Chapter 5 - Kate
Something crashes to the floor with a clatter. I bolt upright out of bed, my heart thundering.
Josh gives me a rolling groan from the floor.
He’s proudly parked his butt beside my fallen nightstand lamp, the source of the noise.
The silver crushed diamond lampshade is upside down, and the mirror-finish base lies on its side, the bulb flickering like a dying star.
I always leave it on at night to scare away the shadows.
My Yorkshire’s tail swishes, and his eyes are bright, pretending he hasn’t committed property damage.
“I swear, if you weren’t so cute…” I grumble, throwing off my comforter, dropping my toes to the soft carpet, and crouching to collect the evidence. “You’re lucky this isn’t broken, otherwise no more jerky for you, mister!”
He groans at me and nudges my leg like I’m a silly human for not understanding his reasons for climbing furniture.
I restore the lamp to the bedside table. Damn, it’s crooked. I adjust it. Still off. My fingers twitch to realign it. Once. Twice. Three times.
“There. That’s better.”
Josh isn’t so convinced. He watches me like I’m the one losing it, and I am. I ruffle his head.
Something cold drops onto the skin of my knee. Josh sits there, body rocking, tailing thumping, a miniature hunter presenting his master with a rabbit. Black, cylindrical, the size of a thumbtack, one side covered in a mesh grill. Also warm and dripping with slobber. Pleased yips come from my pet.
Slowly, I lift it and twist it in the light. Not a treat or one of his toys. He’s lucky he didn’t swallow it. And this doesn’t belong in my bedroom. I freeze. I’ve seen enough crime dramas to recognize a spy chip, possibly a microphone. Why the hell is it my room?
Silence screams in my locked lungs. My eyes sweep across my bookshelves, art frames, wall-mounted TV, and my heart-shaped pillows like they’re suspects. I don’t move for a long moment.
Rational me wants to know if Blackthorn planted this. The name tightens around my ribs.
No. No. No.
That chapter is closed. At least, I thought it was, until three nights ago.
Book Girlie me tickles the back of my mind with another explanation.
I glance back at my bookshelf, and a secret thrill feathers down my spine.
Spying on the heroine is precisely the kind of thing that happens in my books.
That thought alone should terrify me. Hell, it does a little.
Yet, I’m not completely sold that Blackthorn is behind this.
The smut slut in me desperately needs to believe that someone else entered the sanctum of Morally Gray Alley and left me this little love note.
The helmeted biker from last night, for example.
Fantasies explode in my mind, and I can’t help but feel chosen like the female protagonists I pretend to be at night.
My hands come together in prayer. “Dear, God. I know we don’t catch up much. I hope you don’t hold it against me.”
I imagine the Almighty frowning and warning me to get to the point.
I get on with it since He’s busy. “If someone is stalking me, please let it be in a dark romance way and not in a political thriller way. Have a great morning.”
I get up and wrap the device in a tissue and leave it next to my lamp.
Then I shower with one eye on the window, the other on my cabinets, paranoid that someone is watching.
I refuse to let fear touch my body. Refuse to be a trembling, slick, hot mess.
I lather up real slow with enough body wash to clean a car and brush it over my slick skin sensually. Let them watch. I’m done hiding.
“You want to watch, you creep?” I shout all the bravado I can into it to make my point. “Choke on it!”
Whoever they are, they’re not going to intimidate me or send me into a spiral again. They’re going to fuel my little investigative heart to uncover them. And if they’re connected to Blackthorne, well, fuck him, because I’ve got a surprise coming.
I get into my pink apron dress with tiny black daggers. Sweet meets stabby. Hopefully, Burt takes the hint. Over that, I throw a chic white cardigan. Dressed and ready for work, I slide the bug into my pocket and head downstairs to eat breakfast.
Harper’s already at the table, wrapped in her black onesie with black panther spots, cradling coffee like it’s an IV drip.
She only wears the thing because it’s black, and I gifted it to her last Christmas.
Hair everywhere, eyes red, and mouth set in a scowl, she looks like death reborn—and that’s her style.
She’s not a morning person. At. All. If there were a pill to become a Goth Fae or some other gothic creature like a vampire, she’d take it in a heartbeat. After dusk, of course.
Three wooden pots sprouting petunias steal all available space on our kitchen table. A closer examination shows they’re coffin-shaped. Nothing says truce with a grouchy neighbor like burial décor. I’m too distracted with more important topics to care.
“Morning!” I chirp.
Josh snorts and curls up on her slipper. Traitor. I wonder what it’s going to take to get him back to Team Kate.
Harper’s eyes do that painful squint as if I’ve exposed her to sunlight and set her on fire. “You missed buttons on your cardigan.”
I check. Shit. Three are out of order, one looped through the wrong hole entirely. I’m a damn mess.
“Thanks.” I fix them into place, smooth my clothes, and run a shaky hand through my flat-ironed curls.
Fashion faux pas corrected, I work off uneasy energy, filling up the kettle and setting it to boil. Then I click on the music to calm and ground me. Celine Dion, Unison album, her first foray into the English language.
Ms. Dion raised me on love songs and abandonment issues.
Mom played her when she cleaned the house, cooked, or ironed.
Even more so when she was lonely and cried every time she got stood up on a date, or when a man didn’t call back, and she struggled to raise a kid alone.
I grew up to Celine’s soundtrack of power ballads, heartbreak, and the throat and lungs of a goddess. Somehow, we both still believe in love.
Harper covers her ears, hiding her dragon wing ear cuffs. “If you play Because You Loved Me again, I’m staging an exorcism at breakfast.”
“This is my safe space.” My fingers are still shaking, and my brain is looping through worst-case scenarios, but Celine’s sequins and soprano are my balm.
Busying my hands, I take a cloth to the spilled coffee grounds and scrub like I’m punishing it.
I don’t even realize they’re long gone and washed down the sink.
On I go, wiping harder and faster, until my hand cramps.
Celine hits a high note that I massacre, Harper groans too, and Josh lifts a paw over his eye.
Harper observes me for a beat. “You’ll wipe a hole in the stone, and a fairy will lose another wing with those notes.”
I blink at the gleaming surface. So much for hiding my panic.
Speaking of panic, I remove the reason for it, and drop the listening device beside her cradled coffee mug. “Is that what I think it is?”
She doesn’t blink, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s tired, doesn’t care, reserves her energy to block out the warbling goddess, or summons the vitality from her drink to kill sunrise.
She shrugs. “A gift from your secret admirer with the helmet kink?”
Funnily enough, Where Does My Heart Beat Now starts, and I think of my lonely heart as I flash back to the long chat where we dissected him over hot chocolate and questionable life choices.
“Who is the man that saved me? Enemy or a dark protector?” I pull the blanket tighter over me, wondering if he watches me still, when I swore a dark bike tailed me home.
“Whoever he is, he’s not one of Blackthorn’s men. He’s got a conscience. Blackthorn’s crew doesn’t have one.” Harper sips at her drink like she’s made of stone and doesn’t feel the scald of boiling milk.
My thoughts too. His men travel in black, armored vehicles for protection from bullets, and always in pairs of two muscled meatheads to control the situation.
Tingles radiate across my body at feeling worthy enough to be followed and rescued. I just hope it’s by an obsessive, dangerous man from my books, and not the type who runs me off the road.
“Being rescued is kind of romantic,” I admit.
Harper rolls her head to me. “Those thoughts are reckless and shouldn’t be entertained.”
“Aw. Why do you have to spoil my fantasies?” I shrug and stroke Josh’s back as he lies curled on her lap as if I don’t exist when she’s in the vicinity.
I cradle my mug for warmth and go over every little detail, psychoanalyzing them like I’m in a true-crime podcast.
Harper elbows me. “I’m serious, cupcake. Be smart and safe.”
“I am. I’ve got a can of mace in my handbag.” But I didn’t use it last night.
A weapon I wish I had when… no, not going back there.
Harper catches my shoulder and squeezes— her version of a hug. “You’re safe here. No one’s getting inside. Not with what I’m packing.” She removes the Smith & Wesson from her ankle holster.
Harper’s a wee bit obsessed with weapons. Guns, knives, kubatons, and personal alarms. She doesn’t leave the house without carrying a weapon and a keychain on her body. Her favorite is the purple one in the shape of a cat’s face, because of her cat obsession.
I tense at her polymer frame.
Harper’s grip on me tightens. “I’ll kill for you, cupcake. That’s as sentimental as I get.”
That’s Harper-speak for “I love you.” In that moment, I feel protected and truly safe, and it settles my discomfort. Something warm and fuzzy springs up in its place.
“You’re my ride-or-die bitch.” I repeat our mantra.
“That’s right.” Harper strokes the gun along my spine. “Your RODAB.” Our nickname for each other, which is the shortened version of ride-or-die-bitch.
The kettle boiling brings me back to the present.