Shattered Sky (35 page)

Maddy laughed at his audacity. “Are you trying to provoke me, or are you always this callous?”

“Do not misunderstand, Miss Haas. I think what you and Dillon have is wonderful. But a relationship requires a joining of mind, body, and soul. If you can live with two of the three, my blessing to you. But if you find your own soul lacking, overwhelmed by his . . .”

Tessic hesitated, reconsidering his words. “I don't mean to offend . . . but for both of your sakes, please be certain of your
purpose in Dillon's life. For when you are certain, your choice of action will be as clear as it was on the day you rescued him.”

“I like to think I make my own purpose,” she told him, coolly.

Tessic sighed. “There I go again,” he said. “I give you another reason to hate me.”

Maddy considered that, and shook her head. “I don't hate you, Elon.” And then, with more sincerity than she thought she had in her, she said, “The truth is, I think you're a great man, with more vision than I gave you credit for.”

The admission caught him by surprise. “Such a change!” he said, gloating a bit in the new light she cast him in. “What brings this about in a skeptical young woman like you?”

She looked down to the table, preparing herself, then returned her gaze to Tessic. “Over the past two weeks, I've spent a lot of time studying your business dealings.”

“Really,” he said, crossing his legs, knee over knee. “Perhaps you found something interesting?”

“Oh, it's all interesting,” she said. “But what I found most remarkable is your marketing plan for the Ciechanow project.”

“Oh, that.” He attempted to conceal a grin behind his tea. “And what interested you most about it?”

“The fact that there
is
no marketing plan. None whatsoever.”

Tessic sipped his tea, neither confirming nor denying it. He always said he was a man of honesty. She supposed that was true—she had never caught him in a lie. His were all sins of omission.

“All that living space, in the middle of nowhere,” Maddy said, “and no one invited to the party.”

Tessic didn't try to hide his grin anymore. He leaned in
closer to her. “I anticipate a need,” he said. “But you've already figured that out, haven't you?”

“I wish I hadn't.”

“And do you approve?”

Maddy deliberated on her response, and answered truthfully. “I think it's brilliant. I think it's terrifying.”

“A powerful combination.”

“And when were you going to tell Dillon what you're planning?”

“I'm not planning anything,” Tessic insisted. “It will be Dillon's idea, and he will plan it himself. I am merely laying the groundwork for when he does.”

“What makes you so sure he will?”

Tessic put his glass down, and studied her. “You're not a woman of faith, are you, Miss Haas?”

“It's hard enough to believe what I see, much less what I don't see.”

Tessic took a long draught from his glass, until the tea was gone, and the color drained from the ice, leaving it clean and clear. “Time will ease your doubts.”

“I can live with doubts,” she told him, “and once in a while even do the right thing. But it's your lack of doubt that frightens me.”

T
ESSIC GOT A CALL AT EIGHT O'CLOCK THE FOLLOWING
morning that Security was detaining two visitors. The security officer apologized profusely for disturbing him in his private penthouse, and the intruders would have been summarily expelled, had they not claimed to be relatives of Tessic's guests. Since building security had not been informed that Tessic even had guests, it warranted his attention.

He found the two teenage boys in the security office, double-teamed by four guards. The guards were all unsettled—it was in their eyes and their stances; discomfort in the way they looked to one another, scratched their arms, necks, and heads, complaining about the heat regardless of the fact that the air was overly conditioned with a breezy Freon chill. Tessic knew the reason for their discomfort. There was a field of presence here, like the one Dillon exuded, but this one was different. A variant flavor, a different charm.

“Are you Tessic?” said the black teen, all attitude. It only aggravated the suspicions of the good ol' boys with security badges.

“Get out!” Tessic said. The lead guard promptly advanced on the two teens, just as Tessic knew he would. “No,” Tessic said, stopping the guard in his tracks. “You and your men. Get out.”

The men looked to one another, clearly suffering some testicular trauma at their dismissal. The guards began to slink out, and Tessic took guilty pleasure in watching them go.
When he was seventeen, all long hair and torn jeans, he would have been cast out of an establishment like this as well.

“In the future,” he told the exiting guards, “I expect you to treat visitors with common courtesy and respect—even the ones you expel.”

Once the door had closed, Tessic turned to the black teen. “Do I have the honor of addressing Winston Pell?”

Winston cracked the slightest smile. “Expecting me?”

“Not at all—but your presence is a welcome surprise.” The fact was, Tessic had an entire staff of private detectives searching for Winston and Lourdes, and they had come up empty-handed. That Winston had just fallen into his lap was just further indication of how
bashert
his endeavor was. Tessic could feel the hand of the Almighty in this. He offered Winston his hand, and Winston looked at it for a moment before committing to shake it. As their hands clasped, he felt Winston's current move through him, making the hair on his arms and neck stand on end. Tessic laughed, a bit giddy from the sensation.

“So how come you dress like that?” Winston said, pointing to Tessic's white suit. “I've always wanted to ask that.”

“Image is everything,” Tessic answered, “or at least my public relations staff tells me.”

The blond kid stood up behind Winston. “Excuse me,” he said, “the non-entity requests an introduction.”

“Drew Camden, Elon Tessic,” Winston said.

Tessic raised his eyebrows. “The biographer!”

Drew's eyes lit up. “You know about that?”

“With the amount of airplay your videos of the shards received over the past year, you should have been a rich man.”

Drew sighed. “Yeah, too bad I left them in the desert, for some low-life from Vegas to find. He hit the jackpot, I got nothing.”

“Ah, well, I imagine living it was worth all the money in the world.”

“Give me all the money in the world, and I'll tell you which I like better.”

“So,” said Winston. “I've heard it from a reliable source that you've got Dillon locked away like Rapunzel in your tower.”

Tessic considered his response, and said, “The Talmud says a man's own chains are the strongest.”

To which Winston responded, “A man's own chains might be the strongest, but the Talmud also says, ‘A man who puts his brother to the test is not to be trusted.' ”

Tessic shook his head, impressed. “Extraordinary! Your gift of growth has turned your mind into a sponge for knowledge.” Tessic laughed with pleasure, in spite of all of his attempts to maintain a cool, suave demeanor. “I only ask one thing: that I be in the room for the reunion.”

Winston shrugged. “Hey, it's your tower.”

D
ILLON WAS AWAKENED BY
what he thought was an alarm clock, but when morning replaced his dreams, he realized nothing was ringing. Still, there was some energy in his room he could not name, just at the edge of perception.

Maddy had left the room at dawn for her regimen of exercise, and Dillon found himself relieved that she was gone before he awoke. They had shared a bed but not each other the night before. He didn't know who was to blame, and he wondered if their relationship had become so fragile that a single change in their pattern could cause the fabric to unravel.

He scratched an annoying itch on his lip and cheek. Maddy still needed to come to terms with the fact that Dillon had found himself again. He was no longer a boy who needed rescue, but a man, more comfortable with himself than he had
ever been. If Maddy truly did love him, she would come to accept that.

There was a knock at the door, and Dillon opened it to Anselm, Tessic's valet, a good-natured Swede who had suffered to learn Hebrew. He had pledged himself into Tessic's service after Tessic led a campaign to find the man's daughter a marrow donor.

“Mr. Tessic asked that I should bring you this.” He gave Dillon a hand-held mirror. When Dillon looked up for an explanation, Anselm only shrugged. “It is my understanding that it is a gift to you.”

Once Anselm had left, Dillon turned it over to see if it said anything on the back, but it did not. Well, Tessic was nothing if not enigmatic. Dillon had come to find the puzzles he posed entertaining.

Dillon put the mirror down, and dressed for breakfast. As he pulled on his polo shirt, he felt the smooth flow of the fabric over his face. There was something different about it, and it registered only faintly in his mind. It was as he slipped on his socks that it occurred to him that the shirt wasn't different at all, it was his face. Then he looked down to the mirror he had left on the edge of the dresser.

In an instant he knew, even before he picked up the mirror to look.

The face he saw reflected in the oval was not the face he had gone to bed with. That face had been shredded and paved with scars from one cheek to the other, across his lips, down to his chin. Those scars were mere shadows now, and as he touched his face, he could feel them dissolving as good skin regenerated to replace it. There was a growing ache in his mouth as well. Blood began to spill from the corners of his mouth, and by the time he reached for a towel to wipe it away, new molars had
sprouted from the empty sockets left from Maddy's bullet.

There was only one explanation for this, and now he could put a name to the presence he had felt upon waking. Forgetting about Maddy and Tessic, he raced out of the room, his shoes barely on his feet.

He hurried down the hall toward the winding staircase that led down to the penthouse living room, hearing voices below. But as he neared the stairs, his enthusiasm took on a flavor of apprehension.

He took the stairs slowly, letting the room below move carefully into his view. Maddy was there, and Tessic. Neither had seen him yet. He was surprised to see Drew Camden there, and finally Winston. Drew, the first to notice Dillon, rapped Winston on the arm, and Winston turned toward the stairs.

Dillon found himself frozen on the last step as Winston saw him. Things were changing again for him. This controlled equilibrium Tessic had so painstakingly prepared would be violated by that final step into the room. Dillon opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing to say, and he could read the same uneasy ambivalence in Winston as well. This long-awaited reunion had brought with it an unexpected fear.

“Where the hell have you been for eight months?” Winston asked, the first to break the silence.

Dillon shrugged. “Out of sight,” he answered. “And out of mind.”

And then Winston gave him the hint of a smile. “No surprise there—you've always been out of your mind.”

Dillon took that final step down into the room, and crossed the floor to Winston, as Winston came toward him. Caught off guard by their own momentum, they nearly toppled one another in a bruising hug. Dillon felt a charge within the embrace—a surge of energy as Winston's power added to
Dillon's, their harmonics fitting together like a major fifth. The tingling sensation in Dillon's face peaked, then vanished, and he knew that the last of the scars were now gone. “I was starting to think I'd never see you again,” Dillon said.

Winston pulled away at the precise moment Dillon expected he would. “All right, let's not get all touchy-feely about it.”

Dillon laughed. Whatever else might change, some things would always stay the same. He turned to Drew, offering a quick greeting, then returned his attention to Winston. “The army had me in lockdown like King Kong,” Dillon said, and went on to explain his months of captivity. Then Winston filled him in on his travels, but it was obvious that he was dancing around the things that were really on his mind, as was Dillon. Finally Dillon said, “Okoya's back.”

Winston looked away for a moment. “I know.” Dillon sensed there was more he knew, but Winston just said, “We'll talk about it later. Tell me how you wound up here.”

M
ADDY WATCHED THE TWO
of them in the center of the large room, feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic. This was a relationship she had no place in. For as long as she had known Dillon, he had been alone and unique. But now the dynamic had changed. He and Winston spoke as if no one else in the world existed—as if the two were part of their own private universe. They belonged with each other, and Maddy wondered if it would be this way if they came together with Lourdes, too. Would their confluence serve only to push Maddy further and further away? It was small and selfish, this kind of jealousy, but she couldn't purge herself of it.

Make sure you know your purpose in Dillon's life,
Tessic had said. Now, as she watched Dillon and Winston, she wondered if she had any place in Dillon's life at all. Tessic, however,
didn't appear to have any doubts of his own tenure among the starshards. Across the room, he watched in silence, content, for the time, to be an observer.

Drew, who apparently shared the curse of the periphery, came over to introduce himself to her.

“Do you live here with Tessic?” he asked.

She wanted to be angry at the suggestion, but what was the point? “No. I'm a friend of Dillon's.”

“Ah,” said Drew. The two watched Dillon and Winston for a few more moments. Winston was relating an encounter he had had with Lourdes. Something about a cruise ship. Dillon hung on his every word. Then Drew said to Maddy, “You can't get close to them, you know?”