he knows about it. And in any case, you might have more luck asking him independently of me. He hates…this. This whole situation.” She gestured towards the wine-stained sketch. “The drawings. The things I see, the things I say. It freaks him out, and I don’t blame him.” She approached the wall, and stared at the sketch. “I saw that he’s in danger, but I don’t know from what, and I can’t warn him. It would just infuriate him. I’m useless to him, just like I was to my mom. And you.” Tears started into her eyes. “As useless as I was the first time you saw me.”
“You were not useless.”
She shot him an ironic look, but the blazing force of his gaze startled whatever sarcastic thing she was going to say out of her head.
“You’ve been in my dreams for eighteen years,” he said. “You were my angel. Leading me, hiding me, protecting me. Jesus, you even had a halo. What were you wearing on your head that day, anyhow?”
“I had on a white flower wreath,” she admitted. “With tinsel and baby’s breath. And white ribbons.”
His throat bobbed. “I remember a halo. Like a medieval saint.”
“Um.” She swallowed. “I’m, ah…I’m no saint.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. The silence abruptly got very thick, almost stifling. “Well. Ah. Thank God for that.”
The teakettle started to whistle. She was pathetically grateful for the distraction. A reason to turn her burning face away. Her hand wobbled as she poured, thinking what a disappointment the real Edie was going to be to him, after his shining angel projections. No woman could live up to that, let alone an awkward weirdo like herself. He’d cop to the truth soon enough. How unsure of herself she was, how prone to sadness, how liable to mope. He’d be creeped out by the weird things that popped out of her mouth at the most inopportune moments.
It was doom in the making. No way to swerve.
And even so, she was so physically aware of him, she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. All the oxygen in the room was on fire.
She placed his mug on the table, sat down, and sipped her own, although it blistered her mouth. Steam rose in a shaft of light that sneaked through blinds. He sat, and waited in silence for what seemed like an hour, though it was probably just a few minutes. Not touching his tea. “There is something you could do for me,” he finally said.
“There is?” Her heart thudded, her face went hot. She gulped some chai, dragged in a deep breath, held it. Never before had she so desperately wished that she’d inherited her father’s ironclad poise.
“Draw me,” he said.
Shock, disbelief, disappointment, all jostled for place. She gazed at him stupidly. “Excuse me?”
He didn’t repeat himself, just swept a look around the wall collage. “Like what you did to that girl in the bookstore.”
“You want me to do that? Deliberately? For you?”
He nodded.
A breath hissed out between her teeth. No one had ever solicited that from her. As if it were a service of some kind. A desirable thing. It was as if someone handed her a baseball bat, and said, “hit me.”
So. He didn’t want hours of hot, pounding sex. Draw me, he said. It was nice, complimentary, gratifying. But it wasn’t “Do me.”
So he wasn’t interested in her romantically. He wanted to use her like a human divining rod. So? At least he was honest. It wasn’t his fault she was a knot of sexual deprivation. Nor was it his problem.
Neither was the fact that she’d been having dreams about sex with Fade Shadowseeker for years. Erotic dreams that made the honest efforts of real, normal guys pale in comparison, which effectively ruined any chance of a real love life. But probably Kev Larsen himself could never live up to Fade’s imaginary sexual prowess. Just like she could never live up to his shining angel. That knife cut both ways.
They were just people. She had to face reality. That was what he was trying to do. It took guts to tune in to Edie Parrish’s Grim Reaper radio show. She admired his bravery, in spite of feeling…well, stupid.
And hot. And damp. Her hair was sticking to her neck.
“It doesn’t work the way you seem to think,” she explained, in a halting voice. “It’s very imprecise, very impressionistic. It’s not like I get a clear picture of somebody’s future, or their past. I just get glimpses of what’s on their mind, or I see something that they’re trying to suppress, like I did with the girl in the bookstore. I won’t see your lost memories, because you won’t be broadcasting them. So don’t get your hopes up, because I don’t think that I—”
“You saw me going over a waterfall fourteen months before it happened.” He reached for one of the graphic novels he’d lain on the table, opened Midnight’s Secret and leafed until he found a specific picture. He turned the book to her. “Look. See that?”
It was a full-page color drawing from the beginning of the story. Fade, languishing in his mute exile, staring at himself in the shattered bathroom mirror. “Yeah?” she said. “And?”
“That mirror? See those cracks in it? That was my mirror, in the the bathroom of the place where I lived for seven years. You drew the pattern of the cracks exactly, Edie. Right down to this missing chunk here. That angle, those proportions. They’re mathematically exact.”
She shook her head, but he persisted. “You might wonder how I remember details like that, but I didn’t have much else to think about. I studied cracks in the mirror. I memorized the peeling paint. I remember the precise shape of the water damage on the ceiling.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “I, um, don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll take you there and show you, if you want. You can compare.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said hastily. “I, ah, believe you. It’s just that I don’t want to raise false hopes.”
He let the book drop. “I wouldn’t call it hope, exactly. It’s just a door to knock on. Anything at all would help me, Edie. Anything.”
She tore her gaze away, and the wrench felt physical. She was sick with nerves. God knows, she’d disappointed enough people in her life. All the important ones. She couldn’t bear to disappoint him, too.
He waited for a long moment. “I’ve spent more than half my life in a room with the windows painted over,” he said, his voice tight with emotion. “If you showed me one ray of light, from any direction, past, present, future, whatever, I would kiss your feet. Shower you with praise, worship at your shrine. Be in your debt forever. Get me?”
She cleared her throat. “The theatrics won’t be necessary,” she said primly. “I’d be glad to help. Just don’t expect too much.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Anything is fine. And if you don’t see anything, I’ll be grateful to you for trying.”
She busied herself by pouring her half drunk tea into the sink. Then she grabbed her pen, and the largest of her sketchbooks. Something inside her was already rubbing its hands together, eager to get to it. She
