Noah's Boy-eARC (13 page)

Kyrie let go of his shoulder now and went to the shelves that were stacked with mustard pots. She started turning them so they all faced the same way, and spoke as though to the mustard pots. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like the idea that there’s…other…that there are other people in there.”

“They’re not people. More like…the information in people,” he said slowly, more sure as he went along and touched each file, without opening it, and yet getting from it a listing of contents. “Like, what they learned.”

“Don’t care. Where did this came from? Who downloaded it?”

“I think,” Tom said slowly. “I feel it was the Great Sky Dragon, only that’s not quite right.”

“Damn him. First Bea, now this.”

“Well—”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, making tentative movements, and taking a step towards Kyrie. It all worked fine. “I just…I think I was momentarily overloaded. It was very hard not to shift. I was afraid I’d eat Conan. How is
he
doing, by the way?”

“What?”

“How is his
show
going? I remember hearing clapping.”

“Oh, yes. He can sing, Tom. He really can. They’re…people love it, and he’s lapping it up, even if he has the world’s worst taste in clothes.”

“We should go out there, Kyrie,” Tom said, feeling he had to do something normal, to act normal in some way or he was going to implode. Inside him, the locked information was like a sore tooth that one tries to avoid touching with one’s tongue, but which one is always aware of. “We should be selling stuff, and making sure the serving staff isn’t overloaded. I suppose Laura has left now, and she was never supposed to serve, anyway, which leaves Jason serving and Anthony manning the fryer. He might forget to keep a close eye. What if the fryer explodes?”

“You have a weird relationship with that fryer,” Kyrie said.

Tom grinned at her, and this time didn’t feel like he had to force it. “I don’t like things that can destroy the diner if they blow up.”

“Like half the customers?”

“Well, that too, but then so can I. I meant…”

“I know what you meant.” Kyrie touched his arm tentatively. “On the good side, you’re no longer burning.”

“No, I think that too was a function of the…download,” he said. He opened the door and waited for her to step through.

She started to, but then turned around. Through the open door came the strains of “You are Not Alone,” in a powerful voice no one could believe might come from Conan’s unimpressive frame. “Tom? What was that you said? When I touched you first? Was it…what language was it?”

Tom had no idea what she was talking about, at first, but then remembered pronouncing words, words that made his throat hurt saying them. He remembered their coming out of his mouth, though he didn’t remember forming them in his brain, and as he thought of them, his mind automatically zoomed in on one of the more deeply-buried files, the ones that his brain told him were oldest.

A touch brought up memories of a similar language, though he needed to make an effort to open the subfile for all the words he’d heard. Words in a language whose sounds made his throat hurt with remembered injury poured out, their meaning
felt
rather than known.

He squinted against the stronger light coming from the hallway, against the sound of clapping out there. He tried to concentrate on English, as the other language blurred and blended with it, the edges indistinct.

“It was…” he said. “I am not…gone…no. I am not dead. I’m…covered? Hidden? No. Buried. I am buried…beneath…the dragon.”

* * *

He cleans up nice,
Bea thought. And on the heels of that thought was shock at herself for letting her guard down.

There was something faintly scandalous about the whole situation. She was in a cabin in the woods, isolated, with a man she had never met until a few hours ago, and he’d just come out of the shower, smelling of soap and shampoo.

He was wearing what looked like running shorts, very short and loose, and a tan T-shirt that had a picture of a big lion with “The Lion Sleeps IN Tonight.” Her eyes widened a little at the words, remembering he shifted into a lion, and he followed her eyes, and had the grace to blush. “My mom gave it to me,” he said. “When I was twenty or so, because, you know, it’s what I wear on weekends, when I do sleep in.”

She nodded, but still felt uncomfortable. Not because she felt they were too intimate, but because she didn’t feel shocked at their being so intimate. There should be…more embarrassment, she thought, rather than just embarrassment at not being embarrassed.

With a shrug at her own foolishness, she said, “I found some steaks but they’re all frozen.”

“We can defrost them,” he said. “We have the technology!” He opened a sliding door to display a wall-mounted microwave discreetly hidden behind it. “Mom just doesn’t like to give the impression that this is in the twenty-first century, you know—but it doesn’t mean she wants to cook over an open fire. Though we do that too, at times. There’s a grill out back.”

“Yeah,” Bea said, blushing a little, and not sure why. “Only, you know, I think steak is better if it is allowed to defrost properly, right?”

“Right, and marinate,” Rafiel said. “What else do we have?”

“Well, you have a bunch of frozen veggies.”

“Yeah, Mom buys them in the summer, then deep-freezes them for when we come up in winter, but the last winter was so bad we didn’t come up much.” He opened the freezer drawer at the bottom, and looked up at her. “Do you eat chicken?”

“Sure. I mean…doesn’t everyone?”

He shrugged. “I’ll cook up a couple of chicken breasts, make a sherry sauce to disguise the defrosted-in-haste taste, and I think we have rice somewhere up there—would you look?” He pointed at a cabinet and she looked, bringing out a package of brown rice. He nodded. “I’ll make us some stir-fried veggies to go with it. Tomorrow we’ll go to the local market and grab fresh veggies. It’s kind of a small market, for the communities up here, but it does have veggies, or it should by now, even if the selection will be more limited than in the city.”

While he talked, he stood up and started the chicken defrosting, then got out the still-frozen vegetables: carrots and mushrooms and green beans. He made a face. “It won’t be the best thing I’ve ever cooked.” His hair was damp from the shower and rather than standing up like a mane, curled around his ears and the back of his neck. For some reason this made him look young. It was very endearing. He concentrated wholly on the cooking.

The spacious kitchen had a central isle, with the stove on it, and that was where he moved to work. She pulled one of the barstools to it, and sat there, watching him.

He looked up, half-smiling at one point, “So, you don’t cook at all.”

She waggled a hand at him. “Ramen. I’m in college, remember?”

“Ah, yes. So…your parents…do they have any idea where you are?”

She hesitated. “I think they believe I’m back in college. I tried to make sure…I didn’t expect to be gone this long.” She hesitated again. “But if I call them…”

“The Great Sky Bastard will track you down? Likely. He doesn’t seem to ever forget a grudge, does he?”

“No.” She hesitated. The whole idea of what had happened to her, the idea that she had in fact been dead for some unspecified period of time was unbearable. She sighed. “No.”

Rafiel dumped the vegetables from the cutting board onto the oil. Then he grabbed a wooden spatula and started working the spattering, still-frozen veggies around. “I could call them. My cell phone, I mean. Whatever— I mean, I don’t think whatever it was…whoever it was who attacked me has the type of capabilities of the Great Sky Dragon. I could call your parents and tell them you’re fine, and will get back in touch when—”

“No,” the word practically screamed itself. She sighed. “I’m sorry, but really,
no
. You know, the thing is…I mean…You’re a man.”

He laughed lightly as he turned the fire down. “Noted. And yeah, I can sort of see your point.” He bit his lip. “Tell you what…I have to call my mom anyway, or they’ll worry.” He blushed a little, again looking much younger than his late twenties. “I know it’s silly when I’m a grown man, but really, they will worry, so I tell you what—I’ll call them and ask them to call your parents. Would that work?”

“It might,” she said. “The Great Sky Dragon might suspect I’m in Goldport, but he knows that anyway. Yeah. That might work.”

“All right,” Rafiel said. “It’s a deal.” But something in his eyes looked worried.

Chapter 14

When they returned to the diner’s dining room, Conan was standing up in the little circle they had cleared for his performance. Somehow it had gotten much smaller, with various people crowding around, all trying to talk to him.

He had his guitar in one hand and was bowing, seemingly in response to everything addressed to him. Tom patted Kyrie on the shoulder. “I’ll go rescue the poor man; you make sure people have food, if they linger, and that no one leaves without paying.”

It was easier said than done, but on the other hand, the diner seemed to have acquired several volunteer servers. “They said they’re regulars,” Jason said. He was red-faced and looked beat, but was grinning. “And Anthony confirmed it. Some guy called James Stephens who said he’s half a horse, and a big man who goes by Professor Squeak.”

“Oh, Professor Roberts.”

“Is he really?” Jason asked, as he and Kyrie crossed back and forth giving warm-ups and bussing tables.

“A professor? Yeah. Pharmacology. CUG School of Medicine.”

“Oh, wow. I thought he was just nuts. He started telling me how he had all these names, including Speaker to Lab Animals and Professor Squeak.”

Kyrie hesitated, but in the press of people it wasn’t a good time to mention shape-shifting, so she just said, “He’s eccentric, but a very nice man.”

“Yeah, well, he was taking orders and didn’t know what to do with the tips.”

“Well, no,” Kyrie said, when their paths crossed again.

Their desultory conversation wound down as the diner returned to normal activity for that time of night—almost empty with only three tables still occupied by large groups. Three or four people remained near Conan too, one of them the fiercely protective Rya who was standing between him and a large, well-dressed man, who was trying to talk to Conan about something.

Kyrie looked over at Tom, who leaned over one of the tables, talking to regulars, a smile on his face as he traded jokes with the man they’d long known as the Poet, who turned out to be Rya Simmons’ father, Mike.

He looked…natural, Kyrie thought. Or at least, if she hadn’t known that something was very wrong, she would have thought that he looked perfectly natural. He seemed tired and moved in a slightly forced way, like someone valiantly dragging himself past his last ounce of strength and willpower. But there was nothing unusual, no odd movements, as he picked up the tray with the used plates, and laid down the accounting for the table of seven people.

“So, do you think he’ll make enough to marry my daughter?” Rya’s father asked Tom with a wink, as Kyrie approached them.

“He has asked?” Tom said. “Braver than I thought.”

“She’s probably asked him,” Mike conceded with a smile. A retired TV weatherman, he was writing a novel in his sleepless nights, to stay conscious and not turn into a were-fox. He’d left his daughter at five, trying to avoid tainting his family with his weirdness. But when his daughter had started shifting herself, she had found him.

“Well! I’d be happy about Conan and Rya,” Tom said, and for just a moment his voice reverberated oddly, seeming to echo off the walls of the diner and to be imbued with authority and knowledge that had never been Tom’s. He must have noticed it too, and the people at the table all stared up at him, but then Tom cleared his throat, “Anyway, at least he didn’t completely tank and chase our customers away. I’m not sure how much we made, but it was a lot.”

“Well, then, maybe you should give my future son-in-law a cut?” Mike said only half joking.

Tom assured him he intended to do just that, then went back to the counter, with Kyrie trailing him anxiously.

Behind the counter, Anthony was removing his apron, with an air of grim determination, “I have to go now, Tom, really. My wife is threatening to change the locks.”

Tom nodded as he set down the tray loaded with dirty dishes, and put them in a holding area, waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. “We’ll see how much we made and make sure you get a cut, too,” Tom said.

“Well, that might help. We need to move to a bigger apartment.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, you know. There will be a kid, sometime in fall.”

Was Tom’s smile a little forced as he said “Congratulations”? And even Kyrie couldn’t avoid a pang as Anthony beamed at them, saying, “About time you two had some, but you got to get married first! And think about it. Our kids could play together.”

“Our kid would totally beat up your kid,” Tom said, but it was automatic.

From the other side of the counter, leaning on it, Rya said, “Mr. Ormson!” She’d been introduced to Tom as Tom, and to Kyrie as Kyrie, but she insisted on calling them Mr. Ormson and Ms. Smith. Which was funny, since she was probably only two years or so younger than Kyrie. “Mr. Ormson. You’ll let Conan sing on Wednesdays, right? Here?” Conan, standing behind her, looked hopeful. Behind him were two men, also looking hopeful.

Tom turned around. There were dark circles under his eyes, but his gaze had a strange brilliance. “I’d rather he sings Saturdays, though we might need to come up with some new table arrangement to get more people in. Why?”

Rya gestured to the two men nearby. “They want to hire Conan to sing at their bars, and I was saying he shouldn’t do that, when he has worked for you all this time, and you’re friends and—”

The two men started up with a babble of explanations from which the word “nonexclusive” emerged. Tom nodded. “I don’t see why he can’t sing for them other nights. I’ll take the night he can give us. It’s a small venue here anyway, but, Conan, don’t sign anything without getting it looked at by a lawyer.” And with those words, the reverberation, the sound of authority was back. Conan raised his eyes, staring at Tom with wide-open eyes, as Tom went on, “My dad will help you out, when he comes to visit. Just don’t sign anything till he tells you it’s okay.”