They donned what clothes they had, Jonathan adding the T-shirt when it came along with their menus and two brilliant red cocktails in the distinctive glassware.
“I’m only sixteen,” Aliyah said, looking at hers, then paused.
Go for it, Ali, thought Ellen. I could stand a drink myself.
Aliyah took a sip. It tasted like high-octane Hawaiian Punch. “What happened?”
“Zombies,” Jonathan said. “We’ll let Lilith explain it to Bubbles. And actually, that’s not a half-bad idea . . .” He ordered some Zombies to go with the Hurricanes, paired with jambalaya and crawfish étouffée. By the end of the evening, they were both pretty giddy.
Aliyah squinted at Jonathan’s forehead and watched as a lump traveled down, moving under the skin, then down the bridge of his nose. The next moment a luminescent green wasp stuck its head out his right nostril. “Ew!” She giggled, pointing. “You’ve got a wasp booger!”
Jonathan snorted, his whole nose dissolving into wasps that swirled around before settling back into a nose sans wasps. “Uh, sorry. It happens sometimes when I get drunk.”
Aliyah giggled. “It’s actually kind of cute once you get used to it.”
“So are you.” Jonathan bought himself time by taking another drink. “Uh, well, Ellen’s pretty easy on the eyes, but I thought you were cute—though completely underage—when I first met you . . . before you, uh, died.” He looked uncomfortable, and not just because a trio of drunken wasps were trying to figure out how to turn themselves back into his left eyebrow.
“How did I die?” Aliyah clutched her Hurricane. “I mean, how did the Djinn kill me? No one’s wanted to tell me. No one’s even wanted to talk to me much except you. . . .”
“Uh . . . well . . . the Djinn had all sorts of powers. He’d turned himself into a giant and nothing could touch him, at least until you turned into a whirlwind and sand-blasted his hands.”
“And . . . ?”
“Um, he reached out kind of like this.” Jonathan grabbed a leftover alligator fritter, “And, uh . . .” The appetizer came apart in his hands and the broken pieces fell to the tablecloth.
Aliyah gaped at the crumbles of wasted meat and began to tear up. “That’s horrible!”
Jonathan moved his chair and put his arms around her. “It’s okay. You’re back.”
“For how long?” She sobbed. “I never even got to have a real boyfriend!”
Ellen felt like an awful voyeur, but knew it was best to hold her tongue. Jonathan Hive seemed to be a gentleman anyway, seeing to it that the bill was paid and giving Aliyah a shoulder to cry on as he escorted her back to her hotel room. “Um, we’re here. Got your key?”
Aliyah opened her eyes, wiping at them. “Uh, yeah . . .” She opened the door, then looked at Jonathan, blinking, his sweet face and brilliant green eyes, and reached a snap decision.
She stood on tiptoe, Ellen tall enough it didn’t take much to bridge the gap, and Jonathan’s lips parted almost immediately. Tongue met tongue. He tasted like nectar.
Drunk on alcohol and sorrow, Aliyah finally came up for air. “You’re a good kisser.”
He grinned his sweet grin. “Wasps know what to do with their tongues.”
Aliyah grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him inside the room. After a second clinch, she admitted, “They do.” She bit her lip. “I, uh, I’ve never been with a guy, but I . . .”
“Well, you’re not exactly underage anymore, but is Ellen okay with it?”
Just ask if he has protection.
“Uh, yeah. She just wants to know if you’ve got a condom.”
Jonathan’s grin was still there. “That’s one thing I was able to get at the UN gift shop.” He took her for a third clinch, running his hands down her back, stroking her sore muscles.
It had been a long while since Ellen had been touched like that. And Jonathan was an excellent kisser. For Aliyah, it was all completely new. When she pushed back for just a slight breath, she asked, “Do you want to take my clothes off or let me do it the ace way?”
“Maybe a little of both.”
Light jazz still crooned seductively from the radio. “Take off my jacket then.”
He did, his fingers deft and supple despite the drunkenness, the dexterity of someone who worked with his hands. Next Nick’s dress shirt, the buttons sliding free in sequence. Jonathan softly brushed his knuckles down the T-shirt underneath, between her breasts and over her heart.
Aliyah sighed, the soft sigh of a desert breeze, and allowed her form to blur slightly. The slacks pooled about her feet, followed by the dress shirt as it slid through the sand of her shoulders. With a soft susurrus, she reformed, naked but for the baby-doll shirt and earrings.
Jonathan Hive’s grin got wider. “Two can play at that game.”
His figure blurred as well, but where Aliyah became dull brown sand, Jonathan exploded into brilliant green, bright as his eyes as thousands upon thousands of neon wasps flew across the room to swarm atop the coverlet, a half minute later forming into Jonathan, naked but complete, his head propped on one hand, the other hand . . . well, maybe not quite complete.
A cloud of drunken wasps swirled lazily through the air, doing some intricate aerial ballet as they brought him the condom from his wallet. They reattached to his wrist, becoming his right hand with the condom between his fingers. “Care to do the honors, milady?”
Aliyah giggled. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you.”
Jonathan was drunk and hungry and desperate. Ellen knew that it was probably his first time in a while. A guy who turned into bugs probably got as much action as a woman who channeled the dead. But what he lacked in experience, he made up in enthusiasm, and Aliyah had enough enthusiasm for two. Or even three when you came down to it.
Maybe even four. As Aliyah closed her eyes and felt her growing wetness, Ellen imagined that Jonathan’s hands were Nick’s, Nick whom she’d never touched, never would touch. Nick who’d died before she was born . . .
She felt him sliding inside her, in and out, as Aliyah embraced him with her legs, held his arms with her arms, the old iron bedstead creaking with the rhythm and pounding the bricks of the wall, the rhythm of the jazz from the antique radio. “More,” Aliyah moaned. “Touch me.”
Jonathan slid out, making Aliyah moan harder, craving him, wanting him, but next he kissed her belly, tracing the way down with his tongue. Aliyah clutched his hair as he teased her, his tongue flicking in and out, and then he traced his way back to her navel, then reared up, his penis entering again as he reached one hand under her shirt and squeezed her left breast. “Oh, Jonathan.” Aliyah put her arms over her head, allowing him to pull the shirt free.
The connection faded slightly as the shirt was pulled away, but Aliyah just pushed it aside, pausing to take out the earring where it had caught. The connection faded further but she was still there, heady but lucid. Jonathan reached for the last earring, not understanding, but Aliyah instead guided his hands to her breasts as she clenched him, letting him ride her in and out. Then, when she closed her eyes and began to quake with ecstasy, there was a tiny tug on her left lobe and la petite mort suddenly became la grande mort.
Ellen was back in her body as Jonathan still rode her, quaking himself as his eyes burned in the dark like green embers.
“Not bad for a guy who turns into bugs,” he said afterward, falling into bed beside her. “How was it for you, Ali?” He placed his hand and the final earring between her breasts.
Ellen smiled. “Aliyah liked it just fine, but it’s just Ellen now. I stopped channeling her when you took this off.” She held up the fateful earring, the Eye of Horus twinkling in the dimness.