Page 9 of A Little Red
“The Hearseman report was awesome, by the way. You saved me a ton of time. Can you do the same thing with the Applecourt account?”
“Yes?” She looked off-balance and he had every intention of keeping her that way.
“Great.”
She glared at him. “Liam,” she said, using his name like a weapon, “you are too used to getting your own way.”
“Come over tonight and you can have your way with me,” he offered and she gave a half-way decent growl before stomping out of the office.
Episode 6
Thanksgiving
Scarlet
Scarlet stared at Liam’s white plaster ceiling. He lived in a small, but very expensive apartment on the edge of Central Park. In a few minutes her alarm would go off and Liam would wake up and blink at her like he couldn’t remember who she was and then he would smile and kiss her. It was how her mornings started now. It had been three weeks and she’d spent most of the nights at Liam’s apartment. They sometimes went to Maxim’s or ordered dinner in, but the night’s all ended the same, with her sweaty and delirious from pleasure and wrapped in her wolf’s arms. Then they would wake up and Scarlet would leave by herself so that they would arrive at the office at different times.
This morning would be different though. This morning they would leave together and go to the train station before parting for the Thanksgiving holiday. She knew he thought she was going home although she had carefully never said that. And she knew he was going to his family’s property. Not that he ever specified exactly where that was. The amount of personal information he’d shared could be included in a tweet. She tried not to let that bother her. Just like she tried to not let it bother her that he never clarified how he viewed their relationship. He never said they were dating. He never said anything about going public. And the rest of his non-verbal signals weren’t any more positive. Nothing saidnot seriousquite like having to pack her toothbrush and a change of clothes every night of the week. He didn’t even seem bothered by their arrangement. Scarlet couldn’t say that she felt the same. She had enough secrets in her life. She wasn’t sure she wanted her relationship to be one of them. But every time she thought about bringing it up, he’d fuck the thought out of her head.
But her alarm was about to go off and then he would smile at her and kiss her and somehow that meant everything.
Liam’s alarm rang five minutes before hers, startling her so that she jerked in surprise. Liam laughed at her and gathered her into his arms, spooning tightly against her, snuggling his face into the crook of her neck. He inhaled, running his mouth along her neck as if smelling and tasting her at the same time and Scarlet melted, breathing out and letting her silent morning angst go. It was hard to hold onto worry when he was hanging on to her.
They moved around each other in the silent dance of getting ready. Scarlet eating avocado toast over the sink and Liam carrying a glass of milk everywhere with him while he finished packing. She appreciated that he got his milk from a local dairy that was known to her family. It meant that she could have milk too. She tried not to wave her semi-vegetarianism around like a flag. It wasn’t that she didn’t like meat—the chemicals of the modern age made her a little crazy. And also itchy. All the radio waves were bad enough. Cable TV had been an absolute blessing for her family. Sending everything through cables made the air so much quieter. Everything still buzzed with electricity and radio and Wi-Fi and satellite signals and all the other rasping vibrating messages that had driven her mom to leave, and it wasn’t as though Scarlet didn’t feel it. Every morning she spent a few minutes hiding in the bathroom to complete her cleansing spells that allowed her to make it through her day. But some days the spells she used wouldn’t cut it in this busy city and she had to take about eight of her migraine pills plus drive out to some place with fewer signals in the air. But Scarlet still felt like it was worth it, particularly when she got to walk through the train station holding Liam’s hand.
Saying goodbye was odd and Scarlet spent most of the trip trying to figure out why. As the train pulled into the station and she spotted her brother’s pale blond head surveying the platform, looking for her, Scarlet realized that it was because Liam hadn’t looked back. He’d kissed her goodbye and left to make his own train. The thought sat like a lump in her throat, but she swallowed it and went to the exit.
“Ochre!” she called, stepping out onto the platform and waving. Ochre Lucas lifted his head at the sound of his name, spotted her and waved back.
“Hey!” he exclaimed striding toward her. He was close to six-foot-five and towered over most people. He swept her into a quick hug and set her back down again. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah,” agreed Scarlet, hefting her backpack onto her shoulder and smiling at her brother. His hair, a little more red-gold than hers, was getting long again. He was the worst at remembering to get a haircut. She remembered when they’d been children, it had grown down his back because, after the first disastrous cut from Azure, he’d refused to let her try again. But he had been willing to let Scarlet braid it, which she had enjoyed enormously. Privately, Scarlet thought his long hair and pointed ears made him look like their father, but Scarlet had only met him the one time and she didn’t like to ask Azure if her impression was right. When their grandmother had found them, she’d made Ochre get his hair cut. She said they needed to blend in. Diana had been right, and living with her had certainly been better than the subsistence life the Lucas siblings had been eking out on their own, but Scarlet found that she sometimes missed their wild-child days.
“Don’t need to stop for any last second supplies?” Ochre asked.
“I probably won’t even need the ones I brought, will I?” asked Scarlet, looking up at Ochre in confusion.
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “But you’re all citified now. I thought you might be high-maintenance or something.”
“I’m not sure how having a job thatdoesn’trequire me to sit in the dirt makes me high-maintenance, but OK.” Scarlet rolled her eyes and Ochre laughed again. Sometimes being the youngest sibling sucked.
Ochre led the way out of the train station and out to the parking lot. She was used to following Ochre. His height made him easy to keep track of. Scarlet wondered if he ever got tired of being used as a sign-post by his family and acquaintances. He never said anything, but he had always been the quiet one of the three of them.
“Hey, did you bring my bow?” asked Scarlet, climbing into the truck and noticing the lack of equipment.
“Ohhhhhh.” Ochre grimaced and Scarlet sighed. “Sorry,” said Ochre. “I forgot.”
“It’s OK,” said Scarlet. So much for getting any meat on this trip. She had the distinct impression that this weekend was not going to go well.
They drove in until they were bumping down a logging road into the back country. Azure met them at Ochre’s campsite. Azure was always the odd duck in the family. Although, she was lanky like Ochre, and pale like Scarlet, and she shared the family blue eyes, she took after their father with thick black hair. She dressed in the witch tradition of all black—although Scarlet wasn’t sure an outfit counted as witchy when it was dusty, faded, black jeans and a black zip-up hoodie.
“Scarlet!” Azure said holding out her arms. Scarlet hugged her and tried not to feel self-conscious that all of her clothes were newer than Azure’s.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” said Azure, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Scarlet’s ear. She had always been motherly. When they had been children it had been reassuring because their own mother hadn’t been able to be the kind of mom who tucked them in and read them stories. And after her mother had left, abandoning all of them, thirteen-year-old Azure had been the one who took care of them. It had been another two years before Diana had found them and brought them back to Virginia. And Scarlet appreciated that Azure had taken care of the family when they were younger, but these days Scarlet found her mother-knows-best attitude condescending. Scarlet was a grown adult, paying her own bills, living her own life. When was Azure going to stop telling her what to do?
“What part aboutI’ll be therewas unclear?” asked Scarlet with a tight smile.
“I just couldn’t see it happening,” said Azure with what felt like a fake smile—Scarlet tried not to give a wolf-like growl.
