Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            He nods once. The conversation comes to a bit of a lull, which then stretches into something of an awkward silence, which means that Lowe is done with me.

            I’m being dismissed.

            I give one last half-loathing, half-longing glance at the peanut butter jar and stand, pushing my hands down into the pockets in my shorts. “I’ll start tonight.”

            “I’ll have Mick bring you something to put on them.”

            I’m confused. Then notice that his eyes are slowly traveling down my bare legs. “Ah. My feet?” I shiver, but it’s not cold. Now that I think about it, this place hasn’t been cold in days.

            “And your shoulders. And your side.”

            I frown. “How do you know my side hurts?”

            “Professional hazard.” I tilt my head. Doesn’t he have an architecture degree? Do I look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa? “We teach young Weres to study potential enemies for weaknesses. You’ve been rubbing your rib cage.”

            “Ah.” That profession.

            “Do you need medical attention?”

            “Nah, it’s just more burns.” I lift my shirt and let it pool right under my bra, angling slightly to show him. “My tank top was askew, and the sun managed to get . . .”

            All of a sudden, his pupils are as large as the irises. Lowe abruptly turns his head in the opposite direction. The tendons of his neck stretch, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “You should leave,” he says. Gruff. Cutting.

            “Oh.”

            His shoulders relax. “Go take another one of your baths, Misery.” His voice is husky, but kinder.

            “Right. The smell. Sorry about that.”

            I’m at the bottom of the stairs when Ana comes racing down the steps, almost crashing into me. Her eyes are full of tears, and my heart clenches. “Are you okay?” I ask, but she runs past me, straight toward her brother. She’s babbling something about bad dreams and waking up scared.

            “Come here, love,” he tells her, and I turn to study them. Watch him lift her into his lap, push her hair back to kiss her forehead. “It was just a nightmare, okay? Like the others.”

            Ana hiccups. “Okay.”

            “You still don’t remember what it was about?”

            A few sniffles. “Just that Mama was there.”

            Their voices lower to soft whispers, and I turn to climb the stairs. The last thing I hear is a phlegmy, “Okay, but did you cut the crusts off?” and a deep, hushed response that sounds a lot like, “Of course, love.”





CHAPTER 11




                             Some nights, when he’s walking past her door, he has to whisper to himself: “Keep going.”





Two things can be true at once.

            For instance: I like Alex, because he’s an intelligent, pleasant young man.

            And: spending time together and watching him be terrified of me sparks joy.

            Just for fun, I’m tempted to contact a therapist and ask them to quantify how bad a person I am. But by the time Alex and I have been working side by side for five nights, I’ve accepted that reassuring him that I don’t plan to feast on his plasma is futile. Nothing will convince him that I’m not going to exsanguinate him. And I really shouldn’t enjoy it, but there’s something genuinely fun about watching him move around the room like a contortionist to avoid giving me his back, or about running my tongue over my fangs and feeling the clatter of the keyboard stammer to a halt. It’s usually followed by eyes scrunched shut, and low whimpers he thinks I cannot hear, and . . . The Were children who bike all the way to my bedroom window just to point at it are right. I am a monster.

            And yet, I carry on. Even after overhearing Alex say, “Please, please, don’t let me die until I turn twenty-five or I get to visit the the Spy Museum, whatever comes first.” Yeah. He prays a lot.

            He has no idea why his Alpha tasked him with helping me in a Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? errand, and to his credit, doesn’t question it. Most of our work consists of reexamining Serena’s correspondence, cross-referencing the people she had contact with in the last few months for Were connections. We gather info I couldn’t have found on my own, like that one of the CEOs she interviewed last year for a story on speculative construction owns property near the Were-Human border through a shell company. Even if most stuff leads to dead ends, I still feel closer to Serena than I have since she disappeared.