That’s the last thing in the world I would ever do. Please. Sit. Please, Edie.”
His voice had a subtle commanding quality that unknit her tension. Her knees gave way, dumping her onto the chair. She yanked her hand away and put both hands in her lap, twisting her fingers til they were bloodless. “So, if that’s not it, what do you want from me?”
“I want to tell you a story,” he said quietly.
She waited for more, baffled. “A story that you want me to tell in one of my novels? I don’t use other people’s ideas. I don’t need to, because I’ve got plenty of ideas of my own, and besides—”
“No. I’m talking about my own personal story. Because I think, in some way or another, you already know it.”
“You don’t get it,” she said, helplessly. “I know nothing about you! I didn’t even know your name until you told me! Why are you being so cryptic? Tell me what you want! Stop hinting! Stop playing mind games!”
“I would if I could. But I’m at a disadvantage, because I don’t know exactly what I’m asking you for.”
She wondered uneasily if the guy had mental problems. Gorgeous and charismatic though he might be, he was making no flipping sense at all. “Excuse me?”
He let out a controlled breath, eyes fixed on his untouched coffee.
“I was found, eighteen years ago,” he said quietly. “I’d been beaten, tortured. I had some inexplicable brain injury. I wasn’t capable of speaking, or even writing, for years. I pushed a broom in a diner, mopped floors, washed dishes. I have no memory of who I was before.”
She stared at him, speechless and openmouthed. It was her backstory setup for Book One of the Fade Shadowseeker series.
Not possible, that this man’s life had followed the same…oh, please. No way. He had to be lying. Had to. Her mind reeled, fought it.
“But I do have dreams,” he went on. “Vivid dreams. I’ve always thought that maybe these dreams were of the life I had before. And one of those dreams is of you, Edie.” He reached out, and gently touched the back of her hand. The glancing contact made her shiver.
“Have you seen me before?” he asked. “I think you have. I saw it in your eyes, the moment you saw me. I see it from your books.”
She nodded, like a puppet. She couldn’t lie to him, nor could she think of any coherent reason for doing so. “A long time ago.”
His fingers fastened around her hand. “Tell me.”
So she told him what she had to tell; the incident on her eleventh birthday. The bleeding burned man, pleading with Daddy in his Flaxon office eighteen years ago. The security guards that came running. The guard the burned man had thrown through the window. Watching him be dragged away, to an unknown fate.
That was all. It seemed so little, in the face of his hunger for knowledge, but he didn’t look disappointed. His eyes were alight with cautious excitement. “Flaxon,” he said. “Interesting.”
“I had no idea what you were talking about, but it sounded terrible,” she finished. “Murder, torture. I had nightmares for years.”
“Not my name?” he asked. “You never heard it?”
She shook her head. “I was eleven,” she said. “I never heard it said, if anyone knew it. My parents refused to talk about you. I got punished for mentioning you.” She paused. “My father might know more,” she said. “But I doubt he’d be willing to talk to you about it.”
Hah. That was a flipping understatement, if she’d ever made one.
“Christopher Osterman did this to me,” he said, touching the scars on his face. “There were others, but he was the driving force.”
That, at least, was no surprise. “Dr. O.” The name left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“You knew him?”
She nodded. “I did the Haven program, when I was fourteen.”
“You don’t look surprised to find out he was a psychopath.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I knew he was rotten. I told my father, but Dad didn’t believe me. He thought I was just trying to wiggle out of any efforts to improve myself. Being weak and whiny and defeatist.”
“So he made you do the Haven program? Why? What for?”
“I was depressed, doing badly in school,” she explained. “Dad wanted to fix me. Soup me up. Dr. O talked a good line, but I don’t think Daddy realized exactly what the brain potential workshop entailed. Dr. O stimulated our brains with electricity and drugs, to enhance our mental function. So he said. It was…well, it was weird.”
Kev’s mouth hardened. “Did it work?”
She shivered. “I guess that depends on what you mean by working,” she hedged. “You might get in touch with the liaison from Helix to Osterman’s research facility, see if they have documentation on the Flaxon era. They might be able to tell you something.”
“Hmmm.” He looked into his coffee cup.
“I don’t understand why you came to me,” she told him. “I know so little. I can’t help you. With anything.”
“On the contrary. You’re the only one who ever has helped me.”
She gazed at him, blank and bewildered. “How could I?” she demanded, almost angrily. “I did nothing. It was awful to watch that. I felt so helpless.”
“You did help,” he insisted. “In my dreams.”
“Ah! Your dreams!” She laughed, nervously. “It’s funny, to get credit for how I behaved in another person’s dreams. I don’t even know what I did in them, so how can I—”
“You were my angel. When I needed help, you helped me.”
She shut her mouth, swallowed. “Um. How?”
“By existing,” he said simply.
She grunted. “That’s enough? Just to exist? I didn’t do anything?”
“You didn’t have to do anything. You just were. A beacon in the dark. The only one I had. It saved my sanity, maybe my life. So, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” she said. “I can’t take credit for that. In my world, you don’t get points for what you are. Only what you do.”
He shook his head. “Your world is about to change.”
Wow. That was bold. The quiet conviction in his voice made her catch her breath. Her toes and fingers were tingling with it.
Toughen up, Edie. “All this woo woo stuff is really spooky and interesting, and great material for a graphic novel, but it’s the creation of your own overheated brain,” she said crisply. “Just like my own stories are the creation of my own overheated brain. I don’t want
