“What’s in this?” Fynn asked.
“It’s a Chinese blend,” Cate said, with the wave of a hand. She wasn’t concerned with tea. “Ginger, I think.” She poured herself a cup and put her elbows on the table, as though Fynn had come expressly to visit with her. “He talks about you all the time,” she said. “He only agreed to come out of hiding if I promised to get him here to St. Cocha to see you.”
“Me?” Fynn said. “I don’t believe that. He didn’t call me once in five years.” She was having a hard time remembering why exactly she had to run upstairs. She’d had a good reason.
“Did you call him?” Cate asked.
“No,” Fynn said. “I thought he would be too busy.”
“Too busy?”
“I was in love with him,” Fynn said. The truth came out in a flood. “I was in love with him and I knew he would never love me back. So what was the point?” Her face heated. She felt her own forehead with the back of her hand. The kitchen was too warm.
“This doesn’t surprise me,” Cate said.
“Why would it? Everyone is in love with Komo.”
“Yes...but Komo is in love with only one.” Cate talked like it was a matter of simple arithmetic.
“It isn’t me.”
“It is you,” Cate said. Fynn’s heart leapt, treacherous with tired hope. She was such a trapped bird when it came to Komo, so ready to fling herself again at the possibility that he could ever love her.
“You want to believe me,” Cate said. “And you should. I know Komo better than almost anyone. Doesn’t matter how many fans rush the stage, how many crowd the exit. There’s an emptiness inside him. In the beginning, he went with the girls backstage, yes.” Fynn bit her lip to keep from wailing. “But in the past three years, he hasn’t. He hasn’t been with any woman.”
“You’re kidding me.” It had turned out that Komo had rotated through every one of the girls at Athenian in their short time at the school. She couldn’t imagine Komo celibate for a single night, let alone three years.
“What you and Komo shared when you were children is precious to him. No other woman can compete with that. He talks about you constantly. I think that this nervous breakdown he is having is because he misses you. He needs you. The devil that is after him is in his head and he won’t be able to escape it without you.”
“He’s not talking about the devil, exactly. Not the way you’re thinking. We were taught to be afraid of things,” Fynn said.
Cate shook her head. “I can’t imagine what you two went through.”
It took a stranger to understand it wasn’t easy for them to be Keep kids out in the world. It was nice to be understood for once, even by someone who didn’t know the whole truth and who wouldn’t believe it if she heard it.
“If you love him, you’ll stay,” Cate said. She reached for a pile of hand-rolled cigarettes in a crystal dish and lit the end on a candle flame. After sucking deeply, she exhaled in Fynn’s direction. The cloud of smoke blew wisps of hair from Fynn’s face. She flinched at first, but the smoke was sweet as the attar of an exotic flower. Fynn eyed the neatly-rolled cigs and wondered if it would be rude to ask for one. Cate filled her cup.
Another long sip of tea and the summer day extended from her stomach to her arms and legs. In the dancing firelight, it made sense to stay. At least for one night. Cate tapped a fingernail against the marble tabletop. “It was incredible to see him perform tonight. This is a man born to be onstage. Bring him back to it, if you love him.”
Fynn didn’t know what to say. In the teacup, leaves swirled and sparkled with glittery dust. Cate was so sure of her facts. Fynn wasn’t a rock star, but it would be such a relief to hand her life over to Cate to manage. Her chin fell to her chest and she wondered if she had been sleeping for a moment. She sat engulfed in a plush chair by the fire. She didn’t remember making the decision to sit. The ribbons tying her consciousness to her mother and sister pulled loose, their ends frayed. The urgency that had driven her to the front door was as ephemeral as a dream.
Cate took her hand and offered to show her around.
“It’s our house. That is, we’re renting it while we are in town,” Cate said. “Komo needs space and privacy.” Guitar riffs and bass lines reverberated through the narrow hall. It sounded like hundreds of people gathered in hidden rooms. There was talking and laughing, and in between, if she wasn’t mistaken, moans of sexual pleasure.
Fynn’s heart melted in her chest, as Komo’s voice rose above the others over the strumming of an acoustic guitar. He sang a tune from his first album that she knew as well as she knew her own skin.
You are the only one who can help me. Fynn closed her eyes and braced her shoulder against a wall. She was losing her balance. Cate had taken off her jacket to reveal a sleeveless white t-shirt underneath. She wore silver cuff bracelets on her bare arms and they clanked together as she took a long drag and exhaled smoke like a dragon under Fynn’s nose.
“From the very first moment I met him, I knew he would be a real star,” Cate said, every word making so much sense. “I knew he was special,” she purred into Fynn’s ear. “Then he got too scared to go out on stage. Wouldn’t come out of the dressing rooms. Demons,” she huffed. “We had to cancel everything.”
Fynn burned in shame. It had been easier for her to believe that Komo was pulling a publicity stunt than it was to risk getting hurt by reaching out to see if he was okay. She wished she’d called him.
“I thought we lost him. I thought he would hurt himself or worse. It would be my fault if he did, Fynn. You should blame me for it.”
“I don’t think...”
“It was my fault,” Cate said, waving the perfumed cigarette between her elegant fingers. “I pushed him into the spotlight. I saw how much he loved it and how much money we could make.” She let out a wry laugh. “Here I am confessing everything. I just met you, and you already know more than my therapist. Well, maybe there is something special about you, too.”
They stood in the arched entryway to an enormous living room. Cate stroked Fynn’s cheek. Then she put her cigarette to Fynn’s mouth. Fynn closed her lips around it and sucked. Her lungs filled with velvet smoke as thick as incense.
“You’re so beautiful,” Cate said. “I see why he loves you.”
A peal of feminine laughter burst through the party noise. Cara’s voice was unmistakable, even in the crowd. Cate’s dark eyebrows arched under her fringe of bleached-blonde hair. This woman understood everything.
“These after parties are part of the business, but I can’t stand them,” Cate said. “Did you ever consider that the reason why Komo didn’t try to seduce you is because he thought you were too special for all of this?”
She tilted her head toward the room filled with people, laughter, and music. Komo. The idea of Komo keeping chaste for want of her was delicious. It was a crystal pool on a hot day. She wished she could trust that it was more than a mirage. No women in three years? The very idea defied belief. Fynn took another long drag of Cate’s strange cigarette. Maybe she would try to believe it. She would try talking to Komo. She wouldn’t be stupid this time. Or maybe she would. Someone played hand drums and the beat thumped in time with her heart. With Cate at her back, she walked into the room, ready to fling herself into the fire for Komo’s love.
10. A Real Bacchanalia
Komo sat on a wide stone hearth. Girls danced in wild bids for his attention, their arms over their heads and their mouths soft with pleasure. Between the swaying bodies, Fynn caught glimpses of Komo’s legs, his hands, and his long hair over his face as he bent over his guitar. A party girl sat behind him with her legs wrapped around his waist, her naked back pink from the fire’s heat.
Jealousy was a gray, heavy thing, crouching on Fynn’s heart, sucking out any hope of happiness. She moved to leave, but met a wall of smoke and moving bodies. Dizziness knocked her to the side and she grabbed someone’s arm to keep from falling.
“Fynnie?” A fami
liar voice made her look up. She was leaning on Randy, the surfer she knew from her mornings riding the Alley. Several others of the Alley crew waved at her, dancing as they were, amid the Komo girls. Randy held a glass of wine in one hand and a rolled smoke in the other. He hugged her, the salty ends of his hair tickling her cheek.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, glad to have a reason to turn away from the scene around Komo.
“These guys brought us,” he said, motioning to three big guys leaning against the far wall. They nodded to Randy as he raised his glass. They were the uncanny surfer boys, looking just as out of place at the party as they had at the beach. The one with the light hair leaned in to say something to the others. She thought she heard the sound of insects chewing inside the walls as they ducked out of the room.
“I’m going crazy,” she said.
“We all are, sweetheart,” Randy said.
Komo’s head snapped up and his eyes met hers across the room. He broke into a smile that cut through the fog in her brain. The dancing girls turned, their eyes clouded. Cara was among them. A flash of anger crossed her face, but then disappeared so quickly that Fynn thought it must have been a trick of the flickering firelight. Then Cara was calling for her to join the dancing, beckoning her with her arms.
“I need you more than you need me.” Komo’s face cocked in a wise-ass half smile. Komo always sang when other people would have said hello. His singing warmed the centers of her bones and she wanted nothing, but to hear more of it.
“Goddess of the Three, come to me,” he sang.
Fynn ignored the dancers and the surfers and the strange boys. She sank to Komo’s feet. Cara’s sequins caught the firelight and threw it around the room in tiny golden reflections. Komo watched the dancing girls with a satisfied smile. Fynn had seen the look on his face when they were at the Athenian school and his playing put the entire commons hall full of students and teachers in a trance.
There were tables laden with fresh food and drink. Beautiful girls poured ruby-colored wine for themselves and each other. Warm, baked bread, fruit, and fine cheeses filled gold platters, and servants from the kitchen kept bringing more.
“How can you sit still while he plays?” Cara asked. “How can you resist him?” She laughed and spun away.
Beautiful women outnumbered the equally beautiful men, but everyone laughed, danced, and kissed one another in the large room with the nighttime ocean spread out before tall windows. Listening to Komo play guitar and sing was like being in a drop of amber. Komo sealed them outside of real time and the concerns of the real world. Nothing mattered, but feeling good and he made them feel so good.
Fynn understood the smooth seduction of Komo’s presence and voice. She felt it herself. She craved it in his absence. Yet she never succumbed to the wild laughter that most women fell victim to when they got too close to Komo for too long. Cara was right. As much as she secretly yearned for Komo, Fynn could resist him. She loved his music, but she never lost control.
It would be such a relief for once to lose control.
“Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” she asked him. A pair of girls writhing in front of them cut her with their eyes.
“I thought you said no,” he said over fingerpicking the beginning of a new song.
“Komo, you need help,” she said.
“I’m aware of that.” His eyes moved over the burgeoning crowd. “I told you I needed help.”
“So let’s go somewhere and talk.” She could feel so small around Komo. He eclipsed her. She was sure that the people here looked at her and wondered what someone as plain as Fynn was doing with someone like Komo. Anyone could see that Cate was wrong. Komo saw Fynn as a bodyguard. A hired hand. A little sister. What else would he see her as with someone as gorgeous as Cara around anyway?
“We were born of the stars and the sea. . . . .” Komo sang and sighs of appreciation rose to the high ceiling. Now she remembered. She had come prepared to fight demons, but, of course, everyone in the house was human, filled with human need that Komo both whet and satisfied. She’d seen it at Athenian before he was famous. Everyone would dance until they fell in exhaustion and he would never stop playing unless someone convinced him that he needed to rest.
“Komo, please,” she said. “Make this the last song. I want to talk to you.”
He strummed louder and pretended to ignore her. The two dancers moved closer, opening one another’s mouths with a long kiss. The girl behind him tightened her legs around his waist and moaned.
Cara offered a glass of red wine so dark it looked like blood. “Drink up,” she said.
Fynn took the glass, but had no intention of drinking it. The music stopped with a twang of lost notes. The clinging girl yelped as Komo stood and shed her as though he had never realized she was there. He moved behind Fynn and took the glass out of her hand. He reached around her so that she could feel his heart beat at her back and the heat of his breath on her neck. He lifted the wine to her chin.
“Drink,” he said. His mouth brushed against her ear. She closed her eyes as he pressed the rim of the glass against her lips. She took a long swallow and the warmth from the wine bloomed inside of her in a soft detonation.
He kissed her cheek. Electricity sparked on the place where his lips touched her skin. She took another sip of wine and turned around to face him. He straightened to his full height. The space between their bodies charged with a current almost too intense to survive. His eyes were golden and sleepy.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “How do you see me?” She wasn’t a shy teenager anymore. She ignored the racing terror in her heart and lifted her eyes, daring him to answer.
“I see you as my fire arrow.” He sang under his breath so that only she could hear. “I see you as my lovely one.”
“For the love of God, Komo,” Fynn said. She struggled to breathe. A smile danced on his full lips. “Talk like a normal human being.”
“Nothing normal about either of us,” Komo said. “And very little human. But so much love, and so much of the gods.” The space between them closed even further.
“Talk straight with me.” She pushed against him and it was like resisting the ocean. “I’m here, aren’t I? I stayed like you wanted me to. Who am I to you?”
“You are everything to me,” he said.
Cara wedged her way between them. She opened her palm and lay within it a tiny silver box with a four-point star engraved on top. She flipped it open to reveal two red tablets. She lifted one out to Komo. She placed it between his lips, her finger lingering for just a second inside his mouth. Fynn bit the inside of her cheek in agony, her mouth filling with the taste of metal. Komo leaned his head back and exposed his throat.
Cara pushed the silver box under Fynn’s nose.
“What is that?” Fynn asked.
“It’s a nice little something called Nine,” Cara said.
“What does it do to you?” Her own voice was lost in a tunnel. She held an empty glass, having drunk the entire thing without realizing it. Fragrant smoke curled in ribbons from the small rolled cigarettes. Half the room smoked them. Randy, the surfers, many of the girls. Fynn’s arms and legs were loose as a dancer’s. She placed her hand flat against Komo’s chest to keep her balance.
“Take it,” Cara whispered in her ear. “You deserve it, Fynn. All you do is work to help other people. All you ever do is think of the people you might save. You put everyone before yourself.”
Komo nodded in agreement, his strange-colored eyes reflecting the fire. He wasn’t thinking of demons as he faced her in the firelight consumed by whatever Nine was.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said. “We deserve this one night to get lost.” He squeezed her hips, burying his face in her shoulder so that his lips moved against her throat as he spoke. “Do Nine with me,” he said. “When I’m with you, I’m not afraid.”
Fynn moved to take the pill out of the silver box, but then stopped. “Answer me, Komo,” sh
e said, grasping at her question before it slipped away. “I’m not one of your groupies. Who am I to you?”
“You are my goddess.” She winced, as an almost-painful charge of desire moved down her body. He squeezed her hips harder, pulling her close. “You are my queen,” he said. He bent to brush his lips against hers, teasing her with the promise of a kiss. “My love.”
She let him hold her up with one arm. “Is that true?” she whispered.
“It’s only ever been you,” he said. He pressed his finger against the red tablet and lifted it to Fynn’s lips. She darted out her tongue and let it dissolve in her mouth. He chased it with a real kiss, tasting of wine and smoke. She let go into a freefall under the gentle pressure of Komo’s mouth. She fell backward, caught in the arms of the beautiful laughing girls wearing bracelets and rings and gauzy dresses with the smell of incense on their skin.
She let herself be lost. Lost in the depths of Komo’s voice and the laughing of girls and wine spilling down her throat and the feeling that she was deeply and truly wanted by someone who would never ever hurt her again.
***
Fynn ran through a forest on four graceful legs and hooves painted in gold. Komo hunted her from behind the trees and she was going to let him catch her, after a chase.
She shifted shape and time. Fynn and Komo lay together in the meadow within the walls of the Keep. They were children again, holding hands and lying on their backs watching clouds drift by in an impossibly blue sky. His father had brought him there for a visit once when Komo was little and left without him. He’d promised to return, but he never did and Mother Brigid explained to Komo that he was going to be her child now. The Keep would be his family forever. Fynn was happy, as though she had just woken from a long, deep sleep. She turned to stare into his eyes and saw in them pure youth. Then they shifted and reflected age that reached deep into the far reaches of human memory.
The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) Page 6