The Immortal Game (book 1) (6 page)

Sage was at the espresso counter with Langston, the tall poet—Ash and Sage’s brother.

A sudden darkness came over her, followed by an unexpected shiver of fear. Maybe it was the exam. Maybe she hadn’t done as well as she imagined. She shook her head and tried to chase the feeling away, but it lingered.

Sage looked up when Ruby reached the counter. Langston was leaning with one elbow on the glass top. A woman in a short denim skirt rested against the curve of his bent body.

“Rubes,” he said, as if he knew her, though no one had ever called her that before.

Sage held a tattered book with a single gold word stamped on the stained yellow cover: Myths. “Look at the illustrations,” she said as if Langston hadn’t spoken. “Hand-drawn lithographs.” She opened the book to a picture of a young woman with long flowing hair standing in a field of wild flowers. The woman held a large bouquet against her body with one arm. It would have been an idyllic scene if it weren’t for the black robed figure coming up out of the ground pulling her down as if he would drag her into the earth with him.

“Hades and Persephone,” Sage offered.

“Yeah, I think I remember that one,” Ruby said, thinking back to her mythology class from the previous term. “He’s the god of the dead. Right? He kidnapped Persephone and took her to the Underworld to make her his queen. Or something.” She paused, not sure if she had the story right. She had skimmed most of the reading in that class.

“Or something,” Langston said sarcastically.

Sage shot him a dark look. “Ruby, this is Langston.”

He stood up to his full height. He was at least six-and-a-half feet tall. Ruby felt the strain in her neck as she looked at his classic sharp features, platinum-blond hair, and sky blue eyes that were a foot above hers. He wore white pants and a green polo shirt. The smell of his cologne was subtle, but out of place in the Athenaeum, with grungy college kids sitting at most of the tables and the heavy smell of coffee in the air. He wasn’t a typical coffeehouse poet. He might have been more at home at a country club with a stem of champagne in his hand.

“A pleasure.” He winked. She took his hand to shake it but almost pulled away when he turned it over, bowed, and brought her hand up to his warm lips to kiss the back.

She smiled awkwardly at the antiquated gesture and glanced at the dark-haired woman standing there. She wore thick eyeliner and a heavy metal T-shirt with the denim skirt that just managed to cover her backside. No one introduced the woman. Ruby smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.

“I was about to read my latest poem: “The Immediacy of
Lust
.” He drew out the last word and glanced at the woman in the denim skirt. An ivy leaf stuck out of the black journal he held up like it was a bookmark.

“What can I get you, Ruby?” Sage asked, ignoring Langston.

“Double latte, please,” she said, glad Sage had changed the subject. “And …” she peered into the glassed-in case of Ambrosia Bars, brown and plain looking, “
that
Ambrosia Bar.” She pointed to a fat one with golden filling oozing out the side.

Sage measured out the coffee and looked at Ruby. “You okay? You look tired.”

Ruby nodded. She didn’t want to talk about the exam. It turned out she wouldn’t have to.

Ash was suddenly there, standing next to her, close enough that she could feel heat coming off his body. She glanced at him and noted in an instant the broken-in jeans, the blue Henley shirt, the black cowboy boots. His hair was unruly. Part rodeo, part grunge.
Very un-country club.
A giddiness rose in her chest. She tried to swallow it down.

“Hey,” he said, in that low husky voice that made her stomach flutter.

She looked at the chess table. The blond woman he had been playing reached for her bag, glanced in their direction with a scowl, and turned to leave.

“She beat you?” Ruby asked.

“What?” His eyebrows came together in a V. “No.” He searched her face and shrugged. “It was a draw.”

Her eyes widened. Jealousy rose up, not at the woman’s beauty, but that maybe she could beat him too. “Really?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No way.”

Ruby laughed despite her lingering doubts about the exam.

Ash smiled and the room brightened, dark clouds lifting. Sage handed Ruby the latte and the Ambrosia Bar, but her grey eyes were on Ash.

“Thanks.” Ruby took the plate and the mug. Sage ignored her when she tried to pay.

Ash followed her to a table and sat in a chair across from her. He rested one boot on the opposite knee. “No more tests, right?” He raised both eyebrows in a quick flash and smiled. “Let’s go do something.”

“Ash …” She started. She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t. That
really
it was time for her to study; there was
always
another test. But now that he was sitting across from her, she didn’t seem to have the words for any of it.

“It’s Friday,” he said. “We have all weekend.”

“I … I …” she stammered.
We?

…

Ruby stood at the bottom of the sixty-foot cliff with the briny smell of the ocean all around. Seagulls cawed overhead. She watched Ash pull himself up with ease as he reached from one impossibly small crevice to another on the sheer rock face.

An orange rope flecked with blue was tied loosely around a belt loop on his jeans, trailing down behind him. She bit at the inside of her cheek as she watched. She had never been rock climbing before but she knew a rope tied to your jeans would do you no good if you fell. Ash had insisted that he would be safe free-climbing. “I know every hold on this rock,” he had assured her, but still her knees felt weak.

He told her that when it was her turn to climb he would attach one end of the rope to the harness she was wearing. The other end would run through an anchor that he would set at the top, and then run back down to a belay device on his harness. If she fell, the rope would catch her.

She turned to the empty beach behind her, unable to watch. The rock was half a mile down an unassuming trail they had accessed from the coastal highway. “Just a place I know,” he had said, as he directed her to drive the little blue truck toward the Pacific.

She glanced to his boots lying at the base of the rock, thrown together with her worn sneakers. They had changed them out for rock climbing shoes. A chalk bag hung from each of their waists in the back.

She dug her feet into the sand and watched Ash disappear over the top of the dome-shaped rock, gone to find a place to set the anchor and attach the rope. He climbed down with the same surefooted ease he had climbed up, as steady as if he were on a ladder.

“Okay, you’re ready,” he said after he made a knot that looked like two figure eights, one eight lying inside the other, and slipped a loop of rope into a metal device on the harness he wore. Now they were tied together, connected by this rope that she would rely on for her life. His eyes were the same bright blue she recognized from the railroad bridge when they bungeed off it.

She looked up the rock face and tried to see what she had gotten herself into.

“Good,” he said. “Plan ahead. It’s a lot like chess in that way. You can’t just know your next move. You have to know the one after, and the one after that.”

She mapped out the first ten or fifteen feet in her mind and reached into the chalk bag hanging off her waist. The fine white powder was silky on her skin. It dried the sweat that was already slick on her fingertips.

She placed her right foot at knee level, in a small crack, then reached up to a knob of rock above her head and pulled up. The muscles in her shoulders and forearms tensed. She placed her left foot into a wide fissure. The gripping surface of her climbing shoes gave her traction. She placed her left hand and then moved up with the right.

She looked up and sighted her next move. She stepped high onto a small ledge, then reached far to the right and braced herself by pushing her hand against a crevice. She moved up, slow and steady, not looking back, not looking down, focused in the moment. The rock was rough under her chalked fingertips. She could feel blisters forming.

She was near the top when she placed her foot on an outcropping and felt a slight give. She had already committed to the move. A hot wave coursed through her when the rock broke away. She heard the hollow sound the broken piece made as it bounced down the rock face to the beach below.

Her leg dangled into empty space. Her arms held, though. She was able to look down to search for another foothold. She saw that the brown sandy ground had lost its texture at this distance. Ash, strong and steady when he was next to her, now looked small and unreachable.

Her pulse thrummed through her. A fall would kill her. She tried to remember the rope, thick and secure; her harness, adjusted to fit her exactly; Ash holding the other end of the line. Reason could not reach her. Her arms felt weak. Her other leg, the only thing holding her lower body up, began to shake.

From the ground she heard Ash’s voice. “You can do this,” he called. “Trust your instincts.”

Her eyes searched the rock in front of her: dark, grey, and menacing. Her foot scrambled up and down until it found purchase on a hold that felt tiny and tentative.

She held her body flat against the rock and let her muscles rest. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned back slightly. The moves she had originally intended were just above her. She pulled her left foot up, relying on the unknown footing, and reached with her right hand. In one smooth motion she pulled herself back onto her chosen route.

At the top she could not see her next moves. They were beyond the edge of the domed rock. She felt around and found a well where her two fingertips fit. She hauled herself up in one last push of effort.

Exhausted, she lay flat on top of the cool rock. Her limbs were shaky and tired. Her heart pounded and her shirt was wet with sweat. She rolled onto her back and laughed at the grey sky. Slowly she stood. Her legs wobbled. She looked out to the beach, with its high bluff and deep green forest on one side, and the steel blue ocean on the other.

She closed her eyes and breathed in, filling herself with clean sea air. Her lungs were not big enough for the breath she wanted to take. She wanted to breathe in the world. She would consume it. Make it part of her. Devour it whole.

…

They walked up the path to Ruby’s front door to wait for dinner to be delivered from the Thai restaurant around the corner. The sun was low behind the craftsman houses of her neighborhood and the lone fir tree in her front yard cast a long shadow across the mossy grass. She felt pleasantly wrung out from rock climbing and in the comfortable silence she found the opening she was waiting for.

“Ash …” she hesitated. “Did you know I was going to stop at that coffeehouse on Fremont yesterday?” It sounded insane, but it was as if he had been expecting her.

He laughed, but it was shallow, not his usual deep gut laugh. “How would I know that?”

“I don’t know.” She ran her hand through her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “It was an odd coincidence.”

“I was there when you came in,” he said simply. His face was turned away from hers, looking at the college rental next to her house.

“Oh,” she said, still thinking that it was
too
coincidental. He hadn’t even bought anything, she realized. He had just been sitting there. But what was she suggesting? That he had somehow appeared there right before she went in?

Her key shook in her hand as she slid it into the lock of her wooden front door. Once inside she realized how empty and quiet she was used to the house being. Ash filled the room the same way he filled the cab of the little truck, with his height, and his voice, and his presence. Her limbs felt lighter than normal, like her movements were exaggerated and overly deliberate.

The front door opened at the base of a long set of stairs. To the right was the TV room. To the left was what her father had always called the front room. She went left out of habit.

Ruby’s mother had bought most of the furniture in the house when she and Ruby’s father first moved in as a young couple. The wood-and-jacquard couch, the hand-hooked Oriental rug, and even the subtly patterned drapes had all been her mother’s choices. Ruby’s father had never bothered to redecorate after she died.

Pictures from the major events of Ruby’s life marched up the wall along the staircase. One of Ruby’s early nannies had started the photo collection. Her father had kept up with it over the years and Ruby had added pictures of her parents to the mix.

Dirt swirled around her father in his most recent photo. The wind had been created by helicopter blades carrying out the last of the wounded, he had told her. He was smiling in the picture, tired and satisfied, frozen forever in the past.

Ruby’s stomach clenched. Another entire day of studying wasted.

“What’s wrong?” Ash asked, though she hadn’t said anything.

“Nothing. Do you want a beer?” she said, dusting off the seldom-used role of host.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, through the front room. She cringed when she got there. Several cardboard containers sat on the counter. Thai noodles stuck out of one.

She collected the containers in a lopsided stack and put the used forks in the sink. Ash was only a few steps behind her. She turned to gauge his reaction but he didn’t seem to notice the overly ripe scent that reminded her garbage day had come and gone again, and he wasn’t looking around at the dirty glasses by the edge of the sink, or at the day-old coffee in the coffeemaker. He was looking at her.

She glanced at the hollow at the base of his throat and then briefly at his lips. She reached for the fridge handle and cast around for something to talk about. “What’s the number thirty-seven?” she asked, thinking of how he had ordered by number off the Thai menu without even glancing at it.

“We’ll find out.” His voice was soft. He leaned against the counter, absurdly gorgeous in her faded little kitchen.

“You don’t care?”

“I like to be surprised,” he said.