by Sara Reinke
“He’s an asshole,” he replied, drawing a quick but discernablediscernible smile from her. “Trust me. His name’s Dean Abbott. He’s a doctor. And he was in love with Sam, my girlfriend.”
He told her about that night, the fight in which he’d knocked Dean flat on his ass.
“Good for you,” Mei exclaimed.
“Yeah, well, not so good in the end. I told you Dean’s a doctor? So’s his dad, as in the chief of staff at Midtown Hospital, second cousin to the governor or some such bullshit. So Dean gets off the hook, not even a fine, while me, I went to jail for ninety days on assault charges, had to fork out a hundred and fifty bucks in fines and court costs, plus about ten thousand dollars in medical bills the son of a bitch choked up.”
“Ten thousand?” Mei gasped, eyes wide.
Jason smiled with little humor. “Hey, it’s expensive work, recapping teeth and reconstructing a broken nose.”
“No, I mean, you had ten thousand dollars you could just blow like that?” Mei said, and not for the first time, Jason found himself charmed by her ingenuousness.
“I didn’t, no,” he said. But Sam had. And she’d offered to give it to him.
“We can work it out in trade,” she’d told him with a wink, wriggling against him suggestively as they’d spooned together in bed. He’d stiffened at her offer, not in a sexual way, but in an insulted, too-proud-for-his-own-damn-good sort, then shoved back the covers and abandoned the bed.
“Where are you going?” Sam had been genuinely bewildered as he’d stomped into the bathroom.
It was a man’s place to provide for his family. That had always been Jack Sullivan’s mind-set, and thus, had always been Jason’s too. More often than not, he and Sam had avoided the topic of money because it was the only sore spot between them, and one which Sam had been pretty much unaware of. Jason had taken out a second mortgage on the tavern so he could repay Dean’s medical bills, too ashamed and humiliated to accept Sam’s offer.
“Jesus,” Mei laughed again, snapping him from his thoughts. “Punching someone out, doing time for assault. You know, you seem like such a nice guy, cute but sort of lame—”
“Thanks for that.”
“And now I find out you’ve got this whole secret cool life thing going on I wouldn’t even have suspected. It’s kind of hot.” Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry for what happened back at the waterfront.”
He drew back from her, his brows narrowing, his expression growing somber. “What’d they put in the wine?”
“Special K, I think,” she said quietly as he stood and walked toward the windows. “It’s sort of like Ecstasy. It makes you feel good, makes you do things. It can make you see things too. Things that aren’t really there.” She said this last in a small, tremulous voice, as if she hovered on the brink of tears again. “Liang meant it as a joke,” she offered, and Jason uttered a sharp, humorless bark of laughter as he parted the heavy curtains with his fingertips and glanced outside.
“Some joke.”
“He’s jealous of you,” Mei said quietly.
He cut her a glance. “Why?”
“Because he knows I like you,” she said, looking down at her lap.
He turned to her, folding his arms across his chest. She was trying to play on his sympathy, and even though her words sounded honest enough, her expression earnest and remorseful enough, he was hard-pressed to believe her. “There was no camera, was there?” he asked. “At J-Dog’s apartment. That’s not why you wanted me to take you there.” When she still didn’t answer, didn’t as much as move, he continued. “There was no rape either. You made all that up to get me to feel sorry for you, agree to help you.”
You always have to play the hero. Again, Eddie’s words came to mind. Some pretty girl comes in here with tears in her eyes and a sob story, and off you go, riding to the rescue.
“You went to his apartment to get drugs. He had a stash somewhere in his closet and you knew about it, so you went back there and stole it. That’s where all your money came from, isn’t it? What you were doing this morning, your so-called favors from friends. You were out selling drugs.”
“Jason, I…I…” She began to tremble again and he heard her sniffle, a soft gasp against tears.
I’m not falling for it this time, he thought, his brows narrowing as he struggled to steel himself. Not this time.
“But you didn’t sell all of it, did you?” he demanded. “You needed some for yourself. That’s why you tried to get that money at the strip club. So you could buy drugs.”
Her tears spilled and her bottom lip quavered as she nodded.
“What is it?” he asked. “What are you on, Mei? Tell me right now, or I’m out of here. I swear to God, I’ll leave your ass.”
“Heroin,” she mumbled, more tears falling. “It’s heroin, all right? J-Dog got me into it. I’m not a junkie, though.” Her eyes were round, glossy and pleading. “I’m not, Jason, I swear. I don’t shoot up. I just snort it sometimes, like last night, just to relax, you know. To forget about shit for a while.”
“You used it last night?” he asked, surprised, then mentally kicked himself in the ass, remembering how she’d seemed dazed to him when he’d stepped out of the shower. He’d thought she was suffering from shock, but understood now. She was on a nod, snorting dope right here in the hotel room.
“He hurt me,” she cried. “The other night, when we met, I’d caught him with another girl, a dancer from the club. He was fucking her in the apartment. We started fighting and he tried to choke me. I just wanted to teach him a lesson.”
“Was the Special K in the Mad Dog your idea?”
“No,” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “No, Jason, no, I’d never do that to you. I—”
He laughed. “You’d never what? Lie to me? Trick me? Jesus Christ, Mei, you haven’t done anything but lie to me since I met you.”
“Me?” she cried. “What about you? I know that shit at the wax museum wasn’t all in my head! And yesterday, that wasn’t a meth lab explosion, and I know that too. You know what happened, you know what’s going on, don’t you? Don’t you?”
She clapped her hands over her face and wept. Something in him crumbled, the part of him that could never resist a woman’s tears, that always had to ride to the rescue, as Eddie had so duly noted. Jason went back to the bed and knelt in front of her again.
“Hey,” he said gently, stroking her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she said, over and over. “I want to stop. I’ve tried but I can’t. It’s always on my mind. I think about getting high all the time, except…” She looked up at him, tearfully. “Except when you’re around. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why, but I don’t need it as bad around you. It’s like you do something somehow and I’m okay for a while.”
Because of the Eidolon, he thought as she crumpled against his shoulder. It drew on his fear, and hers. Maybe it feeds on her addiction too, whatever sort of negative energy that emanates. And maybe when it does, it makes it better for her, at least for a little while.
He held her against him for a long time, rocking her gently in his arms, smoothing her hair back with his hand. “Thanks for telling me the truth,” he said at length.
“Yeah, well.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt. “You owe me.”
Finally, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath, Jason said, “You’re right. I do.” He leaned back and she looked at him. “Someone shot me five years ago, Mei. They shot me in the head and I died.”
She blinked in tearful bewilderment and surprise, and he made himself continue, forcing the words out of his mouth until they tumbled loose on their own, everything he remembered, everything he’d come to realize. He was afraid of what she’d think, what she would do or say, fully expecting that she’d think he was crazy, that she’d be frightened of him, like Sam had been. He was terrified of what her reaction would be, but he told her everything anyway. When he was finished, he closed his eyes and braced himself for her
rebuke, her disbelief and derision.
“What will happen if they find you again?” she asked instead, drawing his gaze. “That guy, Sitri, and those things he had with him.” Her brows were lifted, her eyes round with worry. “They want to take you back to that place, make you a slave again? That’s why that thing was trying to get inside your head, that Wyrm.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding.
A slave. He hadn’t thought about it in exactly that term before, but realized she was right, that was exactly what he’d been to Sitri, he and the Eidolon both, and what they would have again if the Wyrm had found its way into Jason’s brain. Slaves.
“But why?” she asked. “Why do they want you so bad?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think the Eidolon must be something really powerful, something they can’t control on their own. So they need me to give it a body…a mind they can take over.”
He looked at her plaintively. “I know this sounds crazy.”
She nodded. “It sounds nuts,” she agreed, adding swiftly, “But I believe you. I saw it too, remember? I was there. I know you’re telling the truth.”
Her arms slipped around his neck and he clung to her with a shuddering sigh of abject relief, ridiculously choked up, on the tenuous verge of tears. I believe you. Three simple words that suddenly meant the world to him, made him realize how desperate he’d been to hear them.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Mei said as he drew away. “Why would you have ended up in the place? You called it the…Netherworlde? But it sounds like hell to me, like you were in hell. But I thought only bad people went there. You know, like Hitler or Ted Bundy. You’re not like that…weren’t like that. Before, I mean. Were you?”
“No.” He shook his head. Truthfully, that had been in the back of his mind all along too. He hadn’t been an angel, not by the stretch of anyone’s imagination, and true, he’d never gone to church regularly. But he’d tried to be a good person. Aside from the misdemeanor assault rap, the closest he’d come to anything morally abhorrent in his life had been smoking the occasional joint, serving the occasional minor, lying to get the occasional girl to go to bed with him and then lying again when they were through by saying he’d call her.
“Maybe that priest can tell you,” Mei said. “The one from the wax museum?”
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Jason said. “He said to meet him at the church, Saint Stephen Martyr.” If he’s still alive, he added to himself, remembering the pain in Gabriel’s face, the bloody wound in his gut. He met Mei’s gaze. “Thank you for believing me.”
“Thank you for trusting me,” she replied. He stood up but she hooked her hand against his, stopping him before he could walk away. “You and me, we’re square?” she asked, looking up at him, her expression growing hesitant and hopeful. “I mean, it’s all good now, right? We’re okay again.”
“Yeah.” He brushed his hand against the side of her face, a light, fleeting caress. “We’re okay, Mei. I promise.”
****
He bought them Chinese takeout for supper that evening and they sat cross-legged together on the bed, eating straight out of the boxes while watching reruns of Wheel of Fortune back to back.
Mei showed him how to use chopsticks. “Hold one like a pencil, here.” She leaned over, moving his fingers against the slim spear of bamboo. “Then take this one like this… Now use your fingertip to move it up and down.”
When he got the hang of it enough to pinch a mouthful of kung pao chicken, she grinned. “Ni que shi zuo de hen hao a,” she praised in Chinese, adding by way of translation, “You did a good job.”
The sun set and Wheel of Fortune gave way to a string of C.S.I. spin-offs, then the late-night newscast. After a while, Mei became restless, fidgeting and squirming, then pacing about, chewing on her nails, the figurative long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, but he knew she was lying. She’d told him she wasn’t addicted to heroin, and while that may have been the case, she was obviously hurting for it nonetheless.
He thought of what she’d told him, her words replaying in his mind. I think about getting high all the time, except when you’re around. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why, but I don’t need it as bad around you. It’s like you do something somehow and I’m okay for a while.
He’d attributed this to the Eidolon, a side effect of its apparent ability to somehow feed upon negative emotions, fear in particular.
“Hey,” he said as she cut a diagonal path across the room for at least the ten -thousandth time. When she glanced at him, he motioned with his hand. “Come here.”
Mei walked back to the bed and he scooted over in unspoken invitation. She stretched out beside him, hesitantly at first, her body stiff as he wrapped his arm around her and drew her near.
“I’m just jonesing,” she said. Nestling her cheek against the nook of his shoulder, she spooned against him and closed her eyes.
“I know,” he murmured.
She began to tremble. “It’s bad,” she whispered.
“I know.” He pressed his cheek against the crown of her head, closed his eyes and tried to will the Eidolon to stir inside him. As its icy presence filtered through his veins, he could feel it drawing on Mei’s need. It wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as feeding from the strip club owner, Pops’’s fear had been, but again, it felt visceral, almost sexual in terms of gratification. The tremors in Mei’s body began to wane, then disappeared altogether, as did the tension in her slender form. With each passing moment, she relaxed against him all the more, her breath growing long, slow and deep.
Back off now. He opened his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. Mei and Sam had told him his eyes turned black whenever the Eidolon came over him, and it seemed to him that he could see it now, its indelible shadow clouding his line of sight. For the moment, anyway, it had drawn the raw brunt of Mei’s heroin need from her, but it remained hungry and restless, longing for more. He’d unleashed it without considering how he might recall it when it was done, and leaned his head back now, closing his eyes, the tendons bridging his neck and shoulders tensing now as he clenched his fists and struggled to rein it in.
Back off now, he thought, repeating this mantra over and over until at last, he felt the Eidolon receding inside him. He knew it was gone when the leaden coldness inside him began to subside. He let out a long sigh, not realizing until that moment that he’d been holding his breath. When he looked up at the ceiling again, the shade of gloom was gone.
I did it, he thought in amazement. I turned it on, then off again. I actually controlled it.
“Are you all right?”
He’d thought Mei had fallen asleep, and the sound of her quiet voice startled him, Glancing down, he found her looking at him, her brows lifted, her dark eyes concerned.
“I’m fine,” he told her with a smile. “How about you?”
“Better,” she said. “Much better.” Cutting him a curious look, she added, “Because of you. That thing inside you.”
“The Eidolon, yes. I think it feeds on negative things, like anger or fear.”
“So it’s like a vampire, sort of? Only it drinks bad things instead of blood.”
He managed a laugh. “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” he said. “But yeah, I guess that’s pretty close.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked, and when he shook his head, she frowned, puzzled. “What does it feel like? The Eidolon, I mean.”
“Cold,” he told her. “Very cold, all through me. Like I’m standing naked in a snowstorm or something.”
It was her turn to laugh. “I’d like to see that,” she remarked, slapping him lightly, playfully on the stomach. When she left her hand here, draped against his abdomen, he didn’t think anything of it. But as her fingers began to move, slipping down below his navel, creeping over the waistband of his jeans, it occurred to him the movement migh
t have been more than innocent on her part. And when she touched him through the denim of his jeans, first gripping, then stroking him gently but firmly, his eyes widened in surprise.
“Stop,” he whispered, catching her hand with his own. He heard her breath cut short in surprise, and she froze against him. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small and warbling, as if she hovered on the brink of tears. “Jason, I’m sorry. Please, I…I didn’t mean…”
She sat up and he could hear the soft, fluttering sounds of her breathing as she hiccupped against tears. “I’m sorry.”
Every man she’d ever met in her entire life, with the likely exception of her father, had used her in one way or another for sex. She didn’t know how to express fondness or gratitude any other way and he realized this.
“Mei, listen to me.” He could see her eyes glistening with soft reflected light, and he tucked his fingertips beneath her chin, tilting her face up. “You’re a beautiful girl,” he began.
She rolled her eyes and slapped his hand away. “Oh, God, here we go.”
“What? You are.” When she flapped her hands in a whatever gesture, he caught her chin again, redirecting her gaze to meet his own. “You are. Any guy would be lucky to have you around. I know I am.” His smile faltered. “But I can’t do that. I can’t be with you, not like that. I’m sorry.”
“Because you think I’m a kid.” She pushed his hand away again.
“No.” He hooked her by the fingers, slipping his own through hers. “Because I’m still in love with Sam.” Forlornly, in his mind, he added, And I always will be.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The aroma of coffee brewing stirred him to consciousness some time later, and when he opened his eyes a slim, squinting margin, he saw pale gray daylight. He sat up with a groan, still somewhat groggy and more than a little disoriented. The little motel room was empty, the curtains slightly opened. The TV was on, the volume turned almost all the way silent, and on the bureau across from the bed, a little four-cup coffeemaker sat with its red light ablaze, a filled pot resting on its miniature burner.
