Shadow’s Edge

“The rib eye,” she said, pointing through the glass case.

“Filet’s on sale,” he said, listless. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice filet?”

Yes, she would. But she couldn’t afford it.

“Thanks, but the rib eye’s fine.” Along with the salad fixings and bottle of cabernet already in her basket, it would make a nice dinner. She normally ate her meals at work—standing up—but tonight she was off and treating herself.

Moving as if underwater, the butcher wrapped the steak in waxed paper and handed it back over the counter. “Don’t overcook it; it just needs four minutes on each side.”

She wasn’t going to cook it at all, but didn’t think he needed that particular bit of information. “Great. Thanks again.”

He gave her a wink and a lazy smile that bordered on bedroom.

And that’s when it happened.

At first, it was only a slight hot sting, an odd, tangible shock that seemed to come from nowhere—yet everywhere—around her. The concussion of heat twitched her hand so sharply she nearly dropped her handbag. Startled, she glanced at her hand and watched as a rash of goose bumps covered her arm. Then the strange, heated shock rose, vibrating, pressing in toward her core. It was so molten, so intense, she felt as if she might actually be burned by it.

Carefully, moving only her eyes, she glanced around.

Nothing.

Please tell me the butcher isn’t giving me hot flashes, she thought, glancing back at him, giving him a closer look. He was still sweating, still smiling, at least twenty years older than she. His thick forearms rested on top of the meat case like two slabs of hairy, tattooed rejects from the refrigerated display below.

No. Definitely not the butcher.

She glanced around again and caught the eye of a tall, silver-haired gentleman standing beside his nattering wife in front of the nearby wine display. He was staring at her in the way she was accustomed to being stared at by men, but no, it wasn’t him either.

Who—or what—was it?

And then a terrifying memory surfaced, one that made the goose bumps on her arms spread up to her neck.

If they ever find you...run.

They were her mother’s words, a litany repeated daily until she died. An unexplained litany and one that left her with a permanent case of paranoia and a suspicion of strang-ers so profound she was never truly able to make friends.

She reminded herself that her mother had said a lot of strange things she didn’t understand—and she drank a lot. “You’re just hungry,” she muttered to herself, earning a lifted eyebrow from the sweaty butcher. “You’re hungry and probably overtired, and it’s about a thousand degrees in here. Get a grip.”

She headed to the front of the store and entered the express checkout line, behind a man so fat she didn’t think he would be able to squeeze through the aisle without ravaging the magazine and candy display racks on either side. She unloaded her cart onto the crawling conveyor belt, then turned and opened the large refrigerated case of drinks that stood between her aisle and the next checkout lane. She chose a soda because there wasn’t any milk—whole milk—her second favorite food to steak.

And when she closed the door and turned back, suddenly the very air itself seemed different. Charged somehow, with a heaviness that ate straight down through her bones.

For the second time, a sudden jolt of static electricity spiked the hair on her arms and the back of her neck, sending a shock of awareness through her core as if she’d been lanced with a spear of fire. She gasped and stiffened, earning a lethargic stare from the giant man in line in front of her. An eerie recognition pulsed over her skin.

I see you, the pulse whispered inside her. I know what you are.

She shuddered. Her fingers spasmed so tightly around the plastic soda bottle it split and crumpled in her fist. A fine spray of Pepsi shot out, fizzing out in a cold burst over her wrist and fingers, coating the nearby rack of magazines and gum.

“You OK?” the boyishly handsome cashier said, glancing at the ruined plastic bottle in her hand. He frowned, casting a shadow over his clear blue eyes. “That’s quite the grip you’ve got.”

“I’m sure it just had a crack,” she said through stiff lips. “Dropped during shipping, something like that.”

All the blood had drained from her face. The giant man was gazing at her steadily now, inspecting her pale face and shaking hands from beneath two unruly eyebrows that perched like hairy caterpillars on his forehead. The soda dripped into a fizzing pool on the beige linoleum floor.

The cashier pressed a button and spoke into a mike that squealed with feedback over the PA system. “Clean up on checkout five.”

She inched forward, stepping carefully in her white strappy sandals around the dark, spreading mess of soda, which looked eerily like a pool of blood coagulating at her feet. The feeling of imminent danger was so acute that she had to fight the pressing urge to run.

So because the giant man had turned his back again and the cashier was now distracted with counting out change, because none of the other shoppers in line behind her could know what she was doing, she closed her eyes and opened her senses, pushing her awareness out like an ever-widening bubble in swift, concentric rings to encompass everything around her.

The low drone of air-conditioning whispering through steel vents high overhead. The faint squeak of shoe soles against linoleum; the even fainter creak of leather. The muffled chink of coins jiggling in a pants pocket somewhere near the back of the store. An argument in the deli section—you never let me have what I want, not even at the fucking grocery store—hissed low through clenched teeth. Someone’s gaze on the backs of her bare legs, heated and heavy. But not dangerous. Nothing dangerous, not yet.

She pulled in a slow, deep breath through her nose, letting in the overwhelming sensory world she’d learned so long ago to shut out.

And there—there it was.

Animal. Hungry animal. A predator—and a large one at that.

Her eyes flew open. Her heart began to hammer. Every nerve in her body screamed Danger! Disappear! Run!

But she couldn’t run. She was frozen. Hands shaking, heart pounding, every muscle fixed.

“Let’s get you another soda,” the cashier said, smiling warmly at her.

She was unable to answer or even move her arm to hand him the ruined bottle. She lifted her gaze to his face and he did an immediate double take.

“Wow! Your eyes are amazing! I’ve never seen that shade of green. Or...yellow? It’s so unusual. They’re beautiful.”

“Contacts,” she lied, one of many little white lies she told about herself to mask the truth.

The blaze of fear and fever hit her again, electric and stabbing, like a knife in the gut. She had to grit her teeth against a sudden, wrenching light-headedness. The cashier saw something on her face that made him blink, his brows drawn together. She dropped the ruined plastic bottle on the conveyor belt, stammering excuses.

“I think—I don’t really need another soda. In fact, I’m going to leave everything. I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. I...I have to go.”

“You’re sure? It won’t be any trouble, it’ll just take a sec. I’ll get one from the fridge at the customer service desk, it’s right over there—”

But Jenna had already turned away. She began to push past the giant man, but he was wedged so securely between the counter and the large refrigerated case of drinks there was no way to get past him, and there were ten people in line behind her, pressing close. She was trapped.

So because she was panicked and had no other option, she did something she never allowed herself to do and used her strength.

All of it. In front of everyone.