Trying to take control again?
“Where are you going?” I ask her.
“Upstairs,” she says. “Obviously.”
“I think the fifth floor is high enough.”
“Well, I want to look around,” she says. “I’ll meet you back down here.”
“Whatever you say,” I tell her and head out of the stairwell.
This space probably used to be some kind of office. There are desks and chairs here, and even some pens and paper, which are pretty hard things to find nowadays. I pick up a handful of pens and stuff them in my pocket, even though I have no idea what I’m actually going to do with them. Better to have and not need, especially when it’s something so small and easy to carry.
Whydon’tI just leave Emlyn?
Is it really just the sex?
Now that I’m away from her and I can consider my feelings without worrying about her reading them on my face, I have to admit that it might be.
She said that I shouldn’t expect something like today to happen again. But that doesn’t mean I can’thopefor it. And she’s definitely the best I’ve had in a long time.
For a moment, I allow myself to imagine what it might be like to be with her again. I’d take my time next time. I’d really let myself learn her body, get to know what she likes best. I’d make it last hours so that neither of us would leave wanting more. We’d be too tired for more fordaysafter I was finished.
I don’t regret giving it to her fast and hard today. I think we both needed that. Butnext time—
Yeah. I’m definitely sticking with this woman for as long as she’ll let me. Maybe there will be a next time or maybe there won’t, but if there’s even a chance of it, I have to try.
I finish rummaging through the desks. I find a lighter, but—predictably—it doesn’t work. I haven’t seen more than a half dozen working lighters in my life, but of course you’ve got to hoard them whenever youdofind them.
What must it have been like, before the Lunar Reversal, when people could start fires at the press of a button? That’s an unthinkable amount of luxury.
“Nate?”
I turn. Emlyn is behind me, standing in the stairwell and poking her head through the door. She looks concerned.
“I need you to come and look at something I found,” she says.
Chapter 16
EMLYN
Ileadhimupthe stairs to the seventh floor of the building.
It’s laid out just the same as the two floors below it. Unlike the fifth and sixth floors, though, it’s clear that someone has been here, and recently.
The desks have been pushed up against the walls, for one thing. In the center of the room, the carpet has been scraped up to reveal cement, and there’s a dark circle there.
Nate squats and touches it. “Looks like someone was burning something,” he says.
I nod. That much is obvious, and not what I was concerned about. “Over here,” I say, taking him by the wrist and pulling him to the far wall beside the windows.
I point.
“Oh,” he murmurs. “Damn.”
There are strange shapes—figures—painted on the wall in a muddy red. The first one, all the way to the left side of the wall, is an X-shape, with four crescent moons in the angles of the X. In the middle of the wall is a shape that reminds me of the fancy glasses with stems people used to drink from in the old days. You can still find them hanging in bars or in private homes sometimes, though more often than not, they’re broken. It’s a really weird thing to have drawn on a wall.
The one on the end kind of looks to me like three trees—one tall one in the center, and two short ones standing beneath it and to either side.