Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“Do you mind, ma’am?” The makeup artist, some girl named Raine, raised a pierced brow, sponge in hand. She’d been dabbing until circles appeared beneath my eyes, and creating fading bruises on my cheekbones for Xavier’s visit later that evening. I’m sure she wondered why, but I knew Micah was paying her enough not to ask. I ignored her, and turned my attention back to Ajax. He was gazing to the left, the wind lifting the hair from the nape of his neck as he sucked in a big mouthful of it.

“I’m right here, you rat-fucking bastard,” I said, and my breath caught when he turned and looked directly at the camera. A look of such hatred passed over his face I thought for a moment he’d heard me. Then his eyes fired like torches and a knowing smile jerked at one corner of his mouth. The same smile he’d shown me at dinner when he claimed he was going to kill me.

But he hadn’t heard me, and despite the look, he hadn’t seen me either. I knew, because just then he turned and stepped from the frame to reveal exactly what—who—had caught his interest.

“Oh, God.” I had to put a hand to my mouth to prevent the wail that threatened to rise from my chest. “God. Ben.”

He wept openly, shamelessly, tears running over his cheeks, his mouth contorted in pain. He shook off the consoling arm of one of his colleagues, and there were more than a few, all in uniform and looking awkward around their comfortless friend. Ben, I thought, who had kissed me so passionately I’d forgotten about danger. Ben, whom I’d safely left behind to go to Olivia’s.

Ben. Who thought he’d lost me yet again.

Now I was weeping, and Raine had silently retreated, uncertain what she should do next. In my searing horror and grief over Olivia, in the consuming fury that had impelled me to take another person’s life, and in my shock at finding myself with a whole new identity, I had utterly forgotten Ben.

But what was this? I sucked in a breath and held it there, tears drying instantly in my eyes. Helplessly I watched Ajax approach Ben and speak words that had his head jerking in surprise. Of course the sound was muted, the anchor’s solemn voice-over blabbing on and on about my place in society—my father’s place, really—and Olivia’s estimated inheritance now that she no longer had to share it with another. But I saw Ajax’s mouth move. His thin lips went wide with the syllables, exaggerating the words, as if he knew I was watching and wanted me to follow, and understand.

My condolences.

Ben had already reached out to shake his hand when recognition flashed over his face, freezing it for an instant, and he didn’t move while Ajax pumped his hand with an overly firm grip, a snaking smile taking the place of his faux compassion. I saw the instant Ben tried to yank his hand away, you could catch it if you knew to look for it, but Ben’s friends—sharp-eyed cops though they were—didn’t. They heard the words. They caught the back and forth pumping of a solid handshake. They saw only one man offering sympathy to another.

But I saw something else.

A slim silver chain snaked around Ajax’s neck, taunting. I gasped, putting my hand up to my own naked throat, and Ajax shifted and smiled. The chain glinted in the thin winter air.

And Ben lunged for his throat.

The commentator interrupted his live report as Ben’s friends yanked him back, hands pulling at his arms, his torso, his neck, while Ajax plastered an innocent look on his face. Ben was yelling now, his face red and wild, hair falling over his forehead, his suit jacket raised up around his chest. The commentator was attempting a play-by-play, but he must have been prompted to go to a commercial. There was enough time to see Xavier’s head swivel as he observed the ruckus with a slight roll of his eyes. Then Ben was yanked from the frame. Ajax shot the camera, and me, a victorious smile.

“No!” I screamed, leaping for the television just as the picture cut off. Makeup went flying, the bedside tray clattered to the floor, and I slapped my palms on the screen once, twice, then sent a fist flying through it. Raine let out a terrified squeal and backed into the corner. “You stay away from him! You leave him alone!”

I yanked the television from its mount and sent it crashing across the room. The sound was divine; satisfying and gloriously destructive. A switch flipped inside me, and havoc coursed through my limbs. And suddenly I couldn’t stop. I threw everything—the monitors, the machines, the cords, the tables and plastic chairs. All the while a voice, my true voice, was severing the strands of my new vocal cords. “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you…”

Olivia, so good and sweet and pure, never had a chance against Butch, and my heart had broken at that fact every day since her death. And my mother, who would have been able to fight him, hadn’t been there to protect her; ever since I learned the real reason for her absence, my heart had bled for her too.

But never once had I allowed it to break for myself. I had breath, and I had life, and I told myself that was enough, and more than I deserved. But after seeing Ben’s face, his all-consuming anguish, there was no stopping it. I screamed, and broke, and shattered everything around me, so it would represent how I felt, so it would match my insides; everything torn and stripped, raw and aching. So tired. And so very, very sorry.

When I’d finished—two minutes, two hours, or two years later—I found myself curled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth in the corner of a demolished and empty room; the makeup artist had long since fled, the lights busted on the walls, their counterparts swinging on bare wires from the ceiling, machines toppled and silent and dead.

“Joanna.”

I looked up. Warren’s appearance, as sudden as the first time I’d seen him, surprised me, as did his use of my real name. He’d been calling me Olivia for days. He was dressed the fool again; an unwashed, unwanted bum reeking of desperation and desertion, but his eyes were trained on me with a sort of sober ferocity, and that brought fresh tears to my eyes. He was really seeing me. “Now the true healing can begin.”

I shook my head slowly, then harder, and covered my face with my palms. This wasn’t healing. This was attack; the way antibiotics assault a foreign agent planted inside the body, though in this case I was the foreign agent. I was the virus inside.

“I am not dead,” I told him through stiffly splayed fingers. He knew this, of course, but I needed to hear the words for myself. “I’m not. I feel more, and I smell more. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.”

“Olivia—” he began, crossing the room.

But I cut him off and backed away. I didn’t want consoling words or generic explanations. “I’m not Olivia! I’m not weak or vulnerable! I’m not…” That good, I thought. “That innocent.” What I was was alive , damn it, and I wanted someone, anyone, to know it! No, that wasn’t quite true either.

I wanted Ben to know it.

Warren crouched in front of me. “It’s enough that you know who you are. As long as you know, the rest won’t matter. In time.” And something in his tone made me think he’d had occasion to tell himself the same thing.

But he was wrong, I thought as he held out a hand. It mattered because Ben mattered. What this was going to do to him—again—mattered. But I took the hand anyway. It was the only one being offered to me.

Warren pulled me to my feet and steadied me before him. “I know who you are too. And I promise I won’t ever forget.”

“I’m Joanna,” I said, and allowed myself to weep. I was both Light and Shadow and knew now that I always had been, but more than that…“I’m still me.”