resonance that matched the cords of blue in his sleek, black hair.
But he was hurt. Aerin could tell.
She’d always been able to tell.
The air vibrated with a lie at a different frequency than it did with the truth, and each emotion had its own wavelength. She’d never known why she could read those waves, why they brushed at the fine hairs on her body with an undeniable veracity. Some kind of sensory perception disorder maybe? Was she on the spectrum? Psychological overstimulation stemming from her years in the foster care system?
Who knew? Who cared?
She sure as shit didn’t.
Her stomach clenched and her hand shook as she reached in her bedside table for her cigarettes. “I’m flying into Seattle where I’ve scheduled a few meetings with a certain global online marketplace,” she lied, placing a hand on the ivory handle of her balcony door.
“You usually take me with you. What if you need me?” Well, shit.
“I won’t,” she murmured. “I need you here. I also need you to get dressed, as I have to lock up in exactly nine and a half minutes.” Was that a bitchy way to tell him it was time to leave?
His eyes told her that it was, so she slipped out onto the balcony to escape the sad-face emoji frequencies that were certain to follow.
She berated herself as she thrust her cigarette between her lips and lit up, taking that first morning drag deep into her lungs and letting the soft wave of nicotine roll through her veins with an addict’s bliss. God, she loved smoking.
Aerin waited for the effects to take root as she listened to the teeming mass of humanity down below. The trembling stopped after three pulls. The vibration that had rattled about in her chest quieted at five, and she could again feel her limbs become weighty and normal.
Who needed to taste their food? Better yet, who the fuck had time to eat when there were corporations to conquer and a world to connect? Smoke breaks were… So. Much. Better.
Looking down, she let the spring breeze caress her face, and felt the vertigo that always came with heights. She did this every morning. Her ritual.
Coffee. Smoke. Lean over the balcony. Think about jumping. Decide not to. Go to work.
It wasn’t about suicide. That was just it. Something in her blood told her the bagillion story drop wouldn’t kill her. Which was proof that she was probably psychotic. But whatever, psychopaths ruled the world and ran corporations all the time.
Sighing out a cloud of white through her nose and mouth, she eyed the little black bundle tucked into the eaves of her loft. Shiny, black wings with fine webs of veins cocooned a fury, ebony body with a comically snouted nose and adorable Mickey Mouse ears.
“Good morning, Doctor Lecter,” she quoted her favorite book series between drags. The bat twitched, dragging one clawed wing below its beady eyes to greet her, or to glare at her, she couldn’t be sure. She could just imagine him saying, “Hello, Clarice.”
What the hell a vampire bat, who was native to the Central and South American climates, was doing in Manhattan beat the hell out of her, but Aerin couldn’t say she minded the little bastard hanging around, as it were. When he’d found her earlier this year, she’d been tempted to call a pest control company, but damned if she didn’t get attached to his adorable/ugly face and constant presence.
She’d done research on him, instead. Genus: Desmodus rotundus. A social animal, usually roosting in colonies. They tended to have strong family bonds with tendencies toward reciprocal altruism, even adopting parentless babies.
A strong kinship had formed on her part after reading that, and Aerin had spent almost every morning coffee/smoke with Doctor Lecter perched high above Park Avenue. Both of them supposedly part of a huge colony, and yet apart from it.
Alone. But together.
Return to me what has been forsaken,
By earth, air, fire, and sea…
Aerin was tempted to slap her hands over her ears, but she knew it wouldn’t work. The chant was in her head. Had been for weeks now. Months, maybe. She’d blocked it out at first, but the pull became stronger. Physiological symptoms had manifested. Headaches, tremors, heart palpitations, restlessness, sleeplessness. The constant pull west.
Why west?
Regardless of the direction, last night, or rather, that morning around three am, she’d booked the next flight out of town, as fucking west as she could get in the lower forty-eight.