Chapter Thirteen #2
Marina nods. “Well, there you go then! I know it feels like longer, Melody, but we’ve only been on the job for a couple of days.
They’ve barreled in here this morning demanding you rush, but you can only do what you can do.
It’ll work itself out. And remember, we’re not the only ones on the case this time. Can Leo help out?”
She even sounds dubious herself, because we both know that the words Leo and help aren’t generally good bedfellows.
Leo is a fully paid-up member of the self-preservation society; his help is conditional on it being advantageous to him.
That’s under normal circumstances anyway.
These circumstances stopped being normal when he started going misty-eyed over Britannia Lovell, who is fully aware of what she’s doing and reveling in her feminine power over a beating heart for the first time in a century.
“It’s a bit complicated,” I sigh. “Leo seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for Britannia Lovell. He’s like a lovesick puppy whenever she puts an appearance in.”
Marina rolls her eyes and her laugh is full of scorn. “That’s just so Leo Dark.” She narrows her eyes and suddenly clamps her hand hard around my knee. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
“God, no,” I snap, fast and furious. I’m genuinely not jealous; it’s just messy seeing him so smitten. “I don’t think he’s going to be an awful lot of help in getting rid of her, because he’s enjoying having her around so much. That’s all.”
“Sure?”
God, she knows me too well sometimes. Don’t judge me on this because I don’t harbor any hopes or rose-tinted delusions of a future for me and Leo, but it hits me in a soft, secret corner of my heart to see him melt for someone else right in front of my eyes.
It’s not as if he’s being subtle; he’s mesmerized.
I’m sure the day will come when he meets a real, live woman who makes him feel that way, and actually that will be all right.
But I don’t relish the idea that I’ve got to wade in and tangle myself up in this improbable, impossible romance he seems intent on throwing himself headlong into.
He’s a cock because, dead or not, her husband has a lion and her lover is locked in a violent rage.
Fletch would have a field day with all of this if I told him.
“And what about Fletcher hot-ass Gunn?”
Marina enunciates his name with a hearty helping of derision and a sigh that says she knows he’s the main reason I’m on my backside in the gravel. She probably knows it better than I do, because I am in denial where he’s concerned.
“What about him?” I mutter like a grumpy, antisocial teenager who’s been asked about her overdue homework.
Marina shrugs and turns her palms up in question. “What gives? You could cut the atmosphere between you two with a knife.”
I shrug, wallowing in my own self-pity. “Just for once, I’d like to be normal. A normal woman who sees normal things. Empty chairs, empty ballrooms, and no goddamn lions.”
“You wouldn’t like normal life,” she says. “It’s dull compared to your spooky-vision.”
“Dull sounds right up my street.”
“He wouldn’t be interested in you if you were dull. It’s all part of your allure.”
“That isn’t evenly remotely reassuring, Marina.
You’re saying that he’s attracted to me because my weirdness turns him on.
It makes him sound even bloody odder than me, like people who keep dead squirrels in the freezer in their cellar in case they ever fancy a spot of taxidermy.
” For the record, I’m sure people who do taxidermy are perfectly normal, but it’s always given me the ick.
Marina takes a moment to process that. “I watched a TV show once about a guy who stuffed an entire family of ferrets and posed them as the royal family on a mock-up of the balcony of Buckingham Palace.” She laughs. “Minuscule crowns and all sorts.”
This is why we are best friends; most people would struggle to think of a comeback, but she is totally on my wavelength.
We have a shorthand that cuts through all the crap and lets us see inside each other’s heads and hearts the way an x-ray machine sees broken bones.
Right now, I think Marina is looking at my heart and she can see it’s a putrid shade of green.
“I don’t know why it even matters to me what he thinks,” I say. “I don’t want anything from him apart from a decent write-up in the paper.”
Marina looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “And his sausage roll.”
I ignore that and lean my head back against Babs. “It’s all just made me realize that I’m kidding myself if I think I’ll ever have anything even close to a normal life. A normal relationship.”
She rubs my knee soothingly. “You will. We both will. Romance is no picnic, even without the spooks.”
I clutch her hand. “Am I holding you back? If you want to go out and get a proper job with normal people and sandwiches and water coolers, you can, you know. I won’t be offended.”
She rolls her eyes. “Nah. Watching you declare yourself a lesbian porn addict is far more fun.” She snorts. “What were you thinking?”
I huff. “That’s exactly it, I wasn’t thinking. I never do around Fletcher Gunn. My mouth is an entirely separate entity from the rest of me; it keeps saying things that horrify me.”
Marina picks up one of her curls and holds it up in front of her eyes to inspect it for split ends. “Much as it pains me to say this, I think you’re going to have to sleep with him.”
I glance up sharply, my heart banging. I hate myself for not telling her yet. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” she says, nodding. “For the last God knows how many weeks, you two have been winding each other up to the point where you either have to have sex or else spontaneously combust. In unison, probably, like some weird Romeo and Juliet death pact that neither of you has actually agreed to.”
I stare at her hard, trying to decide if she’s joking.
“It’s either that or I’ll move in with you and your family and we can all live together like The Golden Girls.”
I start to laugh a tiny bit. “You’ll have to be the slutty one.”
“Naturally. I quite fancy the way they used to have those middle-of-the-night kitchen table confabs.”
Much as I love Marina, the idea of sharing our spinsterhoods with my family is hideous.
“So basically I’ve got to sleep with Fletcher Gunn to save us all from wearing lace collar nightdresses and eating ice cream straight from the tub. Is that your point?”
She ums and ahs before she speaks. “Not precisely, no. Let’s be frank here for a second, Melody. When did you last have sex, aside from with Brandy, the made-up lesbian stripper?”
Okay. So there’s a line between not confessing something happened and outright lying, and faced with such a direct question, I’m not prepared to lie to Marina. I study my hands and chew the inside of my cheek.
“Um, a couple of weeks ago?” I mumble, throwing in an upward inflection as if I can’t actually remember and it isn’t remotely important and we should move on immediately.
She stares at me, wide-eyed. “Actual sex with another human I mean, not your hairbrush or that model of Green Arrow’s quiver you keep on your bedside table.”
I scowl at the undignified hairbrush insinuation, and huff about the quiver because it may or may not be true, then I sigh, troubled.
“I needed Haribos and it was stupid late and Babs had a flat tire so Fletch gave me a ride and on the way we accidently took each other’s clothes off and had wild animal sex in the passenger seat of his Saab and then he dropped me home, the end,” I say in one rushed breath, still staring at my hands.
Marina is silent for a few seconds as she digests this new information. “I think, on balance, it would have been better if you’d been inappropriate with the quiver.”
I look at her at last. “Weren’t you the one who just suggested I should sleep with him?”
“Only because I thought it would get him out of your system. Now I’m worried he’s been in your system and shorted all the circuits.”
I lean on her shoulder. “I’ll be all right. This whole forced-proximity thing is just getting to me, that’s all.”
“I’d say it’s getting to him just as much, if that helps,” she says. “You might need to have the pug sleep in your room tonight as your bodyguard; his snoring is enough to put anyone off.”
We both titter and then she stands up and holds her hands out to haul me up too.
“Come on, Blanche. Pull yourself together.”
“You’re Blanche, not me. She was the slutty one.”
“After what you’ve just told me, I bequeath my Blanche crown to you.”
I scrub my hands over my cheeks and she slots a fresh piece of gum into her mouth and straightens her clothes, looking up at the impressive castle basking in the sunlight. I practically see the thought bubbles shimmer in the air over Marina’s romance-movie-loving head.
“You know what? On second thought, leave Lestat in the kitchen. You’re alone here together tonight in a fantasy castle, it’s like a movie set where you’re the leading lady.
Boff his brains out then come to work refreshed and ready to kick this case’s ass in the morning. Think of it as friends with benefits.”
“Don’t ever apply for a job as an advice columnist,” I say, but all the same I’m turning her advice over in my head as we start back toward the castle. “He’s not my friend.”
She shrugs. “Frenemy, then.”
“I won’t respect him any more in the morning.”
“This isn’t about friendship or respect, Melody. It’s about swinging from the chandeliers; God knows there’s enough of them in this place to choose from.”
We’ve reached the castle door now, and just as I’m wondering how to style out my earlier teenage girl exit, I’m saved the bother by the fact that Lestat starts going full on batshit bananas.
He’s morphed from Garfield to raging up and down the hall like a tiny snorting bull, crashing into things and sending a probably priceless vase crashing to the floor.
“Bollocks!” I half shout as Artie tries valiantly to catch hold of him. I break into a run to help, because I’m the only person present who can see what Lestat is actually doing; he’s brawling with an incredibly angry lion.