Love Uncharted

by Berinn Rae

  • • •

  Daniel stood in the door of his office for a long time, head bowed, shaking fingers gripping the frame for support. He couldn’t move, didn’t dare follow Lily. She hated him now. He’d seen her disgust in the one venomous glance she’d thrown him when she jumped to her feet. He’d felt it in her furious kicks when he grabbed her. For so long he had lived in dread of this moment … the revelation of his biggest secret. The naked truth had gone so much worse than he’d ever imagined, seeing the betrayed pain in her eyes, the loathing on her face. She believed he’d taken advantage of her, of everyone. But it wasn’t like that. If only he could explain.

  He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t draw comic strips, little illustrations of events happening around him. “Boxing in life,” his mother used to tease. And she’d been right. The boxed vignettes had helped him come to terms, through humor, irony, and objective images, with the frightening emotions his Reader’s gifts revealed about people. By looking for clues in lines of body language, character, and expression, he could maintain a distance and still see the nuances of personality. And eventually he grew to understand human emotions rather than fear them.

  He’d started writing Lost and Found three years ago, not because he found the people in his life interesting subjects, but because he wanted to know them with his heart and not through his Gift. What he discovered astonished him. He found courage where he least expected it, fortitude in the seemingly weak and perseverance in the fanciful. In writing the comic strip, he uncovered the deepest strengths, love, and integrity in his friends, family and neighbors.

  Then Lily catapulted into his deliberate, boxed-in world. Never had he met anyone like her, so strange, so mercurial and elusive. He’d found it impossible to understand her and grew obsessed, he admitted it. So he recreated Lily as a character in Lost and Found. Getting under the surface of who she was brought him riches beyond his wildest imagination. Each revelation about her became more precious and exciting than the last. And with each new insight, he found it harder and harder not to write more of her into the series.

  Oh God, would she ever forgive him?

  When he could finally breathe again, Daniel showered and dressed. He listened for Lily next door, longing with every cell in his body to go to her. But only silence met him. When he stretched out his senses, he slammed hard and cold against a barrier that tasted so much of her essence it nearly brought him to tears. He didn’t know what to do, how to get to her … and so he did nothing.

  • • •

  Lily felt pain everywhere, as if all her bones had been broken and reset crooked. She woke slowly to the ringing of the phone and lay shivering under a mountain of blankets. The answering machine clicked on. She could hear Ellen’s voice reminding her she had an appointment with clients in less than an hour. Lily could not have cared less. All that was once alive in her felt dead. Daniel’s betrayal cut too deeply and with a harsh despair made more wicked because of his tender and absolute loving only hours before. Why didn’t he tell her? And how could she fall so much in love with a stranger?

  Oh, wouldn’t Ellen be delighted when she found out? How illustrious she’d feel that she personally knew the creator of the famous strip! In that moment Lily despised her almost as much as she did Daniel. Will I always be the biggest fool on the planet, she wondered? Always the idiot, the perpetual joke who now had to get out of bed and shower away Daniel’s precious kisses, his fingerprints on her skin, his scent in her hair? As the hot water beat down on her head, Lily cried like an abandoned orphan.

  • • •

  Moving around her apartment like a silent ghost, she dressed quickly before slipping out the door to hasten down the stairs. She could not imagine facing Daniel ever again. Not three blocks from the Lennox, she felt them at her shoulder, Rodney and Look-Alike. They pressed closer this morning, like an icy shroud eager to settle. She turned to face them, saw their colorless eyes brimming with pain and sorrowing love.

  “I’m sorry, guys. For you, for me. This is what I do … I fuck up. I’d hoped you’d peacefully fade away once Daniel and I finally … ” She swallowed hard. “But since you’re still here, I’ve somehow missed the magic punch line to this macabre joke.” She cracked a mirthless laugh. “And believe it or not, I’m glad of your company today.”

  “Well that’s a start, at least,” a voice said from out of the blue. Lily wasn’t even surprised by Madame Bagasha standing on the walk in front of the magic shop.

  Lily didn’t stop. “I’m already late for work.”

  “I know.” Madame fell into step beside her.

  “I won’t even ask how you know.” Lily felt a flare of anger. “There’s nothing you or magic can do for me now, Madame.”

  “You’ve never spoken a truer word, child.”

  Her cryptic remark stopped Lily in her tracks. Madame gave her a quizzical look, and Lily, surrendering, followed the tiny witch up the steps and through the purple door. The shop smelled different today, like bittersweet memories lost under dust. Even the crystals looked dull and lifeless. It pained Lily that, in this shop filled with beauty, her eyes could no longer see and her heart no longer feel its wondrous grace.

  Only Rodney and Look-Alike seemed to expand like balloons filling with air. They looked as vivid and fresh as the moment they first stepped off the canvas. For a breath of time, the sorrow faded from their faces. Their eyes closed, their nostrils flared as if they suddenly possessed the biology to smell, to taste, to feel. In the next second they deflated back to gray sadness.

  Madame watched them, too. “They long to leave and can’t find the way, Lily.”

  “And just when I need them most. How typically male.”

  Madame laughed and wound a path through the cluttered store back to the kitchen where she poured Lily a cup of tea and forced her to a sit long enough to drink it. “You can feel sorry for yourself, girl, or you can do what needs to be done.”

  “I know.” Lily breathed the reviving scent of ginger rising from her cup. “I must take responsibility. For them. For my feelings. And for the fact that Daniel was afraid to tell me who he truly is. Which says more about me than it does about him, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, I’m perfectly aware of why he couldn’t tell me.” After a long silence, she said, “I imagine writing the comic strip keeps him connected to those around him.”

  “See? You are more astute than you think, Lily.” Madame sat down across from her.

  “What’s that saying?” Lily sighed. “It’s no good fooling yourself about love. You can’t fall into it without dirtying your hands … or something like that.”

  Madame laughed. “Yes. And then there’s this one. ‘There is a smile of love and there is a smile of deceit, and there is a smile of smiles in which these two smiles meet.’”

  “On another day I might appreciate that one,” Lily murmured and stood to go. At the door she thanked Madame for the tea. And the obscure advice. With firmer resolve, she set out for Faces in Time.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “What do you mean. Daniel is G.I.L.?” Ellen stared at Lily like she’d sprouted the six arms of Shiva. “That’s impossible!”

  Lily shrugged but had no energy to argue the point. Or rather the smoking gun, Lily thought humorlessly. She’d managed to get through their meeting with the new clients. Ellen had done most of the talking to the young married couple, wife six months pregnant and radiant, husband proud and radiant. They’d signed the contract for an oil portrait despite more than a few inquiring glances in Lily’s mute direction.

  Now the two women sat in Ellen’s office. Lily watched as compassion slowly replaced astonishment on her boss’s face. “So you feel he betrayed your trust?”

  “Yes! By not having the balls to tell me. And by spying on me.”

  “But, Lily, all artists take from real life, especially writers. They create an amalgam of characters from different people they’ve met, cared for, lived with day to day. I imagine if Daniel had known you
when he wrote graphic novels you’d have been featured as the greatest diminutive super-heroine of all time. The poor guy’s smitten, for pity’s sake!”

  Lily dug her fingers into her hot, tired eyes. “Pity’s sake? Last night I finally felt honest-to-God love, Ellen. Love with a capital L. I lived inside it, felt it fill all the holes in my soul. But how can a man who won’t share himself truly love anyone?”

  “Are you pissed that you don’t know him well enough or that he might know you too well?”

  “I’m pissed that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me he was G.I.L! He could have, anytime. Last night, even. He saw me looking at the framed originals at the opening.”

  “The guy was about to get laid. You can’t blame him for — ”

  “I can and I do!”

  “He knew you’d react in just this way, Lily. That your anger would rev you up beyond reason and he’d never get a chance to explain. And did you let him explain? No.”

  “I was humiliated! He’s been drawing me, drawing all of us, like he’s some … ”

  “Like he’s some kind of peeping psycho, Lily?”

  “No! I understand why he draws, Ellen. I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me!”

  “You understand that as well, Lil. You’re just looking for a reason to be angry. Both you and Daniel have lived as outsiders your entire lives, always keeping people at arm’s length. Now you’re both tangled in love and vulnerable. Fear of losing someone you finally let yourself care about makes a person desperate. Surely you can forgive — ”

  “I can’t!” Lily wailed and drummed her forehead on Ellen’s desk. “I wish I could. My heart feels like stone. And there’s no light in this tunnel, no escape, no painting my way into some distracting vision. My broken heart is bleeding all the colors from my brain.”

  “I’m sorry, Lily. Maybe you just need time to cool.”

  “I can’t stay at my apartment. I can’t see him, it’ll just kill me!”

  “Then stay with me for a few days. And try to paint, Lily. Work always clears that stubborn, jumbled-up head of yours. I’ll go by your place and pack you some clothes.”

  • • •

  Ellen locked Lily’s apartment door, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, and turned to find Daniel standing awkwardly against the hall railing, hands deep in his jeans pockets, his hair rumpled and tragically boyish. She flashed him a smile.

  “Did you feed the fish?” he asked.

  “She won’t stay away that long, Daniel.”

  “I know.” He shrugged, looking at the floor.

  “What do you mean, you … know?”

  “Lily never told you what I am?” He asked, surprised. “I’m a Reader, Ellen. A kind of overqualified psychic.”

  Ellen snorted. “Really, Daniel — ”

  “I know Lily feels betrayed. She’s hurt almost as much as she is angry. She can’t work and is at the studio right now with two scary looking men, one of whom looks like me. You’re playing at supportive when you’re really just pissed off and impatient with her for not behaving rationally. Or professionally.”

  Ellen’s cheeks paled.

  “I have a powerful magic, Ellen. So does she. A lot of sometimes frightening magic. Because of it, she and I have been telepathically linked pretty much twenty-four-seven since Friday night.” Then he heard what he’d said, and gave her a sharp glance. “Please don’t tell her I can sense her. She thinks the link is broken, and she’s already so bloody mad at me.”

  “So you’re still spying on her?”

  Daniel was startled. He raked his fingers through his hair and said miserably, “I can’t let go of her!”

  “Then don’t. You are both supreme idiots, overcomplicating a thing that’s pretty damn basic. Do you want her?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then all you need to know is if she still wants you.” Ellen hefted the bag higher on her shoulder. “You and I both understand Lily well enough to know that she gets off punishing herself. Not consciously, of course. But self-deprecation is her default, her automatic go-to place.”

  Daniel nodded. “She feels safe there.”

  “Does she?” Ellen looked impressed. “Then my advice is go yank her free. She is hurt, Daniel, and very confused. You’re the one person who can, with a simple apology, make her world right. And I’d do it sooner rather than later because when I left she was getting pretty chummy with those two hotties.”

  “They don’t usually come into a building.”

  “You know these guys?”

  “Yes. I told you her magic was frightening. The men aren’t real, actually. And they aren’t human. What they are, quite literally, are portraits she painted that came to life through her magic. Like manifestations, apparitions. Ghosts.”

  Ellen put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

  Daniel continued. “Everyday these manifestations get bolder and emanate more emotion. Even Madame Bagasha doesn’t know how to de-spell them.”

  “Madame Bagasha? Oh, Christ,” Ellen exploded. “Is this about the love potion?”

  Daniel cast her a wry glance. “You and Lily should talk more.” Ducking inside his apartment, he grabbed a coat and pulled it on.

  Ellen pushed away from the wall. “Yeah, well you’re not one to cast stones, big guy. Tell me, what does G.I.L. stand for?”

  “Guy In Limbo.”

  “Seriously?” Ellen smirked. “More like Guy Lovestruck, Lascivious, and Ludicrous! And you deserve it, using Lily in your strip — ”

  “It’s not Lily! It never was. All the characters are fictional, for Christ’s sake! It’s just that when I draw them they sometimes take on recognizable features. Do you see yourself in the strip?”

  Ellen looked startled. “Am I in it?”

  “No! That’s the point. No one person is in it, not even Lily.”

  “But I see a lot of Lily in that character, I always have.”

  “And I’m damned for it. But don’t you see other people in that character as well?”

  “My sister, sometimes. Even me, occasionally.”

  “I rest my bloody case!” Daniel reached to take the duffel bag from Ellen’s shoulder. After a brief hesitation, she let him have it.

  “Are these guy-ghost things with Lily dangerous?” she asked, following him down the stairs.

  “I don’t know. They’ve always kept their distance before. Do you want a ride back to the studio?” He slammed through the front doors of the Lennox, practically running.

  “No.” Ellen tossed him a set of keys and smiled. “It seems my job here is done. Best of luck, Daniel. Oh and FYI? I’m a huge fan of G.I.L. But Lily is not. She thinks he picks on artists and nerds … go figure! She is, however, crazy about Daniel Harris.”

  • • •

  The downstairs restaurant, Taste of Thyme, had a Closed sign in the window. As Daniel fit Ellen’s key into the side door leading upstairs to Faces in Time, his stomach growled at the rich smell of marinating meat coming from the kitchen. He took the narrow stairs two at a time. The second floor, a great rambling maze of hallways and studios reminded him of his old middle school, with echoing, hardwood floors, the smell of dust and varnish and aging wood. His footsteps echoed in a silence he found unsettling.

  He’d felt Lily’s magic five blocks away, stirring powerfully enough to raise the hair on his arms. Now he glided quickly past Ellen’s dark office, his heart pounding, afraid for her. Before he rounded the corner to Lily’s studio, he sensed the presence of Nila and his Gran.

  Damn it to hell! Nila had ignored his request to keep the Cohort out of their lives. With Lily’s uncertain state of mind and her unpredictable power, anything could happen. And none of it good. He stopped when he saw Nila and Gran standing, on guard and obviously terrified, in the hallway outside Lily’s open studio door. Panicked, he shot a querying call through the link to Lily and felt her gushing relief at his presence. Her engorged magic leaped in elated greeting. Gran lifted her arms in defense and D
aniel shoved past Nila to step into the studio.

  “You have no business here, Daniel,” Gran said, her voice razor sharp. “You have betrayed my trust by not informing me or the Cohort that Lily possessed magic so volatile.”

  “Nila fulfilled that obligation very nicely.”

  “As she should have!” Gran snapped.

  “Did she bother telling you that Lily’s magic has taken on properties of mine? Lily sensed you both coming long before you arrived. Yet she stayed because she is not afraid. Not of what her power can do, nor of what yours can, Grandmother Gilmore. You must sense by now her magic will never, ever be shackled again. Or worked by a coven or the Cohort. It is a magic uniquely her own.”

  He pushed the door open further and saw Lily standing on the far side of the room near the large windows. She was flanked, closely, by the two ghoulish apparitions. Her face was pale, her arms dangled weak at her side, and her legs trembled. Daniel guessed she hadn’t eaten anything since the day before. A smile flitted across her face at his thoughts. Then her mouth tightened, and he saw the determined focus in her eyes.

  Daniel suddenly realized what Lily was attempting to do. “Have you asked her why she’s conjuring so much power, Gran? Nila?”

  “If she’s trying to dispel these creepy things, she’ll need our help,” Nila blurted out.

  Daniel laughed. “Will she? Why, because you helped create them through the love potion, Nila?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” Lily spoke in a restrained, quiet voice. “The manifestations are and always were completely mine. There is no spell you or Madame or Gran will ever find that can vanish them. Only I have the words and the power to make them disappear. I’ve always had the power. I only just realized it today.”

  “Madame Bagasha has been advising you?” Gran asked.

  “Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” Lily turned a beaming grin on Daniel. “She advised me in the ways of the heart. And the simple truth of mine.”