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“What happened?” I whispered as we stepped inside the brightly lit store, where a clerk came up to us.
Lucy spoke, waving her hand at a whole section of racks, all of them with names of designer brands attached. Their eyes went wide, but they just nodded. Another clerk came forward to usher us to two large purple velvet chairs.
“We’ll start with heels,” she said, already taking off her ankle boots.
Nodding, I sat down to do the same.
When they started to bring over boxes, Lucy sat on the edge of her seat and picked one. “It wasn’t horrid or overly dramatic. It’s actually very pitiful.”
“What wasn’t?”
“My death,” she said to me, and I glanced to the clerks who were watching our feet at the ready. “I locked up for work like every other day. The Depression was hitting. It wasn’t raining, but it was a bit windy, so I held on to my jacket. And as I walked home, I crossed the street, and I was hit by a car—light, tiny me went flying. There was no ambulance in our part of town then. Most of them thought I had died on impact, but I was alive just barely. A kind man offered to take my body to the morgue…You are not trying on shoes Druella.”
The speed in which she switched tops left me so stunned, a
ll I could do was pick up a box, which was a nine and a half. How she or they knew, I wasn’t sure, but I pulled out the stilts they called heels. “Am I supposed to walk in these our use them as a weapon?”
“I’ve seen you walk in heels before.”
“Nothing over three and half inches or else I feel like an amazon.” I laughed but took off my shoes and tired them on, following her conversation. “Was it Taelon that saved you?”
“No, it was actually my boss.” She lifted her foot to twist it from side to side. “I also joked that he could be a model. He was just too handsome to be a restaurant owner. I even told him to go back to China to make it. However, he loved California. He still loves California and lives there working at that same damn Chinese restaurant. He’s the real Mr. Ming.”
“So, he changed you? Without asking?” I whispered.
“He knew me,” she replied, looking to me. “He knew I didn’t want to die. Not like that. Not some sad woman no one would remember, who thought she could be more and ended up like the rest.”
“But now as a Lesser blood.”
“It is no worse than being a Korean immigrant in California, during the beginning of the Great Depression.” She nodded to the clerks for the shoes on our feet.
“At least I understand why Lesser bloods are treated as we are. It took a lot of time and effort between my father and me. He’s a Lesser blood, too. I think it’s because he cared about me, plus the years of control he battled with that I didn’t give into drinking from me. He taught me how to ration myself, to fight the thirst, and how to be around humans—how to exist. I stayed there, working in that restaurant. Then one day, ten years after my rebirth, Taelon Swan came in to do a census. My father called me out of the back kitchen to meet the president’s son.” She smirked to herself, clearly enjoying the memory.
“And?” I leaned in when she stopped talking.
She shrugged, looking really happy for the first time. “I just said hi, and he said hi…then he just kept coming to the restaurant to work.”
“He just sat there and worked?”
“It was so damn annoying. The fourth day he came in, I walked over with my coffee pot in hand and said, ‘You are being strange. If it is on my account, stop it, and merely say you like me.’”
Of course, she would. “And let me guess he just said, “I like you.”
“Yep.”
“Just like that?”
“I liked him. He liked me. I’m not like you. I do not like to play with my men before—”
“Hey!” I gasped. “I’m not playing with anyone.”
She rolled her eyes so hard I was surprised they didn’t fall out of her head. “Yeah, so you just let him kiss your hand and hang all over you for no reason?”
I picked up another box of shoes.
“I thought so. You like him, obviously, so let us go find a pretty silk dress for him to take off of you.”
“Lucy!”
