Page 8 of King Among the Dead

“Good, Kay showed you the library.”

Rose jumped when Beck’s voice sounded behind her. She was half-out of the chair, clutching the book guiltily when he stepped around into view, hands clasped behind his back, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. It was…a distracting visual, in the gray, rainy light.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, feeling caught. This wasn’t her house, or her library, or her chair, or her book, and even though Kay had said…

But he waved her back down and settled in the other chair. “Sit, please.” Offered another of his small smiles that she was beginning to think of as normal already. “I’m glad someone’s in here keeping the books company.” His honey eyes sparkled, and she finally relaxed back into her chair. “Which one did you choose first?”

She showed him the cover, face heating with embarrassment.

But he said, “That’s a good one.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Oh, yes. Twice. It’s got a nice mix of action, romance, and angst.” He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, and propped his chin on his fist, shiny lock of hair falling over one eye. “Has Emily met Pietro yet?”

“She just did. That’s the scene I’m reading now.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, then.”

When he smiled this time, she found herself returning it. It felt strange; she wasn’t used to her lips curving upward.

“I thought we might go shopping now, if you’re amenable,” he continued.

She still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that he would take a stranger shopping for luxuries. Offer her a place in his home – a permanent one, if the breakfast conversation was anything to go by.

She thought to refuse. It was too much. It was ridiculous. But a yearning, hungry part of her won out. If he was offering, then she would take and say thank you.

She nodded. “That sounds good.”

He didn’t move to get up right away, though. Stayed sitting, studying her, his gaze weighty and impossible to decipher. Rose wanted badly to know what he was thinking. No one had ever looked at her this way, and he had a face worth studying, beautiful but enigmatic.

A long few beats passed in which she didn’t breathe, and then Beck came to life, like a video un-paused, and he sat up, stood up, brushed the creases from his jeans. Offered her a hand. “Shall we?”

It was the second time she’d placed her hand in his; his skin felt warmer this time.

~*~

He pulled two jackets out of the hall closet, oilskin rain slickers with deep hoods and deeper pockets; both obviously his, if the way the one Rose’s swallowed her was anything to go by. It smelled like him, she thought, as she tugged the hood up over her head: that woodsy, cedar, smoky smell she’d caught whiffs of last night and today in the kitchen.

Through the back door off the kitchen, they went across a brick courtyard full of puddles, and into a detached garage. She hadn’t known what to expect from him as far as cars went, but the old, green Jag with spotless tan leather seats suited Beck perfectly. He cranked the heat up once it was started, and put up the garage door with a remote. He twisted around and rested his hand on her headrest as he backed out into the alley, the scent of him stronger on his wrist, when she inhaled, more smoke up close than anything.

Rose tried to be subtle about taking a deep breath of it – and of noticing the little cut on his forearm when his sleeve rode up. From his own knife? she wondered. When he slid it in and out of its holster?

Was he carrying it now? If she gripped his arm, would she feel the hard shape of it under his coat?

“Music?” he asked, when the door was down and they were headed down the alley, lights on, wipers going steadily.

No one had ever asked for her opinion so much. “Sure.”

The car was old enough to have a CD player, and when he pressed it on, the soft strains of string music flooded through the speakers. Again: she hadn’t known what to expect, but it suited him.

It was different seeing the city from inside the warm, plush interior of a car, the rain beading down the windshield rather than down an old patched umbrella. An old patched umbrella if she was lucky. Like everyone else who lived in the Bends, Miss Tabitha had walked everywhere she needed to go. To Fisher’s Grocery, and Zelda’s salon – not that her hair had benefitted from Zelda’s efforts. To the social workers’ office where she collected her checks for housing and feeding Rose, though Rose had done most of the shopping and all of the cooking.

It was a drab city, soot- and rain-streaked, its gutters perpetually full of running water…among other things. Sad storefronts with dim lights beyond the windows. Families walking under umbrellas, and hoods, and newspapers, most of the time. Miss Tabitha had a friend, Lenny, who’d kept insisting that real, physical newspapers were going to disappear one day, but they persisted, littering sidewalks and side tables and newsstands. Digital media had been booming and replacing print media before the Rift. But a primitive way of life had returned after it. Papers, candles, oil lamps, cars that ran on gasoline, and the rain – always, always, always the rain. A sunny day was a rare thing not to be wasted. A day for hanging laundry outside, and for employees and students getting off early.

Today it rained. But Rose was warm, and comfortable, and listening to violins, with a full belly, a book waiting on her return, and a shopping trip to look forward to.

Beck piloted him through the narrow, townhouse-lined streets of his Gothic neighborhood, all of it fabulous and grungy and old and strange in the most charming of ways. Seeing something charming in this world of low, dark clouds, and gutter trash was a rare thing; she drank it in.

---