A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga)

by Grotepas, Nicole

  “Would you still hang out with me if I said yes?”

  They continued up the northbound street, passing the soup place and the Scientology building. Trees lined the sidewalk and the shadows deepened beneath each tree where they were shielded from the yellow light of the street lamps.

  “Foul,” he said, laughing. “There’s no way I can answer that and still be cool. If I say no, then you’ll suspect me of having bad motives or being unfaithful in thought. If I say yes, you’ll think I must be the dullest guy you’ve ever met, intellectually speaking.”

  “So you’re worried I can actually read your thoughts?” A group of bike enthusiasts passed them, some of them riding extremely modified machines—one had a seat-post and steering column that were almost ten feet tall.

  “Whoa, did you see that?” Ty asked, stopping and turning around to watch the group recede down the street.

  “Yeah, I think a bunch of them live up the street from me. Weirdos,” Kate said, shaking her head.

  “You think so?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe? I just don’t see the point in some of their bike modifications.”

  “Fun? Just because they can?” Ty speculated as they continued up the street.

  “Probably. I just don’t get it,” Kate said, waving a dismissive hand.

  “So you’d never make a bike like that?” he asked, pointing the direction they went. He switched the amp to his other hand.

  Kate pretended to think about it. “Um, no.”

  “Not the adventurous type, eh?”

  “Just not adventurous with bikes.”

  “Then what? What are you adventurous with?”

  Kate could hear the grin in his voice and wondered if he was looking for something specific. She cleared her throat. “You know, the usual. Rock climbing, bouldering, that seems pretty adventurous, right? I like to hike. Uh, I’m not afraid to try new foods.” They crossed the final street before Kate’s flat. Plinking sounds came from the driveway of a nearby house where a man had his head beneath the hood of his car, tinkering. Muffled voices rose from a group of smokers out on a porch further up the street. Kate imagined she could almost smell the stench of the cigarettes

  “And what adventurous foods have you tried?” Ty asked.

  “Uh, let me think,” she said, suddenly unable to remember anything remotely interesting. “OK, yeah, squid. I tried squid once.”

  “Right on! I love calamari,” he said, sounding excited.

  “No, not calamari. It was literally just a plateful of tentacles. Like as though the tentacles were supposed to be spaghetti noodles. They were in a dish, some kind of nasty Korean dish.”

  “So . . . you didn’t like it?”

  “No, but that’s not the point, is it? I tried it. That’s the point,” she explained, suddenly concerned that he’d find her adventurous spirit wanting, just because she didn’t like squid.

  “Hmm, I guess. The jury is still out on whether or not you’re adventurous enough.”

  Kate glanced at him, feeling defensive, and caught the gleam in his eye as they climbed the stairs to her front porch, where light from the front room spilled out the picture window. “Gee, thanks,” she said. She was beginning to feel like any relationship with him was a lost cause. The defeatist side of her whispered that she should give up and let the seams burst that she’d stitched up around the lopsided parts of her personality. That was how she kept it all in. Kept it hidden. See if he likes me then, a voice in her head seemed to say.

  Kate pulled the keys from her messenger bag and unlocked the door. Ty followed her inside where he set the amp down. He rubbed his fingers together, massaging them a bit.

  “Well. I’m impressed and I guess you’re a stallion. You didn’t complain at all, well done,” Kate observed as she dropped her bag on the floor and slipped out of her backpack-style guitar case. She leaned it against the cinderblock and plywood bookcase. “Audra would have—” she began, turning. Without warning, Ty took her in his arms, backed her against the wall and kissed her.

  Wait, what? Kate’s thoughts scrambled to catch up. Ty’s mouth tasted of mint. His breath filled her as he moved in deeper. It happened so quickly that she was receptive just out of confusion, and, well, to be honest, it wasn’t like she didn’t want it to happen.

  She wanted this, didn’t she?

  One hand came to the side of her face, the other touched her waist, tentatively. Beneath the delectable flavor of him, there was a hint of chocolate, and then just that, that one taste—the one that flipped a switch in her, shut down reason and turned on desire.

  His hips pressed into her, and she felt his knee curve around her thigh. A groan crept up into her throat and she couldn’t hold it back.

  If he didn’t stop soon, Kate was afraid she’d begin tearing his clothes off. She opened her eyes to see if he was showing any signs of letting up and was surprised by the half-lidded, green eyes staring at her. Huh, she thought drunkenly, I didn’t know he had green eyes. There was a soft tone in his expression and a powerful lust pulled at the edges of his expanding pupils.

  She managed to sort through the hormones of desire coursing through her blood to discover her hands, folded against his chest, like she’d been tranquilized by his lips. Her fingers responded to her commands and moved slightly, and then she found the strength to push him away. Their mouths disconnected and his coarse fingers slid down her jaw, trailing along like lightning until they reached her chin and drifted away as gentle as an electrified summer breeze.

  He tilted his forehead until it touched hers. The hand that just left her cheek came to rest like a sunbeam on her arm. “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks now, Kate,” he said. He was so close to her. She still felt the length of his body pressed against hers. Every nerve ending was aflame. Her thighs tingled, her gut screamed, “Take me! Take me!”

  And . . . all she could think about . . . was Will.

  She closed her eyes and smiled, “It was nice,” she heard herself saying. Visions of mad, crazy, passionate sex between herself and Will played like an ill-timed movie in her head—it was deflating and it pulled her out of the moment with Ty. She felt slightly embarrassed, and it reminded her of the time when her parents walked in as all the sex-starved nuns told brave, pure Lancelot that he was going to have to perform oral sex on them. It happened during high school—the first time she’d seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail—and the show was ruined. Of course. Because they made her turn off the TV in an embarrassed flurry of activity.

  Kate’s guts weren’t screaming for Ty, they were begging for Will.

  Shut up, she told them. I can do this. I can forget about Will. I need to. I have a life. Ty is real. Will is a figment of my dreams.

  She took a deep breath, inhaling the musk of Ty’s skin. The fragrance was of oil and sweat seared by daylight, the sweetened kiss of that yellow orb, and there Kate was, tasting it with her nose and it was bringing her to life, but all she could remember of late was how it felt to be with Will. Being with anyone else was just a shadow of what it was like with Will.

  “What now?” Ty whispered. Kate felt his eyelashes brush against her forehead.

  I can do this. I can.

  “Come with me,” Kate said quietly. She took his hand and led him to her room. She let go, went to her desk beside her bed and flipped on the lamp. When she turned around, Ty was standing in the doorway with his hands shoved into the pockets of his skater shorts. His head was tilted down, his eyes had a seductive light in them, and a slight grin touched the corners of his lips.

  Kate slipped her shoes off and tossed them into her closet. Then she went to Ty, took his hand in hers and interlaced their fingers together. “Is this cool?” she asked.

  He nodded, bent close to her and kissed her lips softly. “Of course.”

  Kate pulled him into her room all the way and shut the door behind him.

  20: An Impossible Discovery

  Kate immediately noticed that th
e dragonfly ring was on her finger when she woke into the dream. This was the first time she hadn’t had to find it somewhere or have Will give it to her.

  She was in the bedroom, the one with the four-poster bed and the black ceiling with encrusted gems like stars in a night sky.

  She searched for him, but Will wasn’t there. Previously she’d always become conscious in this room wrapped up in his arms, so it was unsettling to be there alone. Her first thought was that she’d just wait for him. He will come, she reassured herself but it didn’t do much to give her the confidence that he really would show up.

  For a few minutes she sat on the edge of the bed, running her fingers over the red velour cloth of the bedspread. The silence was deafening. She tapped her toes to fill it with noise. Alone in the room, Kate became hyper-aware of how huge it was. A window seat beneath the towering, curved bay window took up the corner of the room, but the three panels were covered with dark blue, heavy curtains, as they always had been in the dream, so a glimpse outside couldn’t even entertain her. She stood and turned, doing a complete revolution to really absorb this room that she’d been able to largely ignore for the most part.

  The walls were covered in a dark wallpaper. Tall stands held flickering candles. A partition stood in one corner, the kind royalty once stood behind to change their clothes for privacy from their servants. Exquisite courtly romance paintings hung on the walls—pre-Raphaelite styled renderings of defining moments of love. One of them caught her attention. Kate moved to study it beneath the accent lighting shining directly on it. A placard beneath it announced it as a Waterhouse painting—”Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus.” A blast of cold seemed to send shivers rippling across her arms and neck.

  She turned and strode away, ignoring the grisly scene of Orpheus’ head floating in the water.

  Huh. Interesting room, Kate thought to herself, intentionally trying to not think of the painting. She was alone. Who knew what frightening things might lurk in the shadows. Well. She had never noticed so much of the room before. It was just part of the scenery. A backdrop to what happened between her and Will in the bed.

  There was another window, a single one also covered by a curtain, and a door to the outside next to it. That door led to a balcony, and she only knew because occasionally she and Will took it to go outside.

  Kate had hoped that perhaps she’d find some sign of Will in the room. But so far there was nothing. She meandered aimlessly to one of the windows above the velvet window seat, considered for a moment, and then as an afterthought, threw the curtain aside. It will be nice to get some light in here, she thought.

  She was startled to see a dark, foreboding sky with ominous black clouds hanging low over the wet, shadowed land. Flashes of lightning danced across the sky, connecting in chains that popped and sizzled and were gone as fast as they came. Thunder rumbled and shook the windows. Rain pelted against the glass in a nerve-wracking staccato that made a chill pass through her heart.

  She’d never seen it rain in the dreams. Never.

  “Scary,” Will said behind her. She jumped and turned.

  “Will! You scared me,” she whispered, breathless. She ran a hand across her forehead.

  He shrugged and smiled, but there was something new in his face. A hint of dismay. The start of something Kate didn’t want to get into. She’d seen it before. It was the same look she’d seen in Tom’s face when he finally left her.

  “Sorry, Kate. I thought you heard me come in. Er, appear . . . Here?”

  “I didn’t. It was the storm, the—the thunder, maybe,” Kate said, glancing over her shoulder. The wind had gotten bolder outside.

  “Probably. That was probably it,” he said absently, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He crossed his arms and frowned, staring into the distance, past Kate, out the window behind her. The dark blue curtains hung disheveled at the edge of the bay.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked, lurching toward the obvious. She couldn’t hold back. She didn’t want to. Something was bugging him and she needed to know what. Even if it hurt. What did she have to lose, really? A dream? It was never hers to begin with. Was it? Besides, there was no way Will would call things off. Things . . . things were good. They were great, really, if you could overlook the fact that they were only ever together in dreams and that Will was dead. True, sometimes that was hard to deal with. But otherwise, things were absolutely fantastic. They had . . . something. A burgeoning love. Didn’t they?

  His eyes flickered to Kate’s before darting away like a dragonfly, like the one on her finger. She glanced at it. The glow from the track lights above the bay window reflected over the iridescent colors of its eyes and torso.

  “Nothing, er, well, something, but I don’t want to bother you with it,” he said, standing up suddenly and rubbing his hands together. “So, what do you want to do? Dinner? Dancing? Maybe we could travel somewhere exotic?” He forced a smile, but it was empty. His eyes continued to look troubled.

  “Yes, maybe, but only after we talk. What’s bugging you? There’s something you’re not telling me. You can tell me. You really can and I wish you would.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing, Kate, everything is fine. It’s all just fanta—” he stopped. His hands, which he’d been gesturing with vehemently, excitedly, dropped to his sides in surrender. He closed his eyes, his chin drooped to his chest and he seemed to shrink slightly as though defeated. He dug the thumb and forefinger of one hand into the corners of his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. “It’s not OK. No. I’m sorry. Things are bad. I—I didn’t want to tell you. I thought I could pretend like everything was fine, but it’s not, and I can’t. I’m not that great of an actor around you, Kate.”

  Oh no. It’s over. The honeymoon, er, whatever it’s been, is gone. Sayonara. Here comes the breakup.

  Can a dream break up with me?

  Kate was cold inside. She wanted to kiss him, to throw herself at him, to distract him from the horrible moment rolling toward them like a giant boulder in an ancient, booby-trapped Nepalese temple. Her mouth dried out. Her voice choked in her throat, but somehow she managed to locate it. “What—what’s wrong, Will? What’s not fine?” She settled on the window seat and looked at the fingernails on her right hand, the hand with the dragonfly ring on it. She began to push a cuticle down, to fiddle with the skin, trying to tame it with the thumbnail of her other hand. Maybe if she focused hard enough on it . . . maybe this whole dream would fade. Maybe it would change and the bad thing would never happen.

  “I don’t know how to explain this. It’s confusing to me. I’m confused. I don’t even . . . I’m not sure what’s happening,” he said. He jumped to his feet and began to pace, walking back and forth between the bed and the bay window where the storm outside continued to rage.

  “Will, just say it. I can handle it. I’ve been through—,” she said, but he interrupted.

  “I’m not dead, Kate.” He stopped and stared at her. Kate stared at him, not comprehending what he’d just confessed. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the way his skin drooped around his mouth, and the mottled color of his skin. It was weird because he was a dream. Kate was dreaming. But he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

  Wait. Did he just . . . ? “You’re not dead?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’m alive.”

  “Well, uh, that’s great. Right? Maybe I can find you—”

  “You can’t. I’m alive, but I’m not on Earth.” He spoke over her in a tone of finality. A tone that said he was upset.

  “—and we can . . . What? Ha ha, right,” she said, brushing off his statement with a fake laugh. “Where are you? I’ll come find you. Er, if you want me to, that is.”

  “This is what I’ve pieced together,” he said, sitting down next to her. He turned, rubbed the palms of his hands over his 1970s jeans. “I died on Earth, but I wasn’t dead, because I was still aware, I just . . . I just didn’t have a body, I
guess. I’m pretty sure I saw a light.” His brow furrowed. “I think I was supposed to go toward it. Don’t hate me for this, but instead of doing that, I wandered off. Well, OK, it was a woman. A beautiful woman came to me and asked if I wanted to live again. For so long, I’d been hideous—I was sick when I died. I’d been sick for years. Sick and ugly. When I saw her, I went to her instead—oh this is so embarrassing to admit—instead of going toward the light.” His eyes, which had been on the storm outside, shifted toward her nervously, as though he was concerned she’d tell him he made a huge mistake. He went on, his gaze going back to the storm. “Of course I said yes. I’d done an awful job at living before. I wanted to try again. I went with her. And then I woke up in the strangest place. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s not Earth . . . it’s somewhere else. Somewhere awful.”

  Kate studied him, listening and thinking. They were both quiet. Finally, she prodded him, hoping for more. “What, is it like hell, or something?”

  “Maybe. Maybe it is. When I’m dreaming with you, I can’t remember all of it. I just know that it’s not good. I think—Kate, I think I’m a prisoner. Trapped. I died, but I can’t die now. I’ve been living on this other world since I died on Earth.”

  It sounded crazy. It sounded like he was messing with her. It sounded like she should punch him and walk away and forget about whatever plot he was dragging her into.

  But. There were the dreams. There was the fact that he was dead, but she was with him now and he knew things about the life of Will Hawke that the average person wouldn’t know. And judging from the intensity in his eyes and the set of his mouth, he believed whatever he was telling her. He wasn’t just roping her in only to tell her how gullible she was, which happened sometimes when friends thought they were being clever and hilarious—Ferg, to be specific.

  “So, you’re trapped in hell?”

  He nodded and swallowed. “Crazy, I know. I really wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me.”