“When did you say you’re going over there?” I ask Beatrix over lunch the next day.
She lifts an eyebrow at me, her hazel eyes amused. “After lunch, I said. Which is after I leave here. Which is the same as what I told you half an hour ago.”
I nod. “Oh, right.”
“And two hours before that.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“And when I spoke to you last night after I talked to Mari on the phone.”
Wes chuckles from beside her. “Baby, don’t give him a hard time.”
She smiles. Her rhinestone labret piercing glints in the light hanging low above our table. “You serious? This is all new territory for him, which means it’s all new territory for me. I have to tease him a little.”
He places a kiss on her cheek. “Well, make fun of his hair or something, not the fact that he’s somehow found himself a girl to like. Happened to me once, you know.”
Her smile softens, and she turns her head to kiss him on the mouth. Then she concedes, “Mmkay, you have a point.”
“And what point is that?” I tease around a mouthful of club sandwich. “That something’s wrong with my hair?”
They both turn back to me. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say something’s wrong with it,” she says, “but it does kind of do whatever it wants.”
“No joke.” My hair is rather unruly, it’s true. I haven’t thought much about it lately, though, because it’s not long enough to really bother me yet. Eventually, I’ll go get a haircut.
“What is Mari’s hair like?”
I chuckle. “What kind of question is that? And why’re you calling her Mari?”
“It’s a girl question because, hello, she’s the only other girl around here and she seems adorable, so I care. And I’m calling her Mari because she told me I could.” Beatrix tosses her own colorful hair back proudly.
Wes and I laugh, even though I have to wonder why Marienne didn’t tell me that, too.
“What?” she asks.
He grins. “Brag much? We see you over there flinging your hair around because you have permission to use her nickname.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, love.” She winks at him. Then she asks me, “But really, what’s her hair like?”
I don’t actually have a problem with recalling the way Marienne looks.
Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no recalling going on here. She’s stayed in my head since the first time I saw her.
Finally, I answer the question. “It’s long.”
“How long?”
“To the middle of her back, I guess.”
“What color is it?”
“Black.”
“Straight or curly?”
“Uh…straight-ish? I don’t know. It just…is.” In my head, I can see her smoothing her windblown hair behind her ears all over again.
“I bet it’s so pretty,” Beatrix muses.
Grinning in agreement, I take another bite of my sandwich.
“She seems funny, too.”
I nod. After I swallow my food, I say, “Yeah, she actually curtsied the other day.”
Beatrix’s eyes widen. “Can’t wait to meet her. Seriously.”
Wes looks happy about her seeming happy. “Soon.”
“Soon,” I agree.
“Soon,” she sighs, touching her food for the first time since I mentioned her picking up Marienne.
Ten minutes later, when we walk out into the snow that has been drifting prettily from the sky since last night, she goes back to being excited.
“I’m going now!” She puts her arms around Wes’s shoulders. “Until we meet again, my love,” she adds in an elegant, actress-y voice.
He grabs her waist and sweeps her forward theatrically. “The next hour will seem a week.” They kiss rather chastely for having exchanged such fancy farewells.
These are my friends.
I chuckle. “We’ll see you at the Sanctum, B.”
She extracts herself from Wes’s arms and heads over to her black Saturn Sky, waving as she goes. “See you guys in a bit. Drive carefully.” She ducks into her car, and mere moments pass before I can hear heavy rock music pounding through it.
Wes has been riding shotgun in her car all day, so now that she’s going to get Marienne, he rides with me. For the first few minutes of our journey, nothing happens other than him commending me on a song choice. But then we spot a Hellion pulling a cheerful-looking Latina girl into an alley behind a run-down building.
We decide to take care of him for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s become instinct for Wes to kill any Hellion he sees. Secondly, there’s still anger deep in my chest over Em being killed—being dismembered, really—by a group of Hellions that none of us have the opportunity to fight. Thirdly, the Hellion’s got a young girl with him as opposed to just wandering around alone. And lastly, Beatrix and Marienne won’t be at the Sanctum this soon, so they’re not waiting on us or anything.
After I park a safe distance away from where we spotted the pair, we pick our way around parked cars and dumpsters until we locate them again. The girl is standing between the Hellion and the bricked side of the building in the otherwise empty alley. His torso and arms are naked but completely covered in huge, oozing, infected-looking sores that I can actually smell from where I stand. It’s a worse odor than what was wafting out of the dumpsters we passed.
The girl doesn’t have a clue that anything is out of the ordinary, though. The Hellion’s got her fooled completely. She can’t fathom who she’s really looking up at, smiling with, standing on her tiptoes to whisper to, and it’s sad. And nauseating.
As if Wes can read my mind, he mutters, “Fucking vile, isn’t it?”
I make a noise of agreement. Then we whip up a plan.
We need to get the girl away from the Hellion without her seeing our faces. It’s crucial that she doesn’t see us when we attack him, because to her he’s probably a good-looking boy, and any harm that befalls him in front of her eyes will send her screaming for help. And if she runs off telling people what the two guys who murdered her boyfriend look like, it’ll turn into anything from a hassle to a really bad situation.
Ultimately, we decide there is really only one thing we can do: wait for our moment.
We watch while the Hellion flirts with the girl.
After a minute, he steps closer so her arms can go around his sore-ridden body.
We wait another minute and then watch him lift his fetid hands to her face, watch her bright eyes close, watch him put his jawless mouth on hers, black tongue lolling.
They are, in a manner of speaking, lost in the beauty of their stolen kiss.
And our chance has arrived.
It takes us fewer than ten seconds. We sweep up on either side of the Hellion and slip our daggers between him and the girl. Silently and expertly, we both slit his throat, me moving my blade from left to right and Wes going from right to left. And then we disappear again.
It’s not easy to walk away so quickly. A Light person should always confirm that any Hellion they attack is floating away in pieces and particles before they leave the scene. But that can’t happen today; we’ve used our quickest move and now it’s time to go. If we stay, we risk being spotted by the girl.
Luckily, Hellions don’t bleed. We hear no screams of horror from the girl as we make our way back to my car. When Hellions die, they simply disintegrate, so the only thing she’ll be left with is confusion, and probably alarm, as to how she had just been making out with a guy and now is totally alone. But there are no answers to be offered to her; if the situation were different, I’d feel bad for her.
As it happens, I feel bad for us for having witnessed the utterly repulsive kiss unfold between such an unsuspecting girl and a monster.
The Sanctum is located on a far edge of Fayetteville. Like I told Marienne, The Room is only for Light people, so I have never seen it very busy; sometimes it’s used for birthday or holiday celebrations (or funeral services), and every now and then, Lightforce members from other places will visit and Grayhem will put the club to use. The main entrance into the Sanctum is through The Room, though, so even if people don’t really sit around and waste time in the club, they do pass through.
Today Wes and I will be going through the club’s back entrance, so it’s unlikely we’ll see anyone who might be in there. I park in the lot tucked behind the building and we go through the passcode-only door. On the left side of the narrow hallway is a heavy door requiring another code, and beyond it is a wide staircase that only leads down. The space is cold like the air outside, so we leap impatiently down the four flights of stairs until we make it to the bottom floor, where Wes types in the code for the door on the right, labeled Number 2. Then we enter the receiving room of the Sanctum.
The carpeted room is large but perpetually plain. Evenly-spaced wooden chairs line the walls on either side of us, a desk and two doors line the opposite wall, and the fourth wall holds this entrance and a flat-screen TV. The TV is currently muted because Mark, a balding man who nearly died in a construction accident five years ago and then was crippled in a car wreck on his way home from the hospital, is on the phone behind the desk. He offers us a distracted wave while he continues his murmured conversation.
“Guess we got here first,” Wes says, dropping into a chair. “You see the remote anywhere?”
“Mark probably has it.” I nod toward the desk as I sit down, too.
Wes looks that way and stretches his arms above his head. “Ah, well, I don’t want to bother him.” He yawns. “Guess we’ll just watch the news in silence.”
“There’s never anything good on there, anyway,” I murmur as my eyes catch part of the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen: ‘…THE SPORTS STAR SAYS HE DID NOT FEEL INTOXICATED BEFORE HE GOT BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE CAR.…’
“I’m thinking about getting that dragon earring for B,” Wes says. “For her birthday.”
“That’s a good idea.” I’m not much for piercings, but Beatrix has managed to make the ones she has look all right. She’s got both earlobes, her labret, and her left nostril pierced, and all she wears in any of them are tiny rhinestone studs. She hasn’t gone into overdrive with it, so it’s not discomfiting to look at her. Now, having spotted in the mall a long silver cuff shaped like a dragon, she wants her ear cartilage pierced.
“Yeah, I know she wants it bad,” Wes agrees. “She drools every time she thinks about it.”
I chuckle because I know he’s right. Every now and then, he and I will be talking about something and look over to see her staring off into space. One of us will ask what’s on her mind and she’ll answer wistfully, “The dragon.”
Across the room, Mark hangs up the phone. “Afternoon, guys. Where’s the missus, Wes?”
My stomach does something funny when he says, “She’s on her way over with a Light girl Gabe found the other day.”
“Well, that’s great.” Mark nods at me appreciatively. “New faces are always welcome.”
“New faces and new talents,” Wes says. “This girl actually ran up and killed two Hellions that were about to kill Gabe.”
Mark raises his eyebrows. “What? Just out of the blue with no training?” He doesn’t ever engage in combat with Hellions because he’s been physically unfit to fight since he joined the Lightforce, but he still knows how dangerous they are. He knows that the only people who ever walk away from a fight with them are those who have been trained to kill them.
Wes and I nod, still sharing in his disbelief.
“Well, we’re even more blessed to have her than I realized, huh?”
Before either of us can reply, the opening of Number 2 distracts us.
Beatrix walks in saying, “Here we have the receiving room.” She stops in front of Wes and I and gestures toward Mark, then glances at us. Excitement almost as bright as Radiance shines in her eyes. “Over at the desk is Mark, our receptionist.”
I snap my gaze to Marienne as she comes to a stop next to Beatrix. “Hi, Mark,” she says, fluttering her fingers in a little wave.
Mark smiles and waves back. “Hello, there. And how are you today, Beatrix?”
“Doing splendidly. You?”
Marienne’s eyes flicker to me. One corner of her mouth turns up shyly when she spots me looking at her. I immediately return the little smile.
The desk phone rings, so Mark stops talking to Beatrix to answer it. She touches a hand to Marienne’s shoulder and turns her smile on Wes.
“This is my husband Wes. Baby, this is Mary-Anne.”
I frown. Mary-Anne?
Wes nods at her. “Nice to meet you, Mary-Anne.”
That’s not quite right, is it?
Indeed, she looks a little disappointed before she smiles at Wes and tells him, “It’s nice to meet you, too. Please, call me Mari.”
Oh, so that’s why Beatrix gets to use her nickname.
I actually laugh out loud.
Marienne’s eyes find me again, and she seems to give me a knowing look. “Afternoon, Gabe,” she finally greets me.
“Afternoon,” I return with a chuckle, barely refraining from tacking a correctly-enunciated, ‘Marienne,’ onto the end.
“Oh, yeah, and of course you know Gabe,” Beatrix chirps. “So, Mari, are you ready to fill out this form and take the tour?”
“Yep.” She’s still looking at me.
“Cool. I’ll grab the stuff.” Beatrix starts toward the front desk, and Wes leaps up from his chair to run after her and smack her on the ass.
“Feel like sitting down?” I ask Marienne.
“Yeah, okay.” She tucks her hair behind her ears and takes the empty seat on my left. “How do you feel about this snow?”
“I like it. Do you?”
“Yeah, me, too.” She picks up one end of her purple scarf and studies it. “I’m a cold-weather person.”
“So am I.”
Across the room, I hear Beatrix whisper-yell, “Weston, if you don’t quit grabbing my ass in front of people, I swear….”
I look over and see him smirking at her. “What? Are you going to teach me a lesson?”
“Mark doesn’t want to see it,” she insists, albeit with a smile. She goes back to digging around in a desk drawer. “Or Mari or Gabe or anyone else in Fayetteville.”
He bends over and whispers something in her ear, and she bursts out laughing. Then she claps a hand over her mouth and glances at Mark, who’s still on the phone. She mumbles something back to Wes that makes him laugh, too.
“She mentioned him about sixty times on the way here,” Marienne tells me. “It was hilarious.”
Nodding, I say, “I believe that.”
“Everything we passed reminded her of him. Buildings. Cars. Street signs.” She laughs softly.
I look at her and smile. “They were made for each other and they don’t let any of us forget it, so prepare yourself for that.”
“I’ll prepare myself.”
I clear my throat a little and gesture toward her. “Well, you…you look really nice today.” I think about hastily adding that she looked really nice the other times I saw her, too, but I don’t want her to think I’m a bumbling idiot, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Oh—really?” she murmurs. “Thank you.” She glances down at her outfit. Like the others she’s worn, it’s basic and not very revealing: jeans, white shirt, scarf, flat black boots, coat. I think it’s awesome. She straightens her legs and lifts her boots off the floor, then puts them back down and looks over at my clothes. “You look really nice, too. I like that shirt.”
I look down at myself. I only chose this black and white plaid button-down because it was the last clean long-sleeved shirt in my closet. “Do you?” I ask, suddenly glad I’ve been putting off doing laundry for the past several days.
Before she can respond, footsteps approach us. We look up and see Beatrix holding a pen and clipboard. “Here we are, doll. Fill the top one out. The other is a list of rules for you to keep.”
It takes Marienne a few minutes to fill out the information sheet. When she’s done, Beatrix returns it to the front desk for Mark to file and then we’re ready to walk her around the place. We double back into the stairwell and go through Number 1 first.
“Well, you’ve got a place to stay already, but this is the residential hall,” Beatrix says. “The rooms go from A to Z, so they go around this corner down here.” She leads us away from the entrance to the hall, and we go around the corner on our left. She stops and motions toward a door. “Here we have a lounge.”
Marienne goes over and peers into the room. I don’t have to look into it to know it holds two couches, a table and set of chairs, and kitchen appliances. There’s a TV hanging on the wall with both a DVD player and a VCR sitting on a shelf under it. However, despite all these furnishings, the room has always felt rather lonely to me. It’s probably because no one really uses it, since about two people live down here.
Beatrix heads to the next door down. “This is the laundry room.”
Marienne peeks in there, too. Like the lounge, it’s pretty well-stocked. In addition to several washers and dryers, there should be everything from detergent to empty hangers to an iron and ironing board in there.
We continue on. “Here’s an extra bathroom, and the rest of these rooms are just bedrooms. Down here at the end of the hall are a telephone and a fire extinguisher. Actually, there are fire extinguishers all over this hallway.” Beatrix takes care to point each one out as we walk back the way we came.
We’re almost back to Number 1 when Marienne asks me, “Do I need to know the codes to get through these doors?”
I nod. “Yes. The one into the back of the club—” I point above us, “—is 3141. The one into the stairwell is 5926. Number 1 is 5358, and Number 2 is 9793. There’s an emergency exit out of the Sanctum and the code for that is 2384. Also known as the first twenty digits of pi.”
Her eyes widen and she snorts.
I know what that means: she’s not a numbers person. Really, on top of everything else, it’d probably be a little much for a numbers person. “I’ll write them down for you,” I chuckle.
“Thank you. Truly.”
Back in the receiving room, I write the codes down for her, and then Beatrix lets Wes take over the tour. He presses his hand against the shiny wooden door on the right side of the wall behind Mark’s desk.
“Behind this door, you’ll find a conference room and a handful of offices. Grayhem’s is at the end of the hall on the left. The others belong to me and Red, the man who handles weaponry.” He glances at me and clears his throat, and I wonder if he’s going to mention that one of the offices belongs to me, too, now that Em’s gone—but he doesn’t, and I’m grateful. “So, if you need to speak with Grayhem in private, you can just go through this door. The rest of us only spend a little bit of time in our offices.”
“All right,” Marienne says.
He leads us to the left where the other, plainer door stands. We file through it into a hallway that’s not nearly as long as the residential one or the one upstairs. There is one door on our left side, one at the far end of the hall, and three on our right side. Wes goes to the left and walks through the door, shadowed by Beatrix. Marienne and I follow.
As soon as the light comes on, she gasps. “Wow.”
The word echoes around the enormous rectangular room. I still remember the way I felt when I first saw it, so I know how wild it looks to her—hell, I still think it’s pretty cool. Spotless mirrors cover the entire left wall, from end to end and floor to ceiling. The floor itself is made of four different materials: plain white vinyl tile right beside us, sleek wood next to that, blue springboard beyond that, and gravel against the far wall. Lots of things have been arranged against the wall to our right: full-body dummies, exercise equipment, benches, a water stand, a cabinet with a stereo on it, a table holding towels and mats, a rack supporting dumbbells, and a rack for weapons.
“This is the training room,” Wes states. “You’ll be brought in pretty soon.”
Another, “Wow,” is all Marienne manages.
He chuckles. “Here in a few days, you’ll be dropping that first W. Don’t let my wife fool you—she can kick ass as well as any guy, and she’ll teach you to do the same.” As an afterthought: “She’ll hone your skills, anyway. Apparently, you can already kick ass.”
Marienne finally takes her eyes off the room and looks at Beatrix. “Oh, you’re going to train me?” she asks with a smile.
Beatrix nods but looks like she’d rather be clapping or jumping for joy. “I thought it’d be appropriate…and fun.”
“I agree.”
Wes smiles at Beatrix before he addresses Marienne again. “Ready to keep going?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He leads the way out the door, his hand finding his wife’s so he can pull her along.
Marienne follows, but she looks back at me. “I like this place.”
“It’s neat,” I agree as I catch up to her, “and it’s practically a fortress. It’s the safest place for any of us to be.”
She nods thoughtfully and looks forward again. “Yeah, I can feel that. It’s cool.” After a beat, she adds, “Thank you for walking around with us. It’s nice and I’m sure you’ve got other things you need to do.”
“It’s no problem, Marienne.”
I think I hear a quiet laugh leave her, and I’ll bet it’s the name thing. I fight the urge to laugh at my friends’ expenses yet again, then gesture to the other side of the hallway.
“This first door is a bathroom.” I point at the second door. “And this is the infirmary.”
“The infirmary,” she echoes. “The mini hospital. Ugh.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll pay Dr. Roterra your share of visits.”
She looks at me, nose wrinkled, and makes a noise of disfavor. It makes me smile.
When we come to the door to Red’s domain, which is the last one on the right side of the hall, we find Wes and Beatrix have already gone in. The latter turns away from her chat with the men when she hears us pass into the room.
“Here she is!” she says cheerfully.
Red, outgoing as always, walks over and puts a strong hand out. “Hello, Mari. Name’s Red.” He shakes her hand and gestures with the other to his short-cropped red hair. “I know yer thinkin’ my parents were imaginative, but they died when I was thirty-five, so ya won’t be able to meet ‘em and gush to ‘em about what a damn unique name they chose for me.”
She laughs. “It’s not the worst name ever, sir.”
He grins toothily and releases her hand to point at her. “Ya know what? Yer right.” He crosses his thick arms over his chest. “Did anyone fill ya in on what I do ‘round here?”
She looks at him a little apologetically. “No, sir.”
“All well and good, little lady. Well, ya’ve seen Hellions before, ain’t ya, and been told we gotta take ‘em out? So maybe ya’ve wondered how to kill somethin’ that appears to be dead already, and that’s an important question. In our branch, I’m the one in charge o’ makin’ the only instruments that can kill a Hellion. Gabe, son, can I see yer dagger?”
I draw it out of the padded pocket inside my jacket. I leave it sheathed and pass it to him, and he lifts it up to Marienne.
“This is what yer basic dagger looks like.” He lays it across his palms. “Simple, slender, and imbued with Light blood. I’ll get one fixed up for ya before long.”
She bends closer to inspect the brushed-silver handle. The rounded curves of it are made to fit my hand, so it looks and feels a little different than hers will, but I guess it didn’t prove too big a problem on Blossombranch.
A little distractedly, she asks, “There’s blood in it?”
“Yes’m. Don’t know if ya know this or not, but yer blood is special. It’s what makes all Light people special. Our blood is different from other people’s on a cellular level—it’s why we can’t get drunk anymore, for example, and it’s why we can see Hellions at all. And that difference is their only weakness. Hellions are pure evil, and us bein’ run through with life and light makes us their opposite. It’s the only thing they can’t stomach, so it’s the only weapon we have against ‘em.”
“Holy shit,” she mutters.
I meet Wes’s and Beatrix’s eyes and we all grin, knowing how she feels.
“Yep, so we put our blood in our weapons,” he goes on. “It holds up best with metal, but it’s also real effective dried into a powder. Light blood in any form’ll harm a Hellion, so sometimes throwin’ the red powder is the best ya can do without slicin’ yerself open just to get the upper hand. In order to really kill one, ya gotta be a bit more violent—” he winks, “—but I hear ya know that already. I’ll let Mrs. Avery there explain it better on her own time.” He starts unsheathing the dagger.
Marienne looks like she wants to respond, but then the sheath is off. The light above us dances like wildfire across the uncovered metal, and a soft gasp is all that leaves her.
I can imagine why. On top of it being a smooth, lustrous version of the handle, the blade shimmers faintly gold the way Light marks do. The thing is nearly luminous; it looks like it’s infused with Light blood.
Red smiles. “It’s somethin’, ain’t it?”
She nods and looks away from the dagger to smile, too…at me.
Too good.
I don’t get a smile back before Red speaking again steals her attention. “Now I’ve said all that, sweetheart, I gotta be upfront and say I can’t formally create yer weapons until ya’ve undergone basic trainin’. I know ya grabbed this here dagger the other day and handled a couple Hellions real good with it, but rules are rules.”
Color touches her cheeks and she finally gets some words out. “I understand.”
“Well, don’t get all embarrassed, now,” he says with a hearty chuckle, noting her blush like I did. “What ya did ain’t nothin’ to be embarrassed about, k? I’m just goin’ by the book here.”
She smiles and nods, though her cheeks are still pink.
Red sheathes the dagger and gives it back to me. “Let’s g’on and instruct ya in the ways o’ Hellion killin’ for a week or so—get ya some proper trainin’ to go with that fearlessness ya got under that belt o’ yers. Then we’ll get ya back in here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Beatrix speaks up. “Mari, do you think—?”
“Knock, knock,” a voice calls from the door. We all glance over and find Grayhem looking in at us.
“Hey, there, come on in,” Red invites him with a wave. “Just talkin’ to our newest lady here.”
“This is Mari,” Beatrix introduces her before I can.
Marienne gives Grayhem a smile as he walks into the room. He returns it, looking more than a little surprised, probably at her age if I had to guess. “It’s a sincere pleasure, young lady. Nick Grayhem, Director of the local Lightforce branch. Feel free to call me Grayhem.”
“Pleased, too, sir. Thank you.”
“Well, guys and gals,” Red says, “kindly pardon me and the boss man. We got a discussion what needs havin’.”
Grayhem’s expression turns grave, so we all hurry out, calling out our thanks and goodbyes.
After we point out the emergency exit at the end of the combat hall, we head back to the receiving room. Wes hunches his shoulders and takes in a deep breath.
“Well, Mari,” he exhales as he drops an arm around Beatrix’s shoulders, “I hate to say it, but me and B gotta run. We’ve got Hellions to hunt down. You ready for us to take you home?”
Beatrix smiles at Marienne. “Yeah, babydoll, this was so fun, but we really should go. And do you need me to pick you up in the—? Oh.” Her smile drops away. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” the rest of us ask.
“I don’t have a backseat.”
Mildly confused, I ask, “Are you just now realizing this?”
Wes chuckles. “Yeah, Gabe and I noticed it two years ago when you bought the car.”
“Ha, yeah,” Beatrix gives us both a look, “I mean that if Wes and I are leaving, I can’t drive Mari home because I don’t have a backseat.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Oh,” Marienne and Wes say.
I look over at her. She’s already watching me, and I feel sure she can see the idea forming in my mind.
Still, I tell her, “I’ll drive you if you want me to.” I don’t know how I manage to say it sans nervousness.
She looks back at Beatrix and says easily, “Yeah, I’ll go with him. It’ll be fine.”
Amusement is gradually replacing Beatrix’s concern. “Well, you want me to come get you in the morning? I was thinking we could start training tomorrow. How’s 9:00?”
“That would really be great.”
Beatrix nods and reaches up to the hand Wes is dangling off her shoulder. She tangles their fingers together and says slowly, “Then I’ll see both of you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” we say.
Wes nods as they walk past us. “Later, Gabe. Mari.”
And then they’re gone.
We stand in silence for a few moments before I tell her lightly, “Whenever you’re ready, I guess.”
She nods. “Yeah, we should—yeah.” She starts toward the door.
Outside, the snow is starting to build up. It makes everything look prettier than normal, and it fills me with a sense of calm that I welcome with open arms. The fact that I’m about to have Marienne in my car has me torn between anxiety and elation, and it’s nerve-wracking. I’m not used to it.
Once we’re on the road, she says a little timidly, “Thank you for doing this. Really.”
I turn down the old Matchbox Twenty song Wes and I were listening to. Despite my nerves, I tell her sincerely, “You’re welcome. I’m happy to help.”
She sounds like she’s smiling when she says, “You’re too kind. And I love this song.”
“Wow, seriously?” It’s “You Won’t Be Mine”—not a song that ever made it to the radio. Yet another point for her. And I feel slightly less awkward now, so that’s a relief.
“Yep. It makes me sad, though.”
“Me, too. Want to listen to it anyway?”
“Absolutely.”
I restart the song. The only talking that goes on during our drive is her giving me directions to her home, and even then the words are quiet. It’s nice.
It turns out that she lives in a nice apartment complex near Blossombranch Lane. I park where she says to and turn the music down again.
“Thanks again,” she tells me. “I really didn’t want to walk home, and I hate taxis.”
Ha, like I would’ve let her walk all the way here. “Not a problem.”
After a beat, she adds, “And thanks for saying my name correctly.”
I shoot her a grin. “You know, at first I wondered why you didn’t ask me to call you Mari, but now….”
She snickers. “I really don’t care to be called that, but your friends—” she holds up her hands apologetically, “—I mean, it’s not just them, it’s most people—they just don’t say my name right. I get tired of being called whatever variation of Marienne they come up with.”
“So I shouldn’t feel left out, huh?” I ask, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as I look out at the falling snow.
“Not at all. But if you really want to call me that, you can. I know it’s easier.”
I shake my head unconcernedly. “I like Marienne.”
“Oh, okay. Cool. Is Gabe your actual name or is it short for something?”
My heartbeat seems to stumble and my fingers freeze mid-drum. Believe it or not, no one in the Lightforce has ever asked me that…which I didn’t think was strange until this moment. I like that she asked.
“Gabriel,” I answer diffidently.
“Oh, wow. Do people call you that?”
“No.” I laugh a little. “I don’t think anyone in the Lightforce even knows that’s my name. Well, maybe Mark, since it’s on my information form.”
She’s quiet for a few moments, like she’s considering that. Then, “I like it, personally.”
I slide a look over to her and say sincerely, “Thank you.”
She smiles and it makes me smile.
“So you seem to be handling all of this stuff pretty well,” I remark. “Are you good with it, really? Or are you going to start freaking out at some point?”
“No, I’m fine,” she tells me easily. “I’m glad to be a part of it. The whole thing makes sense to me.” Her shoulders lift a little. “If anything, I’m a tiny bit worried someone’s going to jump out at me and scream, ‘Just kidding! Go back to your suckfest of a life now.’”
I laugh. “Well, that’s funny, but you don’t have to worry about it. I promise.”
She laughs a little, too. “Okay. I believe you.”
I suddenly feel like if I don’t get her to keep talking to me, I’ll go crazy. I want to know more about her. So I cross my arms and shift in my seat and ask, “Do you have a job or anything?”
I seem to have asked an unhappy question, because she grimaces.
“Um, I did,” she answers hesitantly. “I had one when the—before my—” She pauses and clears her throat. “The night I turned Light, I got banged up and had to take off work for a while. Embarrassing as it is to admit, once I was better, I just…didn’t go back. Things have been difficult since that night and so I didn’t think I could…um….”
“Nah, I understand,” I assure her.
She nods and looks out the windshield. “I’ve lived here with my older sister for a few years. We used to be really close, but now….” A soft, humorless laugh leaves her. “I guess I wish I had a job so I could reduce the occasions I see her from once or twice a day to zero times a day.”
It sounds like she means that. I ask gingerly, “Why?”
She inhales a bit unsteadily. “Irreparable damage, Gabe. That’s all.” She takes a deeper, calmer breath and looks at me again. “So how does your job work, exactly? You get paid to just find people like me?”
I nod. “I get paid and I get free housing.”
“Really?” She perks up. “What’s your house like?”
“It’s pretty great. It’s kind of in the mountains.”
She sighs, looking like she loves the idea. “That sounds wonderful.”
“The house is nice, but the view is the best part,” I admit. “The far edge of my backyard is actually a cliff, so I can just walk out there and look down into a valley full of nothing but trees.”
“Dang,” she murmurs. Her eyes narrow like she’s trying to picture it in her head.
I give her a second and then say more seriously, “Yeah, but look. You’ll get paid for being in the Lightforce, too. They’ll train you to be a Defender because everyone needs to have those skills, but even if you end up being a Gatherer—or, hell, doing something like what Mark does—you’ll get paid like for any other job.” I glance at the apartment and then back to her. “If time away from here is what you want, you’ll get it.”
One side of her mouth turns up as she studies me. When she says, “Thank you,” the words are earnest.
Well, I didn’t really do anything for her—maybe she just appreciates that I don’t think she’s a bitch for not wanting to hang around her sister, but who am I to judge her for that, anyway? Still, wherever her gratitude comes from, I accept it with a small smile of my own.
Shortly, she says, “I guess I should go, but I appreciate your…” she flutters her fingers around the car and in the general direction of the Sanctum, “…everything.”
I nod once. “You’re welcome.”
She nods, too. “So I guess I’ll see you…when I see you.”
“I’ll be at the Sanctum sometime tomorrow,” I try to say nonchalantly.
Would I normally visit the place while I’m working? No. Can I help wanting to do it now that she’s around? No. Is it obvious to her? Probably. But whatever.
Color brightens her cheeks as she looks at me. Her fingertips smooth distractedly at the hair falling over her shoulders, and she says, “I will be, too. What a coincidence.”
I get that she definitely does understand I’ll only be going to the Sanctum to see her—that it’s not a coincidence at all. And I’m not sure she minds; I hope she doesn’t.
But I don’t manage to ask and make sure before she gets out of the car and shuts the door. I just smile at her when she looks through the window to wave at me, and she smiles back pretty damn big before she turns and walks away.
I don’t think tomorrow can get here fast enough.