The Flame (12 page)

Closed? That’s all? At the very least, she expected a handwritten sign with calligraphic script saying,
I shall return shortly—Bastian
. Or maybe a miniature clock with plastic arms set to the time the store will open again.

Unsure of her next move, she wanders back out onto Dumaine Street and flips up the hood on the raincoat she found in her trunk.

Lord. Enough already with this damn rai—

—and the rain stops.

She is staring down at the sidewalk in a daze when it happens. The quality of the sunlight changes suddenly. It isn’t darker or brighter—it’s different. Because the rain didn’t just stop, it
froze
. The milky gray light of a cloud-filled sky is now reflected through a thousand suspended crystals of water. The silence is sudden and total. A forest of frozen droplets stretches out on all sides of her.

If it hadn’t been for the night before, she would probably be in hysterics right now, curled in a ball on the sidewalk, asking God if she had died. But instead, she reaches into the air in front of her and watches her hand move through the drops as if they weren’t even there. And then, through the impossible silence, comes the sound of footsteps.

He’s about half a block away, dressed much as he was the day before. A vest of dark brown silk, rather than purple, trousers pressed with a knife’s edge, polished brown loafers without a spot of rain on them. The umbrella must be for show, given that he doesn’t have a drop of water on him. Indeed, water doesn’t seem to touch this man at all; like when he took the wet rolls of tapestry from her arms yesterday without getting a stain anywhere on his clothes. But still, Bastian Drake makes a show of lowering the umbrella to his side, closing it with a soft click, and resting the tip on the sidewalk next to him, Charlie Chaplin style.

“I trust everything went well?” he asks.

“Was it a spell, Mr. Drake?”

“Call me Bastian.”

“Is it your real name?”

“It’s been my name for eighty-six years, so it might as well be.”

“And before that?”

He smiles and studies the street scene around them as if it were just another spring morning.

“Are you a vampire?” she asks him.

“Oh,
vampires
. Please. I can’t stand the sight of blood. And besides, they’re not
real
.”

“But you’re real.
This
is real. Can other people…can they
see
this?”

“Only the ones who have enjoyed my gift to its fullest potential.”

He’s just given her enough information for her mind to grab on to. Her quick calculations tow her from a swamp of confusion.

His name’s been Bastian Drake for eighty-six years, but he doesn’t look a day over thirty-five. He’s a ghost; he has to be. So he must have died at thirty-five, but when he was alive he probably had a different name. Since then he’s been frozen in time. And apparently he can freeze time too, which isn’t something she’s ever associated with ghosts. But it’s not like she majored in Ghost Studies in college.

There’s a car frozen halfway through the intersection a block away, its windshield wipers arrested in mid-swipe, the driver an indecipherable blur through the crystalline forest. “Is this the same thing you did last night?” she asks.

“Oh, no. Not at all. And I didn’t do anything last night, Cassidy.”

“Your candle sure did.”

“The candle gave you a nudge, that’s all.”

“Eight-foot-tall ghosts? Spontaneous orgasms? That’s quite a nudge.”

“It’s quite encouraging, isn’t it? But still, nothing about it deprived you of your free will.”

“So it wasn’t forced on us?”

“Did it feel as if it was?”

“I guess not. But what if we’d just freaked? I mean, what if I never went home last night? What if I’d gotten in my car and just kept driving?”

Bastian Drake’s smile flickers before it fades altogether. When he speaks again, it’s in a more clipped and quiet tone than any he’s used with her since they met. “Best not to meditate on the road not taken, Cassidy.”

A far cry from what he said to her in his shop the day before. She struggles to remember the words he used.
Take it from a man who passed up far too many gifts in his life. There is no virtue in ignoring your heart’s desire. To ignore it is to condemn yourself to a lifetime of darkness.
Even though she’s not sure exactly who or what he is, she’s willing to bet most of Bastian Drake’s existence is spent meditating on the road he didn’t take. What else could he have meant by a
lifetime of darkness
?

“That sounds scary,” she says.

“All three of you chose to embrace the flame. This is a good thing, Cassidy. When the flame is not embraced, there are consequences for everyone involved.”

“I see. So this is what you do with your magic? You help people live out their fantasies?”

“The fantasies that guide them to their hearts, yes.”

“I see. And the ghosts we saw last night. Who were they?”

“Well, for starters, they weren’t ghosts.”

“But you are,” she says quickly.

“Clever,” he whispers.

“Thank you. So last night?”

“Have you ever heard mention of a place called The Desire Exchange?”

Sure
, she wants to say as a chill moves through her.
I’ve also heard of Bigfoot, alien abduction conspiracies, and all manner of creepy stuff I probably would have laughed off a day ago.
“It’s a sex club for rich people out in the swamp somewhere,” she replies. “But I don’t know anyone who’s actually been. It’s an urban legend, a myth.”

“Ghosts who can stop time are also a myth, Cassidy. But you’re speaking to one of them right now.”

At least you finally told me what you are.

“Okay. So The Desire Exchange is real. But what does it have to do with the candle you gave me?”

“The Exchange is a place for people to live out their deepest sexual fantasies. Most people visit in the hope of discovering if it's just a fantasy or a calling they’ve always ignored. A calling that could turn into a new beginning. But many of them learn they need only act it out once and then they’re free of it. For these people, it’s more of a purge. Either way, the passion and bravery of those who visit The Desire Exchange gives off a kind of energy. I bottle that energy, I blend it, and I place it on a shelf where it waits for someone like you, someone who could use a bit of inspiration.”

“Inspiration?”

“A nudge,” he says with a bright smile. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the beginning of a haunting. What you saw last night will never come again. It’s up to you to shape your story now. You and Andrew and Shane.”

“Just tell me you’re not stealing people’s souls.”

“Oh, for goodness sake! No. What is with this
incessant
belief that the dead want only to hurt the living? It’s the great misconception of the plane on which you dwell. The engine of the living world is
love
, Cassidy. Not money. Not pain. Not war. Love. And there are those of us who are senten—there are those of us who are
assigned
to make sure the engine keeps running.”

Sentenced. You were going to say
sentenced,
not assigned.

“So last night, those things. If they weren’t ghosts, what were they?
Who
were they?”

“
They
are still very much alive, so you needn’t worry about them. All you saw was their essence, the life force that sprang from their passion and their desire.”

“A woman and two men. Just like me, Andrew, and Shane?”

“Exactly,” Bastian answers with a satisfied smile.

“Did it work out? Did the three of them end up together? Or did they just live it out once so they could purge it and move on with their lives?”

“Their story is not mine to tell.”

“What about my story?”

“Not just
your
story, Cassidy.”

“Sorry.
Our
story. Me and Andrew and Shane.”

“Is yours to live,” he says.

“But what if—”

“
What
, Cassidy? If you give into fear again? If you refuse to admit that you love them both equally, that you always have, that you’ve longed for a special sacred place where all three of you could be together, always? Are those the
what ifs
you can’t bring yourself to name?”

Belong to you…both of you…always.
If she’s being haunted by anything right now, it’s these words, the words they whispered to each other before they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Her heart won’t rest until they’ve spoken these words to each other again, without the sparkling evidence of Bastian Drake’s magic threaded across their bodies.

“We can’t light one of your candles every time we want to be together,” she says. “That’s not going to work, is it?”

“You are correct. My gift has done its job. The rest is up to you now.”

A gold radiance has returned to Bastian’s eyes. This time Cassidy doesn’t turn away from the magic in front of her.

She has what she came for, Bastian’s assurance that if there are battles lying in wait for her, and for Andrew and for Shane, those battles will pit them against their own hearts, not dangerous spirits. But still, she could stand here all day questioning him. And somewhere along the way, she would probably ruin the whole thing. By the hundredth question, her head would take control of her heart and she would analyze the source of this miracle in such microscopic detail she’d convince herself it was all just a bunch of strange chemicals damaging brain cells, making them misfire.

Also, it seems like Bastian Drake is done with their little chat.

There’s a crackling sound all around them, as if the frozen tableau they’re standing in the middle of is actually an ice palace that’s started melting in the sun. She figures this is Bastian’s not-so-subtle warning that he’s about to release his hold on the clock of human time. That, combined with the gold radiance that’s chased the pupils from the man’s eyes, convinces her she doesn’t have much time left with him. And maybe he’s pulling back for the same reason she believes she should. Maybe he’s sensed that the more she discusses his magic, the more she’ll wipe its gold dust from her heart. So as the crackling sound around them intensifies, Cassidy says the first words that come into her head.

“Thank you.”

Bastian Drake smiles, and then suddenly falling rain wipes him from view.

13

CASSIDY

“Hey,” Cassidy says.

“Howdy,” Shane answers.

It takes her a few seconds to realize Andrew has handcuffed Shane to the bedframe with a set of fuzzy handcuffs he’s only used on her once or twice, maybe because she’s a bigger fan of silk wrist ties. The running shower in the master bathroom makes a dull roar.

When she takes a seat on the bed beside Shane, she sees his skin is still rosy from the shower and scented with her husband’s favorite peppermint body wash. He’s dressed in her husband’s clothes too; a pair of his plaid Ralph Lauren boxer shorts and one of the white tank tops he likes to wear to bed.

“How’d you shower in those?” she asks.

“He put them on me after. But he stood guard the whole time so I couldn’t get away.”

“And did you want to get away?”

“Well, see, he told me this woman I love more than anything went and did something really dangerous all by herself. So I freaked out. I said we had to find her. But he had other ideas. Something about keeping a promise to his wife. That’s been the big theme this morning, keeping promises to Cassidy Burke.”

“So what was this dangerous thing this woman went and did?”

“She had a meeting with some guy named Bastian Drake.”

“Yeah, well, turns out he’s not dangerous.”

“Okay, fine. But see, this woman, she didn’t know that before she went down there,
alone
, did she?”

“Uh-huh. Well, if someone hadn’t been ignoring my text messages for a week, I might not have ended up in his shop in the first place.”

“
Oh my God. So
not fair, Cass,” he says, dropping the sly routine.

“I know. And it might not be all that true, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently his candles find exactly who they need to find. That’s how it works. I probably would have smelled it from halfway across the city.”

“What did it smell like? The first time?”

“You,” she says, staring into his eyes. “You and Andrew, together.”

He blushes—god, he’s so cute when he blushes. She’s always thought so but she’s never been able to say so without feeling like a desperate, pathetic, deluded woman hopelessly in love with her gay friend. She expects him to look away from her penetrating stare, but instead he nibbles on his lower lip, meets her stare and asks, “Did I smell good?”

“Very,” she answers.

“Have I always smelled good?”

With one bare foot, he drags his toes gently across her bent knee. His cock is starting to rise in the loose folds of her husband’s boxer shorts, and she wonders if it’s the result of being cuffed, asking her coy questions, the lustful stare she’s giving him or all three in combination.

“Yes,” she answers.

He slides his foot up onto her leg, and once the bare sole is exposed, she realizes what he’s doing, referencing that little moment they shared together, a moment of such unexpected, flowering desire she barely managed to repress her memory of it until they made love the night before. She drags one fingertip along the arch of his foot, and he sucks in a breath through clenched teeth.

“So what did you and my husband get up to while I was gone?”

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks her. “Or do you want me to show you?”

Her heart races. She grasps Shane’s bare foot in one hand. His perfectly manicured, pale foot. Just then, the shower shuts off. A minute later, Andrew appears in the doorway, toweling himself off, trying to appear relaxed and casual even though he’s clearly dying for information about her trip to the French Quarter. The sight of them touching brings a smile to Andrew’s face.