Thanks for all the wonderful reviews everyone! I really enjoy reading them. Lotte Rose 37: Thanks so much for your enthusiasm! Don't miss too many dinners though, you can't read if you starve to death! :) Get comfortable guys, this one's a doozy. I hope it isn't too dark for anyone, but I think you'll enjoy it!

Chapter Twelve

ALEXANDER

As I lay in bed that night my mind ran back and forth between many different things, but all thoughts eventually fell onto the image of Samantha, playing the piano. Her face pale and smooth in the light. I shook my head and opened my eyes. "What am I doing?" I asked aloud. The question was answered easily. Getting carried away, that's what you're doing. She's here for, what; two weeks? And you're already infatuated with her. Though, I thought to myself, it's hard not to at least like someone when they're not completely mortified by your appearance. Maybe… no. It was impossible, I couldn't break through this trap I had fallen into so it was no use pulling her in as well. Then why did you want her to come? I asked myself. But I was too tired by then to question and doubt myself any longer, at least until morning; and shutting my eyes, went to sleep.

Hours later, I woke with a start. Sitting up I held my head in my hands, recalling the dream I had had, the same one that had woken me night after night with painful remembrance. It should've long ceased to be surprising. I dreamed of her so often that I should have been used to it. But I wasn't. It almost seemed fitting in a way, she tormented me with constant reminders of what she had done while I was awake, why should it be any different when I closed my eyes to sleep? Laying back down again I remembered where I'd first met her, Aleisha.

I hadn't always lived in England, before my dad died I had stayed in California with him. Mom and he had split a little while after I was born and we never heard from her. It had happened a few months after my eighteenth birthday and I fell out of contact with a lot of friends afterwards. In hindsight it was probably better that I had; almost as if it had been some sort of practice run, to see if I could handle the isolation. Since I was legally an adult Mom hadn't bothered to fly down from whatever country she lived in to play guardian, but Jonathan was there to help; he had always been a close friend of my father's and had taken on the job of controlling all business affairs until I could take the reins. I don't think I could have handled things if he hadn't been there. My dad had been pretty wealthy and because of that, I became pretty wealthy. It didn't matter though, I'd lost my family. Nothing was going to change that.

As I slowly began to feel less crummy I left the house more often. I'd been in a music store the day I saw Aleisha. Looking up from a cd rack I'd seen this gorgeous girl staring at me out of the corner of her eye. My small grin had been all the encouragement she needed.

"That's my favorite." She'd said, nodding to the cd I was holding.

"Yeah," I'd replied. "They're great."

"I'm Aleisha." She answered sticking out a hand, browned by the Californian sun.

"Alex," I smiled.

"Do you wanna go get a drink or something?"

"Oh, uh, I don't know." I said slowly. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to. She was so beautiful; how could I not? But I felt apprehensive about the whole situation, who was this girl? Was she seriously asking me out after a two second conversation?

"Come on." She wheedled, flashing me a glowing smile. "It'll be fun."

Her expression was contagious and I found myself smiling almost as widely as she was. "Okay."

Aleisha and I began dating after that day, I'd had girlfriends before, but not since my father's death. It was good to have one again, and Aleisha was wonderful. She was a runner and loved everything competitive. We would go out jogging together every morning, and because of this I began to see more and more of the friends I'd left behind so suddenly the year before. Everyone said we were the perfect couple, everyone commented on how perfectly matched we were. But as time went by, things began to change. Aleisha became more controlling; she would call constantly at the most random hours, demanding to know where I was. She was cruel and hurtful in an underhanded hypocritical sort of way. She was courteous and kind to others, until of course those others were out of hearing range. I could hardly believe what I was seeing, it disgusted me. Finally I confronted her, told her I had had enough; that we were over.

"You can't break up with me." She scoffed, as if the act had never yet been attempted, something I could almost believe.

"Believe me, Aleisha, I can and I am." And with that I left, never thinking I would see her again. I was wrong. Weeks passed, I slowly began to put her out of my mind. People asked every now and then- where was the hot chick I had been dating, why weren't we going out anymore, what had I done wrong? But for the most part she was forgotten. That is until one night about two months later; sometime after midnight I woke up to the sound of my name softly being whispered into my ear. I opened my eyes to see Aleisha standing over me, a wicked grin curling the corners of her mouth.

"Hello Alex." She said just as softly. I leapt out of bed and she thankfully moved away to lean against my dresser, one hand casually supported on its ledge.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, bewildered while I waited for my heart to slowly return to its normal pace.

"I came to see you again." Aleisha replied. I looked at her warily, she exuded all the calmness and control of a hungry predator, ready to strike.

"What do you want?" I demanded fervently in a vain attempt to stall for time. One thing I knew, this girl was crazy. I needed to get out.

"You have no idea who you're dealing with, do you?" She asked, her voice accusatory.

I stared at her incredulously. What the hell was she talking about? I decided to ignore it and remind her of where this relationship, if you could call it that, stood. "Aleisha," I said slowly, "we're separated. I broke up with you more than a month ago."

"No!" she suddenly screamed, quickly advancing towards me. I backed away until I was against the wall, but I refused to yield. "It's over Aleisha." I whispered sternly. Her hands quickly shot out and grabbed my wrists, she was strong; stronger than I could have possibly imagined, without warning my skin began to burn and I opened my mouth in a silent scream.

"It's not over until I say it is." She said with a harsh voice, and just as quickly let go. I collapsed onto the floor. My whole body was on fire, it felt like I was being dismantled and quickly pieced back together again, without much concern for the finished result. I closed my eyes and tried to will away the pain, but it wouldn't acquiesce and only became stronger. After what felt like a century the awful sensations slowly disappeared and I was left lying on the floor, feeling as weak as an infant. Gradually I lifted my head up, wiping a hand across my face as I did so. But the hand wasn't mine, it was covered in fur with claws protruding from each fingertip. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. That's not my hand, not my hand, that's not my hand… I thought over and over again, willing it to be true. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through me and I jumped up and sprang to a small mirror in the corner, sure of what I would see. But my reflection didn't meet me; someone had stolen it, taken it away and replaced it with a monster's. I was going into shock. Aleisha. I whirled towards her.

"What have you done to me?" I shouted, but it wasn't my voice that spoke, it was a strange, foreign voice; what's worse: the words came out in a roar.

She stared at me, a satisfied smirk covering her face, and shrugged. "It's your own fault really." She stated, not answering my question. "Did you actually think you could end it so easily? Did you really think I would let you throw me aside? Allow another girl to take my place?" I stared at her, my horror mounting. "You wouldn't have me, and now I've made sure… that no one has you."

I couldn't wrap my mind around it, it wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. "How?" I whispered.

Her laugh was as it had always been, delicate and lilting, but for the first time I detected the barest hint of malice in it. "Oh, Alex." Aleisha said, as she sauntered over to where I stood, her voice dripping with condescension. "Don't be naïve. Did you honestly think that with all those fairy tales out there, told over countless generations throughout the world- what with their faeries and witches, sleeping princesses and glass slippers… did you really think none of that was true?"

I looked at her, speechless. "You humans," she said scornfully, as she walked across the room towards the door. "you always give yourselves more credit than you deserve. You're not that imaginative, you know." As she reached for the doorknob I found my voice.

"You can't just leave me like this!" Aleisha paused, and turned to look at me over her shoulder.

"I can and I am." She said, flinging my own words back at me.

"Please." I said in desperation. The smile left and was replaced with a hard calculating look.

"I suppose you're right, it would hardly be sporting to simply walk out now." She fingered the knob thoughtfully. Seeming to have reached a decision she turned around again. "I will give you… ten years."

"Ten years?" I repeated slowly. "For-for what?"

"To find a girl." She answered, as if it were obvious. But it wasn't obvious, my world had just been thrown upside down; nothing was making sense anymore. She gave an exasperated sigh and walked further into the room. "If you can find one girl, just one, whom you can love truly and completely… and who'll readily admit to loving you: I'll let you go. You'll be free of me, the curse, everything." I let out a sigh of resignation and disbelief, as if that would ever happen. "But," she added, reading my thoughts. "If you can't, I get you. Forever." I shuddered at the thought of it, and knew with certainty that, curse or no, I'd rather be like this than tied to her forever. "So…" she concluded holding out her hand just as she had in the music store so many months ago. "Do we have a deal?" I looked into her face and she smiled once more, knowing I wouldn't refuse. Looking away, I took her hand and shook it. "Deal."

"See you in ten years." She laughed as her footsteps faded down the hallway.

But her arrival came much sooner than that. Almost every week I would dream of her, of what she had taken from me. And it was always the same, in a poorly lit room Aleisha stood over me while I changed into a monster, watching with a malevolent smirk. But tonight, for the first time in three years, the dream had changed. As I lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, feeling the pain of the transformation, something off to the side caught my attention. It was Samantha, standing far off to the left of me, looking towards Aleisha with a mixture of shock and anger lining her features. A part of me marveled at how different the two were. Aleisha was all brightness and light compared with the pale skin and dark russet hair that Samantha claimed; and while the girl facing me was languid and relaxed the other was taut and rigid, fists clenched. But the pain refused to be forgotten and surged through me with more strength than ever, causing me to cry out involuntarily. As if in slow motion Samantha turned her head away from Aleisha to stare at me, her anger disappeared and was replaced with sadness and despair.

Awake now I thought back to the dream, wondering what it meant. I remembered the disconsolate feeling I had seen in Samantha's eyes. Was there a part of her that cared for me? Or was it only that I hoped for there to be one? I didn't know. But her being there at all had been comforting in of itself; Aleisha wasn't the only one anymore who captured my innermost thoughts, Sam was there now too. I wasn't alone anymore.

Hey guys! So the beginning of this chapter was from Alex's POV again, tell me if you like/dislike it; there's just some things that are easier to explain if he narrates them directly instead of explaining them through Sam. BTW, I forgot to mention in the last chapter that the song Sam plays on the piano is The Heart Asks the Pleasure First by Michael Nyman