Stay (9 page)

I squinted to peer deeper into the musty corners and my skin
brightened in answer to my need. The light grew until a rainbow blend of colors danced over the walls, changing the pigment of my skin. And I reached deep under a sea of clothes until my hands grasped something buried and pulled.

I was much stronger than I looked, unfortunately. The large, oddly shaped case flew up into me, sending me back several steps. Wincing, I held my breath and
I waited for the inevitable crashing and tumble of the pile setting itself to rights. Instead I stood rock still with a body-length black case against my chest. I listened and was relieved to hear his uninterrupted, steady breathing on the other side of the wall.

The case was
made of two rounding curves and a long neck. I set it on the magical bed, flipped open the clasps and then pried open the top. The wood was darkly varnished, studded with metal and strings over a bored-in hole. The strings were cool and taut beneath my fingers and I watched the dust effaced and sound escaped the vibrations. My hand fisted over the long neck and I clutched it closer to my chest.

This
must be his instrument.

I glanced up
to find him standing in the open doorway, leaning against the frame with an inscrutable look on his face.

“You are a musician,
” I said, unfazed by his sudden appearance.

Cain reached out and took the instrument from my hands. He held it before him as
he lost himself to the sleek track of wood. “My uncle gave me this when I was just a kid,” he said. “I even remember watching him perform on stage some nights. We lived in the flat above the club. Not a very practical place for raising kids, I know.”

He
glanced up at me from under the veil of his rumpled, dark hair and smirked. “I used to sneak down some nights, when I was supposed to already be in bed of course, and just listen. Then one night he catches me backstage messing with his guitar and says, ‘
You need to learn blues before you play anything else, boy
.’ Then he just hands it to me and well, you know the rest.” Cain held the guitar closely to his chest and let his fingers brush over the thick strings.

I held my breath in anticipation and was disappointed when the only sounds that escaped the guitar were more vibrations. His fingers stilled and I asked, “Is it broken?”

Cain caught my eye and he grinned as he replied, “It’s an electric guitar. You can’t hear the music unless it’s plugged in.”

I leaned forward
to stroke the blue-painted wooden surface of the guitar and watched the muscles in his forearms twitch. “Did you learn?”

“Yeah…
practiced every day, even thought I was Smokey Robinson for a while.” His smile faded and he set the guitar back in its case. “But that was before high school. Things changed when my aunt got sick.” He shut the case and as it clicked back into place, so ended his tale.

Setting my hand on the cover I persisted. “You should play again.”

His dark eyebrows lifted a moment as he looked into me and then with a heavy tone said, “What do you know about it?”

My fingers burned when he reached to grasp them and remove them from the case. For some reason it was difficult to speak and I refused to question why.

“I know what it is like to forget your dreams,” I said, “to lose yourself in darkness.”

He shut his guitar back in its closet
without responding. I watched as he averted his gaze and crossed the room to check the pace of the snow storm beyond the curtain. Every good emotion I had felt from him seemed to be sucked out from that window, out into the frozen winter. It made me ache.

“Did you want a shower?” Cain called over his shoulder. “Was just thinking, you might want to go first, before the hot water heater blows out for good. Couple more days of this weather and it won’t last much longer.” His biceps bulged with each clench of his fists.

“How does it work?”

Shocked out of his reverie enough to face me, he stared at me and then laughed. “You’re kidding? Rona, you can’t tell me you’ve never had a shower before.”

I reached behind my back to twist my waist
-length curls, an old human habit, and watched him warily. But when he shifted into the light again I could see the carefree man I knew yesterday, through cards and dinner and dancing. I wanted this man.

Please let this storm end soon.

I watched his eyes follow my movements as I crossed my legs and bit my lip. So far, I had only managed to anger or amuse him and was no closer to learning the story behind him and Lissa.

“Okay
, that’s it,” he finally said as he walked back to me and extended a hand. “You just lost your last chance to say no.”

“Do I smell?” I teased and then
grinned like an idiot when he grasped my arm and led me through his bedroom.

Pointing at the various knobs, he said,
“I’ll draw the water for you. Twist this way to make it hot and this way is cold.” He glanced over his shoulder to see if I understood. I felt the blood in my face rise when he caught me focused on the exposed muscles of his midriff instead.

I crossed the small space to follow his instructions better and pretended not to see how
he puffed up with male pride. “Yes, I see your meaning,” I said. “And what do I do when I am finished washing?” His eyes raked over me briefly and I felt curiously exposed and in need of his mother’s shawl again.

“Just push it back in,” he quietly replied. “
Shout if you need help with anything.” He paused to watch me before shutting the door behind him.

Two days ago I wouldn’t have cared whether I took a shower or not. It wasn’t like I could have felt
its warmth. But how glorious was the warmth of the clear spray and the steam drifting on air now. Every nerve stood on end in my body and tingled beneath the heat. It recalled memories better left forgotten.

How he managed to steal into the public baths was beyond my understanding. But my lover was the sea, forged by the stormy skies above them. So why should he not come to me in the steam of the public baths?

My sisters were laughing nearby, but no others had
come to this corner of the baths. I had come here for solitude, to avoid their endless questions and their fear of me.

Coming up from behind, Seid
trapped my waist with one arm and ran his hand over my bare skin with the other. I shivered when he breathed against my ear.

“Leave them
behind, Orona. Forget them. Come with me tonight.”

“I cannot,
” I said as I fought vainly for control. I was clay beneath his skilled hands, powerless to fight him. His lips worked against the nape of my neck and traced the curve of my shoulder.

“I am weary of waiting
, my love,” he said. “Come now.” And then his voice changed to reveal his true nature, carried the crash of thunder in its depths as he growled,
“Come.”

“Come on, Rona, answer me. Are you coming out of there sometime today?” Cain chuckled to himself on the other side of the bathroom door, raised his knuckles again to rap at the wood. “You’ve been in there more than thirty minutes, babe. Pretty sure you’ve already used all the hot water in the building, but I won’t tell the neighbors if you don’t.”

I clutched the faded tile on the wall, sucked in
several rapid breaths and struggled to find a better grip with my trembling limbs. The water had run cold. For an awful moment I heard not Cain, but
his
voice commanding me to come to him, to obey. I leapt quickly from beneath the frigid spray, holding onto the shower curtain to keep my balance.

“Rona?” Cain’s voice was pressed tighter to the door, his hand upon the handle. “You okay?”

As long as you don’t come in here, then yes.

“I’m fine!” I gasped when my feet hit the rug and reality settled back in. I was with Cain. I was safe. But through the foggy haze
, I caught my reflection in his shower mirror.

My skin glowed
in the fluorescent light. Every patch of skin radiated the bold and brilliant colors of the sunset and the waters they had overtaken the moment of my damnation. My irises carried these colors constantly within them, fading from one to the next depending on my mood. This was one reason why I could never reveal myself to another human. There had always been the risk I couldn’t hide my true nature from them.

It was easier to wait until
the last moment to unveil myself. It was easier for them to brush aside a fleeting memory of an angel than a living ghost.

My body began to tremble harder then and I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to stamp out the emotions that had triggered the curse.

Be gone!

But when I opened my eyes, the angel remained.
And I could no longer deny the fact I was losing control.

“You don’t sound fine,” Cain said with more than a hint of concern. “
Are you decent?” He waited for my reply but his words had already fallen on deaf ears. I was gasping because of the chills, because my innermost fears were becoming manifest before my eyes.

Do not lose control!

I had left the shower on. How did I turn it off again? With my skin so sensitive at the moment, even the floor felt hard and unnatural. Water had escaped past the curtain and made the way slick, but I saw it too late. My feet slid and I braced my hands out to catch my fall as I slipped. Had I not been so lost to the sensation of falling, I might have caught myself, rather than crashed back into the spray with a heavy thud.

“Rona?” Cain
burst through the door.

I cried out in surprise at the pain in my backside and in my wrists. I stared at them and watched the
curse begin to instantly heal the cuts and fill me with numbness once again.

Somehow he managed to turn off the shower and
lift me into his arms in the blink of an eye. My throat welled up as our connection flashed back into being with the weight of his emotions. They surrounded me, coupled with my own fear of being seen.

Strangely,
he made no comment about the glow of my eyes, or that the colors trapped in my skin began to leak out onto him. His face was clouded by dissipating steam, though his dark blue eyes burned brightly into mine. I scarcely registered the subtle shift of his steps, the brush of the towel he had grabbed and wrapped like a shield around my body. After setting me on his bed, he flipped on the bedside lamp and I lifted my hands to inspect them.

They’ve already healed.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook
my head and sighed when he moved onto the bed and wrapped me in his arms again. On impulse I reached up and wrapped my arms around him, no matter that my towel was slipping, or that he did not belong to me. In this moment he was mine, my savior.

“Rona,” h
e began as he grasped my back and clutched me closer to him.

I relished being so close, so warm again. Had I spent a thousand years cold?

His voice deepened as he continued, “You know, you’re making it really hard for me not to touch you right now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as I pulled away.

“Don’t be.” He was quick to answer. With surprising gentleness, he set my towel back in place and then left me to clean up the mess I had made.

Energy was running low in this part of the city. Ice raced to snap power lines and freeze up pipes. While the people did what they could, only I knew the storm was about to cease and the weak sun reclaim their world. I might have used my gift a bit to help it along.

What else could I do?

Clearly it was no longer safe for me to remain trapped with Cain. I needed to learn more of the connection between him and Lissa. Otherwise I would have never been brought here. I was inexorably drawn to true love, fly to sap. And now I had broken the most important of all rules by getting involved.

Every time I thought of Lissa, I saw the blood in her hands and the hopelessness in her eyes and felt like I was dying all over again. This was why Cain’s gentleness affected me so, why I was the worst of people for savoring it while I could.

Cain did his best to joke and ease the
awkward tension between us. His favorite and most annoying method was the endless sea of questions whose answers he plucked from me.

“Are you sick, Rona?” he asked me over breakfast.

I told him the truth, not imagining how confusing my answer sounded. “I am cursed.”

He pondered this through our first three games of cards. Even as he told me more stories about the club and his childhood by the sea I knew he was thinking of it.

At least he is giving you the answers you were looking for,
my inner voice taunted.

Still,
I learned how much he loved working on boats and how much he missed surfing the Atlantic waves. In my mind I could so clearly see him at one with the crest of a wave.

“You have to imagine power behind it, Rona. You can’t predict it. One minute you could be flying and the next you’re crushed,”
he said.