot frame.

“We have several new fire-witch wands. But I took the time to personalize this selection just for you.” I offered a pleasant smile and used my soft-spoken saleswoman voice. I saved my “Are you crazy lady?” voice for irate customers who tried to hustle the store.