Silent Doll (2 page)

Zoe’s room was very girly; all pinks and purples, even the canopy bed was draped with pink gauze. A small table in one corner of the room held a tea party in progress, the stuffed animals staring at me reproachfully, as though they’d been deep in conversation before I turned on the light. Zoe’s closet brimmed with her normal clothes and various costumes. Sophie told me she was going through a princess phase. There were child size versions of all the Disney favorites; plastic tiaras and play make-up littered her small dressing table, which had pink bulbs around the mirror.

I lifted the corner of the duvet awkwardly, trying not to unbalance Zoe as I slipped her under and tucked it back into place. I brushed some of her blonde hair off her face; her eyes fluttered open for a second as I told her goodnight—then she was fast asleep. I flicked off the bedroom light and pulled the door closed.

I walked back into the living room to find Sophie pulling the DVD out.

“Not going to finish it?” I said in mock disappointment. She looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“You really like it?”

“Come on, singing crabs and fish, who doesn’t like that?”

She finally got that I was being sarcastic and pointed to the adult titles she’d weeded out of their movie collection.“Pick something.”

I squatted down and frowned at the titles. “Don’t you have anything with explosions or martial arts?”

Sophie rolled her eyes.

“You’re letting the whole gender down; I hope you’re aware of this.” I shrugged and pulled out
The Bounty Hunter
. Jennifer Aniston I could take or leave, but I would watch it for the pleasure of staring at Gerard Butler. Next to Adam Baldwin—the only Baldwin brother I could comfortably watch with or without his shirt on—he was my favorite male actor. I had my doubts about him after
P.S. I Love You
, but everyone has to have one bad film. We sat down to watch and Sophie went back to painting her toes. A howl rippled through the air outside.

“They will be okay, won’t they?”

Sophie looked up at me, looked to the window as another howl sounded and smiled slowly. “You’re worried about him, aren’t you? Don’t be. My Simian knows what to do, he’ll watch out for him, make his transition as easy for him as possible.”

I stared at the ceiling.

“Are you and–Michael, isn’t it?” I nodded. “Are you involved?”

I shook my head. “We’re just friends, but I feel responsible for...well, he wouldn’t have gotten bitten if it weren’t for me.”

“Does he blame you?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

“You really ought to, you know.”

“Yeah, well.”

Silence fell between us so with nothing else for us to say I went back to staring at the ceiling.

Once Sophie was focused on the movie I let my mind wander over my various worries. The first was LeBron. When he’d phoned me a week ago and told me what he was doing, he asked for help. Actually he’d let me yell at him then asked for help. He was very reckless. If he’d have broken out of his house he could have hurt someone or worse someone could have hurt him. He tried to tell me that he thought it was like when you attempted to quit smoking; no one could help you beat the cravings but you. After some more yelling from me, which I have to admit he took with relative good nature, I told him he was going to the community for the full moon. Then I’d called Simian who’d yelled at me for not knowing “my” friend better.

If I was honest I should have seen the signs. When at my birthday Simian had asked me if LeBron was okay, I should have twigged that he would know how he was if he was seeing him. I felt really bad. To be fair to me I had a lot on my own mind. Discovering I wasn’t human was a lot to deal with and I had no real idea what I was capable of. Sometimes I could control my powers and sometimes I couldn’t; there was a very steep learning curve. I knew no-one who could teach me to be what I was born to be; so I was left with only one option. Experiment.

At one point, I had stood on the roof of my building wondering: if I stepped off, would I learn to fly before I became a greasy smear on the pavement? Would I even get up and walk away from such a fall? Coming back to the moment, I shook my head, attempted to clear my mind and focused on something safe—the movie.

* * * *

I was half asleep on the couch when I heard the front door open. I rolled my head to look at the clock on the VCR; it was about six in the morning. The sun was just peeking over the horizon; hazy drafts of light streamed in through the curtains as I sat up to rub the sleep from my eyes. I flipped the afghan onto the back of the couch and stepped out into the hall to see what was going on. It was Simian arriving, keys in one hand and the fairly limp arm of another man slung over his shoulders. LeBron was near enough to passed out; his other arm was slung around DJ Tanner.

DJ was even more tanned and handsome since the last time I saw him. He’d cut his hair fluffy short so that he looked a little like Jude Law. It looked good on him.

They carried LeBron over to the couch and laid him down. I was about to shut the door when a woman wearing a man’s shirt and flip-flops bumped through. I’d met her before; her name was some kind of cheese. I stared after her as she fussed over LeBron. DJ moved to stand at my side as I watched her attentive hands flutter over him.

“Brie seems to be very taken with your friend,” DJ said in a low whisper.

Brie tucked the afghan around LeBron, then settled on her knees next to the couch, flashing a bit more than I wanted to see in the process.

“Who said cats and dogs couldn’t get along?” I said quietly, and DJ snickered, trying to hide a smile. Brie pushed some of LeBron’s hair off his forehead and tucked in a hand that had fallen out from under the coverlet. “Doesn’t look like I’m going to be needed here.”

DJ touched my arm to make me look at him. He had a good face, handsome in a very masculine way. He smiled. “Good, because I think there is something you and I should be doing.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, but dug around in my pocket for LeBron’s car keys. “Hey, Cheese,” I said, and threw the keys.

She caught them without looking back at me and said, “I only let the kid get away with that, Ms. Farbanks. Call me cheese again and you’ll meet my claws.”

I made a mock shocked face. DJ hurried both of us outside so he could laugh his ass off.

Chapter Two

The thing we were supposed to be doing turned out to be sweating like animals and leaping around a backyard.

“Come on, you can do better than that.”

I didn’t like it when David mocked me. DJ—short for David Jacob—started pushing me to be the big bad inhuman. He was head of security for the werewolf pack. He was in his late twenties, maybe thirty, but looked a lot older; I had to assume that it was because of all the muscles.

We were “play” fighting. He was playing and I was fighting, but overall it was supposed to be training. Some bad guys didn’t draw the line at hitting a girl. I needed more than basic self defense training.

I swung at him, but he whacked my arm down, rolled around my body and thrust the palm of his hand between my shoulder blades. I hit the ground face first, tasting dirt. His feet came down either side of my ribs and he pulled my head up, using my hair as a handle. I grumbled some un-polite words.

“This is supposed to be a workout. I’m not even breaking a sweat,” he said.

I grumbled at him some more. He was still juiced from his full moon change and I’d not even had coffee. It was a completely unfair fight. Chuckling, he let my head drop; I grumbled even more, grabbing fistfuls of dirt as I climbed to my feet. I threw the dirt at him. It smeared his tight T-shirt and he tutted at me.

“You’re being lazy,” he said.

I told him where to stick it, but I wasn’t really angry at him: I was angry at myself. I was so positive that I could recreate what I’d done the last time I got into a fight with a werewolf. I saw all his moves before he made them, a sepia vision falling over my eyes to show me about a half-minute ahead. It allowed me to win a life or death battle with a werewolf. Which, at the time, had been fantastic.

Maybe that form of precognition only worked if I was terminally in danger. There was no way DJ’s attacks were meant to hurt me. He wouldn’t do that to me. Simian would have killed him if I came back from one of our little sessions seriously damaged.

“Is that the best you got?” I snarled, trying to provoke him. “Not holding back because I’m a girl?”

“I’m trying not to hurt you.”

“Like you could. You’re mucking around like some school kid. If you can’t face me like a real opponent, there is no point in me being here. I’ll just have to ask someone who’s not a complete sissy.” If there was one thing I was good at, it was antagonizing an enemy. “Tell me again how you got knocked out by a lesser wolf?”

That was it. Nothing embarrassed him more than being reminded of the time when he’d gotten clonked on the head and tied up by a group of bitten werewolves who wanted to take over the community. He charged me—and the second sight snapped on. I saw each of his moves before he made them. I dodged him easily and it was his turn to kiss dirt. I knelt very lightly on his back, making sure he got a face full of it, and laughed.

“That was much better, wouldn’t you say?”

He growled, turning sharply to shake me off. I jumped up, planting my feet on either side of his hips as he looked up at me from the flat of his back.

“I’m finally having some fun,” I said, grinning. He grabbed my ankles and I ruined my gloat by letting out a completely girly squeal as he flipped me over. He pinned me to the ground, wrists above my head, and gave a much more playful growl. I pushed against his strength, making him really work to keep me down.

“You wound me up on purpose?”

“Yup. It wasn’t going to work with you just messing around like that. I had to make you attack me for real. I had to be in real danger.”

He smiled at me. I was surprised by how unthreatened I felt, even though he had me pinned.

“You’re not dodging now?” DJ said, arching a brow. I scowled.

“I’m not in danger now.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Next thing I knew his lips were on mine. I won’t lie and say it was the worst kiss I had ever had. It was nice; in fact it was very nice, seeing as I had been off men for nearly three months and my body was set to betray me at the first sign of weakness. I struggled to pull away; he let me go. I was a little breathless as I scooted back to sit up. He had no remorse whatsoever in his eyes. Neither of us spoke as he watched my breathing slow.

“Simian says you’re not seeing anyone.”

“I’m not. Neither am I looking to. I have too much on my plate for this sort of thing.”

It wasn’t a lie. I really did have a lot to handle. I was on a quest to learn more about myself, my mother and where I had come from and I didn’t want to mess around with men right now.

I had sort of broken up with my vampire boyfriend Aram, and although I had said we were both free to look for other people, I felt guilty letting another man kiss me. I got to my feet, dusting off.

“I’m sorry, Cassandra; I just thought we had something going here. A connection.”

“We’re friends, DJ,” I said, offering him a hand up. “I think I’d like you to take me home now.”

DJ was silent on the drive. He had a brand new jeep; dark blue rather than the cherry red one he’d lost in a combination of an explosion and a werewolf attack. That entire adventure, our first time working together, had netted the werewolves their new king, me major werewolf respect and a nice fat paycheck. Most of the paycheck was gone now, but at least I still had their respect.

I got out at my apartment building, which on the ground floor also holds my office: Farbanks Investigations, “all things paranormal, no case too small” as the sign says. Business was going well so far. I said a muted goodbye, and DJ did a U-turn in the road to go back to the community. I hoped I hadn’t broken his heart with my outright refusal of him.

I took the elevator—kicking it at the fourth floor—up to my apartment at the top and let myself in. I doffed my jacket, hanging it up. It was the middle of July and the temperature was slowly heating up, which meant I’d been able to switch to my summer wardrobe. Maybe I could do a little sunbathing soon. I loved the heat of the sun on my skin. I wondered if that had anything to do with my phoenix nature. There was so much I didn’t know about my heritage.

I hadn’t known about any of it until just recently; my mother never told me. She’d whisked me away, magically bound to another world to keep me safe. What she was trying to keep me safe from, I still didn’t know.

I went into my spare room and clicked on the overhead light. The room was a mess. I’d never finished redecorating the room after Magnus, my half-elf boyfriend, and I had broken up. He was helping with this room and I just couldn’t bring myself to work on it.

The walls were plastered with maps, cuttings, and photocopies from books; my desk was piled high with old volumes I had spent most of the wolf-king quest money on acquiring. I was trying to find out everything I could, trying to trace the legends of creatures like me and our ancient ancestors—the actual firebirds—back to a source. I wanted to find out where I came from and what I was capable of.