Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,70
quiet. He doesn’t speak again for a while, but eventually he says, “the place and the time are arbitrary. Shelta’s a creature of habit.”
He gets up, and I see him properly for the first time. He’s a little older than I first assumed—maybe twenty or twenty-one. His hair’s the color of ink, his eyes a startling green. The corner of his mouth lifts as he looks down at me. Then, with a reluctant sigh, he stoops down and collects a ring of flowers that must have been at his feet. He turns and charges toward the ocean, racing past the other members of his clan as he guns for the open water. Fully dressed in a black t-shirt and black jeans, he jumps and dives, launching himself beneath a cresting wave, disappearing from sight.
My heart continues to thump out a steady, grinding rhythm as I wait for him to resurface.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Five…
Six…
An elated cheer goes up amongst the Rivin clan as the guy breaches the water, gasping for air. His hair is plastered to his skull, his eyes alive from the cold. His shoulders are bunched up around his ears as he smiles, shaking hands with the other members of his family as he makes his way back to the sofa.
He slumps back down next to me, and all I can hear are his teeth chattering. “I don’t understand duty,” he says. “I have to travel of hundreds of miles to do this every year to appease my mother’s raging superstition. You came here to kill someone because you’re dutybound to obey a man who sounds like a fucking psychopath, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
I let out a grunt at that, which takes us both by surprise.
The young guy slaps me on the thigh. “See. Your faculties are returning after all. Don’t strain yourself though, man. That was some heavy shit she used. Oh. Looks like we’re leaving.”
I find I have enough control over my numb body to turn my head a fraction to the left. There, the Rivin Clan are crowded around, huddled together in a group, drinking and jeering as a couple of bottles are passed between them. Even the children, soaked to their skin and shivering, are given a swig.
The kid next to me gets to his feet for a second time. “Seems wrong to just leave you here, but justice is justice, I guess. And my mother’s word is law. You were gonna kill her. Normally, she would have just slit your throat and had done with it. On any other day of the year…” He laughs, bemused. “You got lucky, man. Hopefully that streak will continue and Saint Adjutor won’t take you.”
The Rivin Clan don’t even grace me with a backward glance as they begin to head off up the beach. The kid with the inky hair and the green eyes trails behind them. He’s the only one who looks back. The sun’s setting over his shoulder, and for a moment the burnt orange glow casts a halo around his head. And then he, the entire Rivin Clan, and the sun are gone.
An hour later, once the night has properly cast off the last lingering ebb of light and the stars have gathered, shivering in the rich vet blue of the night sky overhead, I realize what the kid meant by that.
Hopefully that streak will continue and Saint Adjutor won’t take you.
The tide has been rising this entire time. I have enough sense about me now to come alive with alarm when the first, frigid lick of water seeps through my boots and stabs at the soles of my feet.
Juuuuust fucking great.
I’m going to drown on a fucking beach, my ass glued to an ugly floral print sofa, because I let some bitter old woman get the better of me. Honestly, I’m not so much angry as I am fucking embarrassed.
I spend the next thirty minutes at war. I fight every cell, every nerve ending and every muscle, forcing them to obey my command. My balls have retracted up into my stomach and the freezing water’s up to my waist by the time I master myself and drag myself up off that cursed couch. I look and feel drunk as hell, lurching and heaving myself back up the black sand toward the Camaro. When I finally haul myself back up the winding pathway through the dunes, I find Salinger sitting on the hood of the car, smoking a cigarette. He gives me a salty look,