by SM Reine
Jon yanked on my arm. “Stop staring, Al.” He sharpened his voice when I didn’t look down. “Al...seriously. What are you doing?”
I watched Mr. Mono move softly out of the diner’s front door. It was already dark outside, but the neon sign lit up his face as he passed by the plate windows. He didn’t hurry, and just when I thought he wouldn’t, he turned.
The lamp-like stare met mine.
When it did, the world became soft.
I grew aware of the sharp lines of the diner blurring. Night filled in the gaps...a sky teeming with violet and black clouds, a backdrop streaming further back than my mind could reach.
Stars exploded behind my eyes, a single shocking plume of brilliance.
And it is beautiful. So incredibly...
The clouds enveloped my mind, leaving nothing but silence.
Cass watched the black-haired man turn from the window.
He was tall, she realized again, maybe more than six and a half feet, and despite the haphazard and almost dated way he dressed—like something from an old fifties movie mixed unevenly with the newer lines of the Aardvarks shirt and a modern watch—Cass could see an athletic body beneath the hanging clothes and inconspicuous gait.
He was really hot, actually.
She wondered why Allie was pretending he wasn’t.
Not stereotypically handsome, not by a long shot, but the guy had a quiet intensity that exuded sensuality. It also struck Cass as a relatively thin mask for whatever lay beneath. Cass watched him glide past the outside window, reminded of Jon’s martial arts buddies and of Jon himself, in the way he moved. This man might be a fighter, too.
So yeah, he was even Allie’s type.
She’d always gone for the dark ones, anyway.
Cass watched until the black-haired man disappeared behind the adjoining wall of the next store front. She caught his brief stare at Allie, and it struck Cass that his eyes seemed to have almost no real color to them at all.
“Weird,” she said, once he was gone.
“You say that like you’re surprised,” Jon said, annoyed.
Cass glanced at Allie, curious as to her silence, wondering how she had reacted to the man’s departure.
Allie had always collected weirdos. While Cass personally thought her friend was gorgeous, she knew that wasn’t the reason, either.
Allie was fairly average by most accounts. While she had stunning...at times riveting eyes, really her face and figure were relatively normal, especially for California. Allie didn’t fall into the “pretty girl” rubric in dress, confidence or manner, either, tending to downplay her assets instead of going out of her way to emphasize them.
Even with all that, Allie had a less-obvious quality that always seemed to have guys chasing after her anyway. More than Cass did. More than a lot of people who were technically better-looking than her did.
Whatever that quality was, it unfortunately was well-appreciated by the full moon crowd even more than normal people. In Jon’s words, Allie was a freak magnet and always had been. Mia Taylor, Allie’s mother, once confided to Cass that Allie had been nearly abducted something like four times as a child. Once, she actually got taken, if only for a short period of time. She managed to get away...luckily...and mostly thanks to the intervention of a stranger who saw her with the freak and figured out something was wrong.
After the second time someone tried to grab her, Allie’s parents gave her a whistle to wear around her neck. Her father had her carrying pepper spray by the third grade...and once, when he didn’t have anything else to give her, he put a knife in her school lunchbox. He taught all three of them—Jon, Cass and Allie—how to fire a gun before any of them got to high school.
Even then, Cass suspected Allie’s “issues” were at least part of the reason.
Allie’s mother, Mia, tried to get her to keep the GPS implant when she turned eighteen for the same reason, but Al wouldn’t hear of it. She got the tattoo along with all of her friends, and got the implant removed.
Anyway, stalkers came with the territory in being Allie’s friend. Cass barely batted an eye anymore when a new one showed up.
This guy felt different somehow, though.
Cass still hadn’t decided if that was a good or a bad thing.
When she saw her friend, she forgot all this.
“Allie?” she said. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Allie said, with no pause.
Her green eyes looked lighter than usual. They appeared almost transparent, like glass, as they stared out the window, as if following the man somewhere in her mind still.
“Okay, robot girl,” Jon joked. “Jesus. Do you need a new boyfriend that badly, Al, that you’re looking at your stalkers like that?” He sounded exasperated, but not really angry. “No wonder the guy’s following you around. He probably thinks you have a thing for him.”
“Maybe she does,” Cass murmured, still watching her friend.
Allie didn’t answer. Her eyes seemed to exude a kind of static.
Cass touched her friend’s arm. “Hey. Seriously. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Allie said. “I’m fine.” She smiled, but it seemed faraway still. “I’m good. Just really tired.”
“Well. Go make yourself a cappuccino or something.”
“Okay.”
She wandered off, and Jon and Cass exchanged looks.
“What’s up with zombie girl?” Jon said.
“She’s tired,” Cass said. “Leave her alone, okay? You don’t have to give her shit all the time, you know. Be the big brother about everything.”
Jon shrugged, but Cass saw his eyes follow Allie as she wandered back over to the espresso machine. Cass found herself doing the same, hoping the worry didn’t show on her face.
Whether the deal with this guy, Allie had been acting decidedly weird lately.
That whole thing in the bar with Jaden and that girl was beyond bizarre. Allie had always been the rational, pacifist, talk-it-over type. In fact, sometimes Cass had wished Allie would be a bit more aggressive, especially when it came to Jaden, who'd been dicking her around for months now while Al defended him. For Allie to go all gangland violence like that, though, out of nowhere, was just...weird.
In fact, if Cass had to take bets before all that, she definitely would have plunked money down on Cass herself doing something like that. Not Allie.
The whole thing was weird.
Of course, Allie hadn't done anything like that since. Still, she hadn't exactly been normal either. If Cass didn’t know better, she would think her friend had developed a drug problem. But Allie never touched anything in that area, not even to experiment.
Cass knew Jon had noticed the weirdness, too.
Whatever was up with Allie, it was definitely getting worse.
3
EXIT
“Excuse me? Ma’am?”
Someone near me cleared his throat.
My eyes clicked back into focus.
I found myself looking at a man in a dark blue suit. A red, silk tie contrasted the darker color, setting off the auburn highlights in his long hair. His light brown eyes met mine, crinkling at the edges in a smile.
When he cleared his throat again, politely, my gaze drifted down to his hand, where he held out several twenty dollar bills.
“Can I use paper currency here?” the man said.
He spoke like someone who’d already asked the same question several times. I blinked, then looked down at his hand. Christ. He was a customer. I’d probably waited on him; that’s why he looked familiar.
Where had my head been?
I glanced down the bar counter at Jon and Cass, a little bewildered that I wasn’t standing next to them anymore. I stood by the cash register instead. Jon and Cass didn’t seem to have noticed that I had apparently teleported to the opposite end of the bar.
Cass laughed while I watched, leaning closer to Jon’s ear to answer something he’d said.
Feeling the man in front of me waiting, I
jerked my eyes back to his.
“Yeah,” I told him. “Yeah, sure. Of course. Sorry.”
His smile widened. “No apology necessary, my dear. I am sorry...to break you out of your reverie.”
I smiled back, hitting through keys on the old fashioned register.
“Is that what it was?” I said.
“You looked very deep in thought right then, Alyson.”
I hesitated, glancing at him. Then, shrugging it off, I gestured towards his arm. When he bared it to the elbow, I summoned the bill by scanning his barcode.
“Were you?” he said, politely. “...Deep in thought?”
I smiled. “Yeah. Well. Even waitresses think about things, I guess.”
The man returned my smile, his gaze flickering over the rest of me.
Ignoring his appraisal, I met his gaze. “Do you want the change in hard currency, too?” I said. “Or just on your account?”
“Hard is fine.” His smile widened, even as his eyes grew more serious. “What are you doing after work? Can I buy you a drink?”
Counting out the coins, I handed him his change. I kept my smile polite. “I can’t date customers, sorry.”
“No? Are you sure? You won’t make an exception?”
I smiled again. “Sorry.”
The man met my gaze directly and I paused, in spite of myself.
For the first time, I really looked at him.
His eyes were riveting, difficult to look away from. They shone a brown so light they were nearly yellow, like burnt amber. I found myself lost there briefly, in his gaze, and wondered why I’d been so quick to turn him away. I could have one drink with the guy, sure. Why not? I was single. He was age appropriate, more or less, and while I didn’t usually date suits, he was cute. Nick the bartender, the guy I'd been seeing casually for the past few weeks, probably wouldn’t like it, but we weren’t exactly a couple.
It would be good for me. I needed to meet new people.
My attention got pulled off him abruptly when the door to the diner opened with a bang. I looked up, blinking in confusion, almost like I’d been smacked.
Once I did, I found myself staring behind the person standing at the counter.
The black-haired man stood there.
For the first time, he looked directly at me.
His colorless eyes grew utterly motionless, like a held breath.
Immediately, my head started to clear. I was still standing there, my hands poised over the cash register, when the man with the amber eyes turned, staring at the black-haired man along with me. Neither of them spoke, but I felt some kind of exchange take place.
Then the man with the amber eyes smiled. Looking away from the taller man, he glanced around at the diner briefly before bringing his gaze back to rest on me. He made a soft clicking noise with his tongue, giving me a regretful smile.
“But I see that you’re already taken,” he said, softer. “Perhaps another time, my dear.”
“Sure,” I said, only half-hearing him. “Whatever.”
I was still looking at the man with the black hair.
The guy in the blue suit turned from the counter, heading for the door. I watched him walk past the taller man and noticed that he wore his hair in some kind of clip at the nape of his neck. The clip glinted with jeweled stones, like sapphires.
The black-haired man didn’t take his eyes off him as he passed. His eyes followed the man through the front door and outside, onto the street. I saw the amber-eyed man watching him as well...saw him wink at the black-haired man through the window before he disappeared down the sidewalk, past the edge of the building.
Before I could wrap my head around what had just happened, the black-haired man walked directly up to where I stood. His colorless eyes met mine, and I flinched at the anger I saw in them, although it didn’t seem aimed at me.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “Now, Allie.”
When I didn’t move, only stared, the black-haired man grabbed my arm.
“Allie.” His voice was a growl. “Now.”
Before I could bring my eyes back into focus, Jon appeared at my side. He had his hand on the other man’s forearm, standing almost between us. Jon’s voice came out quiet but firm, not an ounce of compromise in his words.
“Let go of her, man. Now. Step away.”
I saw the black-haired man look at Jon.
“Jon,” he said. “I won’t hurt her. You know I won’t.”
I saw Jon’s eyes widen in surprise, right before they blurred, growing less clear. The black-haired man focused back on me.
We don’t have much time.
I stared up at him, feeling a cold wash of fear when I realized I’d heard his words, but his mouth hadn’t moved.
Allie! I know you can hear me! You have to come with me. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a cage? Wearing a collar? That man who just left here. He knows what you are.
More fear coursed up my spine as his words sank in.
Allie! They can’t hear me! Only you can...what does that tell you?
Cass ran up at the same moment. “Allie! What is going on?”
The black-haired man looked at her. As he did, his concentration seemed to break.
Jon’s eyes cleared in the same instant. He stepped forward once they had, as if remembering where he was. His mouth hardened into a line as he grabbed ahold of my wrist.
“Al...get away from this guy!”
Confusion twisted my stomach in knots. I tried to think through the fear I saw in Jon’s eyes, the worry I saw on Cass’s face...but the black-haired man’s words resonated somewhere in my mind, and I knew suddenly, that I believed him.
I couldn’t stay here.
Memories swam forward, worsening that ache in my gut. Things that I’d suppressed for years, maybe since I’d been a kid. I remembered needles, endless tests, my dad pale-faced and silent while my mom yelled at doctors in white jackets. I remembered feeling like there was something wrong with me, like they all knew. I’d been so afraid of being found out, of them knowing I wasn’t like them, even though my blood said I was.
The doubt lingered. I remembered feeling my father’s fear...
I couldn’t go there again. I couldn’t.
When Jon yanked on my arm, I didn’t think.
A part of me reached out, seemingly on its own.
A folding sensation started somewhere deep inside my mind...as if a part of me collapsed like a telescope, pulling me with it. I exhaled it out, flexing a muscle I didn’t know I had.
It was over in less than a blink...
...and then Jon was all the way across the room.
Despite how quickly it happened, he didn’t get there gently.
I couldn’t remember raising a hand, finger or toe––and anyway, the paltry amount of Choy Li Fut kung fu that I knew, mostly from Jon force-feeding it to me, wouldn’t have caught Jon himself so completely by surprise.
I saw a soft flash of light. I saw Jon’s eyes widening.
Then, he was just gone.
When the force hit him, he immediately released my arm. He tried to grasp at me the instant he’d let go, but despite his super-fast, martial arts reflexes, he missed. His fingers splayed, groping first for a bar stool, then the counter, then the blender by the back wall. He careened backwards as if he’d been thrown bodily by a much larger man, before slamming into a series of shelves covered in clean water glasses. His arm smashed into a row of those same glasses. Over ten feet from where I stood...from where he’d started...he fell ungracefully to the rubber mat.
He took over half of the shelves’ contents with him.
The sound was deafening. Everyone in the diner looked up.
Tom, the manager, emerged from the back room. He looked between me and Jon, stunned, then back at the mess covering the back area behind the counter.
Jon scrambled to get up, impressively fast, but water glasses continued to fall. Over the sound of breaking glass and people rising to their feet,
I realized everyone in the diner was staring at me now, too.
I didn't take my eyes off Jon.
I tried to understand how he’d gotten there. I tried to make sense of it.
Had I just hurt my brother? Jon? How could that have happened?
Out of nowhere, I found myself remembering my Uncle Stefan.
The memory stood out plainly behind my eyes, crystal-clear, if only for a heart beat. We’d been visiting his farm, touring the pig barn, and I’d been maybe seven years old. No one in the family talked about what had happened that day...not once, at any point afterwards. Even now, my memories of those events struck me as strangely surreal, despite how clear they formed in the foreground of my mind. I remembered standing there with Uncle Stefan, as the wind jerked my hair around my face. I remembered standing with him outside the barn, his rough hands on my shoulders. I’d been crying. My father had been trying to reassure me.
Jon hadn’t been there. Neither had my mom.
Uncle Stefan wasn’t a bad man. He was a rough man, a practical man, and a life-long farmer...but he wasn’t a bad man. He’d just finished telling me what happened to the runt baby pigs, right after I’d finished reading Charlotte’s Web...
The next thing I knew, Uncle Stefan was screaming, pinned against the wall of the barn. He’d been a big man, around six-two, over two hundred pounds, most of it muscle.
I forced the image from my mind, feeling sick.
When I glanced up, my anxiety turned into full-blown terror.
The black-haired man was staring at me, shock written all over his face.
At the same instant, I realized I knew.
Maybe I'd always known. Maybe my parents had known, too. Clearly, this black-haired guy knew what I was. At any rate, he'd known I'd hear his thoughts inside my head, without him saying them aloud. Not a whole lot of humans who could do that. I looked up at his pale eyes, maybe for help. But the shock on his face was as prominent as anyone else’s in the bar. More so, maybe. He stared between my eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
For a long moment, no one in the diner made a sound.
Then the last glass fell and shattered on the tile floor at the edge of the rubber bar mat.