Between (3 page)

Brett’s face creased. “Knew him. Good kid. Any idea what killed him?”

“Honestly, no. Autopsy magic all happens in Spokane.”

“Right. At the speed of a handicapped turtle. Wish we could block that damned beach off for good and all.”

In the small town of Krebston, population around five thousand, give or take a birth or a death, the Finger was a legend. Strange things happened on that beach, so rumor said. A giant red stone dominated the spot, thrusting up out of the sand like a warning finger. Teenage boys called it other, more vulgar names, and if they were bold or stupid or very drunk they covered it with graffiti. Or claimed they did. The stone was always smooth and unmarred by light of day.

Sensible people avoided the place or ventured to the beach only at high noon in large, noisy groups, equipped with plenty of beer. Tourists cruised by, craning their necks
to look. Sometimes they parked and ventured out of their cars to snap photos, but they never stayed long. Some said the pictures they took never came out.

Local legend had it that years ago a group of boys, led by a rebel who proclaimed to fear nothing and nobody, built a fire pit and lingered long past sunset. They straggled home just before dawn, blistered and footsore, scratched by thorns and snowberry bushes. Not one of them would say what happened. They slept for days, waking at night from nightmares that made them cry out in their sleep. The ringleader stayed missing for a week. When he reappeared he was changed: thin, silent, staring for hours at a corner or a ceiling where there was nothing other eyes could see. Those who told the story said he’d been sent to an asylum in the end.

“Dr. Maylor?”

Catching the look in the deputy’s eyes, she pulled herself together. “So what now?”

“We investigate.” He offered her a mock salute and walked away. She watched him go, down the wide, brightly lit hallway, and overlaid like a double exposure saw a corridor running as far as the eye could see. On either side, doors, green doors with brass handles. All of them locked. And unseen but always prowling, always searching, the dragons.

V
ivian was going to have to sleep soon, and she knew it, but she feared her dreams and where they might take her. Forty-eight hours and counting since she’d last slept. Deprivation hallucinations could be right at hand, or maybe they’d already happened and none of what she remembered from last night was real. The other alternative, the one that said schizophrenia was hereditary and maybe this was a psychotic break—that was a thought she refused to entertain.

Her body felt heavy, every movement an effort, like walking through knee-deep snow. The muscles in her shoulders and back ached from the physical exertion of chest compressions and CPR. Her eyes gritted and burned, blurring the world around her. But her brain refused to stop, running over the same problem like a frenzied hamster in a wheel.

Dragons. Mythological beasts, no matter what she might dream about them. It was impossible for a creature to follow her out of her dreams and into reality. Equally impossible that a sixteen-year-old boy could incinerate from the inside out while she stood by and watched it happen.

Again her hand went to the pendant, her talisman. Still there. Superstitious, yes—but it was always missing in her dreams,
and there when she awoke. It reassured her that she could always tell the difference. Science, her goddess of choice, had failed her. The pendant? Never yet.

Pushing away dream fragments and the memories of last night, she forced herself to focus on tasks at hand. Watering plants. Straightening, sweeping, dusting. All dishes washed and put away, the stainless sink shined. Order and structure to keep chaos at bay.

It was a small apartment, kitchen and living area in one room, with doors leading off to the bathroom and bedroom. The furniture was all secondhand store specials, although she’d only bought things that appealed to her and so the mismatched array had a comfortable, cozy aspect that she was coming to love. A battered old sofa, sage green and heavy but soft and comfy and perfect for lying back with her feet up to read. An antique coffee table, scuffed and chipped, with lines that she liked. Kitchen table and chairs, also solid wood, scarred with years of use.

On one wall hung her framed poster print of Escher’s
Hand with Reflecting Sphere
, the only artwork she possessed. As a child she had spent hours getting lost in the curves and strange realities of that drawing, and still it hung as a reminder to her of the fragile nature of reality, the need to guard carefully the borders of what Isobel had taught her as a child to call Wakeworld.

In front of the one window and above the front door hung dream catchers, gifts Isobel had given her. “Always guard against the Dreamworld, darling,” her mother had whispered. “You never know what might come through.”

All these years later the dream catchers went everywhere Vivian went, the only gift her mother had ever given her.

Memories were nearly as dangerous as dreams, and she pushed them away. If she wasn’t going to be sleeping, she needed to be doing. There were a couple of boxes still to unpack, and she moved on to that task. One was a box of books, all of her old favorites. She had an e-reader now and little room for a library, but there were some books she couldn’t part with. The dog-eared covers reminded her of
long blissful hours curled up in various corners of her life, traveling with beloved characters to far distant worlds. Most were fantasies—Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Kay, Davidson. A few were remnants of her childhood—
Little Women
,
National Velvet
,
Anne of Green Gables
. So many more that she’d had to give away, each with a wrenching sense of loss.

Someday she would own a big house with all of the bookcases she needed. In the meantime, she had only one, doubling as storage for paper goods and a landing point for her landline phone. As she lined the books up on the shelf, she realized that the answering machine was blinking. For a minute she stood staring at it, blankly. Almost all calls went to her cell. When her finger pushed play, she half-expected a sales pitch and a pre-recorded message. Instead, Jared’s voice came on, smooth as silk, but with an undertone of little-boy-lost that tugged at her heart.

“Vivian—please. I miss you. Let me talk to you—you owe me that much. Tomorrow, all right? I’ll drive up. We can have lunch. I have something for you.”

In the silence after his voice clicked off she stood, feeling alone and small and suddenly unsure. It had made sense to end things with him, to take the job up here in this little town away from his offers of financial help and support. Away from Isobel.

All her life Vivian had been responsible for somebody else—her mother first, followed by a string of loser boyfriends and then finally Jared.

Jared was not a loser. In fact, if there was a definition of driven overachiever, he was it. At twenty-seven he had passed his bar exam and been recruited by an old-money law firm in his hometown of Spokane. “It’s a place to start,” he’d told her, eyes glowing with the thrill of the hunt. “You wait—I’ll get a job in L.A. or New York. Give me five years. We’ll be rich, Viv. You won’t have to work and you can shop at all of the best stores and dress to the nines…”

But she wanted to work. And she was quite comfortable in blue jeans and tennis shoes and abhorred the parties he dragged her to. On the other hand, nobody had ever tried to
take care of her before, and it had felt safe and comforting to have someone else concerned about her well-being.

She was too tired to think about this. Too tired to think about anything, but the message had buzzed her body with adrenaline and pushed the possibility of sleep even further away. Without an awareness of ever making the decision, she slipped into her shoes and a sweater. There was a single bookstore in Krebston. She’d been planning to check it out, and now seemed as good a time as any. It would be good to buy a new book, something solid and real that she could hold in her hands and put on the shelf when she was through. Maybe a walk would put her thoughts in order and bring her to the place where she could sleep.

The sign on the door said
A to Zee Books
. In the glass a dual image: a reflection of Vivian’s own windblown self, and the inside of the store where a man sat on a stool behind the cash register. His head was bent over a book open on the counter, a fall of dark hair screening his face. All around him, books, stacked on the counter, in boxes on the floor, shelved in neat and orderly rows, spilling into towering stacks where there was no more room.

Something about the man’s hand, poised to turn the page, struck her as familiar. Standing on the other side of the glass, Vivian had a sense of déjà vu but could come to no true memory. The sensation unnerved her, and she might have bolted if he hadn’t looked up then. His eyes widened. His hand froze in the act of turning the page. She stared back through layers of reflection and unreality, as though both of them were caught out of time.

A slow smile spread over his face, crooked, forming a dimple in his right cheek. He slid off his stool and moved toward her.

Vivian opened the door. A gust of wind pushed her through and into the store, dry leaves scuttling around her feet.

“North wind,” the man said. “Trying to make itself at home.”

“The sun looked warm.”

“It’s October. In Krebston. You look half frozen.”

“I walked fast. It’s not that cold.” But she shivered as she spoke, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth.

“Sit for a minute; I’ll bring you a coffee.” He nodded toward the back corner of the store, where deep armchairs squared a low table holding a chess board. “It’s warmer back there.”

She hesitated, and again he flashed her a crooked grin that decided everything.

Breathing in the smell of books, Vivian walked past the loaded shelves and sank into one of the chairs, noticing for the first time an array of wind chimes and hanging sculptures suspended from the ceiling. They were made of wood and glass, ceramic and bone, an endless variety of weird and wonderful. Some were beautiful, others strange, and a few dark and almost forbidding. Above her head a flight of dragons soared, outspread wings in jeweled colors, each one set with a prism that caught the light and broke it up into rainbows. On the walls, hung above the book shelves, were paintings that rivaled her Escher in strangeness.

The man reappeared with two ceramic mugs. He set one down on the table and handed her the other. His hand brushed hers, the touch sending a flood of warmth up her arm, and she found herself gazing directly into his eyes. They were dangerous eyes, translucent amber agate, light filled. Grateful for an excuse to look away, Vivian bent her head over the steaming cup of coffee, no sugar, and with the perfect amount of cream.

“I’m Zee,” he said, folding his long body into the chair across from her and picking up his own mug. “Haven’t seen you in before—are you from around here?”

Again his hands caught at a forgotten memory, like an elusive word on the tip of the tongue. Big hands, built for strength, but they held the mug with a surprising delicacy.
His voice, strange and familiar all at once, pulled her back to the moment, and she risked a glance at his face. Those eyes were watching her with an intensity that made her cheeks flame. She took a long swallow of scalding coffee and promptly choked, coughing and spilling a wave of coffee over her hand and into her lap.