The bus pulled up when we reached the front of the hotel Becca had booked for us, but there was no way we’d be able to go inside right away because another horde of fans was already waiting at the doors, blocking the path to the lobby.
“Man! How could all these people know we’re staying here?” I cried in dismay, sensing that it would take us hours to get past all those groupies. I glanced sideways and spotted Seth looking shifty. When he noticed my scolding glare he shuffled on the spot and sagged his shoulders guiltily.
“Sorry, Joe. I may have been tweeting and … it kinda slipped out … Sorry!”
I groaned half-heartedly and took a deep breath, trying to accept our inevitable fate. Tomorrow we were going to be heading back home, so I supposed we could spend a few more hours with our fans.
“All right, then. Let’s give them some love,” I said, motioning everyone out of the bus.
We were in the middle of signing autographs, taking photos and giving hugs, when I grabbed Tristan as inconspicuously as I could and pushed him to one side.
“Tris, I’m going to sneak away and head into the lobby to get my room key. Becca just waved a signal that she’s finished with the check-in,” I whispered, glancing around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. “Boy, at times like this I bet you wished you still had your fading thing, eh?”
Tristan used to have this fading power for the first year after our New Year’s spell – a sort of ex-ghost ability he brought back from the “deadland”. He could fade into the background and be invisible to the human eye. Except to me: I could still spot him, even if it was just in a blurry, shifty kind of way. But after my deal with Death, when Tristan had earned another chance at living, he stopped being able to work his fading ability.
Tristan gave me a funny look at this comment and glanced away, but I couldn’t quite decipher it. He was probably just as tired as I was. I was so intent on getting my room key, I immediately forgot about it.
“Okay, Joe. I’ll make a diversion and you get inside. I’ll be right with you,” he said, looking away.
He sometimes sneaked out of his room during the night and crashed in mine when we were on tour.
“Okay. So, I’m going in. Cover me!” I said, hunching down and making a signal, as if I were in a war movie. He chuckled and nodded, walking away and preparing to create a diversion.
A few minutes later I was letting myself into my room, bags in hand and a relieved expression on my face.
“Hello, Joe,” came a voice from somewhere inside the room.
I flinched, feeling my wrist start to throb, and clenched my hands into fists, glancing around quickly to see who it was but half guessing that I’d find the familiar face staring back at me.
“Hey, you almost gave me a heart attack!” I said. “You know, we’ve talked about this. Don’t just show up unannounced like that!”
“Sorry. I had forgotten,” he replied.
“Tristan is coming up any second now. He won’t like seeing you here.”
“He does not like to see me anywhere,” he pointed out in a logical, calm tone of voice.
I sighed loudly, too tired to have this conversation all over again. “Listen, now is actually not a good time to talk; I just got out of a really long show. Can we do this some other time?”
“I have important advice I need to ask of you, and since I am already here, maybe you can help me?”
I watched as he stared at me with intense, unblinking eyes, and sighed in defeat.
“Okay. We can talk a little,” I said, putting emphasis on the “little”. “But not here. Wait for me downstairs in the hotel bar. I’ll come down as soon as I finish my shower. I don’t want Tristan catching you here.”
I walked to the bathroom without waiting for a reply, heading straight for my well-deserved shower.
This was going to be a long night …
Chapter Three
Hotel Bar
When I was out of the shower and dressed, I heard the door slam shut and Tristan’s voice calling out to me. I glanced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. A tired-looking girl stared back at me. I really wasn’t in the mood to argue with Tristan right now, but I knew he was going to be upset about this. I just knew it.
He was lying on the bed when I came out of the bathroom, his bag by the foot of the bed and an exhausted look on his face. He was flipping through the channels on the TV, the sound on mute. Turning the TV on was always the first thing Tristan did when he got inside a room. He liked the flickering of the lights in the room and was always amazed by modern TV shows and special effects in movies, a technological novelty that never wore thin for his Fifties mindset.
“Hey. You’re all dressed up to go out. Why?” he asked, raising one inquisitive eyebrow. “I thought you’d be in your PJs by now.”
“I, um … I need to go out for a little bit. I’ll be back real soon,” I said, trying to avoid giving him too much information but at the same time answering his question honestly.
“Where are you going, then?” he asked, not satisfied with my answer.
“I’ve got to meet Vigil. He’s waiting for me downstairs. I think it’s something urgent, I don’t know …” I mumbled hurriedly, fiddling with my bag instead of looking directly at him.
“Vigil? He’s here? And you’re seeing him now? Why? It’s really late, Joey,” he protested, just like I knew he would.
Vigil had been our enemy for a whole year, the year after I first met Tristan, but then we became linked by the powerful spell that had brought Tristan back to life. Vigil was an unearthly being whose job was to restore order in the world, which effectively meant he had to return Tristan back to his ghostly state. He succeeded in this by the end of the year, as he was supposed to, but then, as my eighteenth birthday present, he helped me bring Tristan back again, by helping me to make a deal with Sky. I owed him for ever for that.
The awkward thing that became apparent at that time, though, was that Vigil had confessed to loving me, as much as a creature of his kind could: emotions did not come easily to him. We’d settled for being just friends, but it was something that still bothered Tristan. He never liked it when I went to meet Vigil. He was grateful for his help, but struggled to control his jealousy when Vigil was around me.
“Listen, Tris, it’s just for a few minutes. I’ll be right back,” I insisted.
“You always say that. And you always end up spending hours away, talking to him. What is it that you two need to talk so much about, anyway?” He huffed, exasperated, a disgruntled frown shadowing his face.
“He needs my help, Tris. I owe him; you know that. We owe him. And it’s not only because of that. He’s my friend. I’ll help if he needs my help,” I explained.
“But you don’t have to go running like this every time he snaps his fingers. Like you’re at his beck and call. That makes you more like a doormat than a friend.” He muttered the last part to himself, but I still heard him.
That stung a bit. But I knew I shouldn’t bite back now. It would only make him more angry.
I breathed in, trying to control my temper. “Tris, don’t be like this. Listen, I already told him I would meet him. He’s waiting downstairs. I’ll be back in a minute, I promise.”
“Yeah, right. Go, then. We don’t want to leave him waiting, do we?” he jeered acidly. “And here, let me make this real easy for you, so you won’t need to sneak guiltily back into the room tonight,” he spat out, grabbing his bag. “I’m crashing in my own room. Have fun with your pal. Stay out as long as you want, I won’t be in your way.” Jealousy burned fiercely in his gray eyes and he stormed out of the room.
Tristan wasn’t usually very jealous. He handled the male attention directed at me in a reasonably fair way. I knew he’d been brought up at a time of really conservative and old-fashioned standards, when men decided everything for women, but now he needed to get used to a modern way of life filled with independent, brave women, such as myself. But when the subject was Vigil, he al
ways took a few steps back in his progressive development. At first he’d pretended he was okay with it, but as Vigil and I continued meeting, he grew restless. He knew Vigil “liked” me and he thought Vigil was only biding his time, he said – that he was just waiting for the perfect moment to steal me away.
At that point, I would always ask Tristan if he didn’t trust me. Vigil could “try to steal me” all he wanted, but I still had to agree to it. How could he possibly think I would ever betray him like that?
But jealousy wasn’t about logic or reasoning. It could take you over and make you say horrible things, do horrible acts. As the Bard would say, “Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong.” And everything I ever said about Vigil, even the way I said it, became a confirmation of Tristan’s suspicions. Sometimes he wouldn’t even say a word, but I could see the look in his eyes: the fear and anger of losing me growing inside. I could see it taking root, gnawing at his heart, like a viciously wicked worm.
But I couldn’t let Tristan’s jealousy control me. He needed to understand that he must trust me and that Vigil was only my friend.
I followed him out of the room but Tristan had already disappeared. Riding the elevator to the ground floor, I stepped out into a grand hallway, which I wandered along until I reached a more intimate, dimly lit room. Tables were spread around and a small bar was nestled in the farthest corner. As soon as I stepped into the room, I recognized the never-failing pain throbbing in my wrist – just like it had done back upstairs in my room. I fisted my hand again, trying to make the pain lessen. It was always this way when Vigil was around and it was how I knew he was nearby.
The pain was a side effect from some high-level magic I had accidentally performed while trying to protect Tristan – without having any practical experience or knowledge of what I was actually doing. The end result was a black marking tattooed on my wrist and, whenever Vigil was in my proximity, the constant pain. The only way to make it stop was skin-to-skin contact from Vigil – something Tristan particularly hated seeing.
Whenever Vigil realized I was suffering he would always try to hold my hand or lean over me, trying to touch me any way he could so the pain would stop. He didn’t mean anything by it; there was no covert intention in his touch, but that didn’t stop Tristan from being royally pissed about it.
The room was practically deserted: only a middle-aged man was drinking alone at one of the tables next to the bar. And then I spotted Vigil’s slim silhouette, sitting at the other side of the room. His hands were crossed and resting on the table in front of him, and he gave the impression of waiting patiently. As I approached him, and before he noticed me, I could see that his eyes were glazed over, as if he was focused on something far, far away from this reality. With Vigil, that might well have been the case. Who knew what kinds of realities Vigil was capable of seeing?
I sat down at the other side of his table, which made him jump a little, startled by my sudden appearance. Vigil was normally very alert to his surroundings, but today he seemed distracted.
He was wearing his usual clothes: an impeccable dark-gray suit. His stern and formal dress sense seemed at a disconnect with the softness of his delicate features.
Vigil could control his physical appearance and, given this ability, he had tried to match his age to mine. As I grew older, so did he. The changes were subtle, though; he still looked very much like the boy I remembered from when we first met. His black hair still fell over an angelic, pale face, and the steely glint of his black eyes still pierced my own. His stare was cold and sharp, always vigilant and analytical. That stare alone made everybody approach him with a certain caution and a small sense of fear.
Vigil was still trying to understand human behavior, and his physical movements and verbal phrasing were slightly affected by what he had so far learned from us. The ways of humanity offered a difficult puzzle for him to solve and it was one of the topics we usually discussed.
“Hello, Joe.” He smiled faintly, watching me as I sat across from him.
“Hey,” I greeted him back. “So, Vigil, wassup?”
“Excuse me?” His expression was puzzled at my question. I usually avoided using slang whenever speaking with Vigil. He was very literal-minded.
“I mean, what is going on? What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, unfrowning his face. “You see, I have this new job …” he began.
Ah. The job. Vigil’s job. That was another regular topic of our long meetings. Vigil liked to discuss his various assignments with me. He said I was good at understanding chaotic things, and how they would turn out. His race had a very strict and narrow-minded way of seeing things, so I provided a more flexible reasoning and a human perspective, and somehow it helped him fix whatever needed to be fixed.
I was his “Consultant on Chaotic Affairs”. His “Expert on Unstable Matter”.
The thing was, after Vigil started “consulting” with me, he also started getting better at his job. Like, a lot better. His levels of efficiency rocketed sky high and he was now becoming renowned for it among his “colleagues”. Now he was The Guy you called when you needed help.
“… and it is giving me some grievance,” he continued. “I can’t manage to get a grip on this one; it is a sneaky little thing. Maybe you can find something I’m overlooking?” he said, putting his hands on top of mine in a gentle, familiar gesture. The throbbing pain in my arm stopped immediately.
“Okay. First I need to ask you: Is this new job dangerous, Vigil?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said. After I rolled my eyes impatiently, he added, “You mean, dangerous for me?”
I sighed and glared at him.
“No. Hardly anything is dangerous for me,” he continued. “Now, for you, I have to say yes. But everything is dangerous for you humans. Staying in the sun for too long is dangerous for you. Not drinking water is dangerous for you. Bleeding for more than a minute is also very dangerous—”
“Okay, okay. I get it! Everything is dangerous for us. We are a very weak species,” I snapped, annoyed. “So, it is not dangerous for you, then?” I stated, watching him as he nodded an affirmative. “Is it urgent? Like, it needs to be solved in a few hours tops, urgent? Or do you have some time to work on this?”
He thought for a minute, probably contemplating the differences in the time lapse between his reality and Earth’s reality, so that he could figure out what I meant by a “few hours”. Sometimes talking with Vigil was very complicated. It could get so philosophical and metaphysical that it would give me a heavy migraine.
“I have ‘some time’ to deal with it,” he answered cautiously.
“Some time, as in …?” I asked.
“Well, now, that is a tricky question, you see, because time is a very relative concept when you consider—”
“OKAY! All right! I know where this is going, and I’m so not going there right now!”
He gave me a baffled look.
“What I meant to say is, if this new job is neither dangerous or urgent, can we please discuss it some other time? I am exhausted right now. Us ‘weak humans’ need to rest, remember? If we don’t sleep, our brains don’t operate properly, and I can’t really help you when I’m tired like this …” I hunched over in my seat and rubbed my eyes.
“Oh. I see. Okay, Joe, I understand. We can talk later.”
I smiled weakly. “I’m sorry I’m not in the best place to help you right now,” I apologized, standing up.
“That’s perfectly understandable,” he said, standing too. “We will talk about it later and you can help me then, right?”
I nodded and gave him a quick goodbye hug. As usual he tensed a little, but I had already let go before he could do anything about it. He was never a fan of people invading his personal space.
“Goodbye, Joe,” he said, taking a step back.
“Night, Vigil.” I yawned and waved one last goodbye before walking away.
I stepped inside the elevator in a gloomy mood, the fight with Tristan back in my mind.
When I reached my door, my attention was drawn to something that had been placed in front of it, on the floor. I crouched down and picked it up. It was a white lily, my favorite flower. A black ribbon was tied around its stalk with a little note attached to the ribbon. It read:
A beautiful white to a beautiful Gray.
From your devoted and most loyal
Secret Admirer.
I glanced around, but there was no one in the deserted corridor. It was probably from a fan, I thought to myself. They sometimes managed to get past hotel Security and left gifts at our doors: stuffed bears, boxes of chocolate. We also received piles of letters, and sometimes we were sent flowers, like this lily.
I walked inside my room and could hear the TV blaring out, accompanied by Harry’s laughter. He was lying on the bed, shirtless and wearing only his loose jeans, watching some cartoon.
I crossed the room to lay my flower on the nightstand before slumping down next to Harry.
“So, I guess he really is staying in his room tonight, then,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, I saw him storming past and thought I should check on you and see what had happened.”
“How angry was he?” I asked in a small voice.
Harry eyed me with sympathetic green eyes. “He just needs some time to chill. He’ll be back to his normal self soon.”
“I only said I was going out to talk to Vigil for ten minutes and he blew a gasket,” I muttered, upset.
“He does have a point, though, Joe. You do go running every time that dude calls you.”
I leaned away from him and crossed my arms, affronted. “So, you’re taking his side, is that it?”
Harry raised his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Hey! I’m not taking any sides. But if the big man is feeling a little ‘uncertain’, you should put him at ease, you know, let him know he’s the number one guy in your life.”
In other words, set your priorities straight, Joe Gray. Boyfriend comes first. Unearthly-being friend, second.
The Lost Girl Page 2