2.

Kellen and Tansy fall into a romance, but things are kind of strange. An old friend/enemy has some information about Tansy that Kellen might not want to hear.

2.

In the dark, after we’d gone to bed, Tansy whispered some weird sounding words. I could feel her hot breath against my neck, but the combination of drink and exhaustion and the fact that she was mumbling made it impossible for me to tell what she was saying. 

Before I drifted off again, it sounded like she said “imperium, imperium, imperium” in a whisper as silver-sharp as a needle. 

Control. 

“There’s breakfast for you on the table, I’ll be back later.” Tansy’s voice tickled my ear as sunlight gently tugged my sleeping eyes open. In my haze, I saw that her hair was up and she was wearing a white dress made of soft cotton that billowed in the breeze that came through the open window. She kissed my jaw and brushed her thumb over my cheek once before disappearing. 

When I woke again, this time for real, it was nearly 11 and Tansy was still out. True to her word, there was a bowl (almost) frozen blueberries dusted with powdered sugar, a tall glass of white grape juice, and a plate stacked high with what I assumed were homemade waffles. 

Surprisingly, they were still warm enough to eat, and the butter in the dish was sweet and thick, probably a gift from one of the farm-boys Tansy liked to hypnotize. The sugared blueberries were a favorite of Tansy’s, and I nearly ate the whole bowl while I let my mind go numb watching a marathon of True Life after I’d finished the waffles. 

I kept thinking about how easily things had shifted between Tansy and me the night before, how naturally she fit in my arms, and how I was probably going to get my a*s kicked on all sides by the boys and men of Harborstown. 

Still, I figured it was worth it; she had more good luck than she knew what to do with, and she was gorgeous, and she was the one person who actually knew me. That counted more than all the other good things about her, the fact that she could look into my eyes without having to look away, that she could match my stride without missing a step. 

True Life: I Have a Hot Mom was just getting hilarious when Tansy came breezing through the front door, around 3:30 in the afternoon. I’d managed to brush my teeth and splash my face in the sink, but I’d remained in my boxers and undershirt out of sheer laziness. 

She plunked down some brown paper bags, and exhaled like someone who’d just completed a rewarding task of physical labor, looking radiant as ever. 

“Oh no, don’t get up,” she teased with a smile in her voice, kicking off her shoes on the mat in front of the door. 

I rolled my eyes, muted the television and hoisted myself off the couch to help her put away whatever was in the bags.

“Where were you all day? I was more bored than that time I had to take summer school without you.” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t be able to detect the slightly anxious note in my voice masked by my half-joke. She’d been known to go missing for long stretches, on a few occasions even days; I never got used to it. 

Something like knowing flickered in her eyes but vanished quickly as it’d come. She slung her bag over one of the kitchen chairs and sighed like I exhausted her. She ran a hand across her brow, pushing her hair off her forehead, which was surprisingly damp with sweat. 

“I was up in the mountain preserves at Spruce Park for a few hours, then I came back to town to get some groceries and stuff. Relax, Kell. And help me put these away, lazybones!” 

I complied, helping her unload eggs, milk, flour, cheese, hot sauce (she put it on everything) and wide assortment of snacks. Tansy liked snacks. 

I saw she’d also picked up (I say ‘picked up’ instead of ‘bought’ because Tansy rarely paid for toiletries or food) some more magazines, a few movies, red and white vigil candles, scented oil, and a bunch of roots and dried herbs. 

She snatched that bag out of my hands with a sheepish grin before nimbly tucking it away in a corner cabinet. 

“I’ve been trying to make my own beauty treatments,” she rolled her eyes and dazzled me with a smile. “Can’t be too sure if it’s working, though. All it’s done is make me smell like lavender and patchouli.” 

I decided to let it go, even though she was obviously not telling the truth. I went around to where she stood at the counter and pulled her in by the waist, surprising myself more than Tansy. 

“I think you’re trying to gild the lily, as my old man likes to say.” 

Her body molded to mine, my arms wrapping protectively around her from behind, and she leaned into me with a contented sigh. The view from the window above the kitchen sink was of the beach and a sky so blue it made my eyes water. 

“It’s been so weird without you here.” said Tansy finally, hugging her arms across mine around her waist. 

Her voice sounded so small and wispy, like a single fluff from a dogwood tree, or like a curling tendril of smoke from an extinguished birthday candle. 

She turned around in my arms to face me, her eyes somehow brighter than the day before, reflecting light like shards of a grass-stain-green bottle. Her whole body seemed to be alive and humming, and I felt like if I made any movements she would send a jolt of electricity through me. 

“No, I’m serious. It’s like I was walking around for no reason, and I didn’t feel like myself. I did all the other stuff that I normally do when it goes, but they were all temporary fixes. I don’t...” she trailed off, lost in thought. 

I had no idea what she meant by “it”, or where “it” was going, but I was no stranger to being left in the dust when Tansy’s mind started off running. 

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I spent the entire four years in social and private situations wishing you there were with me. It sucked, Tans.” 

And suddenly she was kissing me with her needlessly-glossed lips and dragging me out the door and into town. 

Harborstown has three main streets; Main, which has all the shops and local businesses, Harbor, which takes you into or out of Harborstown depending on which way you come from and will take you to the interstate, and Magnolia, which has the liquor store and all the bars, the only strip club, and generally the seedier side of life. I spent most of my life being told to never, never, ever go near Magnolia, and was told horror stories about drug fiends and prostitutes and bums. 

Some of that turned out to be true, but there was also a scruffy record store, a coffee joint that sprang up sometime in the early 90’s, and a music joint for bands trying to get out of the garage. 

Tansy worked at the weird clothing store called Cthulhu’s Cave, a mix of retail and thrift that most of the kids trying to be “unique” liked to frequent. 

You have to understand that Tansy had probably worked at most of the businesses in Harborstown, excluding the fast food chains which she hated. She’d even worked at the Siren’s Song gentlemen’s club, but only as a waitress. The boss had tried in vain plenty of times to get her in a pair of heels to work the pole, but she’d always just giggled and brushed him off in that sweet, callous way of hers. 

Even when she let you down hard, she let you down easy.

When we got into town after a ten or fifteen minute walk, Tansy made a beeline for Magnolia with me in tow. The coffeehouse’s patio tables were filled with chain-smoking young wannabe authors and the stoner crowd, and for a moment I felt a wave of hot awkwardness throb in my cheeks. I didn’t really hang with this group before, and somehow that feeling of being on the fringe of a fringe group never really goes away. Luckily, Tansy was heading into Cthulhu’s Cave and not Jolt Coffee. 

The girl at the register, Myra Hadley, is sporting her usual neon-lizard-green hair and a sardonic smile. 

“Here to pick up your check, Tans?” she snapped her gum and cut her eyes at me quite obviously. 

In high school, Myra had always picked on me. I’m not saying that I was some big wuss, or even that I can’t handle a girl teasing me, just that she always had some kind of stick up her a*s about me. Unfortunately, she was one of the few girls whom Tansy actually liked beyond just tolerating. 

When I say that she picked on me, it’s kind of hard to elaborate; she usually would slip biting comments casually into conversation in such a way that no one else caught them. A lot of people mistook it for friendly banter, but I knew from the way her smile never reached her tawny-colored eyes that she wasn’t being playful in any way. 

Usually her comments had to do with my being a loser, being too selfish with Tansy’s attention, being just generally not good enough to exist. 

“Yeah, I came for my check. And because I wanted to see if that clothes-folder job was still open. For Kellen.” she looped her arm around mine, gently squeezing my bicep and leaning into me in that way that she did. 

Myra’s plum-lipped smile reminded me of a hungry crocodile (again with the lizards) and I noticed that she’d gotten much thinner than the last time I’d seen her. 

You could pretty much count her ribs through the tight black tank top she wore, and there were shadows and hollows in her face that I didn’t remember being there before. 

As Tansy scampered into the back where I assumed the break room was, Myra rummaged behind the counter for a minute before come up with a pen and an application. 

She slapped them onto the cool granite of the register counter and looked at me with something like cruel mirth in her eyes. 

“So, Kellen Callahan, big college man. What brings you back to this shithole town? Ohhh wait, never mind.” She tapped the counter in a marching-band beat with her pointy silver-painted nails and glanced pointedly at the door Tansy disappeared behind. 

I ran a hand through my hair somewhat nervously, not liking how I feel like a trapped rabbit around Myra. 

“College life wasn’t that great, Myra. And I’m not back here just to ruin your day,” I added before starting to fill out the application. 

I put down Tansy’s address as mine, mindlessly jot down my name and SSN, wondering why I would want to work at a store named for a Lovecraftian doom-bringing sea-beast anyway. 

“Well, that’s good news I suppose. You should just know something, though. About Tansy.” her voice dropped to almost a whisper, and I could see worry in her normally cold eyes. I leaned in, curious despite myself at what Myra Hadley could possibly want to warn me about. What she could possibly have known about Tansy Finn that I didn’t. 

“She’s been really different since you came back, it’s kind of a relief.” she began, fiddling with the silver skull pendant around her neck. Her collarbones were sharp like blades, stretching the skin over them painfully, and I wondered again what could have happened to her. “The whole time you were gone, she...she changed. It was f*****g scary, Kellen.” I was about to open my mouth to ask why, what, how, when Tansy bubbled back into the room with her check in hand. 

“Ooh what are you two whispering about? Are you going to throw me a party?”

Myra looked like someone who was about to be sick, but Tansy pretended not to notice. 

“Why would we be throwing you a party, Tans?” I asked, trying carefully to keep my voice playful, normal. 

She dimpled and rolled her eyes, splaying her hands out in one of her talk-gestures. 

“Uh, why wouldn’t you be? Because I love parties, and because you weren’t here to celebrate my birthday in March, Kell.” 

Myra raised her eyebrows at me, warning. I hoped that she would deign to speak to me one more time so I could get the full story. 

“Well, s**t. I guess you and I will be planning a party then, Callahan.” She was baiting me, trying to let me know that she’d fill me in. 

Planning a not-surprise-surprise party for Tansy would give us time to talk about what I’d missed in my absence. 

Tansy clapped her hands together and did a little hop of excitement, and my heart flip-flopped in my chest. 

“You guys are the best! Plan it for this Thursday night, that way you’ll have a good five days to get everything set. Now, come on Kellen, we have to get over to the nursery. I wanna buy some potted ferns for the cottage.” 

I let her lead me out of the store by my hand, glancing back at Myra once before I was completely out the door. Her face was gaunt and troubled, but she gave an ever-so-slight nod of the head to let me know that she wouldn’t leave me hanging. 

For the rest of the afternoon, I fell back in step with Tansy and felt pretty damn good just spending time with her. 

But, there was a cloud hovering over me now; her glow had dimmed just a tiny bit. Now that I knew she was keeping something from me. 

What would she keep from me?

Author's Note

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