He released me with a shrug. “Then eat.”
My hand continued to tingle after he let go. I lifted the wrap, tried to concentrate on that feeling of motion as I bit down, especially around my lips and tongue.
I was chewing for a few seconds before I could pay attention enough to notice it really did taste different. Well, not taste exactly—although a subtle array of textures lived under that bitter, damp smell. The real difference felt more like touch, but so infused with my other senses it blurred them together, making them hard to pick apart. Absorbing the plant’s light was like inhaling gentle breaths of deliciously scented air.
The feeling was nearly...sensual.
“Don’t go too far into it, Allie,” he warned.
I watched him relax as he chewed, like someone getting a massage. His pale eyes flickered to mine, as if he’d heard that, too.
“I had to learn to eat blind when young,” he said. “To blend with humans.” He swallowed what was in his mouth. “It is not uncommon for the Council to require service of seers born of certain castes. My parents were asked to give one of theirs...as an infiltrator.”
He returned my blank look, coloring slightly.
“Given my blood type,” he plowed on. “I was the logical choice. The food was of particular issue to me. I would fight them on it, which angered my father. He did not want me embarrassing him in front of the Council. I was already...” He paused, then shrugged again. “...It is complicated. I was not his blood child, and moreover, he did not favor me. Raising me was his duty. He was adamant that I do mine.”
I took another bite of the plant burrito, if only to keep my face from showing a reaction.
“That sucks,” I said, awkward.
We continued eating in silence. Finishing the wrap, I rolled the plastic into a ball and stuffed it back in the backpack, grabbing a bottle of water and twisting off the cap before I drank.
“There is more,” he commented. “If you are still hungry.”
Nodding, I finished the water and leaned back, sliding around to avoid sharp spots with my shoulder blades. I closed my eyes.
He cleared his throat. “You cannot sleep,” he said.
Realizing he was right, I felt my heart sink. Sleep sounded heavenly, even on condom-strewn dirt.
“We may as well talk,” he said.
Sighing, I sat up straighter. I stuck my arms back into the sleeves of my jacket.
“No, thanks,” I said. I felt him tense, but ignored it, too tired to play at being polite. Crawling forward, I reached for the metal door.
He sat up. “No. You cannot go outside.”
I craned my neck around, suddenly even more tired. “Really? I really can’t just go look at the water?”
He shook his head. “It is an unnecessary risk.”
“What is?” I said. “Windburn?”
“Come here.” He leaned forward, and I backed away from his hands. “Now, Allie. I am too tired for this...”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“Do you?”
I hesitated, considered lying. “No,” I said.
He shook his head, gesturing. “Then no.”
“Are you going to beat me up if I try to go outside?”
His eyes focused on mine in disbelief. After a pause, they grew openly angry. “I don’t need to beat you...I can tie you up and drive a stake in the ground!”
Realizing I was too tired for this as well, I slid back on the dirt, sitting on the blanket. Watching me, he ran fingers through his black hair, muttering in German.
I caught enough that I flinched.
I saw him notice, and stare. Not needing that all that much either, I rested my face on my arms. Suddenly I was more tired than I thought I could stand.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I glanced up, then wished I hadn’t. The guilt was still in his eyes.
“I did not know you knew German,” he said.
I shook my head. “I don’t.” At his silence, I sighed. “I had a roommate from Stuttgart. I picked up a few words. ‘Immature’ and ‘bitch’ happen to be two of them.” I saw him wince. “...She argued with her girlfriend a lot.”
His skin darkened. Lacing his fingers, he nodded, staring at his feet.
“I apologize.”
“Forget it.”
“I did not mean—”
“I said forget it.” I rested my face on my folded arms. “I know you’re trying. You suck at it, but you’re trying. I’m just not used to sitting in dirt holes, sleep-deprived. And I hate being ordered around all the time. Since I’ve known you, it seems like no one ever wants to do anything else.” At his silence, I added, “But I told Ullysa I’d listen to you...so it’s my fault.”
The silence lengthened.
“Do you want to know more about who you are?” he said.
Grimacing, I shook my head. “No.” I closed my eyes, then opened them again, remembering I really couldn’t sleep.
“Allie,” he said. He waited until I turned my head. “It’s not only to stay awake. I want us to talk. I want to...move past this somehow.”
I nodded, dejected. “Okay.”
His brows drew together. “You would rather fight?”
“No.” I said. “That’s why I was hoping we could just...not talk.”
At his silence, I bit my lip. Looking at his face, I sighed again. He really was trying. I, on the other hand, was being a brat.
I took another breath. “I’m sorry. I really am tired.”
When he didn’t look up, I tried again.
“Look,” I said. “...That whole thing in Seattle.” I felt him stiffen, but went on anyway. “I was avoiding you that morning. I’m not denying that. I felt like roadkill, and you seemed really pissed off...” Feeling my cheeks warm as I fumbled around the other thing, the real reason I’d stayed away from him, I met his gaze. “...But I didn’t ‘offer’ you to Kat. I said she could see you. And...” I hesitated. “...Well, I guess it was the wrong thing to say. I mean, clearly...it was the wrong thing. So I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Revik.”
There was another silence.
Seeing his expression grow slightly less hard, I added,
“No one would tell me anything. I guess I could have asked you, but it seemed a little heavy for chess conversation. I know it’s some seer thing, but that’s all I know.” Waiting another beat, I tried again. “What I’m saying is, I still don’t know anything, Revik.”
He just looked at me. Then he exhaled, clicking softly.
“Thank you,” he said.
I bit my lip, then shrugged, meeting his gaze.
“So do you want to do it now?” I said. “Tell me, I mean. About that thing—”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes showing a faint alarm. “No...I am too tired to talk about that now. I do want to tell you something, though.”
“Fine,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”
He looked up the cement walls of the lighthouse. I saw his eyes cloud, then focus, as if he were practicing more than one way of saying it. Turning, he seemed to give up.
“I didn’t fuck her,” he said. “Not even that morning.”
“Jesus.” I winced, covering my eyes. “I don’t remember in any way asking about that.”
“I wanted to,” he said. “But I didn’t.”
“Great,” I said, fighting anger. “Good for you.”
He studied my face, then rubbed his own with a hand. His accent grew stronger. “There is no reason to be embarrassed. Seers are naturally possessive...I gave you cause. I didn’t mean to.” Thinking, he reconsidered. “Well. Yes, I did.”
I stared at the floor as I sorted through his words. Finally, I shook my head.
“Yep. Still not asking, Revik.”
He stuffed the remains of the plant burrito he’d been eating into the backpack. He looked tired...and now, angry.
I shouldn’t care. Why did I care about this? Taking off my jacket, I bunched it up for
a makeshift pillow, stuffing it under my head.
I felt him staring as I dragged half of the blanket over my body.
“Allie,” he said. “You cannot sleep.”
“I know.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe.”
I sank my head into the jacket. I was angry, too. I couldn’t bring myself to shove it aside, even after I felt him notice, even when he continued to stare at me.
It didn’t help that at least half of my rage came from confusion, an almost cloying inability to understand him. Why had he told me that stuff about his childhood? Why the chess, for that matter? And why had he been so sure I’d want to know about him and Kat? What had he even meant by it, anyway? Did saying he hadn’t fucked her mean intercourse only? Because that left a pretty wide range of inbetweens that my imagination was more than happy to supply with images...especially since he hadn’t minded getting a dick massage and shoving his tongue down her throat right in front of me.
And why the hell did I care about this again?
I heard a snap and sigh of plastic and air, then the sound of him drinking. The backpack rustled, followed by his leather-covered shoulders meeting the cement wall. I closed my eyes, opening them when I remembered I couldn’t sleep.
“Can I please go outside?” I said.
He shook his head, clicking softly. “No.”
“Then talk. Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Anything,” I said. “Who was your real father?”
He sighed, moving so that the leather crinkled again. “My biological parents were killed by humans when I was very young. I do not remember them.”
I closed my eyes, cursing myself silently, then turned to look at him.
“Revik. I’m sorry—”
“I raised the subject,” he said. “It’s fine, Allie.”
I watched his face as his mind seemed to go somewhere else.
“Were you really a Nazi?” I said.
His eyes turned slowly in my direction.
“Yes,” he said. “...In the way you mean it. In the strictest sense...meaning politically...no.”
I wasn’t sure how to follow on that.
“So,” I said. “Did you leave after? When you—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Averting his eyes, he shrugged. “I don’t remember most of that time, anyway.”
“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”
He sighed, clicking his tongue. “It was a condition of my coming back. A portion of my memory was forfeit. I believe it was partly mechanical...I lost some simply by being separated from the network. Some was a bargain Vash made for my life. With the Rooks.” His eyes remained on his laced fingers. “I imagine I knew things. Things the Rooks needed me to forget.”
Realizing my mouth hung open, I closed it.
“Forfeit?” I said. “How much is gone?”
His eyes grew a touch colder. “I don’t know. I can guess, by piecing together dates with what I remember.” His face smoothed to neutral as he cleared his throat. “...It is very strange that you saw any of it. No one else ever has. Perhaps it has something to do with who you are.” He glanced at me, his eyes and voice casual.
“May I ask...how much did you see?”
Great. I’d just walked into another potential minefield. I tried to be reassuring.
“Not much. You and your wife—” He flinched visibly. “...I saw you in jail, and that guy, Terian. I also saw you in Russia, I think. Something about tanks being stuck in the mud. You seemed unhappy about the way the war was going...” I trailed, figuring that last part was safe at least. “You and some guy talked about who would lead that part of the front.”
His eyes grew calm as he rested his chin on his hands.
“How old are you?” I said, when he didn’t break the silence. “You and that guy Terian...you look exactly the same.”
He laced his fingers together. For a moment, I saw him thinking again, as if considering possible responses. Finally, he shrugged.
“I am young for a seer,” he said.
After a lengthier pause, he leaned his head against the wall.
It wasn’t until another minute or so had passed that I realized that was all the answer I was going to get.
15
MURDER
THE DATE WAS May 12th.
I recycled that piece of information from a dropped comment by Revik about our flights, when we would arrive in Tai Pei versus when we left the airport in Vancouver, BC. I didn’t really hear him when he said it; the fact hit me such that I stopped my hand in mid-motion before the white, triangle-shaped skirt of the woman symbol on the bathroom door of the diner where we’d stopped to eat breakfast.
I stood there, frozen, for more than one heartbeat.
I thought of my mom. My eyes lit on a pay phone bolted inside a shadowed alcove to my right. I blinked at it, nearly hallucinating with fatigue, then glanced behind me, watching Revik’s back as he slumped into a red vinyl booth.
Completing the motion of my hand, I entered the restroom.
On my way out, minutes later, I spotted a black plastic tray covered in Canadian coins on an empty table. Scooping it up, I dumped the change into my palm and left the tray on the bar without breaking stride. My fellow-waitress code brought me a twinge of guilt, but I shook it off.
I slid into the creaking booth across from Revik.
“You got me coffee?” I said.
He nodded. I saw him tracking faces and sighed, relieved when I realized he’d barely noticed my absence.
I drank coffee and he used his to warm his hands. Our waitress came back, topped off both of our cups, then lingered, smiling at Revik.
“Know what you want to eat yet, honey?”
He frowned, picking up the menu. “No. Go away.”
The woman froze, her mouth open. I stared at him too, equally surprised, but more amused than our waitress. Snapping her mouth shut, she turned and walked away, taking her coffee pot with her.
I watched her go, then noted Revik’s eyes on mine. I followed his gaze to my hands, which were methodically shredding a paper napkin. I pushed the napkin away.
“They can’t help it,” he said. He seemed to mean his words to be reassuring. “We’ll both distract people for awhile. Humans, too.”
“Distract people?” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, lifting his coffee mug to his lips. He took a sip of the dark brown fluid, then grimaced, lowering the mug back to the table.
I smiled. “What? Did you forget you didn’t like it?”
He fingered the mug’s ceramic handle, frowning at me slightly.
Glancing at the bar counter, I said, “Well, you’d better not order anything now. They spit in the food sometimes, you know.” When he didn’t look over, I tried again.
“How will we know Ullysa’s people?”
“They’ll know me. I’ll likely know some of them.”
I nodded, reacting slightly to his words. I didn’t know what triggered my reaction at first. Then my eyes followed a man outside, watching him stare at a woman in a skin-tight miniskirt standing across the street. She smiled at him, her mouth a dark red slash, and I found my thoughts drifting to Seattle.
“So we just get on the plane?” I said evenly.
“Yes.” Watching my face, he added, softer, “There is nothing to worry about, Allie.”
Hearing the second meaning under his words, I pretended I hadn’t...which wasn’t hard, since I had only the vaguest idea what it was about.
I tried to think instead about where we’d be in the next two days. In the course of our awkward “talk” the night before, Revik said the part of Russia where we’d be going remained nearly wild, almost untouched. Bears roamed the tundra and woods, along with wolves, eagles, foxes. I thought about my mom’s fascination with wolves and smiled...then frowned, glancing over my shoulder at the bathroom door.
“Okay.” I looked at him. “I h
ave to go again. I think it’s the coffee.”
I watched his eyes focus out the window, coming to rest on the same woman I’d been looking at seconds before.
His gaze sharpened and flickered down, appraising.
“Okay,” I repeated. I planted my hands on the table and stood. “I’ll be back.”
He didn’t look up as I left.
When I glanced back, he was still looking out the window. He took another sip of lukewarm coffee as I watched, and grimaced.
I SLID ONTO the wooden bench under the pay phone and lifted the receiver, throwing all the coins I had into the slot. I found myself relieved they even had coin phones in Canada; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one in SF. I punched in the familiar number, shifting so that my back faced the corridor.
The phone rang.
After a pause, it rang again.
“Come on,” I murmured. “Pick up.”
A click startled my ears. My heart lifted...
But only in the pause before my mother’s antique answering machine switched on, playing a message so old I’d memorized it before high school.
“...We’re not at home right now.” Mom’s voice sang out the words like small bells. “...So pleeease leave a message after the tone...BEEP!” She laughed. “Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes!”
“Dork,” I muttered, out of habit.
The message machine beeped.
TERIAN GAZED IN fascination at the metallic box on the tile counter.
He hadn’t known such machines still existed. It was like looking at an old linotype machine, or a working trebuchet and its pile of stones, waiting to be flung over a castle wall. The phone stopped its high-pitched trill and shuddered to life. Silence wafted after the initial message, but from the static, Terian knew it hadn’t finished.
“...Ha ha, just kidding! Here it comes...”
The machine let out a loud, atonal bleep.
Terian’s new body, still unfamiliar in passing glimpses on reflective surfaces, tensed in excitement. After all, he knew who wasn’t calling. The Seven as well as the Org watched the house and its single occupant, so they might even know he was inside by now, but Terian didn’t mind that, either.
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