Starling (15 page)

“Hang on a minute,” she said.

Fennrys waited for what was probably five minutes but seemed a lot longer. In truth, he was actually surprised to see her walk around the corner of the building. Fenn had more than half expected her to either stay inside and wait for him to go away, or call the cops. He found himself almost smiling in relief.

She stopped a few feet away from him, looked up into his face, and said, “What do you want?”

“Hello again to you too,” Fenn said wryly.

Mason stared at him, unblinking. “Hello. What do you want?”

“I wanted to …”
See you again. Speak to you. Make sure you aren’t just another broken memory or piece of a dream
. “I wanted to return the gear I borrowed.” He held up the shopping bag he’d brought along.

“Oh. Okay.”

Did she look disappointed? His heart rate quickened for a brief moment at the thought she might have actually wanted to see him again. But then he took a breath to calm himself, afraid that he’d imagined the fleeting look. “And I wanted to say thank you,” he added, turning away so that she couldn’t read his thoughts in his eyes.

“Mister … uh … Wolf, was it?”

“Just call me Fennrys.”

“Right. Okay.” Mason nodded and kicked at the ground for a moment. “Well, Fennrys, you’re welcome. Any time. Except for the never again part.”

“I hope that’s the case, yeah.”

“Do you mind telling me just what the hell happened during that storm?”

“I would if I could.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She straightened up and frowned at him. “Okay, look. What do you want from me?”

“What?” Fenn’s gaze snapped back to her face. “Nothing. I don’t … there’s nothing—”

“Who are you, really?”

“If I knew that, you’d probably be the first person I’d tell.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the only person I know. Everything else is just a big blank.”

“What?” She blinked at him.

He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “I don’t seem to be able to remember. Anything. I mean anything about myself. Or my life before I crawled out of the tree that crashed through your gym.”

Mason’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as if she were trying to figure out what to say to that. Finally she settled on, “Did you ever stop to think that maybe you should go to see a doctor or something?”

“Sure. But there’s probably a wait list. I figure the local emergency ward deals with naked amnesiac monster slayers pretty much every Saturday night.”

“You’re serious.” Her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t some weird cover story or something, is it? You’re not, like, some kind of bodyguard or something my dad hired to keep an eye on me, are you?”

“Who’s your dad?”

“The guy whose really expensive stained glass window you helped destroy.”

“Ah.” Fennrys winced a bit at the memory. “Wouldn’t a guy like that have enough money to hire a guy with pants if that was the case? And maybe, I don’t know, a machine gun instead of a sword?”

Mason crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess you’re right.”

“I wasn’t hired by your father, Mason.” He held out the bag, like some kind of peace offering or something.

Mason eyed it suspiciously. Then she reached out, her body language clearly conveying that she thought it was most likely filled with scorpions or incendiaries. When its contents didn’t immediately leap out and attack her or explode, she looked at him and nodded once.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks. I don’t think my brother cares about the sweats, but Toby was pretty pissed about the boots....”

Silence stretched out between them. Fennrys didn’t know what else to say.

Mason shook her head and started to turn away. “Well, good night then, man of mystery—”

“Mason.” He stopped her with a look. “When I said that I don’t know who I am or anything about my life, I
really
wasn’t joking.” He reached out toward her but stopped himself from actually touching her. “And I wasn’t lying.”

Fennrys’s arm dropped back down to his side and he stood there, waiting and feeling very nearly helpless. If Mason turned around and went back inside, if she left him standing there, he didn’t know what he would do. He wouldn’t come to her again. He felt his heart beating loudly in his chest, but his breath was stopped in his throat. Mason’s whole body was tense, poised for flight.

“That’s … I’m sorry.” Her fingers knotted in the strings of the shopping bag. “That must be horrible. It’s just … so hard to believe.” She put up a hand to stop his protests. “No, I
do
believe you. I think.” Her words came haltingly as she tried to mentally work through what he’d told her. “It’s just … I mean … I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening in movies. On TV and stuff. I didn’t think it was really real.”

“I wish it wasn’t.”

“So where have you been these last couple of days?”

“Oh … I’m staying in a hotel.”

“Really.” Mason raised an eyebrow at him. “How … I mean … I didn’t think you were carrying a wallet when I first saw you.”

“Yeah. Um. I kind of owe your brother.” Fennrys grimaced and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Either he’s selling hot electronics out of the back of a van or he’s got a hell of a paper route, but I found almost two thousand bucks in the pocket of his hoodie.”

“Ha!” Mason’s laugh rang out into the night, and it made Fenn’s heart leap a little to hear it.

“I mean—I’ll pay him back,” he said. “I’m good for it. You know. Someday. Probably …”

“Don’t worry about it.” She grinned. “Finders keepers, I say, and serves him right! I’m sure he probably pinched that bankroll from my dad or something anyway.”

“Well. It’ll be gone soon enough.” Fenn sighed. “Manhattan’s expensive.”

Mason stopped smiling and looked at him. “What are you going to do then?”

He smiled slightly and shrugged. He didn’t know. At the moment, it didn’t matter. He would be content if he could just stand there staring at the girl in front of him, who actually seemed like she might just care what happened to him.

M
ason stood on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, staring up at a guy she’d already seen naked but knew absolutely nothing about. She realized that this was the strangest possible situation, and she was perfectly aware of the fact that what she should do would be to thank him for returning Rory and Toby’s property, wish him a pleasant rest of his life, and turn around and get the hell out of there.

Instead she looped the strings of the shopping bag over her shoulder and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

The fleeting look of stark vulnerability—and gratitude—that crossed his face in the second before he was able to compose himself back to his guarded repose was all she needed to tell her she’d said the right thing.

“Come on,” Mason said, and turned to head north up the street. “I know where we can go.”

Mason led Fennrys north up Claremont Avenue and turned left on West 122nd Street. She thought about taking him up the stone steps into Sakura Park to sit on one of the benches there but decided that it was too secluded a place to be alone with him. He might have seemed harmless, but she had seen him in a fight, and the new clothes didn’t exactly disguise his muscled frame.

They crossed Riverside Drive and walked in silence until they came to a wide, paved open space, ringed around with trees. In the center was a stoutly impressive square stone building, complete with pillars and a tall cupola. In front of the monumental structure were wide stone steps bracketed by two huge, fearsome-looking eagle statues, wings spread wide, hooked beaks gaping.

“General Grant’s Tomb,” Mason said. “He’s in there. Him and his wife, Julia.” She hugged her elbows and gazed at the tall double doors. “Sealed away in these two huge caskets, like sarcophagi. Like they were royalty or gods or something.”

Fennrys shrugged as they walked toward the monument. “I suppose there are worse ways to end up,” he said.

Mason turned and gave Fennrys a long, unblinking stare. “I can’t think of a single one.”

Fenn looked down at her.

“I have spatial boundary issues,” she said drily.

“Ah.”

She led him over to the wide concrete ramp that supported one of the eagles and sat down, leaning back on the statue base and looking up at the wings that swept over her as if providing shelter from a storm. The place was almost deserted when they got there, with the exception of a couple of thuggish-looking guys in feature-obscuring hoodies lurking around the far side of the terrace. And they took one look at the Fennrys Wolf and made themselves scarce. Mason smiled to herself. With Fennrys at her side, she felt absolutely safe that night. He watched the lurking guys leave and muttered something under his breath that sounded like “hobgoblins,” but Mason just let that slide. She settled herself more comfortably against the sharp angles of the marble and got right down to the heart of the matter.

“Tell me,” she said softly. “What
do
you remember?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I know which way is east and which is west. I know how to climb stairs and cross the street. I’m pretty sure I could make a wicked Florentine omelet if I was hungry and had eggs and spinach handy. I knew what to do to help your friend who got hurt … even though I’m not really sure what that was.”

“Oh.”

“I know my name.”

“It’s hard to forget.”

His mouth bent in a fleeting grin. And then his expression hardened. “And I know how to fight. That’s all.”

“That can’t be everything. I mean … you remember everything that’s happened since we met, right?

He nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

“Well?” she prompted him. “Anything super interesting, or did you just wander aimlessly around the city for three days?”

She watched keenly as his expression clouded over.

“No. Nothing.”

He was lying. Or maybe he didn’t trust her enough to tell her yet.

“It was a beautiful old tree,” he said, trying to lighten his tone. And change the subject. “The one that took out your dad’s window. I feel kind of bad about that.”

“It’s a pretty old school. It probably had termites. It wasn’t your fault.” She avoided mentioning again the things whose fault it had been. Even though Fennrys had been the one to put a name to the creatures, she believed him when he said he didn’t know anything else about what they were or where they’d come from.

“How long has that place been there?” Fennrys asked.

“Gosforth? Almost as long as New York has been around. I mean, it didn’t always look like that, with all the impressive, imposing Old World architecture and all. It probably started out as a wood-frame schoolhouse. But the Gosforth founding families have made sure over the years that the academy’s facilities maintained a certain … standard.” She sighed. “I find it kind of obnoxious, if you want the truth. All that conspicuous affluence on constant display.”

“You don’t like your school?”

“It’s okay. It’s got good programs.”

“Good friends?”

Mason shrugged. “I do fine on my own.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Mason could hear the aching loneliness in his assertion. She wondered if he’d heard it in hers. In the distance, the sound of traffic on Riverside Drive was a soothing hum. There were no sirens to be heard in the distance, which was rare. The sky overhead was a deep black, broken only intermittently by long thin streamers of clouds, shredded by an earlier wind, that glowed sepia orange with reflected city light. It was peaceful. It was beautiful. Mason had to stop herself from leaning into Fennrys’s warmth and wishing he would wrap an arm around her shoulders.

“I should go,” she said. “It’s getting late and I’ve got practice first thing in the morning.”

“Practice?”

“Fencing.”

“Right. I almost forgot—you’re pretty handy with a blade.”

She shrugged and pushed a silky black ribbon of hair that had escaped her ponytail back off her face. “I’m good. I need to be better. I’m trying to make the national team.”