Kiersten White - Paranormalcy

She gave me a glare so cutting I was surprised I didn’t bleed. A few more steps and the white lines opened in front of us. She shoved me out and disappeared into the black.

The room was the same boring color scheme as the rest of the Center. A door to a small bathroom was open; other than that the room was a simple square with a gray bed against the wall. Lend, wearing me of all things, was sitting on it. He glanced over, surprise flitting across his/my features. Then he looked away, and I realized Raquel was talking.

I backed up against the wall. She must have been standing in the hallway, because I couldn’t see her and was pretty sure from the lack of reaction that she hadn’t seen me. Not busted. Yet. And now I knew where Lend was. Sometimes faeries came in handy, after all.

“… would all be much easier if you’d just give us some simple information. I’ll let you think about it.” Raquel finished and I heard her pumps tapping away down the hall.

Lend-as-me looked over and raised one eyebrow quizzically.

“Hey, no fair!” I whispered. I’d never been able to raise just one eyebrow at a time. And not for lack of trying, either. He looked confused, so I gestured to my own eyebrows and shook my head. He grinned in response and I melted away, replaced by the dark-haired dark-eyed hottie.

“What are you doing here?”

I shrugged, sliding down the wall and sitting against it. “Just thought I’d drop by for a visit.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. I was bored.”

“Me, too.” There was a long, awkward silence. “Are you planning on staying for a while?”

“Not sure. I think I’m missing.”

“Raquel did seem very on edge.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I should probably let her know I’m not dead.” I didn’t get up.

“You look tired.” He briefly shifted back to wearing me, showing me my heavy eyelids and the dark circles under my eyes.

“Gee, thanks. I love hearing that. Why not just tell me I look like crap?”

He laughed and switched back to the cute guy. “I still can’t get your eyes.”

“I’m an original,” I said cheerfully.

“More than you know, I think.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “Just that I’ve never met a human I couldn’t replicate exactly.”

I stood, scowling. “Look, Water Boy, the only paranormal in this room is you.”

“If you say so.”

I was too tired for Lend’s nonsense. The doorway was wider than a normal door and totally open. “What’s the security on this room?”

He lifted the foot with the ankle tracker. “If I cross the threshold of the room, an alarm goes off and my ankle thing goes zap.”

No problems for me then. “Excellent. I’ll see you later.” I walked out without another word.

I didn’t spend much time in the security sections of the Center. By the time paranormals got here, my work was done. Guessing, I turned left and followed the hall to a familiar area. I was pretty close to Central Processing, so I went in and found Raquel talking frantically with Lish. “That’s not acceptable! The werewolves have to be able to find something !”

Lish looked up, saw me over Raquel’s shoulder, and promptly burst into tears. At least, I think that’s what she was doing. I’d never seen her cry, and there weren’t tears since she was already in water, but the facial contortions and shoulder movements were enough to clue me in.

Raquel turned around and yelped, then threw her arms around me. “They didn’t eat you!”

“No, they didn’t eat me.” I had to laugh at the odd symmetry, pushing back my own tears of relief. I was so glad to be back here, with Raquel and Lish. For a while there I’d honestly thought I might not ever see them again.

Regaining her composure, Raquel pushed me out to arm’s length, holding onto my shoulders. “What on earth happened? Where have you been? And why did you kill all those vampires?”

“I—Wait, what? Kill the vamps?”

She nodded, looking severe. Killing paranormals is not okay for employees of IPCA. All paranormals are classified as endangered; that’s why even the icky ones just get neutered instead of, well, dead.

“I didn’t kill them! They were one bite away from killing me! I tased a few and slashed around with my silver knife, but I’m sure I didn’t pierce any hearts.”

“How did you get away?”

I looked down at the ground. “I called for Reth.”

She let out a this is going to be an even bigger mess than I thought sigh. “Then who left twenty-five vampires dead?”

Raquel’s vampire explanation came first. “When the panic team got there, they found all the vampires dead.”

“Were they staked?” I asked.

“We have no idea what killed them. There were no marks of any kind, no indication that any of the ways to kill vampires were used. What were they all doing there in the first place?”

“Not a clue. I followed my vamp and burst into the room to find them all waiting. A few more followed me and locked me in.” Frowning, I thought back. “They did seem to think I was there to kill them, though.”

“Are you sure you didn’t do anything?” Raquel asked, the line between her eyebrows deepening.

“Besides almost get sucked dry? Yeah, I’m sure.”

She sighed. Pretty much the same why me sigh as before. “Well, where have you been?”

I rubbed a weary hand across my eyes. “I messed up. Big time. No one was coming and I was gonna die, so I called for Reth.”

“That’s fine, that’s why you were assigned names.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t calling for him that was the problem. Everything was happening so fast, and I could feel the vamp’s teeth on my neck and I—When I called for Reth I yelled out, ‘I need you.’”

Raquel’s face went from understanding to seriously pissed. When IPCA gives you faerie names, they also make you take a yearly two-week— two-week —course on appropriate named commands and how to use them. “I need you” was about as open-ended and stupid as they get.

“‘I need you’? That’s what you said? That was your named command?”

“Don’t get mad.” I was on the verge of tears. “I already paid for it, trust me. I told him to take me home and he took me to his home, tried to take my heart again.”

“Evie, honey, I know you have a history with Reth, but he can’t just take your heart. It doesn’t work like that.”

This was too much. On top of everything else, she was going to tell me—again—that what happened was all in my head and wasn’t some sort of faerie freakiness. She had never felt the warmth, felt it sneak in and surround her heart, felt it consume her. She didn’t know. She couldn’t. And I was sick of her acting like I was some sort of stupid little girl, still mad over an ex. “Whatever,” I snapped. “I’m going to bed.”

I turned and stalked out of the room without saying good-bye to Lish. She would sympathize, I knew, but she still just didn’t understand.

No one understood. Well, that wasn’t true—Reth understood. Everything. And he was right, too. I was completely alone and it sucked. When I got to my unit, I went straight to my bedroom and dug around under my bed until I found the three-pound dumbbells I had stolen from one of Bud’s training sessions. They were iron, the best protection against faeries. Or at least, I was pretty sure they were iron. Okay, I really, really hoped they were iron, because my only other option was to sleep with my knife on my chest. Images of impaling myself during a nightmare flew through my head. Dumbbells it was.