The Arrivals (10 page)

“I know.” She paused, wanting to pull her hand from his almost as much as she hoped he’d pull her closer. “Please don’t be mad at Francis. He told Jack as soon as he returned from patrol.”

“He could’ve told me,” Edgar said.

She shook her head. “You intimidate him.”

“Good.” Edgar released her hand and held out a holster. “If you’re standing guard with me, might as well gear up.”

“About Daniel—”

“No.” Edgar glanced her way for only a heartbeat. “If he comes back here, I won’t stay. I won’t work for Ajani like he did, but I won’t stay here and watch you be with him.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I’m patient, Kit, more than I want to be, but you and I both know where you belong.”

“I can’t.”

He laughed without any actual humor. “Yes, you can. You didn’t stop loving me because we’re sleeping apart.”

Kitty couldn’t lie to him, so she said nothing.

“Stay away from Daniel, Kit,” Edgar said. “I’ll forgive a lot, but there are limits.”

Shakily, she admitted, “That’s why I said no.” She hesitated and then added, “I don’t want you to leave.”

“That’s a start,” Edgar murmured.

And at that, they both lapsed into silence. They did fine when they didn’t talk. Conversation led to arguments. When they fought whatever monster they hunted, when they patrolled, when they did most anything but talk, they were fine.

Edgar had been on the shady side of the law before he came to the Wasteland, a truth she would’ve known even if he hadn’t told her about his life. He’d been employed by an organization that made its money from gambling, clubs, and alcohol. When he’d told her that the U.S. government had outlawed alcohol in his time, she wondered if he and she were really from the same world, but other Arrivals verified that there was a brief, odd period when the transportation and distribution of alcohol was illegal.

With Edgar, there were no illusions. He had no qualms about who he was or what he’d done—in Chicago or in the Wasteland. He had been a hired gun there, and he’d transferred his loyalty to Jack when he’d woken up here. The only times he ever ran into trouble were because of her.

A few hours later, when Jack relieved them, they were together in their usual comfortable silence—a detail Jack acknowledged with a relieved smile. “I can finish guard.”

Edgar nodded and divested himself of a few of the weapons that stayed with the guard post. “Post’s all yours.”

Kitty offered, “I’ll stay here with—”

“No,” they both said.

Jack softened the refusal by adding, “I’d like a little quiet. I need to think.”

Edgar, on the other hand, simply looked at her in that way of his that made her feel like she wasn’t wearing anything at all. The ease they’d shared when he was on duty evaporated when he zeroed in on her.

She turned away, but she’d only made it a few steps before he was at her side.

“Kit.” He stopped her with both hands on her waist, holding her steady but not forcing her to turn to him or pulling her against him.

She could move away if she wanted to, but she really didn’t want to.

“It wasn’t your fault Mary died.” Edgar didn’t force her to turn around. “Sometimes people just die. We’re alive; she’s not, and it’s horrible, and it hurts, and you want to do something reckless because of it.”

She turned around then. “I don’t want her to be dead.”

“Being careless isn’t going to change that. Pushing me further away isn’t either.” Edgar had kept his hands on her waist, and even though it seemed foolish that such a small touch could comfort her, it did. It did other things too; it sparked needs that she wasn’t going to admit to having.

“You’re alive, Kit.” Edgar stayed motionless, waiting for her. “The rest of us are too. I’m sorry that Mary’s gone. I’m sorry you’re hurting, but we are still alive. Don’t forget that.”

What he didn’t say—or force Kitty to say—was that they were more alive together than either of them was alone. She was standing in the shadows with the man she loved. It didn’t undo the hurt she felt at Mary’s passing, but for a moment the pure joy she also felt with Edgar was enough to chase all the bad away. She wasn’t going to let herself slip into the depression that threatened to engulf her every time one of the Arrivals died for good. Edgar gave her the strength to handle that. The nagging reminder that she counted on him, that he was the only one who could keep that depression at bay, was followed by the chilling memory of when he had died. He was vulnerable too.

She stared into his eyes and admitted, “You always know what to say.”

“I try.” He brushed her hair back on both sides so he was cupping her face.

Before he could do the next logical thing—the very thing she wanted too damn much—Kitty pulled away from him. He frowned as she moved away, but she’d seen that frown on his face so often the past year that it didn’t hurt her quite as much as it once had.

She folded her arms across her chest to keep from reaching out to him. “Chloe will die too. How do I help her learn how to live in this world? How do I keep doing this?”

“You just do.” He wasn’t being cruel. It was simply the way Edgar’s mind worked: he dealt with what
was,
played the hand he had, and didn’t see any other way to live.

Kitty felt tears trickle from her eyes.

“They come, they stay, and sometimes they don’t survive,” Edgar told her. “I don’t know why some of us do, but I do know it’s not your fault—or Jack’s.”

Kitty closed her eyes. She didn’t know if she agreed, but she didn’t know if she could argue either. As much as she wanted him to comfort her, to tell her whatever lies he could, she’d watched people die before and after Edgar arrived. She couldn’t let herself count on him to help her through her grief now because all she could think every time one of the Arrivals died permanently was
please don’t let it be Jack or Edgar next time.

She opened her eyes and stepped farther away. “I’m going to check on Chloe.”

“Melody can watch her, so we can go to my—”

“No.”

“So you were going to spend the night with someone else, considered fucking
Daniel,
but you’ll reject me?” His voice had an angry edge to it, and Kitty couldn’t even deny that she deserved his anger.

“I’m sorry.”

“My patience will run out too,” Edgar added.

A foolish part of her wanted to ask him how much longer that would take, but he’d hear the words as the invitation they were. If she wasn’t going to warm Daniel’s sheets out of awareness that it would hurt
him
, she certainly wasn’t going to use the man she actually loved. If she did, they’d be right back where they’d started when she’d realized she needed to step away.

Finally, he said only, “Sleep well, Kit.”

“You too,” she said. She wasn’t about to admit that she never slept well when he wasn’t beside her. Everything felt wrong without him, but she hadn’t slept next to him since the last time he recovered from dying. When he died a little over a year ago, she’d spent six terrifying days praying to every god, monster, and devil she could think of. When he woke up, they’d locked themselves away for six more days. On the seventh day, she’d returned to her own bed alone and tried her damnedest to exorcise him from her heart.

Like every other night when she’d left him, she felt him watching her as she walked back to her tent. She told herself it was better this way, but that didn’t make it any easier—or true.

Chapter 11

C
hloe wasn’t quite as confused when she woke this time. She remembered stretching out on the cot in an oversize tent filled with boxes and bins. Before that, she remembered a walk through the desert after waking up half paralyzed under a strange sky with an extra moon. She remembered being carried by a cowboy, and she had a hazy memory of being cared for by a woman who acted like a nurse but looked like a burlesque dancer. What Chloe couldn’t recall was anything between being at the bar and that first moment waking up on the ground. More important, she had begun to suspect that this wasn’t a hallucination. She had no logical explanation for the weird sky, the large lizard that looked suspiciously like a dragon, or the Wild West characters who’d brought her to this strange campsite. If they weren’t a hallucination and this wasn’t a coma dream of some sort, she was in a new world—which was scientifically improbable and, quite bluntly, scary as hell.

She took a deep breath.
Breathing means not dead.
Just to be sure, she checked her pulse.

“It’s real. You’re awake.” Kitty stood in the doorway of the tent. She still looked like a dancer, and the soft voice was still more soothing than any nurse’s Chloe had ever met.

“Thank you,” Chloe said. “You were here. I remember . . . some.”

“Good.” Kitty let the heavy material fall shut behind her. In her hand, she clutched a long swath of fabric. “You’ll adjust, but it’ll take a few more days to get your strength back.”

“How long did I sleep? Strength back from what?” Chloe swung her feet to the ground. When she didn’t feel dizzy or queasy, she stood.

Kitty watched her. “Almost forty hours, but you sort of woke to drink and use the necessary. The fever makes it a little hazy for most folks.” Her voice grew even more comforting. “You’re adjusting from the trip here, but the worst is passed.”

“Right. The trip . . . here,” Chloe echoed.

She walked over to a curtained area that she vaguely remembered Kitty showing her at some point. It was a small victory to not have to ask for the strange woman’s support to go to the toilet and washing area.

When she returned, Kitty gave her an approving look. “You’re not dreaming. Not dead. Not in a coma.” She ticked each item off on her fingers. The cloth in her hand fluttered with each motion. “You’re in the Wasteland. Why? No one seems to know. I’ve been here twenty-six years. Same as Jack.”

“But . . . you don’t look”—Chloe did quick math—“like someone from the 1980s . . . or like you’re old enough to have been anywhere that long.”

“We don’t age once we get here. This is it.” Kitty held her arms out in a look-at-that gesture. “I’ll never get any older on the outside—or have kids, as far as we can tell.”

Chloe stared at her, trying to digest the idea of not aging. That part didn’t sound awful. The idea of never having kids, on the other hand, sounded less appealing. It wasn’t that she’d planned to have them anytime soon, but the idea of not having the choice to ever have them was sobering.

Kitty walked past her and picked up a torn skirt. “And it wasn’t the 1980s when I came to the Wasteland. Time’s off between here and home. It was 1870 at home when I came here. Sometimes there are big gaps in the times people are from. No one’s come through who’s later than 1989 or earlier than me and Jack.”

“I’m later.” Chloe tried to concentrate on the details, the words Kitty was saying. If not, if she thought about the big picture, the sheer impossibility of it all, she might fall apart. “It’s 2013 at home. I walked into a bar. Then I was here.”

Kitty looked at her for a moment, shrugged, and said, “It was bound to happen.”

When Chloe didn’t reply, Kitty carried the skirt and her needle and thread to a spot on the ground. She sat on the floor with the skirt and ruffle in her lap. Somehow, that seemed more absurd than anything else so far, or maybe Chloe had simply reached her threshold for absurdity. She began laughing, but after a few moments the laughs began to sound suspiciously like sobs.

“You’re doing fine, all things considered,” Kitty said, not unkindly. Then she looked down at her sewing as if she couldn’t tell that Chloe was crying.

Chloe stared at the 1800s woman who was calmly sewing in the middle of a tent in the desert, and Kitty very obviously pretended not to be waiting for her to pull it together—or maybe she didn’t care if Chloe pulled it together. There was no way to know short of asking, and Chloe didn’t feel much like doing that. They stayed that way for a few minutes until Chloe broke the silence by asking, “Why me?”

Kitty lifted her gaze from the skirt, met Chloe’s eyes. “No one knows.”

“How? How can you say you’ve been here that long and don’t know?” Her voice grew a bit shrill as panic edged back closer to the surface.

The smile Kitty offered veered closer to sardonic than anything else. She pulled the thread through another stitch and then another before saying, “Depends on who you ask. My brother thinks we’re here as a punishment for some sort of sins, and we need to atone for our failings.”

“I had a
drink,
” Chloe objected. “Lots of people drink. I was an ass for years when I was a lush, but I’ve been sober the past five years. What in the hell am I being punished for?” She swiped at her cheeks. “One drink shouldn’t mean I wake up in wherever this is.”

“There’s a washbasin with cool water.” Kitty pointed at a stoneware basin with tiny little flowers painted all over it.

Chloe was splashing water on her face when she heard Kitty say, “She’s fine, Jack. Get to bed. You patrolled and then stood guard. When did you sleep last?”

“Hector offered to finish out the last hour of my shift,” Jack said.

Chloe didn’t want to turn around and face the cowboy who had carried her out of the desert last night. As she patted her face dry, she forced herself to picture her fiancé screwing her boss instead of thinking about how kind Jack had been. She might not be in the world she knew, but there were constants she suspected were the same no matter what world she lived in.
And he can’t look as good as I thought he did. I was half out of it.

Appropriately fortified, she turned to see baby blues, perfect cheekbones, and lean muscles. She’d never been a cowboy fan, but one look at him had her revising that stance. Realizing she was staring, she tried to speak but only managed to say, “Damn . . . I mean . . . Hi. I . . . Thank you. For carrying me, I mean.”

Kitty laughed. Whether at the look of wide-eyed confusion on her brother’s face or at Chloe’s mortified stuttering, Chloe couldn’t say.

Jack clearly didn’t know what to say either. He looked at his sister and then at Chloe. “No need to thank me.” He cleared his throat. “I just stopped here because . . . you’re new. It takes time to adjust and . . .” His words trailed off, and he bounced a little as if he was having trouble standing still.