Charlaine Harris - Crimes by Moonlight

“D’Angelo? Oh yes, I remember that one,” Circe said with genuine delight. “Such a sweet thing, and he fattened up so nicely, too.”

She reached out and touched D’Angelo’s leg in a way that made him feel like livestock appraised for auction. And then the fog enveloped him completely, and he fell into a place as dark as the marsh water.

He woke in a bed that carried the fresh smell of clean sheets dried on a clothesline. There was another scent as well, something exotic and deeply intoxicating. And there was the unmistakable softness of a woman’s bare breast pressed against his shoulder. He turned his head on the pillow and found her gazing into his eyes, her own eyes the deep blue of desire. Without a thought he made love to her. It was glorious and like nothing he’d ever known.

Later he woke again, and the cabin was full of the wonderful aroma of a meal cooking. He found her in the kitchen, wearing a long, flowered apron over her simple white dress.

“Sit down,” she said cheerfully. “Dinner’s ready.”

He sat at the table, still a little benumbed. “Where’s Gorman?”

“Albert served his purpose for many years,” she said, “but it was time for someone new. I like you. You found me, not an easy thing. You suspected the danger, but you came anyway. And you did it because of your brother. Intelligence, courage, and loyalty, traits I’ve always greatly admired. Ulysses was much the same.” She came to his side, set a plate of food in front of him, bent, and gently kissed his shoulder. “You know,” she said, “you even look a little like him.”

D’Angelo stared at her adoringly and murmured, “I’d forgotten you. But you look the same as you did all those years ago in the Sweet Shoppe.” He glanced down at his plate, which Circe had filled with herbed potatoes and green peas and applesauce. At the center was a steaming slice of pork loin cooked to perfection.

“The meat might be a little tough,” she said, sitting across from him and taking up her napkin. “The swine it came from was much older than I prefer, but I have always hated to waste a good pig.”

D’Angelo hesitated only a moment and then dug in.

I’m lying on the backward-facing seat of an SUV that is being driven much too fast, and I am rigid with apprehension. One good swerve and I could roll off the seat and bang against the rear window and then what? Would I break something crucial? Be maimed for life?

When I laid a trap to catch the thief that was ripping off my dad’s antique store, I never dreamed I’d get trapped, too.

At least we aren’t headed out of town. Not yet anyhow. I catch glimpses of passing street signs, but the names are unfamiliar. The van makes a final turn and coasts to a stop, then I hear a squeal of hinges. We pass through a set of steel gates and move slowly down what looks like an alley lined in garage doors.

Of course! A self-storage facility. Where else to stash stolen antiques?

Moments later, the SUV backs up to one of the units and comes to a full stop. I hear the doors open and shut, and a woman rolls up the door on the storage unit and starts unloading. To my intense disappointment, I don’t recognize her before she drapes a padded blanket over me.

“Careful!” a low voice warns from behind me. Man? Woman? I can’t tell.

At least I’m being handled gently. They ease me down onto the concrete floor. I can’t see through the blanket, and I’m starting to feel claustrophobic. What would they do if I suddenly screamed? I’m too scared to find out.

In no time at all, I hear the door roll down, and the van drives away.

I immediately concentrate all my will to fight my way out of that blanket. It’s pitch-black here and cold, cold. I feel along the edges of the door. If there’s a way to release the lock from inside, I can’t find it. I’m thirteen years old. Way too old to start bawling like a baby, even if I am freezing. Nothing for it but to burrow back into that padded blanket and remember how I wound up in this fix…

I probably wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t been struck by lightning when I was three. It was a bolt out of the blue. Literally. No chance to take cover or escape.

Dad’s mom came to live with us, but when she died five years later, Dad decided I was old enough to do without a babysitter. Every morning since then he pours us each a bowl of cereal and drops me off at school with lunch money. After school, I walk the eight blocks to his antique store where I do my homework, then read or help out.

Supper is usually a bowl of canned soup or the evening special at a nearby restaurant. Back at the house, Dad reads one of the many auction catalogs he gets in the mail, or we watch Antiques Roadshow and the History Channel. We’re both in our beds by nine o’clock. At least he is. Lately, I’ve been sneaking back downstairs and out into the backyard to test the limits of what I can do.

He’s a rather absentminded father, a kindly man more interested in the past than the present. He doesn’t care about my As in math or science as long as I make at least a C in history and know that a Chippendale is a desirable piece of furniture and not a desirable male stripper.

Friends? Hey, I’ve got friends.

Lots of friends.

Okay, okay, maybe not close friends. My classmates like me well enough though. I get asked to all the birthday parties, despite being something of a loner. I’m pretty good with a computer, but I don’t do Facebook. I don’t text or Twitter either, so no one’s ever claimed me as her best friend. I don’t mind. Honest. When I was a little kid, the shop was more fun than any playdate, and as long as I was careful and put everything back where it belonged, Dad used to let me amuse myself with the antique toys or the cases of estate jewelry.

In short, I was as normal-or what passes for normal-as any other little girl until the hormones kicked in last spring and I suddenly “became a woman,” as our gym teacher put it. It was not as huge a trauma for me as for some of my older classmates who had to endure sniggers and crude remarks from gorky boys whose voices were cracking like peanut brittle. Mrs. Kim had thoroughly explained what was going to happen to us and I had watched most of the girls in my class become women before it happened to me, so I was prepared. I had begun to wear a small bra, and I had a package of sanitary pads stashed in the back of the linen closet.

Unfortunately, my first period began during the last period of school one warm spring day. Even more unfortunately, I was wearing white clam diggers. As soon as I walked out of the classroom and headed down the sidewalk toward the store, it was as if there were a gang of feral dogs on my trail-three pimply faced boys who jeered and called, “Hey, Laurel! What’d you do? Sit down in ketchup?” and “Oooh, Laurel! Hurt yourself? Want us to call a doctor?”

One of them pulled out his cell phone to take pictures of my backside.

Embarrassed and humiliated, I began to run, which of course only encouraged them. The store seemed miles away, and as I darted around a corner, the only hiding place in sight was a thick hedge of azalea bushes in full bloom. Even as I dived into them and buried myself among the leafy branches, I knew it was a mistake. With nowhere else to look, they would surely zero in on the head-high azaleas.

“Hey! Where’d she go?” I heard one of the panting boys ask when he turned the corner and saw the empty sidewalk ahead.

“There’s her book bag,” said another. “She must be in the bushes.”

I froze as they pushed aside the flowering twigs. One acne-inflamed face was so close to mine, I could have spit on it, yet he didn’t seem to see me.