Currency in Flesh

Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

F ive Years Ago

The symphony’s crescendo surrounded me just as the sun dipped below the horizon. Sean stood at the back of the open amphitheater, on his phone as usual. It was nice, actually, being able to enjoy this without his looming presence. This month had been a bad one—I tried not to glance at where a bruise peeked out from the hem of my sleeve—but here, surrounded by stunning sounds and a brilliant California sunset, I felt like it might be okay.

I spared a covert glance at Sean, hoping to see a face marked by something other than anger. The set of his jaw and the angle of his dark eyebrows relieved me of that hope. Maybe, I could ply him with lingerie and an old fashioned when we got home. More likely, however, we would fight and I would have to decide whether I’d rather say no to him and deal with the aftermath, or give in and cope with my own sense of failure.

When it was a friend of mine, I seemed to always understand. Leaving is difficult. Abuse doesn’t happen suddenly—it’ s insidious and develops over time. We can fix them. But now that it was me suffering, it felt like weakness. I hated every second I spent doubting myself, but other than with one of us in a coffin, I couldn’t imagine a way to escape. Was this how it would always be? I was so tired.

Sean didn’t bother returning to his seat when his call ended, just texted me that we were leaving. He’d driven the Bentley here, so it took me a moment to find it in the sea of black cars, and by the time I slid into the passenger seat he was already seething. He didn’t say a word on the drive, and I didn’t know whether it was good, or a harbinger of an evening of pain. I followed a few paces behind as he stalked toward the house, hesitating only slightly when he flung the door open. I didn’t expect to be thrown against the wall and it happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to react. Caged by his arms on either side of my head, I could only look up at him with eyes that rarely cried anymore.

“Are you fucking pregnant?” he asked. It sounded more like a threat than a question.

“No?” He had caught me off guard and I answered honestly. My period hadn’t come in a few months, but I was used to it. My periods had been like that my entire life—my OB said I likely didn’t ovulate as a result of PCOS. But I took a test each month if I didn’t know for certain, and this month’s had been negative. Like all the others before it.

“You didn’t have a drink at the concert and you’ve gained more weight,” he sneered.

I glanced down at myself. I’d felt confident, but I couldn’t help but view myself through his eyes. It would never matter to him that time had passed, and that he, too, had grown older. It was my job as a wife to remain attractive, after all.

He pushed off the wall and walked away, slamming the door to his office while I leaned against the wall and cried. I hated him, wanted him to disappear. I could do that.

Lady Cora sat beside me on the bed. I didn’t recall falling asleep, but when I opened my eyes to see her reading a book with an expression of bored indifference.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She glanced down, seeming to not have realized I was awake. “I was hoping your rest would show you some things that I feel you should know.”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what that means,” I replied. “Can you see my dreams?”

Lady Cora rolled her eyes, the vibrant green disappearing momentarily below her lids. “I do not know how else to communicate that in my domain, I am omnipotent. I either control or am privy to anything which occurs in the Underworld.”

I sat up, pulling the sheet up over my mostly bare body. I was clothed in a silk nightie I also had no recollection of donning. “I guess you know, then, that I dreamt about Sean again.”

“I thought it might be important to remind you of how he treated you.”

“Have you been controlling all of my dreams?” It felt like a violation. Not even my sleeping mind was my own. “Do I truly have no freedom here?”

“You have many freedoms, you have simply chosen not to take advantage of them.” Her lips tipped up in an amused smile.

Ignoring her, I continued. “I don’t need help remembering how shitty my life was.”

She raised one sharply angled eyebrow. “And what of the things you were not aware of?”

“What could it possibly change?” I asked. But my stomach twisted, and a sense of dread washed over me. What more had Sean done? I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.

“I will make you a bargain,” Lady Cora said, and my eyes snapped to her. Until now, everything she said always seemed like a command. A deal was an interesting proposition.

“What are your terms? And what do I stand to gain if I agree?”

“I will show you one more dream. If, afterward, you still do not want to personally seek retribution, I will not ask you again.”

My eyebrows drew together. “That doesn’t sound like a bargain. If I say no, you can still do it anyway—and there is no benefit on my end either way. Do you know what a bargain is?”

The light in the room flickered, going completely black for a breath. The darkness was absolute, like my eyes had stopped working. It was possible they had. After all, I was essentially dead and Lady Cora controlled whatever remained of my existence. I could have sworn her eyes glowed brighter when she fixed them upon me with a fearsomeness I had not seen directed at me yet. I’d made her angry.

“Perhaps you have forgotten why you are here,” she bit out. “Your husband made a bargain with me, which cost you everything. I feel as though I have been quite generous. You are not rotting in the pit, no eagle consumes your liver every evening, and you seem rather well-kept comparatively. Would you prefer to join him? It can easily be arranged.”

The air in the room heated so suddenly that my eyes were forced shut and I thought the hair on my arms would be singed. Without looking, I reached out a trembling hand and found the smooth skin of Lady Cora’s thigh. The moment my fingertips touched her warm flesh, the temperature began to drop. By the time her hand settled atop mine, I had opened my eyes. There was a fleeting pinch to the set of her face, but it vanished as quickly as it came, and she tossed her hair over her shoulder imperiously. It was as close to an apology or an admittance of losing control as I thought I’d get.

“Apologies, Lady Cora,” I said, dropping my gaze to my lap.

“In the spirit of my continued generosity,” she began, “in the event you choose to agree—I will grant you one request within reason.”

My voice came out incredulous. “Anything?”

“Within reason.”

I couldn’t help but watch how the tip of her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth as she finished the word. The physical pull I felt towards her was as overwhelming as it was shameful. Yet, I knew now that she spoke true when she said she was in control of everything down here. Who could say she hadn’t manipulated my own body against me? My heartbeat quickened with the thought.

My mind flipped through each of our encounters like frames in a reel of film. Each time, my body itself had reacted to her long before I’d had a chance to even understand our interaction. She’d chained me, struck me, made me lick her fucking feet. There was absolutely no logical reason I should feel even the slightest attraction to her. I had never been with a woman before outside of a drunken threesome, never wanted to. So this, the way I found myself in a constant state of arousal when she was near…

I shook my head slightly, attempting to dislodge the many thoughts that clouded my brain. “And all you want me to do is agree to let you show me one more thing about Sean?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand what you get from that,” I said.

“I am not required to explain myself, pet. I have made my offer.”

It seemed like a trick of some kind, and I was wary of agreeing. There was a fucking song about making a deal with the devil, and it had never seemed to work out for anyone in movies or TV shows, either. But she could invade my dreams regardless—why not potentially benefit from it at the same time?

“All right,” I replied, taking a deep breath. Her answering smile held a feral edge and I couldn’t tell if she was more excited to show me something terrible, or simply to have gotten me to agree to her terms.

She reached out and ran one long nail across my jaw and I was struck by an intense and immediate need to lie down. As my head hit the pillow she leaned down over me and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Sleep.”

I opened my eyes to the sight of my kitchen. It had to have been a few years prior—the tile was missing the chip near the fridge from when Sean had thrown the espresso machine. Looking around, I noticed my reflection didn’t show in the shining steel of the appliances or the glass front of the microwave. I walked through the kitchen, letting my fingers drift over the countertop I knew I’d never touch again. As much as I resented this room, it had become a sort of sanctuary. I’d spent so many nights hiding from his anger behind these counters.

Sean walked into the room, and I froze. The terror that clutched my heart had glacial fingers, and it squeezed with a power I had never possessed. I opened my mouth to say something, to explain why I stood here in a silk nightgown and no shoes in the middle of the day, but he stepped past me without even glancing my way. A thin breath escaped my lips, and I prayed to the universe that he didn’t hear. But a moment later, his broad shoulders turned, and he began to stalk toward me. I couldn’t move. Pressed against the pale marble, I trembled, and it wasn’t until he walked directly through me that I truly understood I did not exist in his reality.

This is a memory, nothing more, I reminded myself over and over. It became a mantra, a tangible thing to grasp in the roiling sea of my fear. And as soon as it sank in and settled, I stood taller and strode across the kitchen. Sean stood next to the wine fridge, and reached up to a cabinet far too high for me to have reached without a stepstool. He pulled out something small and I couldn’t see it in the span of his palm. Drawing closer, cautious even knowing he couldn’t see me, I tried to get a better look.

It was a pink circle of plastic, about three inches wide, and he opened it with his thumb. When I saw what sat within, I bent slightly at the waist as though struck. I recognized the circle of small pills, knew precisely what they were. I leaned in further, trying to see the name on the label, hoping it wouldn’t say what I knew in my heart it would.

Grace Schafer, 9/8/89, Progesterone 75mg.

With a profound sense of detachment I watched as he removed the pill, crushed it, and sprinkled the powder into a wine glass. I remembered this night—the genuine shock and odd hope it brought to see him carry in two glasses and hand me one. Is this progress? I remember thinking. Is this his way of showing love? And now I knew. I knew why every pregnancy test came up negative, no matter what my doctors were telling me. I knew why my periods came late sometimes even when I was certain my hormones had leveled out. I knew why I had gained weight. I knew the true betrayal of my husband.

I was crying before I even regained coherence, silent tears streaming down my cheeks as my shoulders shook softly. Lady Cora was still seated beside me, but I swear she was a few inches closer than she had been before my dream. I couldn’t meet her eyes. The crushing weight of what she had shown me kept my head pressed down, my gaze on my lap, watching as my tears struck the sheet and spread into tiny damp circles.

I regained composure slowly, but Lady Cora remained silent throughout, whether out of respect or disdain I didn’t know. I looked up at her and in her eyes I found a spark that lit my own flame. Every bit of sadness shifted in the span of a single blink. All my sorrow and feelings of betrayal, my lost hopes and my shattered dreams exploded in a rush of flame that would have burned me down to bone. When I spoke, my voice was strong and low—bubbling over with rage.

“Take me to him.”