Kitabı oku: «Raintree», sayfa 6

Chapter Ten
Monday

“Are you okay?”

Lorna woke, as always, to a lingering sense of dread and fear. It wasn’t the words that alarmed her, though, since she immediately recognized the voice. They were, however, far from welcome. Regardless of where she was, the dread was always there, within her, so much a part of her that it was as if it had been beaten into her very bones.

She couldn’t see him, because the sheet was still over her head. She seldom moved in her sleep, so she was still in such a tight curl that the oversize robe hadn’t been dislodged or even come untied.

“Are you okay?” he repeated, more insistently.

“Peachy keen,” she growled, wishing he would just go away again.

“You were making a noise.”

“I was snoring,” she said flatly, keeping a tight grip on the sheet in case he tried to pull it down—like she could stop him if he really wanted to. She had learned the futility of that in the humiliating struggle last night.

He snorted. “Yeah, right.” He paused. “How do you like your coffee?”

“I don’t. I’m a tea drinker.”

Silence greeted that for a moment; then he sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. How do you drink your tea?”

“With friends.”

She heard what sounded remarkably like a growl, then the bedroom door closed with more force than necessary. Had she sounded ungrateful? Good! After everything he’d done, if he thought the offer of coffee or tea would make up for it, he was so far off base he wasn’t even in the ballpark.

Truth to tell, she wasn’t much of a tea drinker, either. For most of her life she’d been able to afford only what was free, which meant she drank a lot of water. In the last few years she’d had the occasional cup of coffee or hot tea, to warm up in very cold weather, but she didn’t really care for either of them.

She didn’t want to get up. She didn’t want to have that talk he seemed bent on, though what he thought they had to talk about, she couldn’t imagine. He’d treated her horribly last night, and though he’d evidently realized he was wrong, he didn’t seem inclined to go out of his way to make amends. He hadn’t, for instance, taken her home last night. He’d imprisoned her in this room. He hadn’t even fed the prisoner!

The empty ache in her stomach told her that she had to get out of bed if she wanted food. Getting out of bed didn’t guarantee she would get fed, of course, but staying in bed certainly guaranteed she wouldn’t. Reluctantly, she flipped the sheet back, and the first thing she saw was Dante Raintree, standing just inside the door. The bully hadn’t left at all; he’d just pretended to.

He lifted one eyebrow in a silent, sardonic question.

Annoyed, she narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s inhuman.”

“What is?”

“Lifting just one eyebrow. Real people can’t do that. Just demons.”

“I can do it.”

“Which proves my point.”

He grinned—which annoyed her even more, because she didn’t want to amuse him. “If you want to get up, this demon has washed your clothes—”

“What you didn’t shred,” she interjected sourly, to hide her alarm. Had he emptied her pockets first? She didn’t ask, because if he hadn’t, maybe her money and license were still there.

“—and loaned you one of his demon shirts. You’ll probably have to throw your pants away, because the stains won’t come out, but at least they’re clean. They’ll do for now. Your choices for breakfast are cereal and fruit, or a bagel and cream cheese. When you get dressed, come to the kitchen. We’ll eat in there.” He left then—really left, because she watched him go.

He was assuming she would share a meal with him. Unfortunately, he was right. She was starving, and if the only way she could get some food was to sit anywhere in his vicinity, then she would sit there. One of the first lessons she’d learned about life was that emotions didn’t carry much weight when survival sat on the other end of the scale.

Slowly she sat up, feeling aches and twinges in every muscle. Her newly washed, stained-beyond-redemption pants lay across the foot of the bed, as well as her underwear and a white shirt made out of some limp, slinky material. She grabbed for the pants and dug her hand into each pocket, and her heart sank. Not only was her money gone, but so was her license. He either had them, or they had fallen out in the wash, which meant she had to find the laundry room in this place and search the washer and dryer. Maybe he had someone working for him who did the laundry; maybe that person had taken her money and ID.

She got out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom. After taking care of her most urgent business, she looked in the drawers of the vanity, hoping he was a good host—even if he was a lousy person—and had stocked the bathroom with emergency supplies. She desperately needed a toothbrush.

He was a good host. She found everything she needed: a supply of toothbrushes still in their sealed plastic cases, toothpaste, mouthwash, the same scented lotion she’d used the night before, a small sewing kit, even new hairbrushes and disposable razors.

The toothbrush manufacturer had evidently not intended for anyone without a knife or scissors to be able to use their product. After struggling to tear the plastic case apart, first with her fingers and then with her teeth, she got the tiny pair of scissors from the sewing kit and laboriously stabbed, sawed and hacked until she had freed the incarcerated toothbrush. She regarded the scissors thoughtfully, then laid them on the vanity top. They were too small to be of much use, but…

After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she dragged a brush through her hair. Good enough. Even if she’d had her skimpy supply of makeup with her, she wouldn’t have put any on for Raintree’s benefit.

Going back into the bedroom, she locked the door just in case he decided to waltz in again, then removed the robe and began dressing. The precaution was useless, she thought bitterly, because if he wanted in, all he had to do was order her to unlock the door and she would do what he said, whether she wanted to or not. She hated that, and she hated him.

She didn’t want to put on his shirt. She picked it up and turned it so she could see the tag. She didn’t recognize the brand name, but that wasn’t what she was looking for, anyway. The tag with the care instructions read 100% Silk—Dry-clean Only.

Maybe she could smear some jelly on the shirt. Accidentally, of course.

She started to slip her arms into the sleeves, then paused, remembering how he’d phrased his last statement: When you’re dressed, come to the kitchen. Once she was dressed, she probably wouldn’t have a choice about going to the kitchen, so anything she wanted to do, she should do before putting on that shirt.

She dropped the shirt back on the bed and retrieved the tiny scissors from the bathroom, slipping them into her right pocket. Then she systematically searched both the bathroom and bedroom, looking for anything she might use as a weapon or to help her somehow escape. If she saw any opening, however small, she had to be prepared to take it.

One big obstacle was that she didn’t have any shoes. She doubted the ones she’d been wearing could be saved, but at least they would protect her feet. Raintree hadn’t brought them to the bedroom, but they might still be in the bathroom she’d used last night. She didn’t want to run barefoot through the countryside, though she would if she had to. How far would she have to run before she was free? How far out did Raintree’s sphere of influence reach? There had to be a distance at which his mind tricks wouldn’t work—didn’t there? Did she have to hear him speak the command, or could he just think it at her?

Uneasily, she hoped he had somehow simply hypnotized her, because otherwise she was so deep in The Twilight Zone doo-doo she might never get the weird crap off her shoes.

Other than the scissors, neither the bath nor the bedroom supplied anything usable. There were no pistols in the built-in drawers, no stray hammer she could use to bash him in the head, not even any extra clothes in the huge closet that she could have used to suffocate him. Regretfully, with no other option left, she finally put on the silk shirt. As she was rolling up the too-long sleeves, she wondered when the command stuff would kick in. The slippery material didn’t roll up very well, so she redid the sleeves several times before she gave up and let the rolls droop over her wrists. Even then, she didn’t feel an irresistible urge to go to the kitchen.

She was on her own. He hadn’t put the command mojo on her.

Tremendously annoyed that, under her own free will, she was doing what he’d told her to do anyway, she unlocked the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway.

Two sets of stairs opened before her, the one on the right going up to the next floor and leading to what appeared to be a balcony. The set on the left went down, widening to a graceful fan at the bottom. She frowned, not remembering any stairs from the night before. Had she been that out of it? She definitely remembered arriving at the house, remembered noticing that it had three separate levels, so of course there were stairs—she just didn’t remember them. Having this kind of hole in her memory was frightening, because what else did she not remember?

She took the down staircase, pausing when she got to the bottom. She was in a spectacular…living room? If so, it wasn’t like any living room she’d ever seen. The arched ceiling soared three stories above her head. At one end was an enormous fireplace, while the wall at the other end was glass. Evidently he was fond of glass, because he had a lot of it. The view was literally breathtaking. But she didn’t remember this, either. Any of it.

A hallway led off to the side, and cautiously she followed it. Something about this seemed familiar, at least, and she opened one door to discover the bathroom in which she’d showered last night—and in which he’d ripped off her clothes. Setting her jaw, she went in and looked around for her shoes. They weren’t there. Resigned to being barefoot, she walked through the den, past the powder room she’d used and into the kitchen.

He was sitting at the bar, long legs hooked around a stool, a cup of coffee in one hand and the morning newspaper in the other. He looked up when she entered. “I found some tea, and the water is boiling.”

“I’ll drink water.”

“Because tea is what you share with friends, right?” He put down the newspaper and got up, opening a cabinet door and taking down a water glass, which he filled from the faucet. “I hope you don’t expect designer water, because I think it’s a huge waste of money.”

She shrugged. “Water’s water.”

He gave her the glass, then lifted his brows—both of them. “Cereal or bagel?”

“Bagel.”

“Good choice.”

Only then did she notice a small plate with his own bagel on it, revealed when he’d put down the paper. Maybe it was petty of her, but she wished they weren’t eating the same thing. She didn’t wish it enough to eat cereal, though.

He put a plain bagel in the toaster and got the cream cheese from the refrigerator. While the bagel was toasting, she looked around. “What time is it? I haven’t seen a clock anywhere.”

“It’s ten fifty-seven,” he said, without turning around. “And I don’t own a clock—well, except for the one on the oven behind you. And maybe one on the microwave. Yeah, I guess a microwave has to have a clock nowadays.”

She looked behind her. The oven clock was digital, showing ten fifty-seven in blue numbers. The only thing was, she’d been blocking the oven from his view—and he hadn’t turned around, anyway. He must have looked while he was getting the cream cheese.

“My cell phone has the time, too,” he continued. “And my computers and cars have clocks. So I guess I do own clocks, but I don’t have just a clock. All of them are attached to something else.”

“If small talk is supposed to make me relax and forget I hate you, it isn’t working.”

“I didn’t think it would.” He glanced up, the green in his eyes so intense she almost fell back a step. “I needed to know if you were Ansara, and to get the answer I was rough in the way I handled you. I apologize.”

Frustration boiled in her. Half of what he said made no sense to her at all, and she was tired of it. “Just who the hell are these Aunt Sarah people, and where the hell are my shoes?”

Chapter Eleven

“The answer to the second part of your question is easy. I threw them away.”

“Great,” she muttered, looking down at her bare feet, toes curling on the cold stone tiles.

“I ordered a pair for you from Macy’s. One of my employees is on the way with them.”

Lorna frowned. She didn’t like accepting anything from anyone, and she especially didn’t like accepting anything from him—but it seemed she was having to do a lot of it no matter how she felt. On the other hand, he had thrown away her shoes and destroyed her blouse, so replacing them was the least he could do.

“And the Aunt Sarah people?” She knew he’d said “Ansara”—not that that made any more sense to her—but she hoped mangling the word would annoy him.

“That’s a longer explanation. But after last night, you’re entitled to hear it.” A little ding sounded, and the toaster spat up the bagel. Using the knife he’d got to spread the cream cheese, he flipped the two bagel halves out of the toaster slot and onto a small plate, then passed knife, plate and cream cheese to her.

She took the bar stool farthest from him and spread cream cheese on one slice of bagel. “So let’s hear it,” she said curtly.

“There are a few other things I’d like to get cleared out of the way. First—” He reached into the front pocket of his jeans, pulled out a wad of bills and slid them in front of her.

Lorna looked down. Her license was tucked amid the bills. “My money!” she said, grabbing both and putting them in her own pockets.

“My money, don’t you mean?” he asked grimly, but he hadn’t insisted on keeping it. “And don’t tell me again that you didn’t cheat, because I know you did. I’m just not sure even you know you cheated, or how you’re doing it.”

She focused her attention on her bagel, her expression shutting down. He was going off into woo-woo land again, but she didn’t have to travel with him. “I didn’t cheat,” she said obstinately, because he’d told her not to.

“You don’t know—Hold on, my cell phone’s vibrating.” He pulled a small cell from his pocket, flipped it open and said, “Raintree…Yeah. I’ll ask her.” He looked at Lorna and said, “How much did you say your new shoes cost?”

“One twenty-eight ninety,” she replied automatically, and took a bite of the bagel.

He flipped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket.

After a few seconds the silence in the room made her look up. His eyes were such a brilliant green, they looked as if they were glowing. “There wasn’t a call on my cell,” he said.

“Then why did you ask—” She stopped, abruptly realizing what she’d said when he’d asked about the shoes, and what little color she’d regained washed out of her face. She opened her mouth to tell him that he must have mentioned the price of the shoes to her, then shut it again, because she knew he hadn’t. She had a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, almost the same feeling she had every morning when she woke up. “I’m not a weirdo,” she said in a thin, flat voice.

“The term is ‘gifted.’ You’re gifted. I just proved it to you. I didn’t need any proof, because I already knew. I’m even more gifted than you are.”

“You’re crazy, is what you are.”

“I’m mildly empathic, just enough that I can read people very well, especially if I touch them, which is why I always shake hands when I go into a business meeting,” he said, speaking over her as if she hadn’t interrupted. “As you know very well, using just my mind, I can compel people to do things against their wishes. That’s a new one on me, but what the hell. We are close to the summer solstice. That, added to the fire, probably triggered it. I can do a bunch of different things, but most of all, I’m a Class A Number One Fire-Master.”

“Which means what?” she asked sarcastically, to cover the fact that she was shaken to the core. “That you moonlight at the circus as a fire-eater?”

He held out his hand, palm up, and a lovely little blue flame burst to life in the middle of his hand. He casually blew it out. “Can’t do that for very long,” he said, “or it burns.”

“That’s just a trick. Stunt people do that in movies all—”

Her bagel caught on fire.

She stared at it, frozen, as the thick bread burned and smoked. He picked up the plate and flicked the burning bagel into the sink, then ran water on it. “Don’t want the fire alarm to go off,” he explained, and slid the plate, with the other half of bagel on it, back in front of her.

Behind him, a candle flared to life. “I keep a lot of candles around,” he said. “They’re my equivalent of a canary in a coal mine.”

A thought grew and grew until she couldn’t hold it back. “You set the casino on fire!” she said in horror.

He shook his head as he slid back onto his stool and picked up his coffee. “My control is better than that, even this close to the solstice. It wasn’t my fire.”

“So you say. If you’re a Class A Number One hotshot Fire-Master, why didn’t you put it out?”

“That’s the same question I’ve been asking myself.”

“And the answer is…?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wow, that’s enlightening.”

His brilliant grin flashed across his face. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a smart-ass?”

She barely kept herself from flinching back in automatic response. Yeah, she’d heard the comment before—many times, and always accompanied by, or even preceded by, a slap.

She didn’t look up to see if he’d noted anything strange about her response, but concentrated on putting cream cheese on the remaining half of her bagel.

“Since I had never done mind control before last night, it’s possible I drained myself of energy,” he continued after a moment. She still refused to look up, but she could feel the intensity of his gaze on her face. “I didn’t feel tired. Everything felt normal, but until I explore the parameters, I won’t know what the effects of mind control are. Maybe I wasn’t concentrating as much as I should have been. Maybe my attention was splintered. Hell, I know it was splintered. There were a lot of unusual factors last night.”

“You honestly think you could have put out that fire?”

“I know I could have—normally. The fire marshal would have thought the sprinkler system did a great job. Instead—”

“Instead, you dragged me into the middle of a four-alarm fire and nearly killed both of us!”

“Are you burned?” he asked, sipping his coffee.

“No,” she said grudgingly.

“Suffering from smoke inhalation?”

“No, damn it!”

“Don’t you think you should have at least a few singed strands of hair?”

He was only saying everything she’d thought herself. She didn’t understand what had happened during the fire, and she didn’t understand anything that had happened since then. Desperately, she wanted to skate over the surface of everything, pretend nothing weird was going on, and leave this house with the pretense still intact, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. She could feel his determination, like a force field emanating from him.

No! she told herself in despair. No force field, no emanating. Nothing like that.

“I threw a shield of protection around us. Then at the end, when I was using all your power combined with mine to beat back the fire, the shield solidified a bit. You saw it. I saw it. It shimmered, like a—”

“Soap bubble,” she whispered.

“Ah,” he said softly, after a moment of thought. “So that’s what triggered your memory.”

“Do you have any idea how much that hurt, what you did?”

“Taking over your power? No, I don’t know, but I can imagine.”

“No,” she said flatly. “You can’t.” The pain had been beyond any true description. If she said it had felt as if an anvil had fallen on her head, that would be an understatement.

“Again, I’m sorry. I had no choice. It was either that, or we were both going to die, along with the people still evacuating the hotel.”

“You have a way of apologizing that says you’d do the same thing again if the situation arose, so it’s really hard to believe the ‘sorry’ part.”

“That’s because you’re not only a precog, though an untrained one, you’re also very sensitive to the paranormal energy around you.”

Meaning he would do the same thing again, in the same circumstances. At least he wasn’t a hypocrite.

“Yesterday, in my office,” he continued, “you were reacting to energies you wouldn’t have sensed at all if you weren’t gifted.”

“I thought you were evil,” she said, and savagely bit into the bagel. “Nothing you’ve done since has changed my mind.”

“Because you turned me on?” he asked softly. “I took one look at you, and every candle in the room lit up. I’m not usually that out of control, but I had to concentrate to rein everything in. Then I kept looking at you and thinking about having sex, and damned if you didn’t hook into the fantasy.”

Oh, God, he’d known that? She felt her face burn, and she turned her embarrassment into anger. “Are you coming on to me?” she asked incredulously. “Do you actually have the nerve to think I’d let you touch me with a ten-foot pole after what you did to me last night?”

“It isn’t that long,” he said, smiling a little.

Well, she’d walked into that one. She slapped the bagel onto the plate and slid off the stool. “I don’t want to be in the same room with you. After I leave here, I never want to see your face again. You can take your tacky little fantasy and shove it, Raintree!”

“Dante,” he corrected, as if she hadn’t all but told him to drop dead. “And that brings us to the Ansara. I was looking for a birthmark. All Ansara have a blue crescent moon somewhere on their backs.”

She was so angry that a red mist fogged her vision. “And while you were looking for this birthmark on my back you decided to check out my ass, too, huh?”

“It’s a fine ass, well worth checking out. But, no, I always intended to check it out. ‘Back’ is imprecise. Technically, ‘back’ could go from the top of your head all the way down to your heels. I’ve seen it below the waist before, and in the histories there are reports of, in rare cases, the birthmark being on the ass cheek. Given the seriousness of the fire, and the fact that I couldn’t put it out, I had to make sure you hadn’t been hindering me.”

“Hindering you how?” she cried, not at all mollified by his explanation.

“If you had also been a fire-master, you could have been feeding the fire while I was trying to put it out. I’ve never seen a fire I couldn’t control—until last night.”

“But you said yourself you’d never used mind control before, so you don’t know how it affected you! Why automatically assume I had to be one of these Ansara?”

“I didn’t. I’m well aware of all the variables. I still had to eliminate the possibility that you might be Ansara.”

“If you’re so good at reading people when you touch them, then you should have known I wasn’t,” she charged.

“Very good,” he acknowledged, as if he were a teacher and she his star pupil. “But Ansara are trained from birth to manage their gifts and to protect themselves, just as Raintree are. A powerful Ansara could conceivably have constructed a shield that I wouldn’t be able to detect. Like I said, my empath abilities are mild.”

She felt as if she were about to explode with frustration. “If I’d had one of these shields, you idiot, you wouldn’t have been able to brain-rape me!”

He drummed his fingers lightly on top of the bar, studying her with narrowed eyes. “I really, really don’t like that term.”

“Tough. I really, really didn’t like the brain-rape itself.” She threw the words at him like knives and hoped they buried themselves deep in his flesh.

He considered that, then nodded. “Fair enough. Back to the subject of shields. You have them, but not the kind I’m talking about. The kind you have develop naturally, from life. You shield your emotions. I’m talking about a mental shield that’s deliberately constructed to hide a part of your brain’s energy. As for keeping me out—honey, there’s only one other person, at least that I know of, who could possibly have blocked me from taking over his mind, and you aren’t him.”

“Ooooh, you’re so scary-powerful then, huh?”

Slowly he nodded. “Yep.”

“Then why aren’t you, like, King of the World or something?”

“I’m king of the Raintree,” he said, getting up and putting his plate in the dishwasher. “That’s good enough for me.”

Strange, but of all the really weird things he’d said to her, this struck her as the most unbelievable. She buried her head in her hands, wishing this day was over. She wanted to forget she’d ever met him. He was obviously a lunatic. No—she couldn’t comfort herself with that delusion. She had been through fire with him, quite literally. He could do things she hadn’t thought were possible. So maybe—just maybe—he really was some sort of leader, though “king” was stretching things a bit far.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said wearily. “Who are the Raintree, and who are the Ansara? Is this like two different countries but inhabited only by weirdos?”

His lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh. “Gifted. Gifted. We’re two different clans—warring clans, if you want the bottom line. The enmity goes back thousands of years.”

“You’re the weirdo equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys?”

He did laugh then, white teeth flashing. “I’ve never thought of it that way, but…yeah. In a way. Except what’s between the Raintree and the Ansara isn’t a feud, it’s a war. There’s a difference.”

“Between a war and a feud, yeah. But what’s the difference between the Raintree clan and the Ansara clan?”

“An entire way of looking at life, I guess. They use their gifts to cheat, to do harm, for their personal gain. Raintree look at their abilities as true gifts and try to use them accordingly.”

“You’re the guys with the white hats.”

“Within the spectrum of human nature—yes. Common sense tells me some Raintree aren’t that far separated from some Ansara when it comes to their attitudes. But if they want to remain in the Raintree clan, they’ll do as I order.”

“So all the Ansara might not be totally bad, but if they want to stay in their clan, with their friends and families, they have to do as the Ansara king orders.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “That’s about it.”

“You admit you might be more alike than you’re different.”

“In some ways. In one big way, we’re poles apart.”

“Which is?”

“From the very beginning, if a Raintree and an Ansara cross-bred, the Ansara killed the child. No exceptions.”

Lorna rubbed her forehead, which was beginning to ache again. Yeah, that was bad. Killing innocent children because of their heritage wasn’t just an opportunistic outlook, it was bad with a capital B. Part of her own life philosophy was that there were some people who didn’t deserve to live, and people who hurt children belonged in that group.

“I don’t suppose there has been much intermarriage between the clans, has there?”

“Not in centuries. What Raintree would take the chance? Are you finished with that bagel?”

Thrown off track by the prosaic question, Lorna stared down at her bagel. She had eaten maybe half of it. Even though she’d been starving before, the breakfast conversation had effectively killed her appetite. “I guess,” she said without interest, passing the plate to him.

He dumped the bagel remnants and put that plate in the dishwasher, too. “You need training,” he said. “Your gifts are too strong for you to go around unprotected. An Ansara could use you—”

“Just the way you did?” She didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

“Just the way I did,” he agreed. “Only they would be feeding the fire instead of fighting it.”

As she stood there debating the merits of what he’d said, she realized that gradually she had become more at ease with discussing these “gifts” and that somewhere during the course of the conversation she had been moved from denial to acceptance. Now she saw where he was going with all this, and her old deep-rooted panic bloomed again.

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head as she backed a few steps away. “I’m not going to let you ‘train’ me in anything. Do I have ‘stupid’ engraved on my forehead or something?”

“You’re asking for trouble if you don’t get some training, and fast.”

“Then I’ll handle it, just like I always have. Besides, you have your own trouble to handle, don’t you?”

“The next few weeks will be tough, but not as tough for me as they will be for the people who lost someone. Another body was pulled out just after dawn. That makes two fatalities.” His expression went grim.

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the cops. Something hinky is going on there, because otherwise, why would two detectives be interviewing people before the fire marshal had determined if the fire was arson or accidental?”

The expression in his eyes grew distant as he stared at her. That little detail had escaped his all-knowing, all-seeing gifts, she realized, but if there was one thing a hard life had taught her, it was how the law worked. The detectives shouldn’t have been there until it was clear there was something for them to detect, and the fire marshal wouldn’t make that determination until sometime today, probably.

“Damn it,” he said very softly, and pulled out his phone. “Don’t go anywhere. I have some calls to make.”