Nomad (20 page)

"I don't think he likes me," Raven said. She took Logan's hand as they crossed the New Haven Green toward the brick towers of Yale's Old Campus. Orange and red leaves littered their path.

"Uncle Henry's just not a warm person," Logan said. "He's very analytical. He's kind of a genius, but not very emotional."

"Like a computer." Raven thought of Henry's future self, withered and largely replaced with cybernetics.

"Exactly like that."

"He was nice to me at first, then he acted like he hated me."

"How could anyone hate you?" Logan kissed her cheek. "I'm sure if he gets to know you--"

"You really can't see it? As soon as he discovered I wasn't a fancy Ivy-Leaguer--"

"Listen." He grabbed her arms a little too roughly. Anger flashed in his eyes, and she caught a glimpse of the future dictator inside him. "Uncle Henry is always trying to tell me what to do--what classes to take, what extracurriculars to join, and yeah, who I date. What sucks is my family usually agrees with him. But I don't care, Riley. He can give me his opinion, but I'll always do whatever the hell I want. And I want you. Fuck him."

"You're kind of hot when you're angry," Raven said, and he kissed her. She felt relieved, but only for the moment. If Henry was going to be a counterweight, trying to pull Logan away from her, then she needed to draw Logan closer.

"I have to get to class," he said, still holding her. She touched her fingers to his lips.

"You're coming over tonight," she whispered. "Thanks for bringing me, anyway. It means a lot that you wanted me to meet him."

"Sorry if you had a bad time. I'll make it up to you."

"I can't wait. Bye, Logan." She walked on toward the bus stop at the next corner, while he crossed the street to the campus.

At home, she made preparations, cleaning and organizing her apartment, studying her wardrobe for an outfit, keeping her mind focused in the present so she wouldn't have to think about the future.

She finally decided to bolster her confidence by dressing as though she were planning to visit a nightclub in the year 2064--black boots with high heels, stockings, miniskirt, a skimpy black top. She dusted her face and chest with glitter, and she painted her face in the fashion of the future clubs, lots of stark, artificial colors meant to downplay one's vulnerability and humanity. She watched herself in the mirror as she adjusted the metallic pink wig she'd found in Audra's room. She was someone else now, a cold, deadly beauty who would stand out in a dark club.

Audra was working at the dining hall that night, so Raven had the apartment to herself. She met Logan at the door, dressed in her club clothes.

"Wow, I didn't recognize you for a second," he said. "Where are we going?"

"Nowhere." Raven took his arm and drew him inside, locking the door. She'd turned off all the electric lights and lit candle nubs on the tables and kitchen counter. A slightly warped Pink Floyd record played on Audra's turntable. Raven didn't recognize most of Audra's music, but this slow, psychedelic soundscape felt familiar to her. She'd heard an accelerated, distorted version a few times in the clubs.

"Look at this place," Logan said.

"Sh." Raven kissed him, sliding her fingers around the back of his head to pin him in place. She felt his hands move down her bare shoulders, then down her back, across her thin, fake satin shirt. One hand cupped her through her miniskirt. She felt him thick and aroused against her stomach.

After a minute, she pulled away and left him for her bedroom, without looking back. He followed. Her room was lit by a single candle on her desk. She turned her back to it, facing him. She wanted to keep her scars and burns in shadow.

Raven didn't say a word as she undressed in front of him, until she wore nothing but her stockings and boots.

"Come on," she said.

He began to unbutton his shirt, then seemed to lose control of himself. He picked her up and tossed her back on her bed, then climbed on top of her, kissing her everywhere. Raven ripped at his clothes as if she, too, were overcome with desire, and he stopped long enough to help her undress him.

He lay on top of of her again, and she felt him, long and hard against her inner thigh. She opened her knees wider and closed her eyes, and he kissed her as he entered her. Her body, strangely, seemed entirely aroused and ready for him. She wondered how long it had been since she'd done this with anyone. Her spotty memory couldn't tell her.

She again had the odd feeling of watching from a distance as Riley, a girl constructed out of nothing but lies and illusion and Raven's body, made love to Logan, crying out and raking her freshly painted nails down his back.

She remembered the first time she'd done it, though it hadn't been an experience worth remembering. She'd been fifteen, lying on the gravel roof of a condemned warehouse in a rusty industrial district. Below her, she could hear the pounding, screeching music from the club below, one of the nameless illegal night spots that sprang up and disappeared among the ruins, shifting locations to avoid the police.

The boy was older, and she didn't know his name. She remembered thinking he was cute and dancing with him, but she didn't remember how they'd ended up alone on the roof together, because she had scrambled her brains with an assortment of candy-colored pills that night.

She remembered the feeling of her bare back scraping against the gravel, and looking up at the dull red glow of the city against the clouds of smog above. Her mind had drifted out of her body, up and among those toxic clouds, only distantly and numbly aware of what her body was doing far below.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Giving herself to Logan opened a floodgate. Her body seemed entirely willing to respond to his touch--her body and her brain held very different opinions about the boy who was destined to rule much of the world.

He began spending every night at her apartment, and over the next two weeks his possessions accumulated in her room--jeans, dirty t-shirts, socks, textbooks, a black and gold Bulgari watch. Audra complained about his nightly presence and claimed he was getting in the way of Raven dating better guys.

Raven had taken her annual contraception pill since she was twelve years old, so she had months before she needed to worry about pregnancy. He was experienced, and he knew how to touch her. Sometimes she could feel her body craving him when he was away, and she stomped on those feelings in disgust. She knew she was just desperate for some kind of intimacy, even if it was false.

She joined him on the nights when the Yale Climbing Club met at the rock climbing gym. He took her out to a different restaurant almost every night, some of them elegant, others small, local dives with amazing food. They took excursions into the state forests beyond the city, where Logan liked to make love outdoors, on mats of fading leaves, their bodies bare in the November chill. She would lie back with Logan on top of her and look up at the trees reaching away into the empty blue sky, all their autumn beauty fallen away, leaving only bare skeletons to wait out the coming winter.

Logan invited her home with him for Thanksgiving break, tempting her with horseback rides at his grandfather's estate in Indiana, but she resisted. Her connection with him seemed to be forming well, and she didn't want to risk anything. Being surrounded by his family on their home turf was a situation full of risks, fraught with chances for her to ruin everything, especially with Henry already against her.

On Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, she drove him to the airport. She would drop him off, then keep his car over the holiday. Raven had never owned a car, but she'd stolen and driven her share of them. She looked forward to having her own for a few days.

Before they reached the airport, he told her to turn off onto a tree-lined street with small houses.

"Stop here," he said.

"This house?" She stopped at a house that looked like a faded yellow barn.

"It doesn't matter which house. I want to give you something." Logan opened a side zipper on his suitcase and brought out a black velvet jewelry box.

"Aw, I didn't get you anything." Raven hesitated, staring at the box. It was too large to hold a ring.

"Go ahead."

She lifted the lid. A glimmering silver necklace hung with moonstones lay on the velvet inside. Raven's eyes widened--her scavenger instincts told her she could get a good chunk of cash for it. It was an expensive piece.

"Logan!" she said, surprised. "I didn't expect...anything, really."

"It matches that bracelet you always wear." Logan reached for the silver bracelet on her arm, with the time-travel device disguised as a simple moonstone. She automatically pulled her arm back from him, not wanting him to touch it. "You must love that thing. You even wear it in the shower."

Raven laughed. "It's sentimental. This necklace is beautiful. It's a perfect match."

"I took a picture of your bracelet while you were sleeping."

"You did?" Raven cast a worried look at her time-travel device--her timepiece, Eliad had called it.

"So I could show it to the jeweler. You really like it?"

"Of course. I love it. Thank you, Logan, you're sweet." She gave him a long kiss.

When they reached the airport, he looked at her for an extra moment.

"I wish you were coming with me," Logan said.

"It won't be long."

"I'm going to miss you."

"Me, too." She smiled at him. There was a glowing, intense energy in his eyes. He was looking at her as though he loved her.

She gave him another kiss, feeling an uncomfortable mix of emotions. She was ready for a little time alone, she thought.

She drove away from the airport, feeling a deep sense of relief. She had four days in which she didn't have to be Riley Falcourt at all, and with his car, she could go anywhere she wanted. Unfortunately, her plans for the holiday weekend didn't involve cruising down the coast or other road-trip adventures.

When Raven returned home, Audra was by the front door, her bags packed, just finishing up a phone call with her mother.

"Riley!" Audra hugged her. "I have to run and catch the old city bus."

"I'll take you to the Greyhound station." Raven tossed Logan's car keys in the air.

"He left you his car all weekend?"

"Yep. He's so nice."

"He's so
weird
, Riley. I've never known a boy that loose with his car. A typical guy will trust you with his dick long before he'll let you touch his gearshift."

"True..."

"Last chance to experience a genuine Appalachian Thanksgiving," Audra said. "The mountains are gorgeous, and there's nothing like watching Uncle Flip roast a hog in the ground all day. You can't buy that kind of cultural enrichment."

"Thanks again, Audra, but I'm looking forward to some space and time to myself."

"You'd have more space and time if what's-his-name didn't stay here, like, every night. Y'all are taking it a little fast, don't you think?"

"We're having fun."

"Whatever. Call me if you get lonely or bored."

"Thanks, Audra." Raven helped carry Audra's suitcase down the rickety exterior stairs to the car.

After dropping Audra at the Greyhound station, Raven locked the door to her apartment and brought out the data cube from her safe. She'd interfered heavily with Logan's life for the past few weeks, and she wanted to know whether the future was beginning to change.

She called up the news reports and guerrilla videos charting the future course of Logan's life and the rise of his regime. It looked as though President Vasquez would still be overthrown and he would still become the same brutal dictator. Not one bit of her records had changed.

She frowned and summoned the three-dimensional holographic map she'd used to track Logan. All of the time-stamped red dots were still there, but she didn't see any at her apartment.

Logan had spent many nights at her home and used his phone while he was there. A thick cluster of red dots should have appeared at her house when she looked back over the past few weeks, but there wasn't a single one.

Her map wasn't updating. None of her data was updating, she realized. All her information about the future was frozen. She was flying blind, with no idea how her actions were changing the course of future history.

She watched a life-size hologram of Secretary-General Carraway at a podium in the corner of her room.

"We have only done what was necessary for the security of the American people," the hard-eyed old man said. He wore a black suit with a gold lapel pin, the eye-in-pyramid logo of Providence Security. By 2064, that logo hung on most government buildings. "Order must be imposed, or there will bloodshed and chaos in the streets..."

She muted the hologram and studied the craggy face of the man she'd intended to kill. She had seen an occasional glimmer of the monster within Logan, but it was still difficult to square the smiling boy she knew with the evil old man he would become.

Raven closed down the data cube and hid it away. She picked up the new stack of books she'd just purchased and carried them out to the futon.

Her false identity as Riley Falcourt was paper-thin. If she were going to maintain it over the long term, years and decades, then it needed to be more deeply rooted. She'd determined that her first two objectives were to create a listing for herself in the Social Security Administration database and to put a false birth certificate on file somewhere. Armed with a valid Social Security number and birth record, she could get herself a driver's license, passport, bank account, and credit card, becoming a more established member of 2013 society.

To be thorough, she would also need to create records in the Washington state foster care and public education systems. She smiled as she imagined giving herself excellent grades and test scores, then applying to colleges around New Haven. She could create a bright future for herself, one that would impress Logan and, hopefully, his family.

Unfortunately, she couldn't do any of that until she learned how to hack into the information systems of the early twenty-first century. Her sunglasses were capable of connecting to wireless and cellular networks and operating search engines, but they did not possess the suite of illegal software that she used for infiltrating secure systems. She doubted those programs would work on the archaic systems of 2013, even if she did have them.