Friday, February 6, 1998

Jenny hunched in her seat in front of her desk. She hoped to distract herself by reading e-mail, and what she found was a new message from Amber:

Marcus/Jenny,

You’ve gone and gotten quiet on me. Then again, what I had to show you was pretty shocking, so I guess this may be our last message for a while, depending on whether or not you answer this one.

I’ll just make a brief update. You should be happy to know that since you’ve left, I’ve mostly been on “pet supplies” to keep me going. I have had one or two strong cravings that required going out, but I only ate junk food. I hope you understand what I mean, and I hope you can forgive me for slipping even farther away from my old self. Dimitri took something from me, and there’s no way for me to recover it now. For better or worse, this is who I am now, and if that offends you, I’ll understand.

I hope that even if you don’t want to see me or Vicky again, you will at least reply to let me know what you think. Maybe I’m not your girlfriend anymore, but I still care about your opinion.

Um…so, that’s the news from our side of the state. How are your magic skills now? Are you still playing with water? Or have you figured out any other tricks yet?

Your…friend?

Amber

Jenny sat back, frowning as she read the letter over. She could guess that junk food meant that Amber had sought out criminals to kill and feed from.

Amber was carrying a vampire baby, and she was happy about it, even though carrying the child meant she suffered cravings for blood. But she wasn’t acting like she was suffering much. She accepted the role all too easily, in Jenny’s opinion, and she’d already rejected human food completely.

After Jenny left to take magic training from Felix and Simone, Amber had gone from being supposedly straight to having a lesbian relationship with Vicky, and a violent sexual relationship with an ancient vampire named Emil.

It all went against Amber’s supposedly good nature, but she was just peachy keen with how her life was going, even if she did have to kill a human or two every once in a while.

Jenny thought, Great, now it’s my turn to go gay and find a guy to settle down with. Tommy seems just about right, but to make this as perfect as Amber’s life has become, Tommy needs to be a serial killer. Then he needs to turn me into one of his kind.

This was ironic for two reasons. First, because her morbid thought was not that far off from the truth of Tommy’s goals; and second, because Tommy was reaching for the door to her room when she had the thought.

The door opened, and she glanced around, sitting up when she saw Tommy walk in. Before he’d shut the door, her chest had swelled until her skin was stretching.

Tommy’s eyes dipped to her chest, and he laughed before he looked at the bed. He pointed and started for it. “I’ll just sit over there and wait for you to calm down.”

Jenny pouted, though he didn’t look up to see it. “Are you here for another training session?”

Tommy sat down on the bed, smiling awkwardly while he tried to make eye contact with Jenny. “Yes. I was going to teach you a few spells to affect your hair, and if you can master them, maybe this evening we might progress to changing your facial features. None of today’s training will require taking your shirt off this time. ” He laughed, asking, “Are you disappointed?”

Blushing, Jenny asked, “Are you?”

“I enjoyed the view, but only after you backed off from the super-sized lung-hammers. I like breasts in the C-to-D range, not double-D to whoa mamma!”

Jenny laughed, and he waited her out before he said, “If you want complete honesty, you could go back to the figure you had when I first saw you. Right now, you look like a Barbie doll.”

Jenny smiled and suppressed a quiet snort as she let the fat drain from her chest to return her waist and settle the hourglass curve back to a normal, flatter shape. “So, you don’t want to get under my shirt again.”

Tommy shrugged. “I’m just here to train you, and maybe you’ll have an easier time trusting me if I don’t try to get into your pants.”

Jenny had a mental image of Tommy slipping his hand into her jeans, and she clamped her legs. Her libido and her imagination were both working in tandem, and putting her thighs together had the exact opposite effect from what she’d hoped for. Instead of snuffing the fire between her legs, she was stoking it.

She frowned and got up from the chair, pacing on shaking legs while she watched Tommy’s smile. “You haven’t said if you want to get in my pants or not.”

“Honestly? I don’t think I should.”

Jenny stopped walking, her expression curious. “Why not?”

“Because something about me frightens you,” Tommy said. “I could do a lot of damage to you, because I could take you easily. I could make you believe that you loved me, and that you were really offering yourself for the best of reasons. But in four days, I’ll be leaving, and I won’t have any problems walking away from you.”

Jenny bristled, setting her hands on her hips while she glowered at Tommy. “What makes you think I’d be easy?”

He got up from the bed, and she bounded back, taking two steps fast until she was up against the wall. Then she looked like she would try to climb up the surface by crawling backwards.

Tommy might have found her pose comical if not for the raw terror flooding out of her bright blue eyes.

He folded his arms over his chest and said, “That’s why I don’t think I should do anything with you.” He sighed, waving for Jenny to come over to the bed. “Just relax and come over here. Tonight’s training will go a lot faster if you stop trying to throw yourself away from me.”

***

Jenny giggled and waved her arms out from under the wall of wavy blonde hair, which spilled off of her head like a hooded cloak. She was dancing badly to prove that her new bushy locks could cover her body as clothing, in a pinch.

But dancing, even if it was just swaying, turned out to be a bad idea. Unused to the extra weight, Jenny frowned as a headache started to pound her head.

As soon as she rubbed the sides of her head, Tommy said, “Yes, and that’s why I told you to calm down, silly. You aren’t used to having twenty extra pounds of hair pulling your scalp.”

“Okay, I’m clear on that now,” Jenny muttered.

“Now shorten it to shoulder length, and make it curly and white.”

Jenny did as he asked. She’d spent the last two hours alternating between growing her hair out and dispelling the excess length to magically trim her locks in a flash. The spell was a summoning, similar to calling on water. But there was no sound to capture, which made explaining the concept harder at first.

Once Jenny understood how to focus her will on her hair, changing the length and shape were just as easy as reshaping a water drop. She could convince her hair to grow thicker, or to shrink until it was baby fine. She could use another spell to change the color, or another to force the strands to take and hold certain shapes.

No matter how exotic the shape, her hair held with magical stiffness. Jenny would never need hair gel again, nor would she need hair dye.

Simone would probably want to learn the spell, if she could.

Tommy, who had spent most of the training session joking, suddenly barked in a fake brogue accent, “Feh, ye call those curls?”

He raised a hand to grab one lock of white hair and pulled it down. His face was set in an ugly sneer of contempt that looked very convincing. “I want girly, sissy curls, and I want to see ringlets that bounce.” He let go of her hair and folded his arms. “Roight, drop and give me twenty girly curls!”

Jenny laughed and reached out to smack his arm. The contact was light, but he jumped like she’d slapped the top layer of skin off his upper arm.

He gasped and covered his arm, but the look in his eyes wasn’t pain. It was irritation.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked. “I didn’t bruise you, did I?”

Tommy didn’t want to explain that she’d taken advantage of a momentary break in his guard to attempt mental contact.

He smiled to cover his annoyance. “Nothing, I was just messing with you again.”

He moved around to the other side of the bed, making it harder for her to reach across and touch him. Then he could lean away and avoid her.

Throughout her training, Jenny had alternated between flirting with him and interrogating him. She liked him, but she was sure that his offer to train her led to some kind of trick.

She was right, but her accusations were based on the instinctual fear she felt just being around Tommy. They had nothing to do with the facts, because she knew nothing about Tommy.

Tommy thought that perhaps it was better if she never knew the truth about him. He could just tell his relatives that he couldn’t work with her, and they could go back home and wait for another mark to come along who could be worked over by Henry or Diana again. They were getting too old to find good roles, so perhaps one of them could become the “expert” for the scam, leaving Tommy free to do the job.

But, he didn’t want to tell his relatives that the plan was a bust, and he didn’t want to leave early. He didn’t want to stay either, and he didn’t want to keep his plan going any further.

He felt just as confused as Jenny did, because he was responding to her. No amount of mental discipline or training could help clear his head.

While Tommy mulled his thoughts, they both sat in silence, staring away from each other until Jenny turned and got on her knees.

She raised a hand to rest it on his shoulder, and when he turned to look at her, he felt her trying again to connect with him.

He glowered at her, unable to hide his frustration. “Would you please stop doing that? I told you that I’m leaving, and you can’t convince me to stay.”

“I wasn’t…” Jenny dropped her hand, looking away from Tommy as she moved back to sit in a kneeling position. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?”

“What?”

“If I…” Jenny fidgeted, trying to raise her head to look at him. Instead, she looked around him, unable to make eye contact. “Maybe you could help me. I just need to know how to get over this constant feeling of being afraid.”

Tommy sighed. “You really don’t understand what you’re doing, do you? You’re trying to hook my mind, and if you do that, there’s nowhere I can go that our bond won’t be able to pull me back to you.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Jenny asked, her voice suddenly wary again.

Shaking his head Tommy objected, “I haven’t been doing anything to you, aside from explaining how to summon and shape hair.”

Jenny nodded. “You’re really good at dancing around things that you don’t want to talk about.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Look, just be honest and say what you think of me?”

Tommy sighed. “I’ve known you two days, and from what little I know, I think you’re very nice, if a little neurotic.”

Jenny stiffened and looked down. “If that’s how you feel, why were you so insistent about meeting me? Did you want to make sure I had proper training?”

“Well, no. I…I had plans for you. I don’t now, but I want to make sure you are trained before I leave.”

Jenny frowned. “Are you worried about my safety? Is that in a general way, because your just looking out for one of your kind?”

“No, we aren’t good people who look out for each other. Jenny, we didn’t try to seek you out, okay? Dr. Beaumont contacted us, and this was a chance encounter.”

“I understand that,” Jenny said, tensing her hand on her lap. “But you still won’t explain why you rushed here to see me.”

Tommy said, “You know why.”

“So say it already.”

Tommy’s voice was low and anxious. “I wanted to see if you could be my companion.”

“But I can’t,” Jenny said.

“No, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a good person, and I’m not,” Tommy said. “If I try to tell you who I am, you’ll go right back to thinking that I’m trying to take advantage of you.”

He sighed and looked away, focusing on a poster across the room. “If I can finish showing you the basics tonight, it will be better for Henry or Diana to handle the rest of your training.”

After a long silence, Jenny set her hand on his shoulder again. “Do you kill people?”

“No, I’ve never killed anyone. I’m a con artist and a thief, not a murderer.”

“Then in my book, you can’t be that bad.”

She had him. It was a stupid point to concede and drop his guard on, but once he did, she was able to hook his mind.

It was not a fully telepathic link, but he became aware of her emotions once the connection was made.

Jenny gasped, surprised when she began to sense him. Then she flinched and shrank away from him, asking, “Why are you mad at me?”

“Didn’t you hear anything I’ve said to you?” He got up, intending to walk to the door. But he was only a few steps around the bed when Jenny huffed. He looked at her, and then he grimaced when he realized she was on the verge of tears.

“No, don’t…” Moving back to the bed to sit beside her, Tommy closed his arm around her and pulled her head onto his chest.

He couldn’t do anything else without scaring her, so he held her and hummed while he waited for her to stop shaking. Without thinking about it, he started to hum the melody for Blue Bayou. She began to calm down, relaxing in his embrace.

Then she started to hum the vocal parts of the song over his melody, and he patted her back, making soft percussion thumps.

Jenny smiled and patted his leg, making a tap that matched with his lower pitched pats. She felt silly, like a little kid experimenting with a pot and wooden spoons.

But they were in harmony, and even if she felt silly, she had to admit that they sounded good together.

A soft tingle of energy built between them. Jenny fed from the energy subconsciously, and the positive vibes from their quiet duet eased the cold, hard grip of fear from her heart.

As her terror abated, Tommy sighed and offered her a lopsided smirk.

Jenny had formed a link with him for only a few seconds, and already she was exploiting it to keep him from following his training or his plans. She wanted him to stay, so he couldn’t defy her. He couldn’t feel resentment at her either. She would feel it and get upset again.

But he was frustrated, because the plan was officially in motion, and there would be no splitting from town now, not unless he could convince Jenny to leave her adopted family behind. He didn’t see it happening if she really got to know him.

What was the alternative? To live a poor but happy life with Jenny? Maybe they could mooch off of her adopted parents while he tried to find “clean work.”

Hell no, he thought. He was not meant for honest work, especially not when dishonest work paid so well. There were Matilda’s medical bills to consider, and honest work wouldn’t cover her health care costs for a month, much less a full year.

Jenny whined, “You’re still mad.”

“But not at you.” Tommy raised his hand to touch her cheek, but he stopped when it caused a ripple of panic in Jenny’s mind.

Sighing, he asked, “Am I still allowed to get angry, or must I always be happy for your sake?” She didn’t answer. “If you try to demand constant happiness, I’ll have to ask you to stop feeling afraid all the time. It’s only fair.”

“I didn’t even know that I was afraid until you showed up.” Jenny sighed. “I wish taking away my fear was as easy as making long hair go away.”

“I’ll try to help as much as I can,” Tommy said.

He wasn’t lying then. With his mind hooked to hers, her fear upset him, just like she had become anxious because he was angry. Because she didn’t want him to be angry, he couldn’t be. He could be mildly irritated, at best. He could fight with her, resisting her will to remain angry. But he didn’t feel like fighting over something so petty.

He chose to pick his fights and not go to the mat on every issue simply because he knew he could score a quick win.

Their link worked both ways, and he was trying to exploit it by wanting her fears to go away.

Yet his efforts and hers were only partially successful, and whatever caused her fear, it was rooted so deeply in Jenny’s psyche that he could not bypass it even with their minds hooked.

He wondered if he would be able to find the source after he forced her spirit to rise and took her soul. Would he have to go so far with her? Or could he settle for touching her soul and letting go of her?

That would come later. Tommy put the thought aside, and he held Jenny until she leaned away from him. He brushed her hair out of her face and said, “Let’s take a break for something to eat. Then I’ll show you how to rearrange your face.”

***

Tommy had a gift for distractions, and he put off Jenny’s questions even though she sensed his agitation and returned to asking about his feelings every few minutes.

Tommy tried to lie and convince her that whatever excuse he made up was the real reason that he was upset. But within minutes, she would realize that he wasn’t telling the truth and start the whole process over again.

Being linked with her had another disadvantage. Because of their connection, Jenny was eager to make physical contact too, and she kept finding excuses to do so.

But even the slight touch of her fingers to his arm resulted in both of them jumping. Tommy’s temper would get the better of him, and Jenny’s fear would send her into a panting frenzy. Giddy excitement and stark terror both rose up in her chest, two emotional titans that fought for total control of her body.

While both sides clashed, Jenny was trapped in the middle, unable to decide how she felt about Tommy.

Tommy hoped to make it through the rest of the day’s training, because then either his aunt or uncle could handle the rest of the lessons. Their touch would not have the same effect on her, and hopefully, it would make teaching her easier if she wasn’t so distracted all the time. They were on a tight schedule, and Jenny was dragging the process out.

When they finished lunch and returned to the bedroom, Tommy briefly changed over to Lana to point out the major differences in the shape of her chin and jaw. Lana sat down on the bed and pointed to her chin first.

She said, “I’ve held off on mentioning this until now, but the point of a shapeshifter’s chin is not made of bone. It’s dense cartilage, and by flexing or relaxing your jaw and chin muscles, you can radically change the shape of your chin. The same is true of your jaw. The portion that forms the outer ridge of your jaw is cartilage. It’s hollow, but even so, bending it takes a lot of effort. Since you’ve never done this before, we’ll take it in stages to keep you from getting too tired. As it is, tomorrow, you’ll swear that you were chewing metal for a few hours to feel so sore.”

Lana shifted back into Tommy, and he said, “So, let’s make some faces.”

Once he’d explained the basic process of changing the shape of her chin and jaw, Tommy started to explain more interesting bits of information about the different muscles and sections of cartilage in a shapeshifter’s face.

Jenny interrupted him to ask, “Is that why my face is so sensitive? Because of all these extra nerves and muscles?”

“Yes, but your face also has more pores and hair follicles than a human does, and because of those extra pores, the skin on a shapeshifter’s face is extremely sensitive.” He held up his hand and said, “Later on, when we get to advanced lessons, I can show you how to control the skin on your hands, and that’s going to make them ultra-sensitive too.”

Jenny looked down at her hands. “Mine are already pretty sensitive.”

“The advanced exercises will make it stronger, believe me.” Tommy smiled and pointed up at his cheek. Let’s get back to the cartilage flap under your eye socket, and we’ll try to make your eye shape more Asian.”

He continued to change his facial features to emphasize his lessons, and then he would reach out to touch her face, coaxing her into shifting her muscles. He didn’t change anything back while he worked, and he didn’t give Jenny permission to drop any of the changes either. By the time the sun was setting, he looked like a completely different person.

So did Jenny, but the difference was, Tommy’s new face wasn’t tensed in a look of pain, and Jenny was wincing constantly in an effort to hold her new face together.

Tommy announced a break, and Jenny’s face bubbled as it melted. Low heat filled her cheeks once her normal appearance returned.

She opened her mouth, popping her jaw before she heaved a thankful laugh. “If I had to hold that look for much longer, I was going to pass out from the pain in my jaw.”

Tommy nodded, absently raising his hand to rub his fingers on the sides of her “jawbone.”

Medically, the term was inaccurate for shapeshifters, who had multiple bones fused between sections of cartilage and layers of tendon. The proper term for them would have been jaw bones, but they never said it as such.

Jenny had been holding her jaw at a much sharper angle than was natural for her, and the strain on the cartilage made everything sore. Muscle, skin, and bone all hurt with an equal pounding.

Under different circumstances, the move Tommy used might have been erotic. But with her muscles being so sore and fatigued, the massage inspired feelings of gratitude rather than excitement.

He smiled when Jenny closed her eyes and uttered a relaxed sigh. “Better now?”

“Higher, please?” Jenny asked.

Tommy knew what she meant, and he moved the pads of his thumbs to the backs of her jaw.

Because she understood that his touch wasn’t romantic, Jenny was also feeling less frightened by him. He wanted to encourage that a little at a time, even if he could not break her fully of the constant fear she had of him.

He’d found that she relaxed more if he hummed, and when he started to hum a melody, Jenny joined him. Her fingers began to drum on his leg, as though she were playing a piano. Tommy smiled at her, beginning to time his humming to her fingers pressing into his thigh.

The music called to her, asking for words to the song. “I’d like to lose this fright, tonight. Lose my pain as well. I’d like to feel high as a kite with you.”

Tommy grinned, and Jenny blushed, but she couldn’t stop the words once she’d started. She was unconsciously tapping into her spirit, resulting in an honesty that bypassed her fears.

“Don’t want a ring, or to be a wife. I just need a friendly face. A man who makes me feel.”

Energy built between them, and Jenny again fed from it. She applied the energy to her aching muscles and tendons, healing the soreness with only the smallest fraction of the energy they summoned.

Tommy surprised her by singing, but she began humming to accompany him.

“But I think tonight you ought to sleep alone. Come off this high and I’ll go mope at home.”

He was trapped in her song then, forced to be completely honest, with her and with himself. He shifted his thumb up to pet her cheek as he sang, “I’m not the man you think I am at all, oh no, no, no. I’m a con artist.”

Jenny sang, “Con artist?”

Tommy nodded. “And I’m here to steal your soul for a job.”

The spell ended, and then Jenny finished the song on a bad note. She moaned instead of humming when his massage caused a crick in her jaw on the right side.

The sudden abatement of her pain should have been a major clue to Jenny about how her powers worked. But the minor spells she cast escaped her attention, as did the remaining magical energy that coursed through her limbs and left her feeling hyperactive.

She wasn’t listening to the cues from her body and mind, and she was more concerned with what Tommy admitted than with her method of obtaining his confession.

“You can steal my soul?”

“I can merge mine with it,” Tommy said. He lowered his hand from Jenny’s face. “How do you heal so fast? You should still be sore.”

“I don’t know what you mean, but please, don’t change the subject. What did you mean, you came here to steal my soul?”

“I was being figurative, for the sake of the song. Technically, you have to offer your soul to me, and I can’t take it without your permission. But yes, that was my plan when we came here, before I met you.”

“But you can’t go through with it now?”

“No, because you’d screw up the plan by being too honest.”

“Oh.” Jenny nodded, believing him for once. She sat back and nodded again, repeating, “Oh. Well. I guess it’s fine that you think I’m so nice.”

“You aren’t nice?” Tommy asked.

“Well, I try to be…I mean, I want to be. But no, I’m not, not really.”

Tommy decided to play a hunch. “Can I ask a stupid question?”

Jenny opened and closed her mouth a few times to make her jaw pop again before she said, “Sure, what’s on your mind?”

“Have you had many girlfriends?”

Jenny started to answer that she’d had none, and then she stopped herself. She thought for a second and asked, “Do you mean me, or Marcus, or was that a general question that could be taken either way?”

Tommy’s laughter was warm and full of delight. “I thought I knew, but now you’ve intrigued me. Try to answer all of them?”

“Sure, ask for something easy.” Jenny sighed and looked up in thought. “I’ve had only one girlfriend, and that was Amber. We were a couple for a year and a few months, but we never slept together. We just went out every night to the same club with our other roommate. When we got home, Marcus took over. But I did that because I thought Amber was straight. If I’d know she was willing to experiment, I might have tried a thing or two. I think that bridge is already burned now.”

Tommy asked, “How did she break up with you?”

“Um…she was right to dump me, since I walked out on her in the middle of a major crisis to come home and live with my family instead.”

“Really?” Surprised by the confession, Tommy’s posture straightened, and his eyebrows shot up, stretching his face in a look of sudden interest. “So, you aren’t quite as good as I thought.

“No, not really,” said Jenny. “Amber dumped me to start a lesbian relationship with Vicky, my old roommate.”

Laughing Tommy started to joke, “Oh, so she left you for—”

“Vicky is a vampire.”

Tommy cringed, but his smirk made it clear that the expression was fake. “She left you for a woman, and she’s getting bitten now?”

Jenny laughed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s a real knock to the ego. But the reason why I walked away was my family telling me I was a mage, and I had to train in casting spells.”

She slung her arm in a wave toward the door. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m mad at my folks for lying to me like that for all these months. Felix and Simone wouldn’t have needed to devote so much time to showing me other spells, if we’d been told the truth.”

“Yeah, but your adopted parents love you, and they did contact someone to explain to you who you really are. They couldn’t have given you much beyond telling you that you were adopted, and that by itself isn’t helpful. They weren’t even told what race you are.”

Jenny thought it over and nodded. “Okay, I suppose that could be true, but they still could have told me something.” Shrugging off the tangent, she sighed and forced herself to forgive her parents.

“Anyway, if you meant how many girlfriends has Marcus had, he’s had…nine. Aside from Amber, I was always the reason why they left.”

“But you’ve never even thought of looking for a boyfriend?”

“No, I preferred women.”

“Did you really?”

Jenny frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I think maybe you chose to stay around females because they didn’t require you to revert back to your birth gender.”

Jenny waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, but her face drew into an uncertain pout. “We can be whatever gender we want, so it’s not like what we’re born as means anything.”

Tommy’s smile had a mocking quality, as did the gleam in his eyes. “Who gave you your training on shapeshifter physiology?”

Before Jenny could say anything, he continued on. “Your birth gender determines your dominant personality. It also defines your frame size. You might notice how you’re very slight in either form, while I’m tall and wide in the shoulders no matter which form I take.”

Jenny didn’t say anything, and he scooted closer, his confident smile returning. “Why would you suggest that you aren’t the dominant gender? I’m the first male shapeshifter you’ve met, and you didn’t hesitate to change forms to meet me. Even with me trying to behave by locking you out, you still hooked my mind.”

“It’s no big deal,” Jenny said. “You’ll leave in a few days, and I’ll have to move on.”

“You say that, but if I get mad, you have to see why. If you’re in pain, I have to do something to alleviate it. So if I give in and allow myself to feel anything romantic for you, guess how you’ll react?”

His suggestion caused Jenny’s pulse to race, and her fertile imagination conjured a fantasy of him kissing her.

Tommy groaned, tensing his face in a scowl. “Knock that off.”

Jenny panted harder, her excitement and his anger driving her lungs to work faster. “Why? Wouldn’t you want to take advantage of me?”

“No, I don’t,” Tommy said. “I didn’t want to link with you, and I don’t want to be distracted every few minutes, just because you want me to touch you.”

Jenny blushed as her fantasy incorporated the suggestion, and Tommy grunted as her excitement began to tighten the front of his jeans. “I said, knock it off!”

Flinching at his irritated glare, Jenny whined, “I’m sorry! But you say something, and I start thinking about it, and—”

Tommy set a hand on her thigh, and Jenny sat up. The residual energy from the spell rippled over her body, building a tense ache in her limbs.

But in her mind, terror began wrestling with her excitement.

Tommy frowned, his voice quiet as he said, “I can’t do anything with someone who’s afraid of me.”

“I’m not,” Jenny said. But she was panting faster, and her vision was blurring.

“Liar,” Tommy said.

He leaned closer, unable to resist Jenny when she began to pull at his mind. The abuse she’d suffered had programmed her to be afraid, and Tommy’s presence made the fear well up in her chest as a wild beast, rending her heart and lungs with its powerful claws.

But in spite of her fear, Jenny longed to be touched by him.

Tommy closed his eyes, letting himself fall under her influence. His lips brushed over hers, and his hand slid up her leg, his fingertips riding the inseam of her jeans.

Then the door opened, and they both jumped away from each other and off of the bed, their heads swinging around at the same time.

Henry made a grimacing smile as he looked back and forth between the two, and he said. “I’m sorry, this is a bad time.” He turned his attention to his nephew. “I had to come by to get you early. It’s Matilda.”

Tommy’s eyes glazed, and realizing that he needed to clarify, Henry added, “She’s having lung problems, so she had to be checked in with Dr. Cavanaugh again.”

Even with the added information and Jenny’s link to help him, Tommy’s mood crashed.

He raised his hand to rub his forehead. “How long does he want to hold her at the clinic?”

“A few days to start off with.” Henry pointed toward the door. “Your aunt and I will need you back at the hotel to brainstorm for ideas on funding this new stay.”

Tommy inhaled, intending to say something bitter. But he let the comment go, and he blew out a long breath before he offered Jenny an apologetic frown. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to come over tomorrow afternoon.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jenny said.

She was lying, and he knew it. With his mood crashing, she was falling into a depression too. She was also turned on with no way to get rid of the energy pulsing though her body.

Jenny ignored the urges being caused by the thrumming magical energy and waved toward the door in an invitation for him to leave. “This is a family matter, and family takes a higher priority.”

Changeling - AUMCF - Chapter 3, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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... I write dark fiction in a variety of genres. My blog contains my rants and rambles, and some short fiction that can only be found here. I can be pretty fucking offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Bards, Changeling: AUMCF, Dark Fantasy, Musicals, Shapeshifters, my writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.