no one would ever know.
She glanced around. The room she'd been given was lovely, done in a delphinium blue toile, with the pastoral scene of a lady and a kneeling suitor repeated on the walls, the drapes, the bedcovers, the chair.
Not exactly what she wanted to look at. The two French lovers crowded her, striking her as not visual but audible, a chaotic staccato of what she didn't have with Butch. Wouldn't ever have with Butch.
To solve the problem, she turned off the light and closed her eyes. And the ocular version of earplugs worked like a charm.
Dear Virgin, what a mess. And she had to wonder in what manner things were going to get worse. Fritz and two other doggen had gone over to her brother's-to Havers's-and she half expected them to come back with nothing. Maybe Havers would decide to just get rid of her things in the meantime. Like he'd done with her.
While she lay there in the dark, she sifted through the rubble of her life, trying to see what was still usable and what she had to abandon as unsalvageable. All she found was depressing litter, a hodgepodge of unhappy memories that gave her no direction. She had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do or where she should go.
And didn't that make sense. She'd spent three centuries waiting and hoping for a male to notice her. Three centuries trying to fit in with the glymera. Three centuries working desperately to be someone's sister, someone's daughter, someone's mate. All those external expectations had been the laws of physics that had governed her life, more pervasive and grounding than gravity.
Except where had trying to meet them gotten her? Orphaned, unmated, and shunned.
All right, then, her first rule for the rest of her days: no more looking outside for definitions. She might not have any clue who she was, but better to be lost and searching than shoved into a social box by someone else.
The phone next to the bed rang and she jumped. After five rounds of chiming, she answered the thing only because it refused to stop going off. "Hello?"
"Madam?" A doggen. "You have a call from our master Butch. Are you receiving?"
Oh, great. So he'd heard.
"Madam?"
"Ah... yes, I am."
"Very well. And I've given him your direct dial. Please hold."
There was a click and then that telltale gravel voice. "Marissa? Are you okay?"
Not really, she thought, but it was none of his business. "Yes, thank you. Beth and Wrath have been very charitable to me."
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"Listen, I want to see you."
"You do? Then may I assume that all your problems have magically disappeared? You must be thrilled to be back to normal. Congratulations."
He cursed. "I'm worried about you."
"Kind of you, but-"
"Marissa-"
"-we wouldn't want to endanger me, would we?"
"Listen, I just-"
"So you better stay away so I don't get hurt-"
"Damn you, Marissa. Goddamn this whole thing!"
She closed her eyes, mad at the world and at him and at her brother and herself. And with Butch getting angry, too, this conversation was a hand grenade about to go off.
In a low voice she said, "I appreciate you checking in on me, but I'm fine."
"Shit..."
"Yes, I believe that covers the situation well. Good-bye, Butch."
As she hung up the phone, she realized she was shaking all over.
The ringer went off again immediately and she glared at the bedside table. With a quick lean-and-grab, she reached over and yanked the cord out of the wall.
Shoving her body down through the sheets, she curled over on her side. There was no way she was going to go to sleep, but she shut her eyes anyway.
As she fumed in the dark, she came to a conclusion. Even though everything was... well, shit, to use Butch's eloquent summation... she could say this at least: Being pissed off was better than having a panic attack.
Twenty minutes later, with his Sox cap pulled down low and a pair of sunglasses in place, Butch walked up to a dark green '03 Honda Accord. He looked left and right. No one was in the alley. There were no windows on the buildings. No cars passing by on Ninth Street.
Bending down, he picked up a hunk of rock from the ground and punched a hole in the driver's side window.
As the alarm went apeshit, he stepped away from the sedan and melted into the shadows. No one came running. The noise died off.
He hadn't stolen a car since he was sixteen and a