“Like chocolate?”
He nodded. “But mine was broccoli. It looks like your cravings are much more fun than mine.” John smiled. Those first cravings seemed like a lifetime ago. “After that, I started to feel emotions. I knew when he was happy, excited, scared. I started talking to him and these feelings that weren’t mine flooded me. That went on for a long time, then suddenly there were words. Single words at first. But now he’s completely fluent, and hard to shut up at times.”
*Hey!*
“It’s cool, though. He’s my friend, and I’m never alone.”
Tracy cringed, then offered what appeared to be a forced smile. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
She gulped back what may have been a fresh round of tears.
John struggled against reaching out and caressing her cheek. He remembered the struggle when he’d first found out he wasn’t alone. Damn, he wished he had someone like himself, who could have let him know everything would be fine.
*Please touch her.*
John looked over his shoulder and whispered, “It’s not appropriate.”
“What’s not appropriate? Is he talking to you, now?”
“Yeah. He wants me to touch you so he can feel your entity. I’ve explained to him that humans don’t go around touching each other.”
She adjusted her sweater, twirling her finger around the top button. “If you touch me, can he talk to whoever is inside me?”
*Only one way to find out.*
“He says maybe.” He reached out his hand to her. “Is it okay?”
“Just my hand?”
“Yeah, that should be enough.”
She slipped her fingers into his. Their touch heated as Dak seeped through his skin and into Tracy.
Tracy drew her hand back. “Oh my God! What was that?”
“It’s okay. That was him.” Dak swirled back up his arm and into John’s chest. The entity rattled like he might burst.
There was only one thing that might get him that juiced.
Dak sparkled, confirming John’s suspicion. The Entity inside Tracy was female.
“It felt like something was crawling inside me.”
“Don’t think of it as him inside you. Think of it like him reaching out his arms. He can’t actually leave me. He needs me to breathe.”
“They explained that at the facility, that they use our lungs.”
John nodded. “They need oxygen to survive, but carbon dioxide is pure poison to them, even in small doses. They don’t have a way to separate the good from the bad, so that’s why they need a host.” He shifted in his chair. “If their host dies, they have to move at unbelievable speeds to find a new one. It’s like running a marathon while holding your breath. If they don’t find a new body, they die, too.”
Tracy rubbed her hands across her face. “But why are they here if they can’t breathe our air? Where do they even come from?”
“Dak told me he came from some sort of transport made of vapor. He doesn’t remember anything before that ship. Seems like they were on there for a long time.”
“The Federal agents said them coming here was just temporary until they find a new home. Do you believe that?”
John took a sip of his coffee. “From what he’s told me, yeah, I do. But Dak’s been here for decades. I think temporary is relative.”
She shivered. “It all seems so crazy.”
“Crazy and wonderful once you get used to it.” Even more wonderful to talk about it with someone. He remembered all the questions he had those first few weeks—questions he didn’t get answers to until Dak was strong enough to talk. John could be that bridge for Tracy, helping her to not feel so alone.
Her fingers slowly traced the edge of her mug, her lips slightly parted in thought. John could stare at those lips for hours.
*There are other things you could be doing to her for hours.*
John held back a smile. Down, boy.
She sat back and ran her hands over her shoulders. “Does your entity talk to you a lot?”
“Sometimes more than I’d like.”
*That’s not very nice.*
“When I’m working, he’s usually good about keeping quiet, so I can think. But I still know he’s there.” John shifted in his seat. “I feel little jerks and spasms all the time. Occasionally he’ll get excited and slam me into a pretty girl.” He grinned, but her eyes only widened. Maybe it was too soon for her to know that the entity could sometimes take control. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t happen often. It seems to wipe him out.”
She looked to the side, as if digesting that thought. “You keep calling it a him. You know it’s male?”
John’s gaze lowered to Tracy’s cleavage.
*Her entity is probably still wrapped around her lungs. If you touch her there, it will be quick and easy access for me. It’s a win for both of us.*
“He’s definitely male.” And to Dak, “Please stop.”
*What? You thought of it, first.*
A young couple entered the coffee shop, giggling as they approached the counter. The girl kissed the boy on the cheek and took one of the tables upfront, well out of earshot.
“I don’t know if mine has a name,” Tracy said.
“She has a name, she’s just not strong enough to tell you yet.”
“She?”
“Yeah, Dak thinks she’s a girl.”
“Does he know her name?”
Again, John waited for the spinning of the coffee machine to subside so he didn’t have to shout. “Maybe if I hold your hand again, he can get a better feel, maybe even talk to her.” He reached out his hand. “Would you like to try again?”
She nodded and grasped his hand. Her eyes shut as if she expected it to hurt.
Slowly, John directed. Don’t scare her.
Dak reached out, part of him anchoring to John’s lungs while the rest of him flowed past his skin and into Tracy, again. Warmth flooded him as he inched further through their contact.
Tracy sighed, and her head fell back slightly. John gulped, a pang of jealousy seeping in as her beautiful lips parted. He wanted to trace her cheek with his fingertips, connect with her in a human way while Dak met her entity for the first time. Shit, she was gorgeous.
Dak retracted with a slam and information flooded John’s mind.
He took a moment to sort it all out. “Dak got a name, but it’s hard to pronounce. I’ll do my best.” He chewed his lip. “A-don-na.”
*Close enough.*
“Adonna,” Tracy repeated. She stiffened. “I just got a flash of heat.”
“That’s usually happiness. She’s glad you know her name.”
“Wow.” She shivered and hugged herself. “Hi, Adonna.”
“Dak says that she’s really weak. Healing their host seems to take a lot of energy. It might be a while before you guys can get to know each other.”
Tracy looked to the table before returning her gaze to John. “Tell him to tell her: thank you for saving my life.”
John shook his head. “He doesn’t have to. She lives inside you. She can hear your thoughts.”
“Everything?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“So, no privacy?”
John shrugged. “You’re going to have to get used to that. It’s an adjustment, but I can’t imagine how I ever lived without Dak.”
*How sweet. How about you throw some of that love at the pretty girl? You can start by rubbing your hands all over those perky boobs that you’re already fantasizing about.*
How about you learn to keep it in your pants?
*I don’t have any pants, but maybe if I could get you out of yours…*
You’re incorrigible. “Do you have any other questions for us?”
She dabbed a few muffin crumbs from her napkin. John didn’t remember her eating the rest of her pastries. Then again, the first time Dak forced him to eat broccoli, he ate a whole bag so quickly that John didn’t even remember tasting it.
Tracy leaned
back in her chair. “Questions, yeah, probably thousands, but I’m drawing a complete blank. I can’t believe I ran into you. I mean, what are the odds?”
“We got really lucky. There aren’t any other hosts in the immediate area. None that we’ve found, anyway. They seem to be concentrated more in the cities.”
“Then why is there an Ambient research facility in South Jersey?”
“I actually asked the same question.” John sipped his coffee. “Dak pointed out that people don’t always die in the city, and the entities have less than a minute to find a new host. They don’t have the luxury of being choosy.” He sat back. “Every PAC in the tristate area gets sent either where you went or the big facility in Philadelphia. I ended up in Philly.” His fists tightened, remembering how his screams echoed through the antiseptic triage room. Dak rolled, soothing him from within.
“PAC?”
John shook off the memory. She didn’t need to know that he still had nightmares about his orientation, even five years later.
He met her gaze. “Possible. Alien. Carrier.”
She looked away, rubbing a raised, red rash on her wrists. Apparently, they still restrained hosts until they were cleared for assimilation. Bastards.
Her bangs fell over her eyes, shielding her from him. She probably felt like she needed to hide from the world. He needed to help her believe everything was going to be all right; that she could trust him and Dak.
A deep pain gouged the bottom of his throat. This was the opportunity Dak had been waiting years for, but John wasn’t sure he could go through this again.
*You’re going to let her go, aren’t you?*
Was he? Tracy had been right about one thing. The odds of them finding each other out here in the suburbs were astronomical.
Could he make this work? Or would it end badly, like last time, with each of them in tears?
Dak tried to help drive the memory back, but Amy’s face still pushed through. Her brown eyes. The way her lips trembled when she cried in the movie theater. The way her long, blonde hair arched around her face when she straddled him in the bedroom.
John shook his head, clearing the memory, the pain.
*It wasn’t your fault.*
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. That didn’t make it hurt any less.
*You can try again. Tracy is perfect.*
Sunlight reflected off a picture frame, casting a bright glow in her dark hair. Yes, she was pretty. And Dak was right. It had been far too long since his hands had roamed across warm, silky-soft skin. But it wasn’t worth the risk.
Dak gelled and stiffened within his chest.
Chill, buddy. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see her again. John reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. “Tell you what, give me a call anytime you want. We’d be happy to talk. It’s not all that often that Dak gets to see one of his own kind. Once Adonna is talking, it’d be great for the four of us to get together.”
Tracy laughed, and covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. The four of us, that still sounds so strange.”
“Strange has turned into my new normal.”
She stared at her napkin before easing her gaze to his eyes. “I’m glad I ran into you.”
Dak swirled and flipped inside him.
John tried to hold back their grin. “So am I.”
12
Tracy crunched the last slice of bacon and watched the Pillsbury Doughboy dance across the television screen. The remainder of yesterday seemed to go by in a haze, part stewing over the changes going on inside her body, and part wondering how her life would change once Adonna was strong enough to speak.
She shivered. Someone was going to start talking inside her head. God, would she be able to handle it?
John certainly didn’t seem to mind.
John. Now there was a rare specimen of yumminess. And so darn sweet. She fingered his business card in her pocket. She definitely needed to find a reason to call her unexpected alien-host mentor. The sooner the better.
Mom sat beside her, sipping tea while she read a magazine, leaving Laini with a pile of dishes that probably would have sat for hours if Mom hadn’t come to make breakfast again.
Mom cooked, and the girls cleaned. Those were the rules, but Mom still had Tracy on light duty. Which meant if Laini wanted to eat something that wasn’t wrapped in paper, she had to risk ruining her manicure.
“Did Tracy tell you she met a guy yesterday?” Laini dried off her hands with a towel, a stack of sparkling clean dishes piled in the rack behind her.
The magazine fell to Mom’s lap. “Do tell.”
Tracy flopped back on the couch. “He’s just a guy.”
“Just a guy, my left butt cheek,” Laini said. “She’s been on cloud nine all morning.”
Mom straightened. “Really? Fess up. Tall, handsome, muscular?”
Despite her attempts to hide it, a smile crept across Tracy’s lips. “All of the above.”
She could still hardly believe her luck: running into another person with an entity inside him. Her skin tingled, remembering the heat in his touch. Not really him, or not completely him, Dak had a lot to do with it, but the connection, the warmth that had spread through her. It was like nothing she’d experienced before.
“What’s his name?” Mom asked.
“John.”
Tracy grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it in her lap. Laini threw the towel back toward the kitchen—not noticing or not caring that it landed on the floor—and sat beside her on the couch, just like when they’d talked about boys they met in high school. Mom being there wasn’t an issue, not even when they were growing up. Mom got it. One of the fringe benefits of having a kid at fifteen was that you were still young enough to be friends when your daughter became an adult.
“John. I like it,” Mom said. “That’s a nice, strong name. What does he do for a living?”
“We’re not dating or anything, but he’s a cop.”
She nodded. “A good, law-abiding man. Good for you. Do you have anything in common?”
Tracy hugged the pillow tighter. “More than I ever expected.”
The television commercial cut out and the camera zoomed in on an anchor woman. “South Jersey is reeling this morning after a woman’s body was found inside her parents’ home on Trellis Avenue. The police have identified the victim as Twenty-nine-year-old Melissa Harpoona of Evesham Township.”
“Holy shit!” Tracy raised the volume and straightened as a deep thickness settled into her chest. Her mind glazed over as images of police cars and bystanders flashed across the screen.
Melissa Harpoona: Cheerleader. Most likely to succeed. Homecoming Queen. There were probably a few more titles, but the numbness flooding Tracy overtook any sense of reason. Melissa had sat beside her in Homeroom. They’d barely said five words to each other through all of high school, but now she was dead.
A deep void formed in Tracy’s stomach and twisted. How could someone she knew be dead? Murder happened to other people.
Memories of pep rallies, field trips, and times she’d seen Melissa in the school hallways flooded her. Melissa was the envy of everyone. There wasn’t a girl in school that didn’t want to be her.
Until now.
Laini turned her gaze from the screen. “I am totally creeped out. We used to ride the school bus with that girl.”
Tracy crossed her arms and hugged herself. “I know.”
A short car ride did nothing to help Tracy struggle with the unexpected grief filling her world. She parked her car beside the bus stop where Melissa waited on many a school day morning. The quiet surrounding the ‘caution children playing’ sign seemed stifling, alarming. Down the road, police cars parked beside barricades, keeping news vans off what Tracy expected was Melissa’s parents’ property. She vaguely remembered Melissa waving to her mom as they passed on the way to school; and now it was a crime scene.
Tracy’s body seemed to float down the block until she settled in front of the black a
nd white barriers surrounding the front lawn. She stared at Melissa’s mailbox, the bushes along the walkway, and the old-fashioned swing on the front porch that Melissa would never sit on again. She’d only been Twenty-nine. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
“Tracy?”
She jumped, nearly knocking into the barricade. A strong grip steadied her as she looked up into John’s brown eyes. Damn, they really were as beautiful as she remembered.
“John, w-what are you doing here?”
His grin sloshed her into a wallowing pool of mush. “I’m a cop, remember? This is my case.”
“You’re investigating the murder?”
A wisp of his dark hair shifted over his brow as he nodded. “One of the more unseemly parts of the job. What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I knew Melissa. We went to school together.”
“Were you friends?”
“No. We barely even talked.” In fact, she was a bitch, come to think of it.
“So, why are you here?”
Good question. “I don’t know. I felt like I should come, you know?”
His eyes searched hers, tickling the part inside that made her feel like a foolish teenager again. He flinched, and his gaze carried to his side. Had Dak said something to him? How was she going to handle it when Adonna started doing the same?
He slipped his hands in his pockets and turned toward the groups of people gathered along the street. “Do you know any of these people?”
Tracy glanced past the barricades into faces she’d never seen. “No, why? Are they suspects?”
“At a crime scene, everyone is a suspect.”
She jumped. “Why?”
“Many killers will return to the crime scene. They enjoy the aftermath, the attention, knowing that they were the cause of all this.” He waved his hand through the air. “Occasionally, they come for the fun of it. They think they’re outsmarting me.” He turned back to her. “But they’re not. I pick them out in eight out of ten cases.”
Tracy shivered, imagining one of these people with a knife, a gun. “That’s pretty sick.”
“That’s why people call them psychos.” He propped himself up against the barricade. “So exactly why are you here, again?”
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