by Alisa Valdes
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I would have probably done the same thing.”
“It’s hard for me to talk about. It was easier to show you,” he said, looking down at his hands again.
“You think Victor has Buddy?”
Travis nodded. “Of course.”
“Do you think Buddy’s alive?”
Travis nodded. “Buddy’s bait. Victor wants to make me screw up somehow. He wants to tempt me into messing up so badly I end up where he is.”
I felt incredibly torn now, as though I had to choose between saving my beloved dog and saving Travis from Victor. Travis seemed to sense this.
“I’m going to get your dog back, no matter what you say,” he told me. “It’s my fault Buddy ended up there.”
“Where?” I asked.
“I think he’s probably got him out at the trailer where Randy shot Victor. He haunts it. I’m going to start by checking there.”
“That will be dangerous,” I said.
Travis tried to shrug it off. “I’ll take Randy with me, and a couple other guys we know from the Vortex. We’re a lot smarter than Victor. Don’t worry.”
I began to cry, and he held me. His touch felt insanely good.
“What happened after you guys left the trailer that day?” I asked.
“We died.”
“I know. But how? What happened, exactly?”
“I didn’t show you our own deaths, Shane,” he said, “because I didn’t want you to see that.”
“Oh.”
“But I can tell you. A few minutes after Randy killed Victor, we were trying to get out of there. I was driving. We came around a bend in the dirt road, and there was Victor, plain as day, without a scratch, just standing in the middle of the road. I swerved on instinct and lost control. The truck and horse trailer—we all sailed off the road, over a little cliff there. We had propane in the back, and when we hit, the whole thing blew, like a nuclear bomb.”
“Your horse died too?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he what you were riding when you found me?”
“Yes.”
My eyes welled with tears, and I couldn’t help but let out a sob.
Travis put his free hand on top of our joined hands, and the heat and light came, entering through my skin and bones, filling me with a sense of calm—and temptation.
“Man, that feels good,” he breathed.
“Too good,” I said, shivering with pleasure.
We sat in silence for a moment, just enjoying each other’s energy, and the ways our bodies reacted to it. I didn’t know what sex felt like yet, but if it was anything like holding hands with Travis, I was looking forward to the day I might find out.
“It’s okay, you know,” Travis told me. “Us killing Victor. If it hadn’t happened this way, I might never have met you, we might never have shared this.” He looked at our hands wistfully. “One thing I’ve learned is that everything really does happen for a reason. Even the things that seem bad turn out good, and the other way around, too.”
“So maybe all this bad stuff you say is happening to me is really good stuff, then,” I said.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But . . .”
I watched his mouth as he spoke. Again, I was taken by its perfection. He noticed me looking, and pulled back from me, almost imperceptibly, but kept his eyes on my face.
“You’re real pretty,” he said, seeming to weaken on his position to avoid me for my own good. “Even first thing in the morning.”
I blushed, and realized my breath was probably as out of control as the mascara that was undoubtedly making raccoon circles under my eyes.
“Did it hurt a lot when you died?” I asked him.
Travis shook his head. “Didn’t feel a thing, actually,” he said. “It was more like—”
Down the hall, we heard sounds of hungover life in the kitchen as my mother rummaged around clumsily, slamming cabinet doors it sounded like, and dropping pots on the floor.
“You can’t be here,” I interrupted him, realizing in a panic that my mom would flip out if she saw him. Then again, she might believe me if she saw him, I thought. No, actually, she wouldn’t. She would assume he was some stalker guy I was letting in through my window.
“You have to go,” I said.
“Okay.” His eyes went to the window I’d crawled out of last night to be with Logan. “Meet me outside in a little while.”
“Where?”
“Same place Logan hurt the rabbit last night, end of the street.”
There was a knock on my bedroom door then, and my mother’s voice calling out, “Shane? Are you talking to someone in there?”
“I’m on speakerphone, Mom!” I cried, the lie coming quickly and easily now that I was starting to get the hang of it. “Talking to Logan.”
My doorknob rattled as she tried to open the locked door.
“You know I don’t like when you lock me out,” she said.
“I know, hang on, I’ll be right there. Let me—um, just let me end this call. Privacy, please.”
Travis went soundlessly to the desk, and wrote on a piece of paper, “Come as soon as you can.” His handwriting was small, tight, neat.
I nodded at him.
“You want pancakes?” my mother asked through the door. “And chicken-apple sausage? I have to get to work today—Dr. Paulson just called in sick—but I wanted to at least have breakfast with you before I go.”
“Um, sure, Mom. That sounds great!” I answered far too enthusiastically, happy that she was leaving so that I could meet Travis without having to think up a lie for her. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the happy tone, or that if she did, that she would just attribute it to my having ostensibly hit my head in the crash. Come to think of it, the whole “Shane hit her head” thing was going to come in handy for excusing all sorts of behaviors I might have gotten in trouble for in the past. Silver linings.
Travis smiled at me, winked to let me know everything was going to be okay. Then he walked through the wall of my room as though it weren’t there, and was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
After my mother had fed me some truly delicious pancakes with real maple syrup and butter, fussed over me in her usual guilt-ridden way, and assured me that she was going to set up another appointment at the hospital for my “brain issues,” she left for work with the unwelcome announcement that my grandmother would be coming down from Truchas to watch me for the rest of the day. I felt sick.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, sweetie,” my mother said as she delivered a kiss to the top of my head. “We just need to be careful right now.”
Nice.
I was desperate to see—and feel—Travis again, and to convince him not to disappear. I was already craving him and frantic at the thought of losing the guy who felt, in every way I could imagine, like my perfect other half. My soul mate. My Kindred.
Happily, however, I took a moment and did the math. Truchas was a good two-hour drive from Albuquerque, and my mother had only gotten called into work an hour ago, giving me a one-hour window in which to see whatever it was that Travis wanted to show me, and return to the house to play crazy invalid Shane for my granny.
As soon as I heard the garage door whirring shut behind my mother’s Lexus, I hurried to clean up and get dressed, and went outside, running to the end of the street with the terrible fear I might never see Travis again.
Thankfully, I saw Travis standing about sixty feet into the national forest, already on the hiking trail that wound all through the foothills leading up to Sandia Peak. I hurried to meet him.
“You made it.” Travis hugged me as though we hadn’t seen each other in years, rather than just one short hour ago.
“You can’t leave me,” I said. “I won’t let you. I’m not some fragile little girl. Whatever this is, whatever we are, I can handle it. I promise you.”
“Let’s walk,” he said. “I have something to show you.”
I
followed him along the trail. A few others were out on the trails, the die-hard runner types mostly, in their protective winter gear. They didn’t give Travis a second glance, assuming him to just be a regular human.
We walked for maybe ten minutes, when Travis suddenly stopped and knelt down to look beneath some dried sagebrush. I watched as he extracted a small animal from under the plant. It was a baby cottontail rabbit, bleeding and terrified, broken and handicapped, half frozen to death. I felt sick and sorry for it, and turned away. I had seen enough misery and gore lately. I couldn’t take any more.
“Hey, little guy,” Travis said calmly, his voice warmly reassuring. “Let’s take a look at you. What happened here? A coyote tried to get you, huh? Big, mean coyote. We won’t let him get away with it, will we?”
The rabbit made a tiny, frightened screeching sound.
“Can I look yet?” I called out, knowing what he was up to.
“Still a little gross,” Travis answered. “But not for long, eh, little fella?”
A minute or so later, Travis instructed me to turn around. There, in his lap, was a whole, happy, healthy baby bunny. He released the animal, and off it sprinted, in a zigzagging line given to it by nature for the best shot at avoiding the mouths of predators, lightning fast.
“So basically, you go around rescuing roadkill?” I joked. He appreciated my sick humor and cracked a grin.
“And the occasional pretty girl.”
“You have more than one?” I asked flirtatiously.
“Nope. One’s plenty.” He seemed almost insulted by the question. “I’m pretty sure there’s only one like you, anyway.”
We walked on, mostly in silence now as the hike got steeper and my breath got heavier. Finally, we came to a stone bench in the middle of the path. We were the only ones around. The bench faced out over a beautiful little canyon.
“Look at this view. I love it here.” He took a deep breath.
“This is very pretty,” I said as the damp cold of the bench seeped into my legs and seat. I paused. “Tell me you’re not going to leave me.”
“I brought you here for a reason,” he told me, standing up again. “Because I don’t want your last memory of me to be a sad one. I want us to do something fun together before we part ways.”
I began to cry with frustration and desperation. “We’re not parting ways! Quit saying that.”
He seemed to feel sorry for me, but he was resigned. “Let’s have a little fun. Good memories.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“Remember how I told you I have different ways of traveling? Well, I wanted to show you how I get around when I’m in a hurry or have a long way to go,” he said. “I can bring living humans with me, if I want.”
I shook my head and blinked, a little confused because we were standing perfectly still.
Travis explained. “I use memorials. It can be a gravestone, or a descanso by the side of the road, or something like this. Anything that someone has built in loving memory for someone who has moved on to the next plane, I can use it. All revenants can.”
“Use it how?”
“I’m about to show you. C’mere.”
Gingerly, I stood beside him as he wrapped his arms around me. Travis grinned in his gorgeous way, and told me to hold on to him. I obliged, and was sorely tempted by the nearness of him. I wanted to nuzzle into his neck, to kiss it, but instead I just embraced him. He seemed to focus on something in the distance, and looked almost as though he was entering a trancelike state. I felt a deep, dark vibration in my solar plexus, and the world seemed to shift somehow, just a little, like when you are suddenly dizzy for a brief second.
“Here we go,” he said, as the wind kicked up around us, enveloping us in a small, warm tornado that was filled with golden waves of light. I felt the bench drop out from below my feet, and we hovered for a moment, with Travis holding me tightly to him with both arms now. And then we spun, and soared. I squealed a little, and pressed the side of my face into his chest. I tried to look down, but I couldn’t see anything at all anymore, other than the golden light and white fog of the tornado. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, gathered my courage, and opened them again to find Travis smiling at me. My belly felt the way it did on a roller coaster when it dropped. It was completely thrilling and exciting, and I laughed out loud.
“Get ready to land,” Travis said. Again, I closed my eyes, anticipating a bump. But no bump came.
When I opened my eyes, the tornado has dissipated. I was still in Travis’s arms, but we weren’t in the foothills near my house anymore. Only a few seconds had passed, but we were somehow now on the side of Highway 550, at mile marker 111, in the bright blazing light of the winter morning, next to Travis’s and Randy’s descansos. My feet were on the ground. It was real. I twisted out of Travis’s grasp, and spun, looking about me in shock. I knelt and touched the ground, ran my finger over the white wood of the cross, amazed to be here.
Travis chuckled, apparently delighted by my discombobulation, and by the fact that he had someone special to share his world with now.
“Isn’t that cool?” he asked.
“How does it work?” I demanded. “Why don’t people know about this?”
Travis cocked his head to get a better look at me with those unflinchingly beautiful eyes, finding great humor in my astonishment. “Most people don’t hang out with revenants, or if they do, the revenants are usually better at keeping secrets from them. But I like sharing my secrets with you.”
“Then you can’t abandon me.”
“We’ll see,” he said as he grinned. He was so beautiful, so happy, so alive. I stood still, just looking at the way the sun found golden flecks in the brown of his eyes. I wanted him with a profound ache. He came closer, and brushed the back of his hand lightly against my cheek.
“It is tempting,” he told me softly, “so tempting to kiss you.”
“I wish you would.”
His face registered pain, and he sighed heavily. “No.”
He ran his fingertips beneath my chin, very lightly, and down my neck, to my collarbone. I shivered with pleasure, and closed my eyes.
“But I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you, too,” he said.
Then he pulled away from me, and began to tickle me, switching gears. I opened my eyes to see him laughing at me playfully, with a naughty sort of smile.
“You suck!” I tickled back.
He laughed, and dodged my hands. I lunged again, and dug my fingers into his sides. He doubled over, clearly quite ticklish.
“Aha! So you do have a weakness!” I said.
“Stop!”
I kept tickling him, enjoying having some small power over his body. “Beg me,” I said.
“Please, please, please stop tickling me!” he called out, laughing so hard tears streamed from the corners of his eyes.
“Fine,” I said, backing off. We both panted from the exertion, and regarded each other with longing and happiness.
“That sucked,” he said, still laughing a little. “I hate being tickled.”
Something occurred to me now. “If you can be tickled, is your body just like a regular body when you’re a revenant?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, you must be hungry. I should have offered you breakfast.”
“I’m okay. I’ll get something in a bit.”
“Can you feel pain, too? Can you bleed and break bones and die . . . again?”
“Sort of.” He grimaced and seemed surprised I’d asked this. “Yeah. This body can, I mean. Why? You want to hurt me now?” He grinned to show he was kidding.
“No! I was just wondering, like, because of Victor and all that, what if you got killed again?”
“Then I’d forfeit my right to redemption.”
I didn’t understand.
“I’d go immediately to the Underworld,” he elaborated. “Poof, gone. So I have to be careful. Good thing you can’t die
from tickling.”
My eyes were wide. I looked around and said, “Are you safe here?”
“Don’t worry about me. This is supposed to be fun, remember? Come here.”
I went to him, and he held me again, harder than before, and asked me to think of a place somewhere in New Mexico.
“Carlsbad Caverns,” I said.
He got that distant look in his eyes again, and again I felt the low humming in my chest.
“Coming right up,” he said. “Hang on tight.”
I kept my eyes open. The world around us began to move, the way it does when you’re on a carousel, faster and faster, and as the gold-and-white tornado appeared around us, I giggled, and tried to push away from him, to touch the undulating lights, but he grabbed me, hard, with a stern look.
“Do not let go of me, whatever you do,” he said. “Not here.”
I heeded the advice, and clung to him. In short order, the spinning stopped, and we were once again at the side of a road, one I’d never seen before. It looked to still be New Mexico, but it was warmer, and the vegetation was different. I looked around me, and saw another set of descansos, near a road sign that indicated we were about twenty miles from Carlsbad Caverns. We were in the southern part of the state, hundreds of miles from where we’d just been.
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“Believe,” he said. “It’s energy, is all. People’s love for people who passed away is real energy. We use that to travel.”
“I do believe you,” I said, looking deep into his eyes.
“Ready to move again?” he asked, hugging me tightly.
Again the ground fell away, and when we alighted, we were in a foot of snow beside roadside crosses, next to a field with six freezing, skin-and-bones cattle hunkered down against the wind.
“Come with me,” Travis said as he jumped the fence to the field, and strode toward the cows. They looked at us with weary eyes, but didn’t move away. They were too cold.
