Renegotiating

She threw the door open hard enough that it bounced back half closed again, almost hitting her. She barely spared the room a glance. Her eyes were too blurry from lack of sleep to notice much, anyway.

She’d only been here briefly over the last few weeks, but thanks to the cleaning lady, it was in better order than if she’d actually been living in the apartment she’d called home for the past year. Too many people had wanted to do too many unfriendly things to her for her to be easy to find.

That wasn’t why she was here now, though.

“Where are you, you son of a bitch? I know you’re here!” She smelled smoke already. She’d been smelling it so often over the past few weeks, but the last few days there had been almost nothing but the antiseptic smell of the hospital. The sharp smothering smell of burning almost came as a shock.

Immediately, there was a low chuckle from behind her. She whirled around quickly, almost tripping over the coffee table. There was nothing there. Another low laugh from behind her caused her to spin again.

“Alexandra, my dear, I’m always with you, not only ‘here.’” The voice was the same as always. Rich, low, with throaty laughter just below the surface. More than pleasant, almost seductive. It made her break out in chills and feel slightly nauseous.

Though she knew it was futile, she still searched for the source of the voice. Another quiet laugh came from behind her, and she felt hot breath on the back of her neck for a minute.

“Stop playing games,” she demanded.

“Oh, Alexandra, this is far from a game, and I promise you, I am not playing.” There was a sharp edge in the voice. It may have given her pause, but she was past paying attention to small things.

“I know that… that’s you. You’re doing it, and you’re going to stop. Now.”

There was another low chuckle, originating from just behind and to the left of her. She turned, but saw nothing, not even an indentation in the thick carpeting.

“Stop? Would you have me let him die, then? That would suit me. Keeping him alive is quite the effort, you know.” The voice sounded thoughtful, but fake.

“You--” She stopped, the heat that had been building began to dissipate as confusion set in.

“Of course,” the voice said, sounding almost gentle. “Put aside that wonderful fury of yours and think, Alexandra. The doctors did tell you, didn’t they, that your… friend should be dead. That some mysterious force had kept him from death.”

After a hesitation, she regained her momentum. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“No?” The voice questioned.

“You know it wasn’t,” she snapped. The was a quiet noise from the direction of the kitchen. She turned but saw nothing. She couldn’t be sure if the noise had been real, or just her imagination. The air conditioner slightly shifting the air current, possibly.

“And our ‘deal’ didn’t include you playing hero in the Rogue Isles, either,” There was a distinct growl underlying the words now. “Did you think that busting villains in a new locale would be enough to meet our bargain?”

She was silent. She didn’t have a reply, for that was exactly what she’d been doing, and hoping.

“Not hardly,” the voice sneered. She felt the shifting of air around her, maybe something brushed her arm. She turned quickly, succeeding only in flipping her hair into her eyes.

“Alexandra, surely you must realize how important you are to me,” the voice began. The pleasant voice was back. It came from almost directly in front of her. “Your entire life I’ve been following you, watching you. Before that, your mother, though she possessed none of the… fire that you do. You look like her, you know. You have your father’s eyes, though, and his personality, of course. Your mother, she was a quiet little mouse compared to you.”

The scent of burning was overpowering and she’d taken two steps forward before she caught herself. “What do you know about my parents?” She’d meant the question to come out strong, harsh, angry, but it was barely more than a hoarse whisper.

“Why, everything, of course!” The voice replied happily. “Who do you think brought them together? Your mother was from my line,” it said possessively. “She was beautiful, obviously, but her temperament was lacking, and she had practically no magical potential. Your father, on the other hand…. Even then, the power he had! It was astounding, really. If only he’d been more corruptible.” The voice sighed, but quickly regained its cheery tone. “No matter, though. Practically all I had to do was arrange a meeting, and the rest is history!”

“You’re lying,” she whispered.

“Oh, no. Alexandra, I’ll never lie to you. You can trust me,” the voice was soothing, almost hypnotic. “I know, you’re tired of the lies, the betrayals. Friends, family. No one you can trust. I’ll never lie to you. I’ll never leave you.”

There was a long pause.

And then she burst out laughing. It was harsh, hoarse laughter, bordering on tears.

The voice sounded as though it was true laughter, though, as if they’d shared a joke. “Well, if you choose not to believe me, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it.”

She gave another harsh bark of laughter. “You haven’t even kept up your part of this bargain.”

“And what have you done for me?” There was a growl and the hot breath was in her face. She took an involuntary step back and the voice continued. “You’ve gone out of your way to go against what I’ve asked you to do. I would be within my rights to remove my protection from your friend and give him the death he wants.”

“No! You’re wrong, you’re--” The protest was automatic, but the voice continued.

"You're my biggest investment, Alexandra. My favorite project. I have such high hopes for you. That's the only reason I've given you the leeway I have. However, if you want me to do what you've asked, no small thing, then you must do as I've asked as well. Begin living up to your end of the bargain, and I will do my best to complete mine."

The sofa was steps away, and she sank into it now gratefully. "Fine," she replied with a tired sigh.

"Excellent," the voice said. "Begin by retrieving the locket from the... person you've left it with."

She looked up, remembered that she wouldn't see the source of the request. "The locket? What?"

"The locket, Alexandra. The one that belonged to your ancestress."

"You're... joking."

There was a rumble of laughter from just in front of her. Too close for comfort, but it was near pointless to move away. "I assure you, I am not. You don't believe in coincidences, do you, my dear? As I've said, you are my favorite project. However, not my only one. The locket will enable me to more easily keep track of you and your activities. And to... advise you, should you stray from the path that we are creating for you."

"Advise?" She scoffed. "Hardly. That locket gives you entirely too much power over me. No way."

There was a growl and the smell of burning and the heat in the room increased exponentially. "You are my creation and you've made a bargain with me. Break that bargain, and face the consequences."

She flinched back at first reaction but quickly recovered and glared at the spot in the room where the voice seemed to originate.

The voice became softer, almost gentle again. "You are my creation, you know. You're as much my daughter as your biological parents', or the Kellys'. But if you renege on your end of the bargain, I will be forced to do the same. Your friend will be dead within hours."

She swallowed hard and took a breath, willing herself not to cry.

The gentle voice continued. "I can make it easier for you, Alexandra. Don't fight me so hard. Relax your guard. You won't have to suffer."

She shook her head. "No." The word came out soft, not much more than a rough whisper.

"Suit yourself." The voice was flat, gruff. "Get the locket. Follow my instructions. Or your friend dies."

There was a stillness to the room, and she knew the owner of the voice was gone, for now. She knew what she had to do.

She leaned back into the couch, closing her eyes. Exhaustion took over and she slept, but didn't rest. The nightmares were back, and she knew it was only the beginning.

Bargaining

Stumbling through the front door, she had the presence of mind to be glad that she wasn't someone who redecorated often. Had she moved furniture lately, she would have tripped over something as she crossed the room without turning on lights, blinded by tears. She hadn't cried again on the way back from the hospital in Steel Canyon, but something about the comfort of her own building, even the elevator that always smelled like someone's cigar, had loosed enough tension that the tears had started again.

She reached the corner near a window and sank against the wall. In short order, she wore herself out and sat curled up in the corner, staring blankly across the wall. She'd stayed at the hospital in one of the waiting rooms until the nurses had chased her out just before daybreak. No one had been able or willing to tell her anything. Phone calls had been one thing, but her presence had irritated them more. The only thing she'd managed to accomplish was gaining a hatred of vending machine coffee.

The slowly brightening light beyond the window glass gained her attention and she climbed to her feet, crossing the large room to the desk with the laptop on it. She turned on the computer while she stood, impatiently waiting for it to load.

Suddenly, she picked it up and threw it at the nearest window, yanking cords with dulled snaps. The computer bounced off the thick glass, making a muffled thud as it hit the carpet. Nothing on it helped. Megabytes of e-mails and copied research, and none of it accomplished anything.

Weeks. Days.

She felt heat in waves and smelled burning synthetic as the carpet around her smoldered. The smell intensified as she stood still, trying to regain control and catch her breath. The room shimmered through waves of heat and a glaze of tears.

It was too risky for her to drink now, but there was still the odd bottle of wine and liquor around that she hadn't bothered to get rid of yet. She walked to the kitchen, leaving a trail of slightly melted carpet. She found an unopened bottle of zinfandel and one of the large glass wine goblets, a corkscrew, and, after a moment of disorganized searching, a large butcher knife. On the way back to the living room, the burning slowed under her focused concentration.

She cleared the low coffee table of papers and a candle centerpiece with a sweep of the hand holding the knife. Calling a demon was something she'd never wanted to know how to do, but with an evil sorceress bumping around her head, it was something she hadn't even had to try to learn.

She knelt on the floor next to the table and took a moment to open the bottle, pouring a little wine into the glass. After a moment's hesitation, she raised her hand above the glass and pressed the blade to her wrist. After all, when the demon showed up, it would be thirsty.

Interlude: Research

Alexandra found herself in a position that was becoming more and more familiar with, sitting in front of a computer a desk. Granted, she was dressing a velour jogging suit, with her hair tied in a messy knot, she was barefoot, and one leg was curled under her, but it was still a desk, with a computer. She snorted. The reading glasses perched on the end of her nose were just around the corner. She squinted at the screen thoughtfully. Nah, not yet.

She reached for the coffee cup beside the laptop and took a drink, instantly making a face at the room temperature liquid. She didn’t remember how long it had sat there to get that way, but she’d been involved in the things the on the screen.

Every day, sometimes every hour, more and more reports and research crossed her e-mail. Almost every day, some other type of reports and research were added to the growing virtual stacks. Some of it was deleted as unimportant. That pile was small. Some of it went aside to refer back to later. Some of it was sent on to be delved into further. Or, like the pages on her screen at the moment, sent to someone who could make more sense of it. The scientific jargon that looked more like nonsense words to her would come back to her in wording she was able to understand, if necessary.

Her accountants and business manager were baffled by the sudden and severe increases in her spending. Good people weren’t hard to find, just expensive. And even more expensive if you wanted to keep your interests to yourself.

She rubbed her temple. Another stress headache, or she’d been staring at the screen too long. Maybe the reading glasses where a good idea. She picked up her coffee cup and concentrated on the screen, taking more effort to get around the headache than it should have. In a minute, the coffee was steaming again.

She remembered how many coffee mugs she’d shattered trying to learn the fine control it took to do such a little thing. But, that was a long time ago. Before. She hadn’t been able to do it at all, for awhile, after she’d met Serra. Now, it was second nature again. She paused, watching the steam rise from the mug. She hadn’t made a conscious effort to reheat it, had resigned herself to drinking cold coffee. Apparently, her subconscious disliked cold coffee more than she did. She shrugged to herself and moved on to the next e-mail.

A report reporting nothing. Those were becoming more and more common. She clenched her jaw. Hitting walls was becoming more and more common. Lack of information, information that didn’t apply, information that had already come through from another source. It wasn’t accomplishing anything.

As hard as she was glaring at the screen, she barely noticed the smell of burning plastic. A second later, the mug shattered in her grip, suddenly boiling liquid splashing across the desk, the computer, her sleeve. She heard the faint echoes of maniacal female laugher. It was a familiar sound, and becoming familiar again.

Refocusing was much harder than it should have been. Coming back to herself, she saw the deep melted indentation under her hand, across the keyboard and the touchpad of the laptop. It was the second one she’d melted in the past week. She wiped wetness from her face. Instead of coffee, her hand came away coated with blood that leaked from her nose.

Her headache was gone.

Sessions I

I was going to finish editting and post the E/Serra conversation today, but I had an inspiration sometime during the night. I want to post Fyre's backstory at some point. So, why not do it in a story? But, Fyre doesn't talk about herself. So, how to force her to do that? Well, how about putting her in therapy? It works for everyone else. I like to write, and often read things written in, first person, but, again, Fyre doesn't talk about herself. So, I sort of forced her, and we get to listen in, a little. Possibly the first in a series.

She enters the office with trepidation. She’d been here before and knew what to expect. It didn’t help. She’d met Dr. Connors and he struck her as sort of bland. Fifyish, nice looking, but not too good-looking. It looked as though he’d been put together entirely to blend in, not to intimidate. Her mother always said, “Don’t look intimidated, and you won’t be intimidated.” Like most of her mother’s advice, that wasn’t helping her much now.

She knows the “therapists” at Valley View shouldn’t reflect on anyone else in the mental health field. Shouldn’t. So why does she feel like she's going to have a heart attack since the moment she’d stepped into the waiting room?

“This is a bad idea,” she announces from the doorway, without planning to say it out-loud.

Dr. Connors looks up from his tablet and looks at her from across the room. “Why do you say that?” When she only shakes her head, he motions her further into the room. “You may as well come in the rest of the way. And close the door behind you.”

She takes a deep breath and takes another step into the room. Closing the door behind her feels like sealing a tomb. That thought, that over-exaggerated, melodramatic thought, and the realization of it gives her the strength to take a few more steps and sit on the couch across from Connor’s chair.

“You’re very nervous,” Connors observes. Brilliantly, she thinks. “Why is that?”

“I don’t like doctors,” she says. It comes out as a whisper. She crosses her legs and smoothes her skirt, trying to cover the weakness in her voice.

Connors nods. “We spoke briefly last week. You seemed much calmer.”

“I was leaving then,” she says.
Connors tilts his head in question. “You’ll be leaving in an hour.”

She nods. She’s looking at her hands on her skirt, looking at the manicured fingernails. She’s realized this is going to be harder than she thought. She looks up and toward the door.

“I’ve seen your medical records, of course,” Connors says. He speaks more quietly, as if not to startle her. “I know you were hospitalized at Valley View, and I’ve seen your court testimony.” He pauses, indicating the next question has nothing to do with the previous statement, but she knows that’s not the case. “Why did you decide to see a therapist after all this time?”
“
Ma-- my… friend is seeing one, a colleague of yours, and it seems to be helping him.” After thought, she adds under her breath, “Sort of.”

Connors nods. “Well, since we don’t know each other very well, why don’t we start at the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?” She’s feeling a little better. She straightens and brushes her hair back, feeling some confidence come back.

Connors smiles at her. “Of your life. Childhood memories. What was your childhood like?” He smiles again when she automatically rolls her eyes at the clichéd question. She suspects he asked it at least partly just to see what her reaction would be to it. When she doesn’t answer, he says,
“A lot of what I do is listening to what you want to tell me.”

She shifts slightly in her seat. “All right.” A pause while she thinks. “I was adopted. You probably know. It’s not a secret, or anything. I don’t remember a time not knowing that. My biological mother gave me up when I was a baby. My father’s not listed on the birth certificate, and she died about a year after she gave me up-- a car crash-- so no one can ask her. My parents, my adoptive parents, didn’t have any other children. My father was almost twenty years older than my mother, so maybe they couldn’t. I don’t really know.”

She stops and Connors lets her be silent for a minute. “What kind of childhood did you have?” He prompts her when it becomes clear she’s waiting for the next question.

She shrugs. “It was good. I was spoiled. Very. When my parents took trips, they’d have to buy more luggage to fit all the things that they brought me back.”

“They took a lot of trips?”

She knows what he’s really asking. “Yes. Especially my mother. She wasn’t home much. She worked… was with a few charities, and she was busy with that, or social things. My father worked, I mean really worked, hard for his company. He tried to be around for me, but a successful business takes a lot of hard work and long hours.”

“I’ve seen pictures of your mother in newspapers and such. She works with one of the AIDS charities, doesn’t she?”

She shrugs. “I could never keep track. Whatever’s trendy at the moment, usually.”

There’s the briefest flash of a frown before the impassive therapist face comes down again. “Your father is deceased?”

She nods. “He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen, about twelve years ago.” She looks away and knows he'll keep asking until she tells him, so she adds, “In his office, at home. I came home from school and found him. We were supposed to be going to dinner.”

Connors writes something down in his notebook. She feels a twinge of irritation, examines it, focuses on it. It’s much easier to get angry than to concentrate on whatever else she may be feeling.

“How did that effect you?”

The irriation blooms to full-fledged anger. “How did it effect me? How do you think? He was the only person who cared about me. I hate my mother--” She stops instantly, realizing what she’s said aloud.

Connors merely glances at her.

She shrugs. “I do, I guess. I just hadn’t planned on announcing it so soon. It’s not like she’s my real mother. And she didn’t try to be. She thought it was cute, for awhile, I guess, having a little girl. When I was little, she used to dress us alike. She has really pale blond hair, and she used to have mine dyed to match. She got tired of it when I was around twelve or so, though I kept up the dying. I think, maybe, that she saw me as competition.

“Our relationship got a lot worse after my father died. Either she wasn’t there at all or we were screaming and throwing things at each other. I started getting in some trouble after my father died, and I got kicked out of Saint Anne’s, my private school. Instead of finding me another, she had me put in public school. Which, just gave me the chance to get into more trouble.” She shrugs. “I calmed down when I got to college. Mostly. Did the sorority thing, and all that..”

“What did you want to do after college?” Connors asks when she doesn’t go on.

She smiles slightly. “Get married. My mother conditioned me well enough that it’s all I ever really expected to do. I was meant to be a society wife, like my mother. My father was “new money,” he earned it. But my mother comes from old Philadelphia money. That’s what the women do.”

“You’ve never been married, though,” Connors says, flipping a few pages.

“No. I was engaged. To a doctor,” she says the word with disgust unintentionally. Realizing what she did, she glances at Connors but sees no reaction. “We… broke up.”

“Your choice?”

She gives a bark of laughter. “Yes.”

Connors raises an eyebrow and waits.

She sighs. “He had me committed. Him and my mother. After… the hospital… burned down, I broke up with him. Well, I never really told him that, but I wouldn’t see him or talk to him. Or my mother.”

Connors flips through more papers. “The records of your commitment were lost when Valley View burned. Would you tell me why you were committed?”

She starts to say something, snap at him, but stops. She knows it’s not him that’s made her angry, frightened. She had been having hallucinations, daytime nightmares, brought on by her evil ancestor and a demon both trying to posses her. She’s not ready to talk about that part of her life with him, so she decides on the other part of the truth. “My mother wanted, wants, my money. My father left everything to me, including the house we lived in. My mother has some money of her own, and I never tried to… evict her from the house, but it wasn’t enough for her. Philip went along with her. That’s my ex-fiance, Philip. The doctor. Well, plastic surgeon.” Dr. Phil, E always called him. She frowns slightly, and to stay on track, she automatically answers the question everyone seems to ask next, “No, he never touched me.”

She realizes what she said and feels a blush color her cheeks. “I mean, I never had any plastic surgery. By him or anyone else.”

Connors smiles at her.

“I moved here, after… after I broke up with him.” She’s afraid he’s going to go back to talking about the hospital if she doesn’t keep talking, but she doesn’t know what to talk about. She feels herself getting nervous and frightened, and gets angry at herself for her reaction. “I’ve been here for almost a year now. I bought an apartment, over on Talos Island. There’s a lot of traffic in that area, but I have the top two floors, so the noise doesn’t travel up much, unless you’re on the roof. I’ve been thinking of buying a vacation house. Well, I have two, actually, but I mean one of my own. Or, maybe an island.”

Connors flips pages again. “It says that you’re unemployed?”

She smiles slightly. She’s still not ready to share some things, so she doesn’t think to mention her “job.” “That’s right. I show up at company meetings occasionally, and sometimes even sign checks, but that’s not a ‘job.’ Other that that, well, I’ve never worked a day in my life. Why start now? I certainly don’t need to.”

Connors nods He looks at his pages again.

She looks toward the closed door and feels panic start to set in slowly. The more she tries to push it back, the more it creeps in on her. Serra had encouraged her in this, but Serra’s not there now, now when she needs the help, a calm voice.

Suddenly, her phone rings. The quiet electronic music causes her to freeze in fear. The last breath she took burns her lungs until she forces it out. She fumbles in her purse at her feet for her phone, checking the caller ID.

“I have to take this,” she says briskly to Connors and walks out the door without waiting for his reaction. A minute later, she walks back in, scopping her bag off the floor and dropping the phone back inside.

“I have to go,” she tells him.

Connors looks at his watch, a heavy pale gold affair discretely tucked under his shirt cuff. “We still have fifteen minutes.”

She shrugs. “Give it to the next guy.”

His lips purse. “We’ll talk next week, then.”

“Maybe,” she says over her shoulder on her way out the door.

Tomorrow, I promise to get the E/Serra stuff up. Promise!