Nightwise (30 page)

There was a woman sitting on a swing on the narrow front porch, which was crowded with plant vases. A half dozen different wind chimes, arrayed around the edges of the porch and awning, tinkled in the wind. I noticed one of them had pieces made to resemble crescent moons. I walked up the sidewalk, my bags in my hand, and stopped at the walk up to the house.

“Here comes trouble,” a warm, weary voice said to me. The woman's hair was blond and cut short. She wore a cream blouse with a red knit sweater wrap over it. She had kind blue eyes that had seen too much sadness. She stood as I approached, came down the stoop, and hugged me tight. I hugged her back.

“Hi, Karen,” I said. “I missed you.”

“Hi, yourself,” she said. “Come on in, let's get you some coffee.”

She led me inside. I dropped my stuff by the door and ignored the assault by the tiny poodle that yipped as I walked in.

“Still a fierce predator, I see,” I said to the dog. He growled a little and hid around the corner of the couch.

Karen still made good coffee, and we sat down in the living room, her with her poodle on her lap, stroking it. The mantel above the TV was covered with gold-framed photographs. A much younger me was in some of the pictures. I was smiling in all of them.

“How is James doing?” I asked.

“Still in North Carolina,” she said. “Doing well. He comes up to visit quite a bit, as much as work will allow.”

“I'm glad you two still get along,” I said. “I owe you and him a lot. You took me in off the street, he gave me work, and you both gave me a home.”

“Thank Torri Lyn for that,” she said. “She found you, brought you home, and she convinced her daddy to let some evil-looking little waif of a boy come live with us. She always could talk James into things—she was a daddy's girl.”

Karen smiled, but the pain leaked through. I remembered, after the car crash, she was strong. She held up as well as she could for everyone, but in the private moments, the bolt-holes of privacy and quiet, she suffered the soul-flaying pain that comes with having to bury your child. I recalled what Bruce had said about outliving his boy. I sipped my coffee.

“How is her boy?” I asked. “How is Jareth?”

“He travels a lot with his work,” Karen said. “He used to come most holidays after he went to college. But when he graduated, he got busy. He calls, and we Skype as much as we can. He's beautiful. He'd get onto me for saying that. He's handsome, and he's happy. Off having adventures like a young man should. Reminds me of you at that age.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment as the old unasked question floated in the air.

“Where are Jenna and Mike?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“They went out to the Humpback Bridge,” she said.

Humpback was a covered bridge, one of the last ones in America. It had been built in 1857 near Covington. Torri and I had spent a lot of time at Humpback. It was also one of the guarded gates to the realm of the Court of the Sky, a fairy path. Very few knew that and fewer still could see it. Jenna, Torri's sister, had some Fae blood in her, and she often found herself drawn to the bridge, hoping to catch a glimpse of her sister.

“If they had known you were coming, they would have stayed,” she said.

“But you knew I was coming,” I said. Karen smiled and took a sip of her coffee.

“She told me in dreams,” she said. “Last night. I miss having coffee with her in the mornings, like this, Laytham. After all these years, I still miss her sitting right there, on her spot on the couch. I miss her voice and her laugh.”

Something tight was in my throat. “I do too,” I said. “She visit?”

Karen sighed. “When she can, when she is allowed.”

“I'm sorry about that, Karen,” I said. “If I had any other choice, I would have taken it.”

“I know,” Karen said. “You did the best you could for her in a horrible circumstance. It's comforting to know she's still around, that I can still see her and talk to her, but I worry about her, if she's happy, if they are kind to her. I miss her all the time.”

“I understand,” I said. Karen put down her coffee and narrowed her wise-sad eyes at me.

“You didn't just come to see her,” she said. “You're wrapping things up. You think you are dying soon, don't you Laytham?”

“Hell, no,” I said, and laughed. “I am working a thing, and Torri Lyn can help. And … I miss her too.”

Karen, gave me “the look,” the one I had seen so many times, when I had done so many things wrong, when I thought I was so clever with some half-assed lie. “Whether you know it or not, you are courting dying,” she said. “I can see it all over you. A man intends to die, he'll find a way to make that happen. Don't, Laytham. Please, just don't.”

“Did she tell you where I could find her?” I asked.

“Of course she did,” Karen said. “You two's old playground.”

*   *   *

The moon was ascending, full, swollen, and bright when I jumped the wall at the Cedar Hill Cemetery. A weird sense of déjà vu took me. I remembered playing here as a kid with Torri. Later, we came here when we both began to explore our connections to the unseen worlds. Some summer nights, we'd lie on the hills, watch the night sky spin above us, and talk about dreams, fears, hopes, and love. I miss talking the nights away with her.

I walked through the rows of tombstones. I could feel with my Ajna chakra the faint stirrings of the Waiting near their graves. Ghosts were stirring at the presence of the living in the city of the dead. I didn't open myself to the presences, though. I had no intention of spending the evening listening to every haint in this place bitch to me. I walked toward the hill where Torri and I used to like to lie and watch the sky. I sat in the dark graveyard on the cold grass. I watched the stars in the clear sky. There didn't seem to be as many as I remembered when I sat here as a teenager. Didn't seem as bright, either.

I smoked most of a pack of cigarettes while I waited and watched the moon rise higher and higher. The moon was so bloated and bright I could see the craters and mountains on the surface, like ancient fortresses and ruined castles.

I thought about Torri Lyn; it seemed safe to let myself, here, alone in the necropolis. I had left town after a stupid, horrible fight. I was eighteen, and it was my fault. I was too proud and too egotistical and too selfish. Story of my life, and it cost me the love of my life. She had loved me better, with more purity and more sincerity than anyone else ever had. She gave without thought and she created joy freely everywhere she went. We seemed to complete each other, she and I, her light to my darkness. I came back in 2002, when Boj and Harel and I had called it quits. It was the best year of my life. We picked up like no time had ever passed. We were building a future together without even knowing we were doing it. Then the car wreck, that horrible phone call. And my future died.

Torri Lyn had the gift of power as well, but in a very different way. It was in her blood—more than a touch of the blood of the royal Fae. She had the powers of the Goddess—the Earth Mother. Her magic was in breath and herb, element and candlelight, stars and moon. She had introduced me to the Green spirits, the Fae, and the wee folk. She had been seeing them and talking to them since she was a baby. I taught her what Granny had taught me, but I selfishly held some secrets back. That is one of the many reasons I suck as a teacher, as a mentor. Torri taught me everything she could, freely, easily, with laughter and a voice like a song. She gave.

I felt my eyes getting grainy and hot. There was a heavy weight in my chest; it made my breath catch. I wasn't going to do this, goddamn it.

The moon was in front of me now, huge. A scarred pearl, silently burning with stolen light, the midnight sun, the silent, screaming heart of poets, lovers, and madmen.

There was a curtain of light in front of me, made of moonlight, getting brighter and more solid as I stood. It seemed to arc upward across the cold night sky, its origin point the crater fortresses of Tycho. A figure moved down the bridge, toward earth. I found myself brushing the grass off my pants and trying to adjust my clothes and straighten my hair. It was silly, but I did it all the same, just like I always did.

The Lady Selene, Guardian of Tranquillity, Mistress of House Tycho, Muse of the Moon, and the Adjudicator for the Court of the Uncountable Stairs, approached. She was silver light and living sculpture. Her gown was silver scales that flashed and sparkled with the passion of a lover's eyes. Her skin was luminescent diamond, ageless as desire, fragile as memory. Her hair was the color of polished copper; it snapped and fluttered in the astral wind like a hawk's wings. Her eyes were the color of sky on the best day of your life, burning, as the core of the flame does. Her regard, as kind as sleep, as terrible as dream, roared in my mind. I felt like a leaf clinging to a branch during a hurricane. I was a monkey standing before a goddess. There was so much beauty, so much light and presence pouring out of her, through her; she seemed too much for this fragile world to stand.

“Welcome home, Lady Selene,” I said. “Your knave greets you.”

Lady Selene stepped from the moon bridge onto the grass. As she did, the being in front of me changed, diminished, into something I could fully comprehend with my stunted senses.

She became a woman in her early thirties, auburn hair falling in gentle curls down past her shoulders. Her skin was fair, almost porcelain. Her eyes were blue, piercing, the kind of eyes that demanded your attention from across a room, that sent a charge through you when they were directed at you. Eyes that twinkled with humor and love and a hint of mischief. Her nose was prominent and tapered to a point; she wore a diamond stud by her left nostril. She had curves, the way women did before bulimia became a fashion statement. I remembered the way it felt to hold her. She was warm and soft and feminine. I could faintly smell her perfume—she smelled like lilacs and spring flower. She always reminded me a little bit of Tori Amos, but prettier.

Her shimmering gown had become well-worn blue jeans, sneakers, and a blue-gray T-shirt with a little walking time bomb character, named Bob-omb, from some Mario video game. She loved gaming. The shirt proclaimed
I'M THE BOMB!
She was also wearing a black winter coat and a red-and-blue-striped scarf that fell to her waist.

The moon bridge faded, a cloud had crossed the moon and broken it. It receded from the sky, fading quickly, and the part closest to her seemed to fold itself into the ethereal stone face of a rectangular moonstone pendant, which glowed silently for an instant at her throat. To me, she looked more beautiful now than she had in all her Fae regalia of office.

She looked around, smiled at everything she saw, smelled, and felt, giggled with a bit of delight at all of it. Then she looked at me. The smile got bigger, the eyes wider.

“Pickle!” she said. She had an odd accent: a hint of a southern lady's drawl in her voice, sometimes a slight nasally twang mixed with something a little more aristocratic, a subtle upward inflection that made her sound like a delighted or precocious little girl.

I sighed and tried to frown, but I was crying a little, so instead of giving her shit about her calling me that, I just scooped her up off the ground and hugged her as tight as I could.

“Hi, Torri Lyn,” I said. “Hi, baby. I missed you.”

She hugged me back equally hard, laughed, and kicked her dangling feet. I didn't want to let go. I remembered. I had held her cold hands and kissed her cold lips in the coffin. I remembered watching them slide her casket into the cremator, I remembered opening the door and seeing what was left of her after the fire embraced her. Her memorial marker was in sight of us now, up on the hill. Behind it the moon stood watching over us, like a chaperone.

“I missed you too, darlin',” she said. She pulled back and looked at me. “You look older, tired. Still pretty, just a little tired.”

“You still look beautiful,” I said, “exactly the same.”

“Yeah. Pretty much, I guess. I felt you seeking me,” she said. “You in trouble, sugar?”

“Trouble is my business,” I said, and grabbed her hair, pulling her closer to my face. She groaned a little, and her eyes flared.

“You still running that tired old Raymond Chandler line,” Torri said. “You found any girls dumb enough to swoon over that, shamus?”

“One or two,” I said, as our lips began to brush. Torri pulled away and wiggled down onto the ground. She stepped back, obviously as frustrated as I was.

“I can't,” she said. “One of their rules. No kissing. Tangles the souls up and all that. Kind of like a pact. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm just glad to be able to hold you, talk to you. Really.”

She arched a narrow eyebrow. “Sex is okay,” she said and smiled. “Go figure.”

We laughed.

“Come here,” I said.

We held each other again. We lay down on our hill in our cemetery and made out like two teenagers, me and my living dead girl.

*   *   *

Time had moved the sky. We held hands and watched the moon and the stars and talked about everything. Time was different for her in the courts, different in each court she visited, different from earth. So I caught her up on things as best I could. She wanted to know about video games, and I tried to answer, but the gaps in my knowledge annoyed her.

“You are a celestial entity,” I said. “You serve a court made of deities, elder spirits, and elemental forces, and you are mad at me because I don't know when the next Halo comes out?”

“That other stuff is my job,” she said, and smacked my chest playfully. “
That
is really important. Besides, do you have any idea how tough it is to talk about Master Chief and Cortana relationship fan fic with the Etruscan god of plentiful grain production?”