White Space (46 page)

“It’s here. I know it’s right …” Eric let out a sudden grunt and hitched up so fast Emma piled into him. Gasping, she tripped, lost her grip on the club, and stumbled just as Eric twisted and made a grab.

“Gotcha,” he said, reeling her into a bear hug. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little breathless. Their faces were inches apart, so close her eyes nearly crossed. “Guess we found the snowmobile.”

“Yup.” His arms tightened, just a tad. “This is kind of nice. You realize they can’t see us.”

Or hear them, probably. Her heart gave a little kick. “I should get the club.”

“It’s not going anywhere, and …” His sapphire-colored eyes fixed on hers. “Things have been so crazy, happened so fast, I want five seconds. Just five seconds where I’m not running or fighting or worrying and freaking out.”

She felt her body relaxing into him, just a smidge. “You never seem freaked out.”

“I am, though, all the time. About Casey, mainly. Learned how to hide it early, though, on account of my dad.” His shoulders moved in a small shrug. “Don’t show a bully how
scared you are because it only makes him want to hurt you more.” His eyes drifted to the fresh bandage she’d put over her forehead. “I wouldn’t have hurt you, you know.”

It took her a second to realize what he meant. “Oh. You mean, after the crash?” From the tingle, she knew her cheeks must be red. “I know. I’m sorry I wouldn’t let you help. It’s just that I …” She hesitated, then thought,
Oh, just tell him
. “I have these metal plates. You know, screwed into my skull, into the bone? They’re actually pretty easy to feel, and I guess I’m kind of self-conscious about them.”

“Plates?” His eyebrows crimped. “Like for a skull fracture?”

“Yes. I mean, that’s another thing they can use them for. The plates are small, but … yeah.”

“Do they hurt?”

It was not the question she’d expected. No one at school knew, but a couple clueless security guards and TSA people wanted to know:
Hey, how’d you get those?
She hated their eyes most of all, the curiosity, the kind of
greed
for a good story about somebody else’s bad luck:
So I met this kid …

“Sometimes. Mainly, the one right here.” She touched the bandage. “I get headaches. Anyway, I didn’t want you to feel them and”—
think I was a freak
—“get weirded out.”

“I wouldn’t have, and I’m not weirded out now. Can I feel it?” He read her hesitation and said, “Will it hurt? I don’t want to hurt you.”

She’d never allowed anyone to touch her face. Not that there’d been guys lined up, waiting their turn. “Give me your hand.” She guided his fingers. “There. That circle?”

“Yeah.” He pulled in a small breath. “Is it metal?”

“Titanium. That one’s got this lacy pattern, kind of steampunk, actually. And there’s another one”—she pulled his fingers to the back of her head—“right here.”

“Hmm.” His hand buried itself in her hair, and she could feel him probing. The pressure was … nice. “Hard to feel that one through the muscle.”

“There are new plates, ones that will absorb into the bone, but I don’t want any more operations.”

“Is it because of scars?” She saw how his eyes sharpened a bit as his fingers found a thin, firm ridge of scar. “You don’t have that many.”

“Yes, I do—tons—but they’re up here.” She pressed his hand to the crown of her head. From his expression, she knew when he found the fleshy seams.
Like Lizzie’s crazy quilt
. “It’s weird. They’re hidden, but I always see them anyway.”

“
I
don’t see anything but you.” His dark blue eyes searched hers. His hand moved to cup the back of her head. “Emma, do you … do you think that when this is over and we get out of here, we could …”

“Yes.” Her heart was a fist knocking against her ribs.
This should be a dream, but it’s not
. She thought of his mouth on her neck, his hands in her hair.
This is like a dream I’ve been waiting to have my entire life
. “I’d like—”

Their rope of linked curtains suddenly jerked hard, once, twice, three times. They jumped and looked at one another, but neither made a move to pull away. Eric gave an answering yank and turned a grin. “They probably think we’re dead.”

“Maybe we better get that gas,” she said.

“In a second. I think …” Eric brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Yeah, I think I definitely need to kiss you now.”

“Yes,” she said, but he was already pulling her mouth to his before she got the word out. His lips were very warm and full and as soft as she’d imagined. They were perfect and so was he. He was everything she had ever wanted or dreamed of. Her skin was electric; her eyes closed as his tongue traced her lips. There was a fluttering in her chest that had nothing to do with fear but was, instead, a sweet ache, a longing; and then she was sighing into his mouth, and they breathed into one another, moving together, her body fitting to his so perfectly that there was no space at all between them and only this moment: in the fog, on the snow, with him.

“God,” he whispered, breaking the kiss, leaning back just far enough to look into her eyes. His cheeks were stained with color. His breathing was ragged. “I’ve wanted that for … God,
forever
, from the first moment. When I saw you, I felt this sense of …”

“Finding.” She was close enough to see his pulse bounding in his neck. “Of finally finding something.”

“Someone.” His hands framed her face. “This is like one of those stupid books, you know? Teenage insta-love. But this is so different. It’s like I was born for you, for
this
. When you talk, your voice is already in my head, and I’m thinking the end of the sentence
with
you. Isn’t that weird?”

“No,” And then her mouth was on his throat, and she tasted the salt of his skin, heard his gasp as her lips moved on his neck, felt the hum of his blood against her tongue. Then he was saying her name and covering her mouth with his, and they were kissing again, drinking in each other.

Don’t ruin this
. Emma felt her whole body give something close to a sigh, and then it was just the two of them, cupped in
fog as time stilled. If she ever found a way to encase a universe within glass, this was the perfect one, the only world and moment she wished to inhabit.
Right here, right now, hang on to him and remember this. Remember how he feels, his taste, his arms, his mouth. Remember this
.

Remember him
.

THERE WAS ENOUGH
oil for three torches. As Casey filled the Swiss Miss can and two empty peanut butter jars, Bode and Eric tore the sheet from Lizzie’s bed into strips. “This way,” Eric said, as he knotted and cinched a strip into a belt around Emma’s middle, then slid in the chair-leg club, “our hands are free … No, you take that,” Eric said as Bode held out the Glock. “I have nothing against guns, but I never liked that thing.”

“Whatever works for you, Devil Dog,” Bode said, tucking the pistol into the small of his back. “We still got a problem, though.” Bode slipped a gurgling jar and the gas-filled Swiss Miss can into a pillowcase that he knotted to a belt loop. “There’s no way we’re gonna find enough sheets and blankets to get us through that fog and into the barn.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Casey said, tucking a pair of blunt-edged child’s scissors Bode had used to hack sheets into a hip pocket.

“There is.” Eric looked down at Emma. “Pull us through. Use the cynosure the way you did before.”

“That was different,” she said, running her hands over the beads and glass of Lizzie’s memory quilt. “I was on the other
side. I knew where I was and where I wanted you to be. I was pulling you, not
throwing
us inside a place I’ve never been. I don’t know if it will even work in the same world,” she said, thinking,
I can’t believe I just said that
. “Lizzie talked me through it.”

“What did you do before?” Eric asked.

Her fingers ghosted over the beads that spelled his name. “Concentrated on all of you.” She felt the flush creeping through her cheeks and dropped her eyes to the quilt. “It was weird. You think you remember what someone looks like, but all you’ve got are outlines, a fuzzy snapshot. I just kept concentrating on filling you in, but it was really hard.” She looked up to find Eric’s eyes, intent, on her face. “Even with the cynosure, I’m not sure it would’ve worked if you hadn’t …” She slicked her lips. “If you hadn’t called me.”
If you hadn’t told me to
feel
you
. She remembered that moment so well: groping around in the dark with her mind, trying to conjure up his face or Rima’s. Then, that indescribable sensation of something flooding her brain—Eric’s voice, his … 
energy
?—and then it was like something out of that unfinished painting of Dickens surrounded by the ill-defined outlines of his characters. Eric faded
in
: first a suggestion, then an outline, and finally him.

“When you did that, and I got a sense of you,” she said, “I gave you color, and then there you were.”

“So do that again,” Casey said. “Give Rima and Lizzie color.”

“But that was to bring you guys to me,” she said. “This would be
going
somewhere and trying to take you along.”
Without dropping you on the way
.

“Our only other alternative is walking into that fog, either one at a time or all together,” Bode said.

“And we know that won’t cut it,” Eric said.

“I could get us all killed.” Her hand closed over the Eric beads. “I should do this alone. If something happens, then you guys figure out something else.”

“Not a chance.” Eric cupped the back of her hand in both of his. “She brought us in combinations for a reason. We stick together.”

“Damn straight,” Bode grunted. “I don’t buy all this multiverse jazz, but if we’re all part of each other? We’re stronger together.”

“He’s right. Give Rima color.” Casey’s voice hummed with urgency. “Please.”

“Okay.” Letting go of a long breath, she searched the quilt until she found what she wanted. “Casey, let me see those scissors for a sec.”

Casey handed them over. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t think the entire quilt is necessary. Lizzie might need it because she’s only five,” she said, taking the proffered scissors, then picking at the web of thread cupping the galaxy pendant. “The beads and fabric might be prompts.”

“So you think the cynosure is the
only
device?” Eric asked.

“Pretty sure. It’s the only thing on this quilt that keeps popping up in everything House shows me.” Teasing the glass orb free, she watched how it shimmered in the fan of weak porch light. Now that she actually held it, she saw that its designer had done a pull loop. Clearly, the cynosure was to be worn like a pendant on a necklace. “This is exactly what I was going to make, but I’m not nearly skilled enough. It
would take me years of flamework to make glass sculptures this detailed. But the urge to do it has been eating at me for a long time, like insisting it gets done, you know? Can’t be a coincidence.”

“Here, use this.” Eric reached a hand beneath his collar. There was a muted clack of metal as he reeled out a beaded chain. “Safer than your pocket.”

“Aren’t you supposed to wear them all the time?” she asked as he threaded the pendant onto the chain. The glass butted against Eric’s dog tags with a dull tick.

“In the field. Technically, I’m not supposed to wear them when I’m not in uniform, but I just like them.” His lips flickered in a brief smile. “I trust you to give them back.”

“Thank you,” she said, hoping the heat she felt at the back of her neck hadn’t crawled around to her cheeks. She let her palm linger over his dog tags, still warm from his body.
This is real, too
. She held out her hands. “Lizzie’s always talking about dropping people.”

“Hey, I hear that,” Bode said, taking her left hand in his rough, callused paw and reaching for Casey. “Hang on ti—” He broke off.

“Bode?” Casey turned the older boy a curious look. “You okay? You just about jumped out of your skin.”

“Yeah, I’m cool.” Yet a sudden strain arrowed through Bode’s face, and Emma saw his eyes dart a question at the younger boy. “Just …” Bode’s throat bobbed in a swallow. “Let’s go, okay? The sooner we get this over with, the better.”

“You can do this,” Eric said to her. His grip, sure and warm, tightened around her right hand.

Glad you think so
. She closed her eyes. Her thoughts would
not be still, flitting from one image to the next, and she felt a splinter of panic. What should she think about? Rima? Lizzie? No, this was the reverse: putting
them
onto and into a blank. She thought of the door down cellar; watched the memory of her hand reaching toward that inky cold; remembered the blackness dimpling as her palm pressed that odd, glassy membrane.

But the candle flame was still there. I felt it
. This would be the same. The trick would be filling
them
in, making
them
visible. She let herself see the barn as Lizzie had described it: a black void into which she could drift, like slipping in on the breath of a dream.
Now
—she felt Eric’s hand in hers—
start to fill them in; draw us onto and into the space
.

There came the familiar tingle of a
blink
ripsawing through her skin, a lancet of white pain as the bruised lips of that spiky maw parted in the dark before her eyes. A red rose of heat bloomed on her forehead. Between her breasts, there was a sudden warm flush, and she knew the galaxy pendant must be glowing. A jolt crackled in her chest, an atomic bomb of light and heat that lashed down her arms and out her fingers. Someone gasped. Casey said, wonderingly, “Did you feel …?” But Emma barely heard, was suddenly past hearing. In the blackness of her mind, behind her eyes, she saw them all—Casey, Bode, Eric,
her
—as cutouts edged with the same kind of glow that had haloed Kramer.
His
had been the color of a sick, creeping evil, but theirs was true light spun in pulsing filaments from their fingers, knitting their hands together with …