Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  Mason warily considered expressing gratitude, at the risk of having Heather turn it around on her. She was in unpredictable waters. But she felt she had to say something. “Thanks,” she murmured casually. “Also? Nice one.”

  Heather shrugged an elegantly sculpted shoulder. “Carrie Morgan is a slag, and she’s been asking for it for months now. She also neglected to mention that Calum stomped on her when she went after him right after we split. I should be thanking you for giving me an opening.”

  Mason felt her own grin spreading over her face. Three days since the night of the storm, and everything had changed. Everything.

  Dammit. Calum cursed himself silently as he stalked down the hallway toward the library. What the hell did you do that for, you ass?

  The hurt in Mason’s gorgeous blue eyes haunted him as he took a seat in the far corner of the library, behind the stacks, where he could be alone.

  Why had he been such a jerk to Mason? Cal wondered angrily. He liked Mason.

  You more than “like” Mason Starling.

  Up until the beginning of that school year, Cal had actually been blissfully unaware of that fact. All throughout the previous year, Calum Aristarchos and Heather Palmerston had reigned as the uncrowned king and queen of the school. Gosforth’s ruling power couple. Then, at the beginning of semester, Heather had gone and—out of the frickin’ blue—dropped a bombshell on Cal. She was breaking up with him. Her reason?

  Cal was in love with Mason Starling.

  News to him … until he actually thought about it.

  Cal had, up until that time, been under the impression he’d never really spared the black-haired, sapphire-eyed, heartbreakingly lovely girl on his fencing team a second thought. Then, suddenly, she was the only thing on his mind. He’d actually been on the verge of asking her out on a real one-on-one date when …

  Cal put a hand to the bandage on his cheek.

  Well, that isn’t going to happen now. Is it?

  He’d seen the way she’d looked at him. Moreover … he’d seen the way she’d looked at him. That guy. The arrogant blond naked—what the hell—stranger who’d appeared in the middle of all of that stormy insanity and, like some kind of mythic hero, saved their necks. While Cal stood around and got his face shredded.

  And now … everything was different.

  Not just Mason, but the whole world around him had changed. After that first night back home on his mother’s estate on Long Island, where she’d fumed and fussed over him in her elegantly awkward, distantly maternal way, Cal hadn’t even wanted to return to Gosforth. Ever. All he’d wanted to do was wait for nightfall and the singing outside his window that made him forget about his failure in the gym and the wounds that marked his flesh. It also made him forget about Mason—almost. The doctors—there’d been more than one—had told him he’d need plastic surgery eventually. A few of them had seemed a little puzzled over the way his scars were healing.

  Cal shook his head. He realized that he was clutching the medallion he wore under his T-shirt. It was his.... the Fennrys Wolf’s. Cal felt a surge of something like static electricity wash over him, leaving the hairs on his arms standing up. He could sense the power contained in the little iron disk, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he shouldn’t have been able to.

  But what he had experienced, in the dark, under the moon … staring out over the black waters of Long Island Sound … had changed him. Maybe even more than the marks on his face.

  You’ve been on some pretty heavy meds, you know....

  Sure he was. Not just for the pain, but to help drive back the nightmares and help him sleep. And if he hadn’t been on those meds because he’d been attacked by monsters, then he might have been perfectly willing to believe the things he’d seen were just drug-induced hallucinations. Frankly, that would have been a whole lot easier to accept. He wished he could talk to someone about it.

  No. He just wished he could talk to Mason about it.

  XIII

  The accommodations were fantastic, but the River Hotel’s clientele was … disconcerting. It consisted mostly of European couples, or gatherings of beautiful young men and women who seemed to do little but drink from champagne flutes in the lounge and glance at him sideways as he walked past. Fennrys did his best to ignore them, but it had started to get to him after a couple of days. He didn’t much like the idea of spending another evening hanging around in a place where the people looked at him as if they knew something about him that he didn’t.

  Instead, he went in search of a Laundromat he remembered seeing on his way to the hotel from the clothing store. After three blocks or so he found it, underneath an ancient, peeling sign that advertised WATERFORD LAUNDERETTE AND SHIRT SERVICE.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside the long, dingy room that was basically just an alley of front-loading washers and dryers facing off against one another. The Laundromat was deserted except for the bundled shape of a very old woman wrapped in shawls, sitting at the very back of the place on a plastic chair. It didn’t exactly look like somewhere one went to get something cleaned.

  He stuck a ten in the change machine at the front of the store and bought a soap packet from the vending machine. Then he wandered to the back of the Laundromat and chose a washer. He threw in the sweats he’d borrowed that first night, set the dial to the shortest cycle, and paced, waiting for it to finish.

  When it did, he tossed the damp clothes into the dryer and slumped down on a bench to wait. In the heat, the drone of the machine was hypnotic, and eventually Fennrys found himself struggling to stay conscious. His body jerked as he forced himself awake, and he turned his head to find the old woman watching him from the back of the laundry. At least she seemed to be watching him. Her eyes were fixed in his direction, even though he could see that they were filmy with advanced cataracts—a shade of milky blue that reminded him, uncomfortably, of the eyes of the draugr.

  He nodded politely, not even knowing if she could see him. But then she nodded back and raised a gnarled hand, knocking on the glass of the front-load washer beside her. Fennrys could see a load sloshing around inside it, but when he looked closer, he noticed that the soap froth was tinged a pinkish color. As he stared at the churning water, it turned steadily darker, becoming crimson. Then blood colored. Through the murky red water, Fennrys caught a sudden glimpse of an article of clothing within and was startled to see that, whatever it was, it bore an emblem that was strikingly similar to the Gosforth private school crest on the sweats tumbling in the machine behind his head.

  Fennrys shot to his feet and spun around to yank open the door of his dryer. A waft of steam engulfed his face as he hauled out the still-damp clothes and shoved them in the bag along with Toby’s boots. He turned on his heel and left the Laundromat, without so much as glancing back at the old woman. He walked for blocks before he finally felt like her rheumy white eyes were no longer fixed upon his back.

  Fennrys’s aim was outstanding, even in the uncertain light and deepening shadows of evening. He hit the dead center of the window with the pebble, first time. It just happened to be the wrong window. After a moment, the casement slid up with a grating noise and a blond head appeared, leaning out.

  “Hey, hotshot,” the gorgeous girl from the gymnasium said after a moment—the other gorgeous girl, not the one he had come to find. For some reason, she didn’t seem surprised to see him again. Or maybe she just did a really good job of suppressing any reaction that would make her seem less than completely cool and in control. “Nice pants.” She grinned wickedly. “Think I liked you better without them.”

  “Oh. Uh …”

  “You’re looking for Mason, aren’t you?”

  “I think so.” He didn’t actually know the name of the girl he was looking for. “She has, uh—”

  “Dark hair, blue eyes,” the blonde interrupted him. “Little light in the bra-filling department. That the one? You know, the one you couldn’t rip your own eyes off … even while you were ki
lling monsters?”

  Fenn frowned up at her. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He nodded. “That’s who I’m looking for. I thought I saw her in that window.”

  “She was here a second ago. I ditched class today and needed to borrow her poli-sci notes.”

  “Right. Sorry I disturbed you.” He turned to go.

  “Wait!” She stared down at him for a long moment and then shrugged. “Her name’s Mason Starling. And her room is the south corner window, same floor. That’s where she was headed when she left here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, hotshot.” The girl called him back again. “We might not be best friends or anything, but Mason’s okay. And I might feel obliged to hire someone to make your life particularly miserable if you bring trouble down on her.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Miss …”

  “Palmerston. Heather Palmerston. You can Google my family, and you’ll see I have the means to follow up on my threat.”

  He grinned up at her. “Like I said—you don’t have to worry about that. I won’t. But if I do … you’re certainly welcome to try.” The way he said it didn’t sound like a boast, even to his own ears. It sounded like a simple invitation, and an unself-conscious assessment of his own abilities.

  “Okay then,” Heather said, crossing her arms and tossing her hair over her shoulder. She glared fiercely down at him. “Just so long as we understand each other.”

  “I’m pretty sure we do.”

  “You were definitely more fun pantsless,” Heather said, and slammed the window shut.

  Fennrys shook his head and loped around to the other side of the stone building, where he could see a light glowing behind the curtained corner window on the second floor. The bottom pane had been lifted open, so he aimed for the center of the top glass square. As accurate as his aim was, it took three or four tries to get Mason to come to the window. When she finally stuck her head out, there was a look of confusion on her face as she glanced cautiously into the night.

  “Evening,” Fennrys said in a quiet voice, and stepped out of the shadows beneath the trees.

  It startled Mason enough so that she jumped and hit her head on the casement. She swore and drew back, her eyes wide when she saw him standing there. He saw her breathing quicken, and he wondered if it was in fear. Not that he would have blamed her. Considering the circumstances of their last meeting.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked in a hissing whisper, her hands gripping the windowsill with rigid fingers. “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to talk,” he said. “Is that all right?” He considered telling her that he came by to drop off her brother’s gear and the boots, but he was afraid she would tell him to just leave the bag on the sidewalk and get lost. “Just talk.”

  “Are you alone?” she asked. “Or did you bring zombies with you again?”

  “I’m flying solo tonight.”

  Mason chewed on her lower lip as if trying to decide whether to believe him or not. Her gaze flicked to the trees and darkened buildings behind him as if looking for confirmation that he was truly alone. Then she looked back down at him, and he was struck again by how pretty she was. The orange glow from a streetlamp down the block highlighted the curve of her cheekbone and emphasized the deep sapphire blue of her eyes. And her black hair hung in a straight and shining curtain in front of her shoulder.

  “Hang on a minute,” she said.

  Fennrys waited for what was probably five minutes but seemed a lot longer. In truth, he was actually surprised to see her walk around the corner of the building. Fenn had more than half expected her to either stay inside and wait for him to go away, or call the cops. He found himself almost smiling in relief.

  She stopped a few feet away from him, looked up into his face, and said, “What do you want?”

  “Hello again to you too,” Fenn said wryly.

  Mason stared at him, unblinking. “Hello. What do you want?”

  “I wanted to …” See you again. Speak to you. Make sure you aren’t just another broken memory or piece of a dream. “I wanted to return the gear I borrowed.” He held up the shopping bag he’d brought along.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Did she look disappointed? His heart rate quickened for a brief moment at the thought she might have actually wanted to see him again. But then he took a breath to calm himself, afraid that he’d imagined the fleeting look. “And I wanted to say thank you,” he added, turning away so that she couldn’t read his thoughts in his eyes.

  “Mister … uh … Wolf, was it?”

  “Just call me Fennrys.”

  “Right. Okay.” Mason nodded and kicked at the ground for a moment. “Well, Fennrys, you’re welcome. Any time. Except for the never again part.”

  “I hope that’s the case, yeah.”

  “Do you mind telling me just what the hell happened during that storm?”

  “I would if I could.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” She straightened up and frowned at him. “Okay, look. What do you want from me?”

  “What?” Fenn’s gaze snapped back to her face. “Nothing. I don’t … there’s nothing—”

  “Who are you, really?”

  “If I knew that, you’d probably be the first person I’d tell.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the only person I know. Everything else is just a big blank.”

  “What?” She blinked at him.

  He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “I don’t seem to be able to remember. Anything. I mean anything about myself. Or my life before I crawled out of the tree that crashed through your gym.”

  Mason’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as if she were trying to figure out what to say to that. Finally she settled on, “Did you ever stop to think that maybe you should go to see a doctor or something?”

  “Sure. But there’s probably a wait list. I figure the local emergency ward deals with naked amnesiac monster slayers pretty much every Saturday night.”

  “You’re serious.” Her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t some weird cover story or something, is it? You’re not, like, some kind of bodyguard or something my dad hired to keep an eye on me, are you?”

  “Who’s your dad?”

  “The guy whose really expensive stained glass window you helped destroy.”

  “Ah.” Fennrys winced a bit at the memory. “Wouldn’t a guy like that have enough money to hire a guy with pants if that was the case? And maybe, I don’t know, a machine gun instead of a sword?”

  Mason crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess you’re right.”

  “I wasn’t hired by your father, Mason.” He held out the bag, like some kind of peace offering or something.

  Mason eyed it suspiciously. Then she reached out, her body language clearly conveying that she thought it was most likely filled with scorpions or incendiaries. When its contents didn’t immediately leap out and attack her or explode, she looked at him and nodded once.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks. I don’t think my brother cares about the sweats, but Toby was pretty pissed about the boots....”

  Silence stretched out between them. Fennrys didn’t know what else to say.

  Mason shook her head and started to turn away. “Well, good night then, man of mystery—”

  “Mason.” He stopped her with a look. “When I said that I don’t know who I am or anything about my life, I really wasn’t joking.” He reached out toward her but stopped himself from actually touching her. “And I wasn’t lying.”

  Fennrys’s arm dropped back down to his side and he stood there, waiting and feeling very nearly helpless. If Mason turned around and went back inside, if she left him standing there, he didn’t know what he would do. He wouldn’t come to her again. He felt his heart beating loudly in his chest, but his breath was stopped in his throat. Mason’s whole body was tense, poised for flight.

  “That’s … I’m sorry.” Her
fingers knotted in the strings of the shopping bag. “That must be horrible. It’s just … so hard to believe.” She put up a hand to stop his protests. “No, I do believe you. I think.” Her words came haltingly as she tried to mentally work through what he’d told her. “It’s just … I mean … I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening in movies. On TV and stuff. I didn’t think it was really real.”

  “I wish it wasn’t.”

  “So where have you been these last couple of days?”

  “Oh … I’m staying in a hotel.”

  “Really.” Mason raised an eyebrow at him. “How … I mean … I didn’t think you were carrying a wallet when I first saw you.”

  “Yeah. Um. I kind of owe your brother.” Fennrys grimaced and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Either he’s selling hot electronics out of the back of a van or he’s got a hell of a paper route, but I found almost two thousand bucks in the pocket of his hoodie.”

  “Ha!” Mason’s laugh rang out into the night, and it made Fenn’s heart leap a little to hear it.

  “I mean—I’ll pay him back,” he said. “I’m good for it. You know. Someday. Probably …”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She grinned. “Finders keepers, I say, and serves him right! I’m sure he probably pinched that bankroll from my dad or something anyway.”

  “Well. It’ll be gone soon enough.” Fenn sighed. “Manhattan’s expensive.”

  Mason stopped smiling and looked at him. “What are you going to do then?”

  He smiled slightly and shrugged. He didn’t know. At the moment, it didn’t matter. He would be content if he could just stand there staring at the girl in front of him, who actually seemed like she might just care what happened to him.

  XIV

  Mason stood on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, staring up at a guy she’d already seen naked but knew absolutely nothing about. She realized that this was the strangest possible situation, and she was perfectly aware of the fact that what she should do would be to thank him for returning Rory and Toby’s property, wish him a pleasant rest of his life, and turn around and get the hell out of there.