The Heartbeat Thief (29 page)

“Snapped the chain, huh? I’m sorry. I can fix it.” He half-stood and reached for it.

She snatched it out of reach, shying from him like a wild animal.

“Hey, easy.” His tone was gentle, as if he were calming a spooked horse. His palms open, his brows upturned, he continued to murmur comforting nonsense. “I won’t take it from you.”

She relaxed a little. She couldn’t wear the locket if the chain was snapped. It had to be fixed. She gripped the amulet tight enough to hurt her fingers. “How?”

“A pair of pliers, if you have ‘em, or a piece of wire if you don’t. You can hold onto your bauble. All I need are the ends of the chain. See? Easy.”

“I am not quite sure.” She looked around. This tiny house was a mystery to her. Such a far cry from the early days, when she’d been deposited into lavish apartments and cozy hideaways, so different from the sumptuous sepulcher she’d known only hours before. “Maybe there’s a tool box out back. On the back porch.”

At least, she thought it was a back porch. She hadn’t given more than a glance out the kitchen window when she was making tea, or when she felt the ghost of Knell’s touch on her neck earlier.

“Okay.” He got up and walked out through the kitchen.

Listening to his heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor, the slam of the screen door, the sounds of scraping and metal sliding on metal, she poured another cup for him.

In a few moments he reappeared, snapping a pair of red-handled pliers. “Come sit.”

He pointed to the couch. When she didn’t move, he wagged his fingers at her. “The chain isn’t long enough to reach from there.”

Senza stepped carefully around the small table, noting how small the couch was. She lowered herself like she was spun from glass, careful not to touch him. He slid his fingers down the lengths of the chain, lifting the ends and examining each one.

“You’re lucky. It’s a big, thick link. I wouldn’t be able to fix it here if it had been finer. Then again…” He eyed her hand, fingers tightly wrapped around the amulet. “You need a tow chain to support that heavy thing.”

She snorted and lifted her chin. It made him laugh.

It didn’t take long for him to repair the chain; he’d only had to thread the distorted link through the other and bend it closed.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said.

He looked away, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket. “You saved my life.”

She draped the chain over her head, settling the amulet and its familiar weight to its rightful place, next to her empty heart. “You saved mine, as well.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t know if I should thank you or demonize you. I figured fixing your necklace would err on the side of politeness.”

“Well, then.” She lifted her tea cup. “To civility.”

He picked up his refreshed cup and mimicked her toast. “Cheers.”

Senza excused herself, leaving the tea in the room with him. She was simply unsure what to make of him and so escaped to the cliffs, peering hard at the ocean and the horizon that had melted into the depths of darkness. Hours passed effortlessly, her thoughts muted and vague. The locket was heavy tonight, so much more so than it had been before she’d taken it off, intending to fling it into the sea.

She’d meant to end herself. Piotr had meant the same. Somehow, they managed to foil each other.

What to do now?

She supposed he would leave while she was out. Would he pick up where he’d left off? A cup of tea didn’t cure a cancer and his troubles were still very real. Would she find his body in the morning? Would there be no trace left of him, the only proof he’d ever existed found in a tray full of ashes?

At length, the night grew too chill for her comfort and she tread the path back to her cottage. A lamp burned in the front window, and the door lantern was lit. She didn’t remember lighting them. Cautiously, she pushed open the door. The parlor was empty but a great racket came from the kitchen. She stepped inside, tugging the door closed.

“I know it’s late, but…” Piotr leaned through the doorway. “Hope you’re hungry.”

Senza went to the kitchen to find Piotr in the midst of making supper. The oven blazed, flooding the small room with warmth and aroma. She hadn’t eaten much over the year she’d spent here in her cottage by the sea, but she remembered how she’d once enjoyed it.

And it had been a long time since she indulged herself. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“Ah, well. You left so suddenly I never had the chance to say goodbye. I needed something to do while you were gone.” He pulled out her chair like a proper gentleman.

She bunched her skirts and sat down. “What if I hadn’t returned?”

“Everyone comes home in the end.” He glanced at her as he took his seat. He lifted a warming cover to reveal a tidy roast, carrots and potatoes making an appetizing garland. “Besides, you hardly look like the wild night life kind of girl.”

She plucked a green bean from a steaming bowl. “You might be surprised.”

“Nothing surprises me.” He served them both, heaping the food generously on each of their plates. What an appetite he must have. “Except maybe one thing. Why are you here? All alone?”

“I prefer solitude.” She poked at a carrot with the tip of her fork, not particularly relishing the conversation.

Chewing, he made a disapproving sound. “It’s not healthy.”

Healthy was a relative term, wasn’t it? The absence of illness. Absence of pain or unrest. It wasn’t a state of absolute being; it was simply a state of desirable being.

She reached for her glass, wishing to cleanse her palate. “Being around people isn’t healthy.”

“You can’t catch cancer from someone.” His tone was flat. He seemed to apply a little too much vigor to the pepper shaker.

Ah. She’d insulted him. If that was what he needed to think, so be it. Normally, it was preferable. It enabled her to remain apart, alone. A little alienation often went a long way.

But Piotr—his eyes were tight from the strain the additional distance had placed on him. He was not accustomed to solitude, it seemed. She softened. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“I know you didn’t. Look. I didn’t exactly make overnight plans this morning. I figured I’d be sleeping with the fish. Could I impose…” He spread his hands, his words trailing off awkwardly.

“You mean to sleep here?” Her empty heart fluttered inside as a panic zinged through her. The locket warmed, sending the thump of a beat through her. It had been so long since she’d needed a beat. The sensation wobbled her.

“I shouldn’t have.” He pushed away from the table, taking his plate to the sink, his dinner barely touched. Such a waste.

“No. It’s fine. The couch, will it do?”

He half-turned. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a small comfort. I haven’t much to share but, should you wish to stay, you may. As long as you wish. But, Piotr…my comforts are limited and you may find me to be unremarkable company.”

He returned to the table and reached for his glass. His expression alarmed her. He was too interested. “Thank you, Senza.”

“Now, eat.” She nudged the bowl of beans toward him. “You need to keep up your strength.”

Weeks passed, and Piotr stayed. He’d come to this place to end his life and had made no future plans. No future, either, he’d joked, but neither of them laughed when he said it.

He possessed great humor, as black as it was, and was well-educated. Most afternoons they talked until he was too tired to listen; after a nap and a meager meal, they talked again, well into the night. Not very exciting company, but good company all the same.

Some days, Piotr was consumed by a terrible anger. He never raised his voice or was rude in any way; Senza knew, all the same, and gave him space. He had a lot to accept in the short time that was left for him. On certain occasions, that anger was over-ruled by his dread of being alone, and their conversations would dance around the terrible topic that never seemed to lift itself away.

He had a fondness for sweet red wine, which was always in abundance in a crate on the crooked back porch. Apparently, Knell provided for Piotr, as well.

Except in the most significant of ways. Piotr was dying, and Knell did not manifest to cease that terrible process. Piotr’s appearance and vivacity changed with an unsettling speed, especially considering Senza hadn’t aged a day past seventeen. One did not require medical training to see he was dreadfully ill, and worsening with every passing day. Eventually, the vigorous conversations faded, slowed, and nearly ceased.

Some days, he only seemed to possess enough energy to walk the short distance to the front porch, braving the relentless wind. She kept to his side, content to do whatever he was well enough to do. They spent afternoons watching the path of the sun overhead, counting the gulls or the distant ships at sea.

They sat on the porch one afternoon, watching a far-off storm tumble its way up the coast. Piotr had been as sullen as that wall of cloud in the distance and Senza had spent the morning baking, hoping the warm scents of fruit and spice would ease his spirit.

“Say this is our life.” Piotr lifted his hands, palms facing, and planted one hand on each thigh, making an imaginary measure. “You ever get the feeling that you’re right here—”

He wagged his left hand, indicating the beginning of the measure. “You’re always right here, in this part of your life. Your heart, your brain, your optimism—everything you ever want to do but haven’t done yet, the feeling like you’re not ready to grow up unless you absolutely have to? This is where you always are. Where you should be.”

He gritted his teeth. “But everything else says you’re here.”

Now, he jerked his right hand. “You’re at the end. You didn’t even get a chance to get there yourself. You just wake up one day and find out someone did it for you.”

He chopped at his leg with his right hand, forceful enough to leave a bruise, his fingers curling into a fist.

“I know,” Senza said quietly. “I feel like I’ve been here forever and don’t have anything to show for it. I’ve never had a job. I’ve never done anything of any value, for anything, or anyone.”

“You’re just a kid.”

“Am I?” She held up her hands the same way he had. “You feel like you’re here at the beginning when everything else says you’re at the end. What about me?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What about you?”

She banged her right hand, over and over. “I should be here. I should be here! But I am always going to be back here, at the beginning. You’re mad because you lived, and life caught up with you, and it’s time to end. Life passed me by and it won’t even take me with it.”

“Huh, what are you complaining about?” He grumbled, digging around in his breast pocket for his lighter. “You got your whole life ahead of you.”

Senza gripped the arms of her rocking chair tightly enough to make her knuckles pale. Finally she managed a response.

“What a dreadful thing to say to a person.” Her voice was low, and tight, and shook with an anger that could put Piotr’s own to shame. “Don’t you ever speak those words to me again.”

Piotr looked like she’d punched him in the stomach, his mouth hanging open in a silent
O
. She stood and abandoned him to himself and the incoming weather, which already carried the taste of rain on the wind.

A few minutes later, she heard the door open and close. He cleared his throat from the doorway. “Look, kid. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know your story so I don’t know how the hell I offended you but…I’m truly sorry.”

She busied herself at the counter, pushing spice jars around in an effort to appear busy. “Don’t be. I behaved badly. Sometimes, my temper gets the best of me.”

“Mine, too. Look. I’m not the enemy, and neither are you. We know what the real problem is. And I’m glad you let me stay so I don’t have to face it alone.”

“Oh, Piotr.” She turned and knuckled the sting from her eyes. “No one should ever be alone.”

“Thanks to you, I’m not.” He drew a shaky breath and rubbed his mouth. “So, how long until we see that pie?”

“Patience, Piotr.”

“I can’t be patient, kiddo. I can’t afford to be.”

They sat down to cut the apple pastry just as the first rains smattered against the cottage. The storm promised to be a long one, and it would be days before the air would warm enough for them to venture outside.

By then, he said the porch was still too drafty and he didn’t feel like staring at the ugly old ocean for a while. Senza knew he would not walk through the front door ever again.

His illness had taken over. Now, it was just a matter of time.

Wicked, vengeful time.

One morning, Senza sat in her wooden rocking chair, reading. Piotr had turned the couch into a make-shift bed that first night he stayed, and he rarely left it these days. She spent most hours watching him, listening to him sleep, wondering when he’d awaken.

If he’d awaken. She did not want to admit how much she’d grown accustomed to his company, and how she dreaded his inevitable departure.

Piotr woke with a start and a fit of coughing. She had a glass of wine at the ready. The wine was the closest thing to an analgesic she had, and she could not hold it back from him now.

When she went to his side, he shrank from her, fear and strangeness in his eyes. He cried out when she reached to comfort him. But then, the spell seemed to pass, and relief spread across his visage.

“Oh, Senza. It’s you.” His apologetic chuckle was raspy and rough. “It was just a dream. A dream. Did you ever have a dream so real you didn’t want to wake up? I mean, a dream so much better than this—”

He sliced his fingers at the room around him, condemning it all. “That you’d rather just never wake up again?”

“An escape,” she murmured.

“Yeah. An escape. But then I just wake up. And I’m still alive. God help me, I’m still alive.”

His voice was so heavy with blunt anger, a watered-down version of conviction. Piotr grew weaker every day, in body, in spirit, in vitriol. The fight was going out of him and he died more and more each passing day.

Senza regarded him quietly for several long minutes. The silence was most accommodating and said everything she could not come to say. At length, she nodded. “I used to.”

“Used to what?”

“Dream. I used to dream every night. I didn’t even have to try. I’d just close my eyes, and the darkness would fade, and I’d be swept off in a swirl of abandon. All the pressure would just disappear. All the worry, the demand, the expectations—I’d outrun them all and I’d be free. I used to dream every night and it was the only time I wasn’t afraid.”

He grimaced, biting down hard enough to make the tendons in his jaw stand out. “And now?”

“I don’t dream. Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss dreaming the most. I’m too damned busy living that I’ve forgotten how to dream.”

“I can’t imagine what that must be like.” His voice was tight and thin, as if he was in great pain again. “Dreaming is the only thing I have left.”

“And I have everything but.” She blinked back the sting of tears. “There’s the respect that makes calamity of long life.”

He exhaled through his nose. “What’s that, Shakespeare?”

She nodded. “He had an uncanny knack for a devastating truth. How could he have known?”

She toyed with the locket, staring down at blurry nothingness. “Maybe he was a thief, too.”

“Kid, you’re making even less sense than I do.”

“Maybe. Maybe nothing makes sense anymore. But I worry that it does. I don’t want it to, but sometimes I think…I’m not the only one.” She lifted her chin and looked at Piotr, his face gaunt and hollow in the harsh afternoon light. “I’m tired of being the only one.”

He reached over and gripped her hand. His fingers were weak but the fire that burned in his eyes was fierce. “Me, too.”

He sank back against his pillow. “Thank God it’ll be over, soon.”

Senza did not sleep during her vigil. She had no need for rest, and she had no wish to miss a single remaining moment with Piotr.

He woke with a start, a half-cry of confusion. It took him several moments to settle himself and his eyes roamed the room until he saw her.

In the rocking chair, where she always was.

“Senza.” His voice was little more than a rasp. “I thought you’d gone.”

“No, Piotr. I’m here. And look, there’s warm broth. Will you eat something?”

He shook his head. His breath creaked, tiny puffs that hardly stirred his chest. Pain creased his face, and she was heart-broken for his suffering. “I should have jumped. I should have just let go.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You’ll be fine without me.”

“No.” It was so hard to say it. Easy to think it—it had been a single unbroken thought for dozens of years—but so hard to say it out loud. “I’d…be lonely.”

“You? Never.”

She pulled her chair closer to the couch. “I’m always lonely.”

“But you’re so beautiful. You must have men following you like dogs.”

She shook her head. “Piotr, I must tell you something. I—told you I was older than I looked.”

He scoffed, a harsh scrape of laughter.

“I found the secret of eternal youth.” Glancing around, she whispered, afraid the walls would overhear. “And I can share it with you.”

His watery gaze seemed to focus on her for a moment, as if he could truly see her. “I don’t want it.”

“But you’re dying.”

“Yes, because Death has ordained it. I don’t want to live forever, kid. But, right now I’d give anything to live one more breath past my time, just to thumb my nose at him.”

Senza fondled the amulet, and flicked it open. Inside, the stored beats had dwindled to their last numbers. They fluttered, bright and red, no longer the throbbing surge she’d once known. She pressed her finger into the glow, bidding a beat to come away on her fingertip. Gently she laid her hand upon Piotr’s chest and pressed the heartbeat into him.

He gasped and blinked rapidly, clutching at her hand. There was more animation in that small reaction than he’d exhibited in weeks.

“Oh. Oh, my.” He rolled his head to look up at her. “Just now, I felt—I felt fresh.”

He licked his dry lips. “Could I bother you for tea? I could go for a cup, like you made that first day.”

Tears blurred her vision and she patted his hand. “No bother at all.”

He ate for the first time in days. Granted, it was a biscuit she’d softened with tea, and she fed it to him upon a spoon. But he ate it. And he smiled. And her heart shattered into smaller pieces because she knew the respite would not last.

And the fragments of her heart shattered further still when that temporary light waned in his eyes, and he sank back into the pillows, his face drawn and grey.

She had no choice. She pressed open the locket and drew off another beat, pressing it to his chest, noting the ease that melted into his expression as he slept.

Death be damned. She had a locket full of heartbeats that she’d stolen. Senza narrowed her eyes, clenching her teeth to stop the trembling in her chin. Gripping the locket hard enough for the metal filigree to bite into her flesh, she smiled, a desperate stretch of lips that held no humor.

The dark seducer had turned her into a thief. This time, she’d steal an entire life.