A/N: A story idea that was floating around in my head. This story involves Eve in a romantic relationship with an original female character, so don't read if you're in any way opposed to that idea. Eve and Mirella just wound up meeting each other without me thinking about it or planning it, and I delayed posting this because I wanted to portray their relationship in a way that was natural, respectful, and true to both women. Constructive Criticism is welcome. This can be read without reading my other story Mira.
My visual reference for Mirella is Magareth Made.
I own nothing except for Mirella and any other original characters, everything else including Eve Levine are property of Kelley Armstrong.
It was her. Dressed in a mini skirt and a black blazer. Long, chestnut, just-flat-ironed hair pooled into a loose bun to survive her commute, and a pair of drugstore sunglasses hiding a semi-permanent bitch face. After two hours, a powdered donut and half a cup of stale burnt coffee Mirella Agnello finally left her fifth floor walk up in Gravesend like she did every Tuesday to pick up an extra shift at some bar in Staten Island. I'd been casing her apartment for weeks, learning her schedule down to when she'd probably need to buy tampons again (another three weeks), and what she ate for breakfast (toasted Portuguese roll with butter from the Bodega washed down with a carton of Tropicana orange juice). Finally, I was ready to make my move.
Apparently so was Mirella, and one hour later she was pressing a wad of quilted paper towels into my hand. Oddly enough they were the type with those horrible, pixelated pastel renderings of strawberries and citrus fruits with their names translated into English and Spanish stamped onto every sheet. I frowned at them, they frowned back, and with a quick sigh she gently lifted my hand to my nose, the one that was spurting out blood faster than a jimmied open fire hydrant.
"So, I was thinking, you can make this up to me, yes?"
I mustered up all the authority I could while being muffled by a muzzle of Bounty paper towels.
"I thought you breaking my nose pretty much made us even."
"It's not broken exactly, it's really just an uncomplicated fracture."
At first I thought she was playing me. She had to be. But her face was so incredibly serious that I would've found it funny on anyone else who hadn't just assaulted me. She hoisted herself up on the kitchen counter and after a series of rattling and glasses shuffling she pulled out two porcelain espresso cups, and all but ignored me as she swept around the kitchen. Rummaging through packages coasters and sugar spoons.
"Cream, or black?"
"Excuse me?"
"For your coffee."
"Look I appreciate you letting me get away with just a broken nose-"
She raised her eyebrow and I immediately corrected myself. "An uncomplicated fracture, but I really don't want any damn coffee. I have things to do."
"Ah I see, I did also. I was going to do the laundry but then I got burglarized." She shrugged. " Plans change Eve. It's natural."
She wasn't crazy. No. Mirella Agnello was absolutely infuriating. And worst of all she had somewhat of a point.
"Give me the cream then."
She smiled. "You can wait in the living room. Be careful on the sofa, yes ?"
I stomped off to the couch wondering if I was on some type of acid trip. I hadn't expected this. It wasn't every day that I robbed a gorgeous woman and she forced me into coffee.
Her living room was soft. All whites and light blues with sage sachets in pink satin bags everywhere. Pictures on the side table showed a girl probably around Savannah's age with dark hair, bright green eyes, and Mirella's tanned, dark olive complexion. The kind that women spent hours turning orange in tanning booths trying to get. And then a younger Mirella with a coppery redhead, mother and daughter identified only by their identical smirks.
I'd been too distracted by Mirella's fist connecting with my face to notice before, but as soon as I sat down I could feel the wards in her living room. The symbols vibrating and humming from their etchings into all the doorways and window panes, and their careful placement beneath the area rugs. From where they stood as silent loyal centennials standing watch beneath the floor boards. She was the one who'd made them. I could tell. I zoomed in on it, drowning out the sound of coffee and cream being poured into cups. I focused on how it felt when she had touched my hand in the kitchen, the wards had that same beautifully golden pulse. Some witches' magic felt like static electricity, others like a slight breeze. But Mirella, her magic was like being caught between two magnets.
She set the tray down on the coffee table, and my eyes opened.
"Your wards."
She sat down next to me with her long legs crossed at the ankle.
"Mn" she pressed her lips together "I wish I could say I put them up just for you but that isn't the case."
"They're blood wards, some of them."
They were officially banned by most covens except some old sects in Europe. They required time, patience, and a skill level that most witches simply didn't have. She may have been drinking espresso with more grace than I had witnessed from any one in my life and attempting a friendly chat but I knew right then that I had dodged a bullet. Mirella was strong and she had the home team advantage. I could've been a dead woman if she wasn't so eccentric.
"They're impressive." I'd wanted to say beautiful. My eyes settled on her back-seam stockings, where the hell did you even buy those nowadays?
Her lips turned up just slightly from behind her cup, and I felt my stomach clench.
"Your coffee Eve."
I lifted it from the blue toile tray with a shaky hand. Wondering why the way she said my name made my palms sweat.
"So do you do this for everyone that breaks into your house, because that might be part of the problem you know."
It was a joke, almost, because some part of me wanted to believe that she wouldn't and I felt so incredibly foolish because of it that I could barely look her in the eye. I had been so brazen not so long ago when I had broken into her house. I was cocky and confident and my hands were dry. Yet with just a few words, a well placed uppercut, and one almost smile, she had surreptitiously undone me. That scared the shit out of me way more than the wards had.
"Well no. It's easier just to kill them usually."
I laughed. Only her eyes hinted that she had been joking. Everything about her was an undercurrent, a fantom of the gestures that most people would have. She bit her lip in a surprisingly human display of nervousness.
" I like you, Eve Levine"
It was then that I noticed. I hadn't felt this stupid, sweaty and red since, well since before I'd gotten pregnant with Savannah. Suddenly I was no longer in fear of my life, no I was absolutely petrified about what my hair looked like and if my breath smelled. Which was all ridiculous because she was a woman. I never cared what any of the conven witches thought of me and yet I was agonizing over a relative stranger. She placed her hand on my knee with no warning, no hesitation. It was just there as if this were a common occurrence between us.
"So, how are we going to call this even, Eve Levine?"
It could have been the coffee or my imagination, the blood loss from my fracture, but I could have sworn on anything that her eyes were epoxied to my mouth.
"Dinner."
She raised an eyebrow and her hand slid off my knee. She rose and waltzed over to the bookshelf where the grimoire rested in plain sight and she handed it to me.
"I-"
"Finish your coffee, there's pastries to go with your reading"
I felt ashamed. I was going to take the book from her and now I could barely bring myself to touch the gilded cover. Mirella brought her hand to rest atop mine, our fingers intertwined sprawled over the gilded calligraphy letters.
"Things happen Eve."
She stood up then and got pastries from the kitchen. I opened the book, it was entirely handwritten and beautiful with drawings on all the introductory pages. I almost lost myself in it until she sat down next to me, and leaned back into the sofa helping herself to a Napoleon.
"If you have questions...or need something to make notes?"
I nodded and stuffed half a croissant in my mouth. If she'd wanted to kill me I would've been dead by now. She let me read without any interruptions aside from her feet gliding across the floor and the sound of a record player needle being set. Blues. That Italian accent of hers seemed so at odds with Robert Johnson's guitar, the acme of Americana, that I almost didn't register her question.
"How old is your daughter?"
"Excuse me?"
She paused. "When you saw the shoes by the door you had a look on your face."
I'd almost turned back because they were red and white Converses two sizes too small to belong to a woman and I had to remind myself that no one was home. Because I felt my gut crunch at the thought of someone Savannah's age living in the apartment. That didn't mean I wanted to talk about it though.
"You know where I live Eve, where my daughter keeps her dirty shoes."
In other words we were even.
" Around the same age as the girl in the picture."
She smiled. And them something else flashed across her face. She stuffed it down, quickly, quietly, choosing her words before she spoke. ''If she was here..''
''You would've kill me.''
She nodded. I wasn't offended by her honesty or confession of a zero tolernace policy for intruders when her daughter was home. I respected it. Mirella was deadly in her own right but she was fair, an adjective I wasn't sure I could use to describe myself.
''I hope the music isn't too, mn, too much.''
''It's perfect.''
I sat there pouring over her grimoire until half my ass was asleep and she had to turn on one of the lamps next to the sofa. It was odd company, the two of us, victim and intruder reading and making notes like two teenagers studying for finals. Inbetween the spells and notes on potions I glanced at her, only long enough to catch the furrow of a brow or the scratch of a pencil. When both my feet were officially asleep curled beneath me, she walked over and sat perched on the arm of the sofa.
"Not that one, but I have one, a good grimoire you can borrow until our dinnner.''
''How do you know you can trust me?''
She shrugged. "I don't. But it's a risk I can afford to take.''
At the door she left me with a different grimoire, a sample-sized shampoo bottle filled with salve for my nose, and a goodnight Eve Levine punctuated with a hint of a smile before she closed the door.