Page 56 of Skin Trade

Had Seth had any pillows when he was growing up? It was an odd thought, but there in her head, as if she could reach in and see him as a child--a little boy. She was sure she saw that child in his eyes sometimes, that mischievous look he gave off, some part of himself he still managed to hold onto. But with it, she thought she saw sadness, a loneliness that was the key to the man.

Payton fell asleep like that, cuddling his pillow, letting her mind wander, thinking of what Seth had been like. The dreams came up and snatched her into their darkness almost the moment she was gone. They’d been waiting, hiding in the shadows to catch her the moment she crossed over. Black images came into her mind, a montage of photographs spinning around in her head as if she were watching a carousel with them on. A small house, dainty and dark, woods, children, a downtrodden path with puddles of dark murky water. She saw lights, candles, the images of men with tankards of ale. She saw faces, places, things she didn’t know, but knew somewhere in her heart, like a picture book she had seen once when she was a child. She saw a young man, twenty perhaps, his expression dark, his eyes down. No. He wasn’t twenty, eighteen perhaps. Still just a boy in so many ways. His features had not yet defined him. He looked up at her, those eyes meeting hers. Even in her dream, she gasped at the suddenness of it. Eyes she knew, a mouth tilted purposefully on one side when he saw her.

“Seth.” She bolted up, snatched herself from her dream and yelped. “Don’t you guys ever knock? God.” She held her hand to her chest, tried to calm her body and her mind.

Sky.

“Sir sent me with breakfast. He says you are to eat it all and then find him in two hours.”

“I … um.” She realised where she was and where Sky was and felt her face flush with it. Clearing her throat, she said. “I couldn’t sleep last night.” She went to say more, but it wouldn’t matter. Whatever she said, would sound like a lie, to her at least.

“It is a first moon tonight,” Sky said. “When it comes, it makes everyone feel a little strange.” She set the tray down on the bed. A selection of breads and jams, and on one plate, some bacon and scrambled eggs. “Sir told me once that the moons change people’s moods. He said that he had worked in a place where they kept people, women, locked them up when they got the hysteria, and when the moons changed, they would turn crazy. Like it possessed them or something.”

“He worked in a …” She trailed off and paused, trying to think of the right word. “A mental hospital?” The image of him doing that didn’t fit in her head. In fact, the image of Seth working anywhere didn’t go in her head. He was a self-assured man in a suit, who worked for himself, who owned clubs and people. People worked for him, not the other way around.

“Sir had many jobs in his life.” She shrugged. “He has had a long life.”

He did, but that was the hard part to reconcile with him. He looked no older than thirty. His voice still had that young edge to it, but … she couldn’t fathom it. “I guess. It just feels so odd.” Payton slid the tray towards herself. There was a bottle of something dark and green. Condensation ran down the outside of the glass and she wiped at it with her finger. “What is this?”

“Creven never gave it to you?”

Payton shook her head, took the bottle and pulled off the lid so she could examine the contents of it. It had a bite to it, and she screwed up her nose, backing away as if it would come to life and attack her.

“It is good for you. Full of vitamins you need. You must drink it. It will make you feel good. Sir gives it to every woman he drinks from.”

“Every woman?” The last part made Payton pause, gears grinding to a halt in her mind at Sky’s words. Words that meant nothing, and everything. She was just another girl, another woman in the collection he had. He had seemed so real when they’d talked. When she’d lain with him.

“I have to go back to reception,” Sky said, oblivious to Payton’s sudden unease. “Call me if you need anything else. Drink your juice. It will make you feel better.”

“I feel fine.”

“I know, but Sir insists.”

Payton had been hungry a moment ago, but when Sky left and Payton picked up one of the pastries, something in her chest tightened. Sky’s words were what she needed to smack her back down onto this planet. To here, the room where Seth had brought woman after woman. She was just another of them. Like Tasha, like Miranda, like all the nameless women she didn’t know. The high ceilings and long walls were closing in on her. Everything was so dark. “Every woman.”

Forcing out a breath, she leant over the side of the bed. Wherever Seth had put her robe, was a mystery. She tried to see if he had dropped it down there, but nothing. The closest thing to her was his shirt, hanging on the back of a chair. She hesitated at first. Not wanting to put it on, to wrap herself in something of his, but then her skin prickled for it, almost needing that closeness of him.

“It’s just a shirt.” She sighed at herself, pushed off the bed and grabbed it. It didn’t mean anything. It did smell like him, like his bed, like everything in this room that he had somehow left his mark on. Even her.

Her intention had been to go to her room. To take the tray of food, minus the odd looking green drink, eat, shower and dress, but instead, she grabbed a croissant off the tray, held it between her teeth so it hung out of her mouth and took herself over to his desk where she opened the laptop up and pressed the power button at the top left.

She’d never used one of these things before, but she had at least seen them. Seen enough to know it mostly worked the same. When the laptop came on, the screen was similar to the computer in Seth’s office, except this time it had many more of the small pictures, rows of them. She found the one that looked the same as the one in his office, a circle made of red, yellow and blue, but there was no mouse.

She took a bite of the croissant and rested the pastry on a book next to her. She stood and tried to find the mouse, spilling crumbs from her chest onto the keys.

“How do you work this thing?” She tried pressing buttons to no avail. Some of them beeped at her, another opened a menu, so she pressed it and thankfully made the menu go back down again. “There has to be something to work it.” The cursor blinked at her from the centre of the screen, tormented her even. She pressed the big pad under the spacebar and accidentally swiped it, the cursor dashed across her screen.

“Ah ha.” She ran her finger lightly over it and nodded as it made the thing on the screen move. It took a few attempts to get it to where she wanted, but when she got it over the little round image, she pressed it and the screen opened up to the same one as in Seth’s office, asking her what she wanted to search for.

She typed in her father’s name and pressed search. The same list of things came up. She clocked the first one. Her father’s unsmiling face stared at her. His skin sagged now, lined in ways it wasn’t before. His hairline had gone back a little, thinned in places. “Oh, Dad.” The words under his image talked about a new project he was working on.

Joseph Matthews met today with ….

“Noooo.” She covered her mouth with her hand, not wanting to see the word on the screen. Shaking, she read. Alexander.

The article was nothing especially important. A real estate topic about agreements between humans and vampires, but mostly about trying to manage the horde of thirsty who decimated the areas and seemed to be coming more out into the open than ever before, uglier than before.

She scanned another report, not about her father, but the thirsty. People were being eaten, not just drunk from the way vampires did, but actual flesh-eating murder. One woman reported a thirsty had got into her house through an unlocked door and the dog had taken the hit.

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