Infinite Harmony (6 page)

It didn’t sound like Joshua was the person she needed to convince.

“I’m sure he does.”

Her hands dropped back into her lap and she pulled back her shoulders. “He’s a good person. He does a lot of outreach ministry, visiting with the elderly and doing service projects around town,” she said as if she was reciting it from a memorized list. “He loves the Lord with all his heart.”

But does he love you?

“He sounds great.”

“He is.” She nodded her head, and again it seemed more for her benefit than Joshua’s. “And he’s an actor. He was on four different episodes of
Sesame Street
when he was eight.”

“Very impressive.”

Ada cut her eyes at him. “But we’re not here to talk about Marsden.”

Joshua didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to lead them into the conversation and make it any easier for her. With any luck, she would chicken out and convince herself she hadn’t really seen what she saw.

“If you’re going to burn a bloodied shirt with a bullet hole in it, it’s a good idea to actually start the fire,” she said. “Otherwise, anyone could happen by and pick the evidence up right out of the fireplace.”

Or maybe she would call him on his bullshit.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ada turned to face him. “Seriously? That’s how you’re going to do this? You’re going to pretend like you have no idea what I’m talking about? Do you really think I’m going to be all, ‘Oh, he says it didn’t happen, so it must not have. Silly me, thinking I saw someone get shot. I’ve got to cut back on the Mello Yello. It’s rotting my brain.’?”

“Don’t be crazy. I’ve known way too many Mello Yello addicts in my day. I would never expect you to admit it’s brain-eating capacity or cut back.”

The steady chatter of frogs and crickets and the soft lapping of water against the pier were the only sounds as Ada and Joshua stared into one another’s eyes, each waiting for the other to relent.

“Take off your shirt,” Ada said when it became obvious he wasn’t going to fess up.

Joshua tried to pull off the kind of half-smile he’d seen Jase use a million time. “I thought you had a boyfriend.”

This time there was no blush tinting her cheeks. “Show me your shoulder. Prove me wrong.”

Joshua took a deep breath and ran through a million different responses in his head, but there was only one thing he could really do. He grabbed the edge of his shirt and lifted it slowly, being careful not to reopen the wound. As soon as it was over his head, warm fingers were there, tracing softly around the spot where the bullet had gone in. It should have hurt. If he was being completely honest, it did hurt. But the pain was significantly dulled by the little electrical storms dancing from one nerve ending to another.

“It’s almost healed,” she said, her breath whispering across his neck and setting off a whole new series of happy nerve storms. “How is that possible?”

“I’m a fast healer.” It was one of the benefits of being an Immortal. He could grab a hot pan at breakfast and the burn would be gone by supper. Still, even he was amazed at how quickly his shoulder was healing. By tomorrow night, it would be completely closed up, and by Monday he would be able to swing a sword again. He figured it had something to do with having a trained nurse treat his wound rather than doing what he could on his own.

“There is fast healing and then there is this. Does it hurt?” She touched the center of his raw flesh and this time the only storms were ones of pain. He jerked away, barely catching a curse before it escaped his lips. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Definitely a yes.” He turned back around and pointed at his discarded shirt. “May I?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen all I need to.”

Taking the shirt off had been hard, but putting it back on, especially after Ada’s jab-a-finger-in-it-and-see-if-he-screams test, was almost impossible. He was close to either giving up or crying when the scent of vanilla filled his nose and then small, gentle hands were tugging the worn cotton down to where it belonged.

“You were shot.”

“I was shot.” She knew, and he knew she knew, but it was still hard to make the confession after so many years of lies.

“You were shot last night, but it looks like you were shot weeks or even months ago.”

“Yes.”

A barge was trudging toward the dam. Someone had strung white lights around the bridge, and coupled with the masthead light reflecting on the surface of the lake, it looked like a fairy party was taking place just a few hundred feet from where Joshua waited in agonizing silence for Ada to say something else.

“I know you’re trying to figure it out, but I wish you wouldn’t,” he finally said when he couldn’t stand the silence for another second. “You really don’t want to know.”

“But I already do.”

“You do?”

She turned her back to him.

What the…?

“You’re pale. I only see you at night. And you heal overnight from bullet wounds. You’re a—”

Joshua had to disguise his laugh with a cough before he could say his line.

“Say it,” he finally said somewhat stoically.

“Vampire,” Ada whispered, and then she doubled over in a fit of laughter. Joshua was laughing too, but then her giggles turned into coughs, and once she started coughing, he was afraid she wouldn’t stop. It took several minutes and a few puffs from an inhaler for her to regain her breath.

“Sorry about that,” she said once she had enough air to do so. Joshua wanted to ask, the question was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. She would tell him when she was ready.

“You should be.” He tried to glare at her but knew he wasn’t pulling it off. Joshua couldn’t muster a good glare even when it was called for. He certainly couldn’t conjure one in jest. His face didn’t work that way. Or maybe it was his personality. Life was way too precious to mar it with a bunch of angst. “How would you like it if I called you a vampire? We prefer ‘children of Dracula’ or ‘the fanged ones’. Vampire is a derogatory term.”

The music had changed to an Elton John song and Ada was tapping out the beat on her knee. “Okay, child of Dracula, when were you born?”

“December 3, 1932.”

“Sunlight, does it make you a crispy critter or glitter-rama?”

“If I don’t use sunblock I get kind of crispy, but that’s only because I’m a pasty white boy.”

“What’s your poison? Wooden stakes? Fire? Beheading?”

“None of the above.” He hated himself for the sadness in his voice. He didn’t want to die. He really didn’t. But sometimes he really didn’t want to live either. “Nothing can kill me. I can’t die.”

Ada stopped moving. Her finger was suspended midair above her knee, which made Joshua smile. It was like someone had stopped the music in a children’s game and whoever moved first lost.

“You’re not joking, are you?”

Later, his friend Maggie would ask him why he did it. Why after all these years he would tell the truth of who and what he was to this human girl who he had known for only a day. Why he would risk himself and the safety of all the other Immortals, Thaumaturgics, Shifters, and Seers just because this one, insignificant girl asked. He would tell her he didn’t know, but that wasn’t true, because Joshua did know.

He told the truth because he was tired of living a lie. He told Ada who he was because, for reasons he didn’t quite understand, he wanted her to know the real Joshua.

Joshua pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a photo hidden between his driver’s license and library card. He tried not to notice how it fluttered slightly in his fingers as he handed it to Ada.

“That picture was taken in 1950,” he said. “I was eighteen.”

It wasn’t the first time someone had seen the photograph in all these years, but it was the first time he didn’t remark on how much he looked like his father, or as he had come to do in more recent years, his grandfather.

Ada didn’t hold the picture up next to his face or call it a fake or any of the things he expected. Her finger traced lightly over the worn, old image as if touching his photographed face could make sense of what she was seeing.

“Who is the girl?”

“Evelyn.” He swallowed past the decades old grief. “My Evey. She died three months after that picture was taken.” He’d listen to her breaths grow more shallow and less frequent as he raced toward town, begging her to hold on until they could find a doctor, but she couldn’t fight anymore. Her wounds had been too extensive. He could still remember the weight of her body his arms and the smell of her blood mixed with his tears.

The dock rocked gently on the waves. Even though they were just feet from the shore, it felt as if they were adrift in a vast ocean, far away from the real world where this information was dangerous. The night had stripped Joshua of the constant vigilance and anxiety he’d carried with him since he’d been transformed.

“Six months later I ceased to be human,” he said, the words feeling foreign coming out of his mouth despite being the truth.

Ada cocked her head to one side and studied him, not like he was a monster, but like he was a puzzle to be figured out. “What did you become?”

“Have you ever heard of the Erelim?”

“Sorry, I don’t really get into that whole paranormal scene. I’ve watched maybe two episodes of
Supernatural
, and that pretty much sums up my mythical knowledge.”

Joshua smiled at the reference to the television show the Alpha Pack liked to dissect on a regular basis. “We don’t actually get much play on the whole paranormal or urban fantasy scene,” he said. “We’re more on the spiritual side of things.”

“Spiritual?”

“Heavenly even.”

“Heavenly?” Ada’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion and then she sputtered out a giggle. “You want me to believe you’re an angel?”

“No. Not at all. My life would probably go much more smoothly if you don’t believe a word I say.” All true, except for the part where he didn’t want her to believe. “I’m just telling you that I’m an Erelim, one of the  warriors of heaven. It’s your choice whether or not you believe me.”

Ada slowly shook her head. “No, that’s…” She turned her face to the stars as if looking for an answer in the constellations. “Angels aren’t real,” she said to the heavens.

There was only a few feet between them. It wasn’t necessary for Joshua to move closer, but he did simply because he liked being near her. Once there was only one plank of wood separating them, he reached over and tilted her head back down so she was looking at him.

“I’m real.”

“And you’re an angel?”

Joshua took his fingers from her chin, but she didn’t break eye contact. “I’m an Er’el, but most people refer to us as Immortals.”

“Er’el.” Ada tested the feel of the word on her tongue. “And you will never die?”

“Never.” There was one way, of course, but he would never do it. He made that promise to himself and God a long time ago, and it was an oath he would not break. “Until the end of days, I will exist.”

But not necessarily live
, a part of him whispered.
Existing and living are two very different things. Even people with a limited number of years on this earth find themselves existing long after their life has gone.

“I want to tell you you’re crazy, but I think I’m the one who needs a psych evaluation, because I believe you.”

Years ago Joshua had first told Jase and Talley, and later the rest of the Alpha Pack, who and what he was. It was the first time he’d shared the truth of his existence with anyone, and the entire time he’d been second-guessing himself, running through a series of worst-case scenarios and coming up with plans for how to handle them. Eventually he started to enjoy being out of the supernatural closet. It was comforting to be around people with whom he didn’t have to pretend. But it had taken a long time, years even, to get to that point.

He’d only told Ada minutes ago, and there was still the very real chance this would come back to bite him on the ass, but all he could think about was how good it felt to tell someone. For someone to see him as he truly was.

Not just someone, but Ada.

Joshua had lived through too much to cower from anything in the world, his feelings included. There wasn’t any point in denying it. He had a bunch of warm and fuzzy feelings where Ada was concerned. It wasn’t just that her cheeks reminded him of two perfect little apples when she smiled or that he couldn’t look at her lips without thinking about kissing them. It was in her matter-of-fact approach to everything. It was the way she didn’t back down, even when everyone was telling her she was wrong. And most importantly, it was in the way she was still sitting beside him, looking back at him not with repulsion or fear, but tenderness and understanding.

“You’re staring at me,” she said, and he realized he most certainly was. He could have turned away then. He probably should have, but he didn’t.

“I find looking at you very enjoyable.”

A splash of red colored her cheeks.

“I have a boyfriend.”

“I know,” Joshua said. “That is why I’m sitting here thinking about kissing you instead of actually doing it.”