Between (11 page)

This time she wasted no time outside the bookstore. A bell jangled as she entered, and Zee appeared at once from behind a stack of books. His face lit up at first sight of her, then sobered when he saw her expression.

Vivian stalked across the floor, jerked the book from the bag, and thrust it into his hands. “Explain.”

Furious and frightened as she was, still she felt her heart turn over as she watched those hands run over the outrageous cover.

“I was afraid you’d take it this way,” he said after a long silence.

“How else should I take it?”

His lips twisted into a mischievous grin. “Amazement over the sheer brilliance of the art, that would be good.”

Already the anger was running out of her, but she stiffened her spine and kept an edge of harshness in her voice. “I’m not hearing any explaining.”

He sighed. “Sit down, why don’t you? This might take a while. Let me put the
Closed
sign up.”

And Vivian sat as directed, watching his smooth stride as he crossed to the door, the way he moved with incredible lightness for a man so tall, the way his hair fell over wide shoulders, the narrowness of his hips…

She averted her eyes as she caught herself admiring his ass, reminded herself that she was angry, had a right to be angry, and that he was not to be trusted.

“Coffee?” he asked, and she nodded, worried her voice would betray her if she spoke.

He brought two mugs and sat down across from her as he had done yesterday, only now everything was changed because the book lay on the coffee table between them. “All right—ask what you want to know.”

“Who painted that cover?”

His jaw tightened and his free hand twitched. But he met her gaze when he answered, “I did.”

“But how?

“It was commissioned. I was given the title, told how the image should look.”

“But—you hadn’t met me. My eyes, my face—”
My body.

“I dreamed you.”

The words fell like stones into a pool, and both of them sat in silence as the ripples of implication spread.

She felt the heat rise to her face at the thought of him dreaming her naked, felt her breath catch in her throat. When she was able to find words of her own again, her voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else.

“How did you get the book?”

“From him. He said you would walk into the store someday and I should give it to you.”

“My grandfather said this.”

“Is that what he is to you?”

“If we are talking about George Maylor, then yes. He is my grandfather. Was.” An unexpected grief washed over her. She had seen the old man only once, but always she had believed he would come back for her. The loss of all he could have taught her was enormous. Besides, he was the only family she had other than Isobel, and just knowing he was out there somewhere had made her feel a little less alone.

Averting her face to hide the tears she was unable to blink back, she missed Zee’s reaction to her words, but there was a new tension in his voice when he answered her.

“Was? You speak of him as though he died.”

“This morning. I just found out. His attorney came to tell me, to bring me the will.” So much easier to tell the story this way, even though she had come to realize that Jehenna was far from being anybody’s attorney.

“That,” Zee said, “changes everything.” He turned the mug between his hands, back and forth, forehead creased, eyes distant.

Thinking. Making a decision. She knew the look, had seen it on the faces of hundreds of patients making choices about life and death. This treatment, or the other one. Try chemo or accept the inevitable. Life support, or organ donation.

At last he set down the mug, very gently. “There’s something else that he left for you. You’ll have to wait a
minute—it’s upstairs.” He got to his feet, paused. “You will wait, yes? I think it is important.”

“I’ll wait.” Where else was she to go? She kicked off her shoes and curled her feet up under her, cradling the hot mug with both hands. All the world was shifting around her, but at least the coffee remained the same.

No more than a couple of moments and Zee was back with a manila envelope in hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting down across from her. “About your grandfather. And—about the book. I know my painting you must seem strange—”

“Stalker strange.”

“I told you, I dreamed you.”

“That’s really not helpful.” He had dreamed her naked and half dragon, had been moved to paint her from dream. Her face flushed again at the thought of those hands painting the contours of her naked breasts. “It’s not just the picture,” she made herself say. “Did you read the story?”

“Yes.”

“Does it make any sense to you?”

“It’s meant to be more than a fairy tale.”

“That’s what I thought. But I don’t know what.”

The envelope was thoroughly sealed, wrapped in layers of packing tape that refused to give to her fingers. Vivian dug the stiletto out of her pocket, flicking open the blade with a touch of her finger on the release.

Zee whistled. “That even legal?”

“It works,” she said, slicing through the tape in one smooth gesture. She didn’t know about legal, but the bone-handled stiletto was comforting and familiar.

Inside the envelope lay a single sheet of paper. Vivian recognized the handwriting, her name at the top.

“How long have you been holding on to this?”

“Nine years.”

She felt herself staring, pressed the palms of her hands flat against the table to steady them. At last she asked, “And the book?”

“The same.”

“Just waiting for me to walk into your store one day.”

He shrugged, then leaned toward her. This close she could see the fine umber lines running through the translucent agate of his eyes, noted the dilation of his pupils, felt his breath stir her hair. “Yes.” His voice was husky and low. “Always waiting.”

Vivian’s heart was too big for her chest, thudding against her ribs. There was a real danger that she could get lost in his eyes. If he kissed her—

She tore her eyes away from his, breathing hard. Out of her peripheral vision she watched him lean back again in his chair.

Don’t look at his hands, so close to your own on the table. Don’t think about his lips, or try to sneak another glimpse of those eyes.

A ready distraction lay on the table in front of her, a note that had been in this man’s possession, waiting for her to claim it, for so many years. George had written:

And that was all. Somewhere a clock ticked off seconds in the silent room. No other sound but Vivian’s uneven breathing, and Zee’s, measured and slow.

After a moment he got up and walked away. Came back with a fresh cup of coffee, which he set on the table in front of her. “Drink,” he said.

Vivian obeyed, several long swallows, feeling it burn all the way down into her belly.

“Well?” Zee said at last. “You look like I handed you a hydrogen bomb on a timer.”

She managed a shaky laugh at that. “When you met him, did he seem crazy to you?”

His brow furrowed, thinking, and then he shook his head. “Crazy? No. Eccentric, I’d call him.”

“Eccentric how?”

“Well, giving me these things to keep for you, when I’d never met you. Buying that painting and making it into a book. He called me Warlord all the time—Vivian, what is it? Are you all right?”

At his use of the name, the room restricted down to a small circle: the chair she was sitting on, the warmth of the ceramic mug in her hands, the fragrance of coffee, the low table with its scarred chessboard, a game half played,
across from her, half risen from his chair, frozen in time, a man with agate eyes and a face scarred beyond recognition, long hair bound back with a leather thong, callused hands bloodstained, holding a sword—

“Vivian?”

She blinked. Managed to draw breath. Zee’s hands were stretched across the table toward her, and his voice said again, insistent, “Are you all right? Do you need to lie down?”

It was possible to shake her head no, she did not need to lie down. She held up one finger to signify that he should give her a moment. Air was necessary and in short supply, and she focused on drawing it deeply into her lungs and releasing. Once, twice, three times. And then she said, in a voice that sounded distant and strange to her own ears, “He left a message for you.”

V
ivian lay flat on her back in bed, wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

Thank God she had the night off; she was in no condition to work. Her thoughts made her dizzy, alighting on one dilemma only to flitter away to another, forming connections that logic would have considered insane.

She’d finally realized, sitting in A to Zee Books, that all of the science and logic that she’d held to be true was built on false premises. Reality was no more real than dream, perhaps less so. Nothing was as it seemed, and this knowledge had hit her like a ton of bricks. She scarcely remembered making hasty excuses, fleeing from Zee and his dangerous eyes, half-running all the way home.

Maybe she would go back, tomorrow, and apologize to Zee. Maybe she wouldn’t. He was a disturbing and complicated piece of this puzzle, and she didn’t know how far she could trust him. Didn’t know that she could trust anybody.

It had been a restless afternoon and evening, her body at once weary and unable to rest. She’d cleaned and polished and organized, then called Isobel’s family home to check in. No, they still hadn’t heard anything. The police were looking. They would absolutely let her know the second they heard a word.

She called Sacred Heart to check on Brett. Still raving about penguins, still far too cold, still alive. She thought about making a call to find out how her grandfather had died and discovered that she didn’t want to know. She read through the will, carefully, forcing her distracted brain to focus and make sense of the convoluted phrases.

Just in case, she pulled up Google Maps and found directions to the cabin she had inherited. Maybe she should drive up there, maybe even tonight. But cell phone service was likely to be sketchy driving through the pass, and she needed to be available if the police found Isobel. Or if a detective ever called back to talk to her about Mr. Smoot.

At last she’d climbed into bed, hoping to sleep, but her thoughts refused to stop churning.

Beneath the anxiety caused by this sudden intrusion of the ineffable on her attempts to order her life, her worry over her mother and Brett and her failure in losing the globes to Jehenna so stupidly, a secret exultation began to grow. Her childhood belief that there were realities beyond this one, whole unexplored realms of space and time, began to reassert itself, as though all the years of unbelief had been the dream.

Little by little her mind quieted. She felt her body go easy, breathing slow and regular, heart pumping blood on a journey through arteries and arterioles and capillaries, then returning through the network of veins. A constant, smoothly repeating cycle as rhythmic as the movement of stars and planets beyond.

Never had she felt more awake and aware, tuned to a precise focus of attention that included the sounds of her body, the tiny noises made by the apartment at night, the humming of a quiet town outside her windows.

She came to understand that there was another sound. Not new, although she’d never noticed it before. It had always been there, beneath all of the other noise, but she had not been tuned to it. Now it drew her, and she stepped out of bed, slipped into sweatpants and her favorite big shirt, and padded out of her bedroom to investigate.

A stone wall stretched across her living room. High as the ceiling, it reached from wall to wall, intersecting the sofa right down the middle.

Surely this was a dream.

That was her first thought, but she felt too awake for a dream. Her hand sought out the pendant and found it. As she enclosed it in a fist, it pulsed against her fingers. The sound intensified, a low vibration matching the rhythm of the pendant. A rectangular shape appeared in the wall. A door.