Magical Tendencies (9 page)
Tisha was standing directly across from me with a new look on her face—she was puzzled. "I don't quite understand what is going on, Celeste. This is new."
"Why are you speaking like an old lady, Tish? You really tick me off when you talk like that! Why can't you act like you usually do and speak like a normal twenty-four-year-old… woman?"
Tisha immediately swung her hip out to the side and leaned on it with gusto. I couldn't help but snicker because she was doing it for my benefit.
"Although I do enjoy the wardrobe this time around, I find that it is much harder to keep up with the lingo these days. All of the texting acronyms give me a headache and it's hard to act boy crazy over anything in tight jeans." Tisha actually seemed depressed.
"H-O-T, HOT. You were good at it," I giggled. Sometimes I actually had to rein her in because she was a bit over the top sometimes. I shook my head—this could not be happening.
"So what do I do, Tish? Or should I call you Mortisha?"
What a strange name.
"Tisha is fine until you realize who we both are. You always revert back to Mortisha when the memories flood." Tisha smiled kindly at me. I guess I looked pretty upset.
"So tell me how you met Solomon."
It was Monday morning and I was taking a personal day—no work calls and no time at the computer. It just seemed so obtrusive to the time that I needed to think and flesh out the puzzle that was my life.
What was I going to do about my… ugh.
.husband
? I was married—what was I going to do about that? I was married to a man that I didn't know and didn't feel comfortable around. He was a control freak from what I could tell—never left the castle when I disappeared. He just waved his hand and sent out the scouts to find me and drag me back. What kind of a husband could he have been? What kind of affection could there be with someone that acts like that?
And then there was Solomon. According to Tisha I ran twelve times when I met Solomon first. What was different this time? What was going on and what didn't I know about? What did Solomon do or say that made me run away… twelve times?! Grrrr, what was wrong with me? Was I
that
weak? Did I feel obligations didn't hold me to the throne? Was I
really
a queen?
I sat down in the middle of my apartment, frustrated and a jumble of nerves, crossing my feet, resting my elbows on my knees and closing my eyes. Meditation sometimes helped and sometimes it made things worse.
Solomon. I could see him in my mind. He was tall, handsome, with dirty-blond hair and deep blue-green eyes that made me swoon. He didn't seem like a threat but he was a vampire. Something that I always heard about vampires was that they were always out for themselves and manipulative. They were HOT but manipulative… and dangerous.
Or was that just what I had assumed from what I had read in my spare time.
Von. I imagined him standing before me. He was tall, with hazel eyes and dark hair. His muscles rippled under his jeans and button-down. He obviously knew what I liked a man to dress like because he did it perfectly, down to the scuffed-up ropers. Just looking at him, he was my ideal.
There was a problem here. In the back of my mind I kept seeing the two men side-by-side. Two men that were very much the opposite of each other, but two sides of the same coin. They seemed to be repelling each other, pulling the coin apart, tearing the fabric of their realities apart to ensure that they could reach the other side first. But what stood at the other side? I turned my imagination's vision to the side and saw myself standing there with arms out. Who was I reaching to? Was it Solomon or was it Von? My head told me Von because he was my husband, but my body told me Solomon. Taking the full count, I realized my heart had not cast a vote—it was silent and I figured that it was the smartest one in this vote for a soulmate. My heart would rather be left out of everything
. Just so typical for my heart
.
A knocking sounded at my door, bringing me away from my meditation and shaking me from the quiet of my time alone. Shaking my head to clear my cloudy mind, I pushed off the floor to reach for the door.
"Who is it?" I asked as I peeked through the peephole.
"Solomon," the voice stopped me short. His voice, the voice of the man my body preferred over my own husband. Was it a smart idea?
Who cares?!
I opened the door to get full view of Solomon. He was standing on my foyer area in black jeans, a casual white cotton t-shirt and a black blazer. He was holding a bouquet of hydrangeas, tinted in my favorite purple and blue colors. My eyes feasted on both him and the flowers.
Solomon grinned warmly as he handed me the flowers and leaned over gently to give me a soft kiss on the cheek. His lips were cool on my skin and caused a spread of warmth and peace through me that didn't stop at my cheek.
"What are you doing here, Solomon?"
He seemed taken aback by the question but he didn't pause too long to worry about it. "Checking on you. Did you have a good trip to the coast?"
Turning towards the kitchen I continued the conversation, "It was quite… interesting."
Silence came from behind me. Solomon knew something but he wasn't letting on.
"What happened?" His tone was cautious.
"I met Von Edwards. I met my husband." I said as matter-of-factly as possible to get the point across that I was a married woman even though I didn't believe it.
Solomon threw his head back in a huge laugh that shook the vase that was now sitting on my counter. "Hardly your husband anymore. He has run out of time. He has run out of favor." Solomon continued to laugh. If he kept that up he was going to hurt himself.
"What do you mean that he has run out of time?" I didn't care about the favor because I certainly didn't
favor
the way that he acted very much myself.
"I mean that his time at your side has run out. If you two had not renewed your vows, then you two are no longer married." Solomon swept through the room and was now standing directly beside me in the blink of an eye. Immediately I became uncomfortable with his presence in the room, in my sanctuary.
My voice shook just like my body as I didn't know what to think of this… vampire. "Please elaborate." I shook my head and looked down at the floor.
"You are my queen." That was all he said, as if that was going to be enough.
My eyes drifted back up and he was standing within arm's reach of me, piercing me with his knowing eyes. "The queen that you were speaking of before." It wasn't a question. I was just stating the truth, at least from his perspective.
"Yes." Solomon kept his eyes on me, looking at me as if he was seeing someone completely different.
"And you want… " Open-ended questions were my friend. I knew I had him here. "What?"
Solomon looked at me with sorrowful eyes, and reached out his hand, gently brushing the back of his hand against my cheek. He was afraid of something. He was afraid that he was going to scare me and that I would run again. Wouldn't
that
be the only reason that he was afraid to answer my question now? What was causing the intense sadness?
"You… are still here. You have not run," Solomon whispered as if it were a secret. "Something is different."
"Well, Tisha thinks so." I turned away from him, occupying myself with the vase and flowers.
"Mortisha, yes, the fairy. I should have guessed." Solomon seemed lost in his machinations. What goes on in the mind of a vampire? Bah, vampire. So weird to even consider…
Straightening the vase of flowers on the breakfast bar, I turned to Solomon and crossed my arms under my chest. He obviously noticed the accentuation of my bust because he cleared his throat and leaned slightly closer to me. His eyes were that much closer. "I like your new eye color. Are they contacts? Black-brown. That seems a bit odd for you, don't you think? I never got the chance to ask you before because you were always gone by this time." His voice drifted off as if he were afraid that I was going to disappear yet again.
"These are my eyes, Solomon. I don't know what you are talking about a different color." At that Solomon leaned even closer, so much so that I could feel his cool breath on my chin, smell the manly cologne that he wore and the rich musk that was all him. I was even close enough to get the smell of his laundry detergent that smelled of… clean. No meadows at spring time, no tropical rainstorm, just clean.
"Your eyes, Celeste, I don't understand." He leaned away from me, scanning my face as if I were a complete stranger and he had to find the barest hint of the woman he knew.
"I have brown eyes, big deal?" Geesh, men and their drive to have the beautiful green, blue or hazel eyes. Men were absolutely shallow and it ticked me off sometimes. "What color should they be?" I huffed.
"Lavender."
"What?! That's not an eye color!" I sputtered. What was up with my eyes? Why was Solomon obsessed with it so much? Come to think about it, Von even commented on my eye color. "How could they change?"
Solomon waved his hand around the room and turned in the direction of the hand, following it until he was facing the couch and walked directly towards it like a man on a mission. "I suspect that you may be losing your powers." He sat down fluidly, and settled down like he owned the place. "I suspect that you may have known that in the past and that was why you ran in the beginning."
"But why would I keep running away, Solomon? Why would I keep running away from
you?
"
"Was that what Mortisha told you? That you had run away from me?" He smirked at me with an intense glare in his eyes. "Did
she
tell you that?"
"She told me that the other times, when I chose to run away, you were the first one to find me. The vampire first, then the warlock." I held my chin high. Believing Tisha was easy, defending her was another story completely.
Solomon frowned down at his hands. "This doesn't make sense," he shook his head. "You were running away from
me
?" He seemed dejected, devastated.
Pressing my lips together, I rolled my lips around like I was spreading lipstick. My nervous habits were usually pretty awkward. "I can't say I'm sure of that. I'm not running away from you now." I gazed at him for a long moment, trying to piece everything together. His mind was trying to wrap itself around the problem also, I could tell.
His eyes narrowed in on me, "What do you think is different?"
"I don't know."
"What happened recently that was out of the ordinary?" He sounded just like Tisha.
"Besides being attacked? Besides meeting a vampire? Besides finding out my bassist is a stalker and meeting my 'husband'?!" I looked down at my hands and back up. Solomon was immediately by my side in that instant and I knew that my personal space was going to be invaded more than I wanted in the near future.
"He is no longer your husband. He forfeited the right when he never searched for you, never hunted for the lost queen. You two never renewed the vows." Solomon's voice shook a tiny bit as he ran his fingers through his spiky hair. "He's an idiot." He flicked his eyes over to the flowers and back to me, an eyebrow quirked inquisitively.
"I love them," I smiled at him to get the conversation away from his angst.
"Yes, they are your favorite." He smiled down at me.
How did he know that?
"I guess you know a lot about me."
He simply nodded and smiled at me, quirking his eyebrow again. "Ask your questions." He smiled down at me as he took my hand in his.
"How did we meet?"
He sighed, as if he were gathering his thoughts and organizing them in chronological order. Nodding he began, "There was a tournament to select the guard for the queen. All knights were in attendance and I chose to act as if I were part of their number. Just a number." He seemed to drift off into his own world as the room became heavy with the silence.
"And… ?" Prompting should not be needed. This man seemed to have a history waiting to be shared.
"Yes, well," he looked down at his hands, fidgeting for no apparent reason, "I saw you pass the entrance to my quarters. A woman in everyday attire—it was a typical thing to see in the living areas of the knights. Women came and went, but no one that ever looked like you, stunning even in the clothing of a worker. I was intrigued and decided that I would follow you to get a better look. Something about you spurred me on to follow you through corridors, up stairwells, into rooms and out. Where you were going was beyond me—you seemed a bit… lost." He shook his head with a grin.
"When you finally stood in the middle of the hallway to the library… ." His pause seemed to be for dramatic effect. He looked as if he were wary of what he was sharing with me. His back stiffened and he shook his head. It was obvious that he didn't want to share anymore.
I stared at him as I tried to swallow what he said. "So you were following me… to do what?" I needed to get the conversation back on track.
He smiled directly at me as he crossed his arms against his chest, drawing my eyes to his swelling muscles and tight t-shirt. "My plan was to steal a kiss. You were so beautiful and I was extremely attracted to you—it seemed reasonable to believe that the attraction would be mutual." He revealed a gleaming smile as he quirked his head to the left.
"What was
that
supposed to mean?" I shook my head, smiling back at him. "Don't you think that was a bit vain of you to think so?" He
was
gorgeous but there was no reason to add fuel to the fire.
"I'm a vampire, my love, and yet you have never had anything taken from you that you did not want taken."
"So we have kissed?" I tried to keep my eyes on his to see if there was anything that would give away a lie.
"Many times," he smiled to himself.
I thought about that for a moment. "
Many
times?" It was time to walk away—I walked determinedly straight towards the couch and sat down with shaky legs and arms. Subtle butterflies were making their way into my consciousness as I looked up at him from my new seat.