A Neon Darkness

by Lauren Shippen

  A second later, I find myself standing—whether I intend to leave or to fight him, I’m honestly not sure. He’s not saying anything, not doing anything, but I’m spinning out, feeling trapped and baited.

  My standing brings me closer to him and seems to spur him into action.

  “My dear,” he says, smoothly turning his body to address Indah again, “do tell me where Alex Chen can be found.”

  Indah starts at his voice and his eyes now boring into her—I see the glass in her hand slip before she deftly catches it.

  “I told you,” she snaps. “I can’t help you.”

  She puts the glass back on the shelf and has started to walk to the other end of the bar when the Tall Man extends his long hand, unnaturally quick, and grabs Indah’s arm, stopping her in her tracks. Fear climbs its way up my throat as I stand, paralyzed, wishing uselessly that Neon were here.

  “Ah, I don’t think that’s true,” he clucks. “I think you won’t help me.”

  “What’s the difference?” Indah says through clenched teeth, keeping her body turned away from him, her arm frozen in his grip.

  “There’s a whole world of difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t,’” he says. “‘Won’t’ can be altered.”

  “I think you should leave.”

  “I haven’t finished my beverage.”

  “You heard her,” I find myself saying, “leave.”

  His eyes swivel back to me, squinting and peering into my skull.

  “Strange attack dog you have here,” he says, looking me up and down. “Doesn’t look like much but … looks can be very deceiving.”

  “So you looking like a low-rent hit man means what exactly?” I spit back, sounding far braver than I feel, and his mouth twitches again, like he’s amused every time I speak.

  “I promise you,” he purrs, “I am anything but low-rent.”

  The implication sends shivers down my spine and I look over his shoulder to see the color drain from Indah’s face.

  “Alex isn’t here,” she blurts. “We haven’t seen him in months.”

  The Tall Man slowly pulls his hand from her arm and leans back in his seat, smooth and silent, like a shark moving through water.

  “Hm … so he hasn’t run back home then.”

  “What?” Indah takes a step forward. “What do you mean?”

  “Very well,” the Tall Man sighs, “I can see that you’ll be no use to me for the time being.”

  He reaches into his jacket again and I flinch. This is it. Somehow I’ve stumbled into a genuinely dangerous situation—after so many years of carefully sidestepping—and now this tall, pale man is going to pull out his gun and end everything.

  I have a brief moment to realize that I’m not all that bothered by that prospect before I see that he’s simply pulling his wallet out again. He takes out a few bills and tosses them onto the bar.

  “For the charming service,” he drawls, and Indah just clenches her jaw more. The Tall Man then turns on his heel and leaves through the door, like nothing ever happened.

  “What the fuck,” Indah exhales, collapsing her arms onto the bar and staring at the door into the bar.

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, honestly, what the fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  She whips her head toward me and barks: “Is that really all you have to say, Robert? ‘Yeah’?”

  “What do you want me to say?” I snap back.

  “You’ve seen that guy before—”

  “Yeah, I have—”

  “And your response to seeing him again and him remembering you is just ‘yeah’?”

  “I’m still processing it, okay?” I say, wishing I had a drink in front of me.

  Just like that, Indah pushes herself up and goes about fixing a drink. She sets a glass of whiskey in front of me—something I’ve discovered (thanks to Neon) that I like a hell of a lot more than vodka. I knock it back and Indah starts to wipe down the bar, keeping her hands busy until, a few silent seconds later, her actions catch up to her and she pauses.

  “Damn it, Damien,” she hisses, and the gifted name sounds sharp on her tongue. “Can’t you just give me a break for one second?”

  “I needed a drink,” I say, shrugging, and she shoots daggers at me. But then her eyes relax and fill with affection, the danger of the last few minutes momentarily forgotten.

  But wanting to keep Indah calm and happy doesn’t do anything for the adrenaline still coursing through my body. I think of the gun holstered to his hip, his hand on Indah’s arm, and feel powerless for the first time in a very long time.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you ask him about Blaze?” Neon demands after we’ve recounted the entire Tall Man experience to her and Marley.

  “He didn’t exactly seem like the chatty type, Nee,” Indah says.

  “But it sounds like he knows where Blaze is,” Neon protests.

  “Or at least, he knew,” Marley clarifies.

  We’re sitting in Indah’s apartment, huddled in her small living room a few hours after her shift ended at Lubitsch. Marley and I are sunk into the couch—the standard position we’ve fallen into in our weeks of searching for the Tall Man—and Neon is slouched in an armchair, but Indah isn’t perched on the armrest like usual. Instead, she’s pacing up and down in front of the couch, running her hands through her hair, and breathing deeply.

  “Look,” I say, “it wasn’t exactly a casual chat. We thought he was gonna kill us—”

  “What?” Neon’s eyes go wide. “He threatened you?”

  “Yes,” Indah snaps.

  “Well, not exactly,” I clarify. “But he had a real creepy vibe.” I don’t tell them about the gun—having not mentioned it to Indah, who didn’t seem to notice—or the fact that he grabbed Indah’s arm. I don’t know why I stay silent, knowing that we all might be in real danger, but the fact that I’m not sure I could have stopped the Tall Man from doing anything makes me feel like a failure. I’m not ready to admit that.

  “No offense, Rob, but you have a real creepy vibe sometimes,” Marley sighs next to me.

  “Gee, thanks,” I snap.

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Him having a creepy vibe is not an excuse for just letting him go without finding out who the hell he is or what he’s up to,” Neon finishes.

  “Exactly,” Marley agrees.

  Indah has stopped pacing and our eyes meet. I can tell she’s trying not to burst open when—

  “You two don’t always have to be some sort of two-headed monster!” she shouts, starting to walk in circles again. “We get it, you’ve known each other for years, you share a brain—and everything else,” she adds scathingly, “but that doesn’t mean you have to gang up on us! You weren’t there, you don’t realize how frightening he was—how unnatural—and you always think you know everything just because you’re special but you don’t.”

  Indah exhales sharply and stops walking, facing all of us sitting as the color drains from her face.

  “I…,” she starts, but she doesn’t seem to have any idea of where to go next. I cast a furtive glance at Marley and Neon and see them both slack-jawed and wide-eyed at Indah’s outburst. I’m a little slack-jawed myself until—

  “Robert,” Indah breathes, like a curse, “this was you, wasn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “I would never have said that stuff—”

  “Except you just did,” I hit back.

  “Because you wanted to say it and were too scared—”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth!”

  “You’re the one putting words in my mouth, making me say things—”

  “I just wanted you to stand up for yourself for once!” I shout, surprised at the volume and intensity of my own voice. “Just because you’re stupidly in love with Neon doesn’t mean that she should be able to walk all over you, but she does! She’s always calling the shots, and you’ve told me yourself that you wish she wouldn’t. Don’t
blame me for the fact that you’ve been bottling all that up.”

  The apartment is so quiet that I can hear the low hum of traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, several blocks away. Indah is scowling at me and Neon and Marley are still sitting stiff and silent.

  “What I do or do not bottle up is none of your business, Robert,” Indah says, deadly quiet. “You don’t get to decide when I’m honest with my friends.”

  “Shouldn’t you always be honest with your friends?” I ask.

  “Oh, because you’re so honest?” she retorts, stalking slowly toward me. “Because we know so much about you? You’ve barely told us anything about yourself, Robert Gorham. Don’t pretend you know what being friends with someone is really like.”

  “I’ve never lied to any of you,” I say, though I can’t actually remember if that’s true. “You know everything you need to know. Everything else is just … it doesn’t matter.”

  Indah is standing over me now and suddenly I feel the three of them like meteors trapped in my orbit. Using my ability with multiple people is difficult—my wants ping between targets, sometimes not settling long enough to have an effect. But now, in this moment, with the three of them turned toward me, suspicious looks on their faces, my desire is clear and equally targeted. I want this argument to not be happening. I want the tense atmosphere to disappear, for us to go back to being friends who don’t worry about tall men and missing people and the secrets that each of us is hiding from the others. I want everyone to love me.

  And they do. I see three sets of shoulders drop, three brows unfurrow; triplet exhales cascade over me and I feel each of their minds in my grasp. It’s a tonic—a rush of dopamine, of adrenaline, of pure, addictive control—that brings me back to earth after the confusing and off-putting encounter with the Tall Man. I’m more aware of these three people—of myself, of what I can do—than I ever have been, and it feels like having the strings to a theater’s worth of puppets. Like knowing the answer to every trivia question. Like having a key to each of their apartments.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” I breathe, and each of them continues to look at me with big, trusting eyes. Indah finally sits, perching on the arm of Neon’s chair, and something inside me surges with warmth. This is the way it should be. Neon, the king of all of this, in her throne, her queen by her side; Marley next to me—stoic and steadfast in the way a knight should be—and me, outside and inside all at once. The one with the silent power.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” I say again, relishing the silence, no longer awkward but instead respectful. Deferential to the one person who always has all the cards—all tall, pale men aside. “We just have to stick together.”

  The three of them nod in an uneven unison and I smile, feeling comfortable and at home for the first time in weeks. I can feel the desire to keep them calm coursing through my veins, can feel their minds flush against mine.

  “Stick together,” Neon echoes, like she’s trying to understand a phrase in a different language.

  “Yeah.” I nod. “Stick together.”

  This makes Marley smile, his chiseled jaw softened by the curve of his mouth. Neon and Indah look at each other lovingly—despite Indah’s frustration and Neon’s indecision, it’s clear they want to be together. That can be arranged.

  “We should all move in together,” I say, like it’s a suggestion. Like it’s a question I’m posing, a discussion I want to have. But the decision has already been made. They may not know that right now, but I do. I know that if I said “jump” right now, they wouldn’t even ask how high. They would just leap, not even looking at what’s below, damn all the consequences, even if it left them splattered on the pavement. It’s more power, more satisfying control, than I’ve ever experienced in my life, and it is completely intoxicating. I want to see how they fall, how they fly. All I have to do is ask.

  I tell them to jump.

  * * *

  Indah should have stopped the whole thing in its tracks. She shouldn’t have agreed. She didn’t have a choice but to agree, but there’s always a small part of her that wonders if she could resist. When she’s free and clear of him, it seems so simple, so harmless. She becomes herself again and thinks that maybe he’s not as strong as she supposes.

  But every time she’s wrong. He comes back around and wants something and the next thing she knows, she’s behaving in ways that she never could have anticipated. She’s agreeing to move her whole life; move in with the woman she can’t get to commit—who somehow, suddenly, has now decided to commit—with that woman’s best friend and sometimes lover, and with a boy she barely knows with a power too big to comprehend.

  Indah doesn’t like it and she thinks maybe, maybe, she should just go. Maybe she should take this moment of being alone—of being out from under Robert’s influence—and start over somewhere else. She’d done it before. But then she thinks about Neon and Marley and the still-missing Blaze, and, if she’s honest, Robert, whom she’s come to care for in spite of what he’s capable of. She knows she can’t leave all of them behind. Especially not when there’s a dangerous man—potentially a dangerous “we” if the Tall Man is to be believed—on their tails.

  Indah doesn’t like it, but she knows she has to live with it.

  PART THREE

  THE LOFT

  “I don’t know that I like this, Nee,” Indah’s voice echoes in the huge space.

  “What’s not to like!” Neon shouts, spinning around in the empty living room. “We’ve got four bedrooms, no landlord, a roof! We’re in the lap of luxury now, baby.”

  She grabs Indah by the waist and starts dancing her around the loft, singing an off-key tune and attempting a truly terrible waltz. I laugh at the sight and it stops both of them in their tracks.

  “Did you just … giggle?” Neon asks, a huge grin spreading across her face.

  “What?” I say. “No!”

  “Yes, you did!” Indah laughs, stepping out of Neon’s embrace and toward me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that sound come out of your mouth.”

  “I laugh,” I say indignantly.

  “Not really,” Neon says. “You chuckle. Maybe. But you’re kind of a serious guy, Damien.”

  Her eyes widen at the use of the name she bestowed on me, and I laugh again.

  “See, there”—Indah is smiling and pointing at me—“that was a giggle.”

  “Whatever.” I roll my eyes and start walking across the big open space, looking for something to do.

  “You’re happy,” Neon singsongs as I walk past her.

  “Maybe I am.” I shrug.

  Neon swats at me and I dodge, and before I know it, the three of us are running around the empty loft playing a disorganized game of tag where Neon tags Indah by kissing her on the cheek and then I start doing the same, and soon Neon and I are chasing Indah, who is laughing louder than I’ve ever heard her, threatening her with affection.

  As Neon and I capture Indah between us, each pecking a cheek and teasing her with coos of “oh great, beautiful one,” I think about being happy and whether that’s something I’ve ever felt. I’m not sure it is, but I think it must be something close to this. Whatever this feeling is—this free, light, careless, invincible feeling—I want to chase it until I find the other end of the rainbow.

  It’s been like this ever since I said we had to stick together and the three of them melted like butter in my hands. My desire for all of us to be inseparable, for us to be a family, has had some unexpected, though not unwelcome, consequences. Everyone agreed to live together, much to my surprise—the want clearly deeper and more powerful than even I knew. Moving us all into Blaze’s old loft is a brain wave that I’m proud of. It will be easier to keep them here, in a familiar place, with the specter of their friend hanging over us, than it would be to keep them in an entirely new spot, like my house in the Hills. It was a little more trouble securing this shabby apartment than an anonymous mansion, but the smile on Neon’s face tells me it was worth it.

>   Our giddy group-hug bubble is burst by Indah’s moving away from between us and bringing us back down to earth.

  “What exactly happened with the old roommates?” she asks, and I roll my eyes, not giving one shit about Twiggy and the rest.

  “They all mutually decided that it would be best to live elsewhere,” I say with a grin. “I hear the Valley is nice this time of year.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” Indah says, and I burst out laughing—not a giggle, but a big, hearty laugh that comes from my gut and warms my insides. That kind of language is exceedingly rare for Indah, and those sounds coming from her beautiful lips are enough to send me cackling.

  “‘Mutually decided’ like the super and landlord mutually decided they didn’t want to look after the building anymore?” Neon asks, her eyes glittering.

  “Maybe,” I say, shrugging innocently. “Though the super isn’t going to leave us totally alone. It’s nice having someone look after the place—I learned that lesson the hard way, trust me.”

  “And what about your house?” Indah asks. She was the only one who ever saw the place in the Hills and after the first night she stayed there and made a bedroom her own, I realized how much I loathed the place in her absence. Sure, we could have all moved in there, but the Hills was where I spent two listless months without any connection to the Unusuals. I didn’t want to hang around there anymore.

  “I was getting tired of the upkeep,” I lie. “It’s so much nicer to have a building where you’re not responsible for the utilities.”

  “Mm-hm.” Indah sounds unconvinced.

  “Besides,” I continue, “Marley and I thought it would be nice for Blaze to come back to his own home.” I try not to preen too much at this claim, but being a team with Marley has sanded down his edges, made being around him less terrifying, and a not-small part of me wants to show that I get along with him just like Neon does.

  “If he comes back,” Indah says glumly, and Neon walks over to wrap her in a hug.

  “He’s coming back, babe,” Neon coos. “That kid is so strong. He’s gonna be fine and he’s gonna get back here and be so surprised that we’ve just up and moved in.”