Wildcat Fireflies (9 page)

“I want to go to Siberia or Antarctica and hide.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nocti hunting us. Me supposed to find other Fenestra and save them. Helping the dying reach the highest plane. I don’t want it.” I laid my head in my arms. “They picked the wrong girl.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“They did.” I raised my head and my voice. “They should have picked a brave, confident girl, instead they got me. What if that’s what Auntie’s trying to say?”

Tens came closer, knelt at my side, wiped my tearing eyes with his thumbs. “Auntie believed in you.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. Why do you think she asked your parents to name you after her? Why do you think she sent you quilts with Fenestra mojo and prayers for strength in every stitch?”

“She did?”

“She wanted you to come live with her immediately. She asked your parents to bring you so she could teach you, but your mom wouldn’t.”

“She’d have to have been honest with my dad.” I shook my head.

“Auntie used to talk about you. Your mom wrote her and sent her photos.”

“Photos?” Fenestras don’t show up on film until we figure out how to operate the window. The light overexposes it, I think.

“They weren’t good—you were mostly just a blob of light—but she kept sending them. Auntie knew, and still knows, that you are exactly who you need to be to do this job.”

“Really?”

“Really. And so do I. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. But you need to understand how helpless I feel when you’re gone and I’m watching your body. When you do so many souls, it’s like the energy drains out of you. I can see it happening. First your skin pales and your hair loses its curl, then your heartbeat slows. And all I can do is sit there with you and hope you don’t go through.” His voice roughened and his eyes swam with tears. “I can’t lose you. I wouldn’t survive, Supergirl.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I leaned my forehead in the curve of his neck and held on to him as tightly as he gripped me. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

He nodded against my head. “I want you safe.”

“Me too.”

“You’d get bored talking to penguins in Antarctica.”

I giggled. “I’d teach ’em poker.”

“With fish and chips?” He laughed.

“Ha-ha.” I snorted snot bubbles, which made me laugh harder and break away for a Kleenex.

“We’re supposed to ask Custos? Seriously?” He turned to me, then glanced over at the couch. “In English?”

I nodded. “I guess.”

Custos rolled over on her back, spread her legs wide, and wagged her tail.

“So, in the morning, we ask her to help us find Father
somebody
?”

“Anthony.” I snapped my fingers. “That’s it, Anthony.”

Tens nodded, but didn’t say anything else. He poured soup into bowls and nuked them until they were piping hot. I rubbed the headache pounding at my temples.

“Head hurt?” he asked.

“Yeah, just a normal human headache.”

“You sure?” He sounded skeptical.

“Yes, positive.”
Like we are going to have the I-get-a-headache-and-cramps-with-my-period conversation. I don’t think so
. Before—before Revelation and all this—I rarely had a period. The doctors said it was because I was too thin, too anxious, too something indefinable. But for
the past two months, every twenty-eight days I counted on needing tampons, Midol, and chocolate ice cream. I tried my best to keep this to myself. There wasn’t anything romantic about sharing this part of my life with my boyfriend.

“Do you want this in bed or …?”

“No, I’m fine.” I forced myself to move to the table. I found myself famished. I wasn’t used to being hungry and having food taste good. It continued to be a new experience, feeling satiated.

I ate almost as much as Tens.
Almost
.

I liked watching him eat. I enjoyed studying him, period. His eyes went from dark chocolate to solid black when he worried or grew angry, but lightened to brown-sugar syrup with love and laughter.

His blue-black hair grew much faster than mine, so he was forever tucking it behind his ears. His cheekbones were chiseled angles under his eyes, leading my gaze toward his full lips, every single time. His were the lips Hollywood starlets paid insane amounts of money to manufacture. But on him, the voluptuousness was completely masculine and unpretentious. I wondered, not for the first time, if he looked more like his dad or his mom. He didn’t talk about them, not enough to slake my thirst. I knew from photos at Auntie’s house of Tyee, Tens’s grandfather.

He caught me staring at him and grinned. “Like what you see, Supergirl?”

Relieved he’d forgiven me, I laughed as I carried my dishes to the kitchen. “Maybe.”

He snorted and joined me at the sink. “Your color is better.”

“And my curl is coming back too, right?”

“Maybe.” He smiled and kissed the top of my head. “I’m going to get our stuff out of the truck.”

I gazed out the kitchen window, into the shadows.
What’s waiting out there? What’s watching? What, or who, is baiting a trap?
“Tens?”

He stopped at the open door, Custos by his side.

“I wish—” I broke off, unsure how to articulate myself.

He paused another beat. “What?”

“I— Never mind.” Words failed me.

His brow furrowed, but he believed me. Or at least he dropped it, and walked out into the night. Custos wagged her tail at me and whined.

Why is it I feel she knows exactly what I think before I think it?

Our bag opened and our clothes roughly organized, I changed into flannels that a month ago were too long and baggy, but were now snug and shorter by the night, and scrubbed squeaky clean. I crawled into bed. “My pajamas are smaller.”
Did they shrink in the wash, or am I really growing?

“Yeah, I’d noticed.” Tens sat on the couch and whittled his wood blocks into animals and magical creatures.
Will he come to bed tonight before I fall asleep or wait until after? Is he avoiding being near me?

“Why didn’t you say anything? Am I growing too?”

“You’re eating now. You’re healthier. So, yeah, you’re growing. What do you mean by ‘too’?” He paused.

“You’re taller.” I sat up and stared at him.

“So are you.” He raised a single eyebrow.

“And broader.”

“You too.” With a slight nod.

“I guess food agrees with us?” I smiled. Other girls might be upset by their boyfriend noticing their weight, but I was glad.

“Auntie said you’d catch up to where you should be as soon as your body wasn’t having to fight so hard to stay alive.” His voice trailed off, troubled.

I tried to lighten us back up. “What’s your excuse, then?”

“I’m a late bloomer?” he replied with a grin.

Sitting up and grabbing the nearest fancy, I threw a lacy pillow across the room at him.

“Thanks. How’d you know I needed that?” He snatched the pillow out of the air and tucked it behind his neck, like I’d been thoughtful.

I flounced back onto the mattress with a smile and barely suppressed giggles. I heard Tens’s chuckle as he stayed firmly on the couch. “Why don’t you come to bed?” I asked.

“I’m good. You go ahead and sleep.”

I lost the happy feeling.
Am I repulsive?
“Are you sure?”
Do I bring up sex? Should we have a conversation? Don’t all men want sex all the time?

“You know we have different sleep patterns.” He wasn’t convincing. He insisted on sleeping in shorts and a T-shirt. I was sure he’d prefer sleeping without anything on. Certainly that’s what he’d wanted in the caves. It wouldn’t
bother me. I’d rather be skin-to-skin honest than properly chaste and frustrated.

Why is he avoiding being in bed with an awake me?

I turned onto my side with a sigh. The silence grew thick, and the lump in my throat settled into my stomach. I usually liked the way the world quieted and sighed at night. It was the time when I let a day’s events wash over me, when I assimilated any new soul-info, when I focused on breathing life into my deepest places.
We have all the time in the world. Right? I should concentrate on the mission, finding the girl, not my lack of intimacy with Tens. Stop thinking about sex, damn it!
I knew I’d feel better if he made advances and I spurned them. But he conducted himself like he’d read the
1604 Gentlemen’s Guide to Relationships and Courting. He should throw himself at me and I should be the one saving no. Dysfunctional much?
I was a teeny bit twisted. I knew it. Owned it. Moved on.

Without the boundary of consciousness nighttime added a vulnerability that brought me nightmares. Terrible contortions of Perimo and his mighty band of followers ran on an unending loop in my mind. Panic made my heart race and my palms sweat. Simply thinking Perimo’s name brought dry heaves of anxiety. I tried repeating it to myself, over and over again, until I didn’t physically react to it. I’d kept trying.
Perimo, Nocti, Perimo, Nocti, Perimo, Nocti …

The sound of friction from Tens’s whittling created a rhythm, a slide and stop, a rough and smooth background track grounding me. I kept my eyes closed, but deep sleep eluded me. Nights also ripped open the wounds of grief I
carried. They were no longer the raging hot coal of acute pain, because scar tissue had begun building up around my heart. But I found myself searching for Auntie in those breaths between sleep and waking, in that twilight glow of utter relaxation.

In truth, I was searching for her all the time. In the daytime, I sought among the shadows for anything to remind me. I smelled her as I entered a room sometimes, though what it was that made the scent so utterly Auntie, I didn’t know.

The gritty sound of sandpaper meant Tens had finished a piece.
Didn’t he just start that one?

In the death times, I hoped for Auntie’s spirit among the windows. But at night, the times I dreamed of her, she was moving. I helped pack her bags and boxes with belongings I knew, and others that didn’t quite fit my memories. The house I dreamed of was different than the one in Revelation—it wasn’t her house at all—and she never spoke to me. She merely handed me things: books, scarves, figurines. Or I ran out of boxes or time, or the house began to crumble around us. But she never spoke. Even in the midst of these dreams, I knew it wasn’t really her, this dream Auntie of my imagination. But until I saw her in the afterlife, I’d assumed that was the only one I’d ever see.

But now, I knew she had tried to speak to me, yelling up at me in that window. Not simply when a soul needed me, but deliberately, with my own agenda, I felt compelled to go there again.

To hear more, to ask more.

To beg her to come back and take charge.

“Stop it, Meridian.” Tens leaned over me, wiped tears off my cheeks. “She wouldn’t want you tearing yourself up like this.”

My exhalation tore out of me like a child crying so hard, so long, she worked consciously for breath.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” Tens kept repeating reassurances. Petting my hair and rubbing warmth into my arms.

“Don’t leave?” My demand sounded more like a question, a request.

“I’m not going anywhere. Sleep.” He scooted under the covers.

I snuggled tighter against his side as he tucked us together. We were like a baby spoon and a chef’s serving spoon trying to cradle each other. And yet it worked. It felt perfectly imperfect.

He smelled clean, of minty toothpaste and Dove soap. I drifted away, toward the oblivion of rest. One minute warm and safe, the next jarred awake by his shouting. “No! Wait! Talk to me! Tell me! No, no!”

My legs tangled in the blankets, I fell out of bed.

Thump!

The hard landing shocked the dregs of sleep from my mind.

Tens screamed.

I scrambled back onto the bed. “Tens, Tens, wake up. Wake up!” I yelled, trying to make him hear me over his fear.

T
ens threw his head around and thrashed his legs as if wrestling with an imaginary assassin. An all-or-nothing battle.
For what?
I didn’t know.

I grabbed his forearm to rouse him. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. Instead, his strength merely jerked me into the action and I flew, with the motion of his arm, across the bed.

“Tens!” My
umph!
as my head hit the pillow broke through his nightmare.

“Merry?” Sleep and fear roughened his voice. With every labored breath, his sweat-drenched shirt heaved.

I crawled back over to him. “Are you awake now?”

“Yeah.” He sat up, rubbing his face. He tucked his legs under him to sit, back against the headboard. “Hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine.” I scrambled to turn on the light. He reached for me, his touch surging with energy. With me straddling his hips, he embraced me like a teddy bear. He hung on, tight, like I was a life raft in the middle of a stormy ocean. “What was that?” I whispered.

“Mom.” Anguish colored his tone a deep indigo.

His mom? He never talks about her. Never
. I waited. I’d learned not to push too hard. He needed to open up at his own pace. In his own time. Even if it killed me.

Tens exhaled words with his breath. “And my grandfather and a man—a boy, maybe, more like a boy. Your age, younger than me.” He shivered as the sweat cooled and his heart rate normalized.

My skin stuck against his. I’d waited for weeks to learn more about his family. “You seemed scared? Angry?”

His arms flexed around me. “Yeah, the dream morphed into Perimo and more Nocti, but it started out with my mom by my side. We watched this young couple in a diner share an ice cream sundae. Happy. So much joy. They were entranced, in love with each other.” He smiled down at me, his eyes intense. “This huge bowl.” He chuckled. “Enough ice cream for an entire state, with sprinkles and sauces and huge amounts of whipped cream. And two spoons. They were so into each other, they radiated. They didn’t need words. No words and all smiles.”