Authors: Rachel Green
“Not my clit.” Felicia’s lips brushed Jenna’s ear. “It’s too sensitive now.” Jenna lifted her thumb away. “That’s better. Thank you. You can stop now.” She gave a small yelp as Jenna did as she was asked.
“You’re quick,” the butch told her, bringing a hand to her face to appreciate the scent. She licked her fingers, which caused Felicia to laugh.
“I’m not used to being so skillfully played.” She bent to pull up her knickers. Jenna’s hand on her own stopped her.
“I think I earned these.” She slipped them off over Felicia’s boots. “You really are a slut, aren’t you?”
Felicia laughed. “I know what I want, that’s all.” She stood and flushed the toilet for the sake of appearance, the noise drowning anything that Jenna might have wanted to say in reply. “I’ll go out and wash my hands. When I’ve finished, give me three minutes before you follow, all right?”
Jenna nodded, a smile washing over her features. “You’ve had sex in a public toilet and suddenly you’re shy?” She laughed. “Have it your way then.”
Felicia brushed her lips across the younger woman’s but yelped and drew back when she felt the tender skin catch on something sharp. She lifted Jenna’s lip. “Oh, you have a broken tooth. I’d get that seen to if I were you. It looks like the nerve is exposed.” She left, washing her hands and drying them under a blast of warm air. “Three minutes, remember.”
* * * *
Felicia sank into the back of the taxi with a sigh of contentment, giving the driver the address of the gallery where she’d left her Audi. She brushed her fingers over her tender nipple, reliving the sensations in her mind. That had been one of her more interesting liaisons, but she had no idea why she’d run away. It was more usual for her to spend at least part of the night with her temporary conquests. She looked up, catching the taxi driver looking at her and smiled, turning to stare out of the window instead.
Chapter 5
Felicia was glad when her phone alarm began beeping. Morning could not have come quickly enough for her to escape her nightmares. She groaned and reached to press the off button, resolving never to mix a gallery viewing with late-night clubbing and hot, sordid sex again. Any two, yes, but not all three.
She felt an odd stiffness in her neck as she stretched and yawned. Felicia blinked her eyes free of sleep and touched the sore spot, feeling the dampness of a weeping wound before a stiletto of pain prodded her into full awareness. She winced and swung her legs out of bed, the morning need to relieve her bladder competing with her desire to investigate the wound.
Despite her glasses, her reflection was blurred and she blinked several times to clear it but to no avail. Instead, she slipped her hand under the lenses and rubbed at the sockets. There was still no improvement.
Felicia blinked. She was too tired to think. Why would she not be able to see more than a blur in the mirror, with or without her glasses? She knew she hadn’t left her contacts in because the plastic case containing them was on the counter.
That surprised her. She took a step forward and they came into sharp focus. Her eyesight had improved by roughly half a degree. How was that possible? The optician had warned her that it would only degrade further with age.
With another few inches her reflection came into focus in the mirror. Felicia ignored the pain from her neck and stared into her own eyes. They seemed grayer than they had yesterday, changing from the blue of a clear sky on a summer’s day to the sky seen through the London haze.
She examined her neck. The cow in the nightclub really had bitten her, though she hadn’t noticed during the heat of passion. The wound was inflamed, covered in a clear, gel-like fluid and was sore to the touch, although like anyone else she couldn’t resist probing it, gritting her teeth against the stabs of pain. She pushed a fingernail inside the weeping bite, wincing as it connected with a hard lump inside the wound. A twist of the fingernail provided the necessary leverage and the lump fell out into the sink and clattered against the steel rim of the plughole.
Felicia grunted, relieved the foreign body was out. Remarkably, the spot already felt less sore, and she hunted through the bathroom cabinet for some antiseptic gel, taking off her glasses to read the label. She applied it sparingly and debated the need for a plaster, reluctant to wear a button-up shirt in the heat of the day. She elected to forgo the plaster and hoped no one noticed the wound.
“Oh my God.” Felicia squinted at the object in the sink and used a pair of tweezers to pick it up. It was a piece of tooth, which explained why her twenty-minute lover had a broken canine. “What sort of skank leaves a piece of tooth in a love-bite?” She shuddered as she dropped it into the bin then switched on the shower.
Once she felt clean again, which took longer than usual thanks to thoughts of what diseases could be transferred on a tooth, Felicia dressed conservatively and elected to wear her glasses for the day as her contact lenses were now the wrong prescription.
Breakfast was normally a meal she skipped but today she felt as if there was an abyss inside that wouldn’t be filled by a cream-cheese cracker of cereal bar. She was still early for work, so she detoured into the kitchen and opened the cupboards, turning her nose up at every item until she came to the refrigerator.
Meat. She had an absolute craving for raw, bloody meat.
She began salivating at the thought, great gobbets of drool dripping onto the clean tiled floor. She wiped it off her chin with the back of her hand and pulled out the twelve-ounce fillet she’d bought the previous day. There had been no time to eat before heading to the gallery. The cellophane sliced cleanly under her fingernail and she pulled the meat out with her fingers, sniffed it and deemed it fresh enough.
She tore bites out of the steak, pressing the chunks against the roof of her mouth with her tongue to squeeze thin rivulets of blood down her throat. It was gone in moments, leaving her fingers stained red. She licked them, savoring the salt.
Felicia stopped as a wave of nausea pulsed through her. Her stomach convulsed and she bent double as the rapidly consumed meat came up again, splashing in garish crimson against the white stoneware tiles. Lumps of half-chewed meat showed pink against the red, and she staggered to the sink to get a drink of water.
She downed the whole glass, her attention focused on the calendar pinned to the wall then looked back at the kitchen floor. Her pool of vomit looked like a piece of post-modern expressionism and she wondered if she should document it as fine art. If she pretended it was from a hitherto unknown artist Joseph Klein would probably lap it up. She shuddered. Perhaps that was the wrong turn of phrase.
Instead, she cleaned up the mess with kitchen towels and a spray gun of cleaning fluid, sealed the whole bundle of blood and towels in a plastic bag and dropped it in the bin. She checked herself in the hall mirror. Despite her morning troubles, she’d managed to avoid splashing her suit.
She tidied her hair, tucked a stray strand back into her French plait and went to work.
The journey was interesting. Felicia’s altered sight made her less safe than usual, especially as she found herself continually distracted. Every pedestrian crossing and traffic light gave her something unexpected upon which to focus her attention.
At one point her mouth flooded with saliva and she caught a line of spittle on the back of her hand before realizing she had just passed a small piece of common land where goats grazed. Puzzled, she shook her head, and drove on.
Her nostrils flared when she stopped at the roundabout at the bottom of the high street. Here was fresh blood, an intoxicating scent she was certain everyone could smell. She looked up and down the street, but no one else seemed to be taking any notice. Unless she was wearing a very clever mask, the woman from whom the scent came didn’t seem to be in any distress and Felicia realized she was experiencing menstruation.
Felicia closed her eyes while the traffic was stationary. What was happening to her? Not that she was complaining. Her eyesight had improved and her sense of smell had heightened. The only drawback she had found so far seemed to be her desire for red meat and the change of color in her eyes.
She pulled down the sun visor and checked her face. Her eyes were still the same hazy blue they had been this morning. When she looked again, the menstruating woman stared at her with a half-smile. If nothing else, her obvious attention had made the woman’s day. She grinned back and waved, driving on when the roundabout cleared.
She stopped again at the pedestrian crossing to allow an old lady passage. The woman was oblivious to Felicia and would probably have crossed heedless of the traffic, inviting seriously injury. The woman’s slow gait didn’t annoy Felicia at all, so good was her mood, but she frowned at the blare of horns behind her, her gaze flicking to the rearview mirror to see the man behind shaking his fist. She looked forward again. The woman was nowhere in sight.
Felicia frowned. There was no chance she’d walked away that fast. She’d have to have sprinted five hundred yards to be out of sight and her tortoise shuffle denied such a turn of speed. She shook her head at the puzzle and drove on.
At the back of the gallery, Felicia parked her Audi next to Harold’s racing green minivan. She unlocked the back door of the gallery, slightly envious of the modern technology that guarded Alexandrian Books: a digital key pad and glowing alarm system, the latter currently inactive since he was already inside.
She checked her watch to ensure she had the time to spare and knocked on the connecting door. She tried the handle and the door opened. The bookshop was deserted, but she could hear voices in the kitchen.
Chapter 6
Felicia could see the back of Harold’s head as she closed the connecting door and headed toward the kitchen. The building had been a private house before the town center had swallowed and surrounded it with offices and estate agents, leaving the building abandoned for years before Harold had obtained the lease. Now the large Victorian kitchen at the back of the shop was the hub of the building and the room where Harold could generally be found. Felicia rapped on the door frame. “Harold?”
He scraped the chair away from the table and turned. “Felicia! Good morning. Would you like a coffee?”
Felicia smiled and headed toward him. “That would be lovely, thanks. I open in fifteen minutes, though.”
“That’s all right. There’s one already made.” He stood to pull out a chair for her at the big pine table. Harold spent so much time and did so much business in the kitchen that it was furnished better than Felicia’s flat. Every appliance imaginable nestled among the cupboards and shelves, and a huge window overlooked the back of the estate agent’s next door. He’d planted a window box just outside it, filled with herbs.
“Thanks.” Felicia sat before she realized a coffee was already there. “Is this someone’s seat?”
“No, that’s for you.” Harold grinned. “I saw you arrive on the CCTV.”
“I heard voices, though. Is Mr. Jasfoup here?”
“Jasfoup? No. It’s a bit early for him. I expect you heard the radio.”
Felicia didn’t mention there wasn’t a radio.
“Try your coffee.” Harold poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the table. “It’s a new blend Jasfoup picked up in Arabia.” He indicated a carton on the counter.
“Really?” Felicia took a sip. “It’s good. He’s been to Arabia, has he? Is that his homeland?”
“I don’t think so.” Harold added sugar to his tea. “Jasfoup travels a lot finding us rare books.”
“I didn’t realize your business was so profitable. I would never have expected books to generate the sort of income that could keep a man traveling the world.”
“Well.” Harold coughed. “They are rare and antique books.”
“Still...” Felicia put her cup down and crossed her legs. “It’s profitable.”
“I am a man of mysterious means. What can I do for you, anyway?”
“I wondered if you and Mr. Jasfoup would take a sculpture back to my flat for me in your van. It’s a job for the boys, really, as it’s too big for my car.”
“Happy to help.” Harold smiled. “Shall we say five o’clock?”
“That would be...” Felicia stared at the box next to the sink. She could hear a skittering, as of sharp nails against the cardboard. “
Shh
.” A spiky, pointed head appeared at the side. “Harold! There’s a bloody rat in your kitchen.”
“A rat?” Harold looked around. “I very much doubt it.”
“Damn. You startled it.” Felicia craned her neck. “It was in the cardboard box. It was a huge one with a long tail and everything.”