Flicker (60 page)

“I mean, we haven’t been fighting,” Nasser said. “There’s that.”

“I’m glad
,” Lee said, with a reassuring smile.

“Me, too.”
And he was, truly.
H
e nodded toward the
stack
of slim volumes
tucked under her arm. “What’s that?”

“Oh, these?
Comic books
. I picked out a few for Filo.”

“Filo?” He raised an eyebrow
, skeptical
.

“I’m trying to expand his educ
ation. You know, teach him a thing or two
about normals.”

“I see.” They had other business to attend to while they were in Bluewood, but Lee had wanted to do something a little more relaxing before got started. Besides, she’d said, she had a few things she really needed to pick up. This was it, he guessed.

“It’s mostly
Hellboy
,” Lee said
. “I thought Filo might like him.”

“What, no Aquaman?”
he asked, flipping through the
glossy pages
with dismay.
“How could you?”

She laughed
and shoved him playfully
, and he felt a
strange
weakness
all
through his body.
Sometimes, when she smiled at him, or touched his hand, or just tossed her hair over her shoulder
the right way
, Nasser
experienced
an almost un
bearable tightness in his heart
.

Nasser hadn’t told her that he
was falling in love with
her
.
Not yet.

He was careful with his words and flowers
, weighing each one
more cautiously than usual
; even that subtle language
of flowers
was proving inadequate to
express
what he
felt
.

“What about the other ones?” he asked, nodding toward some used paperbacks.

“Oh, these are for me,” Lee said fondly. With
obvious reverence, she held up
copies of
The Martian Chronicles
and
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. “Old favorites
of mine
.
They’re like my Shakespeare.
Filo can’t quite appreciate them yet. But he’ll get there.”

Nasser followed her to the front of the store. “You’re not teaching him how to be a normal, Lee,” he teased
, thinking suddenly of lilacs
. “You’re teaching him how to be a
nerd.
”

“That’s just the sort of normal I am,” she said matter-of-factly, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “And he doesn’t need to know that.”

* * *

Shaking snowflakes from his hair, Filo stepped into the apartment. He kicked off his boots at the doorway and dropped his bag onto a table on his way to the workroom.

He had to admit it: The apartment and shop looked much better now that Lee was living here. She’d officially moved into the bedroom a few days after they returned from Summerhill—
almost two
month
s
ago now—and it seemed like she hadn’t stopped cleaning since.

These day
s, beds were always neatly made,
clothes were fol
ded and put where they belonged, and
books and other supp
lies were squared away.
Though the upkeep was a pain, Filo liked being able to find clean clothes or a certain book without having to tear the whole place apart in the search.

Filo tossed some wood in the fireplace and got a fire going. Soon, the workroom was flooded with warmth. Filo shrugged off his coat, then returned to the front room to hang it on the little hook by the door that Lee had nailed into the wall. As he hung the coat, something cold prickled the back of his neck. He froze, then turned slowly.

The window was open, a cold breeze stirring the curtains.

Neman
was seated by the window, legs crossed, hands folded, looking calm and infinitely patient.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, resisting the urge to drop his gaze from hers.
You will not flinch,
he commanded himself silently.

“Is this not our house,
Morgan
’s and mine?” she inquired. “May we not come and go as we please? To check up on you?”

“It is yours,” he allowed. “But—”

“But?”

He shook his head. “I’ve tak
en care of this place
for over a year. I don’t need you to check up on me. And—” He’d never been
so
honest with either of them, never tried to explain anything he felt. Never even
tried
. “And I don’t want you to, either. I don’t want you here.”

Filo braced for impact. But
Neman
only smiled serenely.

“It has been a long while since you wanted us anywhere near you,”
Nem
told him. “When you were very young, five or so, you still had memories of your mother. You looked to us to treat you kindly and smile, as she had. You wanted that from us. But by the time you were eight, and you had forgotten what came before, I think you’d realized we could not give you what you wanted. Even our company was nothing, since you had Alice. Perhaps you
needed
us
.
But you have not
wanted
us for a long time.”

Filo glanced around. “Where’s
Morgan
?”

“Attending to business. As I should be.”

“Then why are you here?”

Her expression didn’t change as she said, “I looked after you before you could look after yourself. I taught you to read and write and use magic. I watched you grow up.” Her smile softened. “I think I will miss watching you.”

He wanted to ask if
, to her, amusement was the same as affection. He wanted to ask if,
through the beatings and the shouting and the days alone, she had
ever actually cared about him.
But
he couldn’t bring himself to
. He was too
afraid
she would say
no.

“So you’re going?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“Both of you?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“A place w
here the wind blows differently,” she said
, an almost wistful expression crossing her sharp-featured face
.
“
I think we may go home, at least for
a while.
It has been so long since we have stood upon the soil of our homeland
, or held Court with the
old
lords
under the ground
.”

“You won’t be coming back? I won’t see you?”

“Not for a long time, if ever.”

Suddenly Filo’s
eyes burned, and his chest
ti
ghtened, and he hated himself
. He hated
her
. Looking at her face—the earliest face in his memory—filled him with an awful mix of emotions.

“What next?” he asked.

She shrugged. “That is up to you. Our Flicker is done, Filo. All this is yours now. You’ve learned enough. This place belongs to
you
.”

He’d known this was coming—but
the realization that they were really leaving, that Flicker was really
his
, hit him like a blow to the
stomach
. He couldn’t breathe.

Then
Neman
rose and went to him. She smiled as gently as he’d ever seen her smile, took his face very carefully in her clawed hands, and kissed him on the forehead.

“Take care of this place, Filo, and
of
yourself,” she m
urmured. His skin burned
where her lips had been
, like her very skin was poisonous
. “There are people here and elsewhere who need you.”

“I—” he started, but before he could think of anything to say,
Neman
melted into black energy and became that familiar
hooded
crow.

The crow cawed once, then beat its wings and sailed out the window, winter sunlight striking its feathers. He did not go to the window to watch the crow disappear.

For the first time in his life, Filo did not belong to them. He didn’t belong to anyone.
He was simply his own.
But
as he sank into the nearest chair, his legs strangely weak, Filo
didn’t feel happy or even relieved. He just felt a dull, lonely ache beneath his ribcage.

After a while, he heard the bells jangle downstairs.

“Hey Filo, you home?” a voice called. Jason.

“Yeah,” he called back, a little reluctantly.

Two pairs of boots clomped up the stairs, and Jason and Alice appeared in the doorway. They were
bundled
in coats and gloves, their faces flushed from the cold.

“We’re going to Ladders to get somethin
g to eat,” Jason said. “You want to come?”

“Uh—” It took a second for the words to register. He didn’t know if he could do something so normal just now, when his world had just shifted on its axis again. But they were watching him expectantly, oblivious to what was happening inside his head and heart, and he relented. “Sure.”

While he laced his boots,
Alice knelt beside him. “
Hey.
Are you okay?”
she asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look okay.”

“I—” He tightened the knots in his laces and straightened, grabbing his coat. “I need to think about it first.”

She let it go surprisingly easily. “All right.”

Jason jerked his thumb
toward the door. “You guys ready to go?” he asked, and they followed him into the shop. As they crossed to the front door, they didn’t have to step around any stray boxes or objects. It was kind of nice to be down here when it was clean.

As
he passed the carousel dragon
in the window
, which still crouched as if ready to s
pring
, Filo remember
ed
that he had promised Lee he would work on the dragon’s enchantment
. Lee was
still
quite enamored of it, and she was determined to repaint it.

“Please, Filo?” she’d begged. “
J
ust see if you can work on it a little more. It’ll be so beautiful when I’m finished with it.
Even
you’ll
like it then.
Oh, come
on,
Filo
…
”

This went on for
two weeks
, until he finally
yielded
.
He’d
toyed with the ide
a of turning the dragon
into something closer to a guardian of the shop than a decoration.
Ever since Byrony had
nearly killed him when she got into the apartment, Filo had been brainstorming all sorts of new protections for Flicker, and a guardian dragon—even a wooden one—was an attractive idea.

Twisting and
altering the enchantment
on
the dragon
might be just the
challenge
that could take his mind off
Neman
and
Morgan
—assuming the damn thing didn’t wake
up
at the wrong moment and tear his shop apart, of course.

Filo, Jason and Alice
stepped outside
and headed down the sidewalk, their bo
ots crunching in the thick snow.
Alice drew off one of her gloves and took Filo casually by the hand without interlacing their fingers. She squeezed gently, and he squeezed back,
just
to prove to her that he really was okay.

Or, at least, that he would be.

* * *

Lee pulled her hat down around her ears and hurried up the walkway to the front door of the little yellow
duplex
. She stood in front of the door for a long time, longer than she would’ve dared if anyone had been home. But the driveway was empty and she could take her time.

At length, Lee reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a slim envelope. It contained only two folded sheets of paper: the most difficult note she’d ever written, and a watercolor painting she’d had to fold in half to fit in the envelope.