Fuse

by Angel Payne

  “Emma. Baby.” He twists his fingers around the ball of my shoulder now. “If there were time to let you peruse YouTube on this, I would, but—”

  “Don’t need the video. I get it.” Except that the closest experience I’ve had to this was jabbing a classmate in high school with an epi pen after she rolled onto a bee in PE. She was fine; I nearly passed out. And more recently, having to hold Reece’s hand, while he was unconscious, while Wade drew his blood…

  Wade.

  Oh, thank God. Wade.

  “Just let me… I’ll get Wade or Fersh—”

  “No time,” Reece snarls before falling all the way back down, as if I’ve thrown over one of the machines onto his chest. Only I’m nowhere near him now. I’m watching, helpless and wide-eyed, though he no longer sees me. With his body going stiff and his pupils disappearing into his eyelids, he’s got a great start for an impressive horror movie scene—except that this is all hideously real. He’s actually subjecting himself to some strange seizure in the name of fighting off Faline’s mental invasion—and all I can do is sit here and think about bees.

  “Shit!”

  But not anymore.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

  I bound off the table and sprint toward the medications cabinet. The second I haul it open, there’s a seismic rattle behind me. Reece is jerking from head to toe now, going for the ideal punk-rock-video audition.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit!

  “Hang on, baby.” It’s intelligible past my tears, but I’m not so lucky with my vision. Everything looks like a bad soap opera flashback, watery and confused, as I try reading the tiny labels on the vials inside the cabinet. “Hang on! I’m getting it, okay? I’m…I’m getting—”

  “What the hell?” Suddenly, thank God, Wade bursts back in. “Emma? What the hell is going on?”

  “Did he wake up?” Fershan enters right behind, rushing toward the bed as Reece goes into worse convulsions. “His readings jumped and then dipped, and now they are all over the place…”

  “She woke him up.” I refuse to give Faline any more verbal credit than that. “And then he fought her back, but—”

  “He is weakening.” Fershan dips an efficient nod. Though I’ve seen the exact same motion from him so many times before, it’s accompanied by a layer of badass that earns a new river of my respect. I only wish it weren’t because of these circumstances, especially when his lips compress as he looks over Reece’s spasming form. “He is weakening fast,” he stresses. “So we must save him even faster.”

  Badass or not, I step into the gap with shoulders squared. “But Reece told me—”

  “I am fairly certain of what he told you.” Fersh pivots like a captain on the bridge of his own battleship but tempers the vibe with enough of the aligned-chakras Fersh that I’m double-taking again. Not that he’s even noticing. “Grab the Pentobarbital,” he charges to Wade. “Stat.”

  The guys work fast, Fershan slamming an air mask over Reece’s face as Wade sets up to push the coma-inducing medicine into Reece’s IV tube. But while they’re moving like a well-oiled triage team straight out of Grey Sloan Memorial, I stand here with my proverbial girl dick in one hand though manage to throw a hand towel across Reece’s crotch. The larger loincloth has gone missing, so I’m thanking God his erection has finally waned.

  But so have all his violent jerks.

  And the tension in his muscles.

  And the energy of his presence.

  Waned. But not gone.

  I clutch his hand and hold it tight. Tighter.

  When Wade looks up again, it’s to jog his head toward the juncture of our hands. “Good,” he barks, ginger curls falling into his eyes. “That’s really good, Emma. You keep doing exactly that, okay?”

  I compress my lips, hoping it helps to rein back the tears. “Uh…okay.”

  “He is right.” Fershan ticks his head in a matching nod of firm purpose. “You have the most important job right now, Emma,” he murmurs. “Before the darkness takes him completely, remind him of the light he must return for.”

  “The light we’ll bring him back to.” Wade circles and faces me in full. His posture is full of purpose, and his gaze gleams with a strength it’s never had before. “And damn it, Em, we will bring him back.”

  “Without the wicked witch and her ding dongs.”

  Even when Wade scrubs a hand along his jaw and mutters, “Dude, no more Judy Garland bingeing for you,” I can’t summon even a smile. Even thinking of Faline without her damn “ding dongs” isn’t pulling down the fuzzy feels for me right now.

  Not as Reece’s hand goes as lax as a rag doll’s in my grip.

  Not as his body goes so still and his breaths turn so shallow, I splay a hand across his chest, desperately feeling for his heartbeat.

  Not as the last tiny ember of our connection fades from my spirit…leaving me in a vast darkness of my own.

  A night in which I’m locked and will continue to be trapped. Until we figure out a way to break Reece out of Faline’s wavelength that won’t involve giving him a lobotomy or keeping him in a coma for weeks—or even months.

  But right now, this is all we can do.

  To keep him locked away from Faline, he has to stay locked away from us as well.

  “But not forever.”

  I whisper to Reece—and to myself—the acute vow of my heart. The organ is already threatening to explode out of my chest, just for the chance to burrow into his and stay nestled there forever. Those desperate beats take up the slack for the sparse thumps of his. I flatten my hand across his sternum, grateful for every soft tap I get in return. Cherishing every sign of life his body will give me despite the shroud of midnight in which we’ve trapped it.

  “Hang on, my bold, brave Zeus. We’ll figure this out, and you’ll be back to slinging lightning at the world in no time. I promise you, okay?” I pause and wait, but for what, I don’t know. His stillness should reassure me, but it doesn’t. There’s just…nothing for me to hold on to. Not a single rasp. Not the barest sigh. Not even a hint of his smoke and cinnamon in my nostrils.

  Which only leaves one last window.

  Faith.

  The blindest, hardest, most desperate version of the stuff.

  He’s still in there. He’s still listening. You know he is. You know it.

  Now, you have to believe it.

  “I do.” I declare it on a thread of breath, pouring all my strength into the clasp of my fingers around his. “I do believe, baby. In you. In the you that’s still inside me. I believe.”

  “Baby girl.” It’s not exactly the response I was yearning for, but Lydia’s murmur is still a welcome addition to the air. She doesn’t add to it until she’s done spreading out the blanket she’s brought, the velour throw from our bed upstairs, helping me cover Reece from the waist down. “You look like the walking dead, sweetie.”

  “Thanks,” I deadpan. “Though technically, wouldn’t that be the standing dead?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She cups my shoulders from behind. “You need rest, and you need it now.”

  “Then bring me one of the rockers from the living room.”

  “I mean sleep rest. As in, laying your head on a pillow, in a bed.”

  “Then bring a bed in here.”

  “I’ve brought myself in here.” She flashes her phone into my line of vision. “And I know where to get you if anything beeps or buzzes strangely. Now go. Please. At least for an hour or two.”

  “Not happening, ’Dia.”

  “Fine,” she says breezily. “Then I guess I’ll have to use this other handy speed-dial button. Sawyer’s always so ready to help me out whenever I jingle…”

  I spin and reach for her phone—but as the wench has made clear, I really am past the point of exhaustion. All too easily, she swings away, flashing a catty smirk along with the landing page displaying Sawyer’s picture and number.

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  “Why yes, darling. Ye
s, I am.”

  With a seething sneer, I pivot toward the door that leads to the driveway. “I’m setting my alarm for one hour from now.”

  She jerks a golden eyebrow. “Make it two and you can have my extra-frosting cupcake.” In response to the questioning quirk of mine, she clarifies. “Apparently Joany stress-bakes.”

  I school my features against exposing too much of my open drool. Beyond the sandwich I forced down sometime yesterday afternoon, I haven’t had anything to eat in the last twenty-four hours. “Ninety minutes.” I attempt to bargain.

  “That starts when your head hits the pillow,” ’Dia counters.

  “And I still get the whole cupcake?”

  “After you wake up.”

  I roll my eyes, realizing she’s probably already sampled the frosting in globby spoonfuls by now, though calling her out will do nothing for this negotiation. Finally, I capitulate. “Fine.”

  My sister grins. “Sweet.” Then wiggles the tips of her fingers. “Rest well.”

  “Resting is part of the bargain, sister. But I didn’t promise anything else.”

  She raises both hands as if I’ve drawn a pistol on her. “Fair enough.”

  Chapter Two

  Emma

  The second I reenter the house and turn toward the stairs up to the master bedroom, I can’t push my foot past the bottom step. I can’t think about going back to the bedroom—our bedroom—as if this is just another stressful day in the adventures of Bolt and his lady and taking a nap will prepare me for facing the rest of it better. It’s too great a pretense to ask, no matter how deeply my exhaustion is embedded into my bones.

  Prowling through the house likely won’t count as a worthier effort, but after issuing a silent apology to Lydia and saying a wistful goodbye to the cupcake on the kitchen counter with its flawless frosting rose, I’m off for my first lap of my stress-induced journey.

  I make fast work of carousing through the kitchen, the dining room, and the den. I stop halfway down the glass-lined hall that leads to the gym and the downstairs office.

  Where just a few hours ago, I’d found Sawyer crouched over a fallen, depleted Reece.

  Where I’d dropped to his side too and watched in helpless dread as Faline ripped his mind away from me. As she’s just tried to do again, bringing on a hundred times that agony.

  Because she’s that much closer to succeeding?

  No. No.

  I wrap my arms around my middle so the resolve has to stay locked inside, despite the chaos of my heartbeat, the tumult of my nerves, and the churn of my belly. But there’s no wiggle room on this. I will drive everyone on this team to the point of no return if I have to—starting with the girl reflected back at me from the window, with her exhaustion-hollowed eyes—until we find a way to snatch back Faline’s new play toy.

  The bitch has picked the wrong freaking shiny this time.

  I drop my hands and straighten my shoulders as the resolve fortifies me, all but trumpeting through me—until that victory parade is roadblocked by another voice from inside.

  Oh, yeah? Says you and what army, honey?

  Because in the end, without the “Bolt” part, “Team Bolt” is just three tech geeks and a couple of girls from Newport Beach, though there’s a chance the surf god and Deneuve’s double might decide to stick around if Joany keeps plying them with cupcakes. But even killer cupcakes will only take us so far. While each of us understands a different part of Reece’s drive, none of us has the entire scope of it the way he does. As close as I am to the man, I have to accept that there’ll still be lots of nights on the figurative prairie porch, wringing my hands and staring out at dirt and twigs. Though at least now, that last part is literal.

  “Emmalina?” The quiet query hits the air like a whip, making me behave the same way. I snap around though order myself to chill out when confronting a familiar pair of catlike eyes, perfectly made up in shades of blue and gray, perfectly matching her mottled skull. “Are you all right?”

  I chuff softly, not sure how to answer. Well played, fate. I’ve mentally parked myself on the porch, only to get an offer of companionship by Angelique La Salle, whom I watched Reece walk away with the first time I was here, nearly a day ago. Practically a lifetime ago…

  In that pivotal moment, I’d been so viciously tempted to give the woman some very choice words and an oh-so-eloquent finger flip. I fight the same provocation now, only the conflict stings a lot worse and burns a lot deeper.

  But damn it, Angelique’s stare is brimming with true sincerity. She even attempts a little smile. What if fate wants me to see some kind of lesson here, despite its timing needing some serious help?

  So I turn a little, leaning against the dark-wood wall comprising the other side of the hall, and mutter, “No. Not really.”

  Angelique steps a little closer but doesn’t push for a therapy session dump. It’s pretty nice—a rare quality, actually. Sometimes, though rarely, I’ve been capable of it myself. Being given the double-X chromosome somehow includes the universe’s bonus download of the talking-about-it-will-help chip. But sometimes, instant words don’t help. Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend who’s willing to wait through the silence until they do.

  “Reece wants to go Japanese Zen garden out here.” I nod toward the atrium on the other side of the windows. “Bonsai trees, meditation sand, one of those rocking bamboo fountains…” I look over as Angie hums with understanding. “But I’ve been arguing for something more tropical. Lush bushes and palms, maybe even some Tiki gods…” I’m on the brink of laughing about how I’d even threatened pink flamingoes to Reece, but the sentiment succumbs fast to a watery wince. “Seemed like such a good idea to put in an atrium when my mom first suggested it. But now…” I shake my head. “It’s one of the few things the two of us can’t agree on.” I push off the wall and swallow hard, battling the urge to drive my whole fist through the glass. “I’d let him have it all now, Angelique. The sand and the bonsai and the fountain and even some damn koi fish, if only…”

  As my rasped ramblings are swallowed by my tight choke, Angie steps over and pulls me close. “I know.” She rubs my back in comforting circles, and I’m positive that she really does know—but not just because she can fill in the rest of that phrase due to losing the love of her own life. She knows because she knows. Her empathy is tangible on the air, flitting at the edge of my senses like a rare butterfly. I can see it and marvel at it, but I can’t catch it—nor am I certain that I want to. “I know, Emmalina,” she repeats, and I know I won’t get a better opportunity to at least make the butterfly hold still for a few seconds, so I do.

  “You do, don’t you?” I angle myself around with a meaningful dip of my head. She needs to see that I’m not only serious but curious. “Just like you were able to discern all the unspoken stuff when Reece first collapsed. Like you were able to see things and just know them…”

  And since I realize I sound like a huge loon, I let myself trail off…only to see that Angie’s expression has taken on a reassuring smile. “I cannot see anything, mon ami,” she states. “It is more like…”

  “What?” I consciously make the word as open and accepting as it can be. She responds with a look of sincere gratitude before continuing with quiet care.

  “I hear them first. After that is when the feelings come. The…energies on the air that tell me the rest of the story…” And suddenly, her confidence gives way to nervous fidgeting. “Please; never mind me. This must sound like insanité—”

  “Angie.” I’m the one grabbing her shoulders now. “I’m engaged to a man who can put on a laser light show using his fingers and knock bad guys on their asses from twenty feet away.” A smile tempts my lips, and I let it take over. “I tossed out sanity a long time ago and haven’t missed it.”

  The woman actually giggles, though all too quickly is back to her typical serene smile. “Well, that makes two of us.”

  “Especially lately?” I prompt.

  “Oui.
” She sobers a little more. “Especially lately.”

  “Which means what?” I don’t ramp the energy all the way to a dominatrix interrogation but make it clear my query isn’t casual thing either. Judging from the woman’s averted gaze and dropped shoulders, she’s hiding a bigger truth and might even want me to drag it out of her—whatever it is—but I’m going to borrow from the woman’s own wisdom and purposely keep my mouth shut during a patient wait for her to go on when she’s ready.

  “It simply means that I am learning to…readjust…to a few new things in my life. That is all, Emma.”

  It’s tough—translation: impossible—to accept that as her full explanation. She’s already skittered her gaze to the floor too many times. Has feigned way too much interest in following the path of a hummingbird that’s visiting the atrium in search of nonexistent flowers.

  In return, I lean a sideways stance along the wall, though make it clear that my casual pose is just for show. “A few new things like what?” I don’t lower my gaze from her profile, still as perfect as a Bisson painting even without her flowing wig as a finisher. “Like what you’re capable of doing now? Or…hearing? Or whatev—” I halt, robbed of the words by my lungs’ stunned seizures. “Holy crap.” I gasp. Then again. “Holy crap.” And then hope that forcing my lips around the next word will be worth it. “Faline?” I blurt. “Are you really hearing Faline?” When the woman gives away her reaction by flickering barely any reaction, I rush on, “How? When? Where?” My breath locks up even harder. “She…she isn’t anywhere near here, is she?”

  “No!” Angie is all over issuing that right away, slowing my pulse rate at least a little, before pressing a hand over the center of her chest in an obvious gesture to settle hers too. “If she gets within ten miles of this place, I am certain I would know it.”

  Okay, so that returns my heartrate right back to where it was. “Are you saying there’s a possibility of that?”

  The hummingbird has zoomed away—though even if it hadn’t, I’m sure the woman’s regard would be honed back in on me. Not that it’s helpful. Her face is blank. Too blank.