“Whoa!”
But she already had my other leg, and instead of toppling backward, she easily supported my weight. She moved my legs into position around her waist. My face was burning, and I knew I must look like a gorilla on a greyhound.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Please, Beau.”
Embarrassed as I was, I was also very aware that my arms and legs were wrapped tightly around her slender body.
Suddenly she grabbed my hand and pressed my palm to her face. She inhaled deeply.
“Easier all the time,” she said.
And then she was running.
For the first time, I felt actual fear for my life. Terror.
She streaked through the forest like a bullet, like a ghost. There was no sound, no evidence that her feet ever touched the ground. Her breathing never changed, never indicated any effort. But the trees flew by at deadly speeds, always missing us by inches.
I was too shocked to close my eyes, though the cool air whipped against my face and burned them. It felt like I was sticking my head out the window of an airplane in flight.
Then it was over. We’d hiked hours this morning to reach Edythe’s meadow, and now, in a matter of minutes—not even minutes, seconds—we were back to the truck.
“Exhilarating, isn’t it?” Her voice was high, excited.
She stood motionless, waiting for me to unwind my legs and step away from her. I did try, but I couldn’t get my muscles to unfreeze. My arms and legs stayed locked while my head spun uncomfortably.
“Beau?” she asked, anxious now.
“I might need to lie down,” I gasped.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
It took me a few seconds to remember how to loosen my fingers. Then everything seemed to come undone at the same time, and I half-fell off her, stumbling backward until I lost my footing and finished the other half of the fall.
She held out her hand, trying not to laugh, but I refused her offer. Instead, I stayed down and put my head between my knees. My ears were ringing and my head whirled in queasy circles.
A cold hand rested lightly against the back of my neck. It helped.
“I guess that wasn’t the best idea,” she mused.
I tried to be positive, but my voice was hollow. “No, it was very interesting.”
“Hah! You’re as white as a ghost—no, worse, you’re as white as me!”
“I think I should have closed my eyes.”
“Remember that next time.”
I looked up, startled. “Next time?”
She laughed, her mood still flying.
“Show-off,” I muttered, and put my head down again.
After a half-minute, the swirling motion slowed.
“Look at me, Beau.”
I lifted my head, and she was right there, her face just inches from mine. Her beauty was like a sucker punch that left me stunned. I couldn’t get used to it.
“I was thinking, while I was running—”
“About not hitting trees, I hope,” I interrupted breathlessly.
“Silly Beau. Running is second nature to me. It’s not something I have to think about.”
“Show-off,” I muttered again.
She smiled. “No, I was thinking there was something I wanted to try.” She put her hands on my face again.
I couldn’t breathe.
She hesitated. It felt like a test, making sure this was safe, that she was still in control of herself.
And then her cold, perfect lips pressed very softly against mine.
Neither of us was ready for my reaction.
Blood boiled under my skin, burned in my lips. My breath came in a wild gasp. My fingers tangled in her hair, locking her face to mine. My lips opened as I breathed in her heady scent.
Immediately, she turned to unresponsive stone beneath my lips. Her hands gently, but forcibly, pushed my face back. I opened my eyes and saw her expression.
“Whoops,” I said.
“That’s an understatement.”
Her eyes were wild, her jaw clenched in restraint. My face was still just inches from hers, my fingers twisted through her hair.
“Should I…?” I tried to disengage myself, to give her some room.
Her hands didn’t release me.
“No, it’s tolerable. Wait for a moment, please.” Her voice was polite, controlled.
I kept my eyes on hers, watching as the excitement in them faded and gentled.
She grinned, obviously pleased with herself. “There.”
“Tolerable?” I asked.
She laughed. “I’m stronger than I thought. It’s nice to know.”
“And I’m not. Sorry.”
“You are only human, after all.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
She freed her hair from my fingers, and then she was on her feet in one of her lithe, nearly invisible movements. She held her hand out again, and this time I took it and pulled myself up. I needed the support; my balance hadn’t returned yet. I wobbled slightly as I took a step away from her.
“Are you still reeling from the run, or was it my kissing expertise?” She seemed very human as she laughed now, careless and lighthearted. She was a new Edythe, different than the one I’d known, and I was even more besotted by her. It would cause me physical pain to be separated from her now.
“Both.”
“Maybe you should let me drive.”
“Uh, I think I’ve had enough of your need for speed for today.…”
“I can drive better than you on your best day,” she said. “You have much slower reflexes.”
“I believe you, but I don’t think my truck could handle your driving.”
“Some trust, please, Beau.”
My hand curled around the key in my pocket. I pursed my lips, like I was deliberating, then shook my head with a tight grin.
“Nope. Not a chance.”
She raised her eyebrows, grabbed a fistful of my t-shirt, and yanked. I nearly stumbled into her, catching myself with one hand against her shoulder.
“Beau, I’ve already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive. I’m not about to let you get behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can’t even walk straight. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”
“Drunk?” I objected.
She leaned up on her tiptoes so that her face was closer to mine. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance of her breath. “You’re intoxicated by my very presence.”
“I can’t argue with that.” I sighed. There was no way around it—I couldn’t resist her in anything. I held the key high and dropped it, watching her hand flash like lightning to catch it without a sound. “Take it easy. My truck is a senior citizen.”
“Very sensible.”
She dropped my shirt and ducked out from under my hand.
“So you’re not affected at all? By my presence?”
She turned back and reached for my hand, holding it to her face again. She leaned into my palm, her eyes sliding closed. She took a slow, deep breath.
“Regardless…,” she murmured. Her eyes flashed open and she grinned. “I have better reflexes.”
14. MIND OVER MATTER
HER DRIVING WAS JUST FINE, I HAD TO ADMIT—WHEN SHE KEPT THE speed reasonable. Like so many things, it seemed to be effortless for her. She barely looked at the road, yet the truck was always perfectly centered in her lane. She drove one-handed, because I was holding her other hand between us. Sometimes she gazed into the setting sun, which glittered off her skin in ruby-tinged shimmers. Sometimes she glanced at me—stared into my eyes or looked down at our hands twined together.
She had tuned the radio to an oldies station, and she sang along with a song I’d never heard. Her voice was as perfect as everything else about her, soaring an octave above the melody. She knew every line.
“You like fifties music?” I asked.
“Music in the fifties was good. Much better than the sixties, or the seventies, ugh!”
She shuddered delicately. “The eighties were bearable.”
“Are you ever going to tell me how old you are?”
I wondered if my question would upset her buoyant mood, but she just smiled.
“Does it matter very much?”
“No, but I want to know everything about you.”
“I wonder if it will upset you,” she said to herself. She stared straight into the sun; a minute passed.
“Try me,” I finally said.
She looked into my eyes, seeming to forget the road completely for a while. Whatever she saw must have encouraged her. She turned to face the last bloodred rays of the dying sun and sighed.
“I was born in Chicago in 1901.” She paused and glanced at me from the corner of her eye. My face was carefully arranged, unsurprised, patient for the rest. She smiled a tiny smile and continued. “Carine found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and I was dying of the Spanish influenza.”
She heard my gasp and looked up into my eyes again.
“I don’t remember it very well. It was a long time ago, and human memories fade.” She seemed lost in thought for a minute, but before I could prompt her, she went on. “I do remember how it felt when Carine saved me. It’s not an easy thing, not something you could forget.”
“Your parents?”
“They had already died from the disease. I was alone. That’s why she chose me. In all the chaos of the epidemic, no one would ever realize I was gone.”
“How did she… save you?”
A few seconds passed, and when she spoke again she seemed to be choosing her words very carefully.
“It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But Carine has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of all of us.… I don’t think you could find her equal anywhere in history.” She paused. “For me, it was merely very, very painful.”
She set her jaw, and I could tell she wasn’t going to say anything more about it. I filed it away for later. My curiosity on the subject was hardly idle. There were lots of angles I needed to think through on this particular issue, angles that were only beginning to occur to me.
Her soft voice interrupted my thoughts. “She acted from loneliness. That’s usually the reason behind the choice. I was the first in Carine’s family, though she found Earnest soon after. He fell from a cliff. They took him straight to the hospital morgue, though, somehow, his heart was still beating.”
“So you have to be dying, then.…”
“No, that’s just Carine. She would never do that to someone who had another choice, any other choice.” The respect in her voice was profound whenever she spoke of her adoptive mother. “It is easier, she says, though, if the heart is weak.” She stared at the now-dark road, and I could feel the subject closing again.
“And Eleanor and Royal?”
“Carine brought Royal into our family next. I didn’t realize till much later that she was hoping he would be to me what Earnest was to her—she was careful with her thoughts around me.” She rolled her eyes. “But he was never more than a brother. It was only two years later that he found Eleanor. He was hunting—we were in Appalachia at the time—and found a bear about to finish her off. He carried her back to Carine, more than a hundred miles, afraid he wouldn’t be able to do it himself. I’m only beginning to guess how difficult that journey was for him.” She threw a pointed glance in my direction and raised our hands, still folded together, to brush her cheek against my hand.
“But he made it.”
“Yes. He saw something in her face that made him strong enough. And they’ve been together ever since. Sometimes they live separately from us, as a married couple. But the younger we pretend to be, the longer we can stay in any given place. Forks is perfect in many ways, so we all enrolled in high school.” She laughed. “I suppose we’ll have to go to the wedding in a few years. Again.”
“Archie and Jessamine?”
“Archie and Jessamine are two very rare creatures. They both developed a conscience, as we refer to it, with no outside guidance. Jessamine belonged to another… family, a very different kind of family. She became depressed, and she wandered on her own. Archie found her. Like me, he has certain gifts.”
“Really?” I interrupted, fascinated. “But you said you were the only one who could hear people’s thoughts.”
“That’s true. He knows other things. He sees things—things that might happen, things that are coming. But it’s very subjective. The future isn’t set in stone. Things change.”
Her jaw set when she said that, and her eyes darted to my face and away so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I’d only imagined it.
“What kinds of things does he see?”
“He saw Jessamine and knew that she was looking for him before she knew it herself. He saw Carine, and our family, and they came together to find us. He’s most sensitive to non-humans. He always knows, for example, when another group of our kind is coming near. And any threat they may pose.”
“Are there a lot of… your kind?” I was surprised. How many of them could walk around with us all totally oblivious?
My mind got caught on one word she’d said. Threat. It was the first time she’d ever said anything to hint that her world wasn’t just dangerous for humans. It made me anxious, and I was about to ask a new question, but she was already answering my first.
“No, not many. But most won’t settle in any one place. Only those like us, who’ve given up hunting you people”—a sly glance in my direction—“can live together with humans for any length of time. We’ve only found one other family like ours, in a small village in Alaska. We lived together for a time, but there were so many of us that we became too noticeable. Those of us who live… differently, tend to band together.”
“And the others?”
“Nomads, for the most part. We’ve all lived that way at times. It gets tedious, like anything else. But we run across the others now and then, because most of us prefer the North.”
“Why is that?”
We were parked in front of my house now, and she turned off the truck. The silence that followed its roar felt intense. It was very dark; there was no moon. The porch light was off, so I knew my dad wasn’t home yet.
“Did you have your eyes open this afternoon?” she teased. “Do you think I could walk down the street in the sunlight without causing traffic accidents?”
I thought to myself that she could stop traffic even without all the pyrotechnics.
“There’s a reason why we chose the Olympic Peninsula, one of the most sunless places in the world. It’s nice to be able to go outside in the day. You wouldn’t believe how tired you can get of nighttime in eighty-odd years.”
“So that’s where the legends came from?”
“Probably.”
“And Archie came from another family, like Jessamine?”
“No, and that is a mystery. Archie doesn’t remember his human life at all. And he doesn’t know who created him. He awoke alone. Whoever made him walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could. If Archie hadn’t had that other sense, if he hadn’t seen Jessamine and Carine and known that he would someday become one of us, he probably would have turned into a total savage.”
There was so much to think through, so much I still wanted to ask. But just then my stomach growled. I’d been so interested, I hadn’t even noticed I was hungry. I realized now that I was starving.
“I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from dinner.”
“I’m fine, really.”
“I don’t spend a lot of time around people who eat food. I forget.”
“I want to stay with you.” It was easier to say in the darkness, knowing how my voice would betray me, my hopeless addiction to her.
“Can’t I come in?” she asked.
“Would you like to?” I couldn’t picture it, a goddess sitting in my dad’s shabby kitchen chair.
“Yes, if you don’t min
d.”
I smiled. “I do not.”
I climbed out of the truck and she was already there; then she flitted ahead and disappeared. The lights turned on inside.
She met me at the door. It was so surreal to see her inside my house, framed by the boring physical details of my humdrum life. I remembered a game my mother used to play with me when I was maybe four or five. One of these things is not like the others.
“Did I leave that unlocked?” I wondered.
“No, I used the key from under the eave.”
I hadn’t thought I’d used that key in front of her. I remembered how she’d found my truck key, and shrugged.
“You’re hungry, right?” And she led the way to the kitchen, as if she’d been here a million times before. She turned on the kitchen light and then sat in the same chair I’d just tried to picture her in. The kitchen didn’t look so dingy anymore. But maybe that was because I couldn’t really look at anything but her. I stood there for a moment, trying to wrap my mind around her presence here in the middle of mundania.
“Eat something, Beau.”
I nodded and turned to scavenge. There was lasagna left over from last night. I put a square on a plate, changed my mind, and added the rest that was in the pan, then set the plate in the microwave. I washed the pan while the microwave revolved, filling the kitchen with the smell of tomatoes and oregano. My stomach growled again.
“Hmm,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to have to do a better job in the future.”
I laughed. “What could you possibly do better than you already do?”
“Remember that you’re human. I should have, I don’t know, packed a picnic or something today.”
The microwave dinged and I pulled the plate out, then set it down quickly when it burned my hand.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I found a fork and started eating. I was really hungry. The first bite scalded my mouth, but I kept chewing.
“Does that taste good?” she asked.
I swallowed. “I’m not sure. I think I just burned my taste buds off. It tasted good yesterday.”
She didn’t look convinced.
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