A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (22 page)

“Kate,” Audra said, putting her hands on her hips.

“We’ll chat later. At home.”

“Grrrr. Fine. See you later,” Audra said, throwing her hands in the air and shaking her head.

“Love you!” Kate called as she passed through the metal detectors and hurried out to her car.

***

Kate ate her sandwich in the car as she drove home through twilight. The sun dipped behind the mountains in the distance and the evening was left with a lemony-orange strip of sky against the blue horizon. She rolled the windows down and listened to the sounds of summer. Her heart was on fire with longing for something inexplicable—a place, a person, a location, some fantastical life where she’d be able to pluck Will out of her dreams and place him in a home, in a living of some kind in a world outfitted just for them. What would he do? Would he be an actor again if he had it to do over again? Or would he make different choices?

A clump of lettuce fell on her thigh and she almost swerved into an oncoming car as she tried to retrieve it. Her pulse thumped for a minute as she recovered and set the sandwich down on the passenger seat without taking her gaze from the street.

She gripped the wheel with both hands, squeezing it tight and drilled her eyes to the road. She took a couple deep breaths, thinking about how she could have just killed herself over a chunk of lettuce. In that pause between living and dying, she realized that all she got was one life. One. Her mom had been telling her that for as long as she could remember. Usually Kate just laughed and said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.”

But she didn’t
really
know. She still didn’t even get it. She should, because she was making decisions that would affect the rest of her life, but she hadn’t taken it too seriously. A person did their life one day at a time, trying to make decent enough decisions so that they didn’t end up in a dungeon somewhere or working in a brothel in Nevada, but still—who thought too hard about getting just one life? One chance at this entire maze of choice after choice after choice?

Ty was fine. There was nothing wrong with him in some intrinsic way, at least not that she could see so far. He was everything Audra mentioned. Kate could see that. She could. But it just so happened that she was having this weird crisis in her life. She was kind of dating someone else every night when she fell asleep. And . . . it was odd. And . . . she didn’t know why it was happening. What was it all for?

She bit her lip.

What if Will wasn’t dead? What if his death was faked and he was alive? He’d be an old man. So, well, unless she wanted to chain her twenty-four-year-old self to him, that just didn’t even matter.

Kate came to the street where her house was and she drove slowly. A car came up behind her, gunning its engine and trying to get her to speed up, but she continued to meander along at her Sunday-driver pace, enjoying the smells of a summer night and the warm breeze coasting along her arm as it hung out the window.

The annoyed driver revved their engine and sped by with a roar as Kate turned onto her driveway. She pulled into her parking spot where she killed the engine. Rather than jump right out, she sat there for a while, staring at the blue interior lights of her car and the flashing display of her stereo. The music was turned down low, but the equalizer was going wild as it matched the scope of the muted song.

Heaving a sigh from the deep crevices of her lungs, Kate finally pulled her keys out, grabbed her messenger bag and sandwich off the seat and got out. Her motions were sluggish, reflecting the reluctance she felt about making a choice. She knew what she should decide. She should pick the guy who was alive. Or she shouldn’t pick at all. She should just keep going along as she was, waiting to see how things worked out with Ty.

Kate balled her empty hand into a fist and shoved it into her pocket as she trudged through the cool night air, down the driveway to the front door, avoiding Brody in the backyard on purpose. If she could, she knew she would choose Will. Any day. And that’s what made her final decision so bad. For tonight, at least.

14: Hints

Kate woke in a strange house in a large bedroom with huge picture windows along one wall. She sat up and saw that she was lying in a waterbed with a white leather headboard. Each movement rocked her like a boat on water.

“What the hell?” she mumbled as she looked around, puzzled at being in such a dated bed. The decor of the room was sixties modern. Framed, abstract art hung on the walls and there was a desk in one corner with pale blue and harvest gold trimming that looked like it came out of the sixties. That was the style of the room—that vintage, future vibe.

Kate threw the covers off and rolled out of the bed. She tried to leap out, but the malleable nature of the mattress just made her sink and roll. She stood and shook off her irritation at the stupid bed and thought herself into some practical clothes—a pair of dark blue skinny capri jeans, a white boat-neck shirt, and some red Toms.

Satisfied and comfortable, Kate ran her gaze over a haphazard stack of typewritten notes on the desk looking for clues. The words on the pages were gibberish, except for one, which read, “This contract extends your life impermanently, the exact term to be determined by the grace of Cipher. Attempts to leave the boundaries of the city will be met with harsh sentences in the cerulium mines.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed. She bit her lip, feeling as though she were on the verge of a discovery. But the contents of the paper were nonsense. Cipher? Cerulium? Adrenalin coursed through her. Blood roared in her ears. “Extends your life impermanently,” she whispered. She must be in a dream. Did the note mean that Will was alive? 

She folded the paper and put it into the back pocket of her jeans and looked around.
Where am I?
There was nothing familiar about the place at all. Was she dreaming? Was it real? Did she get drunk last night and go home with a stranger? 

She would think that, but as she approached the windows, she glimpsed a blue-gray ocean. White-capped waves ruffled closer to the rocky shore, folding in on themselves and scattering like a thousand pale unicorns upon the wet black rocks. The house was on a ridge overlooking the sea.

A dream. Definitely.

In that case, Will was somewhere.

Just
knowing
that he was somewhere, she began to feel him pulling her. She went out onto a landing overlooking a living room and hurried down the stairs. The whole place was like the bedroom—sixties space-age with modular tables, chairs, and couches in that white leather style that screamed the-future-is-now!

Her heart was a bird in a cage sensing that freedom was near, if only it could break down the wire door and flutter free. She rushed through room after room, all of them empty, but decorated like someone might live there.

She made it to the bottom floor and ran through the living room into the empty kitchen where she paused only seconds to determine that Will wasn’t there. Several more rooms took her past a white grand piano and under an archway until she found herself beside an indoor pool. She spun, looking for another door. It was like she was attached to Will by a cable that was being winched along. There
. Finally
! A set of double doors that led to the outside. She pushed the doors open with her shoulder and burst into the glaring sunlight.

After the momentary blindness dissipated, Kate spotted him in the exterior pool, laying on a float, wearing sunglasses and white swim trunks.

“There you are,” he said, taking his sunglasses off. His voice broke over her as comforting and thrilling as the sun on her face and she felt the fluttering bird in her chest burst from its wire cage and soar heavenward like Icarus on his way home.

“Will,” she gasped. She was shaking all over. Why? What scared her?
That he’d be gone. And I’d be trapped in the dream. Alone.
Gone were the dreams where she woke up in his arms. Now she had to find him.

“Whoa, calm down, kitten. You OK? What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to sit up. But that almost capsized him, so he rolled his head to the side, managing to look concerned and relaxed at the same time.

“Nothing,” she panted, catching her breath. “I—I thought maybe—” she cut off, unable to say it. She would sound stupid. Desperate. She couldn’t bring herself to let him know how much he mattered to her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The air was warm and the brilliant sun burned hot on her skin.

“Come here, Kate. Get in, swim with me,” he said, opening his arms wide to indicate the water.

The pool was big and L-shaped. There was a small diving board on one side, and another end butted up against the edge of the yard where it overlooked the ridge that led down to the sea.

“Is that how you swim?” she asked with a sarcastic grin. “Where are we? Do you know?” 

“My house,” Will said, smiling softly. “At least, it was when I was alive. It looked better when it was new. Before I died, it had gotten kind of run down and so I had it renovated to be more modern. This is how it looked during my prime. On earth, that is.” He waved his arms over his head, then interlaced his fingers behind his head and laid back. “Nice, huh?”

“It’s great. But, don’t you feel kind of weird hanging out here now?” She walked around the pool, trying to get closer to him without getting in the water.

He shrugged. “I guess, a little. But—well, you come to grips with it.”

“With what?” She sat down on the edge and put her feet in. The chilly water snapped at her skin before her legs got used to it.

“Being dead.”

She nodded, feeling somber at that thought, hating it that he was dead. She wanted him to be alive, couldn’t stand the nightly restriction, couldn’t stand the thought of waking again into her reality and leaving him in the shadows. It was like dating a vampire, only worse because he was never in her sphere of reality at all.

“Kate? You OK?” he asked, taking his hands from behind his head and paddling himself closer to her.

A sorrow ricocheted through her chest as she stared at him on the float. Though he was beautiful and perfect in Kate’s eyes, he might as well have been dead like he said, and forever out of her reach. His skin was amber, his chest smooth, with a tiny bit of dark, curling chest hair. He wasn’t well cut like modern guys—proof again that he lived during a time when muscular bodies weren’t the norm—but he was lean and toned. His legs were long and thin, his feet and toes formed so well he could have been a flip-flop model.

Kate looked away from his blue eyes, which were focused and sharp on Kate. His float bumped into the side of the pool to the right of her and his fingers closed around her calf where her leg dangled in the water. She shivered, her skin seeming to light up at his touch. “Kate?”

“Yeah. I’m good. I—just—I missed you, is all. The days without you are empty,” she said, avoiding his eyes. Though she wasn’t looking at him, she could tell that he was grinning and gazing up at her in that playful, boyish manner he sometimes had.

“Oh, come on, let’s not be all sad about things. Let’s enjoy them while we can. Get in, splash around, be free and carefree. You know, you only live once, or dream once, in this case.”

“What?” she asked, jerking her eyes to his face, startled at what he’d just said. “What did you say?”

“What? I said get in and swim, have fun with me.”

“The bit about living, what did you say?”

“You only live once? And er, dream . . . once?”

“Why’d you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Seize the day, Kate.
Carpe diem
,” he stared at her leg where he was tracing a circle on it with his thumb. “You OK? I’m starting to worry.”

“I thought you were real, but now I think you must be a figment of my imagination.”

“I thought we decided I
am
real,” he said, pulling himself and the float up tight against her leg. His bicep touched her shin bone. The contact was electric.

“We did. But you just said something I’d been thinking about while I was awake.”

“And why were you thinking it?”

Their gazes were now locked. The blue of his eyes was like the ocean behind him and the water of the pool around his body. Kate was swimming in those colorful depths.

“Because I don’t want to live without you. I want you to be real, to be in my reality and not just something that happens to me at night,” she whispered, unable to hold the words back.

“Oh Kate,” he said, “I want that too. I have to have you. Now.” He used his other arm to take her hand and pull her into the water. She let him and crashed onto the float and it capsized.

It wasn’t graceful or anything resembling the ballet like Kate would have hoped. It was cold and loud and the water rushed into her face, her ears, her mouth, and she struggled to not swallow a gallon of it. Her eyes flashed open under the water and she saw him floating about three feet from her. His dark hair was swirling around his face like the halo of a devil. He stared at her, smiling, moving his arms in slow circles to keep himself beneath the water. He swam toward her and pulled her against his chest. They kissed. Kate’s body turned to flames at the surprising warmth of his mouth as it contrasted with the cold water pressing in around them. His hands moved under her billowing shirt and every touch was like a fire surrounded by ice. They twirled in the water, falling, sinking, rising. She felt his lips by her ear and was surprised to hear him say something.