Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (8 page)

Thomas's body betrayed him, reacting with the same mix of fear, loathing and impossible desire the Queen always roused in him. She was a horror, a painful ecstasy, a bitterly intoxicating drink. And when she tugged at his belt and led him to her couch of thistledown, he went.

"Pleasure me, Thomas," she whispered, her face shifting between the beautiful, luminous young woman who had led Tess's friend away at the riverbank, and the nightmare of fury that was her normal face. "Please me well enough, and in return..." Her owl's talon lingered on the bone and gold band. "One strand will part."

"Two, my Lady." Thomas followed her down onto the deeply cushioned surface, his knee between her legs, pressing upward in a way he knew she liked. "One for services already rendered in returning your possession, and one for services about to be rendered." It was only at times like this, when she was indolent and distracted, that he could bend her will.

"Ah, my beautiful boy." She stroked his cheek, then reached into his trousers and took hold of him. "Drive your bargain...this
hard
bargain of yours..." She gave him a wicked squeeze, and laughed when he gasped. "And then perhaps we will see."

The world turned red, and though he was choked with pleasure and bleeding from the scrapes on his back, it was ordinary brown human eyes that swam before him. Only fear made him remember to call out his Queen's name.

"
W
ERE
YOU ABLE TO FIND
the knick knack Rory Morris pocketed the other morning?" Seated at her office desk, Tess spoke into the phone.

"No, Ms. Gordon." The day-room attendant's voice seemed certain and a bit annoyed that she was still harping on the issue.

"But it must be there. I have no idea what he did with it, but it's got to be there. I don't know what's in it, and I'm concerned it could do him, or another resident, harm."

"Oh, but there's been a tremendous improvement in patient Morris. I'm not at liberty to give you details over the telephone, but he's had a breakthrough."

"A breakthrough? What?"

"Like I said, I'm not at liberty—"

"I know, I know—federal law prohibits you, and I'm not his physician." Tess sighed in irritation.

"Sorry," the attendant said. Then he laughed. "Maybe your knick knack was magic."

"Ha," said Tess. "Well, thank you, I guess, and please let me know if you find the thing." She hung up and stared at the telephone. Rory, a breakthrough? She wondered what that meant. She thought she'd glimpsed a moment or two of clarity, but since she had only observed him through their counseling sessions, and not during his hospitalization, she didn't have a good behavioral benchmark against which to compare.

Maybe the damage the drug had done wasn't permanent. Maybe there was hope, hope for Aaron, hope for the other young men who'd been in her care, and for the unknown others whose families didn't have the money to spend on private rehabilitation. Rory had been at Ridge Manor for nearly six months. A former client, Anthony Sparks, had been hospitalized elsewhere for even longer, but for the last month she had not checked on his progress. He was no longer the responsibility of the rehab center.

It ate at her, gnawing like a rat at a wall that separated it from food, to have failed so utterly. The center had come too late to cases like Rory and Anthony, but Tess couldn't help feeling she still had a chance with Aaron. He was still walking, thinking, experiencing the world. Whereas Rory and Anthony were locked away in their own minds, to say nothing of the hospitals. They were silent, distant, not present in their own lives. No longer taking the drugs, whatever they were, but not able to return from those personal nightmares. What kind of drug could do such damage?

Tess fished in her locked file cabinet for Anthony's folder, then hastened back to her desk to make another telephone call.

Fifteen minutes later, she was no closer to solving the mystery of Rory's breakthrough. Anthony's condition had not changed in months.

She doodled on her notepad, listing the names of the young men with Aaron's symptoms who'd come through the rehabilitation center. There seemed to be no link between them except their rapid declines, the delusion that they were elves or sprites or other magical creatures, and the unresponsive state their addiction ended in. She knew of no common schools, friends, jobs, interests or neighborhoods.

But something had to be at the root of the evil. A point where all of them touched. She couldn't help but wonder if it had something to do with the people under the Burnside Bridge.

She tore off the doodles and wrote Aaron's name at the top of a fresh page. She underscored it twice, as though the bold strokes would summon a solution. Then she listed everything she knew about his condition, including the confusing mentions of the lady and a brief description of the girl he'd met along the river in Waterfront Park. She also listed the young man who'd offered to chat with her—the one Thomas had driven away.

Which brought her to the topic that hadn't been far from her mind since the night before—Thomas's kiss.

It had left Tess bemused and pleasantly shaken, warm with arousal. She hadn't expected the kissing, but it hadn't been unwelcome, even though it was only their second meeting. Her lips parted even now with the memory.

What a long time it had been since she met a man whose company she enjoyed and whose touch didn't make her wary. Their encounters had been unconventional, but she looked forward to their coffee and dinner Friday night.

Thinking back over those few minutes together, she remembered the green glass thimble and wondered what Thomas had done with it. He had probably forgotten he had it, given their embrace and his sudden departure. She'd have to ask.

Tess shook her head to get herself back on track. Aaron, "the lady," the Burnside Bridge. Rory too had reacted to mentions of the lady and the bridge. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered: had Rory met the same woman, perhaps? Or was "the lady" a slang term for a new street drug? Was Aaron's paramour also Aaron's pusher?

She accessed the center's appointment schedule on her computer. Her appointment with Aaron was not until next week, but what if she spoke to him before that, got him to meet her somewhere they could talk in complete privacy? What would he tell her then? Or did she dare follow him a second time, see if he went back to the bridge and met the woman again? Could she even come up with a remotely plausible reason for being where Aaron was, filled with obsessive questions about whom he was seeing, and whether the woman knew Rory or Anthony or any of the names on Tess's notepad? A reason to insert herself into his personal life? Question his girlfriend, demand to know if the woman had introduced Aaron to something devastating?

Tess rubbed her eyebrows, trying to press away the headache that was building as her questions piled up and up.

She knew what her colleagues would say: don't let it get personal. Don't get sucked into their lives, their delusions, their private nightmares. Before she knew it, she'd be trying to do Aaron's thinking for him, trying to shield him from all harm, trying to
be
his cure instead of helping lead him to it. He had to want to get better for himself. She could not make him do it—he would only backslide.

Like any other addict, her colleagues would remind her.

Aaron had to hit bottom, she could not point to it and say, "There it is. Walk away from it." His family had staged their intervention by bringing him to rehabilitation. And while Aaron claimed to want to get better, he nevertheless insisted he wasn't on drugs, even as he declined week after week.

She couldn't say why it seemed like a personal failure, except that here was a case where nothing had worked, not even for a few days or weeks.

Nothing.

Tess stared at the computer screen, unseeing. She would meet Thomas for their dinner date in just a few days; she held onto that thought like a lifeline. She wasn't Aaron. She still had a life. She simply had to keep it that way. If not for Aaron, she would not have met Thomas. Maybe at their next session she could explain that to Aaron and pull him into reality, get him to confide in her, show him that life mattered more than fantasy, more than drugged dreams. Maybe it wasn't too late.

Her computer beeped for an appointment reminder. With a sigh, Tess cleared away her doodles, turned the leaf on her notepad, and buzzed the front desk to send in her next client, a young woman who'd been very successful losing weight on painkillers. So successful, in fact, that to get more prescriptions, she'd faked being struck by hit-and-run drivers in downtown crosswalks.

Twice.

Everyone's reality was different. If only those realities could also be healthy. Including her own. She bit her lip, then folded her hands and put on a welcoming smile.

The last client departed just after four o'clock. Normally Tess would have spent the remainder of her day with paperwork, but Rory's change in condition was never far from her thoughts. Ridge Manor had visiting hours until dinnertime. If she left now, she'd be able to get in to talk with Rory, see firsthand what had changed in the young man virtually overnight.

Ridge Manor was its usual peaceful self in the late autumn afternoon light. Tess checked in with the nurse at the front desk and was just about to pin on the visitor's badge the nurse handed her, when the woman blinked in surprise at her computer screen.

"Hold on a moment," the nurse said, busily clicking at her keyboard. "Rory Morris, you're sure?"

"Yes."

"It's probably just timing on the paperwork, but I guess nobody let your center know that Mr. Morris's family came to take him home just an hour ago!"

"Home? Today?" Tess repeated, startled.

"Yes."

"So...he's not here."

"No. Did you still want to go back?"

"I..." Tess floundered. Rory, gone home? "I—could I speak to his case manager, please? I'd like to follow up on this personally, not wait for the paperwork to come through. It's quite a surprise."

"A pleasant one. I'll buzz for you. Just a moment." The nurse smiled.

Fifteen minutes later, Tess was back in her Jeep, staring out at the salmon sunset sky. Other than hearing from the case manager that Rory had inexplicably emerged from his catatonia two days before, becoming quite lucid and insistent about contacting his family, she had no further information. She felt like she was trembling inside, burning with excitement. The next step was simply to contact Rory at home—tomorrow would be soon enough, but that task had gone straight to the top of her personal calendar—and speak with him and his family. Follow up for the rehab center's records.

Then she would apply what she learned to Aaron's case as soon as possible. It was good to feel hope again.

T
HOMAS
HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN WHAT
pizza was like. One of those foods he'd never eaten as a human, living before pizza became so popular. He'd tried it off and on in the past few decades, the way he'd tried many things that changed with the times and kept his human side more or less current, always planning for the time when he would be human again and not trow. But of late his trow body had craved the sorts of things Sharpwit cooked. Fae food. Things that spoke of power in the dark, things that haunted, hunted, or hewed to the night.

But here, in this small Italian place Tess had chosen, he was downing slabs of the stuff, greasy with cheese, volcanic with tomato sauce lava, strewn with meat and vegetables. It sat heavy and warm in his belly, a deeply comforting sensation. Tess had matched him slice for slice until the last two on the platter, when she leaned back, her hand upon her stomach, and her smile wry.

"I thought I could do it when we ordered this pie, I really did." She reached out and turned her glass of beer on the tabletop, studying the bubbles that clung in lines and clusters to the glass. "I was starving, but I can't manage another bite. You?"

Thomas grinned. The ballast of the pizza helped anchor his human form uppermost, which was a relief. He might pay the price later for having consumed the cheese and processed flour, but for the moment he was contented, almost blissful. "I think I'm done for as well." He patted his own stomach and could feel the dinner mounding there as if he were a pup, full of milk and meat. "I could really go for a long walk on the beach to help settle this bulge."

"Or maybe through Forest Park. If only it were summer and sunny. This time of year, the trails are slippery. Leaves and rain and mud, mud, mud."

Forest Park
. She said it so casually. She had no idea what lived there, the sorts of things that would find her tasty in any number of ways. He fought down his reaction and shook his head. "No, the beach, for me. A long walk, right where the water meets the land."

She took a sip of her beer. "We could go, you know."

Thomas sat up straighter. With her agreement, a new thought had occurred to him. Tess wasn't willing to believe Underbridge was the dangerous place he had painted it, but what if he could prove differently? He wasn't likely to be able to convince her to smear fae ointment on her eyes so she could see through their glamour, but there was another way.

"We could? Now? It's night."

"Not now, but tomorrow. I don't have to work, it's Saturday. We could go to the seashore, walk all we want, have a little clam chowder somewhere. Spend the day. Take our time coming back."

And I could find a stone with a hole, and use it to show you the reality you think you know.
Beach stones were the best for seeing past the glamour. Their holes, worn by the waves, were more rounded, less fractured than stones chipped from cliffs or dug from the earth. He sometimes took a fairy road to the coast and remembered what the area had been like two centuries ago, before so many people came. He'd found a few of the stones over the years—almost as if he had a knack for it. Given a long enough stroll on the rocky beaches of the Pacific, sooner or later one would turn up. They'd all gone to Sharpwit in payment for information or meals. No telling what the hob had done with them and he did not want to ask if she had any left.