Inhuman Heritage (22 page)

“How could such little scratches bleed so much?” I looked down at the puckered pink marks across my abdomen. Another day and it’d be gone. I’d have to keep it covered or it would really freak Incarra out.

“Tape and gauze,” I said sitting up. Incarra dug around in the first aid kit till she pulled up what I’d asked for. I held the gauze to the wound while she taped it down for me. Once it was in place I pulled myself to my feet stripping off my top tossing it towards the bin.

“How’s Anton?”

“Curled up on the couch trying to sleep a little I think. He wants to go home.” I pulled a drawer of the dresser open looking for a long sleeve T-shirt.

“Soon as the sun comes up,” I said pulling a black long sleeve tee out sporting a religious slogan-
Don’t fear God’s love. He’s not got anyone pregnant for 2000 years
. I pulled it on carefully, took a deep breath and looked at my hair in the mirror. It was a ragged uneven mess.

“Dude, I’m sorry,” Incarra said from behind me. I pulled the rest of my braid from where I’d stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans and lay it on top of my dressing table. I stroked my fingers along the length that was still intricately wound together. I mourned its loss; it was like losing a much beloved appendage. I remembered how long it had taken me to grow my hair. I was fourteen when it reached my rear and I’d started braiding it. My mother used to have me sit between her knees while it was wet, she’d spray it with de-tangler and slowly and carefully brush the tangles out. She had always loved my hair, which was one of the reasons why, even though it would have been more convenient, I hadn’t cut it. Now that too was gone. It was like a cruel hand of a fate slowly pulling out the threads of the tapestry that was my life. I wondered what would be left when fate was done with me.

“Who was that guy?” Incarra asked. I turned towards her walking towards where the balcony doors were, and pulled back the curtains to look out at the sky.

“It’s best if you don’t know. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to drag you into my weird little existence but I can and will do what I must to keep you from falling any deeper than you are.”

“But what if I want to help?” she whined and I shook my head.

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” I grumbled tersely and watched as the first peels of light shone over the horizon shoving back the gray of the sky and sending a shiver rolling down my spine. The entire apartment sort of quivered with the energy and Incarra sat rubbing the goose bumps off her arms.

“What was that?”

“That was the sign that it should be safe for you and Anton to return home now.” Incarra got up and as we both went into the living room, Anton rolled over on the couch to look at us. I walked to the front door and undid all the latches I’d slammed across to make sure that Anton had got the hint to stay put this time. I pulled the door open and looked over the railing in the corridor and down. Everything was normal again. I looked back into the living room.

“Okay. You can go home now.” Anton was quick to his feet and would have been out the door if Incarra hadn’t have grabbed his arm to make him wait. She knew I had something to say to both of them. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into my mess. I’ll understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore. Call me, if you want to talk.”

Incarra nodded but Anton looked solemn and unresponsive. I let them get into the elevator before I felt brave enough to take my eyes off them and close my front door. I was so afraid I would never see either of my friends again.

Chapter Eighteen

Sorin was so deep asleep and we were safe on the normal side of my worldly equation that I felt alright to leave him alone in the apartment. I wasn’t going far. I got some very strange looks from people as I walked along the street. I could see on their faces that they were wondering what had happened to me. What got me the most was the look of horror on the receptionist’s face at the beauty parlor as I walked in. Curl up and Dye wasn’t that far from my apartment and I knew-from the huge sign they had in the window-that they took walk-ins. Business was slow and they would take what they could get.

“I need some help,” I said tugging on the uneven length of hair next to my face, as if the condition of my hair wasn’t obvious enough. The girl nodded at me wordless. She swallowed hard and leaned around the plastic partition that was behind her desk.

“Deanne?”

I heard a woman excuse herself for a second and peer around the partition.

“Janice, Helen is taking walk-ins today, I’m fully…” She stopped speaking when she caught sight of me. Her mouth dropped open, if she’d been a cartoon it would have hit the floor and her tongue rolled out till it hit my shoes. Once she regained her composure, she looked sympathetic.

“You poor thing. What happened?”

“There was an accident, my hair got trapped and it had to be cut to release me.”

“Where was it before?”

I illustrated where the length my hair had been before and she winced like she could feel how much that had to have hurt me. She tapped a comb against the side of her smock.

“We’ll fix you up in no time, honey. Helen, we’ve got an emergency.”

Another woman appeared from the back of the shop. She was wearing tall boots with black leggings tucked into them and a long top that had large pink blossoms on it and a stylish belt around the middle. She had short, cropped blonde hair and looked to be in about her forties, her makeup was bright but expertly done. The only bad thing about her was that her perfume reached me before she did. She had exactly the same reaction that Deanne had but she recovered quickly. I looked her dead in her pale blue eyes.

“Can you fix it?” I asked. She smiled at me stepping aside to direct me to a row of sinks where she would wash my hair.

“I think I can. Let’s get you washed and conditioned and we’ll go from there.” I took my jacket off when Janice offered to take it and I watched her hang it up before following Helen back to the sinks. She wrapped the traditional black smock around me as I sat down carefully tipping my head back into the bowl.

“Poor love,” Helen muttered as she sprayed hot water over my hair and scalp. “Having to walk all the way here where people could see. You must have been so embarrassed.”

“Couldn’t be helped,” I said with a shrug.

It felt nice to have someone else shampooing my hair, it was kind of relaxing and it also helped me to think. What had happened to DJ and Farai? DJ had said he was going to get help. I assume that meant he had gone back to the farm to use their phone. No help had arrived. That meant one of two things, either DJ had never made it to the phone or he had not gone for help in the first place. DJ could have been one of the wolves that surrounded us in the barn and I wouldn’t have known, I never saw what color wolf he turned into. That then left me worrying what had happened to Farai. I knew Farai was on my side, he and I were both currently in the business of protecting Sorin, so he had not been in on the ambush. So when I had sent him to find what had happened to DJ, what had happened? I reasoned that he’d either been caught in the same trap that DJ had or he’d discovered that DJ had betrayed us and had to be silenced. I didn’t want to think that DJ had planned the whole ambush but what did I really know about the werewolf?

I didn’t even know exactly how Sorin chose the king. I would have to ask him. Maybe DJ was disgruntled about not being chosen as a candidate and had set up the ambush to try to kidnap Sorin so that no one could be king. It would be very petty.

“Does your hair curl naturally?” I opened my eyes and looked back at Helen.

“Yes, but I used to braid it a lot or brush it out.”

“Well now that it’s shorter, it’s going to be a lot harder to do that. I can straighten it if you prefer but your face would be much better framed by the curls.”

“Won’t that require a lot of maintenance.”

“A little spraying, a little fluffing, it won’t take any longer than braiding it would have. If you do it all before you go to sleep as well it will be ready for the morning.” I guess that didn’t sound too bad. I would let her do as she must because she was the expert in this situation, if she could save what was left of my hair then I would be eternally grateful. I felt the splash of the warm water on the back of my neck and rinsed out the soap. I had never been able to imagine myself with short hair, it’d been long for as long as I could remember. I suppose that was a long time to go without change and I know they say that change every now and again is healthy. Personally I’d never been a fan of it. I liked things to be the way I liked them. I had to suppose that was the reason I had freaked out, everything I knew was changing. It wasn’t a little change, it was a warping of my whole world view. The makeover I was forced to be getting was just another change.

She took me over to the seat in front of the mirror where I sat down and proceeded to close my eyes again. I didn’t want to look at the wet jagged mess that was my hair at the moment.

“Let’s start with seeing how much we have to cut off to get you level again and then we can work on style.” I gave a quick nod before she took my head in her hands telling me to keep it straight and still. I could hear each snick of the scissors as it sliced through my hair, sorting through each lock so that they were the perfect length. My head felt strangely lighter. She would lift a lock, draw a comb through it, snip and let it fall back against my head. I could hear the hair as it fell against the floor as she would section off another lock, snip it and let it fall back into place. There was something very soothing about it.

Helen, the stylist, started nattering while she cut about holidays and movies, I only had to chime in with a word here and there and she would just run on like a record only pausing briefly between tracks. She stroked her fingers through my hair and I could feel she had some cream or mousse in her palm that stuck to my hair coating it, shielding it as she turned a blow drier on my head.

The radio that had been playing low in the background was drowned out completely by the sound of the hot air blowing around my ears. I could feel the brush curling and twirling my hair around its bristles, forming it, giving it new definition and shape.

“Do you mind hairspray at all?”

“Not really, but don’t go mad with it, okay.”

I kept my eyes tight shut and held my breath while she sprayed around my head making two completely unnecessary circuits. I felt her lift my hair, scrunch it in her fingers and let it drop.

“There now, that’s so much better.”

I opened my eyes and looked into the mirror. The curls in my hair were more defined, they curled carelessly around my face barely brushing my collar bone and if my face had been a bit fatter I would have looked a little like a doll. As it was I looked close to a promotional picture I’d seen for
Grey’s Anatomy’s
Izzie Stevens. It was remarkable. I admired it from all sides as she held a mirror behind me so I could see the back. It looked good. It looked really good. I thanked the chatty stylist wholeheartedly for saving my hair, paid at the till and left the shop.

I don’t know what it is about a new haircut that makes you feel so empowered. Perhaps it’s all the eyes that fall upon you in admiration and jealousy. However, new or not a haircut did not make my day more or less remarkable. I went to the supermarket, fervently avoiding the liquor aisle and the eyes of the clerk who’d gleefully sold my soused self the bottles of tequila.

I bought some staples of both my diet and that of a growing child, tossing in a couple of bags of gummy bears. There is not a kid on this earth that can resist the overwhelming appeal of bear shaped gelatin products. I pity anyone who does not know the joy of licking the back of a gummy bear and sticking it to an unsuspecting sleeping person’s face. I smiled. I was a slightly evil child.

I walked back home, put the shopping away and checked on the sleeping Sorin. He was still out for the count which was good. I pressed the flashing button on my answer machine and started to put the shopping away. I’d gotten a new machine after I’d destroyed the tape on the old one, then come to the discovery that my parent’s machine was so drastically out of date that I couldn’t buy a new one. Everything had gone digital. Aram’s voice came over the speaker much clearer than the old one had ever managed.

“Pet, please, we must talk. I do not wish to be pushed out of your life. You must tell me what is wrong so I can fix it. Come see me.”

The message clicked off and I was reaching for the phone before I could stop myself. I had dialed Dante’s number before I managed to pull my thoughts together.

“Dante’s Inferno…”

“Can I speak to Lance please? It’s Cassandra.”

“Certainly. Please hold.”

I nodded even though they couldn’t see that. I was greeted much more pleasantly on the phone now. No sales pitches and they actually let me talk to tell them what I wanted. The music stopped and the phone clicked.

“Miss Cassandra, a pleasure as always. What can I do for you?”

Lance was always very polite. He was Jareth and Aram’s day guy, a glorified gopher who got things done that had the limitation of banker’s hours.

“I need you to give a message to Aram, just write down what I say and put it on his bedside table or someplace he’ll see it when he wakes.”

“Certainly.” I could hear the sound of rustling as he got pen and paper ready.