Stay (13 page)

Maybe it’s because he’s wearing Seid’s face?
My conscience deadpanned an easy reply back to me. When I looked up, I saw her gaze had moved to Cain’s jacket. Seemingly unperturbed by the fact I had never agreed with her previous comments, Lissa changed tactics.

“So,” she began
, sliding her hand on the dresser table and cocking her hip. “I don’t remember your name. I’m Lissa Sanchez.” She stuck her hand out into the air between us. Past her false smile and rigid posture, I saw her actions for what they were. She felt threatened.

I rose to my feet
and watched with a twinge of satisfaction as her chin lifted to meet my eye. I was small compared to Cain. Next to Lissa, however, I was nearly a head higher, even with her high heels. I knew I shouldn’t have felt satisfied to see the falter in her step. I hid my smirk when she squeezed my hand, only to find my grip was subtly tighter than hers. If I had wanted I could easily have snapped her in two.

“Orona,” I said, giving her the only name I could still remember.
I could no longer remember my father or sisters’ names, not even the husband he picked for me, just my first name and Seid’s.

The viper waiting to strike behind her smile quickly turned genuine, so quickly I nearly missed the change. How could so much have changed?
I didn’t understand then that this false world was no place for the faint of heart. Lissa had seen my strength and approved, I later realized.

“Nice stage name,” she replied and
dropping my hand to check the rim of her nails. She shifted her weight to her other awkwardly arched foot. How these women managed in high stilts, I would never understand.

“So,
Orona
, want to tell me what you’re doing with Cain’s jacket?”

“I only borrowed it.”

“And he actually
let
you touch it? I’m surprised…” She trailed off, waiting for me to ask her the obvious question. When she realized I wasn’t taking the bait, she added, “It was his pop’s, only thing of his that he got left.”

“I’m just an old friend visiting from out of town. Do
n’t worry, I’ll be leaving soon,” I said and tried not to make it sound like it was rehearsed. It was partially true, after all.

Lissa’s casual smile faded.
“Oh yeah? What’s that got to do with me? We ain’t together anymore, honey, or did he tell you different?” She caught her top lip between her teeth briefly and then added, “He didn’t mention me or anything? Did he? Not that I care, you know. It’s just, I like to know what my exes say about me.”

“He spoke of you, Lissa,
” I said with an encouraging smile.

The young woman softened as I knew she would, and just then, I saw the scarlet thread attached to her begin to fade. She and Cain’s golden thread flickered to life. Hope flared the same instant a fresh ache began to throb in my chest.

“Really?” Lissa brightened at the thought. “I never would have thought he would, after…”

Guilt shadowed her features and when she looked up at me again I saw the frightened girl from the bathroom mirror, not the role she was trying to play.
She reached over to squeeze my hand and glanced either way down the dressing room, then fixed her mischievous expression on me. “Here, put this on real quick! I’ve got an idea!”

She snatched a nearby golden strapless dress,
if it could be considered a dress, and pushed it into my hands. I didn’t want to change out of the ancient garment that had long ago become like my second skin. But I recognized the desperation in her eyes and remembered the blood on her hands from the other night. That image was what drove me to strip in front of her shamelessly and put the dress on.

“What is this for?” I asked, wondering if this was what the other girls were forced to wear. If I was going to play a part I at least wanted to know what I was getting myself into.

“You’ll see!” she cryptically replied. Primping and prodding me for another second, she then attempted to untie my sandals, to which I put my foot down. I refused to wear those ridiculous stilts. She reached up and applied a layer of bronze paste to my lips.

“There, now you’re perfect. Co
me on. Let’s ditch rehearsal,” she said and snatching my hand firmly in hers, began to pull me back to the hall outside the dressing room.

“Where are we going?”

“Girls’ night out. My treat, chica. Trust me you’ll be thanking me after a few drinks.” Lissa winked and I felt a flare of gratifying success at the gesture. I had earned her trust, or at the least piqued her interest. Now all I had to do was convince her to fall back in love with the mortal I loved.

The effects of alcohol on human inhibitions had not changed with the times, I noted. Timid and morose people suddenly became passionate exhibitionists after a few glassfuls of the poison. In my time, wine was in more abundance than water. Yet it had never tasted this sweet.

To my surprise, the liquid didn’t affect me at all. I sti
ll remembered my wedding party, the night I ran away from my new husband and into Seid’s arms. Sometimes I wondered if the poison in my blood had made me more desperate to do whatever my lover asked of me. It certainly made my husband much crueler than he’d ever been before my father’s arrangement.

I
had happily avoided close contact with humans for years and now remembered why. I could feel their connections to each other, accidentally absorbed with wisps of their emotions and dreams. It made my mind overflow with images and the need to help fulfill these wishes. Sometimes what waited inside their souls was dark and twisted, like my husband until Seid killed him.

After riding in a
nother, dirtier yellow cab and listening to Lissa rant about the nightclub and its unfair manager, Jude, we had arrived at our destination.

The club was another underground hot spot, she insisted
, only modern. Men stared greedily as we passed them by, heading straight to the bar behind the dance floor. Music was blaring so loudly I thought my ears might burst, even if I was supposedly indestructible. My heart thudded in my chest in time with the beat and I watched Lissa dance as she led us to a pair of open stools.

“Isn’t this great?” she shouted over the din.

I shrugged but agreed for her sake. I wasn’t here for my own pleasure, but to finish my mission. I had already been here too long and dragging things out wasn’t going to help any of us in the end.

“What’ll it be?” the handsome cocoa
-skinned bartender asked.

“
Two Jack Daniels and Dr. Peppers, for my sister and me here.”

“Ain’t that a little hard for a pretty thing like you?”

When she batted her lashes and leaned further over the counter, his mouth tilted into an even bigger grin. “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl.”

Time w
as nonexistent in this place. People danced to their own rhythm, in time with the transition from one song to another. Lissa basked in the male attention, in the rapid pace of the pulse-pounding music and the heat from too many bodies writhing together.

Alcohol, I believed,
was her way of coping with the disappointment her life had become. As I sipped and she chugged down her drink, more and more truths slipped past her lips. She told me about Cain and how he was the first to welcome her when she moved to the city.

“I was looking for a ticket out of the slums. I just knew I was better than what I’d been told to expect for myself growing up. My ma cleans houses, you know. Pop works the food chain. But I didn’t want to be either of t
hose things. I wanted to sing. So I ran away and did whatever I had to, to make it happen, you know?”

“You were not afraid?” I asked.

She paused mid-sip and her shoulders shook with rich laughter. “Oh, chica, you don’t even want to know what I had to do, to get where I’m at.” Her words began to slur slightly.

“So you fell in love with him?”

Stricken, Lissa gripped her drink and tears welled in her eyes. “I didn’t plan on it,” she said. “He was just a means to an end. I used him to get a gig at the club. His cousin runs the place, you know Jude. Once I met him, I dumped Cain… sure you can figure out the rest.”

“No. What happene
d?” I rested my head in my hand and waited.

Lissa closed her eyes and took in a slow breath, recovering from her latest shot.
“Give me another, Stevo,” she told the bartender. After he had refilled her drink, she looked at me through glazed eyes and began, “I know I shouldn’t care what you think. We don’t know each other. You probably hate me already. I don’t know what he told you, but I really screwed things up. I live with his cousin, but Jude knows I sleep around with the clients sometimes. I left Cain because he couldn’t give me what I needed. I ain’t gonna be poor the rest of my life, you know. Every day I keep thinking I’ll meet the right guy and he’ll help get me where I wanna be. I’m no ho, but I do what I gotta do.”

Breaking down to tears at last
, she hung her head in her hands, rich brown hair masking either side of her face. Her words were muffled and dark as she moaned, “Didn’t mean to do it. Derek said it was the only way. He’s got a wife and kids out of the city. I should have known better… but he said it wouldn’t hurt. Oh God, what if she tells him everything?”

A part of me almost hated her then, knowing
she had tossed aside yet another joy I could never know. Like she said, I could only guess the rest. I could understand why Cain was so determined to prove he wasn’t in love with Lissa. But if this was true, why was I drawn to them in the first place?

“Sorry ab
out that,” she said flippantly, a moment later. She teased the corner of her eye with a fingernail as she picked her head up. “Got some mascara in my eye, but we’re good now. So enough of my past, what did Cain say about me?”

“I think you
should give him another chance,” I hesitated and remembered that I was supposed to be bringing the two of them together. “He tries to hide his feelings for you still, but he hasn’t forgotten.”

“I bet he hasn’t.” S
he frowned at the water ring her glass had left behind. “But I think it’s too late for me.”

My conscience betrayed me
then, because at her admission, I wanted to leap for joy. I wanted to run home and into his arms and throw my worries to the wind. The wind and the sea and the storm were
his
domain and I wanted nothing to do with them any longer. I just wanted Cain. Guilt ate away at the edge of my inner wishes. Again, the image of her doubled over in Derek’s bathroom, crying, made me despise myself. They were miserable without each other. I was the mortar that was supposed to mold them together. Instead I was the wedge driving them further apart.

“Orona?”
Lissa nudged me with her elbow with a silly grin on her face. “What’s with you? You obviously ain’t from around here, chica. Thinking in your first language? I do it all the time. And I swore after I left home I wasn’t using no Spanish no more.” Her giggle was louder and more grating than before.

“You’ve had a lot to drink,” I said and motioned
to the empty glasses.

Lissa shrugged, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Oh
, this is nothing. Come on! We’re two
caliente
mamas and we need to dance!”

I followed her because I could feel her joy and knew this was what she needed.
Seconds later we had two male partners pressed up against us. I followed the beat and realized that even these modern rhythms were ancient.

Flashes of my previous life passed behind my ey
elids. I saw my sisters decked with veils and scarves, dancing around the fire and coaxing Father’s guests to join. I watched my father discuss my future with the most powerful man in the city. When I turned away from the fire, to the blackness of the crashing waves, I saw Seid’s maelstrom eyes on me.

Lissa’s laughter drew me into the present and I opened my eyes to meet her
glazed-over green gaze and the feel of a stranger against my back. Disgust filled me when he reached to touch me lower and I pushed him roughly away. Several people gasped nearby when he went tumbling into them. From the safety of the bar, I watched Lissa dance too closely to a man who had nothing but bad intentions for her.

Is this how she has always lived her life?
I thought, feeling sorrow instead of shame for Cain’s former beloved. Lissa had a tender heart, proven when she quickly noticed my displeasure. I didn’t realize she had left the dance floor until her hand took mine.

“You okay, chica? You don’t look so good. Want me to get you a cab?”

“What?” I asked, confused. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

Lissa smirked and glanced over her shoulder at the handsome stranger smiling back at us. “No, I’m good here. Got my buddy Stevo at the bar watching out for me. This is Jake
, by the way. We’ve danced a couple times before, so no worries.”

“What about Cain?”

Her joy faded and finally resignation filled the set of her mouth and nod of her head. Ignoring my question, she said, “You’re all right, you know. I was jealous earlier when I saw his jacket on you. Just,” she added, wistfully, “don’t make the same mistakes I made.”