Microsoft Word - sk-ss-pdf.doc (6 page)

"What the hell are you doing?" I gasped, doubled over. My mind reeled with the pain from my body and the shock from what had just happened, what I'd seen. The woman in that vision, for lack of a better word, was me, but the familiarity was not that of seeing my own image, but of someone else recognizing me. For those seconds when he had touched me, it had taken me out of myself. "And why did you do it when I was driving? You could have killed me...us." I managed to sit up enough to shove the gearshift into park. Good thing this car was too old for air bags, or I'd have probably been in worse shape.

He remained silent, slumped against the passenger side door.

"Caelan?" I said. "Are you all right?" Clutching my ribs with one hand, I unbuckled my seat belt with the other, then reached gingerly across the seat to shake his shoulder, expecting him to turn those silver eyes on me again. But instead his head just lolled back. His eyes were closed to mere slits, and a nasty red bump was rising on his temple.

"Oh, shit." I scooted closer to him on the seat, so I could get a better look in the dim light. If he were dead...I felt a stab of fear at being alone out here with Nevan still around. After struggling for a moment with pushing the button from the opposite direction, I released his seat belt. Remembering his warning not to touch his skin, I grabbed the shoulder and back of his jacket to pull him toward me for a better look at the knot on his head.

"You needed proof, so I provided proof," he whispered, his 42

Stacey Klemstein

words slurred. I looked over to see his eyes half-open and glazed.

"Yeah, some great proof. You think nearly killing me is evidence somebody else wants me dead. I've already seen that show, no thanks." Did he have a concussion? He wasn't making any sense.

"No, proof of why. Why Nevan wants you dead." He reached up and traced the lines of my face a fraction of an inch above my skin. "Why we need you alive. Why you are the one we've been waiting for."

"Okay, that's enough." I released my hold on him and scooted away. His words and the intense emotion I sensed behind them sent a chill through me. "Look," I held up my hands in protest, "I don't know what..."

I stopped, staring down at my hands, palms out toward him. My entire right hand was dark with something. I closed my fingers, feeling the damp stickiness between them. My stomach roiled with the memory of the agony I'd felt radiating from my back moments ago. Only it wasn't my memory, and it wasn't my back.

I stared at my hand and then at him. The blood looked black in the faint light, though I knew it wasn't. "You're injured. Why didn't you say something?"

"We have to keep going." He lifted a trembling hand toward the steering wheel.

"You need a hospital."

"No hospitals, no doctors."

"You're going to bleed to death, and I don't want any part of that."

"If that is true, then the farther north we are when that happens, the safer you will be," he said. I stared at him for a second, then shook my head and moved back into the driver's seat to put the car in gear. "No way. You're going to get some help. I'm sure there's someone in Findlay who–" 43

The Silver Spoon

"It is unlikely that I will die in this manner. My body is right now attempting to recover."

"Uh-huh. Sure doesn't look like it to me." I steered the car back toward the road. Thank God we hadn't been near a bridge when he'd done whatever that was.

"No hospitals, no doctors," he repeated. I looked over at him half-lying across the seat. "What, are you going to stop me?"

"It would not take long for Nevan to find us in a hospital. Our presence, particularly mine, would not go unnoticed. He would make another attempt on your life, and he might succeed this time, taking an unknown number of innocent lives with yours." I gritted my teeth, thinking of Dewey and Earl Johnson. If there was even the smallest possibility that Caelan was right, I couldn't take the chance. "All right," I said, almost shouting in frustration. This was not going at all the way I'd thought. "What am I supposed to do?"

The tension seemed to run out from his body. "If you insist on stopping, all I need is a place to rest so my body can heal. Some place where we will not garner much attention."

"Unless we bump into Barnum and Bailey, I think you're out of luck on that last part," I muttered. Then I said, "I'll help you find a place to rest, all right? But then I want to hear everything." I shuddered, remembering the strange feel of his thoughts inside my head and the sight of me through his eyes, shorter, paler, and thinner than I'd ever seen myself. I knew he recognized me, or he thought he did, but how I knew that was an entirely different matter, one that scared me.

"I will tell you everything," he said. "But–"

"I won't believe you," I finished his sentence. "So you've said." The troubling thing about that statement was that twentyfour hours ago I would never have believed the diner would be gone, an alien would be trying to kill me, and I'd be fleeing town behind the wheel of a 1982 powder blue Impala with another alien riding shotgun. And two and a half years ago, I never would have believed aliens would live on Earth, let alone that my dreams would be filled with them. So, it seemed reality had little or nothing to do with what I believed, and that was more than a little terrifying.

44

Stacey Klemstein

Chapter 5

Two miles outside of Findlay, I found something I thought might work. The Bide-A-Wee Motor Inn was a squat one-story building with paint peeling off in large sections and a parking lot where weeds waged war against the gravel. I couldn't imagine how much worse it would have looked in daylight. But the Bide-AWee was "OP N," according to the neon sign out front, and deserted, which was exactly what we needed.

I saw a window marked "Office" with another glowing sign and parked as far from it as possible. Caelan didn't look good, and I didn't want to attract any more attention than necessary. It might provoke questions I didn't have answers for yet. I shifted into park and unbuckled my seat belt, then looked over to Caelan. He was close to unconscious, definitely not up to strolling in with me and pretending everything was normal. In fact, I wasn't even sure once I got a room how I would get him in it. I sighed and pulled down the sun visor, hoping for a mirror. I found one, distorted by age, but still clear enough to see in the harsh fluorescent light of the parking lot that this evening had taken a toll on my appearance.

My red hair had escaped from its ponytail in a half a dozen places, becoming plastered to my neck and face. Dark circles under my eyes, now permanent features of my face, only further emphasized the shocky color of my skin. A large red and purple bruise decorated the right side of my face, a souvenir from when Nevan had thrown me into that wall. A long red scratch, which I didn't know how I'd gotten, divided my left cheek into northern and southern hemispheres. Not to mention tear stains, runny mascara, and a lot of grime, all coming together to create that notwashed-in-days look. 45

The Silver Spoon

I swallowed back a groan and shoved the visor up to the roof. No way was this going to work. But then again, this wasn't exactly a Holiday Inn. Who knows what they were used to seeing around here?

"All right, stay here," I told Caelan, not even sure if he could hear me. "I'll be right back." I got out of the car, taking the keys with me. I didn't think he would try to leave without me, I'm not even sure I would have minded if he did, but I didn't want to take any chances. I locked and shut the car door, then headed for the office.

When I pulled open the office door, a bell jingled somewhere to announce my presence, but there was no one behind the counter. I pulled my inhaler out of my pocket, so I could dig for money. I knew I had some in there, I just hoped it was enough. A sudden gasp tore my attention away from counting. I looked up to see an older woman, wearing too much make-up and a tight flannel shirt, standing in the doorway of the room behind the counter, her eyes wide and her hand pressed to her throat. I frowned. I'd been expecting disgust or suspicion based on my slightly tattered appearance, but not this surprise...and something close to fear. She stared at me like I was the Grim Reaper checking in and I'd just inquired where I could store my sickle.

But before I could ask her what was wrong, she recovered herself, lowering her hand from her throat and stepping up to the counter. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah." I took my turn to stare at her now. Her fuchsia fingernails tapped an anxious rhythm on the counter top, and she wasn't quite meeting my eyes. For some reason, I made her nervous. That was weird.

"We..." I started to explain with a lie about a house fire, then stopped. The more I said, the more complicated this would become. "We'd like a room, please." I lifted my chin, daring her to 46

Stacey Klemstein

question me.

She reached down, bringing up a box of keys, which she set on the counter. After a second or two of fumbling, she pulled out a grimy Smurf key chain with a number taped to its blue belly. She tossed it at me. I caught it, thanked her, and started to walk away, feeling her eyes on me the whole time.

"Hey," she called out. "Twenty bucks down. A deposit." Her hand fluttered up by her mouth, the long nail on her index finger clamped between her teeth, muffling her voice. I turned back and searched the various faded signs posted on the warped paneling behind her and saw nothing about that particular policy. Nor could I see what there was to be so protective of. Behind the counter, news anchors jabbered silently on a television with knobs instead of buttons, though both knobs had been broken off. In place of sound on the television, a police scanner squawked from somewhere nearby, though I couldn't make out the voices clearly. The carpet in here was as threadbare as the Astroturf on the sidewalk outside, and a strange and powerful odor that might have been cat pee clogged my nose. I prayed the room wouldn't smell the same way.

"Here, take the whole thing." I stepped forward and slid $30, the posted rate, across the counter to her. That seemed to make her relax, but still, I felt her watching me as I walked out. It's bad when someone who relies on reprobates and adulterers to make a living doesn't trust you.

I unlocked and opened the car door to find Caelan just as I'd left him, semi-conscious and shivering.

"All right," I told him. "I got you a place to rest, but I make no guarantees about a mint on your pillow." Given the looks of that office, he'd be lucky if there was a pillow, let alone one that wasn't infested with God only knows what.

I moved the car around the parking lot, watching the room numbers on the doors until I found the one matching the key she'd 47

The Silver Spoon

given me. "Here it is." I pulled into a parking space again. "Lucky number 13."

I got out and started walking toward the door before I realized he wasn't following me. I could see him in the car, struggling to get the door open.

I hesitated for a second, then walked back over. I opened the door for him, then leaned in. "Wait here for a second, okay?" I crunched across the gravel again to the room door and opened it, grimacing at the sticky doorknob. While I was there, I stuck my head in for a quick peek inside the room. The overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke greeted me, but no smell of cat pee, or whatever that had been at the office. The room was decorated in shades of eye-popping blue, from aqua to royal. A double bed with a horrible green and blue paisley bedspread stood in the center of the left-hand wall with bedside tables on either side. On the opposite wall, a television, knobs intact, was balanced on a wobbly-looking dresser next to a rickety rocking chair. The only window in the room was to the right of the door. I poked my head into the bathroom, just to the left of the room door, and found it to be tiny but relatively clean.

Satisfied, or as close as I was going to get, I backed out of the room, leaving it unlocked. When I turned around, I found Caelan trying to get out of the car on his own.

"Hey, I said to wait a minute." I hurried back over to the passenger side of the car. "You're going to make it worse and I'm not taking any responsibility for–"

He looked up at me, eyes still shielded by silver, his whole body trembling. "You do not have to carry me into this place."

"Yeah, well, I'm not going to watch you crawl, so let me help you." I put my hand beneath his elbow, gripping his leather jacket to give him balance. He'd saved my life twice–I suppose I could at least get him in the door. But he was almost a foot taller than me, so I couldn't offer much in the way of assistance. 48

Stacey Klemstein

"I will be fine," he said. But a fresh sheen of sweat had appeared on his face. "I just need to–"

"Rest. Yeah, I know." With my free hand, I slammed the car door shut, then helped him toward the room. He didn't lean against me much–fortunate because my ribs ached something fierce just from the moving around–but his forward progress was very slow. I got him into the room, helped him find his balance against the wall, then shut and locked the door behind us.

"All right," I said. "Let me see it." I sucked a breath from my inhaler, fortifying myself. This couldn't be pretty.

"I told you," he said between ragged breaths. "I need rest." He began working his way toward the bed.

"No." I stepped in front of him. "Let me see. It might be more serious than you think." If it was, I'd have to figure out some way to get him help without putting him, me, or anyone else in danger. He looked down at me, eyes barely focused. "No." He tried to move around me, but couldn't, which only demonstrated how bad off he was. If he'd been healthy, he probably could have darted around me before I blinked.

"You save my life, but I'm not allowed to help you?" I said. He sighed but said no more, and I took that as a victory.

"Besides," I tried to joke, "if you die, I'll never learn what's going on here." He paused, his hands on his jacket, to look at me. I shrugged. Okay, so it wasn't funny, but it was true. And I was doing everything I could to keep this from turning me into a big, gibbering, weepy mess.