Chapter 3

The beam of light stabbing through her closed eyelids was highly annoying.

Mel grimaced and shifted position on her narrow, back-sloping perch to get out of its range, trying to make herself comfortable. It was a lost cause. She didn't have enough room to fully stretch out, she was stiff and sore, there was a crick in her neck, her spine felt as though it had been dislocated in three separate places, and her left arm was numb from shoulder to fingertips.

And the beam of light was growing wider, brighter and stronger, holding a thin promise of warmth.

Blearily, she opened swollen, sticky-rimmed eyes, blinking, having no idea at all where she was.

A hump under her waist and hip...

A door padded with dark gray vinyl and nubby dark gray fabric...

A contoured arm rest...

A door handle...

A window, cracked open a mere fraction...

Shit.

She checked her watch. 7:13 in the early A.M.

And she'd just spent the night curled up asleep on the back seat of her SUV, her purse and one of Cole's T-shirts serving as her pillow, too far out of it to even fold the seats down and provide herself with a decent bed.

Groaning, she laboriously hauled herself up into a sitting position, gingerly massaging the circulation back into her left arm and hissing through clenched teeth at the unpleasant pins-and-needles affect.

Her car was diagonally parked by a huge mound of no-longer-even-close-to-pristine plowed snow at the far end of the parking lot of a small, utterly nondescript strip mall. Left to right was the most generic of generic drug stores Mel had ever seen; the Up, Up and Away' travel agency (its logo, of course, a big red balloon); a no-name dry cleaner/laundromat; the Hair We Are!' unisex hair salon; the Hot From the Oven' bakery; the whimsically named Dinosaur Feathers' pet shop; and a small cafe optimistically called Good Eats'.

Cute.

Not.

Just across the two-lane blacktop was an old, tired, two-pump gas station littered with stacks of over-used tires and all manner of old, tired, over-used vehicles. It's weather-worn sign simply read GAS' in faded blue capital letters, hand-painted on what was once white but was now a dirty grayish-yellow. Not an oil company name or logo anywhere in sight.

The entire area was surrounded by so many towering aspen, birch, maple, oak and pine trees that it gave the impression of having been carved out of a forest. The morning sun was just clearing the tops of the low buildings and filtering through the branches, bathing her car in its warming, very late winter / very early spring light.

Mel was positive that she'd never seen this place before in her life.

And she had no idea whether she was north, south, east or west of Chicago. When she looked over at the car's odometer and calculated that she'd driven nearly four hundred miles, she couldn't even be certain what state she was in. For all she knew, this was Canada.

How she'd managed to get herself so far was completely blurred in pain and tears.

All she remembered was disconnected flashes of getting in her car and driving, letting the roads take her wherever they may and leaving the Windy City far behind, functioning on what amounted to automatic pilot until the toll of emotional loss and physical exhaustion finally claimed her and she nodded off behind the wheel. The ominous spraying of the road shoulder's gravel against the car's undercarriage had fortunately snapped her awake before she could become intimate with a tree, and she'd pulled over at the first reasonable opportunity to present itself.

The parking lot of this dinky strip mall, a nowhere in the middle of somewhere.

With her luck, there was probably a comfy little motel she could've stayed in only a half-mile or so further down the road.

What had she been thinking, getting behind the wheel? She hadn't been in any rational condition to walk, let alone drive a car. It was a miracle she hadn't killed herself along the way. Or anyone else.

Stiffly, she clambered out of her car, flexing and stretching in the crisp, clean morning air, trying to get the kinks and cramps out.

It helped her muscles and joints, but it did nothing to alleviate the dead, hollow ache relentlessly gnawing within. Not even the mingled aromas of bacon, sausages, eggs, breads, pastries and pancakes wafting across the parking lot from the kitchens of the restaurant and the bakery could do a thing to get the juices pumping or the saliva flowing. But then, she'd been so profoundly listless and depressed these past few weeks that she hadn't really had much of an appetite – so much so that she knew she'd lost weight, could feel it in the way her clothes were fitting. Food had simply become tasteless and unappealing, as difficult to stomach as her reality.

She could really do with some coffee, though. And she certainly had to wash up. The haunted, tear-swollen face staring back at her in the rear-view mirror was a nightmare. And she absolutely hated how grungy she felt when she slept in her clothes.

Hiding her face behind her biggest, darkest pair of sunglasses and shouldering her purse, Mel began the trek across the parking lot, feeling as if she were walking under water against the current, stirring awake a dim déjà vu memory, an echo of her own mother's slow, stiff, almost dream-like movements.

There were a few more than a dozen vehicles parked at the other end of the lot, customers for the only two businesses open at this hour, the bakery and the cafe. The first car she came to had Manitoba plates; the second was from Wisconsin; the third and fourth were both from Minnesota. Then two from Ontario, another from Wisconsin, and a lone car from Iowa. The remaining seven were all from Minnesota. So were the plates on the van and the pick-up truck she noticed just pulling into the lot.

Majority rules, she thought as she opened the door to the Good Eats cafe and was hit by a warm blast of coffee-and-breakfast redolent interior air. She was probably somewhere in Minnesota.

Not that it really mattered.

**** *** **** *** ****

"Is somethin' wrong with the food, hon?"

Mel looked up from her nearly finished third cup of coffee into the concerned face of the hovering waitress and tried her best to smile at her. All she could manage was a slight twitch with one corner of her mouth.

"Um ... No, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just..." Mel glanced down at her platter. She'd only nibbled on one slice of toast, taken a bite or two of the scrambled eggs and hash browns, and hadn't even touched the bacon. She honestly couldn't say if there was anything wrong with any of it or not. Like all food lately, it just tasted like paper.

She had a brief mental image of Nestov happily chowing down on a brown paper bag, then cleared her head with an impatient shake. Her brain still wasn't functioning properly. It might never function properly again. "Guess I ... wasn't as hungry as I thought I was."

She could hear the quaver in her own voice. For no reason at all, tears were threatening to overwhelm her again. Her nostrils were clogging, the waters inexorably rising in her sinuses, even though her eyes were still almost painfully dry, raw and scratchy.

In truth, she'd ordered breakfast merely as a matter of form after making such extensive use of the restroom to wash up. And she'd felt that she needed the excuse to just sit there in an overly padded vinyl booth in an overly warm cafe surrounded by a growing throng of people. It wasn't that she wanted or needed any company; she just couldn't stand to feel so isolated and alone.

"I could zap it in the microwave for you, if you want," the waitress gently offered. "Heat it up for you? Tastes better that way."

"No. No, that's okay..." Mel thickly swallowed and slid her coffee cup across the table in the waitress' direction. "But could I have another refill, please?"

"Sure thing," she replied, pouring from the carafe-extension of her arm. "Man trouble, huh?"

"You know, you look a lot like the Cole guy in the..."

Mel shrugged noncommittally.

"I'm an energy-based being."

"Recognize the symptoms," the waitress went on. "Specially with shades like those worn indoors. Must say, though. You cleaned up real well from when you first came in. Can hardly tell anymore. Amazing what eye drops, a little makeup and a good hair brushing can do for a gal, ain't it?"

"I made me from ... picture on the road."

Mel just looked at her from over the rim of her sunglasses. Her brain was still busily disassociating on a tangent and she didn't trust herself to speak.

"I can go incognito."

The waitress patted her hand and smiled sympathetically. "It's okay, hon.... Been there, done that. Too many times. So take my word on it. Ain't a one of em worth half the pain we ever give em, not even the best of em."

"He IS a man ... isn't he?"
"He is male..."

Again, Mel forced one corner of her mouth to twitch.

... The word man', derived from the word Human', meaning Human male' ...

She'd learned the hard way that was largely true.

... The word woman', derivative of the word man', meaning man with a womb'...

Yet there had been a few notable exceptions in her life.

... Ergo, since he ISN'T Human...

But only one who really mattered.

... HE is no more of a 'man'...

Who will ever really matter.

... than YOU are a woman'.

The waitress leaned down conspiratorially. Mel noticed that she had a nametag pinned to her candy-pink uniform that read Margo'. "Listen, hon. Pretty young thing like you shouldn't have any problem at all replacin' the one who broke your heart with better. Most are almost interchangeable anyways. Like ... you see those three guys at the front table near the far end of the counter?"

Mel automatically looked over, but her gaze slid right past the three men who were mooning at her so hopefully to focus on the young woman beyond them. She'd just come in the door and was heading for the section of counter by the register clearly marked with a sign reading: Take Out'.

There was something strikingly familiar about her.

"They's been arguing amongst themselves over which of em has dibs on approaching you since you sat down," Margo was continuing. "Can't get their tongues off the floor."

Mel watched the young woman order a cup of coffee and a buttered roll to go from an outrageously flirting young counterman who seemed to know her well. Although apparently polite enough with him, she obviously didn't reciprocate the counterman's romantic interest.

Where did she know that young woman from? Mel wondered. She looked like a fresh-faced college student, eighteen, maybe all of nineteen years old. Tall, slim, pretty... Wavy, barely shoulder-length light brown hair held back off her face with a colorful scarf tied like a headband... Very intelligent light blue eyes...

"Anyways, I know they ain't all that much to look at, but they's real good guys. Good as most guys ever get these days, anyways. Decent, respectful and hard working with good steady jobs. All three of em," Margo was saying. "If you hang around a little longer, one's bound to work up enough courage t'come over and introduce himself."

The young woman's gaze idly wandered over the cafe as she ignored the counterman's overtures and waited for her order, passing over Mel without so much as a hint of pause or recognition.

"Tell me ... Margo..." Mel began, some masochistic part of herself blackly amused by the cruel irony of the situation while the rest continued to wallow in depression. Even if she were interested (which she wasn't), and assuming that some day she'd reestablish some manner of equilibrium, she realized that she had to put her dating days behind her forever. She had no right deceiving any Human man into involving himself with the likes of her.

"You think my grandmother knew about this?"

And she had no intentions of ever doing so.

"It would seem so..."

Human men deserve to have wholly Human women for their girlfriends, for their wives and, most important of all, for the mothers of their children. The children themselves deserve that much.

So, since she absolutely refused to allow herself to become breeding stock to produce yet another generation of hybrids, her best course of action was to resign herself to spending the rest of her life single and alone.

"Did they ... um ... ask you to find out if I might be interested?"

Mel's question was greeted with a good-natured rolling cackle of laughter. "Pretty and sharp as they come! Believe me, hon, I well know the score. I told em you probably wouldn't be interested. But, yeah. That they did. Got real pesky about it, too!"

"Thought so. And you're right. So just tell them I'm flattered but... No. No, thanks."

"Gotcha! I'll let 'em know." Margo scooped up Mel's hardly touched breakfast platter and gave her a wink. "You just sit there and relax, hon. Take all the time you need. No rush. And I'll heat this up anyways. Case you change your mind."

Mel thanked her and absently nodded, watching the young woman leave the little cafe, carrying her take-out container of coffee and buttered roll in a small paper bag.