Fathomless (17 page)

Being in the window. In the seed world, sparring with Orne. At least he'd let Sean get a word in edgewise. At least he'd given him magic, big magic and a wild new existence in it. With everyone in bed, Sean could go back to the library and into the crow. He didn't have to call Orne. He could explore on his own, fly around. Fly!

Better not. Not when it was so much like a drug, it left him with a hangover. Not until he'd thought about it.

Not until he'd
talked
about it. Thinking stranded him alone in his brain, which was already overstuffed with secrets. Man, it was a full-time job simply remembering who knew what. Marvell and Helen and Dad and Geldman knew about great-et cetera-grandfather Orne, but Eddy and Daniel did not. Marvell and Helen and Eddy knew about Daniel teaching Sean magic, but Dad didn't yet. Nobody but Sean and Orne knew about the seed world.

He needed someone who knew
everything
. Marvell was out. Helen? More than the melting yogurt had stopped him from confiding in her just now. She would have felt duty-bound to tell Marvell, and because Dad relied on her and Marvell concerning anything magical, he was also a no-go. Geldman might keep Sean's story to himself, but what was he really all about, with his connections to both the Order and Orne? Daniel, no. Sean couldn't risk dragging him into more trouble.

That left Eddy, and what was wrong with him that he'd thought of her last? Even before they'd taken their pirate–spy vows of eternal secrecy, he'd known he could tell her anything. In kindergarten, he'd told her he was the one who put the dead squirrel on the teacher's desk. She'd talked him into confessing, but she hadn't betrayed him. So what if she'd sworn she wouldn't let him and Daniel screw up again. Maybe he could convince her it wouldn't be screwing up to keep his access to the window. Or say he told her everything, and she decided the secret was so dangerous that if he wouldn't tell the authorities, she'd have to. In that case, he ought to trust her judgment. He couldn't remember a time when it hadn't been better—or at least, safer—than his.

In appreciation for its company, Sean spared the cherry a gnashing death in the disposal and gave it a decent garbage can funeral. Then he headed to the second floor and Eddy's room. It wasn't midnight yet. She might be up reading or surfing or writing in her journal.

A thin wash of light snuck under Eddy's door, but she didn't respond to the one-finger knocks that were all Sean could risk, Helen's room being across the hall. Probably she had earbuds in. He tried turning the knob. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open a little and whispered “Yo, Eddy.” Still no response, so Sean stuck his head inside.

No Eddy. She couldn't be showering, because both second-floor bathrooms stood open. That left the common room.

He climbed to the third floor, but the common room was dark, and ditto the flanking bathrooms. Could she have snuck back down to the first floor or gone outside? Could she be in Sean's room, waiting for him?

Sean had taken two steps down the hall when Daniel's door opened and in faint light, like from a bedside lamp, Eddy backed out. “No, really,” she stage-whispered. “Not tonight, but we could bike down to the harbor—”

“Shh. Sean.”

“He's not in his room. We'd have heard him come up.”

Sean took one long step back, into the common room. Obviously he wasn't welcome at the moment.

Daniel came out into the hall. “Yeah, well, maybe we wouldn't have heard him. Maybe we were distracted.”

“
Maybe
we were distracted?”

“Speaking for myself, totally.”

“Here, too. But I wouldn't be scared—”

“I'll think about it, okay?”

Eddy leaned into Daniel, slipping her arms around his waist, inclining her face to his.

Wait—

And Daniel kissed her. On the mouth. Long and serious.

Holy. Shit. Sean stepped out of his flip-flops and pushed them under a chair. Barefoot, he slipped from the common room and edged along the wall to the shadowy stairs. He was halfway to the second floor when the sound of someone else's bare feet, light, running, made him turn around and pretend he'd been walking up all along, no biggie, guy cruising casually to bed, guy who hadn't seen or heard a thing.

Eddy swung around the newel post and bounded down three steps before she spotted him. She jolted to a standstill, one hand clutching the railing, the other dangling her sandals. “God!” she said, a second too late. “You scared the crap out of me.”

For once in their lives, let him be smoother than her. “Just returning the favor,” he said. “I thought you were going to bed.”

“I was talking to Daniel.”

“Oh. Well, I wanted to tell you something, but—”

From the way her shoulders rose and fell, Eddy finally got that deep breath she'd been after. “No. We can talk. I'm not tired.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, come on. Let's go down to the kitchen. That way we won't bother Helen.”

“Good idea.”

Eddy slipped by, and the air she stirred carried to him the scent of Daniel's cologne.

Sean fanned it away before following her.

*   *   *

The
first can of iced tea Sean gulped got him over the Eddy–Daniel shock. After popping the second can, he told Eddy everything about Orne. He'd expected the seed world to bother her more than his relationship to Redemption and Patience, but it was the opposite. “Helen's sure about this?” Eddy asked for maybe the millionth time.

“She says she is.”

“God. But maybe it shouldn't be a big surprise.”

“Because?”

Eddy shook her head. “It explains so much about why Orne is chasing you. I've got to look up that synergy bond Marvell told you about. I can ask Helen, right? She said it was okay for me to know about you and Orne?”

“If not you, who?”

“Yeah, but you didn't tell me for how long? Like, three weeks.”

Sean rolled the iced tea can between his palms, but it had already warmed up too much to cool them. “They also said I could take my time. I had to work out how I felt about the whole thing.”

“And so you've done that?”

Sean looked out the window at his elbow. Orne's newt couldn't be hovering near it, but it could be flitting around one of the sodium lamps on Pickman Street, along with the moths and bats. Anyway, it couldn't overhear him. “I've worked out enough to know I'm not going to swallow everything Marvell says about Orne. Not without checking into it myself.”

Eddy had picked at the polish on her left thumbnail until it flaked. “How do you do that? You can't go back into the window again.”

So here came the tricky part. “Well, maybe I could—”

As if to be ready to lay into him, Eddy laid off her nail. “No,” she said.

“Listen first.”

“You listen! You want to get kicked out of this program and put on the Order's blacklist? You can't go near that window again, and you've got to tell Helen about it tomorrow. If you don't, I will.”

She had clamped her arms across her chest, which meant the discussion was over, her way or the highway. Sean had never actually chosen the highway, but over the years he'd built up a mental picture of it: cracked blacktop zigzagging through desert until it smashed into a fever-red horizon. Traveling down that road, you were bound to rip up your tires, run out of gas and water, shrivel into a skeleton as you dragged yourself toward a convenience store mirage always another mile ahead. But if the alternative was sitting still while your opportunities did the shriveling? “You mean it,” he said.

“That I'll tell Helen? Come on, Sean.”

“Then I'll have to go back into the window tonight. And call Orne to talk to me. And stay there until Helen and Marvell come yank me out.”

So yeah, he was actually pulling onto the highway ramp, and from her gape, Eddy couldn't believe it. “What's that going to accomplish? You'll still lose the window, and you'll get caught and lose the program, too.”

“I might not lose the window. If they move my body away from it, I might be stuck inside. I'm not Orne. I can't do the remote jump yet.”

“You are freaking nuts.”

No, out of nowhere, he was freaking mad. “Eddy, will you try to get it? Why do you think I'm telling
you
all this? It's not, oh, so you can save me from my stupid damn self. It's because you're the only one who might understand. Or maybe Daniel might, but I don't know him like I know you.”

She colored at Daniel's name; it wasn't Sean's imagination. Neither was the barely there ghost of Daniel's cologne wafting from her heated face and the hands chafing her elbows. “Daniel might understand better than me,” she said.

“Because he's a magician?”

Eddy nodded.

“I don't think so. As well as you, maybe, not better. You've got too many years on him, putting up with me. Watching my back. And me doing the same for you. Trying, anyway.”

“Yeah, trying.” Eddy smiled, the corners of her lips shaking. “Usually screwing up.”

“If screwing up's how I fly, you've got to let me screw up.” And that was profound enough to tattoo onto his inner wrist, like a crib note he could refer to whenever he forgot the answers to the real-life quiz. “Look. Even before I found out Orne was my ten-times-great-grandfather—”

Eddy was clearly still adjusting to that idea, from the way she sucked in air.

“Even before I found out, I wanted to know more about him. I kept the last e-mail he sent me.” Sean pulled out his wallet, then remembered he'd burned Orne's message the night before their drive to Arkham, ripping the page along its worn seams and dropping each smudged fragment into the candle flame. “No, I got rid of it. But I carried it around a long time.”

“It was like Buddy's letter,” she said, half to herself.

“Huh?”

“This letter Zooey keeps. Never mind. What else?”

“Marvell wants me to ignore Orne. Except that's not the exact right word.”

“Maybe renounce him? No, refute him, like Beelzy!”

Sean might not know much about
Franny and Zooey,
but the Beelzy story, yeah. He remembered that one. “But I don't think I should refute him, Eddy. I think Orne keeps coming back at me for a reason. I've got to find out for myself what he really is. Say Marvell's right about one thing, that I'm like Orne. I'd be finding out about myself, too.”

“Marvell's wrong. You're not like Orne.”

“Wait,
who's
wrong?”

“Don't start again how I'm his fan girl. I never said he couldn't make a mistake.”

“So he could be making a mistake not letting me do practical magic. He could be wrong about Redemption Orne wanting to use me. I'd bet anything the story's way more complicated than that.”

Eddy began to swivel on her stool. “You'd bet anything,” she said.

On second thought, “anything” could mean
everything,
which was what Nyarlathotep wanted, and what Sean hoped Orne didn't expect. “No, but a lot.”

“So, you'd bet Orne's told you the truth so far. That you control the window. That you can keep him out, so he's not spying through it.”

“I'd bet that much.”

“But it
would
be a bet. You don't know it.”

“I believe it.”

“Hand me my tea.”

Sean did, and she drank the can dry. Then, in place of spinning herself, she spun the can on the island top. Was she playing roulette, like if it came to rest with the tab top facing her, the answer was yes; with the bottom facing her, no? “If I don't tell Helen,” Eddy began.

“Or Marvell.”

“Or Professor Marvell. If I don't tell them about the window, you have to let me watch whenever you go into it. Plus, didn't you say you could hear the crow from the library?”

“Yeah, from the dais.”

“Then I get to listen, too, if I can. That includes if you call Orne into the window. I'll be like your chaperone.”

“You think Orne's going to try to kiss me?” Uh, not the best choice of a crack, after what he'd seen upstairs.

And Eddy's color rose, even as she cracked back, “Kiss a crow?”

“Right. Gross.”

“Get serious. If I'm going to keep my mouth shut, I have to be sure I'm not letting you walk off a cliff. I can be more objective about Orne than you can—he can't pull any I'm-your-ancestor crap on me, and I'm not magical, so he can't lure me with promises of greater power and all that.”

“Kind of embarrassing, somebody eavesdropping.”

“Not eavesdropping, because you'll know I'm there.”

“I bet Orne will know, too.”

“You should tell him, in fact.”

“But then he won't spill any evil plans.”

“Sean.” Eddy drew out his name in an exasperated drawl. “Do you think he's going to spill evil plans to
you
? Look. You want to figure out whether Orne's trustworthy. That's what I want, too. But if it looks like he's getting anything over on you, I'm going straight to Helen. Ditto if you go near that window without me. So, deal?”

It was as good a one as he could have expected. “Deal. But if you decide you have to go to Helen, tell her that you just found out about the window. I don't want you getting in trouble, too. And, same reason, we shouldn't tell Daniel.”

Eddy looked down before nodding. “You're right. Except, in a way, that's leaving him out.”

She spun her iced tea can again. Looking for a new yes or no? Sean was looking for one, too, on the question of whether to blow his entire up-front-honesty budget in one night. The can slewed to a halt with its tab top to Eddy, and to him. He'd take that as a yes. “Sometimes you have to leave a person out.”