“Black in Back” (Part IV)

Grace was still in her jammies when she answered the door. Tess scolded her. “You should have asked who it was before you opened up.”

“I used the peephole,” Grace replied. Her eyes were brilliant, blazing blue in twin cartouches of smoky kohl. “What in God’s name have you done to your hair?”

“You don’t like the colour?”

“Since when has dishwater been a colour?”

“It looks better in natural light.”

Grace stepped aside. “Come in and prove it.”

The apartment’s layout was typical 1970s and the view faced east, filling the living room with bright morning sun. Tess obligingly moved into the spotlight so Grace could see the full effect of her three dollar dye job. As she turned to face her sister, she scanned the suite for signs of company. Grace had gone some crazy after her divorce and it wasn’t unusual—or hadn’t been—to find her entertaining a guest for breakfast.

“Do you want to look the bedroom?”

Tess flushed but kept her cool. “Just making sure we’re alone.”

“We’re alone. I wouldn’t have answered the phone otherwise.”

“Lucky me.”

“If you say so. What’s going on, kid? You sounded stressed on the phone.”

Now that she was here, she had no idea what to say or where to begin. Grace stood patiently in plaid flannel pants and a purple tank top, tattooed and body-pierced in defiance of the suburban soccer mom standard she had failed at so spectacularly. She looked like someone who would believe in vampires, though Tess knew she didn’t. Hell, she hadn’t believed in them, not really, not until a few weeks ago, and even then it had taken the Four Seasons to make them a fixture in her reality. Maybe she could get away without mentioning them, just keep it simple so fewer questions would be asked.

“I’m leaving town for a while.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going home.”

“I have no home without Trav.”

“The parental units would love to hear that,” Grace remarked, dryly.

Tess knew. Different as the girls were in temperament, they were united in disappointing their staunchly Christian, white bread, conservative parents. Grace had betrayed their ideal of wifely motherhood and Tess had fallen in love with a suicidal musician. “You should have fallen in love with him,” she said, half-joking.

“I did, but he was already in love with you.” Grace smiled sadly. “Did you ever find out what really happened to him? Last I heard, you thought you were on to something.”

“I was wrong. There’s nothing more than the cops already figured out.”

“Aw, sweetie—” Grace swooped in to deliver a sympathetic hug “—I can’t imagine what you must feel like, but he wasn’t unhappy with you. He was unhappy with himself.”

Tess let herself be embraced, halfway grateful for the gesture. The family wasn’t overly affectionate, so Grace’s offer meant more than it would coming from someone who dispensed hugs like candy at Hallowe’en. She pressed her forehead to her big sister’s shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against imminent tears. Grace’s skin smelled of dance sweat, good grass, and fine Scotch, an odd mix suggesting that the clubs she favoured were higher-end than the majority of their fellows. It was a strangely comforting scent after days spent with Black in that crappy hotel.

Grace pulled away first, not surprisingly. “So now I have to ask, what were you talking about on the phone? Travis was into some funky shit before he died; has it come back to haunt you?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“Are his friends hassling you?”

The niggly knot in her gut suddenly unravelled. “His friends don’t have your phone number.”

Grace started to frown, but Tess remembered how good a liar her sister had been when they were kids. She remembered Grace standing in her living room after Trav’s funeral, offering to pack up his stuff. She had been in the bedroom beforehand, alone because Tess had been unable to face the shower where he had died, and his cell phone … he had kept his cell phone in the nightstand and Tess had never seen it again.

Shit.

She backed up a step.

Grace matched her, reaching out with one hand. “Tessie …”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Tess, listen—”

Her sister’s fingernails were painted black. She felt their tips scrape her sleeve as she turned to run. Grace called her name, called for her to stop, wait, and she opened the door on a thug in a suit standing at the threshold. Not a vampire, not in daylight; maybe he was nobody but Tess couldn’t go on faith when the klaxon in her head was screaming red alert. She spun back to Grace. “What the fuck?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand? You have no idea what you’re messing with, Grace, no idea at all!”

“Yeah, I do,” Grace said as her sister screamed into the damp cloth jammed over her mouth, “I have a better idea than you know, sis.”

The thug had her in a grip that threatened to crack her ribs. Tess kicked out and felt her shoe strike the galley kitchen counter. Gasping for the breath expended in that muffled scream, she sucked back a lungful of antiseptic stench. She tried to struggle, tried to reach her sister, but Grace just watched from vacant eyes as Tess’s muscle turned to rubber, then to lead.

Then, darkness.

………

“About Sean—”

“Shut up.”

“I did what you asked!”

“I didn’t ask; Raymond did, and Raymond doesn’t ‘ask’ for anything. Now shut up.”

Tess tried to move and couldn’t. The dark was moving, though. Quietly, and smelling vaguely of turpentine. A bottle of it had leaked from her paint box last year and the reek was as stubborn as Black. They were in her Nissan, otherwise she guessed she’d have been stuffed in the trunk.

Grace and the goon were up front. He drove; she rode in the passenger seat. Tess tried to move again and managed a wiggle of her fingers. She was bound at wrist and ankle, but not together. Stretching was possible if she wanted them to know she was awake.

She didn’t. She wasn’t sure how long awake would last, she felt so groggy. Had she imagined her nephew’s name? She hoped so. Not imagining it meant something scarier than being tied up and thrown in the back of her own vehicle … but Grace would never have betrayed her unless someone had threatened her son, and that raised too many uncomfortable questions. Questions like, how did Raymond know about Grace? Did Grace know Raymond? And if she did … Tess wouldn’t entertain that one to save her life.

Unfortunate, because her life seemed in dire need of saving.

“Just tell me that he’s okay.”

“Who?”

“Sean, you idiot.”

“Be nice, Gracie, and I won’t tell you that his nickname is ‘Squab’.”

“Motherfucker,” Grace grumbled. “I can’t believe I fell for your manly charms.”

The goon chuckled fondly. He must have reached for something personal, because there was a sharp smack and a muttered obscenity, and Tess could almost feel her sister’s effort against relenting.

Tess felt no such compunction. She dropped with relief back into darkness.

………

She came to in a tastefully designed room from the 1930s. Clean lines, neutral shades, a white coved ceiling. Brass table lamps. A slick marble fireplace, with a cheery fire crackling in the grate. A glossy wood bedroom suite—walnut or oak or who knew what and who cared anyway? Tess struggled from the embrace of down quilts and puffy pillows when she spied her sister sitting in a low-slung armchair near the wardrobe. Gone were the purple plaid jammies, replaced by a beige silk dressing gown. Her hair was wet and combed away from her face. Her eyes were still brilliantly blue, but without the kohl liner, they lacked ferocity. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They have Sean.”

“How do they even know about him?” Tess demanded. She spoke recklessly and didn’t care. “Mike has sole custody; you lost Sean when his father divorced you for screwing, hell, Grace, everybody.”

“Thanks for reminding me, sis.” Grace produced a pack of smokes and pulled one free of its mates. She lit it with a cumbersome crystal knickknack that required she use both hands.

“Now, now, Gracie, you know that’s not allowed.”

Tess immediately wanted to vomit. That voice; that deep, dusky, crunchy-gravelly unforgettable voice, belonged to the one individual she had quit her life to avoid, and here she was, in his house, in her big sister’s presence, about to square off with him.

Without Black.

Grace doused the lighter and stubbed out the cigarette against the wardrobe. “I want to see Sean.”

“I want world peace,” Raymond retorted glibly, “but I don’t see that happening, either. You’re in no position to make demands, sweetie, and until you are, the boy is off limits.” He smiled at Tess, a cold sickle smile that mercifully showed no teeth. “Nice to see you again, bijou.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

“Oh, I am mightily out of sorts, but what can you do? Life would be so much easier if people would just do as they’re told. Are you hungry? I’ve hired a chef to cater specifically to your needs.”

“That’s kind of you,” Tess said, warily. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You’re my guest. What do you fancy? Pierre is French, but he can cook anything.”

“Like squab?” she asked.

Raymond’s sabre-edged smile tilted higher on one side. He was not at all attractive unless a girl favoured beady eyes, thin lips and a hawkish nose, but there was a reluctant allure in his whip-slim frame and that oddly compelling voice. “I took you for a vegetarian.”

“Then you mistook me.”

“That’s more helpful than I am certain you mean it to be.” His obsidian gaze flicked to Grace, who had stiffened slightly at the mention of Sean’s nickname. “Your sister has some questions for you, Gracie. I’ll leave you to get reacquainted.” He turned without having crossed the threshold, then added over his shoulder, “Ring if you need anything; there’s a bellpull by the bed.”

Tess looked before she could stop herself. When she looked back, the door was closed and Grace was defiantly relighting her cigarette. “He’s a fucking vampire,” she muttered around the butt end, “he’s not going to die from secondhand smoke.”

“He said it’s not allowed.”

“What are you, Tess, the hall monitor? That asshole has my son!”

“How does he even know about your son?” Tess repeated fiercely, “and while we’re at it, how does he know you? What did you do, Grace? What did you do?”

Her sister’s tone was flat. “You know what I did, Tessie. You figured it out at my place, maybe before then, maybe as far back as Trav’s funeral, I don’t know. He was mixed up with this crowd, too. Raymond—he’s a prick, but he throws a mean party and Travis was a relapse waiting to happen. I guess I took advantage of that, but I never meant for him to die. I had no idea that bitch would kill him. If I had, I’d never have brought him here.”

It was all Tess could do to keep her jaw hinged. “You introduced him to Raymond?”

“No,” Grace said slowly, “he introduced me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Grace shrugged. “You don’t have to believe it for something to be true.”

“You’re a liar, Grace, you’ve always been a liar!”

“And you’ve always been prefect!” Grace shot back, half-rising from her chair with a disfiguring snarl on her face. “Perfect fluffy candy floss girl, so pretty and smart with all the boys on a string. You could have had anyone, but you took the one I wanted just because you could. He wasn’t your type, Tess. He was a drug-addled hopeless case. He was my type, for Christ’s sake!”

Tess shouted at her to shut up, but Grace only cranked up the venom. For the first time in her life, Tess heard how her sister really felt about her, how jealous she was, how spiteful and vindictive, and how she blamed Tess for all that had gone wrong with her marriage—the marriage she had walked into hoping for redemption until Mike had muffed a comment and suddenly Grace had known that he really wanted her sister and wasn’t that always the way? They all wanted Tess—Mom, Dad, teachers and friends and boys in good standing with the Cub Scouts. Grace had had to trawl the dregs and even then, the one remotely promising scrap had preferred her little sister. At the end of her tirade, she changed her tune on one note:

“I’m glad he’s dead because now you don’t have him, either!”

Tess lost her mind. She went screaming at Grace with bared teeth and unsheathed claws. Grace launched herself in kind and the sisters clashed at the foot of the bed, tumbling onto it in a wrestling, writhing tangle of limbs. They fought like teenagers, scratching and shrieking, yanking on hair, tearing at each other’s clothes. Grace was naked under her robe; discovering so gave Tess a second’s horrified pause when she saw the tracks on her older sister’s skin. Tiny bruises and twinned scabs dotted and there—inside her elbows, behind her knees; anywhere a needle could go so, apparently, could a pair of incisors. Holy shit, Grace was a fang banger and the disgust showed on Tess’s face because Grace took exception and tried to smother her with a pillow.

Reinforcements arrived. Six thugs might have been overkill except that four were required to restrain Grace. She fought them as wildly, wrought beyond coherence until the fifth one slugged her and she sagged, whimpering, in an eight-handed grip.

Tess protested. “Hey!”

“You want we should let her kill you?” the sixth one asked. He wagged a reproving finger in Grace’s swelling face. “Raymond don’t want that, Gracie. He wants this one alive.”

Grace spat. “Of course he does! Even the king prick of vampires prefers her over me!”

“That’s not true!” Tess yelled, flinging the pillow at the thug who could talk. He was so surprised that he let it bounce off his barrel chest and stared when it landed at his feet. Idiot. He gave Tess a wounded look, as if she should have been more grateful when in fact she half-wished Grace had succeeded in suffocating her. Better to die by her sister’s rage than whatever means Raymond had in mind, because she seriously doubted she was getting out of this alive no matter what Bachelor Number Six had said. “Let her go,” she told the quartet holding Grace captive in octopus hands.

They exchanged dubious glances.

“Let her go.”

“Tessie, shut up.”

“No, you shut up!” Tess snapped, shaken beyond fear and slam-dunked straight into bravado. “I am not going to fight with you, Grace. If you try to hurt me again, these guys will stop you and you’ve already been hit once. Do you want to save Sean or don’t you?”

Grace sobbed wordlessly, but she nodded.

“Then work with me. Now, let her go, you morons!”

They looked at each other again, penguins waiting for someone else to be the first off the iceberg. Finally, Number Five gave a grunt and Grace was free. She staggered without the support; Tess scrambled off the bed to steady her when the penguins would have let her fall. “Get out!” she hissed at them. It took no effort at all to load her tone with loathing.

Number Five grunted again and the troop left in single file.

Grace began to cry. Tess hesitated to offer comfort—after all, she was the victim here—but when all was said and done, Grace believed she had a case and that made her pretty darned pathetic. So Tess walked her to the bed, sat her down, and embraced her.

………

“We can’t talk here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s watching us.”

That figured.

“I’m sorry, Tess.”

“Shut up, Grace.”

To be continued …