Boots. There were boots tucked under her bed that were not her own. How long had it been since that had happened last? Years, certainly. Not since Yan, Yan the beautiful, Yan with a body that made her itch to sketch, Yan who was no more. 

She stayed where Jax had laid her until he slipped out with the boy. She winced at the distant laughter that rode in the wind and it occurred to her that she was mad, or perhaps the toxins in her were making her hallucinate. But then she’d heard the voices, the laughter before she’d been bit. She shook off that thought. Madness brought on by fever and poison was a much more comfortable state of being than hearing actual voices in the storm. And with a delightfully stubborn application of will, it was so. Done, the idea fixed irrefutably in her head. She was hallucinating, there was nothing in the storm.

She sat up and let the room swim around her for a moment, even with eyes closed it spun. Jax would deliver the boy somewhere, back to his Mama, no back to his aunt or just somewhere and then he would come back and she would accept the help she needed and then they could talk about boots, or not talk. Just something.

What did she want? She opened her eyes and looked down at the boots, the two pairs standing side by side, Jax’s worn, thick broad boots looked strangely comfortable next to her own, high spit-shined boots. She groaned because she liked how they looked together very well and that was asking for trouble she did not need. Jax’s smile told her from the get-go that he was trouble. His smile had been honest about that. It was broad and bright and it had promised untold damage to her insides. She had stayed away and kept guarded, warned off by that smile. It hadn’t mattered because with the smile came that chest, that body. Made by heaven to be her absolute weakness. It came at a time when she was weak, when she needed and she was so tired of everything. But mostly she was tired of being so tight, so alone. She stumbled to her table, intent on getting medical supplies but instead found her book with its sketches and her shame contained between the covers. She opened it, with trembling fingers and let her fingers trace over the charcoal representation of all that she wanted and all that she shouldn’t take. 

He just wanted her body, didn’t he? That was simple enough, maybe she could give him just that? Her heart need not be part of the picture. The window over her bed burst open in a sudden rush as it was buffeted by the laughing wind that roared into her cabin and mocked her. She closed the book but not before drops of rain hit the page like tears, puckering and marring the paper. It would dry but it would never be as it was. 

She stumbled and slammed the window shut, ignoring the laughter that still seemed to fill the cabin. Hallucination, she told herself. You are ill and hearing things. But the door opening wasn’t an illusion, it was very real. And the sound of booted feet slipping into the cabin wasn’t imaginary. 

“Jax.” She breathed and knew that she could tell herself her heart was out of the picture but that it was a lie. It was shredded already and it would be pulverized by the end no doubt. But still she would do what she wanted and dreaded because his boots looked so right next to hers. She would take what she could get for as long as she could have it. Without turning she let her trembling fingers fumble with the buttons of the shirt she would not remove when Luc was there and then, laughing at her care of the ruined garment simply ripped it off in spite of the pain. It fell to the ground and the full extent of the wound in her shoulder was barred. A bit of Nicki was gone, there would be a puckered scar across her shoulder but not one overly large. A larger area was shredded but intact, the hooked teeth of the siren having left quite a mess in her flesh, but the angry red area all around it was by far more troubling than the wound. That was infection setting in. 
“Sing to me?” said a voice that was not Jax.

She whirled, her hands coming up to cover the edges of her bodice, her eyes widening in surprise. Mr. Davenport, his eyes mad, his face a strange grey, puffy and waxy, stood swaying in the doorway, the laughing storm rushing past him making her shiver.
 
“Sing to me, beautiful one. Take me with you down to the depths.”