Death Thieves (13 page)

Questions marched through my mind like battle-weary soldiers as I lay in the dark on a tear-soaked pillow. After I’d exhausted my ability to analyze my situation and Tag’s part in it, the night became suffocating. No matter how much my body needed sleep, sleep wouldn’t come. The rhythm and habit of falling asleep to the sound of someone else breathing made sleeping any other way impossible. The house creaked softly in the wind that had picked up outside. My heart rate increased even as I tried to breathe evenly and force it back down to the restful state where I might find sleep. I imagined the shadows from the trees’ movements playing against the wall to be the strange and twisted form of Professor Raik. He was coming to get me—coming to—

With a low growl, I stripped the blanket off the mattress again and hurried to Tag’s room. I looked at the floor between the wall and his bed. I moved to lie on the floor but hesitated. What might be hiding underneath the bed?

You’re being stupid!
But my body wouldn’t budge toward that space between the wall and where Tag slept.
There are no monsters under the bed!

Repeating that logic to myself didn’t change my mind or my ability to lie on the floor and let whatever was under the bed suck me under with it.
What is my damage? I do not believe in monsters, ghosts, aliens, or possessed clowns.

I wanted to feel safe and protected. Tag would protect me—whatever else. The decision was made before there was time to realize a decision needed to be made. I climbed onto the bottom of Tag’s bed, careful not to make too much movement, staying at the edge at the foot of his mattress. Tag rolled over and stretched a little, likely disturbed by my presence. His toe touched my arm. With a sigh of relief, I listened to his breathing and fell asleep to its cadence.

I awoke to the first patters of rain, realizing Tag was again on the floor. He bolted upright as the first sound of thunder tore open the sky. “Janice!”

“Whoa there,” I said, shocked to see him look vulnerable and terrified. I’d have been amused by me soothing him instead of the other way around except his alarm sent a shiver of panic through me as well. “It’s just a storm. You’re okay.”

He took several deep breaths before his white knuckles released the edges where they’d been gripping the blanket.

“Did you have a bad dream?” For him to yell the name of a
girl
. . .

“No.” He staggered to his feet and took his blanket into the room I’d vacated the night previous.

No?
He was a bad liar. He looked like the boogey man had been after him. Maybe Janice was an enemy he’d once fought. That thought cheered me for only a moment before my face fell into a scowl. I’d heard the caress over the name as he uttered it—the worry that hid underneath that one word for that one person. Janice meant something.

I followed him into the other bedroom to find him making the bed.

“In case they come back,” he said as he tucked in the corner.

The explanation made sense. I went back into his room, pushing my irritation with
Janice
out of my mind, and made his bed. Thunder rolled around the mountainside outside the house. Every few moments, lightning flashed white light through the window. Rain pattered over the rooftop and slid down the panes of the windows.

Tag had moved to the bathroom to clean. I went to the kitchen to see if I could find us better food than beans and rice for breakfast. The pantry had everything stocked in those huge cans. I found powdered eggs and bacon flavored textured vegetable protein. Aunt Theresa had been big on food storage supplies for when Armageddon fell upon us. I knew that vegetable protein tasted like real meat if you used your imagination. I took out the cans and set them on the counter.

Tag had left his bottle of matches on the stove. I didn’t think he’d done it by accident since he seemed pretty aware of his surroundings and his stuff at all times. His leaving it felt like a sort of peace offering to me—as though by leaving the bottle, he offered me a small piece of my independence. I could heat my own water.

Appreciation for the gesture came along with the regret of not using the water the night before. My muscles all ached and a hot bath would have been so welcomed. It probably would have helped sooth my storming headache, too. “Stupid pride.” I muttered the admonition low enough to be heard only by me, just in case Tag lurked anywhere nearby.

Cold air chilled the entire house. I wished the heating in this place worked . . .
If wishes were ponies . .
. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it was a favorite saying of Aunt Theresa. It was her way of saying, “You can wish until you turn blue, but it isn’t going to change anything.”

I made breakfast. The heat from the blue flame on the stove actually took the cold bite from the air, making the kitchen preferable to the rest of the house.

Tag followed the smell into the kitchen and offered a cautious smile. He’d cleaned himself up—wetting his hair and slicking it back away from his face. His face shone as though it had been freshly scrubbed and shaved. I wondered where he’d got the razor since I hadn’t seen one while snooping through the bathroom drawers. I startled myself when I said the words I hadn’t even been thinking. “You look nice.”

I bit off the end of the word
nice
realizing I
had
been thinking he looked nice. I went back to making sure our powdered eggs didn’t burn, feeling my own cheeks burn.

He cleared his throat and hurried to pull out dishes for the table. We sat down, each of us acting overly formal and uncomfortable. He picked up the ladle and spooned clumpy yellowed chunks onto his plate. He topped it off with the vegetable protein and a sprinkle of salt. He moved to dish me up a plate, but I hurried to do my own. Any more of his serving me and I’d scream.

“It tastes good.” He took several more bites and nodded approvingly. “This spins wild shrooms any day.”

“Spins?”

“Yeah, it’s good—you know, spins.”

I hid my smile at the compliment in my glass of water. The food wasn’t bad, definitely better than wild mushrooms, and in spite of the headache I felt better. I took several bites before clearing my throat and asking, “So who’s Janice?”

His eyes widened. “No one.” He shoved the food in his mouth and looked away. He did that a lot when I started questioning him. I didn’t want to end up spending the whole day fighting, so I shrugged and let it go.

We ate in beat to the rain on the roof and the thunder rolling around the bowl of the canyon. We both did the washing up. I opened the cupboards after drying the dishes to put them away and looked at the racks and the hard plastic material the cupboards were made of—like those permanent vinyl decks that are made to look like wood. The dishes were made of the same sort of material. “So if the flash heaters worked, we’d just put the dishes away in the cupboards, close the door, and come back to clean dishes?”

“Yes.”

“So every time you close it, it turns on?”

He shrugged as if to say,
yeah, so?

I closed it and opened it. “What if I’m only taking out a cup? And everything in there is clean already. That’s a waste of energy.”

“The sensors know when something is being removed or replaced. It doesn’t go on every time.”

“But you just said it did.”

“Summer, trust that it just works without explanation. Your dishes would be clean, and you would only have to put them away to get them clean. Think of all the loading and unloading of your machines your time does.
That’s
a waste of energy. This cuts out several interim steps. The whole world lives like that now. In everything, steps are cut out. Life is less complicated, less messy . . .”

“Except for your crazy population going off to their deaths when they’re just toddlers. Other than
that,
your world must be as unmessy as a scrambled egg.”

He sighed and turned back to the sink of water.

After we cleaned up the place, we lost our feeble grip on avoiding real conversation, so we avoided each other instead. The rain chased the warmth out of the house, so I went back to searching through the closets in all the bedrooms to find a jacket or a sweater. I also did a search to find my shoes. I found them under the bed I was supposed to sleep in at night.

With nothing left to entertain me, staying away from him proved impossible. I wanted to know where he was, what he was doing; I wanted to see him.

Tag sat in a big fluffy sort of chair that looked like a shaggy dog. The shag chair sat in the corner in front of the bookshelves. A book laid open, spread over his lap. One hand sat on the book, his fingers spreading the pages apart. His other hand fidgeted at the back of his neck, where his fingers pulled at the short dark hair. The Orbital had been snapped into place on his wrist.

“What are you reading?” The idea of there still being books made of paper and bound covers in the future intrigued me. I instinctively ran my fingers over the dust jackets on the line of books—some of which had familiar and well-loved titles.

“
A Sliver of Midnight
, by Romania Brown.” His fingers gave a final tug at his hair before he dropped his hand.

“Never heard of it.” I plucked a leather-bound collective works of Jane Austen from the shelf. The heavy volume felt good in my hands. Familiar, normal, like I might just be doing a little reading for my class on classic literature in school. The rain outside felt familiar, too, the constant spattering lulling me into complacency.

“You wouldn’t have. It hasn’t been written yet in your time. Of course, few enough people in my time have ever heard about it. It’s a little-known classic. I wonder if I’m the only one in the world who’s ever read it. Really, classics are all we have for decent reading. Not many people grow up with talent in any of the arts anymore.”

“Probably because most artists are a little crazy, and you’ve culled art in all its forms out of humanity.”

“Artists aren’t crazy.”

I snorted. “Van Gogh cut off his ear. Writers are the worst schizophrenics around, hearing voices all the time and writing down what the voices tell them. Musicians are more tantrum-throwing, drugged-up lunatics than they are anything else. Totally crazy.”

“I doubt that.” His brow furrowed though as if he’d contemplated my theory and worried there might be some validity to it.

“What’s this book about?” Keeping the subject on the book and not on future human conditions seemed wiser. I settled into the chair across from him.

“It’s about a man who stands at the point between two days. What’s behind him is a mess of misery and despair; what’s in front is something unknown and feared. What happens in the day to follow all hinges on that one moment at midnight when he decides how he will handle what he learned from the day prior. It’s about our choices and what we learn from our choices. The metaphors of life, betrayal, honor, trust, rebellion—it’s all in there—even love.” His eyes met mine briefly and flicked away as he nodded to the book on my lap. “You an Austen fan?”

“
You’ve
read Jane Austen?”

He smiled. “She’s a classic, too. My mother loved her
Persuasion
even though
Pride and Prejudice
remains public favorite.”

“She’s Winter’s favorite. I like her well enough, but she’s not my favorite.”

His smile broadened. He took a deep breath. “You remind me of—” Thunder pealed and he cut off whatever he was about to say.

The noise made me cringe as my headache pulsed behind my eyes.

“Does your head still—” He broke off again, likely unsure of whether or not I’d snap at him like I had the night previous.

I nodded to save him from needing to finish his sentence.

“Would you like some relief?”

I felt instantly stupid. He wasn’t my butler or servant boy waiting around for me to command him, but I nodded again.

Tag snapped the book closed and got up, setting it over the collected works of Jane Austen on my lap. “In case you want to read something new.” He went to work immediately. The swirling motion repeated over my temples and forehead.

The headache dissipated as though he were a voodoo doctor chanting spells over me. His fingers swirled down to the nape of my neck. He murmured something about tension causing headaches, too, and moved to my shoulders.

As his thumbs rolled over the muscles in my shoulders, his fingers played lightly at the place just behind my ears. I held myself still, willing myself not to shiver at his touch for fear he’d abruptly move away as he seemed to so often do. He retraced his path to my forehead and temples and back down again.

I could sense that he’d leaned in, felt his breath warm on my neck, and so I turned to face him, not sure what I expected to find.

With my movement, he stumbled back as though caught doing something wrong. He inhaled sharply and tightened his mouth. “Does it still hurt?”

“No. It’s better now.” I felt confused, but the headache was gone. That and all the ache that had tightened itself into my shoulders. “Why do you do that?”

“You asked me t—”

“No.” I interrupted him. “Why do you always jump away like that? It’s not like I have cooties. I’m not diseased, you know.”

The words were out before I could call them back. And seeing the flash of hurt in his eyes, I would have called them back, stuffed them in my mouth, and swallowed them down if such things were possible.

His mouth tightened even more. “No, you’re not. But I am.”

I winced. The problem stemmed from the fact that it was easy to forget. Thinking of Tag as diseased didn’t sit well with me. He just looked so
normal
. In my mind, all the bad things he’d described would be for the crazy people only, for the people who drooled and fidgeted and gouged each other’s eyes out.

Tag was smart, smarter than anyone I’d met. His way of speaking in complete and well-thought-out sentences amazed me. Give me any ten girls and have him say just five sentences to them, and I’d show you ten girls crazy in love. He knew his history—well enough to keep us out of major trouble. He didn’t drool. He didn’t fidget. He’d read Jane Austen! How many guys in my time zone had done such a thing?