Call of Water (Madame Tan's Freakshow #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,7
employee and a boss.
“Since I was old enough to sing in a cabaret.”
“Are you friends?”
“More than friends. We’re family. Lero raised me since I was six.”
“Six?” Surely, I didn’t hear him right. Lero didn’t seem to be older than thirty. Thirty-five maybe? With Zeph being probably in his mid-to-late twenties, I had no idea how Lero could have raised him if he most likely was still a child himself when Zeph was six. “Isn’t he about your age?”
“He’s older,” Zeph replied vaguely, and left it at that.
Well, I only ever saw Lero at night, in a pretty dark courtyard. There was a chance I judged his age incorrectly.
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead,” he replied, with a somber shadow quickly passing through his expression. “I don’t remember them at all.”
“What happened?” I ventured to ask. “Do you know how they died?”
“There was an accident,” was all he said, and it did not feel right to ask more after that. “How about your parents?” He changed the subject.
“Mine? Oh, they’re both alive and well. Both are happily married, although no longer to each other.” I smiled, making light out of what was a rather heavy situation for me when I was younger. I spent most of my childhood feeling guilty for spending time with either one of them while they battled each other for a larger share of custody of me. Then, when I was old enough to spend my time any way I pleased, they already had their new families, and I often felt like I was, if not exactly unwanted then at least not missed, if I didn’t show up at family functions and such. “They divorced when I was eight, remarried within a couple of years of each other, and started their new families. They’re happy.”
I took another sip of my “distasteful” drink.
“How about you?” he asked. “Are you happy, Ivy?
“Me? Sure I am. I work as a graphic designer, my dream job.”
My mother didn’t consider design a serious occupation, more like a hobby. I’d had a long fight with her over my decision to study it in college. She wanted me to become a lawyer, like my stepfather, or an accountant, like herself. But I stood my ground on that one. I knew I would be terrible in law or accounting. But that didn’t bother her, she simply wanted her daughter to be employed in one of those fields.
“Anyway,” I continued with an awkward one-shouldered shrug. “I’ve graduated, started my own business, and I’m doing well enough to afford a rented basement apartment in Toronto and a trip to Paris every second year.” I cheerfully raised my glass, ready to toast to my achievements. “I’ve got it all.”
“I’ll drink to that!” Zeph clinked his glass with mine.
IT MIGHT BE THE EFFECTS of the strawberry-infused “champagne.” Or maybe the heat of the summer night. Or, most likely, Zeph being right next to me, his arm wrapped around my waist, the warmth of his body seeping in to me through the thin material of his shirt. But everything inside me floated with effervescence of complete happiness as we strolled down a lit street after leaving the wine bar. There was no other place I would rather be at that moment than right here with him.
Zeph steered me into a side street, under an arch between two buildings.
“Shortcut,” he replied with a wink to my questioning gaze.
It occurred to me that I had no idea where we were supposed to be going at all.
“A shortcut to where?” I asked.
“You’ll see.” He gave me a teasing smile. “I promised to take you up and down, didn’t I? The wine bar was down, now I’ll have to take you—”
He cut himself short. The smile, I was beginning to adore, dimmed as he came to a halt in a dark narrow court between four buildings.
The space appeared completely deserted. Then I spotted large, tall figures sneaking in the surrounding shadows.
“Zeph?” I half-whispered, sensing his body suddenly tense.
Gently nudging me behind him, he tugged the sleeves of his shirt up past his elbows. I noticed long silvery scars running up the back of his forearms.
One of the large shapes stepped out of the shadows, emerging as a massive man. He was completely bald with a large, intricate tattoo running around his neck and down one of his arms.
The tattoo on the stranger’s arm flashed with streaks of red. They twinkled along the lines of his body art, dove under the short sleeve of his t-shirt, then