Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series)

by Sara Reinke

  But of course they’d be, he thought. It’s been five years. You can’t give out the same yellow ducks day in and day out for five years straight.

  But the game was the same: fire a water rifle, hit a target, win a prize.

  “This is the game you played,” Sam murmured, having come to stand beside him. “That day…” Her voice faded and she looked up at him. “I still have that duck. The one you won for me.”

  “Good.” He managed a smile. “Because I’m not shelling out fifteen bucks again to get you another one.”

  She laughed. “Come on,” she said, taking him by the hand again, offering his arm a tug. “We’re almost there.”

  “Where?” he asked, letting her lead him in tow.

  She glanced back at him, still smiling. “You’ll see.”

  She brought him to the Eye, the Ferris wheel by the water’s edge. “Surprise,” she said almost shyly. “You rode this with me. Remember?”

  How could I forget? Jason looked up at the towering steel frame, then down at her again, his throat suddenly choked. I’d wanted to ask you to marry me here, but I couldn’t get the words out. God, if I had, so much might have changed.

  “Come on.” Sam pulled him along with her, getting into line. When they reached the loading platform, the park employee, a strapping black guy in a red sweatshirt with a name tag that said Bennie, grinned broadly, as if pleased to see them.

  “Hey, girl,” he said to Sam. “You’re here early.”

  “I brought a friend with me today,” Sam said, smiling brightly, giving Jason’s hand a sudden squeeze. “Bennie, this is Jason.”

  “Hey.” Bennie offered one large hand in affable greeting, and Jason accepted the shake.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  “You take good care of our girl here,” Bennie said with a nod at Sam as he opened the gate on their car.

  “I’ll sure try,” Jason said.

  As the wheel began to turn and their cart began to rise, the city below them unfolding in a widening circumference of panoramic view, Sam said, “I come here sometimes, once or twice a week.”

  “I gathered that, yeah.”

  She laughed. “Bennie’s nice. He usually lets me ride for free. And he keeps the bums from hassling me for change.” She looked out toward the ocean, tucking her dark hair behind her ears with her fingertips. “It makes me think about you,” she said quietly. “Being here. Riding the Eye.”

  The car rocked slightly, like a cork bobbing on an uneven current as the Ferris wheel came to a stop. They were at the very top, the world spread around them at a bird’s-eye view. Just like that Sunday, Jason thought. The day I should have proposed to you, Sam. The day I should have had the balls to ask.

  “I think I’ve cried for you at least once a week since you died,” Sam said. “Usually it’s here, right here. Bennie stops it for me. Because we stopped here that day, that Sunday five years ago. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, touching her face. Her skin was cold. She was shivering, her teeth chattering.

  “It was a good day,” Sam said, tears spilling.

  “Yes.” Jason nodded. “It was.”

  When he kissed her, cradling her face between his hands, he could taste the salty tang of her tears. Her lips were cold but her tongue was warm, her breath even more so. He pulled her near, spreading his fingers into the dark crown of her hair, tangling his tongue against hers, savoring the cotton candy sweetness that lingered on her lips. The Eye car gave another lurch and began to move again. The wind whipped around them, flapping her hair into their faces, clinging to the tracks of her tears against her pale, high cheeks.

  When the ride was over, Sam paused long enough to give Bennie a one-armed hug, standing on her tiptoes to reach his broad neck, and flipped him a wave as they walked away. They bought a bag of caramel popcorn and abandoned the boardwalk for the beach, kicking off their shoes, rolling up the legs of their jeans to their knees and walking barefoot through the frigid, pebbled sand. Close enough to the water’s edge for the pounding of the surf to drown out any din from the park and for sea spray to pelt them in miniscule droplets, they took turns flicking popcorn kernels skyward to swooping seagulls.

  She told him about her plans for the building he’d once owned. Upon completion, it would be a full-service bistro and coffee bar, offering a selection of gourmet salads, pasta dishes and sandwiches, plus an assortment of wines, coffee varieties and concoctions.

  “Live music on the weekends,” she said. “Local jazz bands. They’ve opened up a bunch of art galleries all up and down that block of Keystone. We’re going to be a part of the trolley stop tour they do every Friday evening. It’s jam-packed.”

  The neighborhood had always been sort of rough and a little seedy. That college kids out looking for a cheap drunk and drug dealers scoping for quiet corners in which they could peddle ecstasy or meth had given over to art aficionados and jazz lovers seemed bizarre to him, but no less so than any of the other revelations of the last twenty-four hours.

  “I’m going to call it Sullivan’s,” she told him, and when she opened her mouth in invitation, he tossed a piece of popcorn at her, sinking it neatly against her tongue.

  “For my dad?” he asked, touched, and Sam shook her head, chewing.

  “No.” She flicked a piece of popcorn at him and it bounced off his nose. “For you.”

  He blinked at her, surprised and touched anew, and blush rose in her cheeks. She laughed and looked up at the birds, tossing up a handful of kernels. “I’m sorry it looks so bad now inside,” she said. “I know it must be a shock to you. It’s been empty all this time. I couldn’t buy it—no one could—until the probate was settled.”

  Jason had died without leaving a will, and had been preceded in death by both of his parents, she explained, so everything he’d owned or owed was turned over to the state for settlement. In addition to having no will, Jason had died without any sort of life insurance policy.

  Sam had covered his burial expenses, but the bar and everything in it had been reverted to the state of California to be sold at auction. All the fixtures inside the tavern—the furniture, furnishings, dishes, equipment, even Jack Sullivan’s prized diamond-dust mirror—had all been liquidated, sold to the highest bidder. The proceeds had gone into an estate trust, which were then used to repay Jason’s outstanding debts.

  The state had gone through a list of Jason’s distant, living relatives as his beneficiaries by default. None of them had wanted the property, but they’d sure wanted whatever money was left over in the estate after the building was sold and all the debts repaid. Sam had been forced to wait five years before the matter had been settled ultimately and she’d been able to buy the tavern outright.

  “In a way, I think it’s a good thing that it took so long,” she remarked. “It gave me something to focus on, something in the future to look forward to. I don’t know how I would have made it through otherwise. I really don’t.” Sam let her gaze travel back to the water. “I was so angry after you died.” A quick laugh. “God, that sounds so weird whenever I say that, after you died. But I was. Angry, I mean.”

  “At who?” He shot a piece of corn out toward the encroaching waves as he might have a stone to skip. A deft seagull shot down from the sky and snatched it in its beak, whipping skyward again.

  “I don’t know,” she replied with a shrug. “At the son of a bitch who shot you. At every son of a bitch with a gun I ever saw, heard or read about after that, because I always wondered if he was the one, the guy who had murdered you.” She cut him a sideways glance. “That’s why I got so mad earlier about the gun. I hate them now. I really, really do.”

  Her gaze returned to the waves. “I was mad at Bear too,” she said quietly, nearly inaudible over the roar of the surf, the plaintive cries from the gulls. “Because he promised me he’d find the man who shot you. And he never did. I know he tried, but still…I was angry at him. And at God, I guess. I mean, my parents died
when I was seven. I guess I was angry because I thought I’d lost enough. Because it wasn’t fair, losing you too. It wasn’t goddamn fair.”

  She’d always told him that she’d have traded it in an instant, all the money she’d received after the deaths of her parents, to have them back for even five minutes. The ambulance that had struck their car had been contracted by the city, and though its sirens had been on, it hadn’t slowed, much less stopped, at the intersection where the crash had occurred. Suit had been filed on Sam’s behalf, wrongful death claims for both her mother and her father, and she’d been awarded what had been, at that time, the largest civil settlement in California state history.

  She winged a handful of popcorn up, scattering it in a sharp burst of wind. Gulls spiraled and swooped to catch the wayward pieces. “So long story short, I got some therapy, started going to church again, made my peace as best I could and decided to try to buy back your old building. That was when things with Dean…” Her voice faded, but he knew what she meant.

  That’s when things with Dean changed, is what she’d meant to say. That’s when he became my lover, not just my friend.

  She’d reached the bottom of her popcorn back and crumpled the waxed paper between her hands now, wadding it into a tight ball.

  “So what happens now?” Jason asked.

  The wind gusting in off the water was cold enough to have chapped her cheeks in twin patches of bright vermillion that stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin. She glanced at him, her dark eyes glossy, her hair fluttering into her face. “I go find a trash can for this.” She held up the crumpled popcorn bag. “Then I thought maybe we could go check out the sideshow matinee or—”

  “No.” He stepped toward her, closing the space between them until his toes pushed against hers in the cold, wet sand. He slipped his arm around her and pulled him near. “What happens now with us?”

  She pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Jason, I can’t answer that.”

  “Yes, you can,” Jason said, touching her face with his free hand, brushing back her hair and leaning down to kiss her again. “I love you, Sam.”

  Her arms slid around his waist, but just as his lips settled against hers, her hands brushed against the butt of the pistol, a discernablediscernible lump beneath the heavy cable knit of his sweater, and her voice faded. “What’s that?”

  That’s why I got so mad earlier about the gun, she’d told him only moments earlier. I hate them now. I really, really do.

  Shit, he thought.

  Without him saying anything in reply, he could tell that she knew as she drew back from him. Her posture had grown rigid, her shoulders stiffening, her brows narrowing.

  Shit.

  “You brought that gun here?” she asked, lending low, angry inference to the word gun. “Seriously? You brought it with you?”

  “Sam, I…” he began, reaching for her, but she slapped him away.

  “Are you crazy?” she exclaimed. “What? Were you hoping I’d give you the bullets back or something?”

  “No.” He blinked at her, hurt. “No, Sam, I swear.”

  “Here.” She jammed her hand down into her pocket, then jerked it loose again. “Take them.” She threw the cartridges and they scattered across the sand, five glittering points of silver against the cold, gray ground. Her eyes had grown glossy and he understood. He’d ruined things. All the lovemaking they’d shared, whatever tender closeness had been rebuilding between them that afternoon, had been irrevocably, instantly undone.

  “I can’t believe you.” As she stomped off, marching back to get her shoes and return to the boardwalk, Jason looked down at the bullets, momentarily torn. His first instinct was to hurry after her, to grab her and try somehow to explain. But another part of him, equally instinctual, forced him to stay behind, to kneel in the sand and collect the fallen cartridges. Because I’ll need them, he thought, inexplicably. Not just any bullets. These bullets. I’ll need them.

  As he lifted each cartridge in hand, he could see that they, too, were inscribed with the peculiar little emblem, the trefoil Celtic knot pattern he’d seen on the one in the bedroom. He put the cartridges in his pocket, the act of retrieving them taking less than thirty seconds, then turned and ran through the damp sand, following Sam.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sam didn’t talk to him either at the transit stop or once on board the streetcar. Standing deliberately and conspicuously apart from him, she refused to even look in his direction. As they bounced and jostled in the crowded trolley cab, he saw her reach into her pocket, pulling out her cell phone. She hooked her arm around a nearby pole to steady herself while holding the phone up to her head with one hand, hunching her shoulders and plugging her ear with her opposite fingertip.

  From between tourists jockeying for window seats, he saw her shoot him a sudden glance. He had no accounting for her expression, a mixture of anger and bewilderment, and wished he knew who she was talking to and what they might be saying.

  Probably Dean again, he thought, looking down at his feet, at the puddle of his shadow beneath him, merged and tangled with dozens of others surrounding him. Trying to convince her I’m nothing but a con artist out to sue the hospital. And once he finds out about the gun, he’ll try to tell her she’s in danger with me. Never mind the fact I’d never hurt her. Never in a million…

  His thoughts trailed off and he watched in nearly mesmerized fascination as his shadow seemed to spread, stretching out in thin rivulets and slender, crooked seams, seeping into neighboring shadows and widening from there, devouring them, swallowing the distance between him and Sam across the cab.

  The Eidolon.

  When it slipped and slithered its way beneath people’s feet and between their legs, at last reaching Sam, he could suddenly hear her. More than this, he could hear the other side of her phone conversation too, as if he was taking part in it.

  “Never seen anything like this in my life,” Bear was telling her. “There’s no crossover point, no bifurcation, no typelines, deltas, nothing.”

  “Speak English, Bear. I don’t understand,” Sam said, practically yelling into the phone, because it was that noisy on the streetcar. Which made it equally impossible that Jason could hear her. “Is it Jason’s fingerprint or not?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Bear said as the streetcar came to a jolting stop at the next depot, knocking Jason forward into the people jammed in front of him. The doors screeched as they folded open at both the rear and aft of the car, and Jason was banged and jostled again as people struggled to either board or disembark at the stop.

  “It’s not that’s it’s not Jason’s fingerprint—it’s that it’s no one’s fingerprint,” Bear said. “I know it was dark in the room when I took them, but I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. I know the routine. I took his prints, but there’s nothing there. Nothing, Sammi. Now maybe he’s been surgically altered somehow, but even then, I don’t…”

  Bear’s voice faded into garble as Jason was distracted by a sudden strange feeling, an icy prickle stealing down his spine. He’d felt it before, just that morning, in fact, when the priest, Gabriel Darrow, had come to visit Sam at the bar. He glanced toward the front of the streetcar, lifting his head and straining to look over the crowd of hats and heads just as a man stepped into view, boarding the cab.

  With a black do-rag wrapped around his head and a long black trench coat enveloping his lean frame, he towered over the rest of the riders. His skin was pale, a cadaverous hue accentuated by his dark clothes, sharp features, thin mouth and dark eyes ringed in thickly applied black liner. Just above the bridge of his nose, half-hidden beneath the hem of the scarf around his head, was a mark like a smutch of soot or a burn, a wide-mouthed V, a black chevron etched into his skin.

  He might have been just another Goth hoodlum. The city was full of them, along with a wide variety of other derelicts, society’s lost or forgotten underbelly from every far-flung corner of the country, drawn to
the city by its year-round mild temperatures and the promise of certain fellowship. Mostly teens or young adults as well as drug addicts, they’d panhandle in the street by day and prostitute or party at night. Jason had undoubtedly seen thousands of them in his lifetime.

  The guy getting onto the streetcar might have just been any other man, but he wasn’t. Jason knew it, because he’d seen him before in what he’d thought was only a dream.

  Then again, maybe I’ll take him myself, Sitri had purred in the dream in which he had brutally sodomized Jason.

  Oh, Jesus, Jason thought in sudden blind panic. He rushed forward, shoving his way against the throng to reach Samantha.

  “Maybe you’re looking at it wrong,” Sam said to her uncle, still hunkered over, her finger plugged in her ear as she spoke. As she said this, Sitri looked over her head, and all the heads in between them, to meet Jason’s gaze, and as he did, the corner of his thin mouth lifted slightly in a crooked smile. “People don’t just not have fingerprints.”

  She yelped, her phone tumbling to the floor as Jason reached out, grabbing her by the sleeve, yanking her toward him. “Hey!” She frowned, trying to pull away as he dragged her toward the rear exit of the streetcar, knocking past people. “Jason, let go. I dropped my phone. Let go, I said!”

  The door began to fold closed once more and Jason’s heart seized. I don’t want to be on this streetcar with Sitri, he thought. I don’t want him to find me, don’t want him to get near me.

  As he thought this, he threw himself forward, shoving his arm ahead of his body and catching the door against the inner crook of his elbow. For a moment, it pressed against him; then with a shudder, it receded, folding open again in accordion-like fashion. Still hauling Sam behind him, not pausing to check on Sitri’s progress through the crowd, Jason lunged forward, scrambling down the steps and all but spilling out onto the depot platform below. He heard Sam’s shoes skitter against the pavement behind him and she staggered against him. Less than five seconds later, the streetcar door closed again and it was off, rattling down the track and on its way once more.