Denise lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch, which meant, Could you be any more obvious?
Naomi shot back with a slight narrowing of her eyes: Shush!
Ryn didn’t follow the best-friends telepathy at all and just shrugged. She appeared highly interested in the grooves on the lip of the table.
Naomi could have kicked herself. Maybe she had no parents. This wasn’t a Madison girl; she was from the Bad Part of Town.
“My parents are both Dr. Kwon,” Elli said, trying to fill the vacuum of Ryn’s silence. “Just one of them works exclusively on bones and the other on… gunshot wounds, mostly, I think.”
“My mom’s a lawyer,” Denise said. “Dad is a house husband.”
Elli laughed and Naomi was happy for the change of subject. They discussed Denise’s father’s nontraditional family role a while, cracking the same series of jokes they had since grade school. Ryn sat quietly in her chair, observant but not saying anything, shifting and bouncing her knee at a steady frequency. She fidgeted and scanned the crowd.
“He’s a good cook,” Denise insisted. “He could open up a little bakery if he wanted.”
Ryn spoke up for the first time. “What about you?” she asked Naomi.
“Oh. Well, my dad’s a politician. Senator Bradford?” She prepared herself for the usual litany of reactions to that. There were only a few: stunned silence if they were impressed by senators, or an awkward joke about either voting or not voting for her father if they knew him from politics. Naomi had a few established responses, such as her crack that she wouldn’t have voted for her father some days either, or that it sucked to have a parent who debated professionally.
Ryn didn’t follow the script. She skipped over Naomi’s father and asked, “What about your mother?”
Naomi hated that question—no matter how anticipated, it always made her breathing go shallow. “She passed away. A few years ago.”
Ryn tilted her head. The typical responses were I’m sorry or That’s terrible, and Naomi had her autopilot ways of making people feel less mortified. However, Ryn threw her for a second loop. “Tell me about her.”
The table quieted. Denise picked through a packet of crackers meant for soup, sucking the crumbs off her fingertip. Elli played with her necklace. Ryn eyed Naomi with laser-like focus. Her knee still bounced. The quiet stranger had killed their small talk, shattering through niceties like a bullet through an Emily Post book.
“She died in a car accident,” Naomi said at last. “Drunk driver.” The words tightened her throat. If anyone asked her, she’d tell them it was a long time ago. It gave people the impression she was over it, because whenever she said she was over it, it didn’t sound like she was, not even to her own ears.
“But tell me about her,” Ryn said.
“Oh.” Now the stray had cornered her. Elli and Denise pretended they hadn’t heard the inquiry, and Naomi didn’t trust her voice at first. “Mom was a very brave woman. She was from Russia, back in its Empire days, and she won a visa to study economics in the U.S. She stayed, illegally for a while, and lived in the ex-Soviet diaspora in the Docks. She met Dad at Graystone University in the city and kept turning down his marriage proposals. Dad says she only gave in because the feds were getting close, but I never saw anyone look at him the way she did. She said she married him because he had a dryer and she was sick of clotheslines.”
The words had broken loose and came faster. “She was brilliant, and tenacious. She eventually earned her Ph.D., but they wouldn’t award it for years because she was illegal while she worked on her credits and there was some bad blood in the faculty. Then her work earned a Nobel Prize and they sort of had to. Dad put it on the shelf next to his high-school track trophy and always asked her, ‘But how high can you jump?’
“Later, she taught at Graystone University here in the city. She taught economics but she knew basically everything. She and Dad used to argue all the time, too, but in a good way. She was the only person I ever knew who could make the phrase ‘anarcho-capitalist hardliner’ sound like a term of endearment. Dad used to call her his little ex-commie renegade. She loved that.”
Their food came. Naomi was glad; talking even that much had left her emotionally winded. Denise and Elli went back to chatting. Naomi didn’t feel like talking, but she watched Ryn, who had seemed so much less important five minutes ago. Now Naomi wondered how she’d pulled exactly the right thread to make Naomi’s heart unspool in front of everyone. Are you especially clever? Or especially clueless?
Ryn ate briskly between scans of the food court, sniffing the air periodically. Naomi hardly touched her food, inventing stories that explained this girl: the form-obscuring tomboy outfit, the too-large sunglasses indoors that weren’t even cool, the soft-spoken words that were entirely too bold.
She’d seem awkward if she were not objectively adorable, made so by her apparent conviction that she was five feet taller than she was.
“So. Ryn,” Naomi said at last. “What do you do for fun?”
“I run.”
“Are you on a track team? I run the four hundred and I pole vault.”
“No,” Ryn said. “No team. Just outside. When I need to move.”
“A lot of energy, then,” Naomi said. “Your leg’s been bouncing this whole time.”
Ryn examined her leg. “Yes.” It didn’t stop bouncing. “What do you do for fun?” She asked the question in the same tone Naomi had used.
“Plenty of things. Basketball, Girl Scouts, camping, swimming, running. I like to dance.”
“What is Girl Scouts?”
“Really? It’s an organization. Our troop does some volunteer work and wilderness trips in the summer. Do you ever hike or camp out?”
Ryn laughed just once. It seemed to escape from her throat, and she clapped both hands over her mouth. The displeasure with which Ryn treated her own laugh warmed Naomi’s heart, made her kind of love the little weirdo. Ryn seemed to have even more trouble looking her in the eye, though. “I’ve been in the forest,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t know people went there for fun. I didn’t know about Girl Scouts.”
“Is English your second language?”
“Not my first.”
“You speak it well. Where are you from originally?”
Ryn shrugged. “The wilderness. Some other places.”
“Maybe someday you can show me around your home,” Naomi said. Ryn didn’t like to share details and Naomi’s mind swam briefly with suspicions. She thought of her mom and wondered if Ryn was also in the country illegally. Then she cut off that thinking—it didn’t matter. Her dad had always taught her that immigration laws were too evil to be respected by decent people. “In the meantime, you must be new here. Let me take you out. Next weekend. There’s this great dance club—it’s under-twenty-one on Friday night. Do you have a piece of paper?”
“No.”
“I mean, she doesn’t have to come with us if she doesn’t want to,” Denise said.
“Don’t be silly,” Naomi said. “Here.” She reached across the table and took Ryn by the wrist, clicking out her ballpoint pen. The click shot Ryn backward. For a moment, Naomi thought she’d fall off her chair. Instead, the chair slanted onto two legs and Ryn somehow alighted onto it, balancing it with a foot on the seat and another on the chair back. She crouched, focused on the pen in Naomi’s hand.
Denise and Elli stared. Naomi raised the pen and presented it to Ryn. She clicked it a few times for Ryn’s unwavering gaze. After a few clicks, Ryn glanced back at Naomi. Only then did she tilt forward. The front chair legs banged onto the floor and she dropped into her seat in the same motion.
Naomi had taken eight years of ballet, swing dance, and gymnastics, but had never seen anyone move like that in her life. The speed. The fluidity. “Sorry,” she whispered. The low current of alarm had returned, and she licked her dry lips. “I should have asked.” She set her hands at the table’s midway point. “Do you trust me?” Do I trust you?
Ryn averted her gaze, and without looking up she slid her cool hand into Naomi’s. Expecting calluses, Naomi was surprised by the smoothness of the palm, softness of the fingertips, and perfectly tended fingernails. Each nail’s edge had a strange gleam. Rolling the sleeve up two inches to write there, Naomi startled at the glimpse of a scar. She flicked the sleeve back down to conceal the mark from Denise.
But the memory of it burned. Enormous, and not from a razor.
She wrote the information on Ryn’s palm. “Now you won’t forget.”
Ryn looked at the address and time. “I won’t.” She stood, staring at the words on her skin. “I must go.”
She pushed away from the table, hopped the divider into the mall proper, and disappeared into the crowd before Naomi could react.
~*~
The mall had too many eyes. The prickle of human gazes skittered across Ryn’s flesh like a swarm of ants. Naomi’s gaze had been a different kind of itch, one that made her feel small, uncertain, but kind of good. She couldn’t tell if it was the too-gentle press of Naomi’s fingers or the ballpoint on her palm that had made her so ticklish.
Ryn wove through the crowd. She could still feel Naomi’s heart pounding against her through the fleeting contact of fingertips. The magnetism of her words still tugged on Ryn, confusing her and almost propelling her back to the café. Those words convinced her to do things she otherwise wouldn’t.
No, not just the words: the smiles, the motions of her body. Ryn had never seen a smile before Naomi’s, or at least, none had ever made sense before hers. It was like a codex, unpacking for the first time not just what smiles signified, but what they did. The surveillance photographs hadn’t been enough, since they were too frozen, like capturing the ocean in still-frame when it could only be understood in motion. Naomi was animated. Her soul pushed to the surface of her face. Her movements added a dimension that drew together her whole meaning. And that clean rainwater scent… it was like Aina’s, and alien to the city—a scent Ryn might catch once in a century, a scent with no evil in it. But most of all, Ryn could not figure out why she hadn’t stopped thinking about Naomi. Why her mind and her feet kept trying to lead her back to the female.
Then it struck her: the full depravity of what Splat intended. The fugue of the full moon had almost blotted the hunt from the forefront of her mind, but now she sharpened her intent. No one would hurt Naomi. She fell now into Ryn’s sphere of influence, and therefore, Ryn’s territory.
Ryn ascended the stairs and paced a circle around the food court. She inhaled. Splat was out there. His presence tickled her brain in its darkest corners and her fingers clenched and unclenched with delight. The stalking had begun. By far her favorite part.
CHAPTER SIX: The Devil You Know
“Most awkward dinner of my life,” Denise said on their way out of the food court, bags in their hands.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Naomi said.
“A close second to my eighth birthday party when Bragan Coates went to kiss me on the cheek and threw up down the back of my dress,” Elli said.
“Bragan was just in love,” Denise said. “Still can’t figure out what that girl’s problem with chairs was.”
“Don’t be mean,” Naomi scolded.
“I’m not being mean; she just needs to be careful. Like maybe someone should start a nonprofit to educate people. On how to sit on chairs. Or maybe put the instructions on the chairs.”
“You’re being mean and it’s because you’re livid about my inviting her out next week,” Naomi said.
“Was that for the best, though?” Elli asked. “I think she might be uncomfortable hanging out with us. You have to admit, she’s not our usual thing.”
Denise snorted. “Not our usual? You mean like how you can’t tell she’s a girl until you’re right on top of her? Or do you mean like she might have some kind of chair-related dysfunction?” Her eyes lit up and she leaned in conspiratorially. “Or maybe the chairs offend her, because all chairs are imperfect shadows of the Platonic ideal of a chair. And so she’s disinclined to sit. Philosophically.”
“You’re not going to manipulate me into uninviting her,” Naomi said.
“Whatever do you mean?” Denise asked, her saintliest expression on display.
“You’re trying to convince me you’ll pick on her endlessly so that I’ll uninvite her. Maybe instead you should humor me for one night.”
“Fine—if you promise it’ll help you get over the Iosef thing,” Denise said as they boarded the escalator. “Because that’s what it’s about, isn’t it?” she pressed.
“Maybe. I mean, I saw her at that railing, and she looked…”
“Aloof?” Elli nodded and let out a small sigh. “Aloof and mysterious.”
Denise chuckled. “You thought she was a boy at a distance too, didn’t you?”
Elli shrugged. “So I have a type; sue me. I thought Naomi was going to hit on her. Was about to go all green-eyed monster, too, until I saw she was tiny, and then a girl, and I realized the tragic failing of baggy cargo pants.” She shook her head sadly. “Such unfortunate choices.”
“Too bad she wasn’t a boy,” Denise said. “Then Naomi would have a date next week.”
Naomi was rubbing the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t see or care who she was, just that she was alone.”
“There’s a reason some people are alone.” Denise turned her back to Naomi and stared ahead. “Some like it, and some are that way for good reasons; reasons you would have no clue about.” They rode to the top of the escalator, and she added over her shoulder, “Drugs, by the way.”
“What?” Naomi asked.
“She was here to sell drugs, Miss Perfect. Hence the internet stranger and the way she kept looking around. That’s why she didn’t want to come eat with you. She thought you were trying to buy from her, and she figured you might narc.”
“I don’t think that’s it.” Denise had a point, though—that explanation fit better than anything she could come up with. “I hope not. And if she was here to sell pot, I hope she doesn’t think I was trying to buy any. Do you think that’s what she thinks?”
“No idea,” Elli said. “But she was jumpy.”
“I’d be jumpy too if I were a waif who sold drugs in the Docks,” Denise said.
“You don’t know it was drugs,” Naomi snapped.
“It’s only ever two things, and she’s wound too tight for the other thing. Drugs. She’s buying or selling, and my money says she shows up next week either high or trying to sell you shrooms. Anyway, my point is: bring cash to pay her off, because you’ll look like an idiot if you try to use plastic.”
“Stop trying to talk me out of next week.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve changed my mind. I want to watch this train wreck. Don’t worry. You can pay her, but you don’t have to take the shrooms.”
They stopped because they had arrived at a crossroads, with Elli and Denise needing to exit toward a different parking deck. Naomi faced them. “Look. I don’t think she was a dealer, and she looked like she could use a few friends. If you can’t be that, then don’t come out next week.”
“I will be there next week and I’ll be myself,” Denise said. “Just because you tuck it all in for Daddy doesn’t mean I will. However, I do promise I’ll be gentle with your new charity project’s feelings. Because I love you. Also, I don’t want this girl to knife you in the ribs.”
Naomi took a breath and expelled her irritation. “Good night, guys. Drive safe.”
“Night. We’ll see you Monday. Oh, and bring at least fifty bucks for your dealer. Because if I have to pay her off, I’m getting my money’s worth.”
Naomi pushed through the heavy glass doors and crossed a walking bridge to the parking deck. Frigid wind struck her from the right. She hunkered into her big coat and her hair did a wild dance. She entered a cavernous middle deck and passed through a deserted maze of shiny cars, the echo of her footsteps pinging off distant walls.
The deck lights flickered once and it went dark.
She stopped. The shape of the once-familiar concrete space was transformed by shadows; everything lay still, gleaming car windshields visible only because of distant illumination through the deck openings. A single warning shiver rattled up her spine, and out of nowhere her brain recalled the percentage of assaults and rapes that happened in parking garages. I hate you, brain.
She rummaged through her purse and flicked on a penlight. She took a deep breath. Likely a circuit breaker. She walked again.
The deck was silent but for the wind, which caught a plastic bag, crinkled it, and scraped it across the concrete. The sound raised her fine hairs and she gripped her bags tighter in her left hand, speeding her steps.
A singsong voice echoed off the cold pillars: “Here pussy, pussy.”
She wasn’t sure she heard the words right, but hurried along as cold fear prickled her skin. She’d borrowed Dad’s car. It was still a dozen down and two aisles deeper.
“Don’t run, pussy.” She’d heard it right. Oh God. “Going to do such nice things with you; promise.”
Behind her. Panic dulled her senses until she heard only ringing and she spun, dropped her bags, and snapped up her can of pepper spray. She jogged backward toward the car and flashed her penlight left and right across an empty floor. Where is he? Nothing back there except cars and the dark front of an unlit Coke machine.
“Step out, you coward,” she said, projecting confidence she didn’t have. All the while, she wove between cars, spun to check each corner, and worked toward her vehicle. Keys, keys, keys. Left pocket? “I’m armed!”
“Bad kitty. No scratches or I’ll pull out those pretty claws.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
Where are you!
“You want to see me, don’t you? Bet you scream.” His voice was melodic and made her queasy. She spun toward her car, now in sight, and sprinted. She hit the key fob for the doors to unlock about eighteen times and heard them pop. She hit the panic button too so that its lights blinked and the horn blared. The side windows were shattered but she kept going. It wasn’t until she grabbed the door handle that she saw it.
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 8