Page 10 of Fanged Secrets
That was just one of the mysteries surrounding Dylan. Whenever my wife was out doing god knows what, I took the opportunity to snoop around the apartment. The previous day I had decided to search her bedroom. It was the one place I had avoided since moving in, partly out of respect for her privacy andpartly because it felt invasive. But desperation drove me to push past those boundaries.
I opened drawers and rifled through her wardrobe, careful to leave everything exactly as I found it. There were no photos, no keepsakes, nothing to suggest she had a family or a past worth remembering. It was as if her life began and ended within the confines of the apartment.
My only notable discovery had been a small jewelry box, shrouded in cobwebs under her bed, holding a single, slightly charred arcade ticket and nothing else. The faded ticket was an anomaly amongst the otherwise impersonal items, the edges blackened like it had been snatched from a fire. I had no idea what to make of it and was careful to return it to its resting place.
I was determined to uncover something – anything – that could shed light on Dylan’s perplexing life. But every search left me frustrated and more bewildered than before. Dylan had caught on to my antics – I opened a random drawer to discover a note addressed to me:
Dear Amara,
Still snooping? Stop.
Regrettably your wife,
Dylan
I would have loved nothing more than for her to take her letter and shove it somewhere unpleasant.
So much for subtlety. I was a terrible double agent.
Irritated all over again, I banished that particular train of thought and settled back in the present. My pencil drooped in my hand and I sighed, straightening up and examining the completed sketch. I had been trying to draw the flowers in front of me, dainty white buds I couldn’t name, but somewhere along the way, I had changed course. I stared down at the paper in my lap. Dark, brooding eyes stared back.
I had etched her face from memory, a rough but detailed iteration of Dylan during one of her sulks. The bold lines gave it a raw, unfinished look that captured her essence perfectly. Her eyes, always so guarded and intense, were the focal point. I had spent extra time on them, shading and re-shading to get the depth just right.
They seemed to follow me, exuding both a simmering ferocity and a vulnerability I had only recently begun to notice. Her lips were parted slightly like she was on the verge of saying something important. I traced my thumb over them, the appendage coming away smudged with graphite.
I quickly shut the sketchbook, gathered my pencils, and hightailed it out of the garden before my head caught up with my heart.
I had just reached the bottom of the staircase when the front door opened and Dylan stepped inside. When our eyes met, her usual guarded expression softened for a split second, before she masked it again just as quickly. She leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
“Hey.” Her stance was casual and she sounded her words slowly. “How was your day?”
I stared for a moment, examining her from top to bottom. Aubergine lipstick, slightly smudged like she’d wiped a hand across the corner of her mouth. Strands of hair escaped her ponytail and fell over deep violet eyes. A protruding collarbone under a tight black tank top. Lanky legs and steel-toed boots.
No new injuries.
I exhaled softly and shrugged, trying for a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. I gripped my sketchbook tightly.
Dylan hovered in the doorway for a moment. Then her eyes snagged on something above my head and she strode forward with alarming speed. My heart jolted in my chest and I flinched,but she stopped a few steps away. Reaching over, she plucked a small green leaf from my hair.
I braced for a scathing glare and possibly a reprimand, but Dylan just turned the leaf over in her fingers. Her expression morphed from tense to angry, before her placid mask shuttered and settled back into place.
“Fig leaf,” was all she said, handing it over to me. “Come fall, every tree will be heavy with ripe fruit. They’ll flower again in spring. It’s very pretty.”
I had no idea what to do with that information and Dylan gave me no time to respond. She sidestepped me and headed for her bedroom, shutting the door behind her without another word.
That night, I was curled on the sofa eating cold spaghetti for the second week in a row when Dylan appeared from her quarters. Dressed in leather and donning a grim expression, she came to stand behind me, raising a brow at my abysmal dietary choices.
I blinked up at her, inspecting her outfit. Black leather jacket zipped to her throat. Her long dark hair was braided tightly in a single plait that disappeared down her back. Her signature heavy eyeshadow. An odd-looking knife was strapped to her forearm. She would be out late, I could feel it.
Before she could leave again I dove for my phone, nearly sending my spaghetti flying in the process. Dylan noticed and shook her head, muttering something about her poor Persian carpet. I managed to save my spaghetti and balanced the bowl precariously on my knee, holding up my index finger to shush her while I typed on my cell screen.
I had decided not to use the phone my father gave me, but I was getting tired of having to jot down all my words on paper. So long as I only used it for the mission, Don listening in tomy conversions shouldn’t be a problem, even if it was incredibly invasive.
I typed what I wanted to say into the app I had downloaded and turned the volume up on the cellphone. “Where are you going? Anything dangerous?”
Dylan blinked when the app spoke my words for me, and her lips moved in a barely readable flurry. “Why haven’t you been using that this whole time?!”
More typing from my end. “I’m old-fashioned. But you read too slow.”
