Allegories of the Tarot (23 page)

Sound told the story of Raph’s progress through the
apartment: the tread of his shoes, the clank of trashcans,
the
whirr of the vacuum cleaner. My nerves twitched at every sound, insisting there
couldn’t really be someone else here, because I couldn’t sense the tapestry of
thought and emotion, which made up a living being.

I closed my eyes and tightened my hand on the cane,
fingernails scraping the wood, like a man clinging to a ledge. Like I’d clung
to Hayden’s hands when he heaved me up from the ground, just before
he
—

“Holy shit!”

The exclamation jerked me half out of the chair, old
reflexes screaming. Raph stuck his head in the door, a bright grin on his face.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m supposed to stay professional, but I just saw
your
Parking Lot Mastodon CDs.
And the
poster!”

“Signed by the whole band,” I said. That had been a
night. The lead singer had given me a “special performance” back at their
hotel. “You’re a fan?”

“Hell, yeah!”
Raph leaned
against the doorframe, his eyes alight. “So what did you think about the Ice
Age album?”

***

“I don’t know why we have to do this,” I said. “Can’t
you just call me on the phone?”

Anita Wannamaker stood in my living room, observing
everything with a critical eye: the closed drapes, the dusty TV, the picked-at
remains of a crappy frozen dinner. My “case handler,” they called her. It
sounded better than “person who has to make sure you haven’t hung yourself from
the shower curtain.”

“When was the last time you left the apartment?” she
asked, ignoring my question.

I shrugged, cane tapping as I limped after her. “I go
out.”

“Other than to physical therapy?”

My face spasmed.
It had been
bad today, maybe because I’d dreaded her arrival all week. “People stare.”

“People are jerks,” she said succinctly. “I don’t give a
damn about them. I’m asking about you. Sitting alone in your apartment without
human contact isn’t healthy.”

What the hell did she expect me to do? Act like nothing
had happened? Act like I still had some kind of future? Like my brain hadn’t
burned out, like I hadn’t come down in a shower of glass and blood—

“I have plenty of contact,” I said. “Raph comes by twice
a week.” And I dreamed about him more often than that.

“Raph?”

Damn it. “The home care guy.”

She arched a single, skeptical brow at me. “And you have
long conversations, I take it?”

I couldn’t turn away fast enough to hide the heat in my
face.
Because we did have long conversations.
About music, at first.
Then sports.
Our hometowns.
The foods we liked to eat.
Nothing serious, nothing that really meant anything.

“Interesting,” Anita said, folding her arms over her
chest as she studied me.

“He’s just running up the clock.”

“These services get paid by the job, not the hour.”

My stupid heart lurched, a second of euphoria, like when
you jump off something high and get that instant of free-fall, before gravity
takes over.

Before the crunch of breaking bone when you hit the
ground.

“Oh,” I said.

Anita sighed. “Get out of the apartment. I mean it,
William. Don’t make me file a bad report on you.”

“What are they going to do? I was honorably discharged.”

“No one ever really leaves Psy Squad,” she said, and
headed for the door.

***

“So, um…”

Raph shut off the vacuum and turned to face me, an
expectant smile on his face. God, he was gorgeous. A year ago, I would have
known instantly if he was interested.

Ha. As if.

“Yes?” he prompted, when I didn’t say anything more.

This was stupid. “You probably know the Parking Lot
Mastodons are playing at the amphitheater Friday.”

“Yes,” he said. Was there something hopeful in his
voice? Or was I reading too much into it?

“Well, um, I’ve got tickets, and I was wondering if
you…I mean, you probably already have tickets, and plans, and—”

“Darin?”

“Yes?”

He leaned a hip against my disused desk, his smile
taking on a dimension that might have been flirtatious, or might have been my
imagination, because how the hell could I tell? “I’d love to go with you.”

Oh. Oh, hell. I hadn’t thought about what to do if he
said yes. “Great,” I managed.

“Dinner first?
At the Indian place near the university?”

He remembered I liked Indian food? “Okay,” I forced past
the constriction in my throat, which was mostly panic but
maybe
something else as well.

His smile broadened. “I’ll pick you up around seven,
then.”

***

We pulled up in front of the amphitheater. Thanks to me,
we could park in the handicapped accessible areas, rather than having to walk a
half-mile from the nearest empty lot. “Here we are,” Raph said, putting the car
in park.

“Yeah,” I said. And I found myself smiling. The right
side of my face spasmed, but he wouldn’t be able to see it from the driver’s
side.

People had stared during dinner, but I thought at least
half of them were too busy ogling him to even notice me.
Maybe
all of them.

We’d laughed over the meal, and he’d fed me bites of his
navratan korma. He was even sweeter and funnier away from the apartment. God,
it felt like a date, a real date.

Like I was a real person, and not just
the shadow of a dead man.

It wasn’t too bad in the parking lot, with people still
drifting in, or hanging out waiting for friends. Not too bad in the line,
either, until we got to the security guard wanding everyone.

“You on something?” he asked, scowling at my twitching
face.

“N-no.”
Heat suffused my
cheeks; people were definitely staring at me now. Raph, who had made it through
already, stopped to listen, which made it even worse. I didn’t want to remind
him.

“Oh yeah?”
The guard’s glare
turned contemptuous. “Then why is your hand shaking?
Too long
since your last fix?”

“Back off.” It took me a minute to recognize the angry
snarl as Raph’s.

“Hey! You want to be thrown out with him?” The guarded
demanded.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled at the ground. Shame suffused me;
I’d never backed down from a fight in my life, and now here I was taking shit
from some overpaid rent-a-cop. “I’ll wait in the car.”

“Like hell.” Raph’s eyes flashed fire as he glared at
the guard. “Do you know who this is? This is Major William Darin McConnel. You
know, one of the guys who helped take down Hayden?
The terrorist?
So show some fucking respect.”

The breath in my lungs turned to glass.

The guard’s eyes
widened,
and
he looked past the twitch and recognized the face of a ghost. “Oh shit! I’m so
sorry, sir, I…”

He said more, but I couldn’t hear anything over echoes
of Raph’s voice. Each word fell like a shard of broken glass, fracturing tinier
and tinier as it hit the floor. Major. William.
Darin.
McConnel.

He’d known. He’d always known.

I was an idiot.

I turned and ran, as best I could with the cane, but no
one can outrun the truth.

“Darin!”
Raph shouted from
behind me, but there was no
Darin
. There was nothing,
just an empty shell,
a
space where William McConnel
had been. And I hoped, I really thought—

What? That the dead would come back to life? That I
would?

I limped blindly past the car, past everything, people
stepping hastily aside as the madman came through, as if I might drag them down
with me. The landscaped grass stretched before me, down a slope, and I tried to
flee, but my leg betrayed me,

and

I

fell
.

I fell down the stairs in a shower of glass and blood.

I fell down the slope, my cane tumbling free from my
hand.

And I hit the ground.

I thought I’d died that day, when Hayden burned out my
talent and threw me aside like a piece of trash. But I hadn’t, not really.
Despite the pain, despite everything, I’d been in free-fall all this time.

“Darin!”
Raph dropped to his
knees beside me, and I struggled to shove him away. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?
Tell me?”

“You knew. You never said—I didn’t think—”

His arms, strong and warm, wrapped around me. “I don’t
understand. Of course I recognized your name. You’re a hero.”

I choked on a laugh, because it was all a lie. Icarus’s
wings had melted, even though the sun had burned down to something dark and
cold. “I’m not him,” I whispered. “Or I was, but he’s dead, and there’s nothing
left but this.
This wreck.”

Raph’s scent, of coconut aftershave and warm skin,
enveloped me as he leaned closer. “You stopped a terrorist. You saved lives.”

I shook my head, my body a gaping wound, pumping out
darkness. “I should have waited for backup. But I thought I could handle him. A
lone telepath…how could he have any chance against me? So I charged in, and
he…and he…”

“Burned you out,” Raph said quietly.

Hot fingers in my brain, accompanied
by laughter.
I’d tried to fight back, used everything I had, and if the
whole squad had been there, he wouldn’t have had a chance.

But they weren’t, so I was the one who had no chance,
vessels rupturing in my brain as he overloaded the psychic centers. Then, when
I lay bleeding from my eyes and nose and ears, unable to stand, he picked me up
and threw me through the glass dividing the penthouse from the stairs to the
lower level. I’d lost consciousness halfway down. I had really never hit the
ground until now.

“Yes,” I said.
The stark truth.
“And now there’s nothing left.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Without Psy Squad, without my abilities, what do I
have?”

Raph’s fingers touched my jaw, gently turning me to face
him. “Your sense of humor?” he suggested.
“Your passion for
music?
Your concern for others?
Maybe I asked
for the assignment because I wanted to meet William McConnel, hero, but I’m
here tonight because I want to spend time with
Darin
.”

He leaned in and very carefully, very gently, kissed me.

A part of me didn’t want to believe it could be true. I
wanted to shove him away, and go back to my apartment where the drapes were
always shut, because that was familiar. I could deal with it, with just waiting
for death to get around to stopping by for a visit.

Instead, I kissed him back.

“You still have so much to offer,” he whispered against
my lips, once the kiss ended. “And if you can’t see it right now, can you at
least trust me enough to believe I do?”

I swallowed thickly. I felt drained, as if I’d been
fighting gravity for months, and finally given in to rest on the solid earth.
“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” Raph hesitated then dug in his pocket,
pulling out something shiny. One of the medals I’d thrown away.

“I saved them from the trash, just in case you changed
your mind,” he said, ducking his head with a blush. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No.” I could always tell him to toss them later. But
maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe someday I could look at them again and see them as a
part of my past, not a death knell to my future.

The sound of music rose from the amphitheater,
accompanied by the muffled roar of the crowd. Raph gently traced my jaw with
his fingers. “Maybe the concert was a little much to start with,” he said.

“You’re probably right.” I summoned up a smile, and
found to my surprise it didn’t feel half as awkward as I’d expected. “Why don’t
we start off smaller?
Your place?”

Raph’s fingers twined gently with the shaky fingers of
my right hand. “I’d love that.”

***

Jordan L. Hawk grew up in
the wilds of North Carolina, where she was raised on stories of haints and
mountain magic by her bootlegging granny. After using a silver knife in the
light of a full moon to summon her true love, she turned her talents to
spinning tales. She weaves together couples who need to fall in love, then
throws in some evil sorcerers and undead just to make sure they want it bad
enough. In Jordan’s world, love might conquer all, but it just as easily could
end up in the grave.

***

THE STAR

L’Etoile Flamboyant

By Samantha Henderson

Last night I dreamed about the Painted Children: the
Dragon Leviathan, the Boy Made of Horses, and the girl, L’Etoile Flamboyant. In
the dream, I sat at the edge of the cliff beside the ruins, not far from where
I lie now, but I was straight and whole again, the tiger reclining beside me
like an outsized housecat. The water at the foot of the cliff glistened in the
starlight, and the Children were in a boat, little wider than a rowboat,
looking up at me. The girl stretched out her arms, and I shifted as if to rise.
The tiger gave me a lazy nudge.
Not yet,
it said, silently.
We are still at the
business of dying.

***

It doesn’t matter where I came from and what I was
before, when there were cities with power that came from vast engines, water
came with a turn of the wrist, there were telephones and television and flying
a mile above the ground was taken for granted. In the chaos that came with the
ending of that world my body was broken more than once, and I lost my family
and our beautiful house filled with beautiful things, like crystal glasses to
serve chilled wine and machines that sang.