Fade To Midnight (12 page)

She shut her mouth, swallowed. “Um. How?”

“By existing,” he said simply.

She grunted. “That's enough? Just to exist? I didn't do anything?”

“You didn't have to do anything. You just were. A beacon in the dark. The only one I had. It saved my sanity, maybe my life. So, thank you.”

“Don't thank me,” she said. “I can't take credit for that. In my world, you don't get points for what you are. Only what you do.”

He shook his head. “Your world is about to change.”

Wow. That was bold. The quiet conviction in his voice made her catch her breath. Her toes and fingers were tingling with it.

Toughen up, Edie.
“All this woo woo stuff is really spooky and interesting, and great material for a graphic novel, but it's the creation of your own overheated brain,” she said crisply. “Just like my own stories are the creation of my own overheated brain. I don't want to be mean, but your dreams have nothing to do with me. So get real, and take credit for being your own damn beacon.”

He shook his head. “I might have agreed with you before I read the Shadowseeker books. But I think you've been close to me all along.”

She was shredding the edge of her paper coffee cup into a fringe. An unconscious thing she did whenever she didn't have a pencil in her hand. Another of Edie's little closet full of compulsions, as her mother had called them. She tried to stop, then gave into it, and started tearing again. Why not? What the hell? She had nothing to prove to him.

“I'm sorry,” he said, watching her precisely tearing uniform strips in the cup's edge. “I didn't mean to make you nervous.”

She kept her mouth shut and her eyes on her cup fringe. The silence grew impossibly long, but she resisted the impulse to pump chatty filler into it. After several quiet minutes, he spoke again.

“What happened, in the bookstore? The girl ahead of me in line?”

The awful memory made her gut clench. “Oh, that,” she mumbled. “Just my evil genie, poking out its head.”

He waited for more, but she no longer freely confessed what happened when she sketched people. It never went over well. Her parents had gone bananas. Her therapist tried to put her on antipsychotic meds. The one time she'd confessed it to a boyfriend, he'd dropped her flat and never called again. Other friends and lovers had found out, too, when one of her fits came over her. They always had the same reaction, in the end. So she didn't go there, anymore. Not ever.

“Tell me,” he prompted, gently.

She opened her mouth, let it fall out. Secrecy seemed irrelevant with this guy. After all, he was already inside her head. He lived there.

“It happens when I sketch,” she said. “I sometimes, ah…I pick up things. From their heads. I, um, tune into their frequency, I guess.”

He didn't look alarmed, or even surprised. “What did you see?”

“I saw her boyfriend strangling her to death,” Edie said.

His eyelids contracted, a quick flinch. “Ouch. Jesus,” he said. “How reliable are these perceptions?”

“I can't verify all of them,” she said. “Of those I can verify, one hundred percent. I've had no luck in changing outcomes, but not for lack of trying. I saw my mother's heart attack, but I couldn't persuade her to go to the doctor. I sketched my father a few weeks ago in a restaurant, and I…ah, never mind. So what do you want? An introduction to my father? I'm not really the one to ask, with the low opinion he has of me.”

“No.” He patted her hand. “I don't want to make difficulties for you. I can get in touch with your father and Helix with no introduction.”

“So what do you want, then?” She felt lost.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just keep existing.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, come on. Give me a freaking break.”

A shadow of a smile flashed over his face. “I don't know. You could walk with me.” His voice sounded almost shy. “Just keep me company. Talk to me for a while. I like the way it feels. To be with you.”

Did he? Wow. He knew all her deepest, darkest secrets, and he wasn't afraid of broadcasting something compromising to her? Was his heart so pure? Was he so fearless, so free of shame? Maybe he just didn't believe her. Maybe he thought she was nuts. That was a classic.

She was flushed, charmed. Was he coming on? She didn't have a lot of experience with come-ons. She wouldn't recognize one if it bit her in the butt. He fell into place beside her on the sidewalk, and they walked in silence. So much for keeping him company. She didn't have a thing to say. She was flustered, bashful.

She reflected on what he'd told her. He was a man who had made his peace with silence and solitude, and it had changed him, made him different from other men. She felt it. With him, silence could be as eloquent as speech. Each silence had its own tone and flavor, its own subtle tints and nuances. Each silence said something specific. And she understood each one. Or thought she did. Maybe she was projecting, or deluded. But she couldn't resist that leap of silent understanding. Raw emotion in the center of her chest. Emotion she could barely control.

Play it cool. This man is a stranger,
babbled the shrill voice of reason. She knew nothing about him, except that he was more or less brain damaged, full of weird notions, and intensely interested in her.

She should not be having these trembly, hot, gooey, hopeful feelings. It was fatuous. Dangerous. Stupid, too. She was going to get taken for a ride, made to feel like an idiot at best, and worst, who knew?

So run, the voice of reason bleated. Say hey, it's been real. Flag a cab. Sprint. Parrish bodyguards were hovering nearby. They would pick her up, give her a ride home. Lecture her, too. Tell her dad.

He took her hand.

She dragged in air, as energy flashed through her. Every cell in her body got a sharp, wonderful little jolt of it. She tried to breathe.

Her hand liked his hand. Oh, so much. It was big, smooth. Callused skin, like polished wood. Warm and strong. She was too shy to meet his eyes. Her thoughts scrambled helplessly, here and there.

She couldn't bear to pull her hand away. Tingling rightness flowed from him, right up her arm. It uncoiled slowly through her, swirling, pooling in the classic places. Tightening her nipples. Making her thighs clench, her clit tingle and throb. Just from holding hands.

They walked, silently, hands linked, eyes down. Barely noticing where they went. Over the Steel Bridge, traffic roaring around them, but it didn't matter. They were struck mute. Neither was willing to break the surface tension of that huge, gentle shyness. It was a rainbow-tinted bubble. Improbable and lovely. She would just let it float along, shining bright, and enjoy it while she could. It would meet its end soon enough.

Bubbles always did. It was a natural law.

She didn't realize where she was walking until she was standing in front of her own more or less grotty building on NE Helmut Street.

She hadn't meant to bring him home.

Oh, hell. Get real. Maybe she had.

E
die Parrish had loosened gravity's hold upon him. Kev floated beside her, lucky for the touch of that slender hand to anchor him to earth, or he'd float right off up into the sky, as light as a cloud.

He was so jazzed, he could hardly breathe. Edie Parrish blew his mind. So beautiful, so smart. Deep and strong. Thorny like a rose. The photograph hadn't begun to catch all that she was.

His memory of her child self was frozen in time, like a medieval icon, but this Edie Parrish was no icon. She was warm, soft, perfect in every delicate detail. That translucent skin made her look like a forest sylph. Big, expressive silver-gray eyes, rimmed with indigo, shadowed with delicate purple smudges. Sooty lashes. Her face was narrow and delicate, brows dark and tilted up. Her hair a mass of unruly dark waves that brushed the top of her rounded ass.

She dressed down, tried to hide, but she couldn't. Not from him. She shone like a sports stadium spotlight to him. He could extrapolate every tilt and curve from the stretch and swing of those drab, don't-look-at-me clothes. The generous swell of her tits, the length of her slender frame, the way her jeans clung to her ass. She was tall, the top of her head hitting him right at the mouth. If he embraced her, he could nuzzle her hair without bending his neck.

God, how he wanted to. His mouth watered to lean down close, and start memorizing the smells of her scalp, her pelt. He wanted to stare at her in bright sunlight, study the glinting grain of the nap of female hair on her body. Stroke and kiss the hot fuzz in all her hidden places. He clenched his jaw, mouth watering.

He could smell her, too. Every intimate detail of her, with his olfactory capacity on screaming overload. Usually, the excess of private sensory information about strangers' bodies was embarrassing to him.

Not with Edie. Her intimate scents made him dizzy. And rock hard. He'd been dogged by inconvenient sexual impulses since waking up after the waterfall incident, but this made his previous urges look like a mild itch. He'd had no idea what sexual hunger felt like til now.

Every detail of Edie Parrish was deliberately designed to please him, and he'd never even identified any particular preferences before. The hollow at her collarbone made him gulp excess saliva. He couldn't drag his eyes from the lambent glow of her skin, couldn't stop dragging in lungfuls of the honey and milk and flowers scent that hung like a delicate cloud around her. Couldn't breathe it in fast enough.

He wanted to inhale her, drink her up. Lick her all over. Make her relax, blush, and giggle, lose that worried look. She reminded him of animals in the wild; wary, but innately dignified. None of that air of easy entitlement, like so many young people who came from wealth.

He couldn't read her eyes, under that heavy fan of lashes. She probably thought he was out of his mind. Grabbing her hand, like he had the right. He hadn't meant to. He'd just done it.

“This is where I live,” she said.

He looked around, surprised. He'd tried to find her address, had not been surprised to find it unlisted. Many would see her as prey.

Not what he'd expected. A shabby, grungy boardinghouse in a run-down neighborhood. He forced himself to let go of her hand, and immediately missed the bright, vibrating song of contact.

She flung back her hair. The gesture looked defiant. “Want to come up?” she asked. “For a cup of coffee, tea? Or, ah, whatever?”

“Yes,” he said. Some whatever would be fine. Lots of it.

Her gaze darted away again. “Um. Come on, then.” She led him through a chain-link gate, and on a cracked concrete sidewalk around the building, up a creaking outside staircase.

Her apartment proved to be on the fourth floor, opening from a common veranda off the back of the building. It overlooked a cluster of Dumpsters and an unprepossessing alley. There was a scarred deadlock and a single aging knob lock, loose and rattling in the door. He could kick the thing loose with one blow of his foot. Or maybe even his fist.

He wondered what her people were thinking, letting her live in a dump like this. Not that he had any business complaining. Yet.

“Hey! Edie!” An eight-year-old kid scampered up, scrawny and brown, with a tangle of curly black hair and missing teeth. “Will you help me with my history essay? I'm supposed to write about the Louisiana Purchase, but—” He skidded to a stop when he saw Kev.

“Hey, Jamal,” Edie said. “Maybe later, OK?”

But Jamal had forgotten his essay. His dark eyes went huge with wonder. “Shit on a stick!” he breathed. “You're Fade Shadowseeker!”

Edie looked embarrassed. “We've talked about this before! Fade is just a character, not a real person! This is Kev.” She turned to Kev. “Jamal's my neighbor. He's also my first reader, and my best critic.”

“He is too Fade! Look at those scars! Hey, is it true, about you giving a million dollars to the runaway shelter? And beating up that asshole who stiffed Valerie? I heard you knocked his jaw practically off his face before you took her to Any Port. Shit sucking bastard is eating liquid food through a straw. And did you really jump those guys who—”

“Jamal! No! He did not! His name is Kev, and Fade Shadowseeker is…not…real! Kev is another person! Get it through your head!”

Jamal snorted, utterly unconvinced. “So what's he doing here? You never bring guys here.” Jamal turned a disapproving scowl on Kev. “Are you gonna have sex with Edie?”

“Jamal!” Edie hissed, horrifed. “Shut up!”

“Fade has sex with Mahlia in Book Four,” Jamal confided. “But I always skip that chapter. Girls are gross. Except for Edie. She's OK.”

Kev cleared his throat. “Everyone's entitled to his opinion.”

“Beat it, Jamal,” Edie said sternly. “Or no more computer time. For the rest of your life. I mean it. And I do not want to hear another word about Fade Shadowseeker.” Edie's voice was a thread of steel.

Jamal backed away reluctantly. Edie glared until he turned the corner. Then she unlocked her door, and pushed on in.

The scent of the place embraced him right away. Dried rose petals, cinnamon, plant food, potting soil. The pollen of the big bunch of wildflowers in a jar that adorned the cheap wooden table. Scents of soap, bath salts and shampoo floated out of the bathroom, Sandalwood and lavender, at first sniff. The smell of paper, books, ink, pencils.

And Edie herself, overlaying it all. Sweet, warm and female.

It was an amazing scent. It inebriated him. It should be bottled.

Sun slanted through half closed wooden venetian blinds, striping the walls with slashes of light. The walls were completely covered with drawings, photos, postcards, magazine cutouts. A glimpse into her mind. He wanted to sneak in there, poke around forever. Looking at what she looked at. Studying what she thought about, what she feared and dreamed and imagined. He wanted to know it all.

And here it was. Everything he craved. Laid out like a feast.

 

Edie closed the door, and watched him check out her humble place. A sweeping glance was all it took. A TV perched on a steamer trunk in one corner. A tiny kitchen barely existed in another corner. Spider plants and begonias dangled from the ceiling. The rest of the room was all about her drafting table, books, and wall collage. One door led to a tiny bathroom, the other to a tiny bedroom, big enough only for a single futon bed and a narrow dresser. Not a problem, since she wasn't in the habit of collecting clothes. She worked in her underwear when it was warm, and in raggedy tights and sweats when it was cold.

“I'm sorry about Jamal,” she offered. “He's a really intense Fade fan, and he's having a little bit of trouble separating fiction from reality.”

“Not a problem.” He looked around at her walls.

“I know what you're thinking,” she said.

His mouth twitched. “Do you?”

“You're wondering why a Parrish would live in a hole in the wall like this,” she said. “Right?”

“No. I was thinking how your place shows what you care about.” He gestured at the drafting table, the books, the shelves of drawing supplies and art monographs. “But since you said it, go ahead. Tell me. Why is a Parrish living in a hole in the wall like this?”

Edie dragged in air, hardened her belly. There was no point in trying to misrepresent the unenviable situation she was in. She'd tried that before. It always blew up in her face, sooner or later.

“This is all I can afford, with no help from my father,” she said. “The books are selling well, so it'll get better eventually, but for now…” She shrugged. “Parrish money comes with strings attached. I'd have to be good, take my meds, not embarrass anybody, not say anything strange. I've tried, but the meds make me feel half dead. I can't draw when I take them. I don't even recognize myself. My father thinks I'm doing it to spite him.” She shook the painful thought away. “So, here I am.”

“Here you are,” he echoed quietly.

“I'm lucky I make enough money as an artist to afford even this much,” she said. “I'm not much good at anything else.”

The autumn sun slanted in the window, lighting up his eyes and warming the color into the luminous jade of a glacial lake. She'd never gotten anywhere near his power with her drawings, though she'd tried for a decade. His scars just made his stark male beauty more poignant. They put it in sharp relief, a brutal reminder of his vulnerability.

He was no superhuman. He was real.

His scars made her think of that day that split her life in half. All his revelations were bringing her own long-buried truths to the surface. Things she knew so deeply, she barely thought about them. They were the bedrock of her deepest self, the underlying landscape of her mind.

Seeing the burned man, wounded and desperate, had broken something inside her heart when she was eleven. Something that could never be mended until she could soothe those wounds, and give him the help that he had begged for. She still couldn't. There was nothing she could do for him. But God, how she wanted to. She ached for it.

It was ridiculous. Pathetic. And it was the truth.

She looked down, eyes skittering around the crowded little room. Afraid of looking stupid. Of being judged by him. She wished she were bolder, more uncaring, more fuck-you-all. But she just wasn't.

She couldn't bear to look at him, and she couldn't bear to look away. Slices of sunlight shifted on the wall as drafts from the warped window moved the blinds. The crystals she'd hung spun rainbow splotches lavishly, everywhere. The space seemed incredibly small. He just stood there. Not twitching, not ill at ease or embarrassed. A silent, powerful presence, patiently waiting for something. Who the hell knew what. She was the jittery one, hoping desperately not to screw this up.

Not even knowing what “this” was. Where she wanted this miraculous turn of events to go. Just one thing was for sure. She didn't want to chase it away. Like she'd chased away every other man she'd ever gotten close to. But it wasn't up to her. It never was.

It was out of her hands, and that made her so scared.

Well. You could ask the man to sit down
, suggested a dry voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her mother.

“Have a seat,” she offered. “Can I make you a cup of tea?”

“That would be nice,” he said.

“Oh, and yeah. Here.” She rummaged in her cupboard, and pulled out a colorful cardboard box. Animal crackers. She placed them on the table. “I know they're ridiculous. My mother would turn over in her grave if she saw me offer these to a guest, but it's all I have at the moment. I keep them for Jamal. He stays here a lot. You know, to use the computer, and sometimes he sleeps on the couch, when his mom is, um, occupied, with her boyfriends. I leave my window open for him, the one with the fire escape, so he has a safe place to do homework when I'm not here.” She pulled it shut, latched it. “But, ah…not today.”

He gave her a smile that made her wish she'd kept her mouth shut. Babbling on about Jamal, like a fatuous fool. “Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?” His low, gentle voice sounded caressing.

She waved her hand at him. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“I can't help it,” he said. “It's a sweet thing for you to do for the kid. It's a total nightmare from a security point of view, but it's sweet.”

“I have nothing here worth stealing,” she retorted, flustered. “And I wasn't trying to get your approval, or trying to prove anything to—”

“Of course you weren't. You don't have to. It's obvious.”

“What's obvious?” she snapped.

He hesitated. “Who you are,” he said. “Your quality. Never mind. I don't want to embarrass you. You don't take compliments well.”

“I guess not,” she said testily. “Will you please sit down? Eat some of these cookies.” She ripped open a box, undid the wax paper, held one out. “Here. Sit down, eat a giraffe. You're making me nervous.”

“In a moment,” he said. “I'd like to look at your pictures. May I?”

She huffed out a gusty breath. “Be my guest.”

She shoved the giraffe into her mouth, and crunched it while he walked the walls. She'd covered the walls with clippings, magazine images, things scribbled on restaurant bills, napkins, paper towels, paper plates. A chaotic, fluttering floor to ceiling collage.

She tried to ignore him by putting the teakettle on, setting up mugs with teabags. All she had was spiced green tea chai. No point in asking if he liked it, since she could offer no alternative.

And then there was nothing to do but wait for the water to boil.

She forced herself to turn around. He was peering at the wine-stained sketch of her father, the one she'd done in the restaurant. She'd almost thrown the ill-starred thing away, because it hurt to look at it.

Then she'd pulled it out of the waste basket, and put it up on the wall. She had to learn to use the information that came to her in this elliptical way. To save people, change things. Not just be a helpless witness to disaster. Throwing the sketch away would mean that she had given in to despair. She wasn't ready for that yet.