Split Feather Read online

  Coming out of the bathroom, I was still attacking my head with a hairbrush. Fuckin’ tangle fairies. He was sitting with a serene look, sipping a cup of coffee that smelled like heaven on earth. There was a big platter of pancakes and another of sausages, and my stomach growled so loudly I think it rattled the dishes in the cupboard.

  Clean dishes in the cupboard. Damn, what a concept.

  “Thank you for cleaning up,” I said in a voice that sounded like a five-year-old being forced to apologize for belting her foster sister. The smile widened.

  “You’re quite welcome. I got your mail, too… it looks like your electric bill is overdue.”

  “That’s private,” I snapped, and then I felt bad. This stranger had driven me home, watched over me as I’d slept, even cleaned my home and made coffee—excellent coffee, by the way—and here I was acting like a bear with a sore ass. “Sorry. I’m not very nice first thing in the morning.”

  “Well, it’s not first thing in the morning, but after a sleep like that you’re entitled to a little bitchiness.” Bane’s laugh was just like his singing voice, big and powerful and whole.

  “What is it, noon? How long did I sleep?”

  “It’s more like four in the afternoon, sweetie, and you’ve slept for three and a half days.”

  I choked on my coffee.

  “Three… days?”

  “Mmhmm. I was afraid I’d have to kiss you awake, Sleeping Beauty.” The smile went positively wicked, and I choked again as my body responded with a flash of heat. What the actual fuck? Bane was gorgeous and all, no doubt about it, but my tastes had always been more lumberjack and less Las Vegas. What was in that damn coffee?

  “I’m surprised nobody stopped by to ask about that fight.” Cops could smell me from, like, a mile away. Everybody in town knew I’d been one of “those” foster kids, and I could hardly change lanes without getting pulled over and ticketed. They’d have a field day with a bar brawl—even when shit wasn’t my fault, it was always my fault.

  With a sigh I rubbed my head, wishing I could go back to sleep, but I was awake now, and hungry. So I pulled the plate of about a dozen sausages closer, snagged one with my bare fingers, and took a bite.

  “Oh. My. God.” They were so good. “Marry me.” The words shot out of my mouth without checking in with the brain first, and my face flushed hot. “Uh, I mean…”

  “I’m flattered, darling, but as it happens I am bespoke.” Bane chuckled. “And I don’t think my debt to you extends quite that far.”

  Bespoke? “Debt? What debt?”

  “I should have been able to fight off that… guta, but he surprised me. I might have ended up with cold iron in my gut if you hadn’t jumped in. Oh, I picked up your pipe wrench, by the way, very nice, and had your truck brought over.” He set the coffee cup down with a delicate clink.

  “I have no idea what a goota is, but you’re not in my debt,” I said, swallowing the last of the sausages. “I jumped in without thinking like I always do, that’s not your problem.”

  “Mmhmm.” Bane pushed over the plate of pancakes. “Here, they’re blueberry. I already ate.”

  Normally I’d hold back around other people, or at least have the decency to act embarrassed when I eat all the sausages or pancakes. But Bane wasn’t exactly normal people, and I was really hungry. I pulled the pancakes over and dug in.

  Omigod. So good.

  “Somebody did stop by to ask about the fight, just so you know. Two somebodies, actually. They won’t be back.”

  “What? Why? What do you mean?” My stomach curled into a knot. The last thing I needed was more trouble with law enforcement. They already thought of me as dangerous, as well as crazy; I didn’t need to give them an excuse to lock me up and throw away the key.

  They’d done that once, when I was just a little kid, and it hadn’t taken my demon long to sink her teeth into me. Back then I’d been too small to do much more than set a couple of small fires, and I was still cute enough and little enough that they let me back out… eventually. An adult wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “Oh, relax, darling. I had a little talk with the nice officers and convinced them that none of it was your fault. By the time I got done, they were ready to pin a medal on you.”

  “But how…”

  “I can be very persuasive.” Bane smiled, and for a moment seemed to go a little feral around the eyes, and that brilliant smile was a little sharper, a little toothier. Then I blinked, and he was normal again. As normal as a glitterpunk rock star sitting in my kitchen could ever be.

  “Here’s your mail.”

  Change the subject, much? But I accepted it gratefully, if the mail less so. All I ever got was bills, anyhow. All bills and no pay make Siggy a little bitchy… er.

  As Bane was handing me the pile of second notices and overdue notices and cutoff notices, a large stiff white envelope slipped from the pile and spun across the table. He reached out one long, perfectly manicured finger and stopped the envelope before it could pinwheel onto the floor. I wondered how he kept those long purple nails looking like that. The few times I’d tried to paint my own nails, they’d come out looking like something had been gnawing on my fingertips.

  “Missed one,” he said, picking it up to give to me… but then Bane froze, turquoise eyes widening as they scanned the envelope. His upper lip curled back and a growl came out, a sound so low and scary it might have come from me.

  “What is this?”

  A little frisson of disquiet shivered through me as I took the envelope, but then I looked at the return address.

  “Oh, that’s my DNA test results,” I said, careful to keep my voice steady. “It’s no big deal.” But it was a big deal, but only to me, and now I was all anxious for another reason.

  All my life, all my questions, and I held the answer right there in my hands. I wished I could tell Bane to leave, but how could I do that without being a completely ungrateful bitch? Still, there was no way I wanted anyone around when I opened this.

  Bane snatched the envelope away, and my jaw dropped open like an idiot’s. I was used to being disrespected, but I was used to being feared a little bit, too.

  “What the…”

  “Ssssst!” Bane silenced me with an aquamarine glare, and I was caught so thoroughly off-guard it actually worked. He held the envelope up to the light and stared as if to see through to the documents inside, and then brought it close to his face and sniffed, delicate nostrils flaring, with an expression that said it might have been road kill.

  “What,” I repeated, “the fuck. Are you doing?”

  “DNA test, hmmm?” With pursed lips he handed me the envelope, not bothering to explain or apologize.

  “Yeah, well, you know. I’m adopted.” I had been adopted at one point, but that first family had dumped my ass back on the system when they decided I was “special needs.” Nobody had wanted to keep me since, but I didn’t want to go into all that. I didn’t want to go into any of that, ever, with anyone.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t still curious. I still wanted to find out where I’d come from, and why my mom left me, and all that sappy shit, so I could cry about it in the privacy of my own home.

  “And how did you find out about this company?” Bane reached across the table and tapped the envelope. “Did you find them… or did they find you?”

  “I got a flier in the mail.” Suddenly my heart sank. Had I been scammed or something? That sounded likelier than a DNA test at a price I could afford. At the same time, I was relieved. How badly did I really want to find a family that hadn’t wanted to keep me in the first place?

  “Open it.”

  “But…”

  “Open it.” Bane looked up, met my scowl, and sighed. “Please, darling. This could be important.”

  Frowning and a little confused, I tore the envelope open. I didn’t have manicured nails like some people—mine were chewed to the quick—so it tore clumsily. Holding my breath I pulled out a single sheet of paper. It
was thick, and felt expensive and important. This one document held the answer to all my…

  I stared at the unfolded paper, and my eyes swam with tears. After all this time, you’d think I wouldn’t be so stupid as to get my hopes up. There were two lines of type, and a scribbled signature, and nothing else. Two lines that pierced me like arrows straight to the heart.

  Dear Miss Sigurd John Aleksov,

  We regret to inform you that the results of your test were inconclusive.

  A refund will be issued…

  How the hell could a DNA test be inconclusive? I could accept it if they didn’t find a potential family match for my DNA, but “inconclusive”? What the fuck did that even mean? My heart felt tight, and I wanted to cry, It’s not fair, it’s not fair, but I beat that bitch into submission.

  “You poor thing,” Bane crooned, reaching across the table to hold my hands. “You poor little thing.”

  …the results of your test were inconclusive.

  My vision blurred, and I bit the inside of my cheeks so hard I could taste blood.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…

  4

  Know what’s even better than being crazy?

  Being crazy and unemployed. Now, that’s classy.

  I showed up for work the very first day my clusterfuck headache let up enough that I was able to go an hour at a time without puking. Apparently I was a day too late. My desk had already been cleared out, all my “personal effects” were in a funky-smelling cardboard box with a suspicious stain on the bottom, and Stuart was waiting to escort me to HR.

  Clutching that stupid box, I dragged my heart on the floor behind me all along that Walk of Shame, and all my coworkers stared at me with big round eyes like we were cows in a field and I was being led off to be turned into hamburger. A little compassion, a little superiority, but mostly relief that it was me, not them, and fear that they’d be next on the slaughterhouse floor.

  Assholes.

  They were all really nice about it, in a fake smile and held breath kind of way. I’d like to think they were feeling guilty for firing me over a health issue, but it was probably because everyone knows I’m twitchy and they were afraid I’d go postal. Not sure how postal I could have gone with my box of office supplies. Maybe I could have shot up the place with the stapler, or I dunno, overturned the water cooler. I was too busy nodding agreement that yes, my attendance record was subpar and no, I wasn’t going to sue them and yes, two weeks’ pay was a generous severance and yes, I realized I’d missed being eligible for health benefits by four days and yes and yes and yes and no and yes.

  Mostly I was trying not to cry in front of that smug cunt Amy because if I cry in front of people I get really angry, and when I get angry, well. The demon was chewing on my ear and letting me know that I could sure as shit take Amy out before they could stop me. They gave me my final check—a little over four hundred bucks—took my keys, and Stuart herded me out the door before I could say “moo.”

  Fuck. I folded the check in half, and then in half again, shoved it in my pocket, threw the smelly box into the nearest dumpster, got into my truck, closed the door… and then what? I just sat there for a while, feeling a little lost and numb. I’d had to drag my ass out of bed that morning, because that fucking demon had come back full force as soon as Bane had left, and was yammering nonstop about what a fuckup I was, a failure, a waste of skin and air, and how the world would be a better place if I wasn’t in it.

  Much as I hated that bitch, she had a point.

  Fuck. I turned the key in the ignition and drove home, because what else was I going to do? Go shopping? Drive off a cliff? We don’t have any cliffs in Bearpaw, and besides, I was depressed, but I wasn’t depressed, you know? I’d been there before and knew the difference. This wasn’t the Pit of Despair. It was just, I dunno, the Swamp of Suckiness. I could get through this. I could.

  Besides, with my luck, if I tried to drive off a bridge I’d get caught up in the suspension cables or something and live, and then I’d end up locked away somewhere, drugged to the gills and breathing stale institutional air. Nope. If I ever got to that point again, I’d—

  Halfway up my long driveway I stopped and stared. There were fresh tracks, and they weren’t from my truck. Only one set, and heading toward my trailer. Whoever had come this way hadn’t left yet.

  Stealth had never been a priority in my life, which was a good thing because my old Chevy sounded like an asthmatic bull dragging a half-ton of sheet metal down the road. Come to think of it, that was a pretty good description of my truck all the way around. Whoever had come for a visit must have expected me to be at work all day—after all, I had expected I’d be at work all day.

  They’d had plenty of time to hear me coming, however, as I rattle-clank-wheezed and backfired along the long driveway that was my first line of defense. My potholes kept out the Jehovah’s Witnesses in their tidy sedans, and the vacuum salesmen in their crappy old vans, and I’d always figured that if Little Red Riding Hood from troop three twenty-one showed up selling Thin Mints, I’d buy a box of cookies from her just for having the guts to try.

  Listening as well as I could over the sound of my engine, I didn’t hear anybody driving away—no doubt the intruder’s car was in better mechanical shape than Old Faithless. As I got closer, though, I could see fresh tracks cutting across my lawn. There was a two-track that cut behind my house, through the woods and an old cow pasture.

  Eventually they’d hit Oak City Highway and—boom—gone.

  My front door was hanging open. Whoever it had been, they hadn’t been selling cookies. Adrenaline pumped through me. I wanted to stop and check on my home, but I really wanted to chase down whoever it was and get in their face for invading my territory. I wanted to drag them from their car and…

  My demon grabbed my hands and wrenched the steering wheel to the side. My foot hit the gas pedal hard. Imaginary or not, she wanted to go after them, too.

  Oh man, oh shit, not good. I forgot all about chasing whoever had broken into my home and concentrated on fighting off the one who was invading my body. This had never happened before, never. It was a whole new level of crazy. It took a couple of tries, but I finally got my hands and arms to do what I wanted, and my truck let out a metal screech of protest as I wrenched her back toward the house, smacked into the trash can, sent crap flying all over the yard, and shuddered to a smoking burnt-rubber stop beside the trailer.

  Jerking my hands away from the steering wheel I half jumped, half fell from my truck. For a while I sat in the weeds and anthills, breathing hard, hands clamped over my ears like that was going to help. Like you can block out the sound of laughter in your own head.

  This is so fucked up, I thought. I am so fucked up.

  Yeah, I’d been seeing things and hearing things that weren’t there for as long as I could remember, and sure, sometimes those voices would tell me to do things, and that sucked. I mean, they didn’t tell me the winning lottery numbers or how to keep a job for more than a month. Mostly they’d tell me to kill people or start fires or shoot myself in the head. My big demon, my main squeeze, was the worst of the lot, but I’d kind of grown used to her over the years, and while she’d always told me to do things, she’d never made me do anything before.

  I should tell someone, I thought, but that brought such a wave of panic that I almost blacked out. Been there, done that… The scars on my arm itched, and my demon yelled some truly vile shit into my ear. Maybe I should go away. But where would I go? Siberia? I’d heard the fishing was good in Siberia, but I could hardly get there with four hundred dollars and a broken-down Chevy.

  You should die, laughed the demon. Just die.

  “Go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut,” I told her wearily, and dragged my ass upright. “Nobody asked you, anyhow.” I brushed off the dirt and ants, hoping the little buggers could find their way home again, and trudged up the rickety stairs to my trailer.

  * * *

  I
t looked for all the world as if there’d been a struggle in my trailer. In other words, everything was just as I’d left it. They hadn’t stolen this morning’s dirty dishes, or thrown in a load of laundry. By this time, all of Bane’s hard work had been undone.

  My crappy old laptop and crappy old TV were still there, which was kind of disappointing, and they hadn’t had the courtesy to put food in the fridge. The little glob of toothpaste I’d spat into the sink that morning remained untouched.

  I went out back to check on my bees, though what I expected to find was a little unclear. What did I think they were going to do? Steal my honey? Steal the hive? Harass my little queen? But my wee backyard tenants were perfectly happy, droning on about their busy bee lives blissfully unaware that the landlady was frickin’ insane. I watched them for a few minutes, amused by their butt-wiggle dances and need to hurry, hurry. A little envious of their uncomplicated lives and clear purpose. At least somebody around here could keep a job.

  What had the intruder been after? Why break into a shitty old trailer in the middle of nowhere? Maybe they were looking for drugs—after all, my trailer looked the way I guessed a meth house might look. It sure as shit hadn’t been anybody that knew me. Anybody who knew me would know that, one, I didn’t have anything worth stealing and, two, I was fucking crazy. Breaking into a poor person’s house was bad enough, but breaking into a poor crazy person’s house was just stupid.

  Whatever, yo, people are weird.

  They’d broken the lock on the front door, and I used a hammer and pliers and fixed the bent metal enough that at least the door would shut and latch. Then I heaved a sigh and figured that since I was home with nothing better to do, I might as well wash the dishes.

  I hate doing dishes. There was a dishwasher, but it hadn’t worked in months, so I just used it as a dish drain. First I tidied the kitchen as best I could. For whatever reason the hot water took forever to get to my kitchen, and my sinks were too tiny to wash more than like three plates at a time. I hated the stupid little lace curtains on the window next to the sink—the ones I’d never got around to replacing—and I’d had a shitty day in a long line of shitty days.