Fade to Midnight

by Shannon McKenna

But something in him rejected the idea, with visceral horror. He'd admit to being brain damaged, but not crazy. He'd rather be dead. He wouldn't be squeamish. He'd just quietly put himself out of his misery. Insanity was one level of hell he would not stoically endure.

  But he wasn't crazy. Stressed out, yes. Sleep deprived, knocked on the head. Of course he thought it was all about him, him, him. Never mind war, famine, and plague. Forget indifference and brutality and climate change and innocent babies dying by the sword. Oh no. His own weird, twisted problems were still the center of the fucking universe.

  It was just a sketch. Bold and stylized. A chance resemblance, and Edie Parrish's solemn angel eyes had rattled him. Made it too personal. He just had to get over himself. Take a breath. Lighten up.

  He grabbed another book at random. Fade Shadowseeker, Book I, Midnight's Secret. The man on the cover had long hair, like his own had been before the waterfall. Green eyes. The right side of his face was puckered with scars, down to his jaw. He could see it more clearly in the close-up. The book shook in Kev's hands. He flipped it open, leafed through quickly, and then more quickly, so that he wouldn't have time to fixate on anything and go into a full-out panic attack.

  Every few pages there was a full-page color sketch, between the black and white strips. There was Fade pushing a broom in a desolate industrial warehouse. Fade, seated on a wretched cot in a squalid room, shoulders slumped in despair. Fade, shoehorning himself into a windowless bathroom the size of an upright coffin to wash himself. Leaning over a sink the size of a loaf of bread to splash his scarred face. Staring into a cracked mirror, into eyes bloodshot with trapped despair.

  Locked in his own mind, read the thought bubble over his head.

  That sink, that cot, that mirror, that bathroom. He knew them like his own hands. That was the room behind Tony's diner.

  How had she seen that wretched place? How could she have known? Even Bruno had never gone back there. That stifling room had been his own lonely, private hell. The knot in his belly grew tighter.

  The meet-the-author event would begin in about an hour. He looked down at the table, rummaging with a clammy hand until he found Volumes II and III. Midnight's Scion and Midnight's Oracle.

  He found a secluded corner, a rubberized footstool for reaching top shelves. He planted his ass on it, and contemplated his gelatinous thigh muscles while he gathered the courage to open the books.

  There's one thing I don't believe in. Coincidences. The words he'd said to Bruno echoed in his head. Problem was, he didn't believe in their opposite, either. Which left him nowhere. Trapped in limbo, suspended in midair. No clue where to stand, what to feel. What he could believe in.

  So what else was new.

  Midnight's Oracle, Book III, was on top. He cracked it open, near the beginning, to one of the dynamic full-page color drawings. It depicted Fade clinging to a rock in whitewater rapids. He clutched a girl under his arm. The girl struggled, screaming. On the next page, the girl had been saved, but Fade was heading over the waterfall, cart-wheeling.

  This time, the weirdness rattled him less. Those shock-and-awe hormones could only squirt out full bore a few times, and then the reservoir ran dry, thank God. He picked out Book I, braced for the flock of birds that was going to take flight from the pit of his stomach any minute now. He opened up the book, and began to read.

  "Any more questions?" Edie looked around the crowded room. Today's was a talkative, enthusiastic bunch. The ego strokes were nice, but it took energy to be smiling and chatty with a bunch of strangers.

  She pointed to a tall girl with dyed black hair and black lipstick.

  "Where'd you get the idea for Fade?" the girl asked eagerly. "He's so real! And so intense. Is he based on anybody you know?"

  Edie felt her smile falter. "Not exactly," she lied. "He came to me in a dream once, and I never forgot him."

  That, at least, was the truth. Fade Shadowseeker had visited her dreams ever since she'd started drawing him, when she was eighteen. It hadn't taken long for those dreams to turn scorchingly erotic.

  A redheaded girl jumped up without waiting to be chosen. "Fade is so sexy. I love it that he and Mahlia finally get it on, in Midnight's Curse, but then the bad guys abduct her and everybody gets distracted. Are they ever going to, um, you know? Get together? Like, a couple?"

  "I don't know yet," she said. "I find out that kind of thing as I go."

  The redheaded girl looked disappointed. "But can't you just, like, make them do it?" she said sharply. "I mean, you're the boss, right?"

  "Wrong. I'm not the boss at all if the story is working. It's a paradox. But I really hope that Fade and Mahlia get together, too."

  "Are you Mahlia?" the redheaded girl demanded. "She looks kind of like you. Is Fade, like, your own fantasy?"

  The personal question startled her, and she stuttered. "Um, I, ah...no. I never thought of it. I don't particularly identify with Mahlia, no."

  She felt bad for lying like a rug, but give a girl some privacy. The redheaded girl subsided, looking unsatisfied. Edie's publicist made a brisk wrap-it-up gesture. They'd run twenty minutes over for the question and answer session, and she hadn't even started signing yet.

  The book signing was the easiest part, though she felt silly repeating the same scrawled sentiments on the flyleafs of each book. She made an effort to chat, but it was going to feel good, to sprawl on her couch with a cold beer and a rented movie. Mutants taking over Los Angeles. She loved mutant movies. Couldn't imagine why. Hah hah.

  The line was almost finished, and the redheaded girl was coming up next. Edie smiled as she took the girl's battered copy of Midnight's Curse. A compliment if she'd ever had one. Out less than a month, and already dog-eared. A generous impulse spurred her to open it to the blank page after the title page. "What's your name?" she asked

  "Vicky," the girl said excitedly. "Vicky Sobel."

  Edie wrote, Thanks, Vicky! Here's hoping for Fade and Mahlia, and the triumph of true love. Best wishes, Edie Parrish. Then she sketched a quick drawing of Fade, with his arm around a woman. For the face, she glanced up to sketch the redheaded girl's pretty, wide-eyed face.

  The eye didn't usually open up so quickly. Usually she had a minute or so of grace, but when she looked up from scribbling the flourishes of the girl's curly hair and up into her eyes--she saw it.

  Something else. A flash of double vision. Another embrace, except that the girl wasn't embracing a man. She was wrapped in the coils of an enormous, strangling snake. Edie saw the dead girl's face, superimposed over the smiling, live face. Blue eyes staring and empty.

  Edie opened her mouth to speak, but her voice stopped. Her heart kicked up, a sick, vertiginous feeling, and she opened her mouth--

  "Stay away from Craig," she burst out, her voice shaking.

  The girl's face went stiff. "What do you know about Craig?"

  "N-n-nothing," Edie stammered. "It just came to me, to say that."

  "Why?" The girl leaned over the table. "Why did it come to you? Are you sleeping with him? Do you know somebody who is?"

  "No," Edie said quietly. "I have no idea who this Craig person is. Just that he's poison for you. Drop him. Run away."

  "I love Craig!" The girl's blue eyes bulged. "And he loves me! So just...stay away from him! Shut your mouth! Don't talk about him!"

  Why, oh why, did she do this to herself? Why didn't her psychic gift come with a protective mechanism attached that would let her know if there was any point in giving a warning or not?

  "I'm sorry," she repeated. "It wasn't my business."

  "Shut up," the girl said, her voice wobbling. "You...you nosy bitch." She grabbed her book, and ran, shoving people out of her way.

  Edie shuddered, seeing the empty, bulging eyes. Dark marks on her throat. Strangled. God forbid. But maybe, just maybe, being warned might make a difference for her. She could only hope. It made her feel raw, helpless. A mass of antennae, and no off switch.

  Except the meds. If she p
referred dead calm. No pencils, charcoal, ink. That was her off switch, if she could swallow it. But she couldn't.

  She pasted a smile on and looked up--

  And forgot the redheaded girl, her deadly lover, and everything else she'd ever thought, or known. Including her own name.

  Fade Shadowseeker stood right before her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Edie rubbed her eyes, looked again. Still there. Still him.

  He was extravagantly tall, broad, built. His face was thin, his cheeks carved deep under jutting cheekbones. The spiky hair, the flat, grim mouth. The scars. The invisible mantle of controlled power humming around him, brushing against her body like a million tiny tickling fingers, though he was a yard away, across the table.

  His eyes wiped her mind blank. That piercing green that laid bare everything it looked upon. She knew that face, though she'd only seen it once. She couldn't mistake those eyes. Those scars. She'd seen the wounds that caused them. She wished that she had not.

  She couldn't breathe, couldn't blink. Their eyes were locked. His eyes glowed with some intense emotion. There was an angry crimson spot in one of them. It made the green seem even more intense.

  The person behind him in line began to clear her throat. Fade stepped forward and laid down his books. He held out his hand.

  She took it, and dragged in a breath at the shivery feeling. It flashed across her skin, like wind rippling grass, rustling leaves. The ringing and dinging of a hundred tiny bells and chimes inside her.

  She stared at her hand, swallowed up inside of his. Her publicist approached, coughing discreetly. "Edie? They need to wrap this up."

  Edit tried to reply, but a dry squeak came out of her throat. The guy gazed down, unmoving. A monument, a mountain. So silent, and intense. So beautiful. Like glacial lakes, like thundering waves, piled up banks of clouds. Wild animals. The uncontrollable power of nature.

  She cleared her throat. "I sign with my right," she told him, her voice thin. "You have to let go, if you want me to, um, sign your books."

  He let go. She took her hand back, peeking at it as if expecting it to be somehow changed by that momentous contact, but it was just her usual thin, inkstained paw. She opened his first book, struggling to remember what she was supposed to do. Um. Yes. Signing books. She paused, pen poised over the paper. "Your name?"

  Something flashed in his eyes. "You don't know it?"

  She stared up at him. How could she? Was she supposed to know it? She shook her head, mutely.

  "My name is Kev," he said quietly. "Kev Larsen."

  She scrawled something unintelligible to Kev on all four books, and pushed them back. He took them, moved aside politely for the next person, but didn't go away. Oh, God. He was waiting for her. Oh, God.

  Excitement bubbled inside her. She was so aware of his presence, looming by the table while she chatted with the last few die-hard fans.

  Julie, her publicist, came marching over, and gave the guy a cold look. "Can I help you with anything?" she asked him.

  The man ignored Julie. "I was wondering if you would have a cup of coffee with me," he asked Edie. His low, quiet voice was wonderfully resonant. Full of sparkling harmonics that made her body tingle.

  Edie hesitated, and Julie chimed in. "Have you two met?"

  "Yes," he said. The certainty in his voice brooked no argument.

  Julie gave her a sharp look. "Is this true? Do you know this guy?"

  Know him? As if she could be said to know him. But she couldn't explain anything so improbable to the practical, nuts-and-bolts Julie. She hadn't even grasped it herself, yet.

  She nodded, jerkily. Yeah. She, uh, knew him. Close enough.

  "Well, then. I gotta run. Tell me what's going on later, OK?" She shot the man a suspicious look. "You sure you'll be OK?"

  OK? Such a bland state of existence, to describe standing five feet from her ultimate fantasy, Fade Shadowseeker, inexplicably made flesh and inviting her out to coffee. She managed to nod.

  After Julie's heels clicked purposefully into the distance, Edie shrugged on her coat, grabbed her art bag, and risked another peek.

  Sure enough, he got her again. She went blank, wordless, staring stupidly up into those eyes. Frozen by his outsized charisma.

  He offered her his arm. The little smile and the courtly gesture broke the spell, thank God. She took it, and they were walking together.

  He pulled sunglasses out and put them on. They passed the bookstore coffee shop, but people whose books she'd just signed were there. She shook her head at his questioning glance. "Somewhere else."

  They walked out and strolled silently down the block together until they found another coffee shop, this one almost deserted. He held open the door for her, bought them both a cup of coffee at the counter, waited while she doctored hers with various sugary and creamy contaminants, and followed her to a table in the far corner.

  He took off his sunglasses, rubbing his eyes. "Sorry about wearing these indoors," he said. "I know it looks affected, but I had a head injury recently, and the daylight's too bright for my eyes."

  "Oh. I'm sorry. Please, put them on if you need them," she urged.

  "No, it's OK in here. Not too bright. I've been waiting a long time. I want to see your real colors," was his cryptic reply. She gave him a puzzled look, and he clarified. "I don't want to look at you tinted green."

  "OK." Her gaze flicked away. It had been more manageable when he wore the glasses. It was like looking at the sun. His gorgeousness was burning a hole in her retinas. Those eyes. So shockingly bright.

  "So," she began, trying to sound brisk. "What's this all about?"

  "I was hoping you could tell me," he said.

  That left her feeling uncomfortably on the spot. "Tell you what?"

  He pulled the Fade Shadowseeker books she had signed for him out of the bookstore shopping bag, and spread them out on the table so all four covers showed. "You seem to know all about me."

  Unease deepened. She stared at him. "Those books are fiction," she said. "Completely and absolutely creations of my imagination."

  "Yeah?" He opened the third book, Midnight's Oracle, and flipped partway through. "See this? Where Fade goes over the waterfall?"

  She leaned, looked. "Sure. I drew it. What of it?"

  "That happened to me, four months ago," he said.

  She blinked helplessly, starting and abandoning a dozen different responses to that preposterous statement. Finally, she flipped the book open to the copyright page, and pointed. "Repeat after me," she said. "All resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental."

  "It's true," he said quietly. "A matter of public record. It happened on June 24th. Read about it in the online archives of the Oregonian."

  She wonderered where this game was leading. Maybe into a trap she should be smarter in avoiding. "I wrote that book before that date," she informed him. "A year before. You could have read my book first."

  His lip twitched. "You think I staged it? You ever look out over the top of Twin Tails Falls? I broke my arm, my thigh. I wouldn't have done that voluntarily. For any sum of money."

  "Oh, and I imagine you saved a teenage girl from drowning right before you fell, right?" she challenged.

  He shrugged. "Actually, it was a teenage boy, in my case. I jumped in to help him out. Ask the kid if he pulled that stunt to live out the story in your graphic novel. Might be good for a laugh."

  She shook her head. "Coincidence," she repeated.

  "I would buy one coincidence, or two, or eight, or fifteen," he said. "But not hundreds of them."

  Suspicion grew inside her, and with it, disappointment so intense, it made her throat burn. "I see where this is going," she said. "For the record, I'll tell you right now that I know absolutely nothing about your stupid little life, nor do I want to. Everything I have written or drawn is my own pure, spontaneous invention. So if you plan on suing me--"

  "Edie, no."

  "That's Ms. Parrish to you, mi
ster, and if you want to sue for plagiarism, or whatever it is you're contemplating, go ahead and try. It happens a lot. It's one of the shittier things about being the daughter of an extremely wealthy man, and you'd be surprised how many shitty things there are about that. After the third time, my dad bought me insurance. I'll give you the numbers of our team of lawyers, if you'd like to save yourself some time." She got to her feet. "As for me, I don't have time for this insulting bullshit. I don't appreciate being accused of--"

  "Stop!" He grabbed her wrist, and tugged. "I'm not suing you! I would never attack you! That's the last thing in the world I would ever do. Please. Sit. Please, Edie."

  His voice had a subtle commanding quality that unknit her tension. Her knees gave way, dumping her onto the chair. She yanked her hand away and put both hands in her lap, twisting her fingers til they were bloodless. "So, if that's not it, what do you want from me?"

  "I want to tell you a story," he said quietly.

  She waited for more, baffled. "A story that you want me to tell in one of my novels? I don't use other people's ideas. I don't need to, because I've got plenty of ideas of my own, and besides--"

  "No. I'm talking about my own personal story. Because I think, in some way or another, you already know it."

  "You don't get it," she said, helplessly. "I know nothing about you! I didn't even know your name until you told me! Why are you being so cryptic? Tell me what you want! Stop hinting! Stop playing mind games!"

  "I would if I could. But I'm at a disadvantage, because I don't know exactly what I'm asking you for."

  She wondered uneasily if the guy had mental problems. Gorgeous and charismatic though he might be, he was making no flipping sense at all. "Excuse me?"

  He let out a controlled breath, eyes fixed on his untouched coffee.

  "I was found, eighteen years ago," he said quietly. "I'd been beaten, tortured. I had some inexplicable brain injury. I wasn't capable of speaking, or even writing, for years. I pushed a broom in a diner, mopped floors, washed dishes. I have no memory of who I was before."

  She stared at him, speechless and openmouthed. It was her back-story setup for Book One of the Fade Shadowseeker series.