Chapter 1

 

Chapter 1

 

 

                I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my hand with no idea of how long I’d been sitting there or why I hadn’t moved. I felt broken and empty, if this is what losing love was about then I didn’t want it, I never wanted to feel so happy again and have it all come crashing down the way it had with Rhys.

            Rhys…just thinking his name made me cringe; it literally hurt my heart to think about him. I know what you’re thinking and yes I did walk away from him after he offered to stay with me and adjust, but can you blame me? Would you want to be in a relationship with someone and never know if they’ll fully accept you for who you are, the way you are?

            That wasn’t going to work for me, I needed to know. I haven’t been around for two centuries avoiding close human contact to ignore the idea that he may never be able to fully accept me, no matter how much he may love me. I needed all of it, love, commitment and acceptance, one hundred percent.

So why did I feel like I’d made the biggest mistake of my life?

            I sat, broken, hurting, cried-out and alone, staring at a ring that represented promises which were no longer valid. Almost as much as it hurt to think of…him, it was equally as painful to think about the night he’d given me the ring that I still hadn’t removed. I’d been so elated and full of happiness that evening in Seattle, dining atop the Space Needle.

            He had promised that he was going to marry me some day and asked me to wear his promise ring as a symbol to the world that he intended to keep his promise. Of course, I’m sure that even after all this time he still had every intent of keeping that promise, even after I walked away from his offer. Whenever I was ready he’d be waiting for me. But would he be ready?

            Rhys viewed the situation as something that he understood and had come to terms with but also as though I’d turned my back on him, he wanted to still hang out and do things together. I wanted him to do some soul searching on his own and really figure out if he could spend the rest of his life with a demon. I felt that, in order for him to do said soul searching, we needed to be away from one another. Being in each other’s faces wasn’t going to help either of us think; the distance would give us both perspective wouldn’t it?

            The only perspective I had right now was that I was very alone with no comfort other than the cold band and the promise it once held, which was honestly more like torture than anything else.
I heard a movement at the door and turned to see my roommate Flannigan standing in the doorway.

            “Hey.” Was all she said.

            “Hi.” I replied quietly and she came to sit beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

            “Still bummed huh?”

            “Yeah.” My answers were dead and lifeless, reflecting exactly how I felt.

            Flan had forced me to keep myself together after the breakup, she had conspired with my father to help find ways to keep me busy with work, as well as encouraging my mother to visit, take me on shopping trips and invite me to their house for family dinners. I suppose that I should have just been thankful that they weren’t trying to set me up with someone new. I was lucky in that area, my parents understood exactly how deep my love for him went and it wouldn’t be easily replaced if it could be replaced at all by anyone else.

            I’m not sure if I could consider these benefits of having the devil as my father who can know what I’m thinking or feeling at any given time, but it was helpful that they were able to comprehend what I was going through on a very understanding level.

            I stood up and sighed deeply, it was time, no more moping Saydie. It had been a nearly year since the day I’d walked away from the coffee shop and looked at him for the last time; excitement and triumph blazing in his eyes because he’d decided to stay with me. Then the disappointment when I told him that what he offered was not enough before I turned and walked away from him without looking back. I felt like I’d left my heart on the sidewalk next to him and became more numb as I drove away.

            Now it was time to finally get my life back together, enjoy the friends I’d made since I’d met him and move on until he was ready to meet my needs. I walked over to my dresser, opened the jewelry box and held my hand up in front of me as Flan came to stand beside me. Part of me was panicking; if I removed this ring then it would really be over, I would no longer be able to hold any piece of him close to me.

            I watched as my hand shook violently for a moment before Flan covered it with her own. I was terrified to take the next step but I knew it needed to be done. I took another deep breath, let it out and then reached over with my left hand to pull the ring off. I stood admiring the intricate design for a moment before closing my eyes, setting it in the box and closing the lid.

                My hand rested on the jewelry box, I felt as if I couldn’t make myself move away from the ring. I’m not sure how but I managed to feel even more empty now and my finger felt cold and naked. Gently, Flan lifted my hand and squeezed it in her own.

            “You’re going to be ok, remember things will still work out.” She said reassuringly, but I was long past putting my complete confidence in her visions, even though I would have never stated it to her face. She hadn’t even seen this crossroads that Rhys and I were currently at, so why should I believe that the future she saw for us was any more definite? I couldn’t. I had lost my faith in her vision of my future. Anything else I’d bet money on but not that, it was too much to hope that she was right, especially if it turned out that she wasn’t.

            Eventually, I found the will and stepped away from the dresser, the hole in my heart didn’t seem to get bigger; my heart seemed to disappear completely. I couldn’t cry about it anymore, I had no will to fight, scream, kick, hit or do anything else to get my frustrations out. I had no release to make me feel better, the best I could do now was just to live with the pain until Rhys was ready to accept me.

            “Do you want to go get a cider?” she asked quietly. I’d almost forgotten she was there already.

            “No.” I replied, I didn’t want to go anywhere near Marlene’s and had been avoiding it for the past year even though he wasn’t there that often. Flan had told me that he had a huge workload for this school year since he would be graduating with a double major in business and economics in June, so he had cut back his hours at Marlene’s drastically, only working when she really needed the extra help which wasn’t often.

            “Want me to bring you one back?” she pressed.

            “Sure, thanks.” Was all I could manage.

            She tried to say her next words very gently but I could hear the frustration in her voice.    “Saydie this has to stop, you need to live again, he’s almost never at the shop, there’s no reason to avoid it anymore.”

            I turned to her, suddenly angry, “There’s every reason to avoid it! Ninety percent of my relationship with…him had something to do with that damn coffee shop!” She noticed how I’d skipped over saying his name yet again.

            “You need your life back, if you don’t want cider or coffee then let’s go shopping or on a road trip or something. You’ve got to get yourself out of this funk Say, it’s not healthy. You look like hell, pardon the pun, you barely touch your food, our friends are worried about you, just get back in the game girl. We miss you.” I glared at her; of course she’d use our friends against me.

            You have to understand that this was the first time I’d ever had a lot of friends and I was overjoyed to feel so much more a part of regular human life. After I had broken his ex-girlfriends nose for interfering one too many times, I’d won the admiration and approval of the entire football team and most of the cheering squad.

            At the time we had been on a trip to Las Vegas with the team and the cheerleaders. While we were there we made friends with a group of about 15 people we met at a club that Flan had taken us to. Shortly afterward we found out that they all lived in Port Harbor, which was just a few hours outside of Wharton, where we lived.

            I’d never met so many good people in all my years; I hadn’t even thought it was possible, really. I’d never gotten a bad vibe from a single one of them and they were so friendly that it was hard not to be friendly back; you were better off just giving up. I had a constant stream of emails from every one of them, and Hadley, Flan’s recent flame and first serious girlfriend to my knowledge, had made the effort to bring something to use in an attempt to cheer me up every time she came to visit.

            The thought of her efforts brought an unwilling smile to my lips and Flan was quick to notice.

            “See you need to be around your friends.” She jumped on the opportunity to make her point, interrupting my thought process.

            “Yeah, because too much more time around just you is going to drive me crazy.” I teased, finding a bit of humor in myself. “I miss Hadley though, I haven’t seen her in a while.” Flan had taken to staying at Hadley’s more often than having her stay at our house to give me some time alone.

            “Hadley misses you too, have you checked your email? They all miss you.” She replied, pointing to the laptop on my bed.

            “I have and I know. Maybe we can go visit them soon.” I suggested bravely and her eyes lit up just before she threw her arms around my neck.

            “Thank you Saydie, thank you so much for trying; you’re going to feel so much better I promise.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her close.

            “You already know you’re right so there’s no need for me to repeat it but thanks for putting up with me for all this time.” I conceded graciously.

            “That’s what best friends are for.” She said into my ear and I could feel the smile in her voice before pulling away to see it.

            “Yeah.” I sighed, “You do a good job Flan.” I smiled weakly at her but that was all she was going to get.

            “Why don’t you take a nap or something and I’ll make dinner?” She suggested and I just nodded, at least she wasn’t forcing me out of my room this instant.

            I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, before I knew it I was sound asleep and having a nightmare about my fight with the demon I’d saved Rhys from just before we’d broken up. This was ironic since I’d been fighting the battle to keep us together after many failed attempts, by Malcolm, the demon and Rhys’s ex girlfriend, Veronica, to destroy our relationship; including many occasions where Malcolm had Influenced Rhys’s friends and once, had even possessed Rhys himself.

            There was a red haze to my vision, the rock quarry was splattered with blood, and pieces of skin were strewn all over the ground, adding to the gruesome scene. We were tearing each other apart but I was losing, which couldn’t actually happen to me in reality because I was now unbreakable to other demons. Metaphorically speaking it was a perfect description of what that battle had done to my relationship with Rhys; it had torn me apart and been the beginning of the end for us.

            But in the dream, unlike the reality, Malcolm had gotten a hold of Rhys before I could stop him, screams of terror and agony came from Rhys’s mouth as I watched in horror, unable to move, as is the way in scary dreams, while Malcolm beat him with his fists, rocks and eventually a boulder that crushed him to death, taking him away from me forever.

            I was powerless to stop it which was also untrue in real life. In order to save Rhys I’d embraced the evil inside of me to become more powerful than any demon ever in existence and had destroyed Malcolm in one quick movement, shoving my hand through his chest and crushing his heart out the other side. Afterward, with the help of my father, I’d been able to completely heal Rhys’s wounds and he had walked out on his own without a scratch.

            There was a wild scream of horror coming from somewhere as I realized, in my dream that Rhys was dead. Then suddenly I was in my room, sitting upright and wondering where the screaming was coming from. Flan was standing in front of me in the blink of an eye, using her ability to disappear from one place and re-appear in another.

            “Saydie are you okay?” She was yelling a little and looking at me as though I wasn’t really seeing her but also cringing away from me as if she was experiencing something unpleasant. Then I realized that the screaming was coming from my throat and I couldn’t make it stop, my face was contorted in absolute terror and my cheeks were starting to hurt.

            She shook my shoulders gently at first and then more roughly but I couldn’t get the image of Rhys, bloodied, broken and dead, out of my mind and I couldn’t make the screaming go away. I was barely aware of her presence; it was more of a background to what I was seeing in my head but not enough to snap me out of it.

            Suddenly, my cheek stung with a sharp pain and I came back to reality with a growl in my throat. It took me a minute to realize that she had slapped me and as a result, I had been so shocked that the screaming was silenced instantly. There was still a ringing in my ears and I could feel the heat from the red mark where her hand had come in contact with my face. I rubbed my cheek gently but nodded to let her know that I was back in control of my actions.

            “Sorry, I didn’t know what else to do.” She said apologetically and I had no doubt that she meant it. I felt the burning start of tears that never spilled over anymore, and then it receded, leaving my eyes feeling dry and a little sore.

            “Why don’t you come down and keep me company while I cook?” she suggested and I nodded silently before following her from the room.

            The smell coming from the kitchen was amazing and as I took a deep breath in, I stopped dead in my tracks on the bottom stair. She was making white clam sauce, my favorite on spaghetti and what I’d eaten on my first date with Rhys.

            For heaven’s sake pull yourself together, everything is going to remind you of him, you can’t fall to pieces every time. Move on! The words screamed ferociously in my head, Flan raised an eyebrow at me but made no other indications that she’d invaded on my mental privacy. I thought she looked slightly smug though, but that could have been my imagination since I was so unfocused on any one thing.

            I sat gingerly on a bar stool at the counter and tried to focus on something else. I concentrated on the smells coming from the pan; I could very distinctly smell the briny scent of the ocean on the clams, garlic, celery, thyme, white wine and cream. I could even smell the soap that we used in the dishwasher, clinging to the spoon she used to stir the sauce. The browned butter was making my mouth water and I suddenly felt as if I hadn’t eaten in days.

            My senses were all immensely heightened since I’d fully embraced my demon side to defeat Malcolm, I had a lot of dormant power that I had no use for but once in a while the powers that couldn’t be avoided came in handy. For example, long before she ever showed up, I could smell the blood of any dead animals that Flan’s cat, Sunshine tried to bring home, helping to keep dead animals out of my house and my floors clean. It sounds lame but it’s useful to keep dead critters out of your house when you look at it from the perspective of a homeowner.

            “Hey Saydie I was thinking…” she trailed off and I looked up to see that her eyes were far away, indicating that she was having a vision that had distracted her before she could finish her sentence. When it was over she seemed to nod satisfactorily and then turned to me.

            “Why don’t we have a pool party this weekend? We can invite some friends and have a barbecue.” So that’s what she’d seen, I considered this for a moment, It won’t be too bad, you need to spend time with friends. I told myself.

            “Sure, why not? It’ll be a good distraction.” I agreed and she smiled, glad that I was trying to make an effort.

            “It’ll be lots of fun you’ll see, we’ll go on a shopping trip to get sausages, burgers, chicken and steak.” I nodded absentmindedly as she went on about it, I wasn’t all that interested in the planning process but I had to admit that I did feel a little better knowing that I had made plans to do something normal. Maybe I was ready to start coming out of my shell after all.

            I got up and crossed the kitchen to put the noodles and salt in the pot of water that had just begun to boil, Flan smiled gratefully at me as she removed browned butter from the burner.

            “It really is going to be alright Saydie. It’s not going to be that much longer.” I looked at her skeptically.

            “Do you actually see that?” I asked bluntly, Flan was careful about telling me too much so as not to influence my life decisions.

            “I’ve been telling you all this time that it’s all going to work out, why would you ask me that now? Unless you doubt my ability because I didn’t see the breakup coming.” She looked at me pointedly and raised an eyebrow. I sighed, she knew me too well sometimes.

            “Well you didn’t.” I replied grudgingly.

            “I didn’t see it happening because you made a split second decision, every part of your being wanted things to be ok when he said he’d stay with you. How was I supposed to know you’d have a sudden change of heart?” I admitted to myself that she was right but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

            “Fine, I’ll stop being so skeptical of your visions.” I muttered unwillingly.

            “Soon, I promise.” She said reassuringly and I shrugged, I didn’t really even have it in me to argue at this point. I just wanted to let the emptiness have me and stop fighting but I knew that if I gave up now I’d never find myself again. This was going to be the hardest part and I was going to need her by my side every step of the way.