Page 46 of A Dance With Devils
“You happened, little Alice.” Her eyes widen, mouth faltering around a quick response for that, just as a maid comes scampering into the room. “What sort of coffee would you like?”
“I did?”
“Yes. Coffee?” She doesn’t answer, so I give the maid a list of coffees. Then look back to Alice. “Food?”
“Eggs. Or something?” I nod at the maid and listen as she disappears from the room, too consumed with my Alice for interference.
Silence again. Just her and me staring at each other. It’s unusual for me – silence and human contact. People are usually asking for something, or begging for something, or being like my wife and trying to outsmart me before I outsmart them. Not here, though. Just us and the quiet.
“You’re saying I caused that?” she eventually asks.
“No. Not directly. It was my hand cutting the veins, but you smashed the vase. The shard was there. I used it.” Her eyes blink a few times, a sigh falling from her mouth. “Why don’t you take the robe off so I can look at you?”
“You are looking at me. Why did you try to kill yourself?” The directness of the question surprises me, as does her ability to seem unmoved by my own statement.
“Why do you want to know?”
“If I take the robe off will you talk about it?”
“Possibly. But why would you want to hear?”
She loosens the belt on the robe, gently inching it across her skin until it drapes open and shows me all those tattoos of hers. Beautiful colours, beautiful art. I stare, letting myself sink into the memories of them last night rather than the feel of this room around us. Roses and lilies across her stomach, the leaves crawling up on her breasts under the blue bra. And vines wrap around her torso, some of them casing along her thigh and hip towards her ass.
She should take it all off completely, let me see the entirety of it clearly.
“Because I can feel it,” she says. My gaze comes to her face, unsure what we’re discussing because I’m too lost in all my colours again. “The sadness? It’s with me, and I have a feeling I won’t get rid of it until you do. Freaky as fuck, but needs must.”
A small smile creeps over my lips, the thought of her feeling it too somehow soothing.
“Are you very sad for me?”
“Annoyed mostly, but you’re inside me for whatever reason. And while I’m not sure why, and those pills you forced me to take were probably an illegal act I should be calling the cops about, I’m having a break apparently. Whit said I was safe with you. Whit wouldn’t have said that if I wasn’t.”
Safe’s a murky word here with me.
Especially considering the flying she was talking about that I’m still pondering.
She crosses her legs the other way, shrugging her shoulders until the robe slips down across them. “Also, I assume I can’t get home until you’re feeling better. Talking will help you feel better. And now I’ve taken the robe off so you can ogle my body, you can talk. Tit for tat. Where are we by the way?”
The maid arrives just as I’m trying to process the logic she’s presenting. She works silently, moving objects carefully so she can place a large tray on the table between us. The moment she’s gone my little Alice starts pouring us both cups full to the brim, her eyebrow cocked at me as if I should be answering a question I haven’t heard.
“Malachi?”
“What?”
“Sugar?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. I like sugar. Too much really. Donuts especially,” she continues, pouring milk. “It’s funny really. I’m not sure why I don’t put on more weight than I do.” I skim my gaze over her body again, not seeing an inch of fat anywhere other than full breasts and a ripe ass. “Not that I’d give a fuck if I did. Bodies are your own, don’t you think? Yours to do with as you want? Why slit your wrists, though? I’m confused as to why a man like you, a man with all this,” she carries on, placing my coffee near me and then waving her hand around the space. “Would even think about it?”
“Canada.”
She sips her coffee. “What?”
“We’re in Canada.”
“Oh. I’ve never been. Have now. Wrists?”
