by Cate Tiernan
Yeah, that had gone well.
CHAPTER 10
Since this day was the hill that crap kept rolling down, I still had to admit I’d been fired. I darted past the lit window at MacIntyre’s Drugs, casting a fast glance inside. I was relieved to see only an empty store and skittered over to my car.
River’s Edge had many lit windows, promising warmth. In the yard, snow coated everything like powdered sugar. I climbed out of my car and trudged toward the house, wondering if I could slink upstairs and into a hot bath without anyone noticing me. I climbed the stairs and quietly opened the dark green front door—
“Hey! Nastasya! They’re making Chinese food for dinner!” In the front hall, Amy actually bounced on her heels a couple times in excitement. “And Charles lived in China, so he knows the real way!”
How did she know that Charles had lived in China? I didn’t. She’d just gotten here!
Anne came forward with a smile. “Hi—how was your day? It’s bitter out there.”
My plan of sneaking upstairs and faking illness evaporated.
“I got fired!” I blurted, and felt my chin quivering, my face crumpling. Because I hadn’t been humiliated enough today, we were going to go the extra mile of crying in front of everyone, including Anne’s adorable sister whom Reyn had made chocolate dessert for.
“Oh, honey,” said Anne, and immediately came to hug me, patting my back as if I were a child with a scraped knee. “I’m so sorry. I know Mr. MacIntyre must be awful to work for.”
“What happened?” River’s voice.
“James MacIntyre fired her today,” Anne said over my shoulder. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to face River.
“Oh, goodness,” said River. “Well, you lasted an amazingly long time. It was only a matter of when you would sneeze wrong and he would give you the boot.”
They were taking my side. Instantly, without hearing the facts. They knew me, and they were still sticking up for me. I straightened and opened my eyes, dragging the back of one hand under my nose. “I didn’t sneeze wrong.”
“What happened?” River asked.
“He was screaming at Meriwether, his daughter who works there, and she was crying, and I thought he might actually even hit her, and I didn’t want to use magick to stop him—that would be wrong,” I put in virtuously, “so I lost it and shouted awful things at him and said he was ruining his life and that his own daughter was afraid of him.” I took a breath. “Then he yelled that I was fired and to get out and he never wanted to see me again.”
Actually, I didn’t come off too badly there—defending the innocent, etc. And it was all true. I hadn’t captured the depth of the awfulness, or Meriwether’s shocked, pale face and the fact that in trying to hurt her dad I may have hurt her, too. But that was the gist.
“Hmm,” River said. I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes. It wasn’t anger or condemnation or disappointment.
“How awful,” said Anne, patting my back again. “But I have an idea about what might make you feel better.”
“Ice cream?” Hope flared in my chest.
“No,” she said, grinning. “A nice meditation session. We just have time before dinner. Join the four of us.” She gestured to herself, Amy, Rachel, and Daisuke, who had gathered in the hall while I was pouring out my story.
Oh God, no, I thought.
“An excellent idea!” said River, wearing the slight smirk that told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Go along now. I know you’ll feel much more centered afterward.”
Anne started up the stairs, followed by the others, and I lingered, hoping River would say she was just kidding and what I really needed was a Scotch and a hot bath. She smiled and smoothed my snow-damp hair. “You really will feel better afterward,” she said softly.
I sighed and headed up the stairs. They were insidious with their niceness.
I hadn’t tried to meditate since my self-introspection flop on New Year’s Eve. This was the last thing I felt like doing. Would I ever be well enough to be able to say, No, thanks, no meditation for me right now? Surely I would get to a point where I wasn’t so obviously damaged that people wanted to fling me into meditation circles every time I turned around. Right?
I breathed in and out. My washout day ebbed away from me. My stomach unknotted; my shoulders unhunched. This moment was serene and perf—
Nastasya’s power is so amazingly strong. I worry—
My spine straightened a little—who had thought that? It had already been pointed out how unusual it was that I could sometimes hear people’s thoughts during meditation. Apparently your run-of-the-mill immortal was not burdened with knowing what people thought about them. But who here was worried about me? Surely Anne, as the only teacher here. But maybe Rachel or Daisuke, both of whom were really advanced? I calmed my breathing and opened myself up to receive more.
I should give away Shiro’s pot.
This I recognized as Daisuke. His thought came to me in a flash: He had a small, beautiful bowl that his brother had made. His brother was dead, and this was the only thing that Daisuke had of his. He was agonizing about his need to divest himself of all belongings and his desire to keep a little part of his brother with him always.
Should go home and see Mom soon…
That was Rachel. I wondered where her mom was. I knew Rachel was originally from Mexico.
I’m going to be all over Reyn like ugly on an ape.
I almost choked on my spit and forced myself to swallow slowly. That would be Amy. She was facing her emotions. She was not refusing to deal with things. Because the thing she was dealing with was her intense desire to be a normal person with a hot guy jump on some stranger she didn’t even know.
Nastasya, you are such a chickenshit.
What? Who was that?! Oh, wait—it was me.
What?
You are such a chickenshit. You act so tough, but really you’re a gooey marshmallow of schoolgirl fears. You keep saying you want to get better, but only if you don’t have to do anything hard.
What does that mean? I am working hard!
No. Your “working hard” consists of not fighting everyone about everything. And that’s a start. But you have to do more than just not say no.
What the eff?
You have to be active, not passive. You can’t just storm away from Meriwether, from Dray, from Reyn. You can make things right. You, Nas, actually have to grow the hell up. At last.
Well.
I guess we’re just walking in the truth here.
I was practically hyperventilating with anger. How dare my own subconscious turn on me? How dare—
You’re deflecting what you need to do by focusing on being angry.
I almost snorted, furious.
“Okay, let’s start to come out,” said Anne softly.
Who did my subconscious think she was? I opened my eyes, mad that Anne had suggested I do this, that River had made me. Daisuke, across from me, looked troubled, no closer to an answer about his brother’s bowl. Rachel looked thoughtful. Anne had her eyes on me. And Amy? The jonesing-for-Reyn Amester? I glanced at her, then stifled a shriek, jerking backward.
Amy had Incy’s face, handsome and unearthly. She had Incy’s dark, intense stare, his dark curls, his eyes locked on mine. I saw my visions of him, my dreams…. It was all I could do to not leap to my feet. Instead I blinked and sucked in a quick breath, and then Amy was just Amy again.
Everyone was looking at me.
I brushed my hand against my mouth. It was trembling. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Optical illusion.” He was haunting me, stalking my mind, and I felt scared. Dreams, illusions, were hard enough to deal with. If he was going to be around during a normal waking day, then I was going to be seriously wigged-out.
I almost wept with joy when the dinner chime rang just then. I scrambled to my feet, tossed my buckwheat pillow on the pile in the corner, and headed out after Rachel.
Not so fast, Grasshopper.
&nbs
p; “Nas? A minute?”
I turned with extreme reluctance to face Anne. The others filed out—lucky bastards—leaving us alone in the small workroom.
Anne looked like she was thinking of how to say something. Finally she asked, “Is everything okay? You seemed really upset for a second.”
“Oh, I’m okay,” I said unconvincingly.
Anne waited for a couple moments to see if I would break down and tell the truth, but when I didn’t, she went on. “I remembered you’d heard people’s thoughts, in an earlier meditation class. I guess—I wasn’t sure if you could always do it or whether that was a fluke. But—it’s actually not okay to eavesdrop.”
“Is there a way to stop it?” I asked.
Anne blinked in surprise. “Yes. You don’t listen in on purpose?”
“No. I just… sort of feel my mind opening.” I remembered the cutting things my inner Nasty had thrown at me. “Sometimes too much.”
“Okay, that will be our next lesson,” said Anne. “I’ve never had to teach someone how to not do that—almost no one can. But it makes sense for you—I should have thought of it earlier. I’ll teach you how, okay?”
“Sure.” I started to walk out, but she wasn’t done.
“Nastasya—you really did seem frightened at the end. When you looked at Amy. What was it?”
I glanced at Anne quickly, remembering that Amy was her sister. “Nothing! I mean, Amy’s fine. It was just—my mind playing tricks on me. For just a second she looked like someone else—the friend I left in London. Incy.”
Anne frowned. “Had you been thinking about Incy?”
“Not just then. But it’s nothing about Amy. She doesn’t remind me of him or anything.”
“Hmm,” Anne said, walking with me out the door.
I shrugged my shoulders, self-conscious and not wanting to talk about it. Had my mind been telling me that I was hopelessly dark? As dark as Innocencio? As dark as my parents had been? Was it in my blood, inescapably? And… would there be any point to me being here, if that was true?
CHAPTER 11
Be active, my subconscious had said. Make it right. Grow up.
If I had my way, my subconscious would never get another gig as long as I lived. Wait. Crap. Never mind.
I had no idea what it had meant. I pondered it all the way through Charles’s fabulous Chinese dinner, then through a shower, then for about two seconds after I fell into bed, exhausted. When I jolted awake at 5:29, one minute before my alarm went off, I knew that forming any kind of make-it-right plan was a not-happening thing.
I was on egg-gathering duty that morning, appropriately enough, given the chickenshit reference. The devil chicken gave me the evil eye, and I didn’t even try to get her eggs. Someday I would come in here with asbestos fireplace gloves up to my elbows, and there would be a reckoning. But not today.
I put the last warm egg in my basket, imagining my brain overheating from thinking too hard, smoke coming out of my ears. Make it right. Try one little thing at a time. Maybe. Okay, how about… I would try to… um, not judge people too harshly? At least not right away, I amended in a nod to reality. I groaned at coming up with the lamest thing ever and left the warm, feathery coop to head back to the house. About forty feet ahead of me was Reyn, carrying two metal pails of milk from our two milk cows, Beulah and Petunia. He looked tall and strong, carrying the pails as if they were empty. I forced myself to see him as: Man Carrying Milk Pails. He was not only the person I remembered from long ago, and he was not only the superficial, physical object of my fevered fantasies. He was a whole, real person—and, actually, I barely knew him.
We ended up at the kitchen steps together, and he looked over at me.
“Good morning,” I said. Big-girl Nastasya.
“Morning.” I felt his surprise. Then we went into the kitchen.
So, if you try to make things right with someone, and they dis you, it’s so humiliating. Which is why I had never, ever tried. I’d written off any number of friends, had left any number of towns, rather than try to mend a hurt or a misunderstanding or a wrong. I had no idea how to make things right with anyone, much less… Old Mac, for example.
I had no idea what to do, but my rookie instinct told me that I probably had to be in proximity to Old Mac to even try.
So I drove myself to work. The drugstore was unlocked, and my time card was where I had thrown it on the checkout counter. For a second I wondered if Mr. MacIntyre hadn’t even locked up the night before, but then I saw him behind his pharmacy counter, and he was wearing different clothes. He looked up when the bell over the door jangled and seemed both surprised and angry to see me. I just went to the back, punched in my time card, and started sweeping.
He came out to stare at me, hands on hips, but I kept sweeping. Sweeping seemed like a very active thing. I swept my pile all the way to the front door and out onto the sidewalk. Then I turned the CLOSED sign to OPEN and got out the feather duster. After a while he went back behind the counter, though I felt him watching me, off and on, most of the morning. Meriwether was in school, and he didn’t have anyone else. I did my usual tasks: straightening shelves, marking off what stock needed replacing on the inventory list.
Toward noon the bell jangled and I looked up to see a couple I didn’t recognize, a man and a woman, dressed as if they did not live in West Lowing. Boston, maybe. New York. Paris. Most of our customers were locals, and I recognized literally about 98 percent of them. These were strangers.
“Hey,” I said from my position on the floor. “Can I help you find something?”
The woman looked at me, and for some reason, right then, I shivered. Her hair was corn straw yellow and cut in a feathery cap all around her head. Her eyes were a very light blue. The man looked from-India Indian, smooth-skinned and polished, well dressed, with blunt, handsome features and a mouth that looked… cruel.
I stood up. They were probably tourists, had gotten lost, just as I had once. But something about them felt—not right. Hinky. My skin crawled and I suddenly felt chilly. It was dumb—I didn’t know them; they didn’t know me; it was nothing. But still.
“Allergy medicine,” said the woman. She had a slight British accent.
“First aisle, in the middle,” I said, not smiling.
“Thank you.”
I kept my distance as they stood in the cold-and-allergy aisle and read labels. They talked to each other in low murmurs, and I felt like—like they weren’t even reading the labels. Like they were killing time by being here. Almost as if they were waiting for someone. Could they… be friends of Incy’s? Surely I would have seen them before?
My fists clenched at my sides. I stayed standing, as if I might suddenly have to run. It was weird, and probably stupid, but I felt like a gazelle being eyed by two cheetahs. My breaths were shallow; my heart was beating fast. I sidled toward the back and saw Old Mac engrossed in deciphering a doctor’s handwriting.
I edged around the end of the aisle, as if I was casually walking toward the front of the store, and when I quickly glanced up, they were watching me. My heart started pounding.
“There are so many different kinds,” said the woman, holding up a box of Benadryl.
“Yes,” I said, not going any closer. “Some make you sleepy; some don’t. Some work more quickly, but some you have to take every day for them to work well. It depends on what you want it for.” I realized I was jabbering on because I was nervous.
The woman nodded. She and the man met eyes again and murmured. I have really good hearing, like, beagle-good hearing, and I couldn’t make out a single word they said. Was it a different language? I didn’t even recognize the basic patterns and cadences of speech, and I know bits of a lot of languages.
“We want the kind that makes you sleepy,” said the woman, and I wondered hysterically if they wanted to dope a victim. With… Benadryl. Unlikely, right?
“Benadryl would do it,” I said, my voice cracking. I coughed and headed toward the front counter. My ha
nds were shaking and clammy. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a person—not to anyone. It was freaking me out. I couldn’t even tell if they were immortal or not.
The woman put the box on the counter. Usually you have to look in someone’s eyes, or maybe touch them, to “feel” if they were immortal or not. But everything in me refused to look her in the eyes. I was seriously wigging.
I rang up the medicine, the woman paid in cash, I made change, and they left.
I saw them get in their car and drive away, but stood there and watched the front door obsessively, as if they might suddenly reappear. After a few minutes I hurried to the back, pulled that door tightly shut, and locked it. Finally I felt myself relax a little, as if my body no longer sensed a threat.
That had been really freaking weird. I hadn’t gotten any magickal vibes from them, no spark of recognition. But they had just been the scariest people imaginable. I shook my head at how nonsensical it was and then found myself something to do.
The day went on. I was already feeling kind of beaten down and weary when Dray came in. Another chance to be active, make things right! Oh boy!
“Hey,” I said. Could I do my one thing with Dray? To not judge her?
She nodded and started cruising the aisles. If she was here to steal something, I was going to be seriously pissed. Which was, you know, judgmental. I hovered around her, my arms crossed over my chest. She spared me withering glances every so often.
“So what’s going on?” I finally said in a burst of activeness.
She looked at me, then continued to read the instructions on a box of Band-Aids.
“Are you okay?”
Her eyes narrowed a bit at that. “What do you care?” she muttered unhelpfully.
“I care if you’re okay.”
She shrugged.
I waited. In general, I have about a minute and a half of patience, maybe three minutes if I pace myself. I was running out. I gritted my teeth.
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” she said finally, not looking at me. “The day before Christmas. I’d already gotten him a present and everything.”