The Messenger

31

Amanda finished the last of the parchment pages and set them carefully on the desk. All her first thoughts were of Tyler, and what he had been through. She thought of him spending so many years keeping secrets, going to one deathbed after another.

A little earlier, she had heard him return, heard him speaking softly to Shade as he walked down the hallway past her room. She thought of going to him, to talk to him about the pages he had left for her.

She hesitated.

She asked herself if she believed what she had just read.

Yes, she thought, I do.

And yet, none of this fit into her experience. She told herself sternly to consider the possibility that he was crazy, convinced of his delusions, but right out of his head-or that this was a hoax. She knew she had to be on guard against con men-that had been drilled into her own head from childhood on.

Okay, if this was a hoax, the pages she had just read could have been written yesterday, faked to look aged. But that phrase, “written yesterday,” took her thoughts to the previous day.

No, they couldn’t have been written yesterday. Not while he was lying on a dirt road in the desert, dying. Not with all that had occurred yesterday and today.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

She had seen him revive after the accident. She had seen him heal-twice, now-from serious wounds. She had watched him use his gift with the dying.

He wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t a hoax. Strange, but not a hoax.

She admitted to herself that given the degree of attraction she felt to him, she might not be able to think about him objectively.

She got up again and put on a light robe. She would check on Brad, she decided.

She was crossing the room, headed toward the door to the hallway, when the ghosts appeared. She drew in a sharp breath and put a hand to her throat, but managed not to yelp.

Tyler’s story made her think of them a little differently now, she realized. He didn’t see ghosts, so why did she? She studied each of their faces, trying to read their expressions.

Not disapproving this time, she noticed. Her aunt and uncle looked worried, her parents-serene.

She could not recall a time, during the years her mother lived, when she had ever seen her look like this. Even the childhood photos she had seen of her mother, years before marriage, had not captured this quality. “You’re beautiful, Mom,” Amanda said.

Nothing in her mother’s expression changed-or did it? Something in her eyes. Didn’t they lighten just a little?

Then it occurred to her that they were standing between her and the door.

“Is this a message of some sort?” she asked.

They said nothing. Made no gesture.

She waited.

They drifted toward her.

They had been near her many times over the years, but she had never seen them close distance in this way. She felt frightened, and realized that although they often startled her, they had never before scared her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, hearing the tremor in her voice. “I’m just going to see Brad!”

Her mother seemed to shake her head, just slightly. They came closer still, and she began to feel cold.

Closer yet, and now the air was icy. She shivered. “Don’t!” she whispered.

She turned in blind panic, knocking over a vase that crashed to the floor behind her. She ran to the French doors leading to the deck and wrenched them open. Crossing the deck in quick strides, she gripped the railing and took great gulps of air. The night was cooler now, but still warmer than she had felt in her room.

“Amanda?”

She turned to see Tyler, who must have been standing there all along. Shade was next to him, looking at her with his head cocked to one side.

“Are you all right?” Tyler asked, moving toward her. “I heard something crash-are you all right?” Somewhere inside the house, an intercom tone rang. He ignored it.

“I broke something,” she said, trembling. “A big vase.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, coming closer still, almost touching her now.

His cell phone rang.

“Answer it,” she said, thinking that if someone was dying, she was not going to be the one who kept that person from speaking his last thoughts.

“It’s Alex,” he said, puzzled. He answered. “Hello, Alex, what is it?”

He looked at Amanda with a slight smile as he said, “Everything’s fine. I’m afraid I knocked over a vase… Yes, I appreciate your vigilance. Everything all right otherwise?…Good, I’m glad the two of you are watching over Brad… Yes… Good night, then.”

He put the phone away.

“Thanks for covering for me,” she said, “but if she’s with Ron, he’ll know who’s breaking things.”

“It’s none of Ron’s business, is it? Besides, I don’t think he’ll tell on you. It doesn’t matter.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t even know which vase I broke. I think it was an antique.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then everything that was of value to me in that room remains unscathed.”

She smiled.

“What happened?” he said quietly. “What frightened you? Was it what I gave you to read? If so-”

“No, no! I’m glad you gave that to me. Thank you for trusting me.”

“I believe I’m the one who should thank you.”

He was looking down at her, and she could not mistake what she saw in his eyes. She held her breath, certain that in another moment he would touch her, perhaps even kiss her.

He did reach for her, then dropped his hand. She allowed herself to breathe again, and wondered if she should make the first move. She was distracted as Shade came rushing toward them. Amanda froze, but the dog continued past them.

“Becoming more like me after all, are you, Tyler?” a voice said, startling them both.

Tyler turned, keeping her sheltered behind him.

“I believe that’s the worst insult you’ve given me, Colby,” Tyler said.

Colby laughed.

“Colby?” Amanda said, stepping out from behind Tyler. What was he doing here?

“We meet again,” Colby said, eyeing her up and down. “Although if I’d known how delightful you look in a nightgown…”

Tyler took a step forward. “It’s been a long while, Colby, but if you think the outcome might be different this time-”

Colby raised a hand to his jaw in rueful reminiscence, shook his head, and laughed again. “Temper, temper, Captain Hawthorne. Just for that, I don’t think I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”

“Get out,” Tyler said. “You’re a damned liar, so I don’t care to hear your stories.”

“Damned, certainly,” he agreed. “But aren’t you, as well?”

“Shade,” Tyler said.

“Now, now,” Colby said. “You know Shade will protect you if I truly try to harm you, but he has no interest in me otherwise. Really, Tyler, I hesitate to question your manners, but I do wonder if living in America has been good for you.”

“Get out,” Tyler said. “Must I say it a third time?”

Colby looked at Amanda, then back at Tyler. He smiled. “Miss Clarke doesn’t seem to feel so strongly. In fact, she looks curious about me.”

She was indeed, but she wasn’t going to do anything to help Colby upset Tyler. She stayed quiet.

Colby gave a little bow. “You know, as curious as I am about her in return, I think I will leave-but you might want to keep Miss Clarke with you, Tyler. Otherwise I may come back to renew my acquaintance with her.”

He walked around the corner of the deck.

“Is he gone?” she whispered to Tyler.

“Yes,” he said, still staring after him, as was Shade.

“How did he get in here, past your security?”

“A knack of his,” he said absently. Then in a tight voice, “How did you meet him?”

“At Rebecca’s party.”

“Rebecca’s party?” He frowned. “I didn’t see him there.”

“I think he left before…before we did.”

He turned back to her and seemed to come out of whatever dark thoughts were on his mind. “I apologize for the fright that must have given you. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, but shivered.

He put an arm around her and said, “Let’s go inside.” He started to steer her toward her room, then stopped. “I have a question to ask of you, Amanda, and I hope you know you can answer honestly. I have no doubt that if I take you back to your room tonight, Colby will…will get past my security again, and…visit you.” His face showed a kind of grim determination as he said, “If you would prefer to wait for him…”

“No.”

He visibly relaxed. “Then I have a suggestion to make, and I hope you will understand that my reason for making it is your protection. You know that I don’t need sleep?”

“Yes-except with the fevers, right?”

“Yes, but this has nothing to do with the fevers. If you would allow it, I would watch over you tonight.”

“Watch over me?”

“What I’m asking is-would you please sleep in my room tonight? I’ll be near you, but I promise I won’t-I won’t impose on you.”

Telling him that it would hardly be an imposition didn’t seem like such a great idea. Obviously, he didn’t exactly have the hots for her, since he was able to suggest that she sleep in his bed-alone. And when she thought about it, why should someone with a couple hundred years of experience want anything to do with her? He probably thought of her as a child. This offer of watching over her was one indication of how likely it was that that was indeed how he viewed her.

Her pride nearly made her refuse the offer. Then she thought of returning to her room, and the ghosts, and Colby’s threat.

She’d be near Tyler. He wouldn’t let her come to harm. And maybe, if they were able to talk a little, she’d understand him better.

“All right,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and she could hear his relief.

If there was a little awkwardness in the moments when she got into the bed, that became secondary to a moment of sweet pleasure when he sat next to her and combed his fingers through her hair.

“Good night, Amanda,” he said, and lightly kissed her temple before turning off the bedside lamp.

“Good night, Tyler,” she said as he stood. She inhaled the scent of him from the pillow and smiled ruefully to herself in the darkness. You are pathetic, she told herself, but inhaled again.

By the moonlight, she could see him standing near the doors leading to the deck. She could just make out his features.

“How long do you think you will live here?”

“I don’t usually stay anywhere more than half a dozen years. Ten years at most.”

“This is L.A., Tyler. No one ages.”

“I will admit that it is a little easier to have my…differences…go unnoticed in a big city, or any place where people live out their lives without paying much attention to their neighbors, but eventually I’ll have to pull up stakes.”

“People in Southern California move often, too,” she said. “Ron’s grandfather was the only one of our neighbors who lived here for more than five or six years.”

“That may be so, but over time-well, the bureaucracy catches on. I can’t, for example, look as if I’m twenty-four on all my DMV records or passports.”

“Oh. What do you do?”

“Let’s just say I’ve become as good a forger as Adrian ever was, and if you’d like to visit some of the cemeteries where I’m supposedly buried as my own ancestor, it will be quite a tour. I differ from Adrian in that I did not murder anyone to fill a coffin.” He paused. “I will admit that this age of computer records has made it a little more difficult, but I have managed.”

“You do know that Ron’s an excellent hacker, don’t you?”

He smiled. “Yes. We’ve found it an area of mutual interest. And-I am fortunate because some of the people I’ve helped have been willing to help me without asking a lot of questions.”

“Or come to work for you, like Alex and Ben?”

“Although I pay them, I do regard them more as loyal friends than employees.” He paused. “I say that knowing that in another five or ten years, I’ll have to abandon them. Keep this in mind, Amanda-sooner rather than later, I’ll have to pull up roots.”

He couldn’t deliver the message any plainer than that, could he?

She felt a kind of despair, then told herself to grow a spine. He had already told her more about himself than he had told anyone else. If he didn’t care about her, he wouldn’t have brought her into his bed-even if he wasn’t in it with her. Yet.