The Woman from Cheshire Avenue Read online

  Despite his pleasant smile, a dark look swept through those exquisitely shaped eyes. “Careful, dear. Walls have ears.”

  “Indeed, they do,” she nodded stiffly, “and the ‘walls’ would be most interested to know why the Hirosawas—who were barely ever seen in this town before—are making inroads into Cherrywood now. What’s changed?” Mimicking him, she tilted her head the side. “Who are your friends here?”

  Michael raised a slender black eyebrow. “Friends?”

  Lilith’s eyes narrowed mercilessly. He was forgetting whose daughter she was; politics were nothing new to her. They had been part of her life since childhood.

  “I’ve read about your family’s financial enterprises, Michael; you’re like vampires,” she stated crisply. “You don’t start investing in a town unless you’re specifically invited. It can’t be Eric’s crew; they’re street kids with no power. It has to be someone higher up, someone who actually matters. So who’s been bought and paid for…Mike? And how much did they set your family back?” Lilith asked, stepping forward once more. She was close enough now to smell his cologne. It was muskily sweet and somewhat haunting.

  Michael wasn’t even remotely intimidated by; in fact, he appeared mildly amused. Lilith suddenly remembered the man had seen (and no doubt done) some fairly atrocious things in his life, and the last person in the universe he’d be scared of was her.

  That’s probably why he tranquilly replied, “Contrary to what you may think, my dear, I’m but a lowly underling. I go where I’m sent, I do what I’m told, and most importantly, I never ask questions.” He cocked his head to the right, looking almost boyishly innocent.

  Lilith tensed. Her heart stopped in her chest as she asked the unthinkable, “Was it my father?”

  Michael actually threw his head back and laughed aloud. “Frederick?” His eyes widened in amusement. “Heavens, no. Your old man’s legit; he’s honorable and old-fashioned and whatnot. No, no,” he shook his head, “my family has simply taken an interest in the politics of this town and as of this morning, I’ve been temporarily stationed here,” he finished slowly, eyes twinkling.

  Lilith didn’t miss his grasping for words. “Stationed?” she cautiously echoed him. “In Cherrywood?”

  “Lilith,” he sighed wearily, “I’ve made a habit of not asking questions, and it’s kept me alive. Perhaps you should adopt a similar policy?”

  She wasn’t backing down. In that moment, she mentally made a vow to never back down again from anyone. “Not if it endangers my family, Michael. You understand.”

  “Your family’s not in danger, Lilith,” Michael snickered, deeply entertained now. “I hate to tell you, but you Wellses aren’t exactly a threat to us. The only reason I came tonight is that I’m under very strict orders to play nice with you and yours. And because your father, however well-meaning, has the profoundly misguided hope you and I could ever be a couple.”

  Lilith visibly stiffened. Shakily, she took a step back. “You mean, my father brought you here to—”

  “That’s right,” Michael nodded, “but don’t worry. I’m not even vaguely interested in you.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” Lilith replied immediately, and it wasn’t out of vanity. It didn’t matter how fine or how rich this man was, or even how charismatic, he was definitely no Prince Charming. He was a predator, and she’d had her fill of being preyed upon today.

  “But you will be seeing a lot of me, nonetheless; your father has seen to that,” he smirked. “Like it or not, Lilith, I’m not going anywhere.” He paused, and then grinned broadly as though suddenly inspired. “So while we’re stuck with each other, just think of me as your sweet older brother Mike. At your service,” he added with a slight bow.

  Lilith nodded, backing away once more. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  The Twelfth

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Eric stormed down the streets of Cherrywood. Exactly what had he hoped to accomplish by going to see her? He was too troubled to let the humiliation of the evening really sink in. He was instead more concerned with his growing fascination. Why was he even still thinking about her? She wasn’t anyone. She didn’t matter. Why did she affect him so?

  Was he so pathetic, had he sunk so low that he now obsessed like a teenager over a single kiss?

  It was still too real; too fresh in his memory. Was he like Shoelace? Did he too have the revolting “Taste”?

  Maybe he was tainted, infected somehow. Whether they were in broad daylight or not, in front of witnesses or not, he should have done something the moment he realized she was kissing him. He should’ve punched her in the face, split those lips, blackened those eyes, and repeatedly kicked her in her stomach.

  “I should’ve slit her throat tonight in her office,” Eric told himself, gritting his teeth. “I should’ve made an example out of her.”

  “Yeah, right,” a new voice snickered. Instinctively, he turned to his right to see an apparition of Lilith. Dressed in her red outfit from his earlier hallucination, she was puffing on cigarette again as she leisurely strolled alongside him. “Like you’d really touch the daughter of a well-connected city councilor. You and your crew would all be hunted down and rooted out of this town like the cancerous tumors you are. Then who’d be the example, Eric?”

  “Fucking go away,” he grumbled.

  “I can’t, Eric; you bring me here, remember?” the apparition snorted.

  He looked her over quickly before quipping, “I liked the white dress better.”

  The vision rolled its eyes. “Whatever. Eric, have you even stopped to wonder why you see me? Why you think of me so much?”

  “Now that you mention it, sure,” Eric shrugged. “I’d love to know how to get rid of you.”

  “You’re having doubts, Eric,” the apparition sighed. “For the first time you’re really having doubts. You’re not a troubled teen anymore, you’re an adult. The world’s changed. For years, Aryan taught you and told you about that world. Then you met me and in moments—mere moments—I shattered every belief you held dear. That’s quite a mind-fuck at your age.”

  Eric had no response, and even if he had, he couldn’t have uttered it. His throat tightened as he realized where this conversation was going.

  “You know,” his vision went on, “psychologists have this theory that when you dream or hallucinate, it’s all you—it all comes from you. I’m not really Lilith Wells, Eric, and some part of you realizes that.”

  Eric stopped walking and the apparition followed suit. They turned to face each other, and luckily, the street they stood on was empty.

  “Then who are you?” he demanded finally. His heart was pounding now; he could hear his own blood roaring in his ears. A part of him longed to know; another part was thoroughly terrified.

  “I’m you—at least, a part of you,” the vision chuckled.

  “Which part?” he pushed, as he felt his palms begin to sweat.

  The apparition laughed gaily now, and instead of shuddering at the sound, Eric found it almost musical. “You’ve always had a thirst for knowledge, Eric; you’ve always wanted to know. When you used to tutor girls back in the day, a secret part of you always reveled in the joy of being the go-to guy, the kid who was always in the know. It didn’t matter how tall the other guys were, or how much bigger their muscles were—you were the guy who knew.”

  She stepped towards him now, putting her face just inches from is. He could smell her perfume, and it distantly reminded him of some sweet-smelling oil his mother used to wear.

  “You’ve lost that over the years, Eric,” the vision continued. “You became a slave, a gopher, a lowly errand boy even now in your older years. You followed orders, you bowed and scraped and obeyed. You’ve shed blood and stolen property like some wretched criminal. You stopped reading, stopped writing, and you began to shut out the rest of the world. Your own not-knowing is what got you so easily twisted and manipulated by Aryan. But you used to be someone, someone w
ho knew.

  “Don’t you wish to be someone again?”

  Eric suddenly felt like a sailor lost at sea, a man overboard blindly thrashing against the feral waves.

  “But how?” he asked. “How do…where can I—”

  “She works in a library, Eric,” the apparition drawled smugly. “You used to like libraries, remember? She’s a keeper of lore; it’s her job to preserve and disseminate knowledge. She cannot deny you.”

  “But Aryan—”

  “—is a marked man,” the vision finished grimly. “He doesn’t realize whom he’s fucking with, but you do. You’ve met Michael more than once; you’ve looked him in the eyes, spoken with him extensively, and by now you’ve guessed just how far his tentacles reach.” She leaned in to whisper into his ear. “When the wrath of the Hirosawa falls, Eric, you don’t want to be in the way. Aryan be damned.”

  Though her words had a soothing effect on him, he remained uncertain.

  “She won’t let me in,” Eric shook his head slowly, speaking softly. “She looks down on me. She thinks I’m less.”

  “It’s like magic, Eric,” the apparition murmured. “Like the adventures you used to read about, remember? Sometimes all you need are some magic words.”

  Eric mentally floundered, grasping at the first thing to pop up. Pretty please? He didn’t see that working on Lilith; he did, however, see her laughing in her face before she called her guards and had him cast out back into the streets.

  Fortunately, his hallucination wasn’t finished.

  “Formatia trans sicere educatorum,” it murmured right before it vanished, leaving him alone in the dark.

  When morning came, the dreaded twelfth arrived, and Eric was back in the warehouse basement, standing empty-handed. The night before, after his long talk with himself, he handed the shipment over to Derek and a heavily armed group of Aryan’s new favored few. He wasn’t surprised when Derek didn’t show up alone. And he wasn’t surprised his companions came so heavily armed. Hell, their guns were bigger than they were.

  Eric hadn’t objected to their jibes and sneers; instead, he merely watched them go with a faint satisfaction in knowing they’d signed their own death warrants.

  His hallucination had been right. It did feel good to be the guy in the know.

  In the meantime, it was business as usual.

  “You know,” a visibly irked Michael began, “we almost didn’t do business in this town.” He slowly paced the warehouse basement, making sure to stay in the light of the dangling bulb, where Eric Quisling could see him clearly. “Too small. Too squeaky clean in some parts. But our Korean brethren invited us here, and once we all got past any ancestral…unpleasantness,” Michael smirked, “we did business, and business was surprisingly good.”

  Eric tensed, but didn’t show it. In the shadows, he could hear movement, the distinct clinking of glass. The sound seemed so out of place that it unnerved him deeply. No one cocked a gun or flipped open a blade, but that didn’t mean they weren’t armed and ready.

  “The Koreans then referred us to the Latinos in this town, where we did more business,” Michael continued with his story. “And that business was great. Then the Latinos referred us to the blacks in this town, and the business we did with them was excellent.” He stopped to chuckle for a moment before finishing, “Even got a case of Cristal out of the deal.”

  A lean, limber hand reached into the light from the moving shadows, handing Michael a tall, slim champagne flute.

  “Now,” Michael condescendingly mused, “I know you don’t like black folks, but you have to admit—” he raised his glass, as if in salute, “—they’ve got style.”

  He took a small, single sip before stating quite bluntly, “I want my money, Eric.”

  “Aryan has it,” Eric replied simply, almost wearily. He shrugged, as if too tired to care. “He said he had to hang onto it a bit longer.”

  Michael’s eyes fell on him calmly, levelly as he mocked, “Of course he does, Eric. You know, after we finished doing business with the blacks, we thought, ‘Hey, the Nazis live here too. Why not?’ After all, it’s not as though we all have to like one another to do business. But after dealing with every other bigwig in this town, I have no choice but to conclude that you Heil-Hitler wannabes are complete amateurs, and everything I’ve heard about your fearsomeness is pure rumor—probably started by you.”

  He came to stand toe to toe with Eric, whom he happened to slightly tower above. Eric, knowing better than to show fear, didn’t flinch. His show of bravado didn’t quell his pounding heart, which he fleetingly wondered if Michael could hear.

  “I’m a messenger, Michael, not magician,” Eric replied wearily. “I can’t make that kind of money appear out of thin air. If I could, we would’ve never met.”

  Michael was faintly amused. “You know, in the old days, being a messenger was no excuse. As I recall, sending a messenger’s head back to his master tended to expedite transactions.”

  Eric laughed genuinely. “Michael,” he smiled genially, “add two and two together. I gave the shipment to Aryan, and he sent me back empty-handed, knowing fully well he was putting me and my comrades here at serious risk. What does that tell you?”

  There was a subtle flicker in Michael’s eyes as he murmured, “Aryan finds you expendable.”

  “And that was before I fucked the shit out of his girlfriend,” Eric laughed even harder. He’d almost forgotten about his night with Goldie. “Imagine how he feels about me now.” There was a slight pause before he added cheerfully, “You can hack us all to pieces, Michael. You can slaughter us ‘til the cows come home, but until Aryan decides to part with the cash, it’ll get you absolutely nowhere.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow. “You could point me towards him.”

  Eric resolutely shook his head. “If I knew where he was. I fucked his woman, Michael; by now she’s told him, so he knows we’re through. He won’t be where I saw him last, and I don’t know where he’d go next. The warehouse was always his last resort.”

  Michael mulled this over, before asking, “Would his woman know?”

  Star-Crossed

  While Michael and his family declared open season on Aryan, Eric and his fellow rejected crew members blissfully returned to their lives. They showered and some started growing their hair out. Shoelace got a job delivering for the diner. Others got similar jobs, as though there was an unspoken understanding their days with Aryan were over. It was time to stop waiting for nightfall. They could walk in sunlight again, go where they pleased…see whomever they pleased.

  Eric himself got an evening job working a local library, but he knew right away its book collection didn’t come close to that of the university’s.

  It was over. And once it was over, the remaining members of the crew quickly realized they had very little in common with one another. Couple that realization with incongruent work schedules and they splintered apart within days. It was strange; Eric had spent his last several years with these people, and yet they were like strangers to him now. It was bizarre; once the killings, beatings, and thefts stopped, he had absolutely nothing to talk about with them.

  The change in his life was immediate and profound. Eric could not remember ever feeling this light-hearted, not even in childhood. The day he decided to finally give in and go see her, he practically skipped his way to the university, wearing clean clothes without holes or any Nazi motifs. He nodded back in greeting to every passerby, and he even smiled at some of them.

  She was there, of course, carrying a clipboard and looking busy as she went about her day. For a moment he simply watched Lilith Wells in her black slacks and pink silk blouse. Her hair was still a mass of burgundy-dyed curls. She was beautiful, he finally admitted to himself. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he had absolutely no idea why. He had no idea why he needed to see her or what he expected to accomplish by seeing her. All he knew was that being in her presence was a unequivocal must.


  When he was done playing stalker, Eric finally approached her.

  Lilith caught him out the corner of her gazed and sighed loudly. Strangely enough, it didn’t take her long to recognize him, despite the changes.

  “Oh, hell no,” she rolled her eyes. “Save us both some time and just go away, will you? I’d hate to have to call security and make a scene.” She turned to walk away.

  Eric started talking at her back without thinking, “Formatia trans sicere educatorum,” he echoed his hallucination from several nights before.

  He watched her freeze, then slowly turn back to face him, incredulity bright in her face. He blinked, wondering for a split a second if he’d pronounced that correctly. What language was that anyway?

  Lilith approached him cautiously, looking him over carefully, taking in the differences. Black hoodie that wasn’t faded. Dark blue jeans with no holes. Clean spiked hair and skin. And sober eyes with no malice or ridicule.

  “Enter all ye who seek knowledge,” she translated.

  Eric blinked again. Is that what it means? He mentally shrugged. Cool beans. Clearly, his hallucination knew its stuff.

  Lilith raised a suspicious eyebrow. “You’re seeking knowledge now?”

  “History, to be exact,” he nodded resolutely. “Starting with the ancient world.” It had always been his favorite subject and now seemed the best place to start. He was, after all, fairly rusty.

  She hesitated before sighing resignedly, “Follow me.”

  Dear God. He’s actually serious.

  It quickly became a routine between them. He came every morning without fail and left late afternoon. Lilith directed him wherever he asked, history, philosophy (where, she noticed, he didn’t linger too long), psychology (a growing favorite of his), sociology, anthropology, poetry, language, and so on. When it came to learning about people, Eric appeared obsessed. He mowed through book after book, scouring the shelves with an unquenchable thirst. He had a favorite chair he curled up in by the window and would read there for several hours straight. He never bothered her, and when he spoke to her, it was only to ask for assistance. He was polite every time, and soon, Lilith forgot he was a disreputable prick from the streets who once bribed the security guards with cocaine to get to her.