Siren Queen(22)

“All right, let’s look at you,” he said with a sigh. “I had to crawl out of the bodies after the Wild Hunt for this, might as well see if there’s a scrap of you that can be useful.”

I could see at least some of Jacko’s revenge now. Whatever the Wild Hunt was, it had left Wolfe exhausted and irritable, not a wonderful time for an actress to cross him.

He circled me lazily, eyes traveling up and down my body. If he could have reached out to bite me, I’m sure he would have. When he casually reached for my breast, I knocked his hand away, but I didn’t shout. I only glared. Mrs. Wiley had told me to expect something like that, but she needn’t have bothered.

There was a chance it would enrage Wolfe, but instead he only narrowed his eyes. He pressed closer to me, not touching, but close enough for me to feel how amphibiously cool his skin was and to smell the way the reek of alcohol and something musky hung off of him. I stayed as still as I knew how to, shrinking back from my skin until it felt as if there was another inch of space between us. He hadn’t touched me, so what was I going to cry about?

He looked deep into my eyes, and then I saw what was wrong with his. The pupils never moved, either to shut light away or to take it in. It prickled something in my hindbrain, telling me that if Oberlin Wolfe had ever been human, he certainly wasn’t any longer.

He finally pulled back as if bored with me, and he propped himself back against his desk, letting some of the papers piled on it fall to the side.

“All right, smile. No, not like that, silly bitch, with your teeth, show ’em off.”

I did as he said, and he frowned.

“At least your own teeth will do. You’re not one for the comedies though, are you? Pretty, but a little dead.”

I shrugged because I couldn’t think of any real defense for that. He smiled at me, and I kept myself from saying that he could hardly do better. He picked through the detritus on his desk until he came up with a single lavender sheet.

“All right. Read this.”

I fought the urge to start reading as soon as it was in my hands. Instead I read it over silently before beginning.

“In all my life and ever after, I do not understand why my parents should have sent me to Grieverly Hall upon their deaths, nor why they deemed my Uncle Crispian a guardian for a young girl newly bereft of her parents…”

It was a Gothic piece, all Mid-Atlantic accent that could turn ridiculous if you took your mind off of it for one moment. June Della Ray had done something very similar, and I mimicked her calm instead of my own, hopeful virtue instead of cold.

When I was done, Wolfe looked perhaps more interested, and he fished out another piece for me.

“Here. Again. Put your body into it this time. I’m not running a goddamn reader’s theater here.”

I read the piece over, and a rough fury stirred inside me. I looked up at Wolfe, who smirked at me. This was nothing to him. He only wanted to see what I would do.

I looked over the piece again, and then I stepped discreetly out of my heels and sank to my knees. I could have told myself that it was just acting, but every star in the smoky Los Angeles sky knew better. For better or worse, it was always you there.

“Please,” I said softly. “If you ever had a heart, if you ever felt anything for us. If you ever thought of me, please don’t do this.”

The words felt like scraps of buckram in my mouth, too stiff and dry. Wolfe was turning away, and suddenly there were tears in my eyes. I tilted my face up so they would run from the corners of my eyes rather than making a muddy wash of my mascara.

“I’ve never felt this way before,” I continued. “I hate it, and you don’t care, do you? I was just an amusement to you, a toy…”

Rage and hate were better than that soft cloying sweetness, but the tears kept falling. I met Wolfe’s gaze squarely as I spoke the words, and he was still there when I finished. I held the pose, and then I rose to my feet. Stepping back into the heels, even if it was like walking on knives, restored some of my self-possession.

“Nice,” Wolfe said thoughtfully, and I had a little more of his attention than I did before. “The bit with taking your shoes off, though, over the top.”

“I couldn’t kneel with them on,” I said with a shrug, and that won a dry, barking laugh from him.

“Well, all right then. We have people that can teach you better. You seem like you got a bit of a stick up your ass, but I don’t know, maybe that’s what people want now.”

For a moment, I dared to think that I had won my way, but Wolfe stepped towards me.

“All right, now give me a kiss,” he said, and he opened his mouth to show teeth that were too sharp by far. Something small and animal in me froze with terror. I didn’t know what came next, but it made my stomach lurch with fear.

“You came here without a patron,” Wolfe continued pleasantly. He seemed to grow with every step that he took, and where he had been long-legged before, now there was something unearthly about the length of his limbs. His mouth seemed to stretch far in front of his face, and oh but his teeth were stained and old.

He came forward for every step that I took back, and as I retreated slowly, his smile only got the wider.

“You go through that door, and you’ve lost,” he informed me. “You know that, don’t you?”

He took up the whole room, and I saw flashes of the real Oberlin Wolfe then. He was a beautiful man in slim-cut slacks, but behind him, or perhaps slightly off to the side, there was something far older, and far less human. I thought he was a common monster when I came in, but if that were true, it was because I had only seen a fraction of his form. He was large and knotted like the roots of some kind of terrible tree. He was sharp-toothed, and he was very hungry.