Brightly (Flicker #2) (35 page)

For a while, they sorted through boxes in silence. The sheer number of boxes made the room feel much smaller than it was. Everything was dusty. Lee kept sneezing.

“So,” Henry said, “what exactly did they tell you?”

“Who?”

“Clem and Davis. I know they said
something
. I’m just trying to figure out what you’ve heard.”

“Oh.” Lee felt herself flush a little. “Not that much, actually. They mostly talked about the bar fight.”

Henry winced. “Not my finest hour. Listen, Matt’s not a bad person. He’s just…”

“Kind of an ass?” she supplied.

“That’s one way to put it.”

“He looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe,” Lee said. The look he’d given Filo was harder to read, but no kinder. “Why was he acting like that?”

“I don’t know. He thought it was just going to be him and me, and then it wasn’t.” Henry shrugged. “He likes things to be just so. And when they’re not, he can get…. Well, you saw.”

Lee shook her head. “What’s it like to
date
somebody like that?”

At that, Henry snorted. “Right. I almost forgot your boyfriend is Mr. Wonderful.”

“Mr. Wonderful?” she repeated, raising her eyebrows.

“Oh, come on.” Henry rolled his eyes, but his tone was light. “Don’t act like you don’t know. He’s like a big freaking gummy bear. He looks at you like you’re the greatest thing he’s ever seen, and Davis says he waxes poetic about you. Apparently, it’s nauseating.”

Biting down on her smile, she picked up another book. “What can I say? I lucked out.”

“Well, good for you, I guess.”

“I take it Matt wasn’t quite that way.”

“Not exactly.” Henry ripped the tape from another box. “Just a tip: When all your friends tell you that your boyfriend is a sociopath, actually consider their concerns.”

She grimaced. “That bad?”

Henry shook his head. “He wasn’t so bad with me, usually. It was everyone else. He has a hard time with… people. Humans, especially. He doesn’t trust them.”

“How come?”

“He grew up with his mother’s family, a big clan of fey living out in a forest somewhere. For a long time, his dad didn’t even know he existed. One day, he went to visit this faerie woman for the first time in a few years, and she gave Matt to him. Just handed him over—an eight-year-old kid who didn’t speak any English.”

Frowning, Lee asked, “Why would she do that?”

“Half-breeds have a hard time,” Henry said. “Even among their own family. Matt said his mother thought he’d have a better life with the Guild folk, so she sent him away with his dad.”

“So she was trying to do right by him.”

“I guess she didn’t realize that the Guild folk weren’t so different from her family. Matt didn’t think it was very kind of her.” Henry sighed. “His name’s not actually Matt, you know. I don’t know what his real name is. I just know his dad changed it to Matthew when he brought him to Seattle, and that’s what he goes by now. I’d probably hate humans, too, if I were him.”

“He doesn’t seem to hate you,” Lee pointed out.

Henry shook his head. “That’s different. It’s a power balance thing. It always was.”

“What do you mean?”

Gesturing vaguely with his hands, Henry said, “When we met, I was in a weird place. I’d come out pretty recently. With Matt, it was new territory. He knew exactly what he was doing, exactly who he was and I… didn’t. I went along with him because I couldn’t believe he wanted to be with me in the first place. I was this stupid, lovesick human who did whatever he said, and he really liked that.” He laughed humorlessly. “I mean, I was honored to have the opportunity to be treated like crap by this guy. It was crazy. Can you believe that?”

Lee shrugged. “It’s not that crazy. People will put up with a lot in relationships.”

“You’re telling me. No matter what he did, all he had to do was apologize, and we’d be right back where we started. I always forgave him. I wanted to believe he meant it. He never did, though. And after a while, I stopped liking who I was when I was with him. I didn’t like what I was willing to forgive. So we broke up.”

“You mean you dumped him,” Lee said sagely.

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

“What made you do it?”

He let out a breath. “We were at his place one night. Arguing. We were always arguing then, but that time, it was different. I don’t remember what I said, but it must’ve been the wrong thing, because the next thing I knew, he’d grabbed me by the forearms and he was shaking me, hard. I saw the look in his eyes and it scared the hell out of me. So I shoved him off of me, threw a cup at him and booked it out of there. And that was that.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Do Davis and Clementine know?”

“No. It’s not like it’s some big secret. I just wasn’t in the mood for an I-told-you-so, and it didn’t really come up later.”

“Oh.” Lee thought of what Clementine had said yesterday:
Don’t wuss out on us, Henry.
Somehow, she didn’t think Clem would’ve spoken that way if she knew. Lee couldn’t blame Henry for not wanting to ask Matt any favors. “What’d your mom think of him?”

“I never told her I was seeing him. Clem and Davis didn’t say anything, because I asked them not to. I knew she wouldn’t like him.”

“Because he’s nuts?”

He laughed. “No. Because he’s twenty-one and she’d think that was way too old.”

Lee’s smile died when a heavy thump echoed through the darkness outside the building. She froze. “Did you hear that?”

Henry nodded. “Listen.”

Another thump, and another. The thumps were steady, growing louder and closer.

“I think it’s coming from over there,” Lee said, pointing up the street, though suddenly, she wasn’t sure. The louder the thumping got, the more it echoed and sounded like it was coming from more than one direction.

Henry shook his head and pointed in the opposite direction. “No. That way.”

Lee shivered. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s find Matt and Filo and get out of here.”

“Sounds good to me.”

As they turned toward the door, Lee heard several more thumps, so heavy that she felt their vibrations in the soles of her feet. Through the grimy glass, she glimpsed a large, shadowy shape at the end of the wide window.

Instinctively, Lee grabbed Henry by the shoulder and pushed him behind a nearby stack of boxes. Dropping to the floor, she flung her hand out and watched the glass orb dart to her. She released the energy from it the same way she would release it from her flashlight, watching the green-white light drain away in an instant.

For several long heartbeats, Lee and Henry huddled in the pitch darkness. She hoped fervently that whatever stood outside hadn’t seen their light, but it would’ve been hard to miss.

The sound of splintering wood broke the silence. Lee tried to swallow her scream as what could only be pieces of the door shot through the darkness, but a high-pitched noise escaped her throat anyway. She clapped one hand over her mouth, her heart pounding. For a moment, nothing happened.

She heard the soft scuff of Henry’s shoes on the floor, felt his hands on her shoulders, pulling her toward him. It was a moment before she understood. Then she turned and, keeping low, began to grope her way around the stacks of boxes, toward the other side of the room, away from the door.

The darkness was so complete that Lee’s eyes burned, straining to see. When she felt her shoulder bump a box, her heart constricted. As the stack of boxes toppled, she winced. She thought she could hear every single book spill onto the floor.

The floor shook as something huge began to move. Wood groaned and cracked loudly. Nearby, Henry whispered, “Lee—the light.”

She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. Whatever it was, it knew they were here. They might as well get a look at it; they wouldn’t manage well in the dark. Lee squeezed the glass orb in her hand and it flared, illuminating the room.

Struggling to force itself through the doorway was a massive figure, at least eight feet tall. It was human-shaped, but smooth and featureless, like an unfinished doll. The figure had no eyes or nose, only a grim slash of a mouth. Its body was an even, faded brown, like it had been sculpted from clay.

Lee’s hands shook, the orb’s light flickering between her fingers. Even without eyes, the figure seemed to be looking right at her.

At last, the giant squeezed through the doorway. When it straightened, the top of its head brushed the ceiling. Behind her, Henry stood. In the green-white light, his eyes looked very dark. The giant’s face turned toward him and took a heavy step forward, knocking boxes aside with its massive legs.

With one swift sweep of its arm, the giant knocked Henry off his feet and sent him flying across the room and into the window. The glass cracked, bending outward, but didn’t shatter. Henry slid down the wall. When he slumped onto the floor, he didn’t move.

The giant turned again, taking a step toward Henry. On impulse, Lee darted around the giant, toward the door. She picked up a book and flung it as hard as she could. It struck the giant squarely between the shoulders, but bounced off, fluttering ineffectually to the floor. The giant continued to lumber across the room, one slow, heavy step at a time. She grabbed another.

“Hey!” she shouted, punctuating her shouts with projectiles. “Look over here!
I—said—look!
”

She struck the back of the giant’s head and it paused. The massive head turned slowly, rotating all the way around, fixing her with its strange, sightless gaze. Then its body turned, too, and it began to walk toward her.

Okay,
Lee chanted mentally, scurrying backward.
Okay. I can work with this.

If she ran now, she could at least draw the giant away from Henry, who still hadn’t stirred.

She turned. She ran.

As she flew down the street, the glass orb kept up, streaking through the darkness. She knew it was loudly advertising her location, but for the moment, that was the point. She turned random corners, adrenaline flooding her veins, not caring that she didn’t know where she was going. The Underground wasn’t so huge that she wouldn’t be able to find her way back.

The sound of the giant’s footfalls receded, like she was really outpacing it, and she allowed herself to slow to a trot and dim the light. Just beyond its glow, she could see the fronts of more buildings, all dilapidated signs and dirty windows.

In the distance, she still heard the thumping. Lee ducked around the next corner and huddled behind a building. She clutched the light in one hand and dimmed it until it was the barest flicker shivering inside the glass. Then she let it go out completely.

Lee held her breath as the giant’s crashing steps grew louder, closer. She closed her eyes against the darkness, willing the giant to pass her by. The ground trembled as the footsteps slowed, very close to her. Could that thing see in the dark? No, she thought, that was ridiculous. It had no eyes. But maybe it had another way of detecting the objects around it.

The footsteps stopped. Lee couldn’t tell exactly where the giant was, but it was close. Her body tensed and she held her breath. She started to gather her legs beneath her, preparing to spring up and run. In the darkness, she thought she heard something shift, a rough whisper of stone on stone.

She couldn’t stop the scream that passed her lips when a massive, stony hand seized her by the shoulder and hauled her into the air. The giant shifted its grip, tossing Lee a bit and then wrapping its fingers tightly around her torso. One of her arms was pinned painfully to her side; the other arm was free.

It was a struggle to concentrate, to hold herself together long enough to channel magic into the orb, but she managed it. She gripped the orb in her trapped hand, but when the light flared its brightest, she could see the giant clearly. It lifted Lee until her eyes were level with the spot where its eyes should’ve been. She screamed again, more out of anger than pain. Her whole body was singing with adrenaline, but no matter how she struggled, how she kicked at the solid chest and pried at the giant’s hand with her free arm, the giant didn’t budge.

The giant’s mouth opened a fraction, as if it wanted to ask her a question. In the shadowy pit of its mouth, Lee glimpsed a little square of white paper marked with a black symbol. Without giving herself time to hesitate, she darted her free hand into the giant’s mouth and seized the paper.

The moment she had the paper in her fist, the giant’s massive fingers went limp, releasing her. Lee dropped like a stone and landed hard. The orb fell from her hand, but it floated, glowing softly.

While she lay stunned, struggling to suck air into her lungs, the giant tipped forward. Lee scrambled to the side, barely making it out of the way before it crashed to the ground, sending a cloud of dirt into the air.

For a long minute, Lee crouched there like a cat, waiting for the dust to settle and trying to slow the wild beating of her heart. She panted and glared at the giant.

Slowly, she uncurled her fist. It was only she was staring down at the crumpled piece of paper in her palm that she realized she’d been digging her fingernails into the heel of her hand, leaving angry half-moons in her flesh. Shivering, she stuffed the paper into her pocket and stood.
In the distance, she heard footfalls, rapid as a drumbeat. Whirling around, she raised her light. Another light, this one bright blue, bobbed farther down the street. “Filo!”