by Aja James
She paused, as if considering whether she’d uttered something she oughtn’t have.
Then added, “You don’t usually wear it down though. You must tell me how you keep it so straight and shiny one day. My hair is always a bird’s nest of dry sticks.”
Eli didn’t know how to respond.
He didn’t remember her. But she obviously knew him, so he needed to find out what she knew. He needed to keep her talking to him.
“How have you been?” he decided to ask, and willed his lips into the semblance of a smile.
“I got mat—I mean—married. Your advice helped, actually. You said that I am ready to graduate from writing to myself to writing to others. So I did. I wrote my first letter, then my first poem, and my husband enjoys reading what I write very much. I now write him a letter almost every day, even though we live together, just because he enjoys reading them.”
That was when Eli realized with whom he was speaking.
The woman must be Grace Darling, the only patient he had records of, and only through the handful of emails on his laptop.
“I am glad to hear it, Grace,” he ventured to say.
She simply stared back at him expressionlessly.
Was he mistaken about her identity, then?
“I stopped by your office building before I remembered that you no longer practice there,” she said, abruptly steering the conversation in a slightly different direction.
“I guess I’m too used to the habit, after seventeen years, of seeing you like clockwork twice every month.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, since he had no memories of those visitations over the last seventeen years, not even a single one, so he simply nodded.
She stared unblinkingly up at him some more, while silent awkwardness stretched between them.
Perhaps the woman had a mental disability. It would certainly make sense, given that Eli was supposed to be her psychiatrist.
“Do you have time to have a cup of coffee or tea with me?” she invited, and her eyes widened in the wake of the invitation as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d said, as if inviting someone to share time with her was not something she usually did.
“I’ve missed our sessions together.”
Eli hadn’t had anything to drink or eat since dinner last night, and though he needed blood more than any other nourishment right now, he’d settle for coffee and tea if she was paying.
He nodded again and smiled that plastic smile.
Together, they walked to a coffee shop just across the street. Grace ordered croissants, small sandwiches and a couple of tarts in addition to coffee and tea for both of them.
“My husband is British,” she explained. “He likes to eat several small meals a day, so I’ve adopted the schedule too.”
They ate in silence for many minutes, neither feeling uncomfortable with the lack of conversation, until finally, Grace took a break from meticulously consuming her afternoon meal in regimented portions and stared intently into Eli’s eyes again.
“Are you all right, Dr. Weisman? You don’t seem your usual self.”
Eli gave her his full attention. Maybe she could give him some clues about who he was.
“Really? How would you describe my usual self?” he asked casually, trying to inject a dose of teasing into his tone.
“You are always in control,” Grace answered seriously, completely missing any undertones. “You are the most self-possessed and self-contained man I’ve ever met. And although you have always been kind to me, ever since I was a pre-teen, sometimes your stares make me uncomfortable.”
“How so?” Eli said softly, encouraging her to elaborate.
“You tell me all the time that I should try not to stare so unblinkingly at people, because I lose track of what’s going on around me and get submerged into my own mental world. But you do a lot of staring of your own.”
She paused to consider.
“Well, maybe you blink more than I do, but still. Your stares are pretty unnerving.”
“Why is that?”
She stared wordlessly into his eyes for long moments.
When he thought she’d forgotten the question, she said, “I just noticed that your eyes are different. They used to be dark brown or black, but now they’re green.”
Eli had had the same reaction when he’d first scrutinized himself in the mirror after losing his memory.
“It’s less unnerving when I stare into your eyes now,” she continued, maintaining said stare. “The green somehow makes you look less…threatening.”
“Did you feel threatened by me, Grace?”
She took some time to think again, and a part of Eli, perhaps the medical training he’d gotten at some point in his life, realized that Grace had a unique case of Asperger’s.
She always took things at face value, missing emotional undertones, subtexts, and any other subtleties. At the same time, perhaps because she was insulated from human artifice, she often saw the naked truth.
“No, I never felt threatened by you,” she replied, again answering his question very solemnly.
“I wouldn’t have continued to see you for so long if I felt uneasy. At first I didn’t know any better, I just went in for sessions because my aunt took me to your office. But when I was old enough, I could have refused to go. Instead, I always looked forward to our sessions. They made me feel less alone in the world. But…”
She paused and searched for the right words. “There was such darkness in your eyes, a bottomless well of shadows. I sometimes worried that they would pull you under, all those shadows.”
Eli reeled from her words even though his body did not outwardly move.
Her use of the word “shadows” reminded him of the demons he’d eliminated two weeks ago at the orphanage. His heart pounded harshly in his chest as a wave of foreboding crashed through him.
“Are you okay, Dr. Weisman?”
No, he wasn’t okay; he feared he was on the verge of unraveling. Of breaking apart.
Who was he?
What was he?
“For what it’s worth, Dr. Weisman, I think you’re a good person. You helped me find myself after I lost my parents. You helped me learn to love again. And you never charged me a single penny for the countless hours we spent together. If you ever need anything, just let me know.”
She scribbled some numbers on a napkin and slid it toward him.
“Maybe I can help you, too, one day.”
As stiltedly as they’d met, Eli and Grace said goodbye, she, hustling toward the Chrysler Building, and he, walking in the opposite direction with no destination in mind.
Was he a good person? Could he be a good person?
What did “good” even mean?
Fuck.
He was so tired of trying to reconcile a past he didn’t remember with the present and the future. He was exhausted of the limbo, the waiting to live, the inability to die.
He was sick of the nothingness that suffocated him. It was worse than death—to exist without feeling, without purpose, with no connection to the world around him.
The only spark of life for him had been Clara. From the first moment he saw her in the park with Annie.
Like an errant snowflake swirling through an unforgiving blizzard, he yearned for the heat of her incandescent flame. He wanted it to melt his ice.
He wanted to burn.
Eli didn’t know what made him pause, but his feet stopped moving in front of a pair of local stores.
One was a hair salon with a large advert that said, “We Buy Hair! Minimum of Ten Inches. Get Cash Today!” One was an art supplies store that displayed a new stock of sketch pads, drawing instruments and easels in the window.
Eli didn’t know what “good” meant, but he knew that he’d hurt Clara last night. He’d hated himself for it. He never wanted to do it again.
It was the only thing he knew with absolute certainty. It was the only answer amongst the endless questions that bombarded h
is consciousness, like the North Star shining steadfast in a vast, voracious darkness.
Clara.
Chapter Ten
“Don’t you like your chicken tenders, Annie?” Clara asked worriedly as the little girl picked at her food, nibbling a bit here and there, but after fifteen minutes, only eating half of one piece.
She gave a small shrug, her rosebud red mouth pursed in a rare pout.
“What is it, honey?” Clara said, stroking Annie’s back comfortingly.
She had a good idea what bothered the girl. Likely the same thing depressing her own innate joy.
Annie looked toward the curving stairs as if expecting someone to come up them at any moment. She’d been staring at the stairs, the front door, the back door a lot throughout the day.
They’d visited the Gifted Academy again in the morning for Annie to take the entrance exams. She’d passed with flying colors. She could start class as soon as Monday next week, which would free up Clara’s days to take on more private students, potentially doubling her current income. And while Annie seemed to like the new school and the teachers she met, she’d slipped back into her old sullenness, her eyes downcast, her beautiful smile nowhere in sight.
Clara sighed.
She didn’t know what to tell Annie. She didn’t know whether Eli was coming back or not. She didn’t understand why he’d so abruptly (and literally) disappeared in the first place. Somehow, her sketch of him had offended him.
Maybe it was all her fault.
Annie got up from her stool and pulled out another dinner plate from the large kitchen drawer where Clara kept all the daily dishware. She also took out a knife and fork and ripped off a square of paper towel from the roll attached to the side of the counter.
She brought her items back to the breakfast table, arranged a setting for one more person, and pulled up the third stool.
She got back on her own stool, looked meaningfully at Clara and crossed her arms, her mouth turning the forlorn pout into a stubborn press of lips, as if declaring that if someone didn’t come home to eat, then she wouldn’t eat either. She was going to sit there and wait and go hungry if she had to.
Clara tried not to show how upset she herself was with Eli’s absence.
She’d dreamed of him last night.
He had been waiting for her in her lush green forest, her pet salamanders resting on his shoulder and in the palm of his outstretched hand. The air she breathed was infused with his scent, bold, fresh, thoroughly intoxicating. She inhaled deeply, absorbing him inside of her, and the moment she did, her body lit up in flames. The closer she got to him, the brighter she burned, alive and brilliant, bursting with passion, desire and an all-consuming hunger. She wanted to devour him, melt into him, engulf him in her insatiable inferno.
She’d woken up alone and aching in the morning, cold and desperate. His absence beside her made her feel like she’d been orphaned all over again.
Clara swallowed the lump in her throat and refocused, trying to put on a brave face for Annie.
She pretended to be cheerful and light.
“Suit yourself,” she said with a smile. “More tenders for me!”
She dipped one into a small bowl of barbecue sauce and made a show of stuffing it into her mouth in two large bites and making noises of appreciation to indicate how tasty it was.
“Mmmmmm. This is soooo good, Annie, I don’t think I’ve ever had—”
Suddenly, Annie shot up from her stool and sprinted like a ferret down the stairs, so fast she was a streak of red hair and blue sundress as she hurried past.
By the time Clara caught up with her, Annie had swung the front door open and was looking outside to and fro.
But no one was there, at least, not the person they both wanted to see.
It was almost eight o’clock, and there were some people walking down the street and across the small park in front of their apartment, on their way home from dinner or work or going out to meet friends.
Just the usual. Nothing special to see or take note.
Clara suspected nothing would feel special again without Eli.
And then Annie was gesturing excitedly at something leaning against their doorstep.
A giant set of sketch pads, and…could it be? A deluxe wood box of Faber-castell drawing supplies, one Clara had lusted after in the window of a high-end boutique art store downtown. The art materials would have cost over four hundred dollars!
Suddenly, she sensed him.
Eli.
He was nearby.
“Stay inside,” she told Annie, “I’ll be right back.”
And with that, she hurried down the brownstone steps, in her nightshirt and bare feet again, and ran in the direction her heart pounded towards, as if it were being pulled out of her chest by an invisible string.
“Eli!” she called at the back of a tall, broad-shouldered man in clothes she quite clearly recognized because she’d just bought them for him the day before. But she’d missed him earlier when she looked around outside her apartment.
Because this man’s head was shaven.
He tensed and stopped walking, and now that there was no hair to hide the back of his neck, she saw the clench of the long, sinuous muscles there, the granite hardness of his angular jaw.
He started to walk away again when she said nothing, but she moved faster and threw her body forward, wrapping her arms around him from behind, holding his back tightly to her front, pressing her cheek between his shoulder blades.
“Don’t go,” she whispered against his shirt. “Come home with me.”
He stood still for many moments, so still he didn’t seem to be breathing.
Finally, he gently broke her hold around his waist, making her fear that he was intending to leave. Instead, he turned around and looked down into her wide eyes, staring up at him, open and trusting.
“You shouldn’t be outside like this,” he said in that low, smoky voice. “It’s not safe for someone like you.”
“But you’re here to protect me,” she returned without hesitation, then added for good measure, “Come home with me. Annie and I don’t feel safe without you.”
He continued to stare at her, silent and unreadable.
Clara took in his altered appearance, her eyes longingly roving over his features. Whereas his luxurious hair made him look like an ancient princeling too lofty for the mortal realm, the shaved head called to mind a fierce, battle-hardened warrior, starkly beautiful, yet somehow vulnerable because every feature on his face, every angle and hollow, was now laid bare.
He looked almost like an entirely different male.
She reached up a hand to caress his sharp cheekbone and unyielding jaw, so at odds with the softness of his perfectly full mouth.
He captured her hand in his and held it firm.
“If I come with you now, you might regret it later. But it will be too late to go back.”
Clara smiled.
“I never go back. I only go forward. Come home, Eli.”
*** *** *** ***
It was 5:17am in St. Petersburg Russia.
Anastasia glanced at her wrist.
9:17pm in NYC.
No matter what time it was in the world, it was way past time for the Paladin to make contact with her.
Not one for sitting still and waiting, she’d gone out after midnight to the cemetery to scope out every inch of the area, easily flipping over the tall metal gates that guarded the place outside of visiting hours.
There had been no signs of a fight. No clues as to whether the deal between Antonov and the Chinese took place. And no word all day and night from Dalair.
Ana didn’t like it.
Every instinct told her that something had gone wrong. If the Pure warrior had gone in pursuit of Antonov or the Chinese contact, he would have at least alerted her. She had to assume at this point that he’d been compromised.
The question was: was he alive or dead, and if alive, had he been taken?
She connected to the Cove through her wrist-com. Devlin answered almost immediately.
“We have a problem,” she said without preamble. “I think the Pure Ones’ Paladin might be in trouble. He was supposed to make contact with me by sundown yesterday, but it’s been almost twelve hours, still no word.”
“Hang on,” Devlin said, presumably putting her on speaker so that whoever else was there with him could hear her.
“I checked with the Pure Ones’ Consul after your last note four hours ago,” Maximus spoke up. “He said he was not aware that Dalair was working with us. He had sent Dalair to Russia to look up Pure Ones on Medusa’s target list. That is all. He did not know about the arms deal we are tracking.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Ana growled, thinking back on her conversation with Dalair. “You and I both saw the communication from the Shield before we deployed the mission. It said that the Paladin was going to work with us on this. And Dalair certainly didn’t refute it. He met me at the first contact point on schedule.”
“There’s more,” Devlin cut in, less languidly than usual, betraying the severity of the situation. “The Elite and the Circlet did their own digging and could not find any trace of Antonov in Russia, nor any inkling of an arms deal with the Chinese. Grace spent the last few hours retracing our leads and also came up with nothing. It’s as if we’ve been chasing a ghost.”
Maximus came back on the line, “The only information the Pure Ones could gather point to the fact that the Paladin last made contact with you, Ana, and now…”
“And now he’s gone,” she finished.
Shit. This didn’t look good.
“Does the Shield think we’re responsible for his disappearance?”
She could almost hear Maximus’ scowl. “Nothing has been alleged yet. The Consul has been extremely careful and diplomatic.”
“I’ll go back out and search a wider radius, go over the cemetery with a fine tooth comb. I can—”
“I need you to head to Blagoveshchensk on the Russia-China border ASAP,” Maximus interrupted. “We have video footage of two truckloads of weapons moving quickly to the Amur River checkpoint. One of Antonov’s old mafia cronies has been ID’ed. This could be the real deal while Antonov was a smoke screen.”