Winter's Spell, page 24
“Hey, hey,” said Roxy soothingly, rubbing Tessa’s back. “I promise, I don’t want to go. I…I really like you, Tessa. More than just about anyone I’ve ever met. I want this to be the start of something, not the ending.”
Tessa snuggled against Roxy and held her even tighter. “I never want to let you go. I want to hold onto you all night.”
“And you will,” said Roxy, gentleness mixed with firmness in her soft alto. She kissed the top of Tessa’s head and moved away from her. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back.” She gave Tessa a quick kiss on the lips and began getting dressed again.
All too soon she was at the door, coat on, gloves and hat in her hand. Tessa felt her heart sinking as Roxy fished the car keys out of her large plaid coat. She’d wrapped herself in a bathrobe, and she had her Polish folk slippers on to keep the chill off her feet, but still, she felt cold.
“Come here,” said Roxy gently, opening her arms.
Tessa just about ran to her and enjoyed one more embrace and one more hot, passionate kiss before Roxy left. No longer cold, her body felt hot, feverish, as Roxy’s mouth moved against hers, tongues entwined, the fire of desire flaming up inside her again—it hadn’t had time to go out.
“Mmm,” Roxy murmured, pulling away reluctantly.
“Can’t tempt you to stay, can I?” Tessa ground her hips against Roxy, keeping the one place of connection between them for another moment.
“I wish,” said Roxy. “Honestly, who knew a m—my cousin—could be so much work. My cousin, I mean.” Roxy coughed and cleared her throat.
“Cousins can be that way,” said Tessa knowingly. “Hopefully, someday I can take you to Poland to meet my extended family, and then you’ll really see what cousin drama can be.” It was true; her family in Poland was quite extensive, and there was drama in every branch. Honestly, it made sense she’d made drama her life’s work, in a way. Human drama was a huge part of her life. She was glad, though, that it was never so much a part of her closest family.
“I’d like that,” said Roxy, her eyes shining with an emotion Tessa couldn’t readily identify. “Okay, I’m off. I’ll see you soon.”
“You better.”
She could have stayed there bantering with Roxy and kissing her in the foyer forever, but finally she simply stood back and let Roxy go. It was true what Roxy said—the sooner she left, the sooner she’d be back.
Tessa fought the urge to sit around feeling sorry for herself. Instead, she decided to use her time wisely. She hopped in the shower again and found it necessary to take care of herself. She felt deliciously dirty, touching herself, finding herself so incredibly wet. She came quickly, with a shudder and a sigh, letting the hot water rush around her. She turned it up as hot as she could stand, and it was cleansing in a whole other way. The first time having sex with someone was stressful in its own way, even if with Roxy it was clear that they were in sync. The heat of the shower erased whatever lingering tension was in her body, and she felt much less worried about Roxy’s sudden departure afterward as she got dressed.
She put on her favorite purple oversized sweater and black leggings and made herself a quick dinner, her stomach complaining that afternoon tea was now long gone, especially in light of her recent activities. She reheated the last of the stuffed cabbage that she had in the freezer from home and enjoyed the contrast of earthy rice, meat, and cabbage with bright, acidic sour cream and tomato sauce. She washed up and made a hot tea with lemon and honey before it even occurred to her to take a look at the messages on her phone.
There had been a flash of a message preview on the screen when she’d first picked it up, but she’d been distracted by Roxy and hadn’t noticed who it was from. She was tempted to look at the messages right then, but she’d felt cold in just the bathrobe and had decided to get dressed first.
Tessa went back to the bedroom now to check the phone, and realizing how much it smelled like fresh sex, decided to pull back the sheets and crack open a window. Not that sex was a bad smell, but it was, she realized, a strong one. It made her smile even as her nose wrinkled a bit. The fresh air of an early winter’s evening was just the thing. She lit a vanilla-scented candle as well. Might as well set the scene for more debauchery.
She hadn’t brought much in terms of sexy clothing, but she enjoyed lacy underclothes, so she went through and pulled out what she did have in the dresser and was happy to find a cream-colored underwear and bra set she’d forgotten about. She laid it out and was about to change into it when she saw her phone screen turn on again with a phone call coming through.
It was Joy.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Tessa! My goodness I thought I’d never get through to you. Woman, where have you been?” Her voice was strained, and she spoke at a million miles a minute.
“I had the day off with Roxy. Slow down. What’s up?” Her hackles went up. “Is Lisa causing problems again? I told her—”
“It’s not Lisa. It’s the theater. Oh God. You have to get down here.” Joy’s voice cracked on the word “theater,” and the words tumbled out of her faster than she could contain them. “You have to come here. You have to see this. I don’t know who did this. I just don’t know—oh God. Now Barb is here.”
Fuck. What on earth is going on at the theater? Tessa felt fear go through her. What had happened at the theater? Who had done what?
“I’m on my way.”
Tessa moved as fast as possible, grateful that she’d already gotten dressed and eaten. Fear was coursing through her veins. This project was so important to her—the most important thing she’d ever done. Her entire reputation was on the line with this grant and this production, and nothing could get in the way.
She just hoped whatever it was that had happened, that Joy was exaggerating. It couldn’t be that bad…could it?
With her heart in her throat, she rushed around the apartment to pick up her work stuff, threw on a coat and boots, and ran out the door, before remembering it was after dark and definitely below freezing. She went back inside and grabbed her car keys. She didn’t care if she was a wimp about the cold; she was not going to walk ten minutes in this. Judging from Joy’s tone of voice on the phone, there wasn’t a moment to lose.
Chapter Twenty-three—Roxy
The cold air was refreshing on Roxy’s overheated skin. It wasn’t a long drive to the apartment she was sharing with Mo, so she took it nice and slow. She needed the time to cool off.
Being around Tessa was like standing next to a campfire. It was cozy and warm in a dark, cold world, but stand too close for too long, and you’d start to sweat. It was a nice metaphor. Tonight their passion had been a roaring fire, nearly out of control, the spark that had been kindled between them leaping into something larger that put off heat in all directions. Luckily, it felt like a good kind of fire, not a forest fire that ate up everything in its path. Roxy had had relationships like that before, that flared up seemingly out of nowhere, burning a path through her heart, only to go out completely when the other person effectively threw water over their relationship.
No, this was something else entirely. Having sex with Tessa was like coming home. There was not a single part of her that felt awkward about it, either during or after. She’d felt terrible about leaving her like that, but there was something—a sixth sense almost—that was calling her home to Mo.
What she’d told Tessa was absolutely true, after all. Mo was not human, and even four weeks on land wasn’t enough to change that or to teach Mo how to pretend to be human. Mo was simply wearing a human skin, but underneath, or simultaneously, she was something completely different, something alien and not of the human world. Roxy had enough experience with the magical world or the Otherworldly, as Hazel called them, to know that it was not safe to assume they would follow the rules of humanity. How could they? They weren’t human. Roxy tried not to hold this against Mo as she left the arms of the woman she had so suddenly and completely fallen for.
She pulled into her parking space and checked her watch. Only five minutes had passed since she left Tessa’s. Hopefully, everything at home was one hundred percent fine and it was just a matter of taking Mo to the convenience store and getting her some bait. Roxy had had her doubts about that idea when Mo had first found the bucket of minnows at the shop, but apparently, they were quite the delicacy. Who knew?
As soon as Roxy stepped into the apartment, however, she knew something was wrong.
There was no sign of Mo anywhere, but the apartment was a mess, particularly the kitchen. It looked like they’d been robbed by someone who was desperate for the proverbial cup of sugar.
“Mo?” said Roxy a bit tentatively as she took off her shoes and coat. “Are you here?”
Maybe Tessa had been right. Maybe Mo took some of the cash Roxy had left for her on the kitchen table earlier that week and went to the convenience store herself. It was only two blocks away, after all.
She heard splashing—water gently plashing and plopping onto the floor before becoming what sounded like waves of water, an entire tub of water, gushing onto the floor.
“Roxy!” Mo’s voice was weak and upset. It shook over the vowels in her name, followed by an unearthly sound that was, to Roxy’s ear, a mixture of a groan of frustration, a cry of fear, and words in another language.
Roxy dashed to the bathroom. It took a few moments for her to process what she was seeing.
Mo was in the tub, which was not, in and of itself, unusual. Her evening salt bath was a matter of ritual at this point. There were three rather empty-looking containers of salt on the floor, half soaked with the water that had splashed out of the tub. This was a bit more unusual. Even with needing progressively more and more salt, she’d never needed more than two cups’ worth to get the magic to work.
Roxy’s train of thought was distracted from the salt by the sight of Mo’s tail—or rather, her lack of tail. Instead, what she saw was something between a tail and two legs, a weird, unnatural fusion of leg and tail in which both were visible and yet neither was complete. It was as though Mo had gotten stuck in the middle of the transition from one form to another.
And, clearly, she could not get unstuck.
“Crap,” said Roxy. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am not all right, Roxy. I am stuck. I am stuck.” Mo’s face was a mask of fear and desperation, her voice half human, half something else entirely that chilled Roxy to the bone.
“What, what, what…” Roxy felt herself stutter with confusion. What on earth could they do, should they do? Her mind was an utter blank, even as she felt herself covered with the sweat of anxiety. It occurred to her then that maybe Mo could die in such a state.
She racked her brains trying to think of all the mermaid lore they’d been reading for the past couple of weeks, even as Mo was groaning and moaning, clearly in pain, mumbling in her native tongue, her hands clawing uselessly at her leg-tail.
The selkie. The story of the selkies came to Roxy—how they would hide their fish skin so they could go on land, and if someone found it and hid it, they couldn’t go back to their fish form. Maybe this was a similar situation? Maybe Mo needed to, had to, go back into her native waters? Perhaps salt water in a bathtub wasn’t strong enough? She’d evidently tried to do something like this herself by adding additional salt to the water.
“Mo. Mo.” It took Roxy a moment to get Mo’s attention, even after she crouched down so their faces were level. She put her hand on one of Mo’s arms, and Mo stilled for a moment. She looked at Roxy, tears silently pouring down her face, her bright green hair darker than usual from the water, her amber-yellow-green eyes full of fear.
“I tried, Roxy, I tried to…I tried using more salt, but it’s not working,” she said, each word a trill of terror, her breathing labored, and Roxy felt that same terror enter her heart. Was she about to witness Mo die right here in her rented apartment?
Unexpected courage filled her. She had to help Mo. She pushed away the guilty thoughts that were nagging her at the back of her head, reminding her that she’d been off gallivanting and seducing Tessa the whole day while Mo was alone in the apartment, apparently on the verge of mermaid death. There was no time for those kinds of recriminations. She had to do something and now.
“I’m going to take you back to the ocean.”
“But, Roxy, it’s not safe—” Mo’s eyes widened with fear. “How can we—I can’t—”
“Mo, we have to. You’re stuck. What other option do we have?”
Mo looked at her, suddenly paler than before. “They will find me. Surely they will.”
“What else can we do? Is there something else? Something I haven’t thought of?” It was hard keeping her voice calm when every second felt like a step closer to Mo’s untimely demise.
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Mo shook her head helplessly. “If I don’t go, I die. If I do go, I might also die.”
“That settles it,” said Roxy. “We have to take you to the ocean. Maybe just a few minutes will be enough, you know?” She tried to make her voice encouraging. It was clear to her now that Mo was not capable of thinking for herself. She was too in the moment, fearful and panicked, incapable of logic and reason—not that she had ever really had that good a grasp on human logic, anyway. “Are you completely stuck? Or can you get your legs back do you think?”
“I…don’t know,” said Mo. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She closed her eyes and screwed up her face, and Roxy had to stop herself from laughing a little. Mo looked like a little kid whose parents had asked them to try a little harder. After a moment, she opened her eyes and sighed. “No. I cannot.”
“Okay, let’s try to get you out of the tub, out of the salt water. Maybe that’ll help.”
Roxy helped Mo leverage herself out of the tub by putting her arms on the floor and pulling her fused legs out behind her. Roxy grabbed her leg-tail so the transition would be less sudden and potentially harmful. Once Mo was out of the water, Roxy grabbed a towel and began rubbing the bottom half of her body dry.
They both breathed a sigh of relief when the tail and scales receded and Mo’s human legs were back—though a blue-greenish opalescent cast remained to her skin, as though the tail was not completely forgotten. Still, her legs were back, and she could walk to the car and into the water herself rather than needing Roxy to carry her again—for which Roxy was immensely grateful.
Mo began to cry.
Great big heaving sobs wracked her body, and she leaned her head onto her arms, folded on the side of the tub. Her shoulders shook, and the sounds that came from her were some of the saddest sobs Roxy had ever heard.
Fuck. Of course she was concerned about Mo, but it was also dawning on her now that there was no fucking way she was going to be able to get back to Tessa’s in—she checked her watch—thirty minutes. Somehow half an hour had passed since she’d left Tessa’s warm embrace and promised her, no less, that she’d be back in an hour. Fuck.
She found a fresh, dry towel and wrapped it around Mo as best she could, giving her a squeeze on the shoulders.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster. “Cry it out. Take a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Roxy went to the kitchenette where she’d left her phone, charging. She tried calling Tessa first, but no one answered and eventually it went to voice mail. Roxy hated voice mail, but she didn’t have time to send a text, and, in some ways, it was perhaps easier to leave a voice message.
“Hey, baby it’s me. Mo’s having an, er, emergency, so I’m going to take her to…uh…urgent care. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. My feelings for you are…completely sincere. Please call me back when you get this.” She paused, not wanting to hang up. “I miss you.”
Reluctantly, she ended the call and sighed. What a night this was turning out to be.
Chapter Twenty-four—Tessa
The scene of wreckage that met Tessa at the theater was beyond her comprehension.
She’d tried to steel herself for whatever had happened, but if she was truly honest with herself, she’d assumed Joy had been exaggerating. She was prone to that. She once overheard Joy telling someone that she’d worked on twenty shows with Tessa, when Tessa knew that it was actually seven. But Joy liked to tell a good yarn, and she loved holding her audience captive, so Tessa figured this was something similar.
Maybe one of the sets had fallen over and cracked? Maybe some paint had spilled onto something valuable? Maybe Barb had found some of the cast and crew eating cheesesteaks in the greenroom? None of those things were good, but they were fixable. They had another four weeks until opening weekend—plenty of time to right even a fairly major wrong.
Everything and everyone was in disarray when she arrived. Crew members were running around, panicked looks in their eyes, and it took a while of walking around the backstage corridors to find Joy and Barb, who was with her.
Barb was in what Tessa had come to think of as her uniform—a white polo shirt and black work pants. She was always in short sleeves, regardless of the temperature outside or inside. Her small, dark eyes normally looked full of suspicion, and it was therefore disconcerting to see something akin to glee in her expression that evening.
Joy was next to her, running her hands almost ceaselessly through her ever more disheveled red curls, her eyes rimmed red. Had she been crying?
And when the two of them took her over to the costume room, Tessa understood Barb’s glee, Joy’s red eyes.
The entire room was filled with scraps of ripped up costumes.
The space-age, silver and white costumes of the Planet Sicilia and the gold and yellow costumes of the Planet Bohemia lay mixed together on the floor into a horrifying confetti of unsalvageable fabric scraps. Everything was ripped and ruined. Some costumes had been ripped nearly to shreds, while others had been haphazardly ripped in half, but in such a way as to render them unusable even with the help of the handiest seamstress.
