Page 3 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

I hadn’t truly felt safe since Loren hitched up the Airstream and drove us out of town.

Sully assured me her apartment was carefully warded, and I was, too but, on nights like tonight, I found myself looking around every corner for eerie red eyes or shadowy figures that might dart out and sink their claws into me, tear me apart.

Entering Central Park brought an abundance of grass and trees. Benches and streetlamps lined the path ahead, with other walkers milling by. I meandered, drawn to the crowd gathered around an unknown spectacle a few dozen feet away where voices chattered over the hiss of spraying paint.

I drew closer and squeezed in between the bodies flocked around a man kneeling on the ground. A large canvas was spread out before him, blanketed with strips of newspaper. He reached toward a line of rattle cans, taking one and giving it a shake.

Paint speckled the canvas, adding stars to a black sky. When the artist peeled away the newspaper mask, the crowd applauded the unveiling of a cosmic scene complete with multicolored planets, bands of asteroids, and an iridescent moon in the background.

I clapped, too, as he slid the canvas aside and reached for a fresh one. But, before he could put down a basecoat of paint, he glanced up. He had close-cropped graying hair and icy blue eyes in a field of brown skin. I recognized him.

“Indigo!” He grinned and sat back on his haunches.

Evander. I’d seen him only once at Sully’s art exhibition, but he’d made an impression in a short amount of time. More accurately, Loren’s reaction to him made an impression, but it stuck with me regardless.

Evander pushed to his feet and nodded to the members of his audience, one of whom pulled out a small stack of bills to pay for the freshly completed galaxy piece.

“Gonna take a break, everybody,” Evander said while pocketing the cash. “Catching up with an old friend. Stick around, though. More to see.”

Those gathered began to disperse while Evander cut a path over to greet me. We’d had a pleasant chat at the gallery, but it wasn’t anything that I thought merited my distinction as his friend. Though, with my memory being as watertight as a sieve, he could have been my best buddy in the whole world, and I wouldn’t have known it.

He came alongside me and ushered me toward a nearby bench. Paint fumes wafted off him and sent a direct message to my brain: huffing was cheaper than pills, and it came with a free show. Hopefully, my good “friend” Evander wouldn’t mind if I hung around after he got back to business and took a long, hard sniff.

We dropped onto the bench, and Evander clapped his hand against my back. “How’s it been, man?” he asked.

“It’s Indy,” I said in response to his initial greeting.

His eyebrows furrowed, and the ring looped around the left one glinted in the light. “Yeah?”

“You called me Indigo.”

Evander huffed a laugh. “I meant your hair. You dyed it since the last time I saw you.” Reaching over, he gave my curls a tousle.

I didn’t bother telling him that indigo was a nuanced shade of bluish-purple, and my hair was every bit of plum. Or eggplant because anytime I thought of eggplants it made me laugh, and I could use the humor these days.

“But seriously,” Evander continued. “How are you? How’s Lorenzo?”

“Loren,” I corrected quietly.

The same Loren who warned me I shouldn’t associate with Evander. No context; no explanation. Typical.

“Did you guys swap bodies or something?” The other man chuckled again. “You’re so intense.”

This was quickly turning into one of those conversations that could get me in trouble. Dredging up things I couldn’t talk about. My hellhound boyfriend was at the top of that list, followed immediately by the demons desperate to get their hands on a crybaby phoenix whose tears could wash their sins away.

“Nothing,” I replied at length.

“That’s not much answer for a whole lot of questions,” Evander said.

I wanted to tell him more. Tellsomeone. The truth was eating at me like my spit had melted that damned pill. God, I wanted another one of those. Weak ass shit. I should have been blitzed right now. They used to do more.

After a quiet moment, Evander leaned in to close the distance between us. “Makes the world a little scary, I’d imagine. All that forgetting.”

My eyes angled toward his. “What are you talking about?”

He dipped his chin in a nod. “I bet you feel lost. Not sure who to trust or what to think.”

I hadn’t told him about rehab, or my amnesia, or any of it. We’d talked for five minutes at the art show, and our conversation didn’t make it past surface-level small talk. Besides, I didn’t broadcast my mental issues to strangers.

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