Fade To Midnight (11 page)

“No,” Edie said quietly. “I have no idea who this Craig person is. Just that he's poison for you. Drop him. Run away.”

“I love Craig!” The girl's blue eyes bulged. “And he loves me! So just…stay away from him! Shut your mouth! Don't talk about him!”

Why, oh why, did she do this to herself? Why didn't her psychic gift come with a protective mechanism attached that would let her know if there was any point in giving a warning or not?

“I'm sorry,” she repeated. “It wasn't my business.”

“Shut up,” the girl said, her voice wobbling. “You…you nosy bitch.” She grabbed her book, and ran, shoving people out of her way.

Edie shuddered, seeing the empty, bulging eyes. Dark marks on her throat. Strangled. God forbid. But maybe, just maybe, being warned might make a difference for her. She could only hope. It made her feel raw, helpless. A mass of antennae, and no off switch.

Except the meds. If she preferred dead calm. No pencils, charcoal, ink. That was her off switch, if she could swallow it. But she couldn't.

She pasted a smile on and looked up—

And forgot the redheaded girl, her deadly lover, and everything else she'd ever thought, or known. Including her own name.

Fade Shadowseeker stood right before her.

E
die rubbed her eyes, looked again. Still there. Still him. He was extravagantly tall, broad, built. His face was thin, his cheeks carved deep under jutting cheekbones. The spiky hair, the flat, grim mouth. The scars. The invisible mantle of controlled power humming around him, brushing against her body like a million tiny tickling fingers, though he was a yard away, across the table.

His eyes wiped her mind blank. That piercing green that laid bare everything it looked upon. She knew that face, though she'd only seen it once. She couldn't mistake those eyes. Those scars. She'd seen the wounds that caused them. She wished that she had not.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't blink. Their eyes were locked. His eyes glowed with some intense emotion. There was an angry crimson spot in one of them. It made the green seem even more intense.

The person behind him in line began to clear her throat. Fade stepped forward and laid down his books. He held out his hand.

She took it, and dragged in a breath at the shivery feeling. It flashed across her skin, like wind rippling grass, rustling leaves. The ringing and dinging of a hundred tiny bells and chimes inside her.

She stared at her hand, swallowed up inside of his. Her publicist approached, coughing discreetly. “Edie? They need to wrap this up.”

Edit tried to reply, but a dry squeak came out of her throat. The guy gazed down, unmoving. A monument, a mountain. So silent, and intense. So beautiful. Like glacial lakes, like thundering waves, piled up banks of clouds. Wild animals. The uncontrollable power of nature.

She cleared her throat. “I sign with my right,” she told him, her voice thin. “You have to let go, if you want me to, um, sign your books.”

He let go. She took her hand back, peeking at it as if expecting it to be somehow changed by that momentous contact, but it was just her usual thin, inkstained paw. She opened his first book, struggling to remember what she was supposed to do. Um. Yes. Signing books. She paused, pen poised over the paper. “Your name?”

Something flashed in his eyes. “You don't know it?”

She stared up at him. How could she? Was she supposed to know it? She shook her head, mutely.

“My name is Kev,” he said quietly. “Kev Larsen.”

She scrawled something unintelligible to Kev on all four books, and pushed them back. He took them, moved aside politely for the next person, but didn't go away. Oh, God. He was waiting for her. Oh, God.

Excitement bubbled inside her. She was so aware of his presence, looming by the table while she chatted with the last few die-hard fans.

Julie, her publicist, came marching over, and gave the guy a cold look. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked him.

The man ignored Julie. “I was wondering if you would have a cup of coffee with me,” he asked Edie. His low, quiet voice was wonderfully resonant. Full of sparkling harmonics that made her body tingle.

Edie hesitated, and Julie chimed in. “Have you two met?”

“Yes,” he said. The certainty in his voice brooked no argument.

Julie gave her a sharp look. “Is this true? Do you know this guy?”

Know him? As if she could be said to know him. But she couldn't explain anything so improbable to the practical, nuts-and-bolts Julie. She hadn't even grasped it herself, yet.

She nodded, jerkily. Yeah. She, uh, knew him. Close enough.

“Well, then. I gotta run. Tell me what's going on later, OK?” She shot the man a suspicious look. “You sure you'll be OK?”

OK? Such a bland state of existence, to describe standing five feet from her ultimate fantasy, Fade Shadowseeker, inexplicably made flesh and inviting her out to coffee. She managed to nod.

After Julie's heels clicked purposefully into the distance, Edie shrugged on her coat, grabbed her art bag, and risked another peek.

Sure enough, he got her again. She went blank, wordless, staring stupidly up into those eyes. Frozen by his outsized charisma.

He offered her his arm. The little smile and the courtly gesture broke the spell, thank God. She took it, and they were walking together.

He pulled sunglasses out and put them on. They passed the bookstore coffee shop, but people whose books she'd just signed were there. She shook her head at his questioning glance. “Somewhere else.”

They walked out and strolled silently down the block together until they found another coffee shop, this one almost deserted. He held open the door for her, bought them both a cup of coffee at the counter, waited while she doctored hers with various sugary and creamy contaminants, and followed her to a table in the far corner.

He took off his sunglasses, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry about wearing these indoors,” he said. “I know it looks affected, but I had a head injury recently, and the daylight's too bright for my eyes.”

“Oh. I'm sorry. Please, put them on if you need them,” she urged.

“No, it's OK in here. Not too bright. I've been waiting a long time. I want to see your real colors,” was his cryptic reply. She gave him a puzzled look, and he clarified. “I don't want to look at you tinted green.”

“OK.” Her gaze flicked away. It had been more manageable when he wore the glasses. It was like looking at the sun. His gorgeousness was burning a hole in her retinas. Those eyes. So shockingly bright.

“So,” she began, trying to sound brisk. “What's this all about?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said.

That left her feeling uncomfortably on the spot. “Tell you what?”

He pulled the Fade Shadowseeker books she had signed for him out of the bookstore shopping bag, and spread them out on the table so all four covers showed. “You seem to know all about me.”

Unease deepened. She stared at him. “Those books are fiction,” she said. “Completely and absolutely creations of my imagination.”

“Yeah?” He opened the third book,
Midnight's Oracle,
and flipped partway through. “See this? Where Fade goes over the waterfall?”

She leaned, looked. “Sure. I drew it. What of it?”

“That happened to me, four months ago,” he said.

She blinked helplessly, starting and abandoning a dozen different responses to that preposterous statement. Finally, she flipped the book open to the copyright page, and pointed. “Repeat after me,” she said. “All resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.”

“It's true,” he said quietly. “A matter of public record. It happened on June 24th. Read about it in the online archives of the
Oregonian.
”

She wonderered where this game was leading. Maybe into a trap she should be smarter in avoiding. “I wrote that book before that date,” she informed him. “A year before. You could have read my book first.”

His lip twitched. “You think I staged it? You ever look out over the top of Twin Tails Falls? I broke my arm, my thigh. I wouldn't have done that voluntarily. For any sum of money.”

“Oh, and I imagine you saved a teenage girl from drowning right before you fell, right?” she challenged.

He shrugged. “Actually, it was a teenage boy, in my case. I jumped in to help him out. Ask the kid if he pulled that stunt to live out the story in your graphic novel. Might be good for a laugh.”

She shook her head. “Coincidence,” she repeated.

“I would buy one coincidence, or two, or eight, or fifteen,” he said. “But not hundreds of them.”

Suspicion grew inside her, and with it, disappointment so intense, it made her throat burn. “I see where this is going,” she said. “For the record, I'll tell you right now that I know absolutely nothing about your stupid little life, nor do I want to. Everything I have written or drawn is my own pure, spontaneous invention. So if you plan on suing me—”

“Edie, no.”

“That's Ms. Parrish to you, mister, and if you want to sue for plagiarism, or whatever it is you're contemplating, go ahead and try. It happens a lot. It's one of the shittier things about being the daughter of an extremely wealthy man, and you'd be surprised how many shitty things there are about that. After the third time, my dad bought me insurance. I'll give you the numbers of our team of lawyers, if you'd like to save yourself some time.” She got to her feet. “As for me, I don't have time for this insulting bullshit. I don't appreciate being accused of—”

“Stop!” He grabbed her wrist, and tugged. “I'm not suing you! I would never attack you! That's the last thing in the world I would ever do. Please. Sit. Please, Edie.”

His voice had a subtle commanding quality that unknit her tension. Her knees gave way, dumping her onto the chair. She yanked her hand away and put both hands in her lap, twisting her fingers til they were bloodless. “So, if that's not it, what do you want from me?”

“I want to tell you a story,” he said quietly.

She waited for more, baffled. “A story that you want me to tell in one of my novels? I don't use other people's ideas. I don't need to, because I've got plenty of ideas of my own, and besides—”

“No. I'm talking about my own personal story. Because I think, in some way or another, you already know it.”

“You don't get it,” she said, helplessly. “I know nothing about you! I didn't even know your name until you told me! Why are you being so cryptic? Tell me what you want! Stop hinting! Stop playing mind games!”

“I would if I could. But I'm at a disadvantage, because I don't know exactly what I'm asking you for.”

She wondered uneasily if the guy had mental problems. Gorgeous and charismatic though he might be, he was making no flipping sense at all. “Excuse me?”

He let out a controlled breath, eyes fixed on his untouched coffee.

“I was found, eighteen years ago,” he said quietly. “I'd been beaten, tortured. I had some inexplicable brain injury. I wasn't capable of speaking, or even writing, for years. I pushed a broom in a diner, mopped floors, washed dishes. I have no memory of who I was before.”

She stared at him, speechless and openmouthed. It was her backstory setup for Book One of the Fade Shadowseeker series.

Not possible, that this man's life had followed the same…oh, please. No way. He had to be lying. Had to. Her mind reeled, fought it.

“But I do have dreams,” he went on. “Vivid dreams. I've always thought that maybe these dreams were of the life I had before. And one of those dreams is of you, Edie.” He reached out, and gently touched the back of her hand. The glancing contact made her shiver.

“Have you seen me before?” he asked. “I think you have. I saw it in your eyes, the moment you saw me. I see it from your books.”

She nodded, like a puppet. She couldn't lie to him, nor could she think of any coherent reason for doing so. “A long time ago.”

His fingers fastened around her hand. “Tell me.”

So she told him what she had to tell; the incident on her eleventh birthday. The bleeding burned man, pleading with Daddy in his Flaxon office eighteen years ago. The security guards that came running. The guard the burned man had thrown through the window. Watching him be dragged away, to an unknown fate.

That was all. It seemed so little, in the face of his hunger for knowledge, but he didn't look disappointed. His eyes were alight with cautious excitement. “Flaxon,” he said. “Interesting.”

“I had no idea what you were talking about, but it sounded terrible,” she finished. “Murder, torture. I had nightmares for years.”

“Not my name?” he asked. “You never heard it?”

She shook her head. “I was eleven,” she said. “I never heard it said, if anyone knew it. My parents refused to talk about you. I got punished for mentioning you.” She paused. “My father might know more,” she said. “But I doubt he'd be willing to talk to you about it.”

Hah. That was a flipping understatement, if she'd ever made one.

“Christopher Osterman did this to me,” he said, touching the scars on his face. “There were others, but he was the driving force.”

That, at least, was no surprise. “Dr. O.” The name left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“You knew him?”

She nodded. “I did the Haven program, when I was fourteen.”

“You don't look surprised to find out he was a psychopath.”

“I'm not,” she said. “I knew he was rotten. I told my father, but Dad didn't believe me. He thought I was just trying to wiggle out of any efforts to improve myself. Being weak and whiny and defeatist.”

“So he made you do the Haven program? Why? What for?”

“I was depressed, doing badly in school,” she explained. “Dad wanted to fix me. Soup me up. Dr. O talked a good line, but I don't think Daddy realized exactly what the brain potential workshop entailed. Dr. O stimulated our brains with electricity and drugs, to enhance our mental function. So he said. It was…well, it was weird.”

Kev's mouth hardened. “Did it work?”

She shivered. “I guess that depends on what you mean by working,” she hedged. “You might get in touch with the liaison from Helix to Osterman's research facility, see if they have documentation on the Flaxon era. They might be able to tell you something.”

“Hmmm.” He looked into his coffee cup.

“I don't understand why you came to me,” she told him. “I know so little. I can't help you. With anything.”

“On the contrary. You're the only one who ever has helped me.”

She gazed at him, blank and bewildered. “How could I?” she demanded, almost angrily. “I did nothing. It was awful to watch that. I felt so helpless.”

“You did help,” he insisted. “In my dreams.”

“Ah! Your dreams!” She laughed, nervously. “It's funny, to get credit for how I behaved in another person's dreams. I don't even know what I did in them, so how can I—”

“You were my angel. When I needed help, you helped me.”