With resignation, she placed the Birkin onto the cushioned interior, setting its handles on the little tufted pillow. As tears blurred her eyes, she ran her manicured fingertips over the pattern of scales where things were not burned and she tried to shut out the campfire smell. She could still remember what it had looked like as she had first seen it in the private room at the mothership at Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, so fresh, so clean, that fragrance of the crocodile hide rising up as she had held it as if it were holy.
Because it had been. Because it still was, no matter its marring.
With trembling hands, she closed the lid. Then she rested her palms on the lacquered contours of the top and bowed her head. Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she told herself that she could get a new one.
But this one had been hers.
As the grief became unbearable, she willed the remains away, sending them down to the Well of Souls. For a split second, she remembered that that vampire Throe was still there on her worktable, and then that thought went right out of her mind.
The silence surrounding her registered as total isolation, sure as if the humanity had been wiped off the earth along with every animal, insect, reptile, and fish. She felt alone, like she was no longer even tethered to the blue-and-green planet she had for eons called home, but rather lost in a galaxy, floating through space, cold and useless, passing by uncaring planets and suns that had no time for her.
The thought that she was, in fact, not by herself snapped her back to reality.
She glared over her shoulder at her roommate. “But you’re going to change all this. Aren’t you?”
When there was no response, she embarked on a walk across the vast open space—only to pause by a rack of formal gowns to check herself in a full-length mirror. Her long brunette hair was a cascade of waves over her bare shoulders, and the bustier she had cinched on her waist made her tits look incredible. The leather pencil slacks were as always a nice touch, but she wasn’t sure she liked all the black. It was a bit of a dour one-note.
Tilting her head, she willed the shrink-wrap outfit blood red.
“And people say perfection can’t be improved.”
Resuming her strut, she clip, clip, clip’d across the bare concrete floor. When she got to the far corner of the lair, she stopped in front of a municipal-parks-and-recreation trash receptacle, the kind that could be found all around downtown Caldwell, the kind that people threw nasty trash out in, like half-eaten sandwiches, the last inch of coffee that was cold, dog shit in bags.
Used condoms and needles.
Okay, maybe those last two mostly ended up tossed to the ground, but surely there were some prostitutes, some johns, some casual vein fuckers who were tidy.
“Enough with the bullshit,” she said. “It’s time for you to give me what I’m owed. I’ve been fucking patient, but that is so over right now.”
She wasn’t talking to the bin.
She was talking to the piece of shit sitting on top of the goddamn bin’s square lid. “You owe me, and you know what I want. So get to it.”
Crossing her arms over her breasts, she stared down at the closed cover of the Book. Bound in human flesh—or maybe it was vampire skin or that of a demon, who the hell knew—the ancient tome of spells had body odor like roadkill, pages that could say something or nothing at all depending on its mood, and a checkered history of compliance.
“We had an agreement,” she reminded the thing. “You give me my one true love, a male who will love every single part of me, the whole me, for eternity—and I rescue you from the ashes of that house fire.” When there was no response, she pushed at her gorgeous hair and tried not to show how much this game was getting under her skin. “Might I remind you that without me, you’d be on your way to the dump right now, which is more than you deserve—”
A soft, rhythmic noise rose up from between its hump-ugly covers, the sound so quiet that Devina had to lean in to figure out what the part purr, part snuffle was.
Oh, hell no. “Do not pretend to be sleeping. Don’t even try that bullshit with me.” As the Book just continued to snooze, she stamped her stillie. “Goddamn it, self-care doesn’t apply to you—you’re an eternity old, not a millennial. And P.S., in an earlier life you were probably a Publishers Clearing House fucking mailer, so don’t get it twisted and pull this attitude.”
The top cover popped up a little and the pages ruffled like it was repositioning itself on a Tempur-Pedic mattress. Then the snoring got louder.
“Wake up!”