Blood

I always figured myself a smart-enough guy. Did. Until now.

Because who, with any level of intelligence, would drive off with a girl who had legitimately asked if you were going to kill them.

On the other hand, who asks if the person standing in front of them is going to kill them? I mean, typically you’d just assume and take off. But instead she’d asked me if I would go home with her?

Who in hell does that?

Well, obviously Lorna Owens does, but that’s not the point.

Actually I don’t think there is one.

No, now I remember. The point is that I’m an idiot.

For, here I am, following Lorna Owens towards the front door of her house.

I could have said yes, I’m terribly busy. And then I would have been at home reading, or eating or drinking. Drinking sounds good.

I don’t even understand why I would agree to come here for no reason, even if I was piss drunk.

Well, no. I guess that’s a lie. I mean, just having Lorna ask about me and my plans left me with an excitement that I can’t explain. I don’t know, maybe I could, but I don’t want to.

Lorna is Lorna, and she’s awful. I know that, don’t I? She’s almost as awful as I am.

Albeit…

“Is your mum dead?” asks Lorna as she pulls open the screen door.

It’s not the kind of question most people would give you, although that’s not a surprise from Lorna. Most people only ask questions they already know the answer to, or something completely trivial.

“No,” I say after a minute, because I’d seen her not a week ago, although I figure it’s entirely possible Maeve’s dead, just unlikely.

Lorna walks through the door and I figure I should follow her, even though it seems strange. Well, not strange, just uncomfortable.

It takes my eyes a second to adjust to the dim light, but once they do, it feels nice, to be out of the daylight, I mean.

We’re standing in a room with a kitchen in one corner and a fire in the other, with stairs in between. It’s a nice enough house, warm looking. A lot warmer than my gray one. It’s got a feel of cleanliness to it too, from the wood floors to the dustless counters and orderly shelves. Clean, but not sterile.

Lorna disrupts the order by throwing her black coat on the floor beside the door, revealing a tight-fitting wool sweater in a yellowish-gray. I know there’s a word for the colour, I just can’t think of it. It suits her, whatever it’s named.

“Come on,” she says as she makes her way towards the stairs.

I leave my jacket on, because I figure the floor isn’t the proper place for it, but it’s hot in here since there’s a fire crackling in their woodstove, even though it’s the middle of the day.

The floor creaks as I make my way across it, which makes me feel bad, as though I’m hurting the floor. Which of course is ridiculous, since floors don’t have feelings.

The ceiling above me creaks as well, and I glance up, slightly afraid that I’ve done something to make a house that’s been here since I can remember fall apart.

Lorna laughs a little. “It’s just somebody walking upstairs. What? Afraid you’ll make the house fall?”

I think she’s mocking me for mocking her earlier, though I can’t be sure, and I don’t want to say anything about it in the event I’m completely wrong, so I don’t say anything at all.

“Jesus, you don’t have to take it so seriously. There’s nothing to fear, unless it’s Mattie…” she adds the last part to herself.

I continue to follow Lorna up the stairs until she disappears around a corner. The stairs creak as I take them, as though they’re trying to warn the family of the intruder, but nobody’s listening.

“My room’s over here,” she says from somewhere on the second floor.

Which happens to be a hall lit with an unsheltered lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The stairs divide it in half so that there’s only a couple foot gap between the top of the stairs and the wall, while there’s walls and doors to both sides.

Lorna’s headed to the right, waiting at an open door at the very end of the hall, so I figure that’s where I should go.

“God, you’re slow,” she says when I reach her.

“I’m not used to being in other people’s houses,” I reply quietly.

She laughs again. “What? ’You afraid someone’ll hear you?”

Lorna walks through the door way across a room bright with daylight. I walk in after her, and then stare in surprise when she opens a fair sized window and starts to step through it.

“Would you mind closing the door? What?” She laughs and pulls a cigarette from her pocket as she sits down on the window sill. “Oh. Did you think I was taking off and leaving you here to face my brother? Christ, you don’t think that poorly of me, do you?”

She sticks the filter in between her lips and then withdraws a lighter from the back pocket of her jeans. “You might want to take your jacket off, it’s hot as hell in here.”

It is hot, so I do as she bids, but frown at the lack of place to set it. Lorna’s bedroom isn’t that big, there’s a bed, a little bookshelf behind it and a dresser in the corner beside the window where Lorna sits.

“Uh, just throw it on the bed,” she laughs wickedly, and then coughs for a minute.

I set down my jacket, and wonder yet again why I’m here. What had this been a result of, again? Had she just decided it’d be fun to make me uncomfortable, and I had agreed for whatever reason?

“I was just…why am I here?”

Shit. That’s why I shouldn’t talk to people.

But Lorna just laughs, and says, “You ain’t enjoying my company? Couldn’t imagine why. Here.”

She sticks the smoking cigarette back between her lips and climbs down off the windowsill. Instead of walking anywhere, though, she sits on the floor and pulls at one of the boards, but nothing happens.

She mutters something and then pulls at a different one, her long red hair falling into her face. The floorboard comes loose, and she sets it aside before pushing her hair back behind her ear. She takes the cigarette back between her fingers, pulling it out of her mouth and exhaling a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

“Come here.”

I do as she says as she reaches with her free hand into the gap in the floor.

“You don’t smoke, do you?” Lorna asks as she throws the half burnt cigarette out the window.

“No.”

“As I figured,” she pulls her hand back up, and she’s holding some sort of light. She nods at it. “There, that’s how I got out of the Wood.”

Oh, that’s why I’m here.

She cradles the little light as though it were alive, and then holds it out for me to see.

It is some kind of gem, but not like any I’ve seen before…or have I?

It’s rounded with a little hole in the bottom, which isn’t that rare. Tons of islanders wear them as necklaces, since they’re supposed to let you see the fey, even when they don’t want you to, but this is like none other. The stone itself is glowing, but not just a plain yellowy glow like a lightbulb, but a soft explosion of colour; blue like the sky, then the green of first-cut hay, then the colour of dust. It continues to change, as though it wants to be the whole world, but doesn’t have enough energy to do it all at once.

“You can hold it, if you want.”

I pick it up from her palm between my index finger and thumb, and then drop it within half a second.

“Son of a bitch!”

“What?” Lorna asks, recoiling slightly.

My fingers sting unbelievably, as though I’ve stuck them in the fire. I glance at the tips and see an angry swell, almost cracked.

I blink away a tear and say, “Nothing, it just…shocked me.”

I glance back up at Lorna, who scowls back at me. “Well there’s an unconvincing lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

What could I say? “It doesn’t…burn you?”

She’s still scowling, but she looks more confused than upset. “No. It burnt you?”

“No—” I start, but she grabs my hand with one of hers and pulls my fingers towards he face. I should pull them away. I should. But there’s a big difference between should and do.

“Shit,” she says as she pokes at my first finger.

I cringe and she drops my hand.

“Sorry. That’s fucking weird, though.”

I vaguely wonder if she is mentally capable of going a day without cursing, or if she’d have a break down.

I shrug and sit back farther from Lorna, as though a few inches will hide my parentage any better.

“I guess…”

She stops scowling, and puts the stone back in its place. “D’you know what it is?”

Do I?

“Uh, kind of.”

Now she scowls again, and I wish she wouldn’t. She looks a lot nicer when she’s laughing. But I guess that shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t.

“What the hell does ‘kind of’ mean?”

I almost give her the actual definition of ‘kind of’ before I realize that would be horribly rude, and that she’d continue to be angry, which I think matters more.

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but I have an idea, kind of. How’d you say it helped you?”

“I didn’t,” she snarls. And then sighs. “Uh, it sounds stupid.”

I glance at my hand. “As stupid as burning you’re hand on a rock?” I mutter, albeit not very well since Lorna hears me.

“I s’pose not,” she mutters, but she still sounds agitated. “So there was this…hall, and the Wood Dwellers were having a feast—God, I sound—uh! It was like I was dreaming, and then there was the pretty little rock—I mean, that stone. And then I took it, because I was a brat, and it was like I…woke up. I don’t know…I could just, see the way out, even though it had been there the whole time,” her face is red, and I notice she’s been trying to put the floor board back the wrong way.

I take it from her on an impulse and put it back the right way, because it was starting to annoy me, and then I realize it was probably a rude thing to do.

“Sorry,” I say at the same time Lorna says, “Thanks.”

I look at her face, like really look at her for longer than it’s likely decent to.

She looks embarrassed, I think. Her freckled cheeks are red, and her forehead is as well, but her eyebrows aren’t pulled towards her eyes, and she isn’t scowling. Actually, her eyes look almost…innocent? Which is rather strange because I think I’ve heard her swear more times than I’ve sworn in my whole life since I’ve been here. She has pretty eyes. Well, no. They aren’t really pretty, like how you’d think of it normally, but they’re nice. And they aren’t ruddy white.

“People say that the Wood’s like that. Like a dream kind of,” I say quietly.

That’s how my dad always said it, like a dream that you don’t wake up from, you just kind of wear it off after a while.

“People?” she asks in a slightly mischievous way.

I shrug, and stop myself from mentioning my dad, because that might lead to some questions I can’t answer. She’s already asked about my mother once.

Lorna’s eyes narrow a little, so I figure she can tell I’m keeping something back, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead, her eyes narrow further and she reaches forward and pushes my hair back.

“Is that…?”

But her door opens, cutting her off.

I would have turned, but Lorna still has her hand on my forehead, so she might fall forward, which would be worse.

“Hey, does Lucifer’s mark look kind of like a horseshoe?” she asks whoever opened the door.

“What? I don’t know. Yes, kind of,” says a man’s voice, but I can’t tell who’s it is.

Lorna laughs and sits back, allowing me to turn and see Reid Owens, who I probably should have just assumed it was.

“He’s got the mark of the Devil on his forehead.”

I rub the scab without telling my arm to.

I cringe, because I use my right hand, the one I burnt.

“Hello,” says Reid, to me I reckon.

“Uh, hi.”

“How’d you get the mark of the Devil on your forehead?” asks Lorna.

I shrug. I almost say, Birthmark, but I don’t know how that would turn out.

“Seanie was looking for you,” says Reid, to Lorna this time.

“Well, what’s he want?” she sounds a little alarmed, as though she expects it to be something wrong.

“It’s nothing important, I just didn’t know if you were here or not.”

“Where else would I be?” She scowls.

Reid raises his eyebrows at her and says, “Where indeed.”

“Oh, go to hell!” she calls after him as he walks away, leaving the door open.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

I stand up and reach for my jacket. “I should probably go anyways.”

“Oh,” she says in a flat voice.

Had she sounded disappointed?

“You didn’t tell me what you thought the stone did.”

I frown as I shrug on my jacket. “Uh no, I guess not. I’ll have to look at some…stuff I have. But…I think…”

“You think?”

I rub my eyes. “Uh, can I just…get back to you or something…call? Could I do that?”

The look of surprise on Lorna’s face confuses me until I realize I just asked if I could call her. I hadn’t meant it like that. At least, I don’t think I did…No, I barely know Lorna. And she keeps scowling at me.

“Yeah, you could do that, I guess,” she says. There’s something in her voice I don’t really recognise.

As I leave, feeling Reid’s unintentionally judgemental eyes on my back, I realize what a strange day this has been. But not terribly unpleasant, either.