The Messenger: A Novel

by Burke, Jan

  “I broke something,” she said, trembling. “A big vase.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, coming closer still, almost touching her now.

  His cell phone rang.

  “Answer it,” she said, thinking that if someone was dying, she was not going to be the one who kept that person from speaking his last thoughts.

  “It’s Alex,” he said, puzzled. He answered. “Hello, Alex, what is it?”

  He looked at Amanda with a slight smile as he said, “Everything’s fine. I’m afraid I knocked over a vase…. Yes, I appreciate your vigilance. Everything all right otherwise?…Good, I’m glad the two of you are watching over Brad…. Yes…. Good night, then.”

  He put the phone away.

  “Thanks for covering for me,” she said, “but if she’s with Ron, he’ll know who’s breaking things.”

  “It’s none of Ron’s business, is it? Besides, I don’t think he’ll tell on you. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t even know which vase I broke. I think it was an antique.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Then everything that was of value to me in that room remains unscathed.”

  She smiled.

  “What happened?” he said quietly. “What frightened you? Was it what I gave you to read? If so—”

  “No, no! I’m glad you gave that to me. Thank you for trusting me.”

  “I believe I’m the one who should thank you.”

  He was looking down at her, and she could not mistake what she saw in his eyes. She held her breath, certain that in another moment he would touch her, perhaps even kiss her.

  He did reach for her, then dropped his hand. She allowed herself to breathe again, and wondered if she should make the first move. She was distracted as Shade came rushing toward them. Amanda froze, but the dog continued past them.

  “Becoming more like me after all, are you, Tyler?” a voice said, startling them both.

  Tyler turned, keeping her sheltered behind him.

  “I believe that’s the worst insult you’ve given me, Colby,” Tyler said.

  Colby laughed.

  “Colby?” Amanda said, stepping out from behind Tyler. What was he doing here?

  “We meet again,” Colby said, eyeing her up and down. “Although if I’d known how delightful you look in a nightgown…”

  Tyler took a step forward. “It’s been a long while, Colby, but if you think the outcome might be different this time—”

  Colby raised a hand to his jaw in rueful reminiscence, shook his head, and laughed again. “Temper, temper, Captain Hawthorne. Just for that, I don’t think I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”

  “Get out,” Tyler said. “You’re a damned liar, so I don’t care to hear your stories.”

  “Damned, certainly,” he agreed. “But aren’t you, as well?”

  “Shade,” Tyler said.

  “Now, now,” Colby said. “You know Shade will protect you if I truly try to harm you, but he has no interest in me otherwise. Really, Tyler, I hesitate to question your manners, but I do wonder if living in America has been good for you.”

  “Get out,” Tyler said. “Must I say it a third time?”

  Colby looked at Amanda, then back at Tyler. He smiled. “Miss Clarke doesn’t seem to feel so strongly. In fact, she looks curious about me.”

  She was indeed, but she wasn’t going to do anything to help Colby upset Tyler. She stayed quiet.

  Colby gave a little bow. “You know, as curious as I am about her in return, I think I will leave—but you might want to keep Miss Clarke with you, Tyler. Otherwise I may come back to renew my acquaintance with her.”

  He walked around the corner of the deck.

  “Is he gone?” she whispered to Tyler.

  “Yes,” he said, still staring after him, as was Shade.

  “How did he get in here, past your security?”

  “A knack of his,” he said absently. Then in a tight voice, “How did you meet him?”

  “At Rebecca’s party.”

  “Rebecca’s party?” He frowned. “I didn’t see him there.”

  “I think he left before…before we did.”

  He turned back to her and seemed to come out of whatever dark thoughts were on his mind. “I apologize for the fright that must have given you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, but shivered.

  He put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” He started to steer her toward her room, then stopped. “I have a question to ask of you, Amanda, and I hope you know you can answer honestly. I have no doubt that if I take you back to your room tonight, Colby will…will get past my security again, and…visit you.” His face showed a kind of grim determination as he said, “If you would prefer to wait for him…”

  “No.”

  He visibly relaxed. “Then I have a suggestion to make, and I hope you will understand that my reason for making it is your protection. You know that I don’t need sleep?”

  “Yes—except with the fevers, right?”

  “Yes, but this has nothing to do with the fevers. If you would allow it, I would watch over you tonight.”

  “Watch over me?”

  “What I’m asking is—would you please sleep in my room tonight? I’ll be near you, but I promise I won’t—I won’t impose on you.”

  Telling him that it would hardly be an imposition didn’t seem like such a great idea. Obviously, he didn’t exactly have the hots for her, since he was able to suggest that she sleep in his bed—alone. And when she thought about it, why should someone with a couple hundred years of experience want anything to do with her? He probably thought of her as a child. This offer of watching over her was one indication of how likely it was that that was indeed how he viewed her.

  Her pride nearly made her refuse the offer. Then she thought of returning to her room, and the ghosts, and Colby’s threat.

  She’d be near Tyler. He wouldn’t let her come to harm. And maybe, if they were able to talk a little, she’d understand him better.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, and she could hear his relief.

  If there was a little awkwardness in the moments when she got into the bed, that became secondary to a moment of sweet pleasure when he sat next to her and combed his fingers through her hair.

  “Good night, Amanda,” he said, and lightly kissed her temple before turning off the bedside lamp.

  “Good night, Tyler,” she said as he stood. She inhaled the scent of him from the pillow and smiled ruefully to herself in the darkness. You are pathetic, she told herself, but inhaled again.

  By the moonlight, she could see him standing near the doors leading to the deck. She could just make out his features.

  “How long do you think you will live here?”

  “I don’t usually stay anywhere more than half a dozen years. Ten years at most.”

  “This is L.A., Tyler. No one ages.”

  “I will admit that it is a little easier to have my…differences…go unnoticed in a big city, or any place where people live out their lives without paying much attention to their neighbors, but eventually I’ll have to pull up stakes.”

  “People in Southern California move often, too,” she said. “Ron’s grandfather was the only one of our neighbors who lived here for more than five or six years.”

  “That may be so, but over time—well, the bureaucracy catches on. I can’t, for example, look as if I’m twenty-four on all my DMV records or passports.”

  “Oh. What do you do?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve become as good a forger as Adrian ever was, and if you’d like to visit some of the cemeteries where I’m supposedly buried as my own ancestor, it will be quite a tour. I differ from Adrian in that I did not murder anyone to fill a coffin.” He paused. “I will admit that this age of computer records has made it a little more difficult, but I have managed.”
/>   “You do know that Ron’s an excellent hacker, don’t you?”

  He smiled. “Yes. We’ve found it an area of mutual interest. And—I am fortunate because some of the people I’ve helped have been willing to help me without asking a lot of questions.”

  “Or come to work for you, like Alex and Ben?”

  “Although I pay them, I do regard them more as loyal friends than employees.” He paused. “I say that knowing that in another five or ten years, I’ll have to abandon them. Keep this in mind, Amanda—sooner rather than later, I’ll have to pull up roots.”

  He couldn’t deliver the message any plainer than that, could he?

  She felt a kind of despair, then told herself to grow a spine. He had already told her more about himself than he had told anyone else. If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have brought her into his bed—even if he wasn’t in it with her. Yet.

  32

  Tyler asked himself if he had lost his mind.

  He wanted nothing more than to crawl in next to her and make love to her all night.

  He could think of nothing that would be more disastrous.

  He was—to understate the case—an old man. She might see him as young, might even feel as drawn to him as he was to her. But he was constantly aware that his youthfulness was a charade.

  And if he ignored that, what could he suppose would happen in the very near future? She would age, and he would not. That might not bother her at first, but eventually it could not help but affect her—and would most likely subject her to ridicule.

  She would die, and he would not—thinking of it was nearly unbearable.

  Suppose they decided to seize whatever moments they could find? She had lived all her life here. Being with him would require her to live with constant upheaval.

  He thought of all of these objections, and more, and still wanted her, was tempted to be with her, consequences be damned.

  Suddenly, Shade came racing into the room, and Amanda gave a little scream. Shade halted near the bed and started barking—while staring at the far wall.

  “Shade!”

  He stopped barking but continued to growl ferociously at the wall.

  Tyler turned the light on but couldn’t see what was bothering the dog.

  Tyler turned back to Amanda, who had leaped from the bed and was cringing in the far corner of the room, her face paper white.

  “It’s not you,” he said quickly, and took her into his arms. He held her and tried again to get Shade’s attention. Had the dog lost his mind?

  “Let him growl,” she said, peering over Tyler’s shoulder.

  “I know you’re trying to get used to him,” Tyler said, “but really, this is too much to ask—I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He usually only does this in cemeteries, and then only rarely. He growled a couple of times during our walk tonight.”

  “Ghosts,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve never seen them myself, but that’s my theory, yes.”

  “It’s not a theory,” she said, her voice a little stronger. In fact, she seemed to be over her initial shock. “Good dog, Shade! Keep them away!”

  Shade gave a quick wag of his tail but kept growling.

  “Them?” Tyler asked in dismay.

  “My parents and my aunt and uncle,” she said angrily. “Who have no business being here right now!”

  One part of his brain recognized that he was experiencing a rare emotion: fear. The rest was employing every ounce of his willpower to keep him standing there.

  “Your parents?” he said faintly.

  She looked at him. “You will not convince me you are scared of ghosts! You just went walking in a cemetery after midnight!”

  “Shade protects me from them on those walks,” he said as Shade’s growl grew louder. And will protect me now. The thought calmed him. Shade was with him, no ghost would be able to harm him.

  “Protects you? You can’t be killed, right?”

  “There are worse things,” he said. “Ghosts present a particular hazard to my kind.”

  “What hazard?”

  “They see my kind as caught between their world and the world of the living. They would have me live an existence closer to theirs instead of this one.”

  Amanda stared toward the wall, then said to those she saw there, “I would never forgive you for that! Never!”

  The room grew colder, and he felt her shiver. He held on to Amanda, determined that just as Shade protected him, he would protect her.

  Shade stopped growling.

  “They’re still here,” Amanda whispered. “But they seem to be staying put.”

  Shade settled near the foot of the bed. Amanda had grown pensive, and Tyler watched her face as his heartbeat returned to normal. He should let go now, he told himself. He held on to her as he led her back to the bed, then reluctantly released her. She got back under the covers, scooted to the middle of the mattress, and patted the top of the comforter.

  He resisted for half a second before sitting down next to her.

  “If a ghost attacked you—you’d become a ghost, too?” she asked. “You would die?”

  “Not exactly. As I understand it, ghosts aren’t all alike. If I allow a certain type of ghost to approach me, it can have a kind of persuasive power over me. It would try to change my nature to one closer to its own. And since I can’t die—well, I’d become like Colby.”

  “Like Colby?” She swallowed hard. “He’s not human?”

  “That’s hard to answer. Colby isn’t a ghost, but he’s also not fully one of my kind either—and he’s certainly not merely human. He has some of the powers of each—he got past my security because he can appear and disappear at will, show up at one place, then another. Yet he doesn’t have the invisibility of a ghost—he can’t hide his presence from the living in that way. Like me, he is in his own body. His skin, were you to touch it, would feel like that of anyone—solid, warm-blooded. He has my powers of agelessness, of recovery, but he can’t hear the thoughts of the dying.”

  “So what is he?”

  “A creature completely devoted to pleasure and mischief, as nearly as I can tell.” He fell silent, thinking of Colby’s visit. “I really handled things the wrong way tonight. Colby loves to provoke, and I allowed him to provoke me. He’s older than I am, and far more experienced in finding another person’s weaknesses. Lately I’ve worried that he’s in trouble or needs to tell me something, but I haven’t controlled my temper long enough to allow us to reach a point where he could confide in me. I should know by now that in any encounter, first he has to try to push my buttons, just to have his fun. It’s his nature.”

  “What makes you think he’s in trouble?”

  “The number of times he’s been in contact.” He paused, then said, “Perhaps he’s happy in some way I don’t comprehend. But lately, I think he’s regretted giving up his usefulness. He’s a man without a purpose, in essence. Agelessness is not an existence I could bear without a purpose. And I do not envy ghosts, who may be devoted to some purpose, but are unable to do much about it.”

  “I can understand why you wouldn’t want their existence. I have to admit, I haven’t really thought about what it’s like for the four who haunt me. I’ve always been fairly sure they weren’t real.”

  “How long have you seen them?”

  “When I woke up in the hospital, after the accident, they were in the room. Ron and I have been trying to come up with an explanation for them for years. At first, I thought it was just my head injury, and then I thought it was guilt, you know, especially because they wear evening clothes, dressed like they were on that last night. But they weren’t even buried in those clothes.” She glanced at the dog. “It’s kind of a relief to know Shade sees them. I’ve thought I was crazy.”

  “You’ve had to cope with seeing ghosts for eight years?”

  “Yes. Only those four ghosts. They don’t harm me. They don’t speak. Just startle me now and then. I’m the only one they bother.
For whatever reason.” She frowned. “What is the reason? I mean, why do they hang around me?”

  He thought for a while, then said, “They may be protecting you.” Something else was troubling him, though. “All these years, Ron is the only other person who has known about them?”

  “Yes. I once tried telling Rebecca and Brad about them. Years ago. They really didn’t let up about that for a long time.”

  “You told me they blame you for the accident. Do you blame yourself?”

  “Most days, no. Some days, I think I should have stood up to them. Rebecca says, ‘You knew they were drunk, why didn’t you insist they call a cab?’ And I don’t really have a good answer for that one.”

  Tyler looked toward the wall, at which Shade was still staring. “Have you asked them if they blame you?”

  “I don’t think there’s much I haven’t asked them. But they don’t respond.”

  “Do you blame her for your deaths?” Tyler asked, hoping he was looking somewhere near them.

  Her eyes seemed to follow some movement, and she started crying.

  “Amanda—what’s wrong?”

  “They shook their heads.”

  He took her hand. “I’m sure they never blamed you.”

  “They’re agreeing with you.” She wiped her tears away with her free hand, then said, “They’ve never made so much as a gesture in my presence until now. Just stared at me. Ask them why the hell they’re answering you when they’ve never answered me!”

  He did so.

  “Now they’re shrugging. I guess they don’t know.”

  “Is Amanda’s guess right?” Tyler asked, speaking to the ghosts. “You don’t understand?”

  “Um, I don’t think they know how to reply. My aunt and my mom are nodding and my dad and my uncle are shaking their heads.”

  “Oh, I see,” Tyler said. “Shrug if you don’t understand why it is you can’t speak to her.”

  “They’re shrugging.”

  “But I’m acting as some sort of bridge between you and Amanda?”

  “They’re nodding.”

  “Why are you here this evening?” he asked.