She ate and she read, read and ate. He took her back to the very beginning, to the night shed driven through a storm to Warriors Peak. He made her see it again, feel it again. That and all that had happened since.
That was his gift, she realized. His art.
He told it like a story, each character vivid and true, each action ringing clear, so that when you came to the end, you wanted more.
“Flynn was right,” she said as she turned the last page over. “It helps to see it like this in my head. I need to absorb it, read it again. But it puts everything thats happened on one winding path instead of having a lot of offshoots that just happen to run into each other.”
“Im going to have to write it.”
“I thought you just did,” she replied, shaking her head.
“No, thats only part of it. Half of it at best. I realized today when I was putting it all down that Im going to have to write it when its all done, turn it into a book. Do you have any problem with that?”
“I dont know.” She smoothed her fingers over the pages. “I guess not, but it feels a little strange. Ive never been in a book before.”
He started to speak, then stopped himself and polished off his eggs. She hadnt been in a book shed read before, he thought. Which, when it came down to it, amounted to the same thing.
Chapter Fifteen
LOOK,” Kane said, “how you betray yourself in sleep. He stood looking down at the bed where she and Jordan slept. On the floor beside them, Moe twitched and made excited sounds.
“What did you do to Moe?” “I gave him a dream, a harmless, happy dream. He chases rabbits on a sunny spring day. It will keep him safe and occupied, as we have much to talk about, you and I.”
She watched Moes back right leg swing as if he was running. “I dont have much to say to anyone who sneaks into my bedroom at night to play Peeping Tom.”
“I dont peep, I watch. You interest me, Dana. You have intelligence I respect that. Scholars are valued in my world, on any world. And there we have the scholar and the bard.” He gestured toward the bed at her and Jordan. “One would think a fine combination. But we know better.”
It both frightened and fascinated her to see the couple on the bed, wrapped together in a tangle of limbs. “You dont know us. You never will. Thats why well beat you.”
He only smiled. The dark suited him, cloaked him like velvet and silk and left his eyes burning bright. “You search, but you dont find. How can you? Your life is pretense, Dana, a dream as much as this. Look how you cling to him in sleep. You, a strong, intelligent woman, one who considers herself independent, even willful. Yet you throw yourself at a man who tossed you aside once and will do so again. You allow yourself to be ruled by passion, and it makes you weak.”
“What rules you if not passion?” she countered. “Ambition, greed, hate, vanity. Theyre all passions.”
“Ah, this is why I enjoy you. We could have such interesting conversations. No, passions are not owned by the mortal world. But to invite pain merely for love and the pleasures of the flesh.” He shook his head. “You were wiser when you hated him. Now you let him use you again.”
He lies. He lies. She couldnt let herself fall into the trap of that seductive voice and forget how it lied. “Nobody uses me. Not even you.”
“Perhaps you need to remember more clearly.”
It was snowing. She felt the flakes—soft, cold, wet, on her skin, though she couldnt see them fall. They seemed to hang suspended in the air.
She felt the bite of the wind but couldnt hear it, nor did it chill her.
The world was a black-and-white photograph. Black trees, white snow. White mountains rising toward a white sky, and there, far up, the black silhouette of Warriors Peak.
All was still and cold and silent.
There was a man all the way down the block, frozen in the act of shoveling his walk. His shovel was lifted, and the scoop of snow was caught in its flight through the air.
“Do you know this place?” Kane asked her.
“Yes.” Three blocks south of Market, two blocks west of Pine Ridge.
“And this house.”
The tiny two-story box, painted white with black shutters. The two small dormer windows of the second floor, one for each small bedroom. The single dogwood, with snow adorning its thin branches, and the narrow driveway that ran beside it. Two cars in the driveway. The old station wagon and the secondhand Mustang.
“Its Jordans house.” Her mouth was dry. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy. “Its… it was Jordans house.”