The gift had arrived when she was twenty three, newly licensed, desperately trying to prove herself. A patient had been describing a fantasy, something intricate and humiliating, and she had wanted so badly to understand. To really understand. Not just the words, but the feeling beneath them. The...
Read MoreShe was the fifth.That was what they called them. The subjects. The vessels. The women who had been selected to carry the first human alien hybrid into existence. Four had gone before her. Four had failed. Not failed, exactly. The pregnancies had not taken. The bodies had rejected. The creatures ...
Read MoreThe snow started at noon. By three, the roads were impassable. By six, the tiny inn at the crossroads had become an island, cut off from the world by drifts that had swallowed the cars, the trees, the very concept of leaving. The innkeeper, a woman with tired eyes and a practical manner, counted ...
Read MoreThe house had been empty for forty years.That was what the estate agent said, anyway. Empty. She preferred to think of it as waiting. Waiting for her, perhaps. Waiting for someone who needed its silence, its shadows, its strange and palpable stillness. After the divorce, after the years of noise ...
Read MoreThe flyer had been on her friend's refrigerator for months, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a seashell. Jackie had glanced at it dozens of times without really seeing it. BDSM 101. A six week introductory workshop. All genders, all experience levels, all questions welcome.She had looked a...
Read MoreThe spreadsheet had 247 rows.Each row was a date. Each column was a category. Name, age, occupation, how they met. A column for pros, meticulously bullet pointed. A column for cons, sometimes longer than she wanted to admit. A column for dealbreakers, highlighted in red. And then the scoring syst...
Read MoreThe first thing she noticed about her was how small she was. Not small in the way of delicate things. Small in the way of things that have been carrying too much for too long.The pop star's name was Eden. Twenty four years old. Four Grammys. A net worth that made headlines. Twenty million fol...
Read MoreHe had moved to the city with nothing but a broken heart and a suitcase that barely closed. Three years ago. Three years of tending bar at The Hawthorn, a gay pub in a neighbourhood that still felt new, serving drinks to men who reminded him of who he used to be. He had come here to heal. To star...
Read MoreShe woke to light.Not the light of morning, the soft gold of a sun she would never see again. Not the light of artificial bulbs, the harsh fluorescence of hospitals and laboratories where she had spent her final human years. This light was alive. It moved and breathed and watched her with an atte...
Read MoreThe key turned in the lock with a sound like a bone settling.She had not been to this house since she was a child. Summers spent in the garden, winters by the fire, the smell of her grandmother's cooking drifting through rooms that had stood for two centuries. The old woman had died quietly i...
Read More 