Page 22

Te ndrils of Doubts

Helena talked to Scarlet the whole way back to the city, going over her idea. They got into details and minutiae Rafferty barely understood. Cindy, for her part, stayed quiet and didn’t do anything to distract. Once they reached the station, Cindy parted ways with them, heading to Chris’s house to stay. While she continued to talk to Scarlet on the phone, Helena hugged Cindy, and that was jus t as well.

Over the next three days, Rafferty barely saw Helena. They were still staying at the hotel, but she would get up in the morning and leave for her work, eager to get out of the door while he remain ed in bed.

He spent much of his time sleeping. Sleeping was such an interesting experience. He remembered doing it in his first life, but not what it was like. Sleeping was not something a demon did. You simply existed. He felt like the exhaustion of all those centuries conscious was catching up with him.

It made Helena’s peppy energy… annoying.

But the second she was gone, loneliness would overtake him, and he would long for her to return.

So, it was a surprise when he woke up on the third day and Helena was still there. She looked freshly showered and dressed for her day, but this time she wore jeans and a sweater instead of her wo rk slacks.

“Good morning!” she said brightly as she ran her brush through her beautiful red-gold hair, currently darker from being washed. Waves appeared after each stroke, and he found it mesmerizing. “I have a surprise to show you. Something I’ve been working on for Scarlet Promotions.” She grinned, her eyes bright with excitement. “I want you to come look at it with me. Give me your expert opinion . Please?”

Rafferty sat up, the comforter dropping from his bare chest as he ran a hand through his longer hair. He wondered if he shouldn’t cut it to be more in line with the fashion of the times he now lived in.

“Come on, you’ve been cooped up here for days now. Have you done anything but eat and sleep?” Helena asked, pulling clothes for him from their suitcases. They needed to wash them if they didn’t go back to her h ouse soon.

“Watched TV,” he said, kicking his legs out from the covers as well so he could stand up.

“Watch ing what?”

“Cooking channels,” he said truthfully. He had spent a lot of time on the cooking channels, of which there were many, all full of marathons.

“Oh my!” Helena said, as he stood, her cheeks shifting to red. “I didn’t realize you were sleepi ng naked.”

Rafferty looked down at himself. “How else do peop le sleep?”

“In… pajamas?” she offered. Then she laughed. “What did you wear when you were alive the first time? Nightgowns? Or maybe you called them nig htshirts?”

He frowned as he searched his memory, surprisingly, finding a scrap. “Oui, we wore something like that. But I never did. I would either wear my clothes because I was too busy to change, or I would sleep in nothin g at all.”

She giggled again as she crossed the space, sidling her hands along his sides, giving his hips a gentle squeeze as she nestled her nose into the crook at his neck. “Too bad there isn’t any time to make more of it,” she whispered, the promise of those words waking his body the rest of the way. His breathing sped up and blood rushed through him. Her lips brushed against his with a million little kisses in quick rapid succession that left them tingling even as her touch made his skin crawl. She felt like too much, too intense, and he wondered if it was always going to feel like this. He still wasn’t u sed to it.

Then she squeezed him around the waist in a quick hug before releasing him to hunt for her shoes. “Come on, get dressed. We need b reakfast—”

Helena’s phone rang out.

Huffing a sigh, she went to pick up the errant thing. “Yes, hello?” she said into it. She gave him an apologetic smile, which he returned, then moved to the bathroom.

“Scarlet?” she asked.

Rafferty halted in place as Helena’s expres sion fell.

“What… what’s wrong?” The alarm in her gaze as it hit his made his heart skip a beat. “We’ll be rig ht there.”

The doorman didn’t argue or even question Helena and Rafferty’s need to enter the towering building with its beautiful maroon canopy and decorative statuary on either side of the door. He just jotted down their names from their state-issued IDs (Rafferty had dismissed the idea of a driver’s license when offered until he had actually learned to operate one of the machines) and pressed a button next to an elevator to let them in, then another on the inside to sen d them up.

The door to the elevator opened immediately into a foyer, instead of a hallway like most buildings did. Scarlet clearly lived on the whole floor of the building. Lined up to one side of the foyer were a series of wheelchairs: folded up, clean, and waiting to be used. There was another stand beside them with various arm crutches and pushing walkers for when she had fought to move regularly under her own power. Seeing them lined up, no longer needed by the old-woman-turned-young, they seemed almost sinister. Mem ento mori.

Beside him, Helena tensed, alerting him to look for danger, but he didn’t see nor hear anything.

She set a hand on his arm. “Can you just… wait here a moment?” she ask ed softly.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice matc hing hers.

“I h ear her…”

A crash drew their attention to the main door at the end of the foyer.

Helena rushed through and no request of hers was going to stop him from following.

The door led them both into the main room of the apartment, a cavernous space where the tile gave way to warm wood. The furniture was the light-colored creams of the modern era that spoke of wealth in the way brocades and jewel colors once had in the century he had been born in. Like her office, Scarlet’s apartment was also a study in the elegant ways that water and greenery could be incorporated into a space, to make it have a garden-like feel, but this one also used the floor-to-ceiling windows to make it seem almost like a terrace amongst the clouds.A haven of the gods.

Helena didn’t savor the view at all as she turned to the left and passed through a large alcove where a long dining set sat, looking more like it was waiting for pictures instead of dinner guests. This continued again into another room, set up with lounge chairs and a fully stocked bar, picture-perfect and untouched. Nothing about this place spoke of a real home to Rafferty.

And then they turned past the bar into anothe r hallway.

Here were the sign s of life.

Clothing and shoes of all sorts were thrown and scattered over a softly carpeted surface. Wine stains cut red slashes over the lighter fibers as well as the shards of the glass that used to hold that wine. More alarmingly, Rafferty picked out the sight of different colored pills amongst t he refuse.

Helena ignored it all as she tripped her way through like a deer in a thick jungle. He had to resist the urge to sweep her up in his arms and carry her over it all or to start clean ing it up.

Another crash of glass spurred Helena faster, and she turned about halfway down the hall, through a doorway. “Scarlet? It’s Helena. Are you alright?” she asked as she passed through, Rafferty right on her heels.

It was a man’s bedroom; he could tell that by the clean masculine smell that greeted him. Like the hallway, clothes were thrown over the floor and the bed, though now there was a place of origin as their throw patterns suggested that they all came from the small walk-in closet off to one side. Scarlet was kneeling in the middle of it all, beside the messed-up bed, in a bathrobe and a slip of a nightgown, picking at the glass from a broken frame on the floor. Tears streamed down her face, even though she didn’t mak e a sound.

“Oh!” Helena said as she rushed to drop to Scarlet’s side. “I’ll get that.” She tried to take over, but Scarlet only batted her hands away before looking up in surprise at their sudden entrance.

“Helena? No, no, child. I’ve got it,” she said, but she abandoned the glass she had been gathering to pull the picture from the frame, dropping back in an unladylike, heedless way to stare at it. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have done tha t to him.”

Over her shoulder, Rafferty could see the image. It was of Yosef standing behind her, his hands on her wheelchair, laughing and smiling. Her older self laughed, too, and they were dressed in colorful shirts with balloons and streamers all around. There were also strings of flowers around their necks, though Rafferty was pretty sure they weren’t real flowe rs at all.

Tenderly, Scarlet’s fingers brushed over the image of Yosef. “I was so disgusted with my own ugly face, I forgot that he was in the picture, too.” The tears streamed afresh, but still she didn’t sob. Her voice didn’t even thicken as she spoke. “I was sixty years too old for him. He didn’t care. He was a baby, but… he said he didn’t care. That age was just a number and that he loved every inch of me.” Her head dropped into her hands, though she was careful not to crush the picture, unwilling to let it go from her fingers. “I was preparing him to live without me. It wasn’t supposed to be the other wa y around.”

“Here, let’s get you up,” Helena said, moving to take her arm to do just that, but Scarlet slapped her away.

“Leave me alone,” s he barked.

While Scarlet couldn’t see their faces, Helena gestured with her hands, then she mouthed the words Help me silently.

He had only one idea. “What would you lik e to eat?”

It was strange to ask that question with no other agenda but to help Helena, and he needed to help her. Judging from the smell of alcohol, he would bet that she hadn’t eaten anything to counter it properly. Food did many things: bring comfort, sanity, and a sense of connection back to the consumer. Scarlet clearly needed all three.

The socialite blinked, lifting her head to look up at him standing over her. It took a moment more to process that there was someone else there, and he was male. A heartbeat later, she clutched at the top of her robe. “What… what are you doing here?” she asked, the thread of imperial authority returning to her despair ing voice.

“I’m here to help,” he said, and he reached down to hook his hands under her shoulders to lift her back up to her feet.

She meeped as her equilibrium changed, forcing her to put more effort toward clutching at her robe than fighting his a ssistance.

Helena stood up as well, bringing the picture frame and all its glass shards piled in the middle with her. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I can get you something cold to drink,” sh e offered.

Scarlet opened her mouth as if to argue, then she looked away and cast her gaze over the rumpled, abandoned bed. “You must both think I am a disgusting old woman. That I planned all this or something.” She gestured at Yosef’s room. “He moved in on his own. To better take care of me. Other than the cleaning service, he did everything for me. Cooked. Bathed me. Administered my medications. Made me laugh. Made me feel beautiful and worth loving again. He gave me everything. Ev erything.”

“What did he make you?” Rafferty asked gently. “What was your favorite thing that he would cook for yo u to eat?”

She laughed dryly. He could see it just behind her eyes. She had an answer.

“I wish to take a shower,” she said instead of giving him an answer. She turned away from them and walked with forced dignity out of the room to another across the way, shutting the door firmly b ehind her.

Helena then made a hesitant motion to follow Scarlet but came up short when she got to the closed door. Instead, she leaned her ear to listen. Closing her eyes, she focused. “It’s so strange,” she whispered. “I can hear her in there so clearly.” Another moment later, she opened her eyes. “The shower is running. I… I don’t think she’ll do anything.”

“I don’t either,” he said, hoping it assur ed Helena.

“Why?”

“Her life is Yosef’s gift to her. She loves him too much to throw it away. At least, just yet.”

Helena went still a moment, thinking that over. “Yosef is keeping her alive in more ways than one.” She backed up from the door and crossed her arms, hugging herself. “Do you think he did the right thing? I mean, obviously it was the very wrong thing and very wrong for him, but… for her sake?”

He shook his head. “Right or wrong is pretty much ir relevant.”

“Irrelevant seems like the wrong word, too,” she said, nibbling at her lower lip as sh e thought.

He sighed, understanding what she meant. “It is possible for something to be both,” he said. “Right and wrong don’t cancel each other out. They are independent of each other, and neither are irrelevant. They’re both i mportant.”

She smiled at that. “You know, I think you are wiser than you think you are.”

That was a hard statement for him to swallow, so he cleared his throat and looked away. “Does she have a kitchen?”

It was an asinine question. Of course she did, but it was the first one his brain spat out.