Homecoming

by Amber Benson

  The man laughed, throwing back his honey-blond head, so all she could see were straight white teeth and pale pink lips stretching into a wide grin. Even when he was done laughing, the smile stayed in place, and she didn’t know if she was supposed to be offended or pleased that the man found her babbling hilarious.

  “You look concerned,” he said, feigning seriousness—though there was still a twinkle in his blue eyes.

  “Well, I don’t know if you were laughing at me or with me—”

  “Both,” he said, grinning again.

  She realized he had sexy eyes, pale blue irises flecked with gold, the skin around them cross-hatched with tiny lines from laughing too much. There was something else interesting about them, too. The pupils were very large, even in the daylight, and Lyse remembered reading somewhere that dilated pupils made a person more attractive.

  Whether this was really true or not seemed inconsequential—because it wasn’t just his eyes that drew her to him; it was his whole vibe. The way he carried himself, the calm confidence exuding from his lean body. This was a man who knew who he was and what he wanted—and, if she wasn’t careful, Lyse was going to end up on his “wanted” list.

  Trying to distract herself, she looked past him to the covered patio. Here, people sat scattered around small chrome patio tables drinking coffee, working on their laptops, or chatting. Behind the patio and through the building’s plate-glass front wall, Lyse could see the interior of the coffee bar, the line snaking around the front of the register as a couple of young baristas filled orders.

  “You going inside?” the man asked, scratching the side of his nose with a curled finger, the sleeve of his green flannel shirt slipping down to expose the vivid black-and-purple edges of an octopus tentacle ringing his wrist.

  The tattoo reached out from inside the folds of his sleeve, and Lyse was certain if she was ever so lucky as to see him without his shirt on, there would be even more octopus to discover.

  The man saw Lyse noticing his tattoo and gave her a languid smile.

  “That’s Clyde,” he said. “Wanna see the rest of him?”

  Without meaning to, she found herself nodding, and suddenly he was stripping off the flannel—a weathered wifebeater kept things chaste—and turning his forearm toward her, so she could see Clyde the octopus in the flesh.

  “Incredible,” she said, and, without realizing what she was doing, found herself reaching out to touch him.

  She yanked her hand back but continued to marvel at the beautifully rendered piece of art. It was all swirling tentacles, rounded body, and haunting amber eyes, the vertically slit pupils reminding Lyse of a cat’s eyes. Clyde wasn’t alone on the man’s skin. His arms and torso, at least what she could see of them around the wifebeater, were covered in intricate nautical-themed ink, his body a misguided mash note to the sea.

  She felt strangely vulnerable standing in the middle of the sidewalk with this man. She wasn’t just looking at his tattoos. She was sharing something intimate with him, speaking a wordless language that was all about context, made up of tentative, shared looks and shyly averted eyes—and then before she could really process everything, the show was over. He was pulling his flannel back on and buttoning it into place.

  “I love it,” Lyse said. “Clyde’s gorgeous.”

  “Appreciate that,” he said, taking a green knit cap out of his back pocket and pulling it down over his head, a few naughty strands of blond hair poking out. “So what’s your deal? You live around here?”

  Lyse wanted to say that yes, she lived here. That this was her neighborhood, and he was the interloper—but nostalgia didn’t make her the owner of a place. Just because her most poignant memories were made here didn’t mean Echo Park belonged to her.

  “I used to live here. Up the street, actually,” Lyse found herself saying. “But I haven’t been back in ages.”

  The man nodded.

  “It’s a special place,” he said. “You feel it in your bones. When you belong somewhere. From the moment I set foot here, I knew it’s where I was meant to be. Sounds stupid. Don’t know why I’m telling you this . . .”

  He seemed embarrassed by his words, as if he’d unconsciously divulged too much information about himself.

  The funny thing was that she understood completely. He’d described the exact same feeling she’d had standing on Eleanora’s front porch one wet afternoon twelve years ago, hope burning in her heart like a precious flame. She remembered shaking like a leaf, terrified she’d have to go back to the children’s home—just the memory of the place with its urine stink and unwashed-body smell made her feel ill—but then she’d looked up into Eleanora’s wise granite face and realized she was home.

  Home.

  The word caromed around inside her head.

  “Where did you just go?” he asked, grinning at her. The man couldn’t stop smiling, could he?

  He was right. She’d been a million miles away and hadn’t even realized it. Now it was Lyse’s turn to be embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking down at her hands, at the bitten cuticles and ragged nails.

  “It’s a charming quality,” he said. “I’m Weir. By the way.”

  “That’s a very sexy name you got there, Weir,” Lyse said, looking up at him through lowered lashes, surprised by her own flirtatiousness.

  “Oh . . . yeah?” he said, and blinked, taken aback—no, not taken aback . . . flustered. She’d thrown him off his game.

  “Sorry,” she squeaked, embarrassed again. “I don’t normally flirt so unabashedly. So, let’s start over. I’m Lyse. And I’ll be on my best behavior from now on.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lyse, who will be on her best behavior from now on,” Weir said, nodding as if he liked the feel of her name on his tongue.

  She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, annoyed with them for getting in the way and for making her feel like an awkward teenage girl all over again.

  “Well . . .” Lyse said, and let the word linger.

  “Well . . . I’m gonna go inside,” he said, and lifted his arm, indicating she should go ahead of him. “After you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe in a minute,” she said, quirking her eyebrow in the coffee bar’s direction. “Is the coffee good?”

  “Well, I think so, but I’m biased.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked, teasing. “You own the place or something?”

  He shook his head, more blond hair falling out from beneath his knit cap.

  “Nah, just roast the beans they make their coffee with,” he said, grinning. “A man’s gotta eat, and roasting coffee is the way I do it.”

  Then, when she didn’t make a move toward the coffee bar, he shook his head and went through the gap in the hedges without her.

  “See you around, Lyse?” he asked, turning back to look at her.

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe,” she called after him.

  “I hope so,” he said, and then she watched him cross the patio, admiring the confident way he carried himself—and she might’ve checked out his butt a little, too, just because she could.

  He paused halfway across the patio to talk to a teenage girl who was sitting at one of the tables holding a sketch pad in her lap, a bright pink scarf wrapped around her long neck.

  The girl looked up from the sketch pad, smiling at Weir as he talked, though she remained strangely quiet. Lyse felt a stab of envy. The girl was gorgeous, and obviously a favorite of her new friend.

  She was tall and willowy, her long legs tucked up underneath her as she reached for her coffee, delicately sipping from the lip of her mug. As Weir continued to talk, the girl’s thick reddish-brown hair fell forward, gentle curls framing her face before slipping down her back in thick waves.

  Lyse was too far away to hear what Weir was saying, but suddenly the
girl’s golden-brown gaze had turned in her direction, the dark almond eyes sliding over Lyse, cataloging her.

  Lyse smiled back at the girl, trying to defuse the awkwardness she felt at being examined like a bug under a microscope, but the girl only blinked back at her, long lashes floating like butterfly wings as they brushed the tops of her cheeks. Lyse’s smile froze as the girl cocked her head, brows furrowing, before returning her attention back to Weir.

  Odd, Lyse thought as she watched Weir wave good-bye to the girl, then open the heavy metal door to the coffee bar and go inside.

  She decided she didn’t really want a latte anymore. She felt out of sorts, and the thought of dealing with Weir again was off-putting. He was obviously a ladies’ man, and she was just another pretty lady to play with. She turned on her heel, starting to move away from the patio entrance, but stopped when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder.

  It was the teenage girl—and Lyse had been right. She was tall. Well over six feet with a coltish quality about the way she moved, as though she weren’t quite comfortable in her own skin. Up close the girl’s beauty was less formed, more immature, like standing in front of an Impressionist’s work and seeing the chaotic slap of brushstrokes that from far away resolve into lush landscapes and intricate human forms. Lyse noticed the smattering of light-red freckles on the bridge of the girl’s sharp nose, the pimple on the girl’s chin, the chapped lips. They were tiny flaws, barely worth mentioning, but somehow they made the girl seem more human and less like an alien creature from the planet Supermodel.

  The girl stood there, hands twisting together in front of her waist, eyes skittering here and there: anywhere but Lyse’s face.

  A shy one, Lyse thought, feeling for the girl.

  She’d been a shy kid, too. It was only in college, when she’d finally found a group of friends she trusted, that she blossomed and stopped giving a shit about what other people thought of her.

  “Hi,” Lyse said, breaking the silence.

  The girl blushed, her golden cheeks flushing a deep pink, and then she held up her right hand, producing a slender pointer finger. Like a magician in the middle of a silent stage show, she was telling Lyse to hold on.

  Lyse nodded, and the girl took off, returning a moment later with her pad. She pulled a pencil from her back pocket and began to write, her brow furrowed in concentration. When she was done, she brandished the pad in front of her:

  I’m Lizbeth. Are you the Bear?

  Lyse was surprised by the use of her pet name, and she must’ve made a funny face because before she realized what was happening, the girl was abruptly retracting the pad, embarrassment flaming her cheeks again.

  “No, don’t run away,” Lyse said, reaching for the girl’s arm to stop her from leaving—she was curious to find out how this kid knew who she was. “You’re right. I’m Bear, but no one here calls me that except my great-aunt.”

  The girl nodded, held up a finger. After a few seconds of scribbling, she flipped over the sketch pad again:

  She said you were coming home today.

  Obviously the she being referenced was Eleanora—who else could it be? Lyse’s thoughts froze as something about the exchange with the girl hit a bull’s-eye deep inside her unconscious mind, illuminating something she’d been too dazed to put together earlier that morning: If she hadn’t told Eleanora she was coming home, how had her great-aunt known to pick her up at the airport?

  The thought was unsettling.

  “Who are you?” Lyse whispered, taking a step back.

  The girl reached for Lyse’s hand, her long fingers fluttering like frightened birds, but Lyse jerked her hand out of the girl’s reach.

  “Don’t touch me,” Lyse said, still backing away. “I don’t know you and you’re freaking me out.”

  The girl wrote on the sketch pad, her pencil working furiously:

  Please, don’t be upset. I don’t want to freak you out.

  “This is the oddest conversation I’ve ever had,” Lyse murmured, and the girl smiled, nodding in agreement—but then she was back, writing on her pad again.

  “Look, it was, uh, nice to meet you, but I gotta go,” Lyse said—and she took off before the girl could finish writing out her last thought.

  It was a graceless exit, and she wasn’t proud of herself for it, but she needed a break from all the weirdness.

  As she continued down Echo Park Avenue toward the little bodega, she tried to keep her mind clear, concentrating, instead, on the loud slap of her heels as they beat against the rough sidewalk. But not thinking was an almost impossible task. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop the bizarre, half-formed thoughts from running through her head.

  * * *

  The girl stood by the hedge, waiting until Lyse finally disappeared from view. She was confused by the lukewarm reception she’d received from the one person she assumed would understand everything.

  With a silent sigh, she flipped over the last page she’d used in her pad, but not before scratching out what was written there:

  Don’t be scared of the tall lady from your dream. She visits me, too.

  Eleanora

  Eleanora was relieved when she saw the turnoff for Curran looming ahead of her, the rectangular street sign faded and half hanging from its cylindrical post. The sun was high above her in the sky, which meant there was still plenty of time to sit Lyse down and explain everything—God help her—before they went into the sacred grove to begin the induction ceremony.

  Eleanora was finally going to come clean to her grandniece. She’d spent years skirting around the fact that she was a clairvoyant and the master of a coven, but that time was over. She’d stayed quiet, hiding her abilities—she could see and talk to ghosts, or Dream Walkers, as she called them—because she didn’t think Lyse was ready for the information, nor did she want to burden her grandniece. Now she felt both excited and terrified to share her secrets—and she wished she possessed a crystal ball, so she could see exactly how Lyse would react to the news.

  She hoped her grandniece would be open to joining them, but there was just no way to tell. From Hessika’s portent, Eleanora assumed that Lyse’s love of plants meant she would join Arrabelle in the herbalist’s trade. Eleanora seriously doubted Lyse even knew her talent was a talent—because most herbalists just thought they had a green thumb. They had no idea magic might be involved.

  She realized it was asking a lot of Lyse to give up her plant nursery in Georgia, but she hoped her grandniece could build something similar in Echo Park. Still, becoming a member of the coven required sacrifice, and Eleanora had never regretted the choices she’d made—and therefore she didn’t feel guilty about asking Lyse to do the same. To give oneself over to the greater good was a sacrifice well worth making. It had given Eleanora’s miserable life purpose, had brought her blood sisters and given her the greatest gift of all: Lyse.

  She was selfish about her memories, about the sheer joy and love she’d experienced because Lyse had belonged to her. She’d never expected to fall in love—didn’t think it was possible even—but it’d happened all the same. The gaunt, dark-haired child she’d found standing on her porch one wet afternoon had, with a single gaze, stolen her heart.

  Eleanora remembered the haunted look in Lyse’s blue eyes as the girl had stared up at her. This was a child who’d endured misery and had accepted that her life would only contain more of the same. Eleanora had vowed then and there to place this child’s needs above her own. She was going to love Lyse with the fierceness of everything she possessed.

  Back then she’d seen it as an easy thing, this loving, but somehow, when she wasn’t paying attention, it had transformed into something else. It was only now, as death approached and the future remained uncertain, that she realized Lyse would be the greatest gift she left the world.

  She felt her breath get away from her. She was winded, the uphill cli
mb harder than she’d expected. She stopped on the sidewalk in front of her neighbor—and blood sister—Daniela’s house, leaning against the short wooden fence to catch her breath. She peered past the hedges, curious to see if Daniela was home, but all the lights were off inside, and Daniela’s two black cats, Verity and Veracity, were lounging on the wooden front porch—one in a wicker chaise longue, the other sprawled across the porch’s top step, belly exposed to the sky.

  With its weather-blistered siding and warped wraparound porch, Daniela’s house was no longer a showplace, but once upon a time—before Hessika’s tenure on Curran, even—the Zeke Title House had been magnificent. A converted artist’s bungalow, it’d seen its heyday in the 1920s when Title, an art dealer and rare-book seller, played host to stylish salons with the crème de la crème of Los Angeles’s bohemian set.

  Even a house falls prey to age, Eleanora mused, her heart rate finally slowing down to normal as she enjoyed the feel of being static.

  But static wasn’t in the cards.

  As soon as the cats sensed Eleanora’s presence, they both looked up expectantly, two sets of sea-green eyes focused in her direction. Verity, who was missing half her tail from a run-in with a neighborhood dog, stood up and stretched, arching her back so her shiny black fur stood on end. She jumped down from her perch on the chaise longue and trotted across the lawn toward the wooden gate that separated the yard from the sidewalk.

  “Hello there, little one,” Eleanora said, as Verity collapsed onto her belly and slithered underneath the gate like a garden snake, emerging on the other side to rub her lithe body against Eleanora’s ankles.

  Eleanora knelt down and picked up the purring feline, burying her nose in Verity’s dark fur.

  “I’m not trying to slut-shame you, Verity, but come on. I’ve been gone ten minutes!”

  Daniela stood behind Eleanora, holding a brown bag in her gloved hands, the green glass neck of a wine bottle protruding from inside.