by J. R. Ward
“I just wanted to honor her in some way.”
“Of course you did. How could you not?”
Helania looked him. “That’s the reason I’ve been going to that club. Why I watched that female the night before yesterday. Why I checked on her. I need to find out who did this to Isobel, and I don’t want them doing it to anyone else—and I’ve already failed once, or you and I wouldn’t be talking.”
Boone frowned. “Listen, Helania. I’m not saying you can’t handle yourself—I stared down the barrel of your gun, remember? Just please don’t be a hero at the expense of your own safety.”
“I’m not going to stop going to Pyre,” she said sharply.
“I’m not asking you to. Just call me. Anytime. If you see something, if you think you’re in danger, don’t hesitate to call me. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
A strange feeling came over her, and it took a moment to figure out what it was. With Isobel there to look after her, even after Helania had gone through her transition, she had always had a protector. Now, Boone seemed to want to step into that tragically vacated role, and the idea that she might have someone to turn to again eased her on deep levels.
“Promise me,” he said. “That you’ll call.”
“I promise,” she heard herself reply. “Is that all? For this interview?”
Rubbing his eyes as if he were tired, Boone seemed to have to refocus. “Actually, about the boyfriend. Did you ever hear from him after the death? Did he try to contact her phone, her social media, you or any of her friends?”
“I don’t know about her friends. And I’m assuming he tried her on her phone, but I don’t know where it is.”
“You don’t have her phone?”
“It was lost that night.” When Boone frowned and sat back, she knew exactly where he went in his head. “It was not the boyfriend, I’m telling you. She was thrilled whenever she spoke about him. I’d never seen her so happy, those last couple of months.”
“I believe you. It’s just . . . you don’t know his name, you never met him, and he didn’t show up looking for her after she was gone. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
Helania wanted to argue the point, but the truth was, she had sometimes wondered about the very same things. Yet calling into question Isobel’s true love had seemed disloyal.
“I was not part of her scene.” Helania took a deep breath. “And if he was trying to find her by calling that phone, I would never know, would I.”
“What about the clothes she was wearing? Did any of those get saved?”
“Her friend told me they threw them out because they were ruined.”
“We really need to speak with those two females. What are their names?”
“I don’t know what their given names are. But I can find them on social media. I cannot forget either of their faces.”
“That would be really helpful.”
Helania let herself fall back into the armchair. Closing her eyes was a bad idea. The world got to spinning.
“Are you all right?” Boone asked.
“Just a little woozy.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
Helania forced her lids to open as she started to do that math. When the hours added up—and kept adding—she frowned.
“You need to eat.” Boone reached out and turned off the phone. “And so do I. Let’s take a break and have First Meal together.”
Her knee-jerk reaction was to say no, conclude the meeting, and go back home to change. She could still make it over to Pyre and have plenty of time there before dawn. Except . . . just as all that stick-to-the-plan, find-the-killer, keep-your-distance occurred to her, from out of nowhere, she pictured her sister.
Isobel had always worn her hair short and spiky, the red color even louder and brighter that way, untempered with the blond that marked Helania’s far longer waves. And she had had bright blue eyes. Brilliantly blue, like a robin’s egg. And a super-white, ultrawide smile.
Even her coloring had been vivid.
Add to all that her laugh? Isobel had been captivating to people. The few times Helania had gone out and watched on the sidelines as her sister had charmed friends and strangers alike, she had been astounded by the presence of the female. Just like everyone else.
There had been so many times over the last eight months that Helania had regretted the fact that she had been the survivor. Isobel had always been better at living. Why had the recluse been the one to stay on the planet? And to that point, if her sister had been offered a nice meal with a nice male when she was starving? She wouldn’t have said yes. She would have hell-yeah’d that idea—and then made sure that the conversation was even better than the food.
Helania looked into Boone’s eyes. They were . . . beautiful eyes. Thickly lashed. Deeply set.
She thought of the dead body she had found the night before last. If that female had known that she was going to die that evening, if she had had the date of her demise given to her, what would she have done differently?
I am alive, Helania thought to herself. Right now, I am not dead.
So it was about time she started living, wasn’t it.
“Yes,” she heard herself say. “I would like to eat with you. Where, though? Here?”
Boone’s eyebrows popped, as if her acceptance of the invite had surprised him. Except then he rushed on. “The doggen are busy in the kitchen serving the folks here. But I know a great place to take you. You’re going to love it.”
THIRTEEN
The Remington Hotel was a Caldwell fixture, a throwback to the Roaring Twenties that had somehow survived the modernization of downtown. Surrounded by skyscrapers, the thirty-floor, bi-winged building was a gracious grande dame in the company of robots, its courtyard the kind of thing that was in every tourism ad for the city. It was the sort of place where people had Sunday tea in their dress clothes, and couples got engaged in the formal dining room, and there were suites with plaques on the doors pointing out that President Taft had stayed there in 1911 and Hemingway in 1956 and President Clinton in 1994.
Boone rematerialized in the alley beside the hotel, and for a split second, as he stood in the cold alone, he wondered whether Helania was going to change her mind and reroute in her molecular form to somewhere else.
But then she was beside him. In the flesh.
“I’m dressed casually,” she said as she indicated her parka and jeans.
He nodded down at his set of leathers. “As I am. That’s why we’re going to Remi’s.”
As he motioned to the head of the alley, they walked together toward the cars that were passing by on East Main Street.
Say something, he thought. Say . . . anything—
“You mean the movie?”
Boone shook his head. “What?”
“Say Anything. You know, with John Cusack?” When he gave Helania a blank look, she said, “It has that classic scene with him holding the boom box over his head and Peter Gabriel playing. What made you think of it?”
Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, he must have spoken that out loud. “Ah, sure . . . it’s one of my favorites.”
“Mine, too.” She laughed a little. “Cameron Crowe’s best, in my opinion. I also like all the John Hughes movies from the eighties. I had a crush on Jake Ryan forever—you’re really limping, by the way.”
Was he? He couldn’t feel his face, much less his legs—and talk about pop culture refs. Thank you, the Weeknd.
“How were you hurt?” she asked. “Were you fighting?”
“Yes.” With a down pillow that had had a helluva ground game, as it turned out. “The enemy nearly got the best of me.”
Helania stopped dead. “Oh, my God. Are you serious? Did you see a doctor—”
“I’m sorry, no.” He held up a hand. “Look, I want to impress you. And if I tell you how it actually happened, you’re going to think I’m the biggest planker on the planet.”
“I don’t even know what a planker is.”
As
she stared up him, with those big yellow eyes filling her heart-shaped face and the wisps of her red and blond hair teased on the wind and that bright flush on her cheeks from the cold . . . she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
All of the aristocratic females in all of the ball gowns in the world couldn’t hold a candle to her.
“Do you mean ‘dweeb’?” she prompted.
“I haven’t heard that word in a million years.”
“Well, to be fair, you brought the eighties into this first.” That slight smile, the one he loved so much, tilted her mouth again. “Tell me how you got hurt. I promise I won’t judge. I mean, come on, I am the most socially inept person you will ever meet. I have lived a whole life through movies that I watched at home. I can quote you a hundred thousand lines from a thousand rom-coms, but you ask me to talk to someone I don’t know? I freeze solid. So I am in no position to judge.”
I want to kiss you, he thought. Right now.
“WhenyoucalledlastnightIwasnakedandIdidn’tthinkthatwasappropriatesoIrantomyclosetandgotdressedandwhenIcamebackIendeduptrippingonapillowdon’taskhowandIstubbedmytoeandsprainedmyankle.”
Helania blinked. And then laughed out loud. “I’m sorry, can you try that again?”
“Naked when you called. Ran to get dressed. Back by the bed, tripped on a pillow. Stubbed toe, sprained ankle. Man-card revoked. Tragedy ensues.”
As she laughed again, he decided he was going to take classes in stand-up. Just so that he could hear that sound.
“So you were naked?” she said.
“Yeah.” Okay, now he was doing the blush thing. “I didn’t want to disrespect you.”
“We weren’t FaceTiming. I couldn’t see anything.”
“But I knew I had no clothes on.”
He meant to keep the tone light and funny. But something in his voice changed, and she picked up on it instantly—because that lovely little smile drifted away from her expression.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said roughly.
“Walk down this alley, you mean?” He tried to bring the mood back around. “I think you’re better suited to the job than I am—”
“No.” She motioned between them. “This.”
Instantly, Boone got serious. “So you feel it, too.”
Her eyes went to the open end of the alley, where the traffic was stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper. There must have been a basketball game that had just gotten out, he thought. Or a concert. A show.
Maybe this had been a mistake to drag her into the human world.
“I don’t want to misrepresent myself.” She shook her head. “Isobel would do something like this. Not me—”
“You’re the one I want to share a meal with. Not anyone else.”
“I just don’t want you to have high expectations. A lot of the time—even before I lost Isobel—I didn’t feel right with other people. It’s like a gear that can’t quite engage. It’s always been that way and I don’t want you to think it’s you. I’m a little off—”
Boone reached out and took her hand. The instant the contact was made, Helania fell silent.
“I’m not expecting anything more than dinner,” he said. “On my honor.”
There was a pause. Then that smile came back even wider, and what do you know—it brought a friend. A dimple popped up, sweet as could be, on one of her cheeks.
Crocking his elbow, he grinned. “May I have your arm?”
Ducking her head, she put her hand through the space he made for her, and then they were walking down the alley together once again.
“You tripped on a pillow?” she murmured.
“At least it was after I’d gotten dressed or God only knows what else I could have hurt on that bedside table.”
Her laugh made him feel taller and stronger, even as his physical dimensions did not change.
And what do you know, Helania was still smiling as they got out onto Main Street proper and entered the Remington’s famous courtyard. Courtesy of the hotel’s two wings, there was a vast open mall created by the embrace of its stone extensions, the main entrance a majestic anchor with its hanging flags and Art Deco details. Illuminated by old-fashioned gas lanterns and marked by rows of trees wound with thousands upon thousands of Christmas lights, it was a fairy tale in the heart of downtown’s steel-and-asphalt anonymity.
“This is so beautiful,” she said as she looked around.
“Yes,” he murmured as he focused on her face. “You are.”
She was so taken by the spectacle that it appeared she didn’t hear him. Probably just as well. Right under his surface was an intensity that he didn’t want to reveal to her. Yet.
“It’s magical.” She reached out a hand and stopped just short of touching one of the lit-up branches. “Something out of a book.”
“The hotel’s famous for this courtyard.”
“I’ve only seen pictures of it before.” She paused and then turned in a slow circle. “The glow reminds me of sunlight back before my transition.”
She was right, he thought as he followed her lead and glanced around. All the little bulbs threw off a mellow, banked illumination similar to a summer sunset’s.
“Did you sneak out of your parents’ house to look at the sun, too?” he asked.
“Isobel told me I had to do it.” Helania smiled. “She said I absolutely had to see the sun before my change. As the older of the pair of us, she’d been through the change already. She showed me where to go through the basement of our family’s house, how to follow the crawl space and get out through an old storm door.”
“I always thought that humans smoking cigarettes behind their parents’ backs was like us with sneaking out to see the sun.”
“Exactly.” Helania shook her head. “I didn’t stay long. It was July when I did it and . . . yes, that’s what the color of this light reminds me of. It was right at sunset when I went out. My parents were making First Meal, and Isobel distracted them in the kitchen. I’ll never forget the feel of the warmth on my face.”
Boone thought back to when he and his cousins would duck out and watch the sun set and rise. They had done it so many times. Right up until their transitions. After that, everything had been different. No more sun.
“Isobel was so proud of me. She hugged me and told me I had to do it again and again. But that was her. I never went out another time.”
“You miss her.”
“Every night.” Helania glanced at him. “You must feel the same way about your father.”
Boone shrugged. “I have certainly noticed his absence, that’s for sure.”
They started walking again, heading for the formal entrance with its bank of glass doors and silver and brass flourishes. Hanging above it all, there was the American flag as well as the ones for the State of New York, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
“Welcome to the Remington,” a uniformed doorman said with a brief bow.
“Thank you,” Boone answered as the human gave the revolving door a shove and Helania went through first.
Inside, the cavernous lobby was all black marble, gold and silver carpeting, and burnished metal fixtures. Seating areas clustered around the bases of broad square columns were like presents under human Christmas trees, and discreetly dressed staff whispered by as they attended to the hotel’s guests.
“Oh . . . wow.” Helania slowed again, her eyes lighting up. “It’s a palace.”
“This way.” As he took her hand, he felt the network of scars and wished he could have helped her bury her dead. “Remi’s is down here.”
Over in the far corner, there was a theater-worthy heavy velvet curtain with gold tassels, and as he drew her behind it, the first strains of jazz could be heard faintly. The staircase that was revealed was cramped, the marble steps worn in places where a century’s worth of feet had trod. On the glossy black walls, hundreds of framed, vintage photographs of flappers and dandies from the twenties and thirties were hung so closely together, they formed a m
osaic of black and white tiles.
Down at the bottom, the mellow music was louder, and at the maître d’ stand, Boone slipped the gentleman a hundred-dollar bill and was rewarded with one of the best tables in the house, right in front of the small stage. He sat with his back to the trio who were playing so Helania could have the better view.
As she stared up in wonder at the piano player, the clarinetist, the guy on the bass, he felt something warm bloom in the center of his chest.
There was nowhere else on the planet he wanted to be. And the happiness he felt, the sense of connection and communion, was a shock that illuminated how lonely he had been.
For such a very long time.
• • •
Helania felt like she was under a heat lamp. And not in a bad way.
As she took off her parka and sat across from Boone, the sensual music wrapped them in an embrace, bringing them closer together than they actually were. The dim lighting and thoughtful staff offered little to no interruption, and even the small table, as well as the chairs that were tilted in, seemed to encourage the intimacy.
Before she knew it, plates of cheese with fruit appeared, and then heartier fare, a stew with meat and vegetables, which quite possibly could have been the best thing she’d ever eaten. Or maybe the company was the spice that turned a humble dish into a gourmet masterpiece: In spite of the fact that she often felt tongue-tied with other people, that was not the case with Boone. There seemed to be an endless array of topics for discussion, everything from favorite books and music, to current affairs, to happy childhood memories, shared along with the common bread basket.
It was all quite remarkable. And then even the dishes of dessert had been cleared, and they were still talking.
Running her fingertips over the belly of her wineglass, she stared into the chardonnay she’d been nursing . . . and wondered how the night was going to end.
“What are you thinking about?” Boone murmured.
Shaking her head, she was curious if he’d guessed that she’d been with a male before—and whether or not that was going to be a problem. He was obviously from the aristocracy, and there were a lot of rules for them. Well, there were rules for civilians, too. But Isobel had urged her to break out of her shell and get herself a male, and so she had done that about a decade ago. The relationship had lasted about a year and then fizzled, a social experiment that had failed in the lab.