GRIT

by Elle Cross

  Deimos, on the other hand, nodded along as if my explanation was perfectly cogent. "Well, then, I'd hate for you to be late for your thing."

  I turned stiffly away, avoiding looking at anyone directly, made my legs move toward the skywalk and elevator. I could still feel Corbin's surprise at my reaction.

  I'd never felt so awkward in my entire life.

  "Balin," Deimos said behind me. "I shall escort the ladies out. Stay here with Sage."

  I'd practically raced to the elevator, Corbin right beside me. "Oh, you needn't bother. We can see ourselves out."

  "You could never be a bother."

  Again, I had no response to that. I wouldn't have trusted my ability to speak even if I had.

  Deimos stood just behind me, so close that I felt the heat radiating from his body. The storm cloud tendrils of his aura fanned around my field of vision, visible and close, yet just outside my reach.

  My hands ached with a need to touch them. One tendril curled close to my wrist. I clenched my hands into fists.

  This was the longest I'd had to wait for an elevator in my entire life. It arrived here so quickly before, what in the seven hells was keeping it?

  "A colleague of mine is a client of yours." His voice was the rolling thunder on a balmy spring day.

  "Oh?" I automatically turned to look at him when I answered. Oh Lords Above, I wouldn't know what to do if he asked this colleague for a referral and ended up being my client. I'd probably die of a heat stroke. Or much more likely, embarrass myself when I wouldn't be able to stop myself from biting and/or licking him.

  Because that would clearly be the logical outcome in that situation.

  Soft chuckles rumbled from his chest as the elevator doors finally dinged open. We stepped inside. He settled into a corner, yet it was like he filled the entire space.

  He continued, "My colleague mentioned that she'd been struggling with writing her book, but you were able to help her tremendously, and credits you with her success. I thought to pass along her words to you."

  I had a strict non-disclosure agreement. I didn't even want my clients to credit me for any help I'd given them. I had more than enough coming from referrals, I didn't need ‘walk-in’ business also.

  Still, it warmed me to know that I'd helped his colleague in this way. "Thank you for the words."

  "I'm sure she would say the same to you." Then, he handed me back the black key card I'd given his security guard. "Don't forget your card. Remember, you're welcome here. Anytime."

  I met his gaze directly for the first time since we stepped out of the conference room. I had an odd compulsion to lean in and press myself against his body. Everything about him called to me. Just one step, and I'd be enveloped in him.

  Corbin coughed. I’d somehow forgotten she was there. "So, would that invitation include any guests?"

  "When accompanied by the cardholder." He hadn't looked away from me when he answered.

  I looked away first, slipping the card into my jacket pocket to distract me from his overwhelming presence. "Uhm. Thanks. Again. For that." I stopped there before I said Stuff and Things again.

  He chuckled, and the sound was the velvet of melting chocolate.

  I wondered what he found amusing. I hoped it wasn't because I'd turned into a complete lunatic.

  Then, he leaned down, way down, so his lips were as close to my ear as they could be without touching me. "You have no need to be embarrassed around me."

  Then, he inhaled deeply and straightened back up.

  The elevator doors opened.

  "Finally," Corbin said. "The elevator didn't take nearly as long when we went up."

  I followed after her, a little lost and dazed. I couldn't resist looking back once.

  He leaned against the back of the elevator, a calm stillness in the midst of the storm that roiled around him. Lightning crackled the air.

  He nodded at me, as if to say, go on, now, catch up to Corbin.

  I turned to do just that.

  The elevator doors closed.

  As soon as we got into her car, Corbin said, "So. Like did I witness you having a stroke earlier, and I need to take you to the hospital now, or what?"

  I didn't answer. I just buried my face in my hands and groaned. "I can't believe...I mean...I never...My Lord." And buried by face in my hands again.

  She rubbed my back, chuckling. "It's all good, V. I mean, I worried about your sanity for a moment, but you know what? It's kinda nice to see your feathers ruffled for once."

  I stared hard at her Cheshire Cat grin. "Really? Maybe I need to see your feathers ruffled then."

  "I don't got feathers to ruffle."

  "That makes no sense. Just drive..."

  "Yeah, or else we'll be late for that thing. With people and stuff."

  "I will cut you."

  Corbin drove a slow, meandering route downtown. The rest of the interviews were pleasant enough. None of them mentioned my artwork, and they at least proved to Corbin that not everyone remembered or recognized me or my name.

  Corbin even got to tell off a couple of snooty building managers, which made her so happy. She practically skipped to the car after the last interview. With all the information she took in, she'd want to process it, work it, see what possible connections she could find. "Let's go get ourselves that dinner!"

  On our way there, we exchanged notes about the interviews, and Corbin, nicely enough, sidestepped the encounter with Deimos altogether. Our laughter and banter subsided. Then, Corbin hissed.

  I nearly asked what was wrong, and then realized what had made her react. Construction crews made us detour through a part of SoHo that we both actively avoided.

  SoHo.

  I loved this part of the city. Really, I did.

  But, jolts of anxiety still gripped me whenever I was near.

  "You okay, V?" she asked in the thickening silence.

  "I'm fine," I said.

  But she knew. She didn’t need to be an empath to know what I might be feeling. I kept my eyes firmly ahead, even though the pull to look out and see how the neighborhood changed was great.

  "So you were saying about that guy again. What was his deal?"

  I let Corbin talk, her clipped, direct rhythms comforting in their familiarity. I drew strength from it, even as we drove through a too-familiar street.

  We came to a stop at a traffic light. I kept my line of sight straight ahead, knowing that the bodega on the corner just outside my periphery used to be a kitschy art gallery. I worked and lived there. And, eventually, debuted my art collection.

  Invictus was a series of paintings and companion sculptures. Each piece represented the emotions that swirled vividly around me. Their touch. Their weight. Even their scent. How they scared me, thrilled me, captivated me. I put all of me into my work. All my emotion and passion.

  It had been my clarion call. My line in the sand. My middle-finger-salute to all the bullshit that I'd been afraid of my entire life.

  My work was celebrated and sold well, and the flashboil of fame that accompanied a living artist overflowed. I had students at first, wanting to be taught technique and style, but I couldn't teach them any more than what they were learning at the institutes. Yet, they were producing more inspired work with me than without me, so that I had been given the reputation as a muse. They paid me quite handsomely to guide and direct their force of will and make them into whatever it was they wanted to be.

  Thus, my business was born.

  I hadn't minded. Most of the time, it only required siphoning off the doubt and insecurities that got in their way. A little coffee, a lot of handholding. Like therapy. Only quicker. And, after a few conversations, my client and I would end up creating our respective artwork during our sessions.

  I'd wondered to this day, if I'd known what my work could do, would I have still created it? If I had known that the very emotions I had put into my work, others felt as well? Looking back, it was so obvious the effect my work had had on others
, what effect even just my presence had.

  But I had known nothing back then.

  Back then, I hadn't known about empaths or emotion addicts or blowback. That there were people that could become addicted to empathic emotional siphoning, or that empaths crested to euphoric highs during emotional siphoning up until the blow back hit. Manic dreamers one moment, near psychotic rages the next.

  Most empaths hated the siphonings. Hated touching people. Hated feeling others' sticky messes. Hated the emotional roller coaster. But the high that came before the crash. They craved it. Lived for it.

  They were as miserable and rotten to be around like any other junkie. Some were like functioning alcoholics, they hid it well.

  Most were identified young and brought up as wards in temples, if lucky, or state-run facilities where they were registered and suppressed with tattooed blessings regularly. My abilities may not have tipped off my handlers? For whatever reason, they had never branded me.

  I never felt the high or the addiction, so I hadn't understood what a regular empath would have felt. I had learned about the depths of their addiction the hard way, though. Always, the hard way.

  An empath had come into my gallery one day, drawn to my work, he'd said. I recognized him for the junkie he was, and sent him away to get help. Then, later, he had come into my studio. Drugged me.

  I'd woken up, naked, tied to a chair, more shocked than anything else.

  Until he'd started touching me. He'd been drawn to me, he'd said. Couldn't stay away. Imagined the high.

  A cold rage had deadened and numbed something inside me. Crystalline ice thickened and grew inside my emotional walls, spilling over onto my skin.

  He hadn't gotten the high he'd expected. Only a promise of one with no payoff. His thick scent nearly choked me when he'd slammed his fist into my face. He hit me again. And kept hitting me.

  He'd found another way to replace the high.

  I didn't know how, but I'd managed to convince him between his cycles of fury that I needed to be the one to touch him. My left arm was broken, still tied behind my back. Some of my ribs surely were as well.

  Still, despite the searing pain, I'd lifted my right hand when he snapped the zip ties off my wrists. Cupped his face and pulled.

  The immediate ecstasy that had taken him over made the rage inside me swell and grow.

  Except.

  The rage hadn't wanted to push out. It had become a nothing inside of me, a cold emptiness that welled up from inside me and wanted to feed. And so I fed it. I drank down everything he had given to me, and gave life to this empty space. This void.

  I'd ripped everything away from him as he had tried to do to me.

  Everything.

  He died in bliss.

  Me, all full of...him...had lain in a broken pile on the floor.

  I'd gagged, then vomited. I kept purging until just black sticky smoke dribbled out of me.

  One final scorch of something had coughed out of me. A wisp of something that was more distortion than matter, like a heat wave, had traveled back into his open mouth.

  His body had bucked and sighed. And then, he had screamed and screamed. Bloody tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes and still he screamed. The screaming became more pressure than sound.

  I had shielded my ears as best as I could despite my broken body.

  Then, flames had shot out of his mouth, engulfed his body, spilling across the floor like liquid waves. I'd somehow crawled to the stairs, pitching my body over the landing, onto the first floor.

  Corbin had found me there. She had been part of the first-responders that came out when some anonymous neighbor called for help.

  The rest of the night was a blur. There'd been no physical evidence in my loft of what he'd done, of who he was. Heck, there'd been no physical evidence of my loft. The flames had consumed it all, left nothing more than a blackened scorch mark next to the sidewalk. None of it touched the surrounding buildings. It was as if my loft, had never been there.

  Corbin had made sure that the city and the powers that be that ran it knew that I wasn't responsible for the fire. Not that it had been necessary. It had been obvious to anyone with eyes that I'd been worked over. The authorities had agreed, and labeled me the victim.

  Rumors had sparked, circling around the various powers the Remnant God tribes wielded, but Corbin made sure that those rumors had been squelched immediately. Whispers traveled far, and she hadn't wanted to attract the attention of any of the Remnant in their secret enclaves. That was a level of bureaucracy and justice no one was willing to shoulder, especially me.

  After that day, I'd retreated from the world. My business would evolve into something more discreet, more selective. Consultations for found objects, mainly, which kept me in the art world, but away from the public eye. Away from walk-in business.

  The only art I created was through my agency, where I would work my clients' emotions, then sent them on their way.

  The cold void that had awakened inside me that night scared me. I kept it hidden away within a fortress that had since frozen over. It held all my secrets. But, with it, I knew I would never be anyone else's victim again.

  Only five years ago. Felt like ages. Like the girl I'd been was someone else completely.

  Corbin reached out and squeezed my wrist.

  The light turned green. We drove on.

  Our favorite Thai restaurant was in the heart of Chinatown. The owners, a husband and wife team who had emigrated to this country from Asia thirty years ago, knew us, and kept a table in the back corner open for us whenever we might pop by. The husband was on hosting duty now, and took us to our table. He left to place our order in with the kitchen staff.

  They often joked that I could be the daughter they wished they had, claiming that one or the other looked the most like me. I loved their silly humor, and sometimes pretended that they were the parents I never had.

  The other tables were filled with tourists and their shopping bags, customers lined the bar, glued to the big screen with whatever sports event was playing. A group of girls babbled excitedly about their various writing projects. I smiled at their energy, the inspiration that flowed from artists.

  We decompressed over chicken satay and Pad Thai.

  As I ordered refills on our iced Thai coffee, I prodded Corbin before she became too pensive. "So, throw down your hunches, Detective. Lay 'em out for me. I know you're dying to."

  It was always fascinating to see how her mind worked. As someone who helped guide and direct other people in their endeavors, it was fun to see the spark of it on someone who knew how to wield and direct it on her own. Trusted herself and her process enough to move forward.

  She shoveled more rice onto her plate. She needed it. All her work and constant scheming and non-sleeping burned more calories than she could possibly take in. The sinewy look worked on her long, ballerina frame, though. Made her all gracefully lethal.

  Me, I just looked skinny, would always just look skinny, no matter the weights I lifted in the gym.

  At least there was iced Thai coffee.

  "Okay, this is what I got so far. Owen Sanderson was found last night. Blitzed out of his mind. Basically naked. Raving that he killed her, whoever that 'her' is. He had blood on him that wasn't his, and the CSI team said the only thing they got from the blood was that it belonged to a female. He had scars that looked like a symbol. Or a name.

  “When we interviewed the wife, said she knew nothing about where he'd been. Thought he was supposed to be on a business trip. Contacted his family back in Texas, and they said he was just there, and the last time they saw him, he was leaving the family compound toward the airport.

  “We obviously know now that he had other means of travel that he didn't really share with Stepford wife, but with our lovely conversation with Deimos we know a little of what happened.

  “So, he had legit business travel, and ended it, but didn't go home right away, so he did that ‘other’ business tra
vel that royally made Miss Socialite into Miss Sourpuss. Without knowing where his other business travel was or with whom, we're at an official dead end. Thanks, in part, to Deimos." She ran frustrated fingers through her hair. "Fucking Sylph politics."

  I giggled into my drink. "I know Sylph is the generic term we use for the Remnant Gods, but I have a feeling he'd be offended to be called that."

  "Well, perfect, I'll just keep calling him and all his boys one then."

  I shook my head. "You're so bad."

  "It's close enough anyway. He had the shade of Voice in his talk."

  "Man. Of course he'd know Voice." Which meant that he was off my radar. I didn't think I could let myself be under someone's control like that. Knowing I'd be powerless.

  I didn't know if I felt relieved by that or disappointed.

  Corbin was lucky that way. Those who had Voice—and knew how to control it—didn't need to worry about being controlled by it.

  Our refills came, and we asked for the check as we savored our iced Thai coffees.

  "I wish I knew how Owen got where he was."

  I had trouble following the shift in conversation. “Owen got where?”

  Corbin shook her head, pursing her lips. She gestured into the air. "Here. Like he was originally from Texas. From a big family, a rich family. I mean, with a background like that, why did he move all the way out here?" She moved her straw up and down in her drink, crushing at her melting ice cubes.

  "Well, this is practically the biggest city in this country, and arguably the economic center of the world? Maybe it's as simple as that." I hadn't needed a complicated reason to move here. I had no ties to the old country. When Corbin decided to move to this city, start over, I hadn't hesitated in following her here. I said as much.

  "Yeah, but that proves my point." She gestured between us. "Family."

  I smiled. That was the closest we'd get to an ‘I love you’ moment. "No worries, Corbin. You'll figure it out. You always do. You and your hunches."