by Gloria Craw
“Around three,” she replied.
Ian mouthed four behind her back.
“Too bad our kind need the normal eight hours of sleep to function properly,” I commented.
Brandy pretended not to hear me. She waved to some girls and bounded away like a happy puppy. “More party guests for Saturday,” Ian said and then yawned. “No sign of your follower this morning. He’s been out of range for a while now.”
“I hope they’ve moved on to more interesting things.”
“Me, too. Speaking of interesting things, did you get a chance to go over that Byron script yet?”
“Yes. I added a few things, but overall I think it’s really good.”
“We should get some visuals off the internet to go along with it. Do you want to come over to work on that tonight?”
“I thought you had shopping to do,” I commented.
“I should be finished by the time you’re done at the Shadow Box.”
Brandy had already explained she would be out shopping until late, so I’d be alone with Ian for a while. As much as I enjoyed looking at him this morning, I’d made a decision last night to keep some emotional distance between us.
“I’ll come on one condition,” I said. “You keep your mind to yourself.”
He was amused. “But I thought you liked it. And we still need to train.”
“Aren’t you under a vow of chastity until you meet your true love, or likeness, or whatever?”
“I told you, I didn’t break any rules.”
“I know that, but we’d better not go there again. It makes everything…confusing.”
“You’ve probably learned as much as you’re going to through that approach, anyway,” he said with a grin. “Shame to ban it altogether.”
“Once again, you’ve said something completely inappropriate. Why can’t I hate you for it?”
“Because it’s true. You can’t get in trouble for telling the truth.”
“And that my friend, is a lie.”
Chuckling, he put a chummy arm around my shoulders. I was going to push it off, but he moved it to answer a text on his phone.
“Luke is here,” he said. “He wants me to meet in front of the school. He says he’s got something for me.”
“I’ll meet you in class, then.”
“Why don’t you come with me? It shouldn’t take long.”
Luke’s appearance was better in the daylight, but he was still far too thin to be healthy. “Thanks for meeting me,” he said to Ian. He nodded toward me in greeting. “Business is taking me out of town, and I need to get this to your father as soon as possible. Can you give it to him?”
“He’s in California right now. I don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“Keep it until you see him,” Luke insisted.
“Okay,” Ian replied, taking a small flash drive from him.
Luke waved his thin hand in farewell and then got into a black Maserati.
“That car is nicer than my mom’s,” I said as he drove away.
“He inherited it when his parents died. They’ve only been gone a few months. He’s been under a lot of pressure adjusting to being a clan chief. He’s a nice guy, but not really suited to the role of leader. My dad and Bruce Dawning have been mentoring him.”
The first bell rang. “Crap, we’re going to be late,” I said, hustling up the steps to the front doors.
“You should test your thoughtmaking on Connor this morning,” Ian suggested, close behind me. “Let’s see if you can stop him from talking for the next hour.”
“That’s setting the bar pretty high, isn’t it?”
“You might surprise yourself.”
Five minutes later, Connor sat next to me in room seventeen. He was just about to strike up a conversation when I joined my mind to his. Finding a nice opening between two of his thoughts, I slipped You don’t feel like talking into it. Connor was confused, probably because the idea was completely foreign to him. After a moment, he opened his textbook and started reading. Ian caught my eye and winked.
Jazzed by my improved joining skills, I practiced every opportunity I got during the rest of the day. I rarely encountered a problem I couldn’t go around or through, but each success was accompanied by a twang of guilt and increasing fatigue. By the time the bell rang after Art Appreciation, I was worn-out, and Brandy could see it. “You should take a break for the rest of day,” she said as we walked out of class. “You’ll get plenty of opportunity to practice your joining later.”
“Do you feel drained after doing this kind of stuff?” I asked her.
“I did when I was very young, and I do now that I’m weaker. But when I was in my prime, it didn’t bother me at all.”
Ian was waiting for us in the north hall. “You don’t look so good,” he said to me.
Brandy punched him in the shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”
“Well, it’s true,” he replied.
“You’re still an idiot,” she insisted.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease out a knot as she walked away.
“It’s probably the rebound,” Ian said to me.
“What is what?”
“Feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck. It’s probably a result of the rebound.”
“It’s just been a long day.”
“It’s more than being tired from a long day,” he insisted. “We project energy when we use our joining, and it comes back at us like the flick of a rubber band. You’ve got to learn to buffer yourself from the rebound.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense,” I said wearily.
“Pay super-close attention then.” He put an arm across my shoulders. “You have to buffer yourself after you use your joining. Kind of like tightening your stomach muscles so it won’t hurt when you get punched in the gut.”
I shook his arm off, shuffled things around in my locker, closed the door, and spun the lock. “I’ve never been punched in the gut, so that analogy doesn’t mean much to me. I promise to think it through tomorrow. Maybe after I’ve slept eighteen hours I’ll understand what you’re talking about.”
He smiled and put an arm around my waist. “I give good massages,” he said with teasing eyes. “I think you could use one.”
“You need to work on your smolder,” I said. “Maybe lift an eyebrow or something.”
He laughed. “I’m only giving it 50 percent right now. When I give it all I’ve got, it will work so well you won’t remember your own name.”
“Is there an end to your ego?”
“If there is, I haven’t found it yet,” he said without shame.
Lillian was at her computer when I walked into the Shadow Box. “How was your shopping trip yesterday?” she asked.
“Good.” I replied. I checked out the store to make sure no one else was around. Unsure how to breach the divide between employer-employee and fellow alien species, I tried to think of something significant to say.
All I could come up with was, “So, you’re a reader.”
She looked up from her computer and rolled her left hand over to reveal the V in her palm. The lines were thick and corded like strands of rope. “I’m relieved I don’t have to hide this from you anymore,” she said.
“You knew about me all this time?”
“It took me a while to figure it out. When I did, I thought it was best to keep quiet. I thought my knowing might make you run away.”
She was right. If she’d said one word about me being dewing, I would have run as fast and as far from her as I could get. Lillian had done everything she could to help me, and I had the sneaking suspicion it hadn’t been easy for her. “Thank you, Lillian,” I said. “Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose in a tired way. “My sister was a thoughtmaker like you,” she continued. “I feel a link with her when you’re around. It’s been a comfort to me.”
Lillian was so stoic, I was surprised she’d ever needed comfo
rting. “Was your sister killed by Sebastian like my mother was?”
“She was killed on his orders, so her blood is on his hands.”
I nodded, understanding some of her pain. The bells above the door jingled and a harried-looking woman came in. She plopped a piece of paper on the counter. “Can you help me find these?” she asked. “I’m in a hurry.”
A long list of titles had been written on the paper. I put on my best customer service face and left Lillian to finish whatever she was working on before I came in. Luckily, perfect recall made finding the books the woman wanted easy. I drifted from one end of the store to the other, pulling volumes as I went. She was so pleased to have finished her book buying in such a short a time that she gave me a whopping two-cent tip.
As I worked on a haphazard stack of books in the self-help section, I wondered how old Lillian really was. She looked at least three-quarters of the way through a human lifespan. I figured that meant she was probably three-quarters of the way through the dewing lifespan. Which would have made her approximately 225 years old. If I was right, she would have been born sometime in the late 1700s. My instincts told me she’d been alone a long time. Alone as in not likenessed. I wondered if Lillian’s aloneness explained why she chose to live as a rogue. Maybe it was too painful to be around all the other dewing who’d paired off. It would have been rude to ask her about it, so I went about my organizing and let Lillian do her rare book thing.
There had been silence between us for so long that I jumped when she clapped her hands together. “Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I just located something wonderful.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’ve been trying to find this book for more than a year. A dealer in the city thinks he’s got a first edition.”
She was already on her feet and looking for her keys when she paused. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”
“It’s six thirty,” I said. “I’ll be fine for the last half hour. Ian says my follower has been off the grid for a while now. Whoever it was must have lost interest, so go get your book.”
She looked longingly at her computer. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Go, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, put the closed sign up and lock the door if you feel anything strange,” she said, grabbing her purse and walking out the door.
I didn’t have much to do for the last half hour. I was so tired and sore from the rebound or whatever that I could have slept on the floor. To fight off drowsiness, I started to clean up the store. No one came in while I dusted the shelves with a feather duster, so I decided to take the trash out a little earlier than normal.
I felt it the moment I walked out the back door—the squeeze as a mind joined mine. Immediately after that, I was gripped by crushing pain in my head. I dropped the trash bags and held my head in both hands. Out the corner of my eye, I saw large man step out from behind the dumpster. He wasn’t wearing a fedora, but I recognized him. He was the tiger, the man-eater, and he was smiling.
My head felt like it was being compressed from the inside out. Waves of pain spread from there through the rest of my body. I swayed on my feet. “I thought so,” the man said with a heavy Eastern European accent. “I couldn’t be sure with the others around, but I thought so.”
“What?” I managed to ask.
“You’re human enough that I can reach you like this. The fact that you’re not dead yet tells me you’re something else, too. I’ve spent the last week piecing it all together.”
I started to shake. He knew. Three years of hiding in the shadows was for nothing. The man knew what I was and he’d come for me. If he didn’t already know about the McKyes, he soon would. The pain coupled with fear for them was too much. My thigh muscles gave out, and I hit the pavement like a load of bricks. The asphalt was scorching hot, but the burning of my skin was secondary to what was going on inside me. I kept my hands on my head and concentrated on remaining conscious.
“There have been rumors,” the man continued. “Rumors about the child of the White Laurel. A child thoughtmaker that would be more powerful than any other because of her mother’s amazing joining and the father’s lack of it. It was clever to place you with humans. Who would think to look for you among the weak ones?”
The only thing I could do was deny it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated.
His smile grew and the pain amplified another level. “You are going to buy me a place of influence with a powerful man. My clan has been reluctant to join Sebastian Truss, but when they see my payoff, that will change.”
The ground under me burned, but I was cold. Cold to the bone with terror. My worst nightmare had come true. The McKyes were going to suffer because of me. My peripheral vision began to shrink. I was going to pass out. The tiger walked toward me. When he moved his foot back to kick me in the head, I caught a glimpse of movement behind him. He must have sensed something, too, because his eyes widened in surprise.
He turned to look over his shoulder as an arm went around his neck, hauling him backward. He hit the ground hard with his head twisted at a horrific angle. Then I heard the popping sounds of bone breaking, and the crushing in my head stopped. Ian got off of him, breathing hard.
“You won’t touch her,” he said.
I had enough presence of mind to wonder why Ian, who was at least five inches shorter and probably a hundred pounds lighter than the tiger, knew how to kill people with his bare hands. I also wondered why he continued to stand over the broken man while I lay burning on the pavement. A dull ache remained in my head. I had no strength to ask about it or about my family, so I let my eyes close.
“Alison,” I heard Ian say, “open your eyes.”
I did, briefly, and then felt myself being lifted. He ran with me in his arms and kept saying things like, “Don’t go to sleep,” “Stay with me,” and “It’s going to be okay.” He put me in the front seat of his car. Even with my eyelids tightly closed, the sunlight burned into my retinas. I longed for darkness. Not semidarkness, but darkness in its blackest form. I managed to pull my legs up in the seat, wrap my arms around them. My thighs stung as salty tears dropped on them. I probably had second-degree burns on the backs of my legs.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ian repeated over and over as he drove.
I had a good idea where we were when the car stopped, but I didn’t look to find out for sure. I didn’t care that much. All I wanted was to lie down in a quiet place and pass out. Ian lifted me out of the car. “My dad will know what to do,” he said.
I figured he was trying to reassure himself more than me.
I heard him open the door, and I felt a blast of cool from the air-conditioning. He moved fast but not at a run this time. With every step he took, my head thudded against his chest, making the ache echo and echo and echo again. When the light coming through my eyelids dimmed enough, I opened one of them. We has passed through the mansion’s hallway and into the living room filled with new furnishings. He took me down another, darker hallway and into an unfamiliar room.
“Stay awake,” he said, laying me down.
There was a shushing sound as an inflatable mattress took my weight. A moment later, he put a blanket over me. My body had gone from overly hot to overly cold. Rolling myself into a ball, I wrapped the blanket as tight as I could around me.
“I’m calling my dad,” Ian said from somewhere in the room.
I kept shivering. Nothing I tried would make the cold go away. The air in the mattress shifted as it took his weight. He sat against the wall and pulled me up so I sat against him. “You’re in shock,” he said wrapping his arm around me. “It’ll just take some time for your body to regulate itself.”
His warmth helped a little, but I would have preferred hot coals.
I heard the tones of his cell phone as he dialed and then his rush of words. “Dad, the tiger got to Alison. She didn’t go under, but she might if she doesn’t get help soon.”
Under sounded like a nice place to visi
t. I started to slip away, but he shook my shoulders to bring me back. “Alison, don’t sleep. As long as you stay awake, my dad can fix it. He’s catching the next flight back. You’ve got to hold on until he gets here. You can’t sleep. Do you hear me?”
I tried to nod, but my neck ached so badly that I couldn’t.
“Alison,” he said, “I’m not a healer like my dad, but there is something I can do. Don’t fight me when I try.”
That was as much warning as I got before he connected to my mind. After what I’d just experienced, I didn’t like it one bit. I groaned and fought against him. “You’ve got to trust me,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
What choice did I have? When push came to shove, he’d win. So I stopped struggling and tried to hold onto consciousness. At first, it felt like he was blindly stumbling around in my mind, bumping into places that already hurt. Then I realized I felt less pain when he moved on to the next spot. This mind touch continued until the vise in my head began to loosen. By the time he broke the connection, living seemed a viable option once again.
Grateful, I turned my head to look at him. He was shaking and ghostly pale now. His eyebrows were drawn together, and his breathing was shallow like mine. It took only a moment to understand why. “You took some of the pain.” I whispered.
“I took as much as I could,” he replied shakily. “Don’t sleep until my dad gets here. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“What about the McKyes?” I managed.
“They’re fine,” he assured me.
I accepted that. Ian was all about the truth and honesty. He wouldn’t lie to me.
He touched something on his phone and death metal music started blaring full blast from it. He tossed it on the mattress and held me tight with both arms. We sat that way, listening to the world’s worst music as we fought pain and sleep.
I fought as much for him as I did for myself. He’d saved my life and then taken part of my suffering. The very least I could do was stay alive to thank him for it.
Chapter Thirteen
Sometime later, I heard the door open and knew Brandy had come in.
