Starling (21 page)

“It’s heavy,” she said, extending her arm and holding it out parallel to the floor. “But it’s beautifully balanced.” She handed the sword back to him and waved a hand at the wall of weaponry. “That’s quite a collection. Y’know …” She hesitated for a second, thinking. “I heard what Toby said to you in the storage room—about your … abilities.”

“I know you did.” His mouth twitched in his usual expression of dry amusement.

“Right.” She ducked her head and turned back to the cabinet. “Well, I’m thinking … maybe you’re like some kind of government operative or something. D’you think?”

“A government operative with a sword collection and no gun. Yeah—that sounds likely.” He laughed briefly, and the blade in his hand wavered and dropped to his side. He gazed down at Mason, and the loneliness and confusion were back in his eyes. “Thank you for helping me find this place, Mason,” he said. “But I still don’t make any sense.”

He turned back to the weapons cabinet and replaced the blade in its carrier, setting it down on the shelf below the displayed weapons. Then he frowned a little and ran his hand over the wood face of what looked like a set of shallow drawers under the weaponry.

Mason wondered if there was another trove of dangerous implements in there, but when Fennrys opened the top drawer, they both stood gaping at the contents. The drawer was sectioned off into compartments containing cash. A
lot
of cash, both American and a large amount of different types of what must have been foreign currency: silver, bronze, and even what looked like gold coins with a wide variety of unfamiliar markings. He left those alone and counted out a couple of hundred dollars in various denominations of U.S. bills. He fanned through the stack with his thumb and then glanced up at Mason, who was staring at him openmouthed.

“Are you hungry?” Fenn said, his mouth quirking up in that maddening half grin. He waved the wad of cash. “I’m buying.”

The Boat Basin Café at Seventy-ninth Street was a favorite weekend hangout of some of the college crowd. Mason didn’t really feel like running into anyone she knew while she was with Fennrys, but she figured it would be safe enough on a weekday. Also, she was craving open-air space, and the café had a great patio that overlooked the Hudson River and the boat docks, where rich boaters would tie up their yachts while they sat eating burgers and drinking beer.

To get to the café, you had to descend a hidden, sloping path that curved toward a round, colonnaded structure in a sunken circle with an open, coliseumlike space surrounded by arched stone breezeways. A hostess led them to a table with an umbrella and smiled brightly at Fennrys as she seated them. He nodded absently at her, and Mason suppressed a grin.

Fennrys slipped the strap of the sword case off his shoulder and leaned it against the table. Mason had asked him, when they were leaving his loft, why he was bringing it along, and he just looked at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking in tongues. Secretly she supposed she was glad he had the thing with him.

It’s like this
, she told herself.
If you take an umbrella with you, just in case—it won’t rain
. Fennrys had brought his sword, just in case—and so, logically, they wouldn’t be attacked by zombies.

So far it looked as though her theory was panning out. The day was beautiful and the weather perfect. Normal. No storm … no zombies. Draugr.
Whatever
. Still, Mason remembered what Fennrys had said earlier about needing to always have an exit strategy, and she found herself checking out the nearest exits.

Sunlight glinted off the surface of the water, hot and blinding bright, but the breeze coming off the Hudson River was cool and soft on Mason’s face. Fennrys reached up to adjust their table’s umbrella to shade her from the sun’s glare. Then he sat opposite her and fidgeted silently as Mason sat with her hands in her lap, watching him with bemusement. He almost seemed nervous. As if this were some kind of date or something.

It seemed like forever until a bored-looking server with three lip rings and an overabundance of tattoos came over and grunted at them.

Fennrys barely glanced up as he said, “Bring us a couple of Blue Moons. Mason, what are you hungry for?”

She blinked at him. “Uh …”

The server made a huffing sound, and Fennrys looked back up at him.

“What?”

The server flicked his gaze at Mason and said, “I.D.”

Fennrys’s jaw muscles clenched slightly. “You don’t need to see her I.D.,” he said. “Just get the lady a beer.”

Mason put a hand on Fennrys’s arm. “It’s okay. I’m not …” She trailed off as she realized he wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was just staring at the waiter, unmoving, unblinking. He didn’t seem to be breathing, but his hand drifted slowly up until he was resting his fingertips on the iron medallion at his throat. His arctic-blue gaze was sharp as the edge of a finely honed blade, and Mason was glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of it.

The waiter looked as though he was about to get really pissy. But then, as Fenn continued to stare at him, an expression of confusion washed over the guy’s face. He frowned faintly and shook his head. Then he mumbled, “Couple a Moons. Yeah. Sure …” And turned and wandered off.

Fennrys turned back to Mason.

“What was
that
all about?”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“Did you, like … hypnotize that guy?”

“Of course not.” He didn’t sound as though he was so sure of that. He frowned. “I just … I just ordered.”

He hadn’t
just
ordered. He’d done something, and had made the waiter do what he’d wanted. Like magic or something.

After a few short minutes, the waiter came back and set down two glasses full of pale gold liquid garnished with round slices of orange. Mason just looked at hers as Fennrys took a long pull from his and stared toward the New Jersey side of the river. The lightness of his mood earlier was gone, and he was back to inhabiting the persona of the Fennrys Wolf.

Mason didn’t really want the beer. But she took a sip, if only because Fennrys really seemed to be trying hard to be nice to her. Or something. Like he was desperate to be chivalrous but just didn’t quite know how. It was actually kind of endearing, if she was going to be honest with herself.

“It’s … good,” she said, nodding at the beer she’d set back down. “Thanks.”

Fennrys sighed. “You don’t have to patronize me, Mase. It’s okay.”

“I’m not. I …” She paused and frowned, not knowing what to say. It was so frustrating. She’d thought about spending time alone with the mysterious Fennrys Wolf ever since he’d disappeared into the storm, and now here she was and there was all this weirdness between them. She took another sip of the beer. It wasn’t bad. The orange slice perched on the side of the glass gave it a sweet flavor that softened the bite of the alcohol.

“I’m not,” she said again, and waited until he looked back at her. “You’re the last person I would ever even think of patronizing. I’m just … I don’t know. Confused, I guess.”

“By what?”

“You.”

He laughed a little and spread his hands, leaning back in his chair. “I’m a pretty simple guy. What you see is what you get … ’cause that’s all there is.”

She smiled at him and shook her head. “All there is right
now
. You can’t stay a blank slate forever, Fenn. Either you’ll remember who you were, or you’ll become whoever you decide you want to be. That’s not the confusing part.”

“What is then?” he asked. “I mean, other than my rad apartment, obvious penchant for weaponry, apparent mystical gifts, and the sudden, surprising way I entered your life … what could possibly be confusing to you about any of this?”

Mason did laugh then. “Yeah. That. But also … not so much the
how
you came into my life, but the
why
you’re still here.” She looked, unblinking, into his face. She hadn’t really meant for the conversation to go this way.

“You saved my life, Mason,” he said, his voice low, gruff.

“Just returning the favor.”

“You were kind to me.”

“I …”

He ran his thumb across the marks on his wrists. “I have a feeling you might be the only one.”

Mason reached out a hand and ran her fingertips lightly across the roughened skin, where old welts had turned to scar tissue and newer ones were healing over them. She felt Fennrys shiver as she touched the underside of his wrist. “I’d really like to know who did this to you,” she said quietly, a slow-burning anger at the thought of him chained up like an animal building in her chest.

“I’m not so sure you do.” Fennrys reached for his beer with his other hand. “Whoever they are, I don’t think they play very nice.”

Mason watched as emotions chased across his face. He looked years younger suddenly, and vulnerable. And, for a moment, as though he was watching a movie only he could see.

He remembers something
, she thought.
Something he doesn’t want to tell me. Or doesn’t want me to know...
.

“Do you remember where you got those?” she asked quietly.

He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding to stretch the fabric of his T-shirt. He exhaled in a gusty sigh and took another long swallow of his Blue Moon. “No.” He shook his head. “But I have a delightful collection of recurring nightmares. At least I think they’re nightmares. Might be memories, though. Who knows? It would be easier to tell, I suppose, if any of them made sense. But in one, I’m in a dark place. Small, like a cellar or a cave or something. I can’t really see much, there are no windows, and the floor feels like dirt. The smell is … indescribable. Rot and dank.”

Mason felt her own nose wrinkling. “You can
smell
in your dreams?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, might be a memory. I just don’t know of what. But I remember … chains. On the wall. And a heavy door barred with iron. I think I might have spent some time there.”

“It sounds horrible.”

Fennrys smiled one of his awkward smiles and shook his head. “To you, yeah. You have claustrophobia. I’m sure I probably thought it was a bloody picnic.”

“Sure.” Mason went with him on the joke. She didn’t want things to turn gloomy. “Make
me
sound like a freak, why don’t you?”

“Mason … between the two of us, you outstrip me in the normal department by about two hundred percent.” Fennrys smiled. He actually had a really great smile—when he wasn’t
trying
to use it.

Mason found herself staring at him for so long that eventually he just raised an eyebrow at her. She felt herself start to blush and shifted her gaze away from Fennrys’s face, turning to stare out over the river. The day was starting to cloud over. The bright blue sky had lost some of its brilliance, and the breeze off the Hudson had died to nothing. It was starting to feel cold and clammy sitting outside on the café’s terrace. Mason glanced inside, trying to spot their waiter somewhere among the shadows and clusters of patrons. The grumpy server was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m sorry this is … weird for you,” Fennrys said. “All of it.”

Mason suddenly realized with a start that he was now holding her by the arm, his long fingers lightly circling the strong, lean fencer’s muscles that corded her wrist. She wasn’t sure if it was to reassure her or to keep her from bolting. But the warmth of his hand on her skin sent a wave of heat flowing up her arm and on toward her head and heart. It made the rest of her feel cold in comparison, and she blinked rapidly and looked away, back out over the river … which, she noticed suddenly, was rapidly disappearing beneath a pall of creeping fog.

“Oh … damn,” she whispered. “Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it, Fenn.” She nodded her head significantly in the direction of the thickening fog bank.

Fennrys glanced over his shoulder in the direction she was looking, and his fingers tightened sharply on her arm. Several distant, shadowy shapes were gliding silently up the river toward the boat basin.

“We should go,” Fennrys said.

“I thought you might say something like that,” Mason said as they both stood at the same time.

“Now.”
The word came out as a growl.

An eerie wail pierced the strangely dusky air, joined by another and another … sounding to Mason like ancient war horns. From within the heart of the murky darkness, tall, curved shapes—the heads of dragons—seemed to materialize out of the thick fog. Points of flame bloomed out over the water. One of them grew large, and suddenly a massive fireball slammed into the sleek white hull of a yacht moored in the basin.