Authors: Elle Hill
“Excuse to keep you tethered to home?” Reed guessed.
“‘Tethered.’ Huh. I feel like a tetherball sometimes. Okay, so quit jawing my ear off; this is a business meeting, buddy. Since you seem to think the phone is a modern version of thumbscrews, I called the caterer. She thought your idea of steak and potatoes was, um, less than inspired. She reminded me we needed some kind of vegetarian option.”
With a mental sigh, Reed resumed their discussion of culinary choices for the elite. Yesterday he’d made Cor laugh when he’d suggested going to the supermarket and buying cheese trays.
A few minutes later, Quina strode into the room. She had obviously just returned from work; she still wore a wrap wound about her thin shoulders.
“I’m pleased to see you here, Cor,” she said, smiling. Cor waved a now-empty banana peel at the woman. “I was hoping to round up Reed for another lesson. You’re entirely welcome to come along.”
“Are we going somewhere?” Cor asked. “I could use a lesson in consuming fast food.” She flashed some teeth.
“We’ve decided it’s time to test Reed’s proficiency at vertical maneuvering. Providing, of course, you’re amenable, Reed.”
Vertical maneuvering? Oh, she meant the Spiderman trick. He had been practicing with Paul but didn’t think he was ready for some kind of test. Of course, if some element of pain and danger didn’t exist, they probably wouldn’t bother.
He opened his mouth to voice his suspicion that he was participating in a gratuitously violent test for the amusement of these women, but then he remembered Jade’s hint concerning his tendency toward un-charming behavior.
“Sounds good,” he said.
“So whassup in the world of psychology?” Cor asked ten minutes later from the passenger’s seat of Quina’s silver SUV. Reed sat in the backseat. He’d only narrowly avoided making a sarcastic comment about the back of the bus.
“Anti-depressant use,” Quina said dryly.
Cor grinned. “It’s because reality shows are on the rise. Given what they say about the state of the world, they depress the hell out of me, too.”
Suddenly inspired, Reed asked Quina, “What kind of psychology do you specialize in?”
She briefly met his eyes in the rearview mirror; hers were crinkled in a tiny smile. “Cognitive. My latest journal article addresses the function of memory consolidation during rapid eye movement sleep.”
Reed stared at her until she looked away to focus on the traffic in front of them.
“For the non-scientists among us, Quina studies dreaming,” Cor said cheerfully.
When they arrived at their surprisingly urban destination twenty minutes later, they found Maricruz had already arrived. She sparkled in the late afternoon sunshine. Her hair gleamed a dark, glossy brown, her white and tan clothing shone, her face beamed a sunshiny smile. She possessed the kind of delicate, ethereal beauty that induced straight men to hurl themselves over mud puddles to protect her dainty feet.
She left Reed cold. As he’d told Katana, he liked his women fleshy, tall, substantial. He was attracted to strong women with the capacity to give and receive comfort.
Not being a sociopath was also a plus.
Mari’s megawatt smile dimmed briefly when she caught sight of Cor. Was she still pretending an attraction to him, then, or did she simply dislike the younger woman?
“Welcome to your pop quiz.” Even Mari’s voice warmed.
Their quartet stood on a relatively quiet, dusty stretch of landscape lying north of downtown Los Angeles. Beside them a bridge, like some kind of concrete rainbow, squatted over an arroyo that hadn’t seen water since the city’s last rainfall. An occasional car rumbled overhead, but the avenue was surprisingly quiet. Next to them, the concrete-walled arroyo led upward to a string of cottonwood trees. Even in an arid climate like L.A.’s, life managed to flourish.
Reed understood why they had chosen this spot for his test. Below the avenue bridge yawned a waterless streambed, but it was far from empty. Unlike the dry bed of the L.A. River, the arroyo wasn’t wide enough to accommodate several cars driving abreast of one another. Come early spring, runoff flowed, albeit shallowly and briefly, sometimes carrying the detritus that otherwise littered its bed. Below this particular bridge, castoff construction and other equipment, including piles of rotting wood, moldering leaves, and rusting barrels, had collected. Or perhaps humans, whether by design or through laziness or mischief, had constructed the deadly piles of trash. Either way, a fall from the bridge would land a person in a giant pile of sharp wood and jagged metal.
“You people aren’t happy unless I bleed,” he remarked mildly, but his heart was racing. Around him, three pairs of eyes stared. These beings were not only empaths but could feed off his fear. He was usually much better at reining in his feelings, but he recognized the danger of this situation.
“You will climb from this end of the bridge to the other one,” Quina said in her quiet, steely tone. She pointed to the opposite side of the streambed. “I know it looks daunting, but Mari will climb below you and catch you if you fall.”
Mari?
He felt so much better.
As he’d suspected, he could choose not to participate and admit he didn’t trust Mari—and, by extension, the Broschi —worth a triple damn, thereby further isolating himself from these people, or he could risk his life.
“This is a lesson, not a test,” he said aloud. Quina smiled.
“Ah, hell, since I’m here I may as well pitch in, right?” Cor said easily, rubbing her hands together in exaggerated eagerness. “I can spot you, Reed. God knows I need the practice.” Either she could feel the tension or she was picking something up from Mari.
“Mari can do this, Corinna,” Quina said. She clasped her white hands over her stomach. “You’re here for moral support.”
“All right,” Reed said. “Let’s do it.”
Mari walked forward and kissed his cheek. Then, she drifted forward, kicked off her sandals, and ascended the bridge.
It was hideously beautiful, really. This lithe, graceful woman met the vertical face with her hands and feet and, defying gravity and physics, crawled like an insect along its surface. He’d managed to stay on the gym wall for up to ten minutes at a time, and he sure as hell didn’t look anywhere near as casual as Mari.
“Come on, Reed,” she called, voice twinkling. “I’ll walk under you.”
Breathing through his nostrils, Reed glanced at Cor’s unusually somber face and walked to the bridge. He slipped off his battered socks and sneakers and, taking a deep breath, placed his hands on the concrete. It felt warm and gritty against his palms.
I’m a feather
, he thought, and placed his feet on the bridge. He moved slowly, awkwardly, up the bridge’s abutment.
Floating like a feather
.
After thirty seconds, he reached Mari’s position. She waved jauntily at him with one hand, and he moved jerkily past her, further up toward the arch.
The time had come for him to change direction from up to sideways. He’d never done that. Initially, he scooted sideways while his head pointed upward, but a quick glance at Mari showed him she had repositioned her body so her head led the direction of her body. Breath thready, heart pounding, Reed repositioned his body—and slipped.
He slid a couple of feet before catching himself.
I’m a feather, a bird, I’m floating, flying, fucking drifting like a leaf
. His body stilled. After a couple dozen rapid breaths, he started moving again.
Reed, his limbs starting to ache, crawled slowly on. Below him, Mari took slow steps, always keeping herself under him.
He briefly closed his eyes and envisioned himself a dandelion fluff borne aloft by the breeze. He drifted, floated, coasted on air currents, unencumbered by gravity’s greed. His biceps shook very slightly as he wall-walked across the arch of the bridge.
Beneath his hands and legs, gangs and others had covered almost every spare surface of the bridge with graffiti. He walked across names, dates, land claims, and a few anatomically creative suggestions. Stretched, fat on the bottom and spiky on the top, the graffiti formed a colorful mosaic to which he inexpertly clung.
Reed was beyond the halfway point, and other than a burning in his arms, quads, and calves, he felt pretty decent.
I may do this
, he thought. His foot slipped, and he continued envisioning himself as a dandelion-fluff-bird-leaf.
He closed his eyes again and crept slowly forward, muscles quaking ever-so-slightly. He was a balloon, floating on the wind, bobbing in the—
“You okay?” a voice, just inches from his ear, snapped.
With a gasp, Reed’s eyes twitched open. He lost his train of thought, his foot slipped, and for the first time since he began this journey, gravity took full control of his body.
The landscape blurred in front of him, and he cried out in surprise and fear. Before he could fall more than a foot or so, Mari grabbed his wrists, one in each hand. Somehow, she clung to the wall using only her legs while, much as he had the first time he’d tried and failed this superhuman feat, Reed dangled by his arms. Only this time, no safe blue mats awaited him below.
Reed’s hot breath whooshed in and out of his chest. He looked up from the debris below and into Mari’s tranquil visage.
“Thank you,” he said as calmly as he could manage.
She smiled at him, an angel with a cloud of dark brown hair. “I can feel your terror,” she whispered, eyes half-closed.
She wanted to play, then. Reed tried to control his breathing. His feet scrambled toward the wall and found purchase, but he doubted he could maintain his balance if she dropped his hands.
“Yeah, this is pretty scary,” he agreed quietly, even though his heart throbbed in his chest.
Mari’s eyes closed all the way. “Don’t you trust me, Reed? Trust us?”
“Let one of my wrists go so I can regain my footing,” he said.
“Answer me.”
Fury choked him for a moment, but he swallowed it.
Mari’s smile spread into a grin.
“No.”
“Maybe I should just let go then. It’s what you expect, right?” she murmured. When he remained silent, she demanded, “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he bit out.
“If we can’t trust each other, maybe it’s better to die.” Still quiet, still serene.
Rage scalded his veins, his tongue. “Then do it!” he snarled at her. “Kill me or don’t, but shut the fuck up.”
Mari’s eyes opened, and she stared at him for a few seconds. The moment stretched. Then, she shocked him by chuckling. Winking at him, she released one of his wrists and allowed him to situate himself before dropping the other. She scurried below him once again.
Slowly, his muscles trembling, Reed oozed over the remainder of the bridge. When he reached the other side, he dropped the final ten feet to the ground and lay there, muscles jellied in exhaustion.
Mari jumped down next to him. “Congrats. You passed the test,” she said lightly.
Reed remained silent, not because he didn’t have anything to say but because too many words had clogged his throat.
The ride back home was silent. Once at the house, Quina left Cor and Reed in the living room, claiming she needed to get back to work. Mari had not yet returned.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Cor rifled through her backpack in an attempt to appear busy.
Finally, she stilled. “These tests don’t usually go like that,” she told him.
Reed’s mouth trembled into a tiny smile. “I guessed,” he said.
Cor didn’t smile back. “You did really well . . .” she began, and then quieted. After another moment of silence, she blurted, “Mari wasn’t really checking up on you before you fell, was she? She meant to startle you.”
“Yeah.”
Cor’s hands smoothed over her face. Then, so quickly she knocked him back against the sofa, she threw herself at him in a giant hug. After a few seconds, she drew back. “She hates you, you idiot,” she whispered.
Reed smiled again. “She does,” he agreed.
Cor shook her head, sending blue shudders through her unstyled hair. “I’ll have to think what to do about that,” she said, chewing the inside of her lip.
After everything, Reed was touched. This twenty-year-old baby was trying to protect him from Mari’s wrath.
He began pondering blacks, whites, and grays once again before noticing Cor had removed her hoodie to reveal a stained yellow T-shirt underneath.
It was a lot warmer here than at House Greco.
She sat alone before a giant dinner table. Food of every kind fanned out before her, brightly colored, steaming, or chilled as necessary. Bowls, plates, platters, and tureens vied for space atop a sparkling white tablecloth. Katana found she held a fork in her right hand and a spoon in her left.
Beyond the table lay . . . not much. Stark white walls stretched vertically, and the floor gleamed equally whitely below everything. The only sources of color and movement in the room came from the food. And, of course, her.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” she told the room. Wherever her real body lay, she received nourishment. She couldn’t remember once feeling hungry.
Well, perhaps she could learn something from the choices before her. Dozens of dishes sat side by side on the table, each looking like a three-dimensional version of a cookbook picture. Each promised gustatory delight.
She wasn’t so sure she believed the promise.
After staring for a few moments at the spread, Katana noticed none of the dishes featured meat. Was she a vegetarian, or was the lack of chicken and pork some kind of symbol?
“I don’t believe in dream symbolism,” she said out loud, and felt a memory stirring in her overtired brain. Something about dreams and symbols . . .
Mashed potatoes, apples, oiled green beans, bright pink cupcakes, pasta with a cream sauce, fresh-baked bread, risotto, blueberry pie, gravy (vegetarian?): the table featured every delicious food she could possibly imagine. None of them, even reeking of carby comfort as many did, stirred her appetite.
Minutes passed. Katana stretched the muscles of her arms, drummed the silverware on the tabletop, and tried (with a spectacular lack of success) to hum a tune. Finally, muttering “To heck with it,” she grabbed a small apple from a fruit bowl in front of her.