Gifts of the Blood (8 page)

“I told you I would see you again.” In the full afternoon light, he looked almost disappointingly normal. I remembered just a flash of the dreams he’d starred in last night and ducked my head to hide a blush. Today, his blue-green eyes sparkled with amusement rather than some strange inner light. His mouth twisted slightly at one corner, as if holding back his full smile. He was dressed for the weather like any other citizen of Whitfield; jeans this time, paired with a thick black sweater. “You’ve been busy all day. I thought I might walk you to work.”

“Oh.” My mouth stayed in that perfect round formation longer than it needed to as his words sunk in. He knew my schedule. He knew the shape of my days. I turned to him, the mouth of the alley dappled with wavering patterns of sunlight and shade. “Do I dare ask how you know that?” I finally ventured.

He slipped up beside me, taking my bandaged hand in his own. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, flipping my hand so it lay palm up in his own. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m involved now. I’m not supposed to be, but I am.” His thumb rubbed against my exposed palm in a slow circular motion. That one single exposed piece of skin seemed to grow and expand until it took up a disproportionate amount of my attention, focusing my brain in like a laser on the single point of contact between us. It made it hard to think. I might have protested if it didn’t feel so good.

A chill wind barreled down the alley opening at the same time that a cloud hid all sunlight. A violent, full body shiver brought me back to myself, and I wrenched my hand away from his. “What’s that supposed to mean?" I demanded while I still had the chance to think straight.

He sighed. “Different things.” Somehow, when he was rubbing my palm, he’d managed to take my extra clothes from me. He held them neatly stacked underneath one arm. “Right now, it means getting you to work safely, and on time.” His fingers curled around my upper arm, propelling me down the sidewalk.

I had about a million questions for him. I sorted through them, trying to pick the ones I thought he might actually answer in the short time it took to walk two stores over to The Whitfield Coffee Shop. There was nothing. My questions were all too huge and crazy for the sidewalk in front of work. “I brought your jacket,” I finally said, after several false starts. “It’s cold. You should wear your jacket.”

He laughed. “I’m warm enough.” We had stopped walking again. People moved around us like currents of water flowing around boulders. I dimly registered that we stood in the front window of my job. Rows of tea lights stood sentinel along the windowsill, waiting for me to come in and light them. Ethan’s leather jacket hung from my shoulders, warm and scented like soft cotton sheets pulled straight from the dryer. Impossible, I wanted to protest. Leather didn’t smell like warm cotton. I felt firm warm fingers forcing my chin up, level with his.

“Your eyes are more silver than gray,” he said solemnly, like he was imparting important information. “Did you know?”

“I know what color my eyes are,” I told him, although no one had ever called them silver before. I wanted to break eye contact. I wondered how many of my co-workers were watching, and how badly they were going to tease me for this.

“The jacket is yours,” he said, his fingers sliding under my chin to cup the side of my jaw. “I meant what I said, about protection. Please wear it.”

“You said you thought I was in danger.” The words came out in a hoarse whisper. I leaned into him as I spoke, so closely I could feel the thickly knit cabled texture of his sweater through my thermal long-sleeved shirt. A few more inches, and our faces would touch. “Is that why you’re here? Is my brother in danger, too?”

Both of his hands cradled my face in a grip at once both so fierce and careful his entire body vibrated from the force of it. My injured arm dangled uselessly; the other again held my extra sweater and apron. Once again, I hadn’t seen him move. Once again, his eyes promised a gathering storm, lightening flickering in their depths, tightly leashed. “I hope to keep you both from harm, Caspia Chastain. As much as I am able.” He released me abruptly, and I staggered back, almost hitting the glass. His hand on the small of my back steadied me.

“Oh. Wow. Ok, then.” I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. It wouldn’t do to walk into work hyperventilating at the start of my shift.

“You will manage? With your injury?” he asked, his voice gone cold and formal. I looked up to see he had moved several feet back on the sidewalk. The sudden distance twisted something inside me.

“I always manage,” I said with as much dignity as I could gather. Behind the glass, Mr. Markov stared, sightless and moody, at his eternal game of chess. Nicolas put out new dessert trays while sneaking covert glances my way. His twin sister Amelie had no such pretenses. She just outright stared at Ethan and I, a neatly folded towel in one hand as she leaned against the counter. “Look, thanks for the walk and the jacket and all. Don’t worry about me. I only live two stores away. I’ll be fine,” I said tiredly. I was supposed to close and take the deposit to the bank tonight, but there was no way I was telling him that. I could look after myself just fine. I’d been doing it for years now.

Ethan looked far from pleased. He stuffed his hands into his jeans pocket and kicked at the sidewalk. “I do not doubt your competence. Nevertheless, I will be here to escort you to the bank, should you wish for company.” I felt my jaw drop. How did he know...? I hastily snapped it shut again as he continued. “Should you not wish for company, I understand. I will stay several feet behind you. Either way, if you have questions, I will do my best to answer them.” He glared at a staring Amelie, who paled and began frantically wiping the counter. “After work.”

“After work,” I agreed, slipping into the warm, strongly scented air of my job. I looked at the clock. It was going to be a long six-hour shift.

Chapter Six:

The Lighter Spectrum

I watched as Amelie took her third sip of my cinnamon-dusted, whipped cream topped coffee confection. Her silvered eyelids pulsed against the urge to fly open, but she repressed it; that would be cheating. Her perfect mouth twisted slightly in her pale face, amused, even as her nostrils flared over her steaming cup. Amelie was so pale, with snow-blond hair and ice-gray eyes, that she could only wear pale or sheer shades of make-up. But her features were frozen perfection, and she knew it, and used it to her advantage. Her skin glowed with some kind of outrageously expensive cream imported from her native France. If I looked closely enough, I could see tiny sparkles as she moved in the light. Her eyes and mouth were the only features she could highlight without looking like a circus clown. Today she’d chosen a deep red lipstick, the color of pomegranates, that left generous circles on the white coffee cup as she played her part of our nightly game.

“Vanilla and brown sugar?” she guessed, a flash of pink tongue lapping at her top lip as she waited.

“Oh, come on,” I huffed, a little insulted. “You are so off. Those are summer flavors, Amelie, and you know it. Give me some credit.”

When she smiled in triumph, her deep red lips an almost cruel, curling beauty in her snow queen face, I bit my lip in annoyance.
Damn
her. “Why, thank you, Caspia, for that vital clue. So it’s seasonal, hmm?” I didn’t answer. “How many guesses do I have left?”

“Just one,” I ground out, crossing my fingers and wishing hard. "You just used your second." We played this game whenever we closed together. The loser had to wash the dishes. Since Mr. Markov never invested in a dishwasher, someone had to wash everything by hand. It was the least popular chore. The dishwasher was almost always the last one out and the closer by default. Tonight I really hoped to go early; I'd tried to devise an unusual drink, hoping to stump Amelie and win my early freedom.

For some reason, I was the one who almost always invented the new coffee drinks. Mr. Markov, the owner and our boss who happened to be dozing beside his chessboard in front of the fire, claimed he had no talent for such things. If we left things up to him, Whitfield’s only coffee shop would serve nothing but plain black coffee. Maybe, if he felt adventurous, he might add decaf, too. I sighed.

“Mmm.” Amelie sipped again, her pink tongue licking up whipped cream. “I’ll have to go with…” I held my breath. I so did not want to be the last one out and then have to go to the bank too. Plus there was the tiny little matter of Ethan, and his slightly puzzling comment about keeping me company, my even more puzzling anticipation that he might actually show, and the extremely high creepiness factor that he knew things he shouldn’t and appeared to be stalking me…

Amelie snapped her perfectly manicured fingers in my face. “Hello? Pretending to be in a coma won’t save you. It
has
to be pumpkin.” She gave me a wintry smile that matched the growing unease in the pit of my stomach and cradled her drink. “Admit it, Caspia, so I can finish up and go home.”

“Pumpkin spice, actually,” I told her, slumping back against a bare expanse of green marble countertop in defeat. “But close enough.”

She finished off what was left in her cup in one quick, unladylike gulp. “It really is quite good. What are you going to call it?”

“Pumpkin spice?” I said dully, feeling about as imaginative as Mr. Markov. My entire body went limp as the weight of my day pressed down on me. I looked out the storefront windows, every one of them lit up with tea lights across the sill, at the darkness lurking just beyond and tried to imagine what waited for me out there. Take the deposit to the bank in the dark, possibly accompanied by a strangely attractive stalker person heralding impending doom, then home to a dying brother and a bedroom that had been secretly robbed of a worthless but prophetic homework assignment. I shivered violently before I could stop myself. Was I forgetting anything?

Dying. Brother.

The winter will take him.

Amelie was beside me almost instantly, her slim, cool, garnet-tipped fingers stroking my hair, pulling it loose from the clip it had half-escaped anyway. “Hey there,” she said softly, her nails gently raking my scalp before working their way down the tangled mass of my fine dark hair like a makeshift comb. I stared down at her, into eyes that seemed pale, jeweled versions of my own: diamond against steel. She moved to take my hands in hers, in some kind of comforting gesture, but touched my bandaged hand and flinched. “Oh, Caspia, I forgot,” she exhaled. I saw pity in her diamond, ice queen eyes. She wrapped herself around me in a tight hug. I was so surprised I froze. Amelie and her twin, Nicolas, were famously aloof when it came to personal space. The strength of her hold surprised me, as did her cool skin and faint, cloying perfume, like dying roses. She murmured to me in French, her native language, and even though I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, they comforted me nonetheless. “Je suis un idiot. Vous souffrez en douleur. Vous ne me laissez pas vous aider, bien que je sois votre ami. Que est-ce que je pense?”

“Um,” I said brilliantly. “Sure?”

She stepped smoothly back from me. She looked me up and down, her snow-blond hair rippling like silver tinsel under the light, before shaking her head slowly. “Forget it, Caspia. Tonight I will wash the dishes.”

“But,” I sputtered. “You guessed. You won. I wash. It’s what we do,” I protested. Amelie merely arched one perfect silver eyebrow at me and threw me a damp towel. To her credit, she knew me well enough not to mention or even look at my bandaged hand. She knew how stubborn I could be when my pride was damaged, and she also knew I was smarting from the sympathetic glances and not-so-subtle comments so many of our customers had flung my way tonight. Early into our shift, she elbowed me away from the front counter, where I stepped back and forth between the dessert displays, steaming lines of ceramic mugs, and the cash register after yet another customer sweetly inquired how I was feeling after my “nasty fall.” I spent the rest of the night frothing milk and lining up espresso shots, or bringing Mr. Markov and Erik the guitar player a plain black cup of coffee when things were slow.

“You have to take the deposit anyway,” she reasoned. “If you wipe down the tables, we’ll be even.” When I opened my mouth to protest further, she stomped one black-booted foot and fisted her hands on her hips. “Mon Dieu! I will wash the damn dishes, you stubborn creature, and that is all I have to say!” She spun on one heel and flounced away in her designer jeans and perfect silver hair. I stared after her, my mouth drooping open in shock. Amelie, sweet Amelie, never shouted and stormed off. She was more the glaring coldly and gliding away type; quiet anger suited her pale beauty more than passionate outbursts. I shook my head and slipped the daily deposit into my messenger bag. It was heavy. We must have had a good night. Behind the tall steel espresso machines, where I had spent the majority of my evening hiding from gossipy neighbors, it had been hard to tell. I wondered darkly how many customers had come to gawk at Crazy Caspia, Whitfield’s newest mental case, and then shrugged. If they had, at least Mr. Markov had made some money off me.

I looked around the store as I methodically wiped the tables down. Erik’s tall stool was empty next to the rough gray stone fireplace. He’d taken the mic and amp with him; he probably had another gig tomorrow somewhere. Usually, he just left his equipment neatly in the corner. I put down my towel and stacked the board games together on the large glass-topped table, which was hemmed in by four mismatched sofas. I straightened their cushions and collected stray books and magazines, depositing them on the shelves that dotted the room in random order. By the time I got back to my tables, the fire had almost completely died, and Mr. Markov was awake again. But instead of staring at his chessboard, as usual, he stared straight at me.

Since Mr. Markov was blind, I found his direct gaze especially unnerving.

His heavily lined face looked almost cruel in the banked glow of the dying fire. My boss was heavily scarred and wrinkled. His fingers rested in permanent curves, perfect, he told me, for holding a cane or a chess piece. I knew that his hands had been broken decades ago before he escaped to Whitfield from his native Russia, from what he called only his “life before.” He wouldn’t elaborate further, but my overactive imagination could fill in the blanks. His bent, scarred body bore witness to the secrets he would not speak, and his sightless eyes were eerily observant. They raked over me now, seeing through me, reminding me to count my blessings and take nothing for granted. No one would ever call him gentle, but he would do anything for those he trusted. He had a soft spot for orphans and immigrants, like the twins and I. I think we reminded him of some parts of himself: alone in a strange country.