by Chloe Liese
“In here,” I said weakly.
Nairne spun into the room, looking somber. “It was Kai.”
Tears filled my eyes. Stupidly, I’d let myself hope it was Lucas, coming to find me.
“Oh, El. You poor dear.”
I whimpered and pressed my cheek against the cold tile floor. The nausea was gone but in its place was overwhelming fatigue. I just wanted to fall asleep right there. “What did he want?”
Nairne locked her brakes, offering me her hand. “He was actually doing me a very big favor. Apparently Zed reached out to him about my muscle spasms, which have been particularly terrible, asked if his friend who works with spinal injuries had anything different. My body seems to be habituating to the antispasmodic I’ve been taking since the injury. Kai just dropped off a new sample he was given.”
I smiled weakly. “He’s a good husband to you.”
“That he is.” She bent my way, offered her hand. “Come on, up ya get.”
“I can’t. I’m dead.”
“Ah, the dramatics. Let’s go.”
I took her hand, pushing off the floor unsteadily and grasping the sink ledge to stand. I looked terrible, my hair sticking out at odd ends, dark smudges under my eyes, and my skin was sallow. “Bugger. I look like death warmed over.”
“Twice,” Nairne confirmed, slapping my arse and causing me to yelp. “Enough of this wallowing. You’re most likely pregnant and the timing might not be ideal but we’ve got some logistics on our side. One, makeup.”
“Piss off, MacGregor.”
She shrugged. “This isn’t the time to sugarcoat things. Two, we have the gala tonight.”
“What?” I said dazedly. My eyes widened with memory. Nairne and Zed’s charity was hosting its inaugural formal event. “That gala.”
“Aye.” She nodded, spinning out of the bathroom. “I have a job there for you to keep you distracted. And I’ll ensure Lucas will be there, too.”
“What? No he won’t, he still has another week possibly until he’s done with training.”
She waved her hand like logistics were no matter to her. “Trust me, it’ll be taken care of. He’ll be there. And you’ll be there, highly visible. You’re going to look incredible. You two will find each other across the room, then you’ll go home, have fantastic makeup sex, and sort all this out.”
I stared at her. “Who are you, and what have you done with Nairne?”
Nairne lifted a shoulder defensively. “Living with Zed has rubbed off on me a little. Romance isn’t so terrible after all. Now, I know you’re hesitant. I understand all too well—love is mildly terrifying.” Pulling the door open, she looked over her shoulder at me. “It’s why I used to be so adamantly against it.”
I grumbled, following behind her. “Well, I wish you’d have sent your resolve my way when you lost it.”
Nairne sighed as I plopped onto the bed and moaned. “I almost wish that too, except that my theory was solidly disproved, and I have never been so glad to revise my assumptions.” Taking my hand in hers, she smiled softly. “It doesn’t feel safe now, Elodie, to step into such raging waters, but it will, soon enough. You and Lucas are good for each other. You love each other. Sometimes that love just needs a little nudge.”
Twenty-Nine
Lucas
Dante was onto something, writing damnation in his Divine Comedy as a frozen hell rather than a fiery pit. As a boy, I remembered the first time I read the ninth circle of hell. Treachery. Betrayal. There remained Lucifer for all eternity, frozen, mid-breast in a massive lake of ice, kept there by the frantic, egoic beating of his wings. Satan made his own hell, and he kept himself there, too.
That resonated a bit more than I liked. I’d been thrust into mobility training in the brutal start of English winter, knowing it was because I’d dug in my heels and fought doing it in the country’s gentlest months, when I could have been learning under warm skies with soft grass beneath my feet. Now here I was, in my own personal arctic hell, and after I escaped this frozen inferno, I was murdering Zed and Teo.
Noli wasn’t just eccentric or weird. The sharp-tongued woman with a sharper American accent and a non-depletable energy source had me trapped on the icy streets of London, sightless and shivering as I learned the long cane. She was Satan’s bloody spawn.
“Pay attention, Thor, I don’t have time for another O and M casualty on my record.”
“Another?” I stuttered and came to an abrupt halt. Were it any other person, I would have known immediately that they were joking about someone actually dying during Orientation and Mobility training, but Noli frightened the piss out of me. “You’re not—”
“Serious?” She tapped my elbow which meant, get that stick swinging and stop talking. “No, I’m not, but implying it is surprisingly effective. You know why they assigned me to you, right?”
“Because Zed and Teo want to die slow, horrid deaths at the hand of a farsighted, deranged Englishman?”
“Nope.”
I focused on the sweep of my stick, the rhythm Noli had taught me to use. I was a big fellow, so I needed a broad sweep, but it had to be quick enough to encounter the full span of potential obstacles in my path.
“Well then, no, Noli, I don’t—”
“That’s Your Royal Highness, High Commander Reynolds to you.”
Christ, this woman. She was a ridiculous human being who lived to torture me and keep me fearing for my life. But I had a funny feeling that I wouldn’t have learned a tenth of what I had thus far, if it had come from anyone less formidable.
I sighed. “No, Your Royal Highness, High Commander Reynolds.”
“Thank you,” she chirped. “It’s because you’re a yellow tab guy.”
“Oh.” I smiled, focusing on the sweep and then periodic dip of my long cane, “I know what that means. My brother’s a physician. Yellow tabs on folders mean problem patient.”
I could feel her nodding. It was insane, what you observed when eyesight was off the table. I wore occlusion glasses, which made me absolutely blind, but I could sense Her Royal Highness—HRH as I’d succumbed to calling her—nodding her head as she spoke to me.
“Yep. You, Thor, are a giant pain in the collective medical community’s ass, and those are the unfortunate souls they send my way.” She paused, and I heard the soft tattoo of her fingers drumming against her arms. “What do you hear, oh, Viking One?”
“You hit the Norse mythology hard, don’t you?”
I heard the fabric of her coat shift. She’d shrugged her shoulders. “I may have a penchant for the adventures of the great blond God of Thunder. Though I always wished they made him a ginger. I’ve got a thing for gingers.”
I laughed and internally cheered myself that I’d managed that curb seamlessly while distracted with conversation. That was no small feat. “Gingers, eh? You sound about as American as apple pie, but if you’re sticking around long enough, I can think of a few carrot top cousins I owe a retributive payback—I’d be happy to introduce you.”
“Very funny. Smart-ass.” She chuckled, and it was a low, husky sound. Noli smoked, but she was considerate, and never reeked of it. She smelled like bonfires and berries, sometimes topped off with spearmint, swore like a sailor, and something about her made me feel like I could have supreme confidence in meeting whatever challenge she put me to.
“Well, my long-term agenda is a little up in the air right now,” she said, “but I appreciate the offer. Now listen, literally. I want you to stop and observe your surroundings, using all your available senses. Notice where sounds come from and track their progress. Visualize if it helps, but eventually you should stop—it’s better not to try to graft other senses onto your sight.”
I turned toward her. “Why is that?”
She patted my forearm gently. “Because it’s like keeping a braindead person on oxygen for twenty years. Sure, there’s life-sustaining blood flowing to it, but the organ’s caput. Our senses can never adequately augment decreasing sightedness. And the sooner we
embrace the strength and coalescing power of every sense left to our disposal, the sooner your new sight begins.”
“New sight, eh, HRH? Who knew you could be so poetic.”
I couldn’t see it, but I knew she’d smiled. “Don’t count on it happening again, Thor. Now”—she tapped my long cane and turned me facing front—“time to make Mjolnir pull her weight.”
Her hand gently touched the inside of my elbow, which was a cue for her desire to reposition me. We turned slightly to the right, and I felt the sun shift across my face as we moved.
“Now let’s practice curbs some more. Notice how your cane dips. Find the rhythm, then step down. Go on.”
With no warning from her about when the first curb was coming, I handled it smoothly. But after I stepped up, I couldn’t map where we were headed anymore. I stopped and peered over my shoulder in the general direction of her voice. She’d told me our path before we started, and unless I’d got really turned around, this was not on it.
“Where are you taking me?”
She sighed. “Man, I can’t get anything by you. I want a milkshake. You need practice in parking lots. Now, senses ahead, Great Viking One, and if you dent any cars, you’re going to be in a world of pain, you hear?”
I smiled and faced forward. “Challenge accepted, ma’am.”
“Edwards.” Noli snapped her gum while she strolled behind me. “Quit trying to cheat.”
“Christ Jesus,” I muttered. I had a tension headache named Noli that had been my friend for these last four weeks. Its namesake was, of course, responsible for it. Her Royal Highness barking orders, countless hours of O and M training, living on lockdown at the flat while I learned navigating a home.
She ran the place like a prison camp meant to break my sighted soul and resurrect me a fucking Special Forces blind brigadier. And I was losing my will to do a single thing more other than crumple to a heap, then take the world’s longest, quietest shower.
“I saw you, trying to peek around your glasses. Convenient option for you right now, my friend, but comes the day you can’t lift those shades anymore, you’re up shit creek without a paddle. Say your kid needs to take cookies to school—”
“Children don’t take biscuits to nursery here, Reynolds. We’re not all sugar addicts like you Americans.”
“Ten points from Slytherin, Malfoy, and I don’t appreciate being interrupted—”
“I told you a thousand times, I’m in Ravenclaw.”
“And I told you the Sorting Hat was smoking Professor Trelawney’s tea leaves the day he put you in it.”
I mumbled curse words under my breath, wishing I had an incantation instead that would shut the witch up.
“As I was saying. Use your senses. Touch and smell. Then tell me your verdict.”
I had two bags open and at my fingertips. One was salt, one was sugar. Now here’s the thing— two weeks ago, I would have known instantly. They’ve got a smell to them, it’s not complicated.
Except now I was knackered. Absolutely done. If I smelled one more odor or stuck my beak in another godforsaken pantry item, I was going to lose it. One time as a lad I went with Mum to Selfridges, and out of sheer boredom sniffed every women’s perfume while she prattled on with her friend who worked behind the counter. I’d promptly sustained my first migraine and an inability to smell or taste anything besides synthetic flowers and musk for a week.
That was nothing compared to this.
“Come on, Captain. Is your kiddo’s snack a hit or a salty disaster?”
Lord, she knew how to lay it on, invoking my future children.
“Can I taste it?”
I heard the smile in her voice. “Why yes, young Padawan, you can. Well done. I didn’t give you that as an option, but you thought critically, determined your schnoz is shot for the next fortnight as you call it, and isolated the sense that will best serve you. Taste.”
I dipped my finger in and identified salt. My water was to my left at nine o’clock and I drained it. “But is it safe to do this? What if I can’t tell detergent powder from baking soda?”
She stepped closer to me and I caught a whiff of her mint gum. The additional scent nearly put me over. “You’ll only use your taste when it’s safe to—in the kitchen, nowhere else. Detergent’s kept where?”
“Below the sink in the laundry room, far right.” We didn’t have my home to work in, because I’d be damned if I kicked Elodie out, but I’d managed to let a flat whose layout was similar enough to mine.
“Good, and where’d we stash the natural wonder that is sodium bicarbonate?”
I opened my mouth to answer but she was on a roll.
“Exfoliant. Antacid. Microwave scrubber. Silver polish. Battery cleaner—”
“You don’t say?” She always sucked me in. “How’s that work?”
“Neutralizes the battery acid. Yeah,”—she noticed my eyebrows lifting with impress— “baking soda is the Home Ec jack-of-all-trades. Man, I’m still pissed I failed Home Ec.”
I snorted as I leaned my hip against the counter, grateful for a brief spell from her barking orders at me. “How’d you manage that one?”
She coughed, and her steps faded from me slightly. “I may have swapped in shaving cream for Cool Whip the day that trifle was on the syllabus.”
An involuntary shudder wracked me. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”
Noli rustled around in her pockets, and I knew she was locating her cigs and lighter. Blessed God, she was going to take her midday smoke break. “Oh, long story, but the short version is that bitch needed to pay.” She tapped the lighter against her wrist bone. It made a weird reverberating sound. “Teachers are the testicles of the professional world.”
I shook my head. “Noli, you are a teacher. You’ve been torturing—I mean, teaching—me for twenty-eight horrifying days.”
“No,” she corrected, talking tightly around her unlit cig. “I’m not your teacher, I’m your commander. Your dictator—”
“Truer words—”
“Your fearless leader.” She stepped toward me, and I knew to expect her bracing squeeze of my shoulder. “You’ve done good, Captain. Now, at ease, but not until you roll those bags up and put them where you arranged them to be.”
I began the process as she walked toward the door. Her footsteps halted.
“Your nose will get better,” she said. “Like anything in your body, with use it will gain stamina.” The door creaked open and ushered in frigid winter air. Her voice hung at the threshold and I imagined her looking over my sorry exhausted appearance. “Hang in there, soldier. I know you’re sick of me, and you’re damn close to your breaking point. But you’re there, Edwards. You’re ready.”
I swallowed the emotion that I chalked up to four weeks struggling like I never had before. “Thanks, Commander.”
The few brave birds that weathered English winter twittered outside. I felt the faint December sun reach across the kitchen tiles and warm my feet. And I knew Noli was smiling.
Then the door shut with a heavy thud, and I was left in silence to reflect and bask in it. I rolled up the bags, stored them in their respective places, and walked the room, remembering the first time in my own kitchen, where Elodie and I devoured each other amid a mess of flour and French pastry. And another night not so long ago that she plummeted us in darkness and demanded I find her in its shadows. I’d mauled her, taken her desperately.
My body burned hot with those thoughts, and I escaped upstairs to the loo. I found the cold water and splashed my face off, breathing deep as I shut off the tap. Then I wandered into my bedroom, wishing it were ours at home and I could step into Elodie’s closet. It was incredibly powerful, how scent spoke to me now. I wanted the sweet, burnt sugar warmth of her body, her perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle to surround and comfort me. I wanted to bury my nose in one of her tantalizing office dresses as I pictured her, making her way through the last days of busy season.
I hadn’t spoken to Elo
die, denying myself her until I’d survived this refining odyssey. No words to anyone except Dad a few times via email when he hit a wall with a client I’d been handling primarily. Poor fellow. He’d backed off so much once Elodie started, thinking I was just fine to be left alone, and now here he’d been, slogging through long days leading up to Christmas.
A brief knock on my door startled me, and I glanced toward the noise. Had it really been twenty minutes? Twenty bloody minutes, was it so much to ask for? Just a tiny break from that woman’s incessant demands.
“Christ, Reynolds, you’ve a warped sense of time.”
“Hey there, Luc.” Zed’s voice shocked me, and I ripped off the occlusion glasses, squinting at the harsh flood of light to my eyes.
I knew by sound that Zed stood in my doorway, but he was only a blob of darks and tans until my eyes got the hang of seeing again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I blinked, trying to let my eyes adjust. “How did you breach the commander’s defense?”
“Oh, Noli and I go far back enough that I have some leverage to gain access.”
“Clearly. You betrayed me to her after all, you and Teo. You’re dead to me, both of you.”
“First of all, I told you that you weren’t going to like it, but you’d thank us one day. And second of all, you did this voluntarily, pumpkin.”
I sighed and scrubbed my face. He wasn’t wrong. Despite how miserable I was, I’d done this because it was the only way. And I was proud of myself, relieved by the massive strides I’d made. “Yes, I know.”
I let my hands fall and looked him over. “What brings you here so urgently? My sentence is served in just under a week.”
He shrugged as he sat in a chair at the desk where I kept braille books to work on. “Noli said you were starting to droop a little. I figured you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Well, you’re kind. I wish I had anything to offer in the way of hospitality except gin, but I suppose it’s a little early for that.”
Zed smiled. “I’m good. I have to get home before Nairne heads out for an appointment. Can’t be tipsy while dadding.”