JEREMY DROVE FASTER THAN THE CHIEF, SO WE MADE IT TO PORT ANGELES by
four. He took us to the florist first, where the glossy woman behind the counter quickly upsold Allen from roses to orchids. Allen made decisions fast, but it took Jeremy a lot longer to figure out what he wanted. The saleswoman made it sound like all the details would be really important to the girls, but I had a hard time believing anyone could care that much.
While Jeremy debated ribbon colors with the woman, Allen and I sat on a bench by the plate glass windows.
“Hey, Allen…”
He looked up, probably noticing the edge in my voice. “Yeah?”
I tried to sound more like I was just randomly curious, like I didn’t care what the answer was.
“Do the, uh, Cullens miss school a lot—I mean, is that normal for them?”
Allen looked over his shoulder through the window while he answered, and I was sure he was being nice. No doubt he could see how awkward I felt asking, despite how hard I was trying to play it cool.
“Yeah, when the weather’s good they go backpacking all the time—even the doctor. They’re all really into nature or something.”
He didn’t ask one question, or make one snide comment about my obvious and pathetic crush. Allen was probably the nicest kid at Forks High School.
“Oh,” I said, and let it drop.
After what felt like a long time, Jeremy finally settled on white flowers with a white bow, kind of anticlimactic. But when the orders were signed and paid for, we still had extra time before the movie was set to start.
Jeremy wanted to see if there was anything new at the video game store a few blocks to the east.
“Do you guys mind if I run an errand? I’ll meet you at the theater.” “Sure.” Jeremy was already towing Allen up the street.
It was a relief to be alone again. The field trip was backfiring. Sure, Allen’s answer had been encouraging, but I just couldn’t force myself into a good mood. Nothing helped me think about Edythe less. Maybe a really good book.
I headed in the opposite direction from the others, wanting to be by myself. I found a bookstore a couple of blocks south of the florist, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. The windows were full of crystals, dream- catchers, and books on spiritual healing. I thought about going inside to ask directions to another bookstore, but one look at the fifty-year-old hippie smiling dreamily behind the counter convinced me that I didn’t need to have that conversation. I would find a normal bookstore on my own.
I wandered up another street, and then found myself on an angled byway that confused me. I hoped I was heading toward downtown again, but I wasn’t sure if the road was going to curve back in the direction I wanted or not. I knew I should be paying more attention, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Allen had said, and about Saturday, and what I was supposed to do if she didn’t come back, and then I looked up and saw someone’s silver Volvo parked along the street—not a sedan, this was an SUV, but still—and suddenly I was mad. Were all vampires this unreliable?
I trudged off in what I thought was a northeasterly direction, heading for some glass-fronted buildings that looked promising, but when I got to them, it was just a vacuum repair shop—closed—and a vacant space. I walked around the corner of the repair shop to see if there were any other stores.
It was a wrong turn—just leading around to a side alley where the dumpsters were. But it wasn’t empty. Staring at the huddled circle of people, I tripped on the curb and staggered forward noisily.
Six faces turned in my direction. There were four men and two women. One of the women and two of the men quickly turned their backs to me, shoving their hands in their pockets, and I had the impression that they were
hiding the things they’d been holding. The other woman had dark black hair, and she looked strangely familiar as she glared in my direction. But I didn’t stop to figure out how I knew her. When one of the men had spun around, I’d gotten a quick glimpse of what looked a lot like a gun stuffed into the back of his jeans.
I started walking forward, crossing the mouth of the alley and heading on to the next street, like I hadn’t noticed them there. Just as I was out of view, I heard a voice whisper behind me.
“It’s a cop.”
I glanced behind me, hoping to see someone in uniform, but there was no one else on the empty street. I was farther off the main road than I’d realized. Picking up the pace, I watched the pavement so I wouldn’t trip again.
I found myself on a sidewalk leading past the backs of several gray warehouses, each with large bay doors for unloading trucks, padlocked for the night. The south side of the street had no sidewalk, only a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protecting some kind of engine parts storage yard. I’d wandered far past the part of Port Angeles that guests were supposed to see. It was getting dark now—the clouds were back and piling up on the western horizon, creating an early sunset. I’d left my jacket in Jeremy’s car, and a sharp wind made me shove my hands in my pockets. A single van passed me, and then the road was empty.
“Hey, pig,” a woman’s voice called from behind me.
I looked back, and it was the woman I’d seen before, the familiar one. Behind her were two of the men from the alley—a tall bald guy and the shorter man who I thought might be the one who’d had the gun.
“What?” I asked, slowing automatically. She was looking straight at me. “I’m sorry, do you mean me?”
“Sorry?” she repeated. They were still walking toward me, and I backed away, toward the south side of the road. “Is that your favorite word or something?”
“I—I’m… sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She pursed her lips—they were painted a dark, sticky red—and suddenly I knew where I’d seen her before. She was with the guy I’d knocked with my bag when I first arrived in Port Angeles. I looked at the shorter guy, and sure enough, I could see the tops of the tattoos on either side of his neck.
“Aren’t you gonna call for backup, Officer?” he asked.
I had to glance behind myself again. It was just me. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Sure we do,” the woman said. “And you didn’t see anything back there, either, did you?”
“See anything? No. No, I didn’t see anything.”
My heel caught on something as I backed away, and I started to wobble. I threw my arms out, trying to balance, and the taller man, the one I’d never seen before, reacted.
He was pointing a handgun at me.
I’d thought it was the shorter guy who’d had the gun. Maybe they all had guns.
“Hey, hey,” I said, holding my hands higher so he could see they were empty. “I’m not a cop. I’m still in high school.” I kept edging away until my back ran into the chain-link fence.
“You think I’m stupid?” the woman asked. “You think your plainclothes getup fools me? I saw you with your cop partner, Vice.”
“What? No, that was my dad,” I said, and my voice broke. She laughed. “You’re just a baby pig?”
“Sure, okay. So that’s cleared up. I’ll get out of your way now.…” I started sliding along the fence.
“Stop.”
It was the bald man, still pointing the gun. I froze.
“What are you doing?” the short guy said to him. His voice was low, but the street was very quiet, and I could hear him easily.
“I don’t believe him,” the tall one said.
The woman smiled. “How’s that pirate song go? Dead men tell no tales.”
“What?” I croaked. “No, look, that’s—that’s not necessary. I’m not telling any tales. There’s nothing to tell.”
“That’s right,” she agreed. She looked up at the tall man and nodded. “My wallet’s right here in my pocket,” I offered. “There’s not much in it,
but you’re welcome to it.…” I started to reach for my pocket, but that was the wrong move. The gun jumped up an inch. I put my hand in the air again. “We need to keep this quiet,” the short one cautioned, and he bent to
grab a broken piece of pipe from the gutter. “Put the gun away.”
As soon as the gun was down, I was going to bolt, and the bald guy seemed to know that. He hesitated while the tattooed one started toward me. Zigzag, that was what my dad had told me once. It was hard to hit a moving target, especially one that wasn’t moving in a straight line. It would help if I weren’t doomed to trip over something. Just once, let me be sure on my feet. I could do that once, right? Just once, when my life depended
on it?
How much would a nonfatal bullet wound hurt? Would I be able to keep running through the pain? I hoped so.
I tried to unlock my knees. The man with the pipe was only a few paces away from me now.
A shrill squeal froze him in place. We all stared up as the noise turned piercing.
Headlights flew around the corner and then barreled right at me. The car was just inches from hitting the tattooed guy before he jumped out of the way. The chain-link rattled when he rammed into it. I turned to run, but the car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door flying open just a few feet from me.
“Get in,” a furious voice hissed.
I dove into the Volvo’s dark interior, not even questioning how she’d come to be here, relief and a new panic swamping me at the same time. What if she got hurt? I yanked the door shut behind me while I shouted.
“Drive, Edythe, get out of here. He’s got a gun.” But the car didn’t move.
“Keep your head down,” she ordered, and I heard the driver’s side door open.
I reached out blindly toward the sound of her voice, and my hand caught her slim, cold arm. She froze when I touched her. There was no give, though my fingers wrapped tight around the leather of her jacket.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Drive!”
My eyes were adjusting, and I could just make out her eyes in the reflected glow of the headlights. First they looked at my hand gripping her arm, then they narrowed and glared out the windshield toward where the man and the woman must be watching, evaluating. They could shoot at any second.
“Give me just a minute here, Beau.” I could tell her teeth were clenched
together.
I knew she would have no problem breaking free of my grasp, but she seemed to be waiting for me to let her go. That wasn’t going to happen.
“If you go out there, I’m going with you,” I said quietly. “I’m not letting you get shot.”
Her eyes glared forward for another half-second, and then her door slammed shut and we were reversing at what felt like about sixty.
“Fine,” she huffed.
The car spun in a tight arc as we raced backward around a corner, and then suddenly we were speeding forward.
“Put on your seat belt,” she told me.
I had to drop her arm to obey, but that was probably a good idea anyway. It wasn’t exactly a normal thing, holding on to a girl like that. Still… I was sad to let go.
The snap as the belt connected was loud in the darkness.
She took a sharp left, then blew through several stop signs without a pause.
But I felt oddly at ease, and totally unconcerned about where we were going. I stared at her face—lit only by the dim dashboard lights—and felt a profound relief that went beyond my lucky escape.
She was here. She was real.
It took me a few minutes of staring at her perfect face to realize more than that. To realize that she looked super, super pissed.
“Are you okay?” I asked, surprised by how hoarse my voice was. “No,” she snapped.
I waited in silence, watching her face while her eyes glared straight ahead.
The car came to a sudden, screeching stop. I glanced around, but it was too dark to see anything besides the vague outline of dark trees crowding the roadside. We weren’t in town anymore.
“Are you hurt at all, Beau?” she asked, her voice hard.
“No.” My voice was still rough. I tried to clear my throat quietly. “Are you?”
She looked at me then, with a kind of irritated disbelief. “Of course I’m not hurt.”
“Good,” I said. “Um, can I ask why you’re so mad? Did I do
something?”
She exhaled in a sudden gust. “Don’t be stupid, Beau.” “Sorry.”
She gave me another disbelieving look and then shook her head. “Do you think you would be all right if I left you here in the car for just a few
—”
Before she could finish, I reached out to grab her hand where it rested on the gearshift. She reacted by freezing again; she didn’t pull her hand away.
It was the first time I’d really touched her skin, when it wasn’t accidental and just for a fraction of a second. Though her hand was as cold as I expected, my hand seemed to burn from the contact. Her skin was so smooth.
“You’re not going anywhere without me.”
She glared at me, and like before, it was as if she were waiting for me to let go instead of just yanking free like she could easily have done.
After a moment, she closed her eyes.
“Fine,” she said again. “Give me a moment.”
I was okay with that. I kept my hand lightly on hers, taking advantage of her closed eyes to stare openly. Slowly, the tension in her face started to relax until it was smooth and blank as a statue. A beautiful statue, carved by an artistic genius. Aphrodite, maybe. Was that the one who was supposed to be the goddess of beauty?
There was that faint fragrance in the car again—something elusive that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Then her eyes opened, and she looked slowly down at my hand. “Do you… want me to let go?” I asked.
Her voice was careful. “I think that might be for the best.” “You’re not going anywhere?” I checked.
“I suppose not, if you’re that opposed.”
Unwillingly, I pulled my hand from hers. It felt like I’d been holding a handful of ice cubes.
“Better?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. “Not really.” “What is it, Edythe? What’s wrong?”
She almost smiled, but there was no humor in her eyes. “This may come as a surprise to you, Beau, but I have a little bit of a temper. Sometimes it’s
hard for me to forgive easily when someone… offends me.” “Did I—”
“Stop, Beau,” she said before I could even get the second word fully out. “I’m not talking about you.” She looked up at me with her eyes wide. “Do you realize that they were serious? That they were actually going to kill you?”
“Yeah, I kinda figured they were going to try.”
“It’s completely ridiculous!” It seemed like she was working herself up again. “Who gets murdered in Port Angeles? What is it with you, Beau? Why does everything deadly come looking for you?”
I blinked. “I… I have no answer for that.”
She tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips, exhaling through her nose. “So I’m not allowed to go teach those thugs a lesson in manners?”
“Um, no. Please?”
She sighed a long, slow sigh, and her eyes closed again. “How disagreeable.”
We sat in silence for a moment while I tried to think of something to say that would make up for… I guess, disappointing her? That was what it seemed like—that she was disappointed I was asking her not to go looking for multiple armed gangsters who had… offended her by threatening me. It didn’t make much sense—and even less so when you factored in that she had asked me to stay in the car. She was planning to go on foot? We’d driven miles away.
For the first time since I’d seen her tonight, the word Jules had said popped into my mind.
Her eyes opened at the same moment, and I wondered if she’d somehow known what I was thinking. But she just looked at the clock and sighed again.
“Your friends must be worried about you,” she said. It was past six-thirty. I was sure she was right.
Without another word, she started the engine and spun the car around. Then we were speeding back toward town. We were under the streetlights in no time at all, still going too fast, weaving easily through the cars slowly cruising the boardwalk. She parallel parked against the curb in a space I would have thought much too small for the Volvo, but she slid in with one try. I looked out the window to see the theater’s brightly lit marquee.
Jeremy and Allen were just leaving, pacing away from us.
“How did you know where…?” I started, but then I just shook my head. “Stop them before I have to track them down, too. I won’t be able to
restrain myself if I run into your other friends again.”
It was strange how her silky voice could sound so… menacing.
I jumped out of the car but kept my hand on the frame. Like before, holding her here.
“Jer! Allen!” I shouted.
They weren’t very far away. They both turned, and I waved my free arm over my head. They rushed back, the relief on both their faces turning to surprise when they took in the car I was standing next to. Allen stared into the recesses of the car, and then his eyes popped wide in recognition.
“What happened to you?” Jeremy demanded. “We thought you took off.”
“No, I just got lost. And then I ran into Edythe.”
She leaned forward and smiled through the windshield. Now Jeremy’s eyes bugged out.
“Oh, hi… Edythe,” Allen said.
She waved at him with two fingers, and he swallowed loudly.
“Uh, hey,” Jeremy said in her direction; then he stared at me—I must have looked odd, my one hand locked on the frame of the open door, but I wasn’t letting go. “So… the movie’s already started, I think.”
“Sorry about that,” I said.
He checked his watch. “It’s probably still just running previews. Did you…” He eyed my hand on the car. “… still want to come?”
I hesitated, glancing at Edythe.
“Would you like to come… Edythe?” Allen asked politely, though he had a little trouble getting her name out.
Edythe opened her door and stepped out, shaking her long hair back from her face. She leaned on the frame and threw her dimples at them. Jeremy’s mouth fell open.
“I’ve already seen this one, but thank you, Allen,” she said.
Allen blinked and seemed to forget how to speak. It made me feel a little better for always being so stupid around her. Who could help it?
Edythe glanced over at me. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to see this movie now?” she murmured.
Negative five thousand, I thought. “Er, not that much,” I whispered back. She smiled directly at Jeremy now. “Will it ruin your night if I make
Beau take me to dinner?” she asked.
Jeremy just shook his head. He hadn’t remembered how to close his mouth yet.
“Thanks,” she told him, dimpling again. “I’ll give Beau a ride home.” She slid back inside.
“Get in the car, Beau,” she said.
Allen and Jeremy stared. I shrugged quickly and then ducked into the passenger seat.
“The hell?” I heard Jeremy breathe as I slammed my door.
I didn’t get another look at their reactions. She was already racing away. “Did you really want dinner?” I asked her.
She looked at me questioningly. Was she thinking what I was thinking— that I’d never actually seen her eat anything?
“I thought you might,” she finally said. “I’m good,” I told her.
“If you’d rather go home…”
“No, no,” I said too quickly. “I can do dinner. I just mean it doesn’t have to be that. Whatever you’d like.”
She smiled and stopped the car. We were parked right in front of an Italian place.
My palms started to sweat a little as I jumped out of the car, hurrying to hold the restaurant’s door for her. I’d never really been on a date like this— a real date date. I’d gotten roped into some group things back in Phoenix, but I could honestly say that I hadn’t cared one way or another if I ever saw any of those girls again. This was different. I nearly had a panic attack anytime I thought this girl might disappear.
She smiled at me as she walked past, and my heart did this weird double-beat thing.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded—this was the off-season in Port Angeles. The host was a meticulously groomed guy a few years older than me, about my height but thicker through the shoulders. His eyes did that same thing that Allen’s and Jeremy’s had, bugging out for a second before he got control of his expression. Then it was his smarmiest smile and a goofy deep bow, all for her. I was pretty sure he didn’t even know I was standing there
next to her.
“What can I do for you?” he asked as he straightened up, still looking only at her.
“A table for two, please.”
For the first time, he seemed to realize I was there. The look he gave me was quick and dismissive. His eyes shifted back to her immediately, not that I could blame him for that.
“Of course, er, mademoiselle.” He grabbed two leather folders and gestured for Edythe to follow. I rolled my eyes. Signorina was probably what he’d been looking for.
He led us to a four-top in the middle of the most crowded part of the dining room. I reached for a chair, but Edythe shook her head at me.
“Perhaps something more private?” she said quietly to the host. It looked like she brushed the top of his hand with her fingers, which I already knew was unlike her—she didn’t touch people if she could help it—but then I saw him slide that hand to a pocket inside his suit coat, and I realized that she must have given him a tip. I’d never seen anyone refuse a table like that except in old movies.
“Of course,” the host said, sounding as surprised as I was. He led us around a partition to a small ring of booths, all of them empty. “How is this?”
“Perfect,” she said, and unleashed her smile on him.
Like a deer in headlights, the host froze for a long second, and then he slowly turned and staggered back toward the main floor, our menus still in the crook of his arm.
Edythe slid into one side of the closest booth, sitting close to the edge so that my only option was to sit facing her with the length of the table between us. After a second of hesitation, I sat, too.
Something thudded a couple of times on the other side of the partition, like the sound of someone tripping over his own feet and then recovering. It was a sound I was familiar with.
“That wasn’t very nice.”
She stared at me, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Whatever that thing you do is—with the dimples and the hypnotizing or whatever. That guy could hurt himself trying to get back to the door.”
She half-smiled. “I do a thing?”
“Like you don’t know the effect you have on people.”
“I suppose I can think of a few effects.…” Her expression went dark for a tiny second, but then it cleared and she smiled. “But no one’s ever accused me of hypnotism by dimples before.”
“Do you think other people get their way so easily?”
She tilted her head to the side, ignoring my question. “Does it work on you—this thing you think I do?”
I sighed. “Every time.”
And then our server arrived with an expectant expression, which quickly shifted to awe. Whatever the host had told him, it had been an understatement.
“Hello,” he said, surprise making his voice monotone as he mechanically recited his lines. “My name is Sal, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. What can I get you to drink?”
Like the host’s, his eyes never strayed from her face. “Beau?” she prompted.
“Um, a Coke?”
I might as well not have spoken at all. The waiter just kept staring at Edythe. She flashed a grin at me before turning to him.
“Two Cokes,” she told him, and, almost like an experiment, she smiled a wide, dimpled smile right into his face.
He actually wobbled, like he was going to keel over.
She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh. The waiter shook his head and blinked, trying to reorient. I watched sympathetically. I knew just how he felt.
“And a menu?” she added when he didn’t move.
“Yes, of course, I’ll be right back with that.” He was still shaking his head as he walked out of sight.
“You’ve seriously never noticed that before?” I asked her.
“It’s been a while since I cared what anyone thought about me,” she said. “And I don’t usually smile so much.”
“Probably safer that way—for everyone.”
“Everyone but you. Shall we talk about what happened tonight?” “Huh?”
“Your near-death experience? Or did you already forget?” “Oh.” Actually, I had.
She frowned. “How do you feel?”
“What do you mean?” I hoped she didn’t turn on the hypnotist eyes and make me tell the truth, because what I felt right now was… euphoria. She was right here, with me—on purpose—I’d gotten to touch her hand, and I probably had a few hours ahead to spend with her, too, since she’d promised to drive me home. I’d never felt so happy and so off-balance at the same time.
“Are you cold, dizzy, sick…?”
The way she listed the words reminded me of a doctor’s exam. And I didn’t feel cold or sick… or dizzy in a medical way. “Should I?”
She laughed. “I’m wondering if you’re going to go into shock,” she admitted. “I’ve seen it happen with less provocation.”
“Oh. No, I think I’m fine, thanks.” Honestly, almost being murdered was not the most interesting thing that had happened to me tonight, and I hadn’t really thought much about it.
“Just the same, I’ll feel better when you have some food in you.”
On cue, the waiter appeared with our drinks and a basket of breadsticks. He stood with his back to me while he placed them on the table, then handed Edythe a menu. Done with her experiments, she didn’t so much as look at him this time. She just pushed the menu across the table to me.
He cleared his throat nervously. “There are a few specials. Um, we have a mushroom ravioli and—”
“Sounds great,” I interrupted; I didn’t care what I got—food was the last thing on my mind. “I’ll have that.” I spoke a little louder than necessary, but I wasn’t sure he really knew I was sitting here.
He finally threw a surprised glance my way, and then his attention was back to her.
“And for you…?”
“That’s all we need. Thank you.” Of course.
He waited for a second, hoping for another smile, I thought. A glutton for punishment. When Edythe kept her eyes on me, he gave up and walked away.
“Drink,” Edythe said. It sounded like an order.
I took a sip obediently, then another bigger gulp, surprised to find that I was actually pretty thirsty. I’d sucked down the entire glass before I knew
it, and she slid her glass toward me. “No, I’m fine,” I told her.
“I’m not going to drink it,” she said, and her tone added the duh. “Right,” I said and, because I was still thirsty, I downed hers, too. “Thanks,” I muttered, while the word I didn’t want to think swirled
around my head again. The cold from the soda was radiating through my chest, and I had to shake off a shiver.
“You’re cold?” she asked, serious now. Like a doctor again. “It’s just the Coke,” I explained, fighting another shiver. “Don’t you have a jacket?”
“Yeah.” Automatically, I patted the empty seat next to me. “Oh—I left it in Jeremy’s car,” I realized. I shrugged, and then shivered.
Edythe started unwinding a bone-colored scarf from around her neck. I realized that I’d never once really noticed what she was wearing—not just tonight, but ever. The only thing I could remember was the black gown from my nightmare.… But though I hadn’t processed the particulars, I knew that in reality she always wore light colors. Like tonight—under the scarf she had on a pale gray leather jacket, cut short like motorcycle gear, and a thin white turtleneck sweater. I was pretty sure she usually kept her skin covered, which made me think of the deep V of the black dream gown again, and that was a mistake. A patch of warmth started to bloom on the side of my neck.
“Here,” she said, tossing the scarf to me. I pushed it back. “Really, I’m fine.”
She cocked her head to the side. “The hairs on the back of your neck are standing up, Beau,” she stated. “It’s not a lady’s scarf, if that’s what’s bothering you. I stole it from Archie.”
“I don’t need it,” I insisted.
“Fine, Royal has a jacket in the trunk, I’ll be right—”
She started to move, and I reached out, trying to catch her hand, to keep her there. She evaded my grasp, folding her hands under the table, but didn’t get up.
“Don’t go,” I said softly. I knew my voice sounded too intense—she was just going out to her car, not disappearing forever—but I couldn’t make it sound normal. “I’ll wear the scarf. See?”
I grabbed the scarf from the table—it was very soft, and not at all warm,
the way it should be after coming off someone’s body—and started to wrap it around my neck. I’d never worn a scarf that I could remember, so I just wound it in a circle until I ran out of fabric. At least it would cover the red on my neck. Maybe I should own a scarf.
This one smelled amazing, and familiar. I realized this was a hint of the fragrance from the car. It must be her.
“Did I do it right?” I asked her. The soft knit was already warming to my skin, and it did help.
“It suits you,” she said, but then she laughed, so I guessed that meant the answer was no.
“Do you steal a lot of things from, um, Archie?” She shrugged. “He has the best taste.”
“You never told me about your family. We ran out of time the other day.” Was it only last Thursday? It seemed like a lot longer.
She pushed the basket of breadsticks toward me. “I’m not going into shock,” I told her.
“Humor me?” she said, and then she did the thing with the smile and the eyes that always won.
“Ugh,” I grumbled as I grabbed a breadstick. “Good boy,” she laughed.
I just gave her a dark look as I chewed.
“I don’t know how you can be so blasé about this,” she said. “You don’t even look shaken. A normal person—” She shook her head. “But then you’re not so normal, are you?”
I shook my head and swallowed. “I’m the most normal person I know.” “Everyone thinks that about themselves.”
“Do you think that about yourself?” I challenged. She pursed her lips.
“Right,” I said. “Do you ever consider answering any of my questions, or is that not even on the table?”
“It depends on the question.”
“So tell me one I’m allowed to ask.”
She was still thinking about that when the waiter came around the partition with my food. I realized we’d been unconsciously leaning toward each other across the table, because we both straightened up as he approached. He set the dish in front of me—it looked pretty good—and
turned quickly to Edythe.
“Did you change your mind?” he asked. “Isn’t there anything I can get you?” I didn’t think I was imagining the double meaning in his offer.
“Some more soda would be nice,” she said, gesturing to the empty glasses without looking away from me.
The waiter stared at me now, and I could tell he was wondering why someone like Edythe would be looking at someone like me that way. Well, it was a mystery to me, too.
He grabbed the glasses and stalked off.
“I imagine you have a lot of questions for me,” Edythe murmured. “Just a couple thousand,” I said.
“I’m sure.… Can I ask you one first? Is that unfair?”
Did that mean she was going to answer mine? I nodded eagerly. “What do you want to know?”
She stared down at the table now, her eyes hidden under her black lashes. Her hair fell forward, shielding more of her face.
The words weren’t much more than a whisper. “We spoke before, about how you were… trying to figure out what I am. I was just wondering if you’d made any more progress with that.”
I didn’t answer, and finally she looked up. I was glad for the scarf again, though it couldn’t hide the red I could feel creeping up into my face now.
What could I say? Had I made progress? Or just stumbled into another theory even more stupid than radioactive spiders? How could I say that word out loud, the one I’d been trying not to think all night?
I don’t know what my face must have looked like, but her expression suddenly softened.
“It’s that bad, then?” she asked.
“Can I—can we not talk about it here?” I glanced at the thin partition that separated us from the rest of the restaurant.
“Very bad,” she murmured, half to herself. There was something very sad and… almost old about her eyes. Tired, defeated. It hurt me in a strange way to see her unhappy.
“Well,” I said, trying to make my voice lighter. “Actually, if I answer your question first, I know you won’t answer mine. You never do. So… you first.”
Her face relaxed. “An exchange, then?”
“Yes.”
The waiter returned with the Cokes. He set them on the table without a word this time and disappeared. I wondered if he could feel the tension as strongly as I could.
“I suppose we can try that,” Edythe murmured. “But no promises.” “Okay.…” I started with the easy one. “So what brings you to Port
Angeles tonight?”
She looked down, folding her hands carefully on the empty table in front of her. She glanced up at me from under the thick lashes, and there was a hint of a smile on her face.
“Next,” she said.
“But that’s the easiest one!” She shrugged. “Next?”
I looked down, frustrated. I unrolled my silverware, picked up my fork, and carefully speared a ravioli. I put it in my mouth slowly, still looking down, chewing while I thought. The mushrooms were good. I swallowed and took a sip of Coke before I looked up.
“Fine, then.” I glared at her, and continued slowly. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that… someone… could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know—with just a few exceptions.” It sounded so stupid. There was no way, if she wouldn’t comment on the first one…
But then she looked at me calmly and said, “Just one exception.
Hypothetically.”
Well, damn.
It took me a minute to recover. She waited patiently.
“Okay.” I worked to sound casual. “Just one exception, then. How would something like that work? What are the limitations? How would… that someone… find someone else at exactly the right time? How would she even know I was in trouble?” My convoluted questions weren’t making any sense by the end.
“Hypothetically?” she asked. “Right.”
“Well, if… that someone—” “Call her Jane,” I suggested.
She smiled wryly. “If your Hypothetical Jane had been paying better attention, the timing wouldn’t have needed to be quite so exact.” She rolled
her eyes. “I’m still not over how this could happen at all. How does anyone get into so much trouble, so consistently, and in such unlikely places? You would have devastated Port Angeles’s crime rate statistics for a decade, you know.”
“I don’t see how this is my fault.”
She stared at me, that familiar frustration in her eyes. “I don’t, either.
But I don’t know who to blame.” “How did you know?”
She locked eyes with me, torn, and I guessed she was wrestling against the desire to just tell me the truth.
“You can trust me, you know,” I whispered. I reached forward slowly, to put my hand on top of hers, but she slid them back an inch, so I let my hand fall empty to the table.
“It’s what I want to do,” she admitted, her voice even quieter than mine. “But that doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“Please?” I asked.
She hesitated one more second, and then it came out in a rush.
“I followed you to Port Angeles. I’ve never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it’s much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that’s probably just because it’s you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes. I was wrong before, when I said you were a magnet for accidents. That’s not a broad enough classification. You are a magnet for trouble. If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you.”
It didn’t bother me at all that she was following me; instead I felt a strange surge of pleasure. She was here for me. She stared, waiting for me to react.
I thought about what she’d said—tonight, and before.… Do you think I could be scary?
“You put yourself into that category, don’t you?” I guessed. Her face turned hard, expressionless. “Unequivocally.”
I stretched across the table again, ignoring her when she pulled back slightly once more, and laid my hand on top of hers. She kept them very still. It made them feel like stone—cold, hard, and now motionless. I thought of the statue again.
“That’s twice now,” I said. “Thank you.”
She just stared at me, her mouth twitching into a frown.
I tried to ease the tension, make a joke. “I mean, did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and you’re messing with fate? Like those Final Destination movies?”
My joke fell flat. Her frown deepened. “Edythe?”
She angled her face down again, her hair falling across her cheeks, and I could barely hear her answer.
“That wasn’t the first time,” she said. “Your number was up the first day I met you. It’s not twice you’ve almost died, it’s three times. The first time I saved you… it was from myself.”
As clearly as if I were back in my first Biology class, I could see Edythe’s murderous black glare. I heard again the phrase that had run through my head in that moment: If looks could kill…
“You remember?” she asked. She stared at me now, her perfect face very serious. “You understand?”
“Yes.”
She waited for more, for another reaction. When I didn’t say anything, her eyebrows pulled together.
“You can leave, you know,” she told me. “Your friends are still at the movie.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
She was suddenly irritated. “How can you say that?”
I patted her hands, totally calm. This was something I had already decided. It didn’t matter to me if she was… something dangerous. But she mattered. Where she was, was where I wanted to be.
“You didn’t finish answering my question,” I reminded her, ignoring the anger. “How did you find me?”
She glared at me for a moment, like she was willing me to be angry, too.
When that didn’t work, she shook her head and huffed a sigh.
“I was keeping tabs on Jeremy’s thoughts,” she said, like it was the most normal thing. “Not carefully—like I said, it’s not just anybody who could get themselves murdered in Port Angeles. At first I didn’t notice when you set off on your own. Then, when I realized that you weren’t with him anymore, I drove around looking for someone who had seen you. I found the bookstore you walked to, but I could tell that you hadn’t gone inside.
You’d gone south, and I knew you’d have to turn around soon. So I was just waiting for you, randomly searching through the thoughts of everyone I could hear—to see if anyone had noticed you so I would know where you were. I had no reason to be worried… but I started to feel anxious.…” She was lost in thought now, staring past me. “I started to drive in circles, still… listening. The sun was finally setting, and I was about to get out and follow you on foot. And then—” She stopped suddenly, her teeth clenching together with an audible snap.
“Then what?”
She refocused on my face. “I heard what she was thinking. I saw your face in her head, and I knew what she was planning to do.”
“But you got there in time.”
She inclined her head slightly. “It was harder than you know for me to drive away, to just let them get away with that. It was the right thing, I know it was, but still… very difficult.”
I tried not to picture what she would have done if I hadn’t made her drive away. I didn’t want to let my imagination run wild down that particular path.
“That’s one reason I made you go to dinner with me,” she admitted. “I could have let you go to the movie with Jeremy and Allen, but I was afraid that if I wasn’t with you, I would go looking for those people.”
My hand still rested on top of hers. My fingers were starting to feel numb, but I didn’t care. If she didn’t object, I’d never move again. She kept watching me, waiting for a reaction that wasn’t going to come.
I knew she was trying to warn me off with all this honesty, but she was wasting the effort.
She took a deep breath. “Are you going to eat anything else?” she asked. I blinked at my food. “No, I’m good.”
“Do you want to go home now?” I paused. “I’m not in any hurry.”
She frowned like my answer bothered her. “Can I have my hands back now?” she asked. I snatched my hand away. “Sure. Sorry.”
She shot me a glance while she pulled something from her pocket. “Is it possible to go fifteen minutes without an unnecessary apology?”
If it was unnecessary for me to apologize for touching her, did that mean
she liked it? Or just wasn’t actually offended by it? “Um, probably not,” I admitted.
She laughed once, and then the waiter showed up. “How are you do—” he started to ask.
She cut him off. “We’re finished, thank you very much, that ought to cover it, no change, thanks.”
She was already out of her seat.
I fumbled for my wallet. “Um, let me—you didn’t even get anything—” “My treat, Beau.”
“But—”
“Try not to get caught up in antiquated gender roles.”
She walked away, and I rushed to follow, leaving the stunned waiter behind me with what looked like a hundred-dollar bill on the table in front of him.
I passed her, hurrying again to get the door, ignoring what she’d said about antiquated roles. I knew she was faster than I could probably imagine, but the half-filled room of watching people forced her to act like she was one of them. She gave me a strange look when I held the door open—like she was kind of touched by the gesture, but also annoyed by it at the same time. I decided to overlook the annoyed part, and I scrambled past her to hold the car door, too. It opened easily—she’d never locked it. Her expression was more amused than anything at this point, so I took that as a good sign.
I almost ran to the passenger side of the car, trailing my hand across the hood as I moved. I had the nerve-wracking feeling that she was regretting telling me so much, and she might just drive off without me and disappear into the night. Once I was inside, she looked pointedly at my seat belt until I put it on again. I wondered for a second if she was some kind of safety-first absolutist—until I noticed that she hadn’t bothered with hers, and we were racing off into the light traffic without a hint of caution on her part.
“Now,” she said with a grim smile, “it’s your turn.”
