In the disquieting aftermath, Gabriel looked at Annie’s own door, thinking that there had to be more to everything than seemed apparent.
A
lot
more.
11
Mariah
O
ver the last hours, I’d washed myself in a lot of cold water, then worked at the aquifer pumps, as if that would clean me through and through. But no matter how much I scrubbed or labored, I knew consequences were on their way.
Gabriel was upstairs.
But, worst of all, so was the rest of the world.
Sweat was clammy on my forehead, my skin, as I pushed back my lamp helmet to wipe off the moisture, panting while I rested my hands on my hips. The next time I saw Gabriel, I’d see a reflection in his silver gaze, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it.
You see, the last few hours had been . . . well, bad. Not even Chaplin knew what I’d done, and I was dreading how he’d respond when he found out. Guilt was punishing me, along with the ache I still carried from the sins of my body.
Furthering that punishment, I donned a waterpack and trudged toward the steps. Long ago, Mom would’ve said, “Our bodies are temples, Mariah. Treat yours accordingly.” Over the years, I’d tried my best to remember that, but last night I’d crossed a line, and it was because of Gabriel and the way he affected me. I’d let myself go too far.
Thing was, I’d liked it.
But there was something else putting me on edge now.
After my loss of control, I’d gone over to Annie’s to rearrange the remnants of her life in the Badlands. Hell, I’d even sucked up my courage and taken the outside entrance, where dawn had been flexing, while Gabriel was bundled in his blankets and it was still decent enough not to require a heat suit.
Annie’s wasn’t far off, and I’d kept telling myself that as I ran there as fast as I could.
When I arrived, I could feel her all over the place, but I forced myself to go about adjusting her possessions to my satisfaction, even if Gabriel had already been there. I couldn’t tell if he had, though, because it was obvious that Stamp and his men had already been present to confuse things, the bastards.
Nonetheless, I collected the only objects that might’ve given personal clues as to who Annie might’ve been during her pre-Badlands life. I took her hairbrush, a flame lighter that she’d used to smoke the feyweed that grew round here, the few items of worn, coming-apart-at-the-seams clothing she’d left behind. Then I quickly used my hand to wipe over a makeshift calendar Annie had carved into the dirt.
I got the possessions out of sight and blessedly out of mind, stuffing the items well below the ground, shoveling dirt back over them, moving a hill of rugs over the site and hoping that would suffice to hide the burial. I returned home as fast as I could, shutting the entrance behind me and heading straightaway to my room while trying not to look over at sleeping Gabriel.
So it was done, and I should’ve felt all the better because of it. But guilt’s a wily thing that sneaks into you and hides real well, coming out every so often like a ghost under the bed, just to remind you it hasn’t left.
Now, weighed by it, I looked round my workroom, the last waterpack on my back. My body was about to collapse on me. It’d been through too much, and although there was a lot left to be completed down here, I couldn’t put off going upstairs any longer. I’d have to do it sometime.
I slogged to the top of the steps, where I stood on shaky legs in front of the shred of crucifix billboard image on the door. I rested a palm against the beaten image. I should’ve taken it down a while ago, yet the symbol of it had given me such hope when there was so little of it nowadays.
Unable to look at it any longer, I unpinned the poster, and it unfurled, cringing to the ground. I rolled it up and propped it in the corner, near a crate.
Inhaling, my lungs almost too tight to take in much oxygen, I shed my helmet and opened the door.
Luck be with me . . .
I held my breath, my nerves jumping as I listened in. Quiet, except for a . . . chuckle?
I hesitated, and another laugh filtered over to me from my dad’s old fortified quarters, which were hidden by a wall.
Grasping every ounce of control I could muster, I tried to remember that Gabriel might not have been privy to my waywardness last night at all. He might have been outside the whole time, and I’d just imagined him as an audience, with those red eyes in the dark. Still, my belly tightened as I heard him say my name to Chaplin, and the tautness in me turned fluid, warming me in the places I’d touched so recently.
“You sure this ain’t hers?” Gabriel said, and just hearing him talking about me made me feel owned by him in a small, disturbing way.
I’m sure,
Chaplin woofed, and I wondered if the dog had been with Gabriel all along.
Our guest continued the conversation with my dog, although I was pretty sure Gabriel didn’t understand Canine. Or was he misrepresenting that about himself?
“I can’t imagine Mariah would’ve been so keen on dolls,” he said, “though a tough role model like this Princess Leia would’ve been her speed, if any doll was.”
I quietly positioned myself at the lip of the room, behind the fragmented wall, already knowing what they were up to. Chaplin was obviously showing Gabriel my dad’s vintage geek collection, which the equally geeky dog had always gone silly over. Dad had kept the items locked safe, all the components vacuum-bagged just in case our Badlands hideout failed us and we needed to trade for essentials with some urban hubite who still cared about old movies and nostalgia. Also, my father had once told me that geeks just plain packed up their collections like this. It was a sign of caring.
I could just hear him in my head, clear as the day used to be. Dad. He felt near to me right now, because of those damned dolls. Maybe that was why I’d kept them in the safe, even after his death—because bringing them, and him, out was too painful.
Peering round the corner, I found Chaplin and Gabriel looking at the bagged dolls. There was Princess Leia, Arwen, Apollo, and Batman. As a girl, I’d never touched them, but it hadn’t been becaus I hadn’t wanted to. Dad had made it clear that these weren’t for play.
Even though Chaplin, at least, had to sense that I was nearby, he and Gabriel still kept their backs to me, chatting away as if things were dandy and lovely in the world at large.
“Know what I wish, boy?” Gabriel asked.
Chaplin cocked his head.
“That you and me could have a real discussion.” Gabriel put the doll back. “About things like Mariah having a predilection for dolls.”
My skin went hot again. I was embarrassed and, okay, also angry that he’d been riffling through everything in
here
, not maybe just at Annie’s.
Or I could’ve been flushing because of something else. Something like . . .
My heart started pounding because, last night, I wouldn’t have minded some riffling.
Gabriel was talking again while he shut the safe’s door. “You and I could also chatter about things like how I suspect your mistress isn’t quite as thorny as she’d like most to believe. It’s an idle theory, but I’ve seen her be nice enough to you, so I know she’s not
all
fireworks and vinegar.”
The dog laughed, and right before my temper got riled high, Gabriel slowly turned his gaze on me, his crooked grin revealing that he’d known I was there.
But was he also remembering my behavior?
Had he seen me . . . ?
“I heard the door shut a moment ago,” Gabriel said. “Chaplin’s ears perked up at the sound, but I told him to play along with me.”
He was acting as if he hadn’t seen anything untoward at all in me. As if all my fears had been for nothing.
Thank-all, a million times over, thank-all.
I breathed easier, at least for now, and deigned only to cast an exasperated look at Chaplin and Gabriel, then walk toward the food prep area so I could get a meal on its way.
“Mind that you shut that safe up tight,” I said. “Dad’s gone, but he wouldn’t have ever taken kindly to anyone pawing through his stuff.”
Thank-all, thank-all, thank-all . . .
I passed the visz wall, glancing at the common-area screen. The gathering place was empty. Then I went about brewing some loto cactus–tinged water. When I heard Chaplin bark near the workroom door, I realized that I’d neglected to shut it all the way, but that was fine. The gape of it often allowed a stream of cool to enter our domain.
Chaplin kept barking, so I went to him, seeing that he’d nudged through the door and to the other side. He was sticking out his head, jerking his chin toward the spot where the crucifix billboard used to be.
You took it down,
he said.
I shrugged, but not before I detected a faint slant of thanks on Gabriel’s mouth.
I didn’t ask him why he might appreciate my taking down the poster shred, mostly because pursuing the subject of him being a vampire had done me no good the first time.
“I’ve got cactus water on,” I said to him instead. “You going to want a mug of it?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
I’d expected im to refuse. Vampires didn’t drink regular stuff, right?
“I suppose,” I said, gearing up for what would surely prove to be the night’s big discussion, “you’d be pretty thirsty after a day of searching round for Annie.”
I waited a beat. And when his light gray eyes went dark, I knew I’d arrived somewhere.
“I don’t know you all that well,” I said. “But in some ways, I can predict you to a T.”
He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. “You got me then. I did go to Annie’s after this last sunset.”
Tonight? He’d gotten there
after
I had . . . ?
“I didn’t want to be out too long searching for her place last night, after it was plenty dark,” he said, “so I waited until today’s dusk. I don’t have a heat suit, or else I could’ve gone earlier.”
I
had
beat him to Annie’s. Hell-a-lu-jah.
I said, “You could’ve used my father’s old suit, but Dad didn’t quite possess your . . .” I refrained from scoping out Gabriel’s body. “. . . dimensions. Although having it’s not a bad idea for when you do take it upon yourself to leave.”
“Much appreciated, Miss Mariah.”
Now I was wondering about why he might’ve put off his search for Annie’s until after the sun had settled. I’d read that some breeds of vampire couldn’t go out in the daylight without burning right up.
“You could’ve also gone through the common area to get to Annie’s room,” I said. “Unless you thought someone might try to stop you from entering her place once you were down there.”
“That did occur to me.” Gabriel was so still that I wondered if he’d shut down altogether. Then he took in a deep breath, as if recalling that humans needed to do this to survive. “Actually, I didn’t want to fly in anyone’s face, flaunting my going into Annie’s. It’s true that I didn’t want anyone to stop me, either.”
“Did you find anything?”
Gabriel stared at the ground. “Not much. Not what I’d hoped.”
My knees went weak with relief. “And what were you hoping for?”
He began to respond, then halted.
But I’d already predicted his answer. “You do know that Annie isn’t the same as your Abby, right?” The comment emerged quieter than I’d expected.
“How would you be sure of that?”
Because I didn’t
want
Annie to be Abby. Yet I could hardly say that out loud.
Instead, I shrugged again while, in the background, the boiling water moaned, like wind through stripped, deadened branches.
He started to walk away, and I blurted a question. “Who
was
Abby?”
Who was she to you?
Gabriel spread his fingers as his thumbs kept hold of those belt loops. “Wish I could tell you that, Miss Mariah. But I suppose I’m here to find out.”
He finally glanced up at me, as if wondering if I wanted to hear more. I was fairly sure my face couldn’t hide that I did, so he kept on going.
“Abby was . . . special to me.”
I didn’t know what to say, how to feel, so the numbness overtook me.
Chaplin shifted from foot to foot, sensing my disquietude along with enduring his own. I backed into the food prep area, going to remove the water from the burner.
Special. Damn it all, Abby had been
special
.
“You don’t need to continue,” I said, my words sounding strangled. “I didn’t mean to get personal.”
“Of course not.”
His tone was dry, and it could’ve denoted all kinds of things, none of which I quite understood.
If Abby was so special, why didn’t I hear it in him?