by Sara Reinke
“What’s going on?” he asked, then, after a stupefied moment, ““Mei?””
“Oh, shit.” She hiccupped, clutching at Jason. “J-Dog!”
“Hold on.” Jason had wrapped one arm protectively around Mei as the door burst open, and the room suddenly dissolved into shadows. Again, Jason felt the weight of his body dissipating; like a dried leaf adrift on a current of breeze, he floated away. This time, though, Mei went with him. He felt the warm press of her body against him melt away, literally, as if she had been made of wax, slipping from his grasp. It lasted less than a second, these peculiar sensations, and then Jason found himself standing in a narrow alley, his arm still around Mei, the gun still in his hand.
“Wh-what the…?” Mei gasped. She jerked away from him as if he’d burned her, and staggered about in a clumsy, reeling circle, her eyes enormous with disbelief and shock. “What just happened to us?”
Jason looked up, disoriented, drawing the blade of his hand to his brow to block the glare of the sun from over the edge of the building’s roof. It wasn’t the green apartment building in skid row any longer, and of the blown-out third story window, the smashed walls and gaping hole, there were no signs. Nonetheless, he recognized the place and realized where he was, where the Eidolon had brought him. Again.
“Where are we?” Mei asked. “Jason, what is this place?”
“Home,” Jason replied quietly, staring at the back door of what had once been Sully’s Tavern, and the entrance leading up to the apartment above the bar where long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, he had lived. “It’s home.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Look, we made the news,” Mei said as she lay down on her side against the queen-sized motel bed, curling in a fetal ball beneath her blankets, her gaze pinned drowsily on the television.
Jason had brought her to a little motel near the tavern, the place that rented weekly Dean had mentioned only days earlier. It was crappy, but it was shelter, at least for a couple of nights—a room with a TV, telephone and shower.
He’d taken advantage of this last, standing beneath a steaming, stinging spray and scrubbing the silt, grit, grime and blood away from his body.
The Eidolon is getting stronger, he’d thought as he stood in the shower, staring down at his hand, which, only hours earlier, had been mangled by the window in J-Dog’s apartment. His nose had been broken too, and damn likely his cheekbone from where the creature had punched him with a cinderblock fist. He’d been able to prod experimentally with his tongue against his back teeth and feel a couple of loose molars only hours ago, but now those same teeth were firmly rooted in place once more. His nose wasn’t even particularly sore, and there wasn’t a mark on his face to be seen, now that the blood and muck had been washed off. His hand was likewise nearly good as new. He felt a dull, arthritic sort of ache in the joints as he flexed and unfurled his fingers, but otherwise, they seemed virtually unaffected.
The rest of him had healed, but his shoulder remained a grim, aching mess. He’d downed a pair of the ibuprofen tablets Dr. Delgado had given him to try to dampen the pain, get it back under some semblance of control. The tablets had been in his coat pocket during his fight. They were nearly pulverized, so the best he’d been able to do was dissolve the crumbled powder in a glass of water and knock it back like a shot of tequila.
Curious, he approached the bed, looking over at the TV. Images flashed across the screen of the avocado-green apartment building filmed from the alley. From this vantage, the damage to the third floor was apparent, a rough-hewn, ragged hole where the outer wall had once stood.
Breaking news: Meth lab explodes, the video caption declared. “Jaime Vincent is wanted by police for suspicion of manufacturing methamphetamines in the apartment,” a reporter said in voice-over as the screen changed again, this time to show a mug shot of J-Dog. “Two years ago, Vincent pled guilty to drug possession charges and was sentenced to three years and three days of probation. Meth labs are dangerous and carry a high risk of explosions due to the volatile chemicals involved in the drug’s production.”
“A meth lab,” Mei murmured, looking somewhat forlorn. She hadn’t asked Jason about what had happened, hadn’t mentioned it at all, in fact, until just that moment, almost as if she was trying desperately to push it out of her mind, forget all about it. “That makes sense. Yeah.” Her eyelids drooped heavily. “Except for your eyes.”
He thought he’d misheard her. “What?”
“Your eyes,” she said, her voice sleepy and slurred. “Today at the apartment, your eyes went black…like there was nothing there…like you weren’t there.”
Her words struck him as eerily similar to something Sam had said to him. For a second, it was like your eyes weren’t even human, like they’d gone black or something.
It’s the Eidolon, he thought. When it comes over me, it shows in my eyes.
“You saved my life,” Mei said.
Jason smiled, sitting beside her on the bed. “Now we’re even.”
“Yeah.” Her voice had taken on a sort of slurred, deadpan quality to it, something he hadn’t noticed before stepping into the shower. She seemed sleepy, somewhat dazed.
She’s in shock, he thought. And why shouldn’t she be? We were both almost killed by an apartment building today.
As he watched, her eyes closed. After a long moment in which he waited to see if she’d open them again, he leaned forward, giving her a gentle nudge. “Hey, you still with me?”
She didn’t answer. In fact, he heard a soft snuffling sound that sounded like a snore. “Mei?”
She was sound asleep. He smiled again, reaching down, slipping the remote control from her hand. “Good night,” he whispered.
****
While she slept curled at the end of the bed, he stretched out at the top, turning off the television and lying still for a long time, watching as evening faded to night to judge by the dimming, graying quality of light seeping through the motel room curtains. At last, the room was enveloped in darkness and Jason closed his eyes, letting his consciousness drift.
He dreamed of stepping outside his body, of being weightless and airy, like an untethered balloon, and floating above the bed, looking down at himself. He felt no alarm at this admittedly bizarre sensation, no fear or unease. What was happening felt natural to him, as inexplicably reflexive as holding the pistol had been, folding his finger against its smooth trigger, firing it.
The Eidolon.
Earlier in the day, he’d thought it was getting stronger, but now he understood the truth. It’s becoming a part of me.
In this shadowlike state, he continued to rise, floating up until he passed through the ceiling of the motel room like a wisp of smoke. He passed through insulation, wiring, vent shafts and pipes until he seeped out through cracks in the roof. Now he drifted on a cool night breeze, sailing over the cityscape below, looking down at a dizzying network of lights and shadows.
The Eidolon was a primitive creature, of that much, Jason had grown certain. Driven by impulse, reflex and instinct, it reacted with no aforethought, seemed incapable of any sort of cognizant action. The Wyrm had controlled it, Jason thought. I gave it a body and the Wyrm gave it a brain. And the poor, stupid son of a bitch didn’t know anything different. Only now…
The Wyrm was gone. Nemamiah had killed it. And though it had apparently taken a couple of days for both Jason and the Eidolon to adjust to this new arrangement, to get their proverbial shit together, it seemed to be happening bit by bit, day by day.
It’s a part of me.
Now instead of the Wyrm’s will to guide it, the Eidolon relied on Jason, his mind, his emotions. My memories, he thought. That’s why it keeps bringing me here.
Here was Sully’s. Jason had lighted along the top floor, eventually settling against the weathered frame of the old fire escape. The lights were on in the apartment beyond, the blinds turned so that the wooden slats were all open. The window had been left open, and he could look in
side. He could see her.
Sam.
She’d just emerged from the shower and walked across the bedroom, a towel wrapped around her lean body, falling to just beneath the apex of her thighs. With another, she dried her dark tumble of loose, wet curls.
His heart ached. He wanted to go to her, crawl through the window, rip the towel away from her body and pull her fiercely against him. He wanted to kiss her, make love to her again, plead with her to help him, believe him, take him back and love him again. But when he moved to press his hand against the glass, a helpless, longing gesture, he realized he had no hands with which to touch anything, let alone the window—or her. He saw nothing but the rudimentary outline of his arm, his hand. Through his reflection in the glass, he saw nothing but a dim silhouette.
I really am a ghost now, he thought in dismay. I’m nothing but a shadow, the Eidolon.
From inside the apartment, the phone rang. Sam glanced over her shoulder at it but made no move to answer. Instead, she sighed and sat down against the edge of the bed facing Jason, less than five feet away from him, in fact, and continued drying her hair.
The phone rang again. And again. And again, until finally her answer machine kicked on.
“Hi, this is Sam.” Her recorded voice carried into the bedroom from beyond the corridor, in the living room. “You know what to do next.”
Jason heard a beep, and then Dean’s voice. “Are you there? Please pick up if you’re there. You’ve turned your cell phone off and I’ve left you a dozen messages.”
His voice trailed off, the last line left dangling in the open air. Sam had fallen still. Her expression uncertain, she lowered the towel from her hair to her lap and shot a hesitant glance toward the bedroom door.
“Sam, come on,” Dean said. “Please? Look, I really need to talk to you. I can’t concentrate on anything, can’t focus, can’t think. This is killing me, Sam.”
She’d set a small waste can beside the bed. Jason could see she’d swept up the mess of broken glass and busted picture frames he’d left and dumped it all here. The photographs she’d apparently piled onto the bed, because as Dean spoke, Jason watched her reach for them, her eyes glossy with sudden tears, her breath coming in ragged, pained gasps.
“I’m sorry I said those things,” Dean said. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I was an ass, and I swear I’ll make it up to you. Please, Sam. I love you so much.”
As he watched, Sam leaned over the bed and picked up the cordless phone. “I’m here,” she said softly, nearly a mumble.
She loves him, Jason thought. I was wrong before. She really loves him.
In his mind, he understood the logic of this. It had been five years for her, five long and obviously very painful years. For Sam, it hadn’t been as if Jason had left her or had turned up missing.
I was dead, he thought. She had grieved for him. And then she had moved on.
Sam lay down against the bed, drawing her long legs up to her belly, the phone against her ear. He wasn’t privy to Dean’s side of the conversation, but didn’t need to be. He could glean the gist of things simply by listening to Sam.
“I know,” she murmured into the line, nodding even though Dean couldn’t see her. “I know, Dean. Yes, me too. I know you do.”
The dog, Barton, padded in from the hallway. The moment it saw Jason, its lip wrinkled back and it uttered a sharp bark that startled Sam.
“Barton, what?” Sam said, sitting up as the dog darted forward, its claws scrabbling against the hardwood floors. “Dean? Hold on a second.”
She set the phone down on the bed, pushed her hair back from her face and, holding the towel demurely in place at her bosom, rose to her feet. “What is it, Barton? What’s the matter?”
She was facing him. Had he not been incorporeal, she would have been staring directly at him as she approached the window. She looked around hesitantly. “Jason?”
His heart shuddered to a pained standstill when she called his name softly, tentatively. The dog apparently never barked or growled at anyone but him, and he wondered if it was only his imagination, the hopefulness he thought he saw in her face as she drew the blinds up. She uttered a soft grunt as she shoved the window up farther, then leaned out, nearly nose to nose with him now, but unable to see him against the backdrop of the night. Barton growled beside her, trying to plant its front paws on the windowsill and poke its head outside too.
“Barton, stop,” she said, nudging the dog aside. “Jason? Is that you?”
I’m here, Sam. He found himself opening his mouth to tell her this, his heart seized with desperate longing, only in his shadow form, he had no mouth, no breath, no voice. He was mute, all but invisible as she looked down, then pivoted slightly, craning her head to look up toward the roof. When he reached for her, brushing his spectral fingertips against her cheek, she turned as if she’d felt him, the whisper of air against her skin, and looked directly at him again.
Her expression faltered, the hopefulness in her eyes dampening and, shoulders slumping, her breath escaping in a quiet sigh, she withdrew into her room again. “Come on, Barton,” she said, lowering the shade.
Jason watched her return to the bed, lifting the phone in hand. “I’m sorry. Barton was barking. No, it was nothing.”
Which pretty much summed up Jason’s place in her life, he realized. Nothing. That’s all I am to her, all I deserve to be. Nothing.
Heartbroken, he left, floating again on the wind, falling away from the fire escape and drifting skyward again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You were talking in your sleep last night,” Mei remarked the next morning as they walked together down the street, side by side. She smoked a cigarette as she spoke, keeping her free hand jammed down in the pocket of her parka. The morning was foggy, damp and cold, and they moved with their shoulders hunched against the chill.
He glanced at her. “I was?”
Mei nodded. “About some guy named Sam. You kept saying that name.” She glanced up at him, hesitantly. “Are you gay?”
He blinked in surprise, then managed a laugh. “What? No.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “Sam is short for Samantha.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Mei asked.
After a momentary pause, he said, “Yes.”
“You love her?”
He smiled sadly. “Yeah. I do.”
“So where is she?”
“Here,” he said. “In the city.”
“Why aren’t you with her, then?” Mei asked. “I mean, if you love her so much.”
The conversation between Sam and Dean on the phone that he’d overheard had cemented in Jason’s heart and mind exactly where things stood now, exactly where he stood. Nothing. I’m nothing to her.
“I left her,” he said at length and before she could ask him why, he added, “I’m not good enough for Sam. Never have been. Never will be.”
“Hey.” Mei drew to a halt, grabbing him by the hand. “That’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she’s found someone new now, moved on with her life, and she deserves that. She deserves to be with him. He’s a doctor and can give her anything she wants. I can’t give her shit and never could.”
“If all she wants are things, who needs her, anyway?” Mei said. “You ask me, she isn’t good enough for you.”
“No.” Jason shook his head. “Sam’s not like that. She doesn’t—”
“Come on. If she wasn’t like that, then you’d still be with her right now. You wouldn’t have left, because she wouldn’t have let you. If she was as gaga in love with you as you are with her, then money wouldn’t matter and there’d be no choosing between you and Dr. Fucktard.” She gave him a solemn look that was surprisingly grown-up for her round, youthful face. “Sounds to me like she’s where she wants to be, with who she wants to be with.”
He wanted to protest, offer her some sort of objection, but for the life of him, he couldn’t. Because I saw her crying over him last ni
ght, he thought. Not me. No matter what happened between us since I came back—that day at Holiday Island, making love to her—it doesn’t mean shit. She’s in love with Dean now. I have to accept that and move on.
“Hey, I meant to tell you. I called my zu mu,” Mei said. “Early this morning, while you were still sleeping. They’re three hours ahead of us in Kentucky. My parents always head out for the restaurant before even before the sun’s up, so she was home alone.” With a wry smile, she jabbed her elbow into his side. “I figured you’d be proud.”
Grateful for the change in subject—because thinking about Sam had made his heart ache—he managed a smile in return as he poked Mei back with his arm. “I am proud. What’d she say?”
“You know, the usual guilt-trip bullshit routine. She misses me. She’s worried about me.” Her eyes had grown glossy, but she blinked against her tears. “She said she’d wire me some money. My parents don’t know or they’d be pissed. We’ll have to go later to the Western Union over in Chinatown to get it.”
“You going to use it for a bus ticket home?”
She laughed, snorting out a smart stream of smoke. “God, no.”
“Why not?” he asked. “It sounds like your grandmother wants you to.” When she shook her head, dismissive, he added, “If she can’t send you enough, maybe I can help. I don’t have much, but—”
“You don’t get it. It’s not about the money. I can’t go back to Kentucky. It doesn’t matter if my zu mu wants me there or not, because my parents don’t.” She stopped in midstride, turning around to face him. “I didn’t run away, okay? My parents kicked me out. There was nothing my grandmother could do. My mother said as far as she and my father were concerned, they didn’t have a daughter anymore. I was worse off than dead to them. I was nonexistent.””
She managed an unhappy bark of laughter. “So you see, I can’t go home again, because I don’t have any home to go to.”
