Without a Shadow - Julie Steimle (best books under 200 pages .txt) 📗

table for the tip, and then strode across the sidewalk to leave. The imp followed me, throwing his hands behind his back and sticking his face next to mine with a horrid snicker. “And the freakish beast runs. Run along, you little vimp. Run back to daddy to see what he is up to.”

My pace halted. I reached out with a grab, digging with my fingernails into his shirt. His clothes were insubstantial in my hands, but his face was white with shock that I could touch him at all. With a jerk, I clenched him, shook him, and dropped him on the ground. “Leave me alone!”

I had no idea I had cleared the deli walkway with that act until it was over. People screamed and ran from me, staring not just at me but also at the man that was blinking on the ground in horror at being visible to the world. Clicking my heels, I smiled and bowed to him. “Now get lost.”

I did not stay to see what happened after. Despite all the evil intentions the imp had, I really did want to see what Miss Adams was up to—and more importantly, to see if my father really did return her advances.

The dental office was on the second floor. I knew I would be spotted if I went through the main doors. So, I walked around the block past Mrs. Mahone’s Bakery and Danae’s Floral Place, and slipped into the barren alleyway that allowed access to the service entrance. Stretching my back muscles, my wings broke out from behind my shoulder blades. Unfortunately, I tore my shirt in the process. With one flap, I lifted myself up into the air, hovering near the second floor.

Gliding to the windows was easy. Keeping aloft was hard. I had to flap and flap to remain stationary, and that was tiring—like treading water. I found it easier to stay up by standing on the window ledge below and peer inside. The first room was vacant. The second was empty. The third had Miss Connors, my father’s other dental assistant, her head bent as she cleaned a patient’s teeth. I flew back to the empty room and tried to open the window.

The door flew open, the light from the hall shining in. I pulled back, flapping to keep in the air as I watched my father step into the room, reaching for the light switch. Before he could flip it on Miss Adams threw her arms around him, planting a wet slobbery kiss on his lips. “I knew you would come. Lock the door and we can be alone.”

A horrid sinking feeling filled my stomach. I also sank as I could no longer flap my wings.

“Alone? So this is why Eve was so upset.” My father’s voice answered distantly.

I made one more powerful flap and grabbed the windowsill to hang on, listening intently.

“Oh, why bring that up? Look at me. Touch me. Can’t you tell that I want you?”

I felt like vomiting. My fingers got sore just clinging there. I flapped my wings once more for a lift and peeked in for another look. My father stared at the ceiling with slumped shoulders. “Miss Adams…”

“Call me Madeline.”

I gagged.

“Let go of me. I am a married man.”

My wings flapped again. I floated higher. The woman was now tugging at his shirt buttons.

“You must be tired of living with such a frumpy old bag—”

My fingernails scratched against the brick. They shoved under the crack between the window and the sill.

“My wife is not an old bag.”

“An old nag then.”

I slid the window up, sick of watching anymore. Both my father and the woman turned when I climbed in. She shrieked. He stared.

I think I would never try that again. The lady just about collapsed, scrambling to get away from me, tripping over everything between her and the door. My father just stood there, still staring at me as my wings contracted into my back. Miss Adams elbowed my father in the chest and then near his eye. She tore out of the room, tripping on her own heels, breaking one when she skidded on the carpet with a lurch.

My father peered out the door once at her and then leaned back in. He turned to me and said, “So that’s how you got in your bedroom window last night. And I thought Mr. McDillan was making up stories about you.”

I winced, shrugging my shoulders.

He walked over to me, placing a hand on my back to check if my wings were still sticking out. He then took off his white coat and placed it over my shoulders, buttoning it up. “I think we had better invest in backless shirts from now on. Hmm?”

I smiled, blushing hotly.

I could hear him sigh. “Oh, Eve. Your teeth. They’re long again.”

 

The Family Joke

 

Though I spent that afternoon waiting for the filing down once more, in the end we never did it. My father had too many appointments to take care of, and when we went home at five he just tilted my chin with a shrug, saying, “I guess they’re just going to stay long this time, huh?”

There was no point in answering.

Dawn and Mom were shouting at each other when we walked through the door.

“But Eve has wings coming out of her back! That is loads more creepy than me wearing this!” Dawn turned and saw me. She was flushed red in the face, holding a plastic pitchfork in her hands. Obviously she had replaced her angel costume was with a sexy red devil one that sparkled. She even had a headband with horns on her head.

“Well, Eve can’t help what’s happening to her! You can!” My mother shouted back. She blinked at my father, then saw me. I grew red in the face.

“Hello, dear,” my father said, kissing her on the cheek.

My mother cast me a sympathetic glance as she leaned in to the kiss. I tried to look the other way.

“Show them to her!” Dawn stomped her foot, shouting at me. “Tell her you want to be something scary for Halloween this year!”

I lifted my head and blinked at my mother. I guess hearing about the wings didn’t faze her as much as I had thought.

With a shrug I said, “Mom, Dawn’s right. I want to be a black cat this year, which you know.”

My dad shook his head then walked between us to the kitchen, saying nothing. This was my mother’s territory. I knew he would stick with what she decided.

My mother frowned at me. Taking hold of my arms, almost ready for an embrace, my mother looked me in the eye. “Eve, honey, I think you know that would not be a good idea. Two people already saw you with wings, and we don’t want to give anyone an excuse to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” I pulled back a pace. “Who would hurt me?”

“If they thought you were some kind of monster…” my father put in with a grim sigh as he stood in the kitchen doorway.

My mother nodded in agreement, glancing back at him. “Which is a problem we have faced several times before….”

This, I hadn’t known. I stared at them.

“Then they might start hiring that old vampire hunter to go after you again. That’s why Mr. McDillan came to this town in the first place,” my father said.

I took another backward step towards the wall, glancing once at Dawn, who looked at me shamefacedly. Her eyes revealed that she had known about it for a while, and she was actually sorry. Apparently it had been a big secret they all had kept from me.

“Then how come—?” I started to ask, but my mother cut me off.

“We got a court order from the county. And in return we had to promise you would not bite anyone,” she said.

Feeling my wonderful perfect life melt into a sticky puddle of goo, I dropped in a slump against the wall. “Have I ever bitten anyone?”

“Once,” my father said with a shrug.

“Or twice,” my sister put in with a cough. My mother and father stared at her. She shook her head and snapped, “Oh come on. Don’t you remember? She bit the dog all the time. And what about when she hissed at Mrs. Davish at your social club?”

“That wasn’t biting,” my mother retorted, but even I remembered that instance. Mrs. Davish was a puffed-up snotty lady with a little yipping Scottish terrier who also happened to be the chairwoman of the local women’s club. I had gone to the Ladies’ Aid Sweetness Society (LASS for short) with my mother and Dawn for Easter brunch. I was ten. Our neighbor, Mrs. Macullah, introduced us to the woman, and I saw that Mrs. Davish was sneering at my mother’s modest dress. It wasn’t Dior, apparently. Then she had taken one look at me, blinking with her false eyelashes and pressing her red lined lips together as she seemed be trying to think of something witty to say. She had made some remark about how adorable Dawn was, but said with pity dripping from her voice, “What an unusual child. Wherever did you find her? How generous of you to adopt such a poor creature.” That was when I hissed. I had been still smarting from being called a monster at school. Mrs. Davish had jumped back from me, just as my mother pulled me away from the woman. Yes, I suppose I might have bit her then if I had not already promised not to.

Dawn huffed at my mother. “That’s not the point. You never had to grow up with people telling you your sister was a devil monster.”

Bile filled my mouth, rising from my stomach. Dawn had never talked this way before, but her bitterness was strong enough to taste. That sensation burned into my chest, making my hands feel cold.

“I have had to live with the ridicule because they didn’t dare call Eve that to her face. They’re too scared of her. Why else do you think that only Plain Jane is her friend?” Dawn started shouting again, letting out what I could see was years of frustration. Her imps did not even coax her to say stuff. In fact, they were staring at her as if they were not having any fun at all and wouldn’t until she was done. “And you two keep pretending for Eve that things are all hunky-dory so that she won’t know the whole town has been asking you for years to dump her off in a home out of town.”

That was it. At last I knew how she really felt about me.

My wings tore through the back of my father’s white dentist’s coat. I hovered in the air with a flap and a small hop to the carpet, shaking all over. Spinning on the ball of my foot, I turned and grabbed the doorknob with a twist and jerk. 

“Eve!” my mother shouted as I ran out the door. I heard her voice echo below me as I launched upward with large deep swooping flaps rising up into the blue sky that beckoned over the rooftops. I glanced down and saw Jane staring up at me from under the brim of a tall colorful witch’s hat.