Silence (16 page)

Chase added, by way of explanation. “Like the jacket?”

“It’s…interesting,” Alison replied.

“I can’t stand it either.”

Alison laughed again. Emma turned to stare at Chase.

Alison laughed again. Emma turned to stare at Chase.

“What, do I have an enormous zit or something?”

“She is staring at you,” Eric replied, when Emma failed to answer, “because you are actualy capable of charm, and this is the first time you’ve shown any.”

“I figured she’s used to no charm.” Chase’s smile was very smug. “She’s spent the week with you, after al.”

Alison was polite enough not to laugh out loud at this but amused enough not to be able to keep the smile off her face.

“Are you sure you’re not brothers?”

“Please,” Chase said, at the same time as Eric said “Positive.”

He turned to glance at Michael, Connel, and Oliver, who existed at the moment in their own world.

“I don’t suppose you play Dungeons and Dragons?” Alison asked Chase.

“Not often.”

Emma stared at him again.

“What?”

“Fourth edition rules, if you want to join the discussion,”

Alison said politely.

Emma gave Alison a look, and Alison laughed. “Or not.”

“Have you seen Amy at al?”

“Sort of. Her brother showed up yesterday, with a friend from law school in tow.”

“Good looking?”

“Very. And impeccably dressed. I think. Do you want to meet him?”

“No.”

“No.”

“Wel, then, I suggest we move,” Alison replied. “And quickly, because they’re heading this way.”

“Emma!” Amy’s voice—which was, like the rest of her, exceptional—cleared the distance between them as Emma squared her shoulders and fixed a friendly, party smile to her lips.

She turned in time to see Amy step through the open doors, folowed by the sound of very loud music, Skip, and a stranger.

Amy was wearing a black and white dress. It was cut to suggest, in some ways, a harlequin, but it was fitted, and the black diamonds that trailed from throat to hem glittered; the white was soft and pale in comparison. Her hair framed her face and fel, in a thick drape, down her back. Her shoes were the inverse of the dress; black with a single white diamond.

She looked, in short, fabulous. Emma, who had long since given up any attempt to compete with Amy, repressed a sigh.

Which, Amy being Amy, was noticed anyway. “Wel?” she said, demanding her due.

“You are gorgeous. And I love the shoes!” Emma, on the other hand, was perfectly wiling to grant what was due.

“Notice the earrings?”

“No—come here.”

Amy did. The earrings were also black and white—but they were the yin and yang symbols, not the straight lines of trapezoids. “Nicely understated,” Emma told her.

Amy nodded, satisfied. “I like your dress,” she added. Which, to be fair, was a genuine compliment, because if Amy didn’t like to be fair, was a genuine compliment, because if Amy didn’t like your dress, the best you could pray for was silence.

Because she had perfect timing, Amy paused and then looked at Chase. Whose dress, for want of a better word, she didn’t care for. “Emma?”

“This is Chase,” Emma said quickly. “He’s a good friend of Eric’s.”

“Realy?”

“Eric doesn’t dress him,” Emma said, with a perfectly straight face.

Chase, on the other hand, had falen silent. While Emma was used to this reaction when a new guy was put in the vicinity of Amy, it was the wrong type of silence for someone like Chase.

She glanced at him and then turned to look at Eric.

Both of them were utterly stil. And both of them wore the same expression, or the same lack of expression; it was as if something had sucked al the life and warmth from their faces.

What it left was disturbing.

Amy noticed it as wel, but, being Amy, she ignored it. She turned as Skip and his friend joined them. “Skip,” she said, “this is Eric, a friend from school. He’s new here,” she added helpfuly. “This is his friend, Chase. Eric, Chase, this is my brother. And this is his friend, Merrick Longland. They met at the beginning of term at Dalhousie.”

Merrick Longland stepped into the light, standing with his back to Michael and his friends, who remained entirely unaware of encroaching strangers. He was, as Alison had said, impeccably dressed. The dress in question was casual, not impeccably dressed. The dress in question was casual, not formal, but there was something about the crisp lines of a loosely fitted coal jacket and the colarless white shirt beneath it that suggested formality. The shirt was partly unbuttoned, and the teltale gleam of a gold pendant lay across his exposed chest.

Emma didn’t notice what kind of pants he wore. She noticed that his hair was a short, clean-cut brown, that his cheekbones were high, that his chin was neither too prominent nor too slight; she noticed that his brows were thick.

But mostly, in that quiet moment that exists just after you’ve drawn and held breath, she noticed his eyes. They were gleaming, faintly, as if lit from behind, and she could not honestly say, then or later, what color they actualy were.

Merrick smiled, and it was a deep, pleasant smile; it transformed the lines of his face without exactly softening them.

“Merrick,” Amy said, although her voice now sounded quiet and slightly distant, “this is Emma Hal. She’s one of the Emery Mafia,” she added.

“Emma?” Merrick said. He held out a hand.

Emma stared at it, as if she couldn’t quite remember what to do. Shaking her head, she grimaced. She held out her hand in turn, and he grasped it firmly in his.

His hand was cold. Not like ice, but like winter skin. She started to pul back, which no amount of apology could excuse or convert into good manners, but his hand tightened.

“Oh, Emma,” he said softly. “We’ve only just been introduced, and I think we have a lot to say to each other.”

introduced, and I think we have a lot to say to each other.”

“I—I’m here with friends,” she replied, knowing how lame it would sound even before the words left her mouth.

“Ah. Yes. That could be awkward.” His eyes, the eyes that were somehow luminescent, flared in the dark of night sky, becoming what the soul of fire would be, if fire had a soul.

And then the world stopped.

IN THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF THE PATIO, al the shadows cast against the stonework suddenly stopped moving. The music, transformed by solid glass into the thumping of loud bass, continued its steady, frantic beat—but no one was shouting to be heard.

No one, it appeared, was talking much at al. She couldn’t tel if they were even trying; she couldn’t look away from his face.

if they were even trying; she couldn’t look away from his face.

She knew. She’d tried. But she could see their shadows— Amy’s, Skip’s. Alison, Eric, and Chase cast shadows that fel past her line of vision.

“Better?” Merrick Longland asked.

“No.”

He smiled. It wasn’t meant as a threatening smile; Emma was certain he meant it to be friendly. But her hand was cold, and she could have shaved her dog with the edges around that smile. She tried to dredge up an answering smile from somewhere, and she managed. Unfortunately, it was the same as the smile you offered a dangerously furious dog while you were carefuly reaching for a big stick.

“What have you done?” she asked, speaking softly because the unnatural quiet almost demanded it.

“I’ve provided us with a little bit of privacy.”

“I don’t think we need it.” It was hard to keep her voice even.

“It’s better. For them,” he added. “There are things I have to tel you—things about yourself—that they don’t need to hear.”

“Need to hear?”

He nodded. “I’l be brief, because I have to be; this is costly.

When Skip mentioned that his sister was having a party, I didn’t realize I would have to control a smal vilage’s worth of teenagers.”

She laughed; it was a thin sound, and it quavered too much.

“It’s one of Amy’s parties.” From his expression, it was clear that there were people in the world who hadn’t heard of Amy’s that there were people in the world who hadn’t heard of Amy’s parties. And while Emma knew this was in theory possible, it wasn’t often that she met them.

“We can explore the delights of Amy’s party in a few minutes.” He was clearly underimpressed. “What I have to say to you is important. Your life is in danger. I was delayed some few days in my arrival,” he added, “but so were our enemies, it appears.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re alive. The delay might have cost you your life. There are people who wil be hunting you, and if they had found you before I did, you’d be dead. But I have some measure of defense against them.”

She nodded carefuly. “I’m wiling to talk about this, but I want you to let go of my hand.”

“I imagine you do. And I wil. I mean you no harm,” he added. “I traveled here, at some risk to myself, to save your life.”

“Who would want to kil me?” But she knew. And it seemed very important at this minute that she keep that knowledge to herself.

“No one you would know. But they know what you are, Emma. And I know what you are. Shal I show you?”

She started to say no. She wanted to say no. But she said nothing, mute, as the hair on the back of her neck began to rise.

She felt as if she were at the science center again, one hand on either of two bals that produced enough static to literaly make al the hair on her head stand on end.

al the hair on her head stand on end.

It wasn’t as bad as that. But it felt that way.

“Come,” he said, in a commanding tone of voice. “Show yourself.”

Emma frowned, her brows drawing together. She even started to speak, but she lost the words. Beside Longland, thin tendrils of what looked like smoke began to appear in the air. He spoke a word that was so sharp and curt she didn’t catch it. Didn’t want to. Eyes wide, she watched as the smoke began to coalesce into a shape that was both strange and familiar. A woman’s shape. A young woman.

Her eyes were the same odd shade of light that Brendan Hal’s eyes had been; her hair was black, and her skin was pale, although whether that was because of the lighting, Emma couldn’t say. She wore a sundress, the print faded, the material unfamiliar—although Emma had no doubt that Amy would recognize it instantly if she could see it.

“Helo,” Emma said to the girl, speaking quietly. It was an entirely different quiet than she had offered Longland, because the girl was afraid.

The girl looked at Emma but did not speak.

“You see her, don’t you?” Longland asked.

Emma nodded. “Who was she?”

Longland frowned. “Who was she?” It was clearly not the question he expected.

“When she was alive.” Remembering that she actualy had manners, Emma turned her attention to the girl. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”

was rude.”

The girl’s eyes widened slightly.

“My name is Emma Hal,” Emma continued, lifting her left hand, because she couldn’t actualy offer the girl her right one; Longland hadn’t let it go. “What’s yours?”

Longland’s frown deepened. He glanced at the girl; it was a cold glance and a dismissive one. “Answer,” he said curtly.

The girl remained mute.

Longland’s expression shifted again. “Answer her.”

“If she doesn’t want to answer, it’s okay,” Emma said, raising her voice.

Longland said, “When you understand your gift better, you wil understand why you are wrong.” Each word was clipped; he was angry. “Answer her.” When a name failed to emerge, he suddenly lifted a hand.

“Merrick, don’t—”

But he didn’t strike the girl. He yanked, and when he did, Emma could see a thin, golden chain around his fingers. It was fine, like spidersilk, and she had missed it because it was almost impossible to see. But she had seen it, and she was now aware of it and determined to remain so. The strand ran from his hand into the heart of the girl. The girl staggered, her face rippling— literaly rippling—in pain.

“Emily Gates,” the girl replied, and the sound of her voice was so wrong Emma almost cried out in fear. Before she could think, she slapped Merrick, and even as his eyes were widening in shock, she reached out for that golden chain, and she pulled.

The chain snapped in her hand, and she held its end.

Merrick Longland stil held her right hand, however. Al smile, al friendliness, was gone. “You wil give that back to me,” he said, each word distinct and sharp. “Now.”

In answer, Emma tried to yank her right hand free. Longland didn’t move. She tried harder, and reaching out with his left hand, he grabbed her by the chin. “Give it back, Emma. Don’t force me to be unpleasant. No one can hear you,” he added, lowering his voice. “And at parties of this type, bad things sometimes happen.”