Читать книгу Fade To Midnight - Shannon McKenna - Страница 11

Kev’s legs felt rubbery as he walked into Pirelli’s, the hip independent bookstore that had recently opened up downtown. He was early for the two-thirty meet-the-author event. He’d been too anxious to wait at home, and he wanted to stay out of Bruno’s reach.

They’d worked out a shaky truce. Or rather, Kev had made Bruno understand that if he tried to stop Kev from going to the book signing, or if he showed up to police him there, one or both of them would end up in jail, or hospitalized. They’d fought in the hospital room two days ago, they’d fought this morning. They fought on the phone whenever they spoke. There was no middle ground.

He understood his brother’s point of view. Pursuing Edith Parrish was a big waste of time. Potentially embarrassing, possibly dangerous. She was too young to have anything to do with his past. This was indisputable. But checking out Edith Parrish was not a decision. It was a compulsion. A clawing, roaring need that could not be reasoned with.

Bruno had tried, in the hospital room, but his efforts had soon degenerated into shouting, a frequent occurrence in the Ranieri household. Tony had gotten into the fray, and after the IV rack got knocked over, the bottle of fluid smashed, and a table full of medical equipment upended, two big male nurses had come in and thrown Bruno and Tony out. And Kev had been made to understand that he was no longer welcome as a patient at Legacy Emanual Hospital. Now, or ever.

But hey. A guy had to do what a guy had to do.

He looked around, gut vibrating in that weird, tight way he couldn’t get used to, and strolled down the magazine aisle. Motorcycles, Men’s Health, Fine Art & Furnishings. He caught sight of himself reflected in the coffee bar machine, and winced. The wraparound sunglasses looked dumb, but he couldn’t tolerate fluorescent lights without them, and they hid the scarlet spot in his eye. And that hair, God. He went back and forth between long hair and buzzed off, it being a toss-up which took less maintenance, but he’d worn it long before the waterfall accident. When he wore it loose, it shielded him from a good forty percent of the stares that he caught for the scarring.

But they’d buzzed him to the scalp for the surgeries. It was barely two inches long, which meant that as it grew, it stuck up in spiky, crazy cowlicked whorls that made him look like an overgrown Sting wannabe. Even the long canvas coat, chosen for bland neutrality, seemed like a costume piece, with that hair, those glasses. And he was so fucking tall. He fought the urge to slump. That didn’t make a tall guy inconspicuous.

He forced himself to straighten, and noticed the cute blonde scoping him from the other side of the magazine rack. He turned his head as if checking out the bookstore map, letting her get a good long look at the scars. Her gaze darted away. She strode off. Bingo. One down, three billion to go. He weeded out the pointless ones a priori as quickly as possible.

He had discovered, to his cost, that girls fell mostly into two camps. The ones who were repelled by the scars, and the ones who were intrigued. He wasn’t sure which category was worse.

He hated explaining the story to them. He didn’t like to lie, but he hated telling the truth, too. Dealing with the girls’ wonder, their speculation, their sympathy, their heebie-jeebies. And the worst; their tender fantasies about soothing his ravaged soul and healing his inner wounds. Hell with that shit. It exhausted him. Celibacy was preferable.

Then he saw the photograph.

The image wiped his mind clean. Those eyes, looking out from the photograph, solemn and calm and compassionate. Full of light.

His angel. The force of those eyes, the shock of seeing her there, it hit him in the stomach like a bull’s head, knocking out all his air.

His lungs were sending him signals of distress. He reminded himself to breathe, got oxygen. He lurched forward. Read the name.

MEET THE AUTHOR. EDIE PARRISH. 2:30 PM.

The table was heaped with graphic novels. He locked his knees, tried to stop the drunken swaying. Another black and white headshot, but in this one, her hair was flung back and she wore no glasses. She gazed straight at him. The look in her eyes was a quiet, level challenge.

He had no idea how long he stood in the aisle. If his mouth hung open. People jostled by, inconvenienced by his large body blocking the aisle. He registered their annoyance but he was unable to move.

Edie Parrish was his white-clad angel. No wonder she’d been so small. She’d just been a child, eighteen years ago. Eleven years old.

A beautiful child. Grown up into a beautiful woman.

He stared into those eyes, his brain revving into a strange, altered state. Fear, laced with a strange, unbelieving joy. Dread, too. He would no longer have his magical talisman, so crucial for negotiating the maze of his jerry-rigged mind. If his angel was a flesh and blood person, he could not expect protection from the powers of darkness from her. He couldn’t use her like a magic penny if she was a real, live woman, with her own problems, her own bullshit and baggage.

A woman. So fucking beautiful. His hands shook. He was taking this too seriously. He could see that, feel it. But he could not stop it.

How could he have met her? Where? How had he known her? Would she recognize him? Could she know something about him?

No, dumbass. Don’t go there. Don’t hope that. She couldn’t. She was just a child. She was tiny. She could have no clue. None.

A muffled cough caught his attention, and he caught the nervous, gaze of one of the bookstore personnel. Fake normal, butthead. He moved closer to the table, picked up a book. He glanced at the cover, felt the delayed jolt to his system. That was a drawing of…himself.

Wait. What in the flying fuck? Kev rubbed his eyes and lifted the lenses of his sunglasses to peer at the drawing, his body thrumming.

Fade Shadowseeker, Book IV, Midnight’s Curse.

Midnight’s Curse. The name reverberated inside him like a gong. Whorls of spiky dirt-blond hair, pale green eyes, thin face, flat mouth. His face was scarred, on the right side. No. Not possible. Get a grip.

Hallucinations? Was he messed up enough to justify even this? Maybe he should get stronger meds. Dope his out-of-control imagination into submission. Or get checked out for schizophrenia. Only crazy people thought everything in the world referred to them. Only crazy people heard personal messages in popular songs, TV shows. Or found portraits of themselves on bestselling graphic novels.

But something in him rejected the idea, with visceral horror. He’d admit to being brain damaged, but not crazy. He’d rather be dead. He wouldn’t be squeamish. He’d just quietly put himself out of his misery. Insanity was one level of hell he would not stoically endure.

But he wasn’t crazy. Stressed out, yes. Sleep deprived, knocked on the head. Of course he thought it was all about him, him, him. Never mind war, famine, and plague. Forget indifference and brutality and climate change and innocent babies dying by the sword. Oh no. His own weird, twisted problems were still the center of the fucking universe.

It was just a sketch. Bold and stylized. A chance resemblance, and Edie Parrish’s solemn angel eyes had rattled him. Made it too personal. He just had to get over himself. Take a breath. Lighten up.

He grabbed another book at random. Fade Shadowseeker, Book I, Midnight’s Secret. The man on the cover had long hair, like his own had been before the waterfall. Green eyes. The right side of his face was puckered with scars, down to his jaw. He could see it more clearly in the close-up. The book shook in Kev’s hands. He flipped it open, leafed through quickly, and then more quickly, so that he wouldn’t have time to fixate on anything and go into a full-out panic attack.

Every few pages there was a full-page color sketch, between the black and white strips. There was Fade pushing a broom in a desolate industrial warehouse. Fade, seated on a wretched cot in a squalid room, shoulders slumped in despair. Fade, shoehorning himself into a windowless bathroom the size of an upright coffin to wash himself. Leaning over a sink the size of a loaf of bread to splash his scarred face. Staring into a cracked mirror, into eyes bloodshot with trapped despair.

Locked in his own mind, read the thought bubble over his head.

That sink, that cot, that mirror, that bathroom. He knew them like his own hands. That was the room behind Tony’s diner.

How had she seen that wretched place? How could she have known? Even Bruno had never gone back there. That stifling room had been his own lonely, private hell. The knot in his belly grew tighter.

The meet-the-author event would begin in about an hour. He looked down at the table, rummaging with a clammy hand until he found Volumes II and III. Midnight’s Scion and Midnight’s Oracle.

He found a secluded corner, a rubberized footstool for reaching top shelves. He planted his ass on it, and contemplated his gelatinous thigh muscles while he gathered the courage to open the books.

There’s one thing I don’t believe in. Coincidences. The words he’d said to Bruno echoed in his head. Problem was, he didn’t believe in their opposite, either. Which left him nowhere. Trapped in limbo, suspended in midair. No clue where to stand, what to feel. What he could believe in.

So what else was new.

Midnight’s Oracle, Book III, was on top. He cracked it open, near the beginning, to one of the dynamic full-page color drawings. It depicted Fade clinging to a rock in whitewater rapids. He clutched a girl under his arm. The girl struggled, screaming. On the next page, the girl had been saved, but Fade was heading over the waterfall, cartwheeling.

This time, the weirdness rattled him less. Those shock-and-awe hormones could only squirt out full bore a few times, and then the reservoir ran dry, thank God. He picked out Book I, braced for the flock of birds that was going to take flight from the pit of his stomach any minute now. He opened up the book, and began to read.

“Any more questions?” Edie looked around the crowded room. Today’s was a talkative, enthusiastic bunch. The ego strokes were nice, but it took energy to be smiling and chatty with a bunch of strangers.

She pointed to a tall girl with dyed black hair and black lipstick.

“Where’d you get the idea for Fade?” the girl asked eagerly. “He’s so real! And so intense. Is he based on anybody you know?”

Edie felt her smile falter. “Not exactly,” she lied. “He came to me in a dream once, and I never forgot him.”

That, at least, was the truth. Fade Shadowseeker had visited her dreams ever since she’d started drawing him, when she was eighteen. It hadn’t taken long for those dreams to turn scorchingly erotic.

A redheaded girl jumped up without waiting to be chosen. “Fade is so sexy. I love it that he and Mahlia finally get it on, in Midnight’s Curse, but then the bad guys abduct her and everybody gets distracted. Are they ever going to, um, you know? Get together? Like, a couple?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I find out that kind of thing as I go.”

The redheaded girl looked disappointed. “But can’t you just, like, make them do it?” she said sharply. “I mean, you’re the boss, right?”

“Wrong. I’m not the boss at all if the story is working. It’s a paradox. But I really hope that Fade and Mahlia get together, too.”

“Are you Mahlia?” the redheaded girl demanded. “She looks kind of like you. Is Fade, like, your own fantasy?”

The personal question startled her, and she stuttered. “Um, I, ah…no. I never thought of it. I don’t particularly identify with Mahlia, no.”

She felt bad for lying like a rug, but give a girl some privacy. The redheaded girl subsided, looking unsatisfied. Edie’s publicist made a brisk wrap-it-up gesture. They’d run twenty minutes over for the question and answer session, and she hadn’t even started signing yet.

The book signing was the easiest part, though she felt silly repeating the same scrawled sentiments on the flyleafs of each book. She made an effort to chat, but it was going to feel good, to sprawl on her couch with a cold beer and a rented movie. Mutants taking over Los Angeles. She loved mutant movies. Couldn’t imagine why. Hah hah.

The line was almost finished, and the redheaded girl was coming up next. Edie smiled as she took the girl’s battered copy of Midnight’s Curse. A compliment if she’d ever had one. Out less than a month, and already dog-eared. A generous impulse spurred her to open it to the blank page after the title page. “What’s your name?” she asked

“Vicky,” the girl said excitedly. “Vicky Sobel.”

Edie wrote, Thanks, Vicky! Here’s hoping for Fade and Mahlia, and the triumph of true love. Best wishes, Edie Parrish. Then she sketched a quick drawing of Fade, with his arm around a woman. For the face, she glanced up to sketch the redheaded girl’s pretty, wide-eyed face.

The eye didn’t usually open up so quickly. Usually she had a minute or so of grace, but when she looked up from scribbling the flourishes of the girl’s curly hair and up into her eyes—she saw it.

Something else. A flash of double vision. Another embrace, except that the girl wasn’t embracing a man. She was wrapped in the coils of an enormous, strangling snake. Edie saw the dead girl’s face, superimposed over the smiling, live face. Blue eyes staring and empty.

Edie opened her mouth to speak, but her voice stopped. Her heart kicked up, a sick, vertiginous feeling, and she opened her mouth—

“Stay away from Craig,” she burst out, her voice shaking.

The girl’s face went stiff. “What do you know about Craig?”

“N-n-nothing,” Edie stammered. “It just came to me, to say that.”

“Why?” The girl leaned over the table. “Why did it come to you? Are you sleeping with him? Do you know somebody who is?”

“No,” Edie said quietly. “I have no idea who this Craig person is. Just that he’s poison for you. Drop him. Run away.”

“I love Craig!” The girl’s blue eyes bulged. “And he loves me! So just…stay away from him! Shut your mouth! Don’t talk about him!”

Why, oh why, did she do this to herself? Why didn’t her psychic gift come with a protective mechanism attached that would let her know if there was any point in giving a warning or not?

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It wasn’t my business.”

“Shut up,” the girl said, her voice wobbling. “You…you nosy bitch.” She grabbed her book, and ran, shoving people out of her way.

Edie shuddered, seeing the empty, bulging eyes. Dark marks on her throat. Strangled. God forbid. But maybe, just maybe, being warned might make a difference for her. She could only hope. It made her feel raw, helpless. A mass of antennae, and no off switch.

Except the meds. If she preferred dead calm. No pencils, charcoal, ink. That was her off switch, if she could swallow it. But she couldn’t.

She pasted a smile on and looked up—

And forgot the redheaded girl, her deadly lover, and everything else she’d ever thought, or known. Including her own name.

Fade Shadowseeker stood right before her.