Page 56 of Aïdes the Unseen
“No.”
“And not about the puppy.”
“Also no.”
She held my gaze. Her heartbeat didn’t spike. No fear entered her eyes. That was so much worse, because their glow made me hunger for her even more.
“What are you here for then?”
I glanced down at the way the moss around her feet had darkened, drawn slightly inward, like it anchored and protected her. The last thing I should tell her was the truth.
But I found, I could not bear to lie to her.
Never lie.
“You,” I said.
Silence stretched unbearably taut as she held my gaze.
Then she blinked, and it released us both. “You’ve got the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”
Her response startled a chuckle from me, and the sound was as unfamiliar to my ears now as the feeling was to my chest. Yet a smile tugged my mouth wider before I could contain it. “It’s not a line.”
Skepticism filled her expression. “Still terrible.”
The invitation to play was right there. My being stretched out toward hers in yearning. I turned toward the corridor before I could give in to the desire. If I stayed any longer, something might happen that couldn’t be undone.
“You’re leaving?” The disappointment wreathing the words looped around me, and I had to glance back.
“You have work and so do I.” Not a lie. Never a lie. But not the whole truth either. “I’ve interrupted you enough as it is.” The last, the absolute truth.
“Oh.” So much meaning populated that one word, and I resisted the urge to translate it. To offer her comfort and to take some myself, because the last thing I wanted to do was leave her.
“You should run a test onRegrowth,” I said over my shoulder as I neared the exit. “Use a neural imprint pattern—without touch. Watch what she does when you walk by.”
An olive branch for her. A gift for me.
“Why?” Puzzlement filled the word, and I knew her gaze had gone to the plant so I looked back once more to drink in the sight of her.
“She’s remembering you.” With those last words, I forced myself to leave and not wait for any response. She wasn’t going to say anything to that. Not yet, anyway. The puppy didn’t growl as I left, but his stare stayed on me all the way down the hall and beyond when the doors closed behind me. There was an ancient question in his stare and one I didn’t have an answer for. Not yet.
Back on the street, the city pulsed around me—sirens, footsteps, voices, car horns, fragments of music—but I wasn’t listening. I should have stayed away, but how in the name of Gaia could I possibly do that?
I was closer to her far sooner than I’d ever managed before. I’d had two whole conversations with her and not a few sorrow-infused moments before she was ripped away from me again. How many times had I lost her? I hadn’t lost count, every single moment imprinted on me forever. Those tear-drenched moments both sustained and enraged me.
No, I couldn’t stay away. Not when the tether had finally tightened again. Not when the blood had already begun to stir. If I were close, then I might be able to hold on to her this time.
The moment I made the corner, the air shifted. Not like before. This wasn’t memory humming in the wires or the pulse of something ancient rising through the cracks. This was colder. Stiller. As if the city itself skipped a beat.
The clouds threatening earlier had rolled in, but they hadn’t thickened. The light had changed anyway, it slanted sharper and colors blued at the edges. It was like the sun had glanced away for a moment too long.
I made myself keep walking with a measured pace, spine straight, and I kept my gaze firmly forward. I didn’t glance back at the Annex, even if I could still feel her inside.Irina. The puppy. The slow, inevitable rhythm of something beginning.
At the next crosswalk, the voice found me.
“Didn’t think you performed your own errands.” It came from the stoop of an old bookstore, one that hadn’t been open in years. The sign was still hand-painted, letters faded and flaking like they were ashamed to still exist.
The man seated there wore a crisp gray suit, but no tie and no coat. He appeared young, but the kind of young that didn’t really start that way. His eyes were the color of tarnished copper, and he wore a single ring on one gloved hand, a seal I recognized and hated.
