My sleep was plagued with nightmares and I awoke with a jolt, rubbing at my eyes to help them adjust to the low light coming in through the bedroom windows. Becca sat in a chair in the corner of the room, scrolling through her phone, the light of the screen illuminating her pretty face.
“You were crying out,” she said, not looking up. “Bad dreams?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded and set down her phone, turning her full attention to me. I pushed back the quilt and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was still wearing the torn and soiled clothing since I’d been too tired to change.
“Fresh clothes on the dresser.” Becca lifted her chin in their direction. “Towels in the bathroom if you want a shower.”
I ran a hand through my hair, tugging at the tangles of the sweat damp mass. I scratched at the sides of my head and thumped the bedding in irritation. “Yeah, I need one.”
“You do.”
“Thanks,” I said, dryly. “Time is it?”
“A little after eight.”
“No one has been in asking for us?”
“Not yet.”
I nodded and stretched my neck, lowering my head to first my right shoulder and then my left, feeling the pull of the sore muscles.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” I admitted. “Hungry too.”
Becca laughed and pushed herself up from the chair. “You shower and change and I’ll grab you some food.”
It was a good idea and after a hot shower, I felt almost alive again. Still had a few aches and pains, and there were plenty of scratches and bruises showing on my body that weren’t worth the magic to heal, but overall, I was alive.
There was a clean pair of knickers on top of the pile and I pulled those on before trying the jeans. They were a bit loose around the waist and ass, perhaps a size too large, but they settled on my hips and didn’t seem like they would fall down.
I would just have to live with the constant feeling that they were about to.
The shirt was, wonder of wonders, a full t-shirt with some band name scrawled across the front. I had no idea who the band was, and I didn’t really care. I was just happy to not be worrying about showing off too much cleavage for once.
I pulled on socks that were white, fluffy and sporting embroidered cat faces, definitely not my style, and then my trainers which still had specks of blood and mud on them.
Dressed and ready to face the world, I slipped Jen’s phone into my back pocket and headed in search of Becca. I found her in the sitting room, a bowl of pasta loaded with cheese and sauce sat on the coffee table.
“Eat up,” she said as she flicked through the channels on the TV. “Think you made the news, babe.”
“Huh?” I asked around a mouthful of pasta. There on the TV was a grainy image of Jen boarding a train. “What’s happening?”
The image shrunk to allow the news anchor to appear in the corner below, a woman who might be pretty underneath the layers of makeup and hair spray. She was speaking to the camera as she looked straight ahead.
“An explosion on a train travelling from Manchester today, resulted in a closure of the line,” the anchor was saying. “While no one was hurt, police are looking for information on this woman regarding this matter.”
I swallowed the mouthful of pasta that suddenly tasted like ash and looked from the TV to Becca, wide-eyed.
“That’s not good.”
“You can say that again.” She nodded towards the TV. “It gets better.”
“This same woman is wanted for questioning in the death of a Manchester resident, Lillian Whyte.”
“Oh, fuck.” It was Delilah’s doing, had to be. The covens scrubbed anything related to supernatural events from cameras and databases all over the country. It was one of the ways they ensures their own secrecy. “Well, I’m screwed.”
“Yah, you really are.”
Becca turned off the TV and tossed the remote down. She looked at me with those big, hazel eyes and brushed a hand through her brown curls. There was fear and worry in her expression and I couldn’t help but feel something close to actual guilt for the problems I was causing her.
“I need a drink.”
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“Probably not a good idea.”
“No.” I looked down at the half-eaten food. My appetite had fled but I forced down a couple more forkfuls before letting the fork drop to the plate. “Sod it, I need it though.”
We headed downstairs and joined May in the bar area. It was fuller now, with more than half the tables full. Men and women both sat in groups, talking and laughing as a rugby match played on the TV fixed to the wall.
May had drinks poured for us before we reached the bar and we both settled onto barstools and leaned forward, resting our elbows on the bar.
“New guy,” May said, leaning in. Her eyes flicked to a table in the corner of the room by the door. “Been in for an hour now, bought a drink but not drinking it, you know?”
I did indeed. I turned my head to look back at him, not caring enough to hide the motion. The well-dressed demon from earlier raised his glass in a mock salute and I held back a sigh.
“Yeah, that’s one of them,” I said. “Better go see what he wants.”
“You want me to come with you?” Becca asked.
“Not yet. Will save that for when Delilah gets here.”
I lifted my drink and carried it across to where the man sat. He leaned back as I approached, his gaze seeming to trace the outline of my body as he took in everything about me. I shivered at the attention.
“Hello, again,” he said, quite genial. “I honestly wasn’t sure I would see you.”
“Why’s that?” I took a seat opposite him and sat down gingerly.
“After your, somewhat impressive, escape from the train, I expected you to have perished.”
There was a glint of humour in his eyes and he still wore the same grey suit of earlier, though it was a touch more rumpled than it had been. There was also noticeable stubble on his chin and I guessed that he had not had the time to do much more than chase me.
“When’s the boss getting here?”
“Soon enough.” A shrug of his shoulders as if he wasn’t bothered about such things. “She is most upset with you. Marcus told me that she positively terrified her staff back home.”
“I think I could still upset her even more,” I said with a wink and a smirk.
“Oh, I do not doubt it.” He lifted his glass and sipped at the golden liquid in the tumbler before pulling a face. “Not much of a selection here.”
“A fan of whiskey?”
“I do enjoy a nice glass from time to time,” he admitted with a grimace at his glass. “This is not that.”
Couldn’t really argue with that. I sipped at my own, letting the taste linger on my tongue before swallowing.
“I’ve had worse.”
It was his turn to smile. “I like you. It will be a shame to see you experience what Ms Winters has in store for you.” He paused, smile fading. “I can kill you, if you like. It will be fast, and clean. A good death.”
He seemed to genuinely mean it and I blinked, surprised at the honesty in his voice. His expression was serious, those steel grey eyes boring into mine. I felt my cheeks heating and I covered by taking a sip of my drink.
“Thank you.” Weird to thank him for offering to kill me, but in our world and with his boss, it was a decent thing to do. “But, I think I will meet with her anyway.”
Another shrug of his shoulders and he lifted his drink in salute once more, though there was no mockery in the motion this time.
“I salute your bravery, if not your good sense.”
“Thanks.” I raised my glass, mirroring his gesture. “Cheers.”
We both sipped, each of us grimacing at the taste. His chuckle was warm and genuine and I found myself liking the guy.
“What’s your name?”
“Finlay Sharp, but you may call me, Finn, if you wish.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Finn.”
He inclined his head, his smile warm, transforming his face once more from good looking to handsome. Jen’s body was definitely responding to him, and I found myself leaning forward, inhaling that masculine scent that I’d never realised men had.
“Why do you work for her?” I asked, trying to distract myself yet not quite ready to quit the conversation.
“It’s a job.”
“You don’t seem like it’s a job you enjoy.” I lifted a beer mat, turning it idly with my fingers as I fidgeted. “Surely there’s something else you would rather be doing?”
“Many things,” he agreed. “But none that pay so well as this.”
I nodded and dropped the beer mat. I had a restlessness that I wasn’t familiar with. I leaned back and studied him. “What if I asked you to quit?”
“You could ask, but I would say, no.” He spread his hands. The fingers were long and almost delicate, the hands of an artist, or a musician. “It would be dishonourable to betray my employer, and this is what you are really asking, no?”
Well, he wasn’t stupid, I thought as I absently twirled a length of blonde hair around my finger. Intelligent, damned good looking and more than a little charming. A girl could do worse.
Dammit! What the hell was wrong with me? I pulled my hand back down to my lap and held it there as I glowered at the demon.
I knew what was wrong with me and it scared me more than the demon did. My soul was too weak, it was connecting far too well with Jen’s body. I was being affected by her emotions, her body! She’d definitely liked boys, and her body reacted to those she found attractive. Which meant that me, the essence of who I was, that was inhabiting her female brain, was also doing that.
The mind moulded to the body. I’d known that and still, it was surprising and a little scary to experience how strong that change could be.
Objectively, I knew that I wasn’t attracted to men. Never had been. Jen was though, and through her, it seemed that I was too. Or at least physically I was, and maybe subconsciously. Consciously, I could resist such things.
I was just glad that she also seemed to have a reasonable attraction to girls too.
“Call me when she gets here,” I said, rising from the table and marching away. I kept my back straight and eyes facing front as I joined the smirking Becca. Even May had a smile on her face. “What?”
“You were flirting,” Becca teased.
“No I wasn’t.”
“You were definitely eyeing him like a cat would a mouse,” May said. “You want my opinion, give it a go. Would kill some time and he seems like he’d know what he was doing.”
My cheeks were burning and I knocked back my drink, planting the empty glass on the bar and tapping the rim. Becca’s smile was only widening as May offered a few more suggestions that were only growing more ribald, and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.
I was not mentally equipped to deal with the mind of a teenage girl, and it was by far the worst possible time to have to learn how to. I should have been focusing on Delilah’s imminent arrival and instead I couldn’t get a pair of steel grey eyes and a gorgeous smile out of my mind.
Becca threw an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. The hug was welcome, but it also allowed her to whisper in my ear.
“Don’t fight your body, Jen would have loved that guy and she’s gone anyway. It’s not her body anymore.”
I pulled back and there was a shimmer of tears in her eye. She smiled, a little sadly, for her friend and with warmth for me.
“Thanks,” I said. “But, I’m good.”
Really not ready to try anything remotely like that with a guy. My intention was to survive the next few days and then find my body and get back into it. Then, I could think about sex. Only then.
If Jen’s body would let me, anyway.