Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (2 page)

I set his leather saddlebag on the floor beneath the table. Cool bag. “I’ve seen you here before.”

“I’ve seen you, too,” he said.

This actually surprised me. Never once had I noticed him look up from his keyboard.

“Are you a writer?” I asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Either that or you really, really hate your laptop.”

He grinned. I grinned. My inner alarm remained silent. Always a good sign. We did this for another twenty seconds. The silence was not uncomfortable or unpleasant.

I studied him. Full lips, hint of gray in his short beard. Lots of laugh lines. Could probably use some lotion on his skin. Strong hands. Nails chewed. Bad habit. V-neck tee-shirt. Chest hair poking out. A ring on his right hand. A thick squarish watch on his left. North Face jacket hanging on the chair behind him. Nice duds. Nothing about him suggested that I knew him.

And yet… I
did
know him. Somehow. “You’re probably wondering why I’m sitting here.”

He reached for the recently-saved coffee. As he drank, he continued to take me in, his eyes going from my hair to my face to my body. They might have lingered on my boobs a little. I gave him a pass. This time.

“I think I know why you’re here,” he said. I waited for it, expecting the worst. And by worst, I meant some cheesy come-on. Instead, he surprised me with, “You think you know me, and it’s killing you.”

I nodded, impressed. “Something like that.”

“Or maybe you’re here because you like my beard.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He sighed. “Well, I like it.”

“Someone has to.”

“Ouch,” he said, but smiled anyway.

He set down his drink and glanced at his laptop when a
ping
sounded. I would know that ping from anywhere. It was an instant message. Fang and I had used IMs often in the past. The big blond writer ignored his. On impulse, I reached out with my mind to get a read on him—and drew a total blank. Another immortal? Interesting, as only immortals were closed off to me.

He nodded after a moment. “Yeah, you seem familiar. Really, really familiar.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“No,” he said. “Just the ones who sit across from me at Starbucks and look so damn familiar, it’s driving me crazy.” He paused and pretended to think about it. “So, I guess maybe once a day?”

I laughed. No, I snorted, which made him laugh. Tammy giggled behind us. My telepathic daughter
would
be picking all of this up. Yes, my kids are weird. And no, I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

“Did I used to date you?” I suddenly asked.

He laughed some more and looked me over again. To the betterment of his health, he didn’t linger on my boobs this time. Good boy. “Oh, I would remember if I used to date you.”

“Is that a compliment?” I cocked my head.

“Very much so.”

“Good, then I won’t have to give you a public noogie.”

“A public noogie?”

“Yeah, you want one after all?”

He raised his hand and laughed hard. Easy to get along with. Effortless familiarity. God, I
knew
him. I tried again to penetrate his thoughts. No luck. But, he didn’t seem immortal. He seemed very normal. Too normal.

When he was done laughing, he said, “You sound kind of badass.”

“I have to be.”

“And why’s that?”

“I’ve got two kids.”

He nodded. “Mad mom in minivan and all that?”

“Close,” I said, picturing my minivan parked just outside the doors here, a minivan with a fresh dent along the passenger side fender, a result of me backing into a shopping cart. Lord knows my inner warning system goes haywire when someone has ill intentions for me, but far be it for it to alert me when I’m about to put a $700 dent in my van.

Stupid warning system.

I studied him some more. The beard. The blue eyes. The chipped front teeth. The overbite.

“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?” He grinned. He seemed to be enjoying this a hell of a lot more than I was. The bastard.

“Bonkers.” I chewed my lip. Tapped my nails on the circular, slightly scarred table. I asked him where he went to high school. He told me. No dice. But his high school hadn’t been very far, just a city away.

“What year did you graduate?” he asked.

I told him. He shook his head, reached for his iced coffee. When he was done sipping, he set it back into the wet ring. Bull’s eye.

We next went through friends, jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends. No connection anywhere. No friends of friends. Nothing. His name, I learned, was Jon.

“Maybe we sat next to each other on an airplane trip,” he offered. “Or shared a seat on a train.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe our eyes met across a crowded room, and we’ve never forgotten each other.”

“Romantic, but no.”

“Maybe I know you from another life?” he suggested.

Okay, that hit me. Another life. Another time. Another place. And something in the here and now tugged at me, reminding me that I knew him. Great. “Maybe,” I said.

“But there’s no way to know for sure.” He huffed. “And that sucks.”

“Totally,” I said, then motioned to his laptop. “So, what are you working on, Hemingway?”

“A novel.”

“What kind of novel?”

“A murder mystery.”

I snapped my fingers. “Maybe, I’ve read one of your books.”

“Did you just snap your fingers?”

I giggled a little. “Yes.” God, he was so easy to get along with. “What’s your name?”

“John Grisham.”

I stared at him, knowing my mouth had dropped open stupidly. “Really.”

“No, that was a joke.”

I shook my head and looked back at Tammy, still happily slurping from her drink and kicking her feet, watching us, listening to us. Even from across the room.
Weird kids
.

Hey,
she shot back.

I smiled and gave her a small wave. She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Your kid?” he asked.

“My monster.”

“She’s cute for a monster,” he said.

I like him,
thought Tammy.

Shh,
I hissed silently.
And stop being so nosy.

“So what do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a private investigator.”

“Serious?”

“Serious as my mortgage payment.”

“I used to be a private eye,” he said.

I snapped my head up. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s where I know you.”

“I doubt it. I worked in L.A., and mostly I worked alone.”

“Damn.”

He grinned. “Double damn.”

“So, you write books under Jon?”

“No, I use a pen name.”

I raised my eyebrows. Maybe I had read his books after all. “What’s your pen name?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “No,” he finally said.

“No, what?”

“No, I won’t tell you.”

My heart sank even as my frustration rose. “I could make you tell me.”

“Because you’re a mad mom in a minivan?”

“Because I have my ways,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me your pen name?”

“Because this is more fun.”

“To walk off into the sunset and always wonder?”

“Something like that. Except, I’m going to get into my SUV and drive over to my sister’s house for dinner.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Yes, I do.”

He laughed some more and began gathering his bags. As he did so, I noticed the time on his watch.

“Your time is off,” I said.

He frowned and looked down. “Off?”

“Your watch is two hours fast.”

He looked again. “No, it’s the right time.” He looked at me as I’d lost my marbles. Maybe I had. I looked at the time on my iPhone. Yup, his was two hours off. I showed him the difference.

He leaned over and looked. “Weirdness.”

Then, when he had everything packed, he turned to me and said, “Well, it was certainly fun meeting you, whoever you are.”

“Don’t you want my name?”

“No.”

“Rot in hell,” I said, and crossed my arms.

He laughed loudly, throwing back his head, then slung his cool satchel over his shoulder. “Till we meet again.”

“Bastard.”

He smiled and nodded and left through the side doors. As he passed Tammy, he gave her a small wave. She smiled and waved back.

Once outside, he looked back at me through the big glass window. He winked, adjusted his bag, and, no, he didn’t disappear or fade away. He walked beyond the window and out of sight. No doubt to his SUV.

Whoever the hell he was.

he kids were away, and I wanted to fly.

And I mean
really
fly.

Maybe I was inspired by my kids going to Space Camp. Mary Lou’s kids were supposed to go, but they had the mumps, so Tammy and Anthony got in in their stead.

So here I was, alone.
Free.

For some time now, a very simple question churned in the back of my mind: Just how high could I fly?

It was a legitimate question, one not even Fang had an answer to. Yes, Fang was back in my life now, kind of. Feelings were raw, open and unexplored. We were both hurt. Both confused. For the most part, Fang was not the same Fang I remembered. He was colder now, more calculating, more confident. He was also closed off to me, so that beautiful telepathic bond we’d once shared was gone. But we had, of course, a different kind of connection.

A supernatural bond. A vampiric bond.

Fang was, in fact, the only other vampire I associated with, now that Hanner was gone.

But that’s another story, for another time.

For now, I wanted to fly, as high as I possibly could.

I wanted to test my abilities, test my limitations. Explore myself fully.

It was crazy.

I should be home, doing laundry, or working a case. Not flying high above the treetops. Hell, at the very least, I should be powering through my DVR recordings. I had a whole month of
Nashville
episodes waiting for me. No, I didn’t watch any of the vampire shows. They often got it wrong, or focused on issues that were foreign to me. I didn’t sparkle or keep a diary. And I wasn’t like those other vampires played by beautiful, young actors. My God, I had kids. A dead husband. A sister who was still traumatized by the events of last month. She was getting better, yes, slowly but surely. But for a few weeks there, she’d wanted nothing to do with me. She only wanted to be around her family: her kids and her husband.

She didn’t blame me for her kidnapping. She blamed the situation that I had found myself in, the situation she had been drawn into.

Mostly, she was in shock. Her world had been irrevocably rocked, shaken. The poor thing had thought she would die. Or, at the very least, turned into a creature like me. Then, of course, she had been there when my ex-husband got killed.

Yeah, that had not been a good night for Mary Lou.

I’d told her that I was there for her if she needed me. She didn’t, not now. She needed her family—mumps and all—and I understood that.

I kept soaring, gaining altitude. It was colder up here. I didn’t mind the cold. Hell, I enjoyed it. My God, I live in perpetual cold!

Anyway, the temperature was dropping to near freezing. Near freezing didn’t bother me either. So, I continued up, higher than I ever had before. Higher and higher. My breath didn’t form vapor puffs before me, as the creature I became didn’t need to breathe much. I
did
need to reflect on my life—and flying gave me that chance.