by Amy Patrick
“I see. So, if you did know where she was, you wouldn’t go to her?”
My tone is decisive. “No.”
“Okay then,” she says, dropping the subject. “You know, we haven’t had much of a chance to talk since you went back to L.A. I haven’t really been able to tell you much about Asher.”
“What a terrible shame,” I deadpan. “There’s nothing I’d love more than to hear all about your new sweetheart.”
“You might be surprised. For instance, you might be interested to know... one of Asher’s closest friends from Deep River High School died of an S overdose.”
I stop walking and stare at her. “Are you really this mean... or just grossly insensitive? Why would I want to know that? You know I’m trying to make up for—”
“His name,” she continues, ignoring my wounded tone and expression, “was Joseph. Great guy, apparently a talented actor. He had a younger sister... named Laney. And she’s blind.”
All the oxygen leaves my body at once. I stagger back, my eyes bulging so far from their sockets I fear they might actually leave my person. Ava wears a very pleased expression.
“She’s... here?” I gasp. “Here. In Deep River, Mississippi.”
Ava shakes her head up and down, her smile growing. “Asher can give you directions to her house if you want.”
For a few moments I’m silent as thoughts and emotions whirl through me like a gritty red dust storm on the Outback. She’s here. Within driving distance. Within walking distance. If I want to, I can see her—today. I am slammed with a longing so powerful it nearly knocks me to the earthen floor. The thought of seeing her beautiful smile again, smelling her enticing scent...
“No.”
“No? But I thought you’d—”
“No. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to know where she is.”
“But Culley...”
“I said, ‘no,’ all right? And you can tell your little half-human boyfriend to mind his own business as well. ‘True love’ isn’t for everyone, okay? I’m happier on my own. Now—if you’ll kindly direct me to my room, I’m rather tired, and I’d like to be left alone.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Shadow
I found her.
I spent the better part of the morning driving through town, making a loop from one end of Main Street to the other. I finally spotted her coming out of a diner called The Skillet holding the arm of some bloke with dark brown hair and biceps bigger than his brains. Maybe he’s some sort of guide. A cousin? A friend? A new boyfriend?
I’m not sure, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m only here because I want to make sure she's doing okay. I won’t be speaking to her or even let her know I’m in town.
Last night I lay awake for hours, staring up at that damn sparkly ceiling in my quarters at Altum. A million imagined conversations ran through my mind, all of them beginning with, “I’m sorry.”
But I won't be telling her that. I won’t be telling her anything. The last thing she needs is to have me show up in her life again. She looks happy. She looks... well, stunning actually. I’d somehow forgotten how beautiful she really is.
The beefy guy walks her to his car—a Charger, and they leave together. I follow as they make the short trip up Main Street and pull into the library parking lot. The passenger door opens. Laney gets out—alone. She shuts the door and leans into the window, saying good-bye I suppose. I feel a low growl roll through my throat.
Really dude? You don’t even open her door for her?
Laney steps back from the car, and it backs onto Main Street again, driving away. Thank you, I believe I will. I pull into the vacated spot and kill the engine, watching as Laney moves up the walkway toward the old Antebellum style house. I wait until she ascends the stairs and goes through the doors under the Deep River Public Library sign before getting out of my car.
The interior of the library is cool and dim compared to outdoors. I stop just inside the front doors and scan the area. A head pops up from behind a counter nearby.
“Hi. Can I help you?” the woman asks.
“Oh. No, I’m... actually yes. Could you direct me to the Braille section? I’m also interested in audiobooks. My... grandma lost her sight a few years back.”
“Sure.” The woman smiles at me. “Go straight back and you’ll see the audiobooks in our multi-media section. And we have a limited Braille selection, but they’re housed just past the reference section there on the right. Toward the back.”
“Great. Thanks.”
I move off toward the right, guessing that’s where Laney has gone. The library is not busy. A few old men sit and peruse newspapers. A young mother holds the hand of a child, encouraging the toddler to push the call button for the elevator. The reference librarian looks up from her desk and smiles at me as I pass, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in this section.
I take a left past reference, and there she is. My feet stop moving. I stop breathing. She’s so close I could reach out and touch her. I don’t.
Hearing me or perhaps sensing the presence of another person, Laney smiles and says, “Am I in your way?”
The pounding of my heart in my ears is so loud it nearly drowns out her voice. I don’t answer her, don’t move an inch. Her fingers stop moving across the raised bumps on the spines of the books in front of her, and she lifts her head, cocking an ear in my direction.
“Is somebody there?”
I don’t dare answer, just ease back away from her as she moves in my direction and stretches out her hand. I want to grab it—grab it and hold on and pull her into my arms. Her voice is so sweet in my ears, the sight of her like a cascade of rain on parched earth.
Very slowly I take several steps backward and nearly run over the reference librarian who has apparently taken it upon herself to offer some customer service.
“Sir? Can I help you?” she says, darting a glance over at Laney and then back to me.
I give her a terse head shake and speed walk away, out of the front doors and down the sidewalk to my car. Sliding inside, I inhale deeply of the hot air and shake my head at my own idiocy. What am I doing? I’m a stalker now. Awesome.
I start my car, vowing to drive away and leave her alone, but then it doesn’t happen. Letting the engine idle, I sit watching the library doors. Did she know it was me? My heart resumes its ridiculous thumping at the thought of it. No. She couldn’t know.
It could have been anyone standing there beside her. In fact, it would be extremely easy for someone with evil intentions to follow her, sneak up on her, catch her alone and vulnerable. I don't like thinking about it.
She probably feels safe here in her tiny Southern hometown, but if I can find her here, any other vile character could. The idea compels me to keep following her when she leaves the library.
Laney walks down the sidewalk. After she passes my car, I open the door and get out, trailing about thirty feet behind her. She goes into a small drugstore with an ancient looking clock mounted on a pole outside. I open the door and go inside myself, struck by the quaintness of the place.
It feels like stepping into a bygone era. The entire left side of the store is an old-fashioned soda fountain made of dark, carved wood with a mirrored back. A smiling teenage girl scoops ice cream for one of the kids sitting on the bar stools lining the front of the fountain’s counter. A few small tables dot the checkerboard linoleum floor.
The other half of the store contains shelves of first aid and personal care products as well as some gift items, and in the far rear a pharmacist and some assistants help customers. Laney’s not one of them, so I start checking the aisles.
“Hey there,” a friendly voice calls, making me think someone actually recognizes me. But then I turn and see it’s just a store employee. “Can I help you find something in particular?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I mutter and move quickly away from the helpful worker—who probably now assumes I’m here to buy gas relief medication or a treatment fo
r some sort of fungus or head lice. Whatever. I need to find Laney.
Moving to the next aisle, I spot her. She’s checking out with a small box of medication. Is she sick? A snatch of alarm seizes my heart. I want a closer look at that box, though of course, that still might not fill me in on what’s going on with her. Elves don’t use medication—the human kind anyway. Our healers work differently, using their glamour to counteract the maladies that occasionally affect our kind. They’re more apt to be treating injuries than illness since it is possible for us to be injured or even killed in a violent way—or by a poisonous substance like iron.
Laney pays for her item and turns around, walking right past me down the aisle toward the front door of the drug store. I plaster myself against the shelf behind me so she doesn’t brush up against me. And now I’m following her again.
Outside on the sidewalk, she pulls her phone from her pocket and brings it to her ear. “I’m finished,” she says to the person on the other end of the connection. “Are you about done at the grocery?” There’s a pause as she listens, and then she says, “Okay, I’ll see you in a minute.”
Laney feels her way to a bench outside the store and sits while I wonder who she was talking to. That guy from earlier? Does he grocery shop for her? She didn’t say if she had another brother—I think she would have mentioned it. And now that I think about it, Ava didn’t mention one either.
I walk quickly to my car, climbing in and backing onto Main Street, driving the short distance down to the drug store and parallel parking across the street from it. Laney seems to be listening to something on her phone as she waits to be picked up. I hit the button to lower my car window and strain to hear what it is. Ah—a song. Oh my God, she’s singing along.
The sweet sound of her voice reaches down and wraps itself around my heart, tugging to pull it out of my chest and across the street to her. Why does this girl affect me so much? I hate it. But I also love the feeling of connection, of actually caring about something for a change. A car pulls into one of the diagonal parking spaces directly in front of Laney’s bench, blocking my view of her. I start to open my car door, so I can get out and keep an eye on her, but she stands and goes to the front of the vehicle, making her way around to the passenger side and getting in.
As the car backs up again and drives away, I get a look at the driver. It’s a middle-aged woman. Petite with short, light brown hair—has to be her mother. My heart leaps, and I throw my own car into gear, pulling a U-turn in the middle of Main Street to tail them.
They drive to nearly the end of the street where it turns into a county road. I try to stay a few cars back. I rented an inconspicuous car this time—a Jeep—but still, I don’t want to push it. I’d be more worried if it was her father driving. Men tend to notice cars more than women do. Plus, I can see her mom’s head turn to the side every few minutes—they’re obviously in conversation.
Finally the last car between us makes a turn, so I slow my speed. Laney’s mom turns right onto a side street, and I speed up a little, catching up. As I make the turn, I see the bumper of her car disappear over the hill at the top of the street. Applying a bit more pressure to the gas, I follow, crest the hill, and look around. Where did they go?
Then I see the car pulling into the garage of a house on the left side of the street. If the property didn’t have a long driveway, I would have missed where she’d gone all together. I drive a ways down the street, turn onto another offshoot street, and park.
Great. Now what?
I wait for dark. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I check it for messages from Hakon or Father. Neither has called. Should I call Hakon? Ask him about Asher? Ask if he’d be willing to help me sabotage Audun’s S operation? My thumb hovers over his contact info as I consider it. And then I turn off the phone and slide it back into my car’s console. It’s too risky.
To kill some time, I cruise back into town and park at the Sonic drive-in restaurant. I am hungry, and I like the fact I don’t have to get out and go in this place to order. Now that I’ve located Laney, I’d like to keep my profile here as low as possible. I push the button and order some fries and a shake with tiny candy bits in it. Might as well enjoy the local delicacies.
As I sit and wait for my food to be delivered, cars pull in and out of the place. Business really picks up as it gets close to dark and the teen population of the Sonic explodes. Guys and girls get out of their cars and sit on the hoods, chatting and laughing and flirting.
This is what Laney is used to. This is what she wants. Not some strange guy with megalomaniacal parents from literally the other side of the world who doesn’t know anything about small town life, who’s seen far too much of the filthy underbelly of the human experience and knows nothing about how to live among regular people, how to be a “boyfriend.”
I get my food, pay the car hop, and go, driving back toward Laney’s house and planning to eat while I stand watch. Now that it’s dark and my car isn’t quite so obvious, I park on Laney’s street—not directly in front of her home but just shy of it in front of a wooded lot across the street. From here I have a clear view of the lighted windows. Every once in a while, someone walks past one, and my idiot heart springs to attention.
After about an hour, I see a car in the rearview mirror. It’s the Dodge Charger Laney got into earlier today—the one belonging to the bicep drongo.
“Keep going mate,” I mutter.
The car does not obey my command but pulls into Laney’s driveway. Now we’ll see who this fellow is. Instead of going in through the garage or opening the door and going inside, the guy goes to the front door and rings the bell. Damn it.
A man—Laney’s father I presume—opens the door, shakes the young guy’s hand, and steps back to let him in. Shit. He’s not a cousin or a friendly classmate giving her a lift. He’s a boyfriend. Now I’m really not leaving.
The hours tick by as I wait for the git to leave. At around ten pm, the door opens again, and he comes out.
Finally.
I sit up straighter in my seat and watch as he turns back to Laney, who’s standing in the doorway, framed by the interior lights. She looks tiny and adorable. They say a few words to each other, then the guy leans down and gives her a brief kiss.
My insides are instantly boiling. Who is he? How long has she known him? How serious is this thing between them? It can’t be that big of a deal because she’s only been back from California for three weeks. Three weeks and three days to be exact.
He walks to his car, gets in, and backs down the driveway, then spins the wheels and drives right past me. If hatred were visible like laser beams, I would have blasted him right off the road as he passed. At least he’s gone. And the kiss didn’t go on and on. It was maybe... five seconds. But who’s counting?
Now the figures inside the house pass by the windows several times, and lights go out in some of the downstairs rooms while the ones upstairs pop on. Judging from the fact that two shadows are moving inside one bedroom, while the bedroom on the other side has only the faint glow of a television inside, I’m pretty sure which room is Laney’s.
And what exactly are you planning to do with that information, creeper?
I’m not sure yet. For now, I sit and wait a while longer. When the light of her parents’ bedroom goes out, I open my car door, step onto the street, and stretch. The night air is warm and still and smells of dusty asphalt and pine—a welcome contrast to the French fry smell that now inhabits my rental car’s interior, probably permanently.
It feels good to move after sitting in one position for so long, so I take a few steps in one direction, turn, and walk back. A bit more walking would probably do me some good. Looking one way then the other, I cross the street and stand at the end of Laney’s driveway, hidden from the house by a row of tall hedges that hug the mailbox.
It wouldn’t hurt to go have one look at her. Just one more look before I regain control of my sanity and get back in my car and drive away, never to ret
urn to this little town she calls home. Keeping to the far right of the long drive, I walk along a row of pine trees that border the property. The low street lamp light doesn’t reach over here, and the front porch lighting throws only enough of a glow to illuminate the front door and stairs. That’s not where I’m headed.
Going to the side of the house where I believe Laney’s room is located, I stand near the foundation and look up. There are two possibilities here. The large front porch is covered by a roof that slants down directly under her window. The other option is a tall tree that stands on the side of the house, its large branches stretching near what appears to be another window to her room.
I’m nobody’s idea of a Light Elven nature boy like Lad, but the simpler option, climbing onto the porch roof, is also the most likely to get me caught. It’s on the front of the house, and if someone drives by, they could very well spot me in the moonlight. I hesitate, looking back and forth between my two choices. I’ve never done this Romeo shit before—I’m not sure which way to go. Why couldn’t her bedroom have been on the back side of the house? On the first floor.
Finally, I settle on the tree tactic. Reaching above my head, I hook one hand then the other around the lowest branch and pull myself up until I can get a leg over it. I glance down at the designer pants and shirt I traveled in today. These won’t be ready for their next close up. I’ll probably have to leave them in whatever serves as a rubbish bin in Altum tonight.
Once that part is over, the rest is much easier. I make my way up, hand over hand, searching for stable footholds until I reach a sturdy branch level with her window. And there I stop—because I can see her.
She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed, facing the TV screen, hugging a furry pillow in her lap. Beside her on the bed, stretched out in blissful comfort, is Cupcake. Lucky little beast. He’s grown, and he certainly seems content with his lot in life. I would be too if I were the one stretched across Laney’s bed, being petted and stroked—oh wow.
