Allie's War Season One (4 page)

In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would think he was a cop.

Hell, maybe he
was
a cop. Had I done anything to warrant a
cop
following me, though? Even with that freakout in the bar and the GPS anklet, I figured I was pretty much a nonentity in their eyes. First time offender, no previous history of drugs or violence. I was pretty sure my public defense lawyer convinced them of the “temporary insanity” thing, even if it didn’t get me off the hook with community service or the anklet.

I still found Mr. Mono’s ethnicity impossible to pinpoint.

He had gorgeous eyes––almond-shaped, but I had no idea what color they were, or even if they had a color at all. The few times I’d seen them in natural light, they’d looked almost like glass, faintly tinted with maybe blue or green.

His mouth was narrow, his face angular. Straight black hair, could use a hair cut.

He touched the formica tabletop with long-fingered hands, staring down at his own digits with the same almond-shaped eyes, the same eerily pale irises. I could gauge no emotion there, no expression at all. His face remained endlessly flat, his body inconspicuous in its stillness.

“He’s probably a sociopath,” Jon grunted.

“Sure. Maybe.” Cass shrugged. “But I like his hands.”

“You said that about
Jack,
Cass,” I reminded her.

“Yeah, well I was right, wasn’t I?”

I didn’t touch that one. I squinted at the black-haired man. Some part of me wanted to dismiss him, to follow Jon’s lead and put him in the weirdo category. After all, the guy had been following me for weeks now, and he’d never actually said a word to me.

“He’s like a walking corpse,” I said a second later. “...Minus the goth. He probably lives in his parent’s basement. I get Asperger’s syndrome, listens to bad cowboy music.”

Jon stifled a laugh, but Cass saw through me.

She gestured with her slim fingers, tugging at a silver chain around her neck. “He looks like there’s more to him than that, Al.”

“Again. You said that about
Jack,
Cass.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?”

I grimaced, glancing back across the room.

The black-haired stranger rose to his feet.

I watched him reach into a back pocket and extract a money clip. Like he had the day before, and the day before that, he left actual paper money on the table, and well in excess of what he owed. He wore a single piece of jewelry, a silver ring on his smallest finger.

“He’s leaving,” Cass said.

Jon yanked on my arm. “Stop staring, Al.” He sharpened his voice when I didn’t turn. “Al...seriously. What are you doing?”

I watched Mr. Mono move softly out the diner’s front door. It was already dark outside, but the neon sign lit up his face as he passed by the plate windows. He didn’t hurry, and just when I thought he wouldn’t, he turned.

That lamp-like stare met mine.

When it did, the world became soft.

I grew aware of the sharp lines of the diner blurring. Night filled in the gaps...a sky teeming with violet and black clouds, a backdrop streaming further back than my mind could reach.

Stars exploded behind my eyes, a single shocking plume of brilliance.

And it is beautiful.

So incredibly...

The clouds enveloped my mind, leaving nothing but silence.

3

EXIT

“EXCUSE ME? MA’AM?”

Someone near me cleared his throat.

My eyes clicked back into focus.

I found myself looking at a man in a dark blue suit. A bright red silk tie contrasted the blue of his jacket, setting off the auburn highlights in his long hair. His light brown eyes studied mine, crinkling at the edges in a smile.

When he cleared his throat politely, my gaze drifted down to his hand, where he held out several twenty dollar bills.

“Can I use paper currency here?” the man said.

He spoke like someone who’d already asked the same question several times. I blinked, then looked down at his hand. Christ. He was a customer. I’d probably waited on him; that’s why he looked familiar.

Where had my head been?

I glanced down the bar counter at Jon and Cass, a little bewildered that I wasn’t standing next to them anymore. I stood by the cash register instead. Jon and Cass didn’t seem to have noticed that I had apparently teleported to the opposite end of the bar.

Cass laughed while I watched, leaning closer to Jon’s ear to answer something he’d said.

Feeling the man in front of me waiting, I jerked my eyes back to his.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Yeah, sure. Of course. Sorry.”

His smile widened. “No apology necessary, my dear. I am the one who is sorry...to have interrupted your thoughts just then.”

I smiled back noncommittally, hitting through keys on the old fashioned register.

“You looked very deep in thought right then, Alyson.”

I hesitated, glancing up at him.

I wasn’t wearing a name tag. Maybe I’d told him my name when I waited on him earlier. Shrugging it off, I gestured towards his arm. When he bared it to the elbow, I summoned the bill by scanning his barcode.

“Were you?” he said politely. “...Deep in thought?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Well. Even waitresses think about things, I guess.”

The man returned my smile, his gaze flickering over the rest of me.

Ignoring his appraisal, I met his gaze. “Do you want the change in hard currency, too?” I said. “Or just on your account?”

“Hard is fine.” His smile widened, even as his amber-colored eyes grew more serious. “What are you doing after work? Can I buy you a drink, Alyson?”

Counting out the coins, I handed him his change. I kept my smile polite. “I can’t date customers, sorry.”

“No? You won’t make an exception?”

I smiled again. “Sorry.”

The man met my gaze. When he did, I paused, in spite of myself.

For the first time, I really looked at him.

His eyes were riveting, difficult to look away from. That amber color nearly glowed, such a light color they seemed to have an internal fire. I found myself lost there, wondering why I’d been so quick to turn him away.

I could have one drink with the guy, sure. Why not? He was age appropriate, more or less, and while I didn’t usually date suits, he was cute. Nick the bartender, the guy I'd been seeing casually for the past few weeks, probably wouldn’t like it, but we weren’t exactly a couple.

My attention got pulled off him when the door to the diner opened with a bang.

I looked up, blinking in confusion.

Once I did, I found myself staring at the black-haired man. He stood there, looking angry, his athletic frame looming over the guy in the blue.

For the first time, he looked directly at me.

His colorless eyes grew utterly motionless, like a held breath.

Immediately, my head started to clear. I was still standing there, my hands poised over the cash register, when the man with the amber eyes turned, staring up at the black-haired man along with me. Neither of them spoke.

Even so, the man with the amber eyes smiled.

Looking away from the taller man, he brought his gaze back to rest on mine. He made a strange, soft clicking noise with his tongue, giving me a regretful smile.

“Ah. I see that you’re already taken,” he said. “Perhaps another time, my dear.”

“Sure,” I said, only half-hearing him. “Whatever.”

I was still looking at the man with the black hair.

The guy in the blue suit turned from the counter, heading for the door.

The black-haired man didn’t take his eyes off him as he passed. His eyes followed the man past him and through the front door and even outside, onto the street. I saw the amber-eyed man watching him as well...saw him wink at the black-haired man through the window before he disappeared down the sidewalk, past the edge of the building.

Before I could wrap my head around what had just happened, the black-haired man walked directly up to where I stood. His colorless eyes met mine.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “Now, Allie.”

When I didn’t move, only stared, the black-haired man grabbed my arm.

“Allie.” His voice was a growl. “Now.”

Before I could bring my eyes back into focus, Jon appeared at my side. He had his hand on the other man’s forearm even as he inserted his entire body between us. Jon’s voice came out quiet but firm, not an ounce of compromise in his words.

“Let go of her, man. Now. Step back.”

I saw the black-haired man look at Jon.

“Jon,” he said. “I won’t hurt her. But I need to get her out.”

I saw Jon’s eyes widen in surprise, right before they blurred, growing less clear. The black-haired man focused back on me.

We don’t have much time.

I stared up at him, feeling a cold wash of fear when I realized I’d heard his words from inside my mind, not with my ears. His mouth hadn’t moved.

Allie! I know you can hear me! You have to come with me. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a cage? Wearing a collar? That man who just left here. He knows what you are.

More fear coursed up my spine.

What I am? What the hell was he talking about?

Allie! They can’t hear me! Only you can...what does that tell you?

Cass ran up at the same moment. “Allie! What is going on?”

The black-haired man looked at her. As he did, his concentration on me and Jon seemed to break. Jon’s eyes cleared in the same instant. He stepped forward once they had, as if remembering where he was.

His mouth hardened into a line as he grabbed ahold of my wrist.

“Al...get away from this guy! Right now.”

Confusion twisted my stomach in knots. I tried to think through the fear I saw in Jon’s eyes, the worry I saw on Cass’s face...but the black-haired man’s words resonated somewhere in my mind, and I knew suddenly, that I believed him. Without understand at all what he was talking about, I believed him that I was in danger.

I couldn’t stay here.

Memories swam forward, worsening that ache in my gut.

They’d tested my blood a few hundred times when I was a kid. It always came up human. Always. They’d only done it so many times because of how I’d been found, my parents assured me, and the fact that they couldn’t trace my biological parents, despite the record-keeping processes now in place. An unregistered baby found under an overpass in the middle of a major city like San Francisco had been big news...they had to be sure, my mom explained. It had been suspicious that they couldn’t trace my parents through my DNA. All people were registered at birth now––human and seer. Pretty much everyone had a DNA record on file.

So they had to check, my mom said. They had to be sure.

But my blood was human. They verified it, re-verified it. There was no question what I was.