‘You’re a lot alike,’ he said, meeting her eyes.
No we’re not, Mare thought. We look nothing alike. So how did you know?
Maybe Xan was that lame.
Up on the big flat screen, Victor Quartermain fired at a little gray bunny that went hurtling backward toward a white light. I know how you feel, Mare thought, and then the bunny ended up in the Bun Vac 6000 floating in rabbity ecstasy, not dead after all.
‘I love the Bun Vac,’ she said. ‘What?’ Jude said.
‘The Bun Vac 6000,’ she said, nodding at the screen. ‘You’ re vice president of a video company and you don’t know the Bun Vac?’
‘Oh, that.’ Jude polished his silver tie tack with his finger, almost a nervous twitch by now. ‘I don’t watch children’s movies.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Mare said, and turned back to the screen to watch Victor put a bunny on his head.
‘Have you thought about my New York offer, Mare?’ Jude said. ‘It would give you tremendous power. With your abilities you could go right to the top. Vice president in no time. President even.’
‘Queen,’ Mare said, her eyes on the bunny.
‘The sky’s the limit. No, not even that, no limit. Limitless power. You’d like that. Of course, you’d have to stop doing strange things…’
‘I’m thinking about all my offers, Jude,’ Mare said.
The problem was, the offer she needed most, the one that might set her free, that one she hadn’t gotten yet.
Maybe I need to talk to Xan, she thought, and turned speculative eyes on Jude.
Dee was still futzing with her hair and waving off blue sparks as she stalked out of the video store. Every strand of her hair still shivered in outrage from Mare’s trick.
Seduce him. Easy for Mare to say. She had the courage to try something like that. Dee had spent so much effort trying not to have sex, she swore she’d forgotten how. She-
‘Need this yet?’
Dee jumped a foot. There, leaning against a lightpost, was Danny himself. Smiling, rumpled, and holding out her briefcase like a Christmas present.
Dee wondered if he knew how good he looked in that Marlon Brando pose or whether he just couldn’t stand up straight for long. It didn’t matter. Her brief dalliance with the illusion of mutual attraction was over. Fantasies survived only in the dust.
‘Are you stalking me?’ she demanded, snatching the briefcase and hugging it to herself.
Danny looked around at the fairly deserted streets. ‘I must be. Here you are. Here am I. Waiting for an explanation for why you disappeared like The Runaway Bride.’
Giving her hair one last agitated yank, Dee sighed. ‘Please. If you like me, don’t quote movies.’
He didn’t like her. He was using her, just like the other men Xan had sent to smoke her out. Xan dealt in men the way a Crip sold crack.
‘You ran off so fast, I wasn’t sure what happened,’ he said, looking concerned. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
He stepped closer. Dee stepped back. The street by the store had emptied, and the wind had kicked up, catching a flyer for the Elks’ chicken dinner and plastering it against the Civic Pride trash container on the corner. At the horizon, a gathering of clouds showed purple. Portents of the storm to come.
‘You can explain about my Aunt Xan.’
He offered a chagrined grin. ‘She said you’d be upset.’
‘And she’d be right.’ Dee shoved her hair off her forehead. ‘I’m not fond of liars. I’m even less fond of people who play games.’
He held up his hands, the image of innocence. ‘No more games. No lies. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but this was important to Mr Delaney. And…’ He shrugged, looking faintly ashamed. ‘I didn’t know you then.’
‘Well, you know me now,’ she said. ‘So you can begin to make amends. And that begins with how you really found us.’
‘Will you tell me more about your parents?’
Dee couldn’t help staring at him, presumptuous prick.
‘You’re just going to have to stick around and find out, aren’t you?’
She really hated this. How could she know what to do? Her instincts were to run. Well, first to beat the crap out of him with her briefcase and then run. But if she ran, she’d never know just what his relationship was to Xan. What Xan really wanted.
If only she hadn’t seen him in the dust. If only Mare hadn’t put that suggestion in her head.
‘Would you like to go back to the Fork?’ he asked. ‘I think they like me there.’
Dee snorted. ‘They’d have your babies there. But no, I’d rather have some privacy.’
‘My room?’
‘Privacy, Mr James.’ She looked around the uninspiring streets for inspiration. ‘I walk up the stairs at the Lighthorse with you, and by morning every woman in town is going to be camped in my front garden wanting details.’
‘Your place.’
She didn’t even bother to answer. Danny James was not coming anywhere near her house.
‘It’s a nice night,’ Danny said, looking back toward the river. ‘You want to try the mountain?’
Dee looked that way herself. The late light bathed the cliffs in gold, and the moon hung half seen amid the trees. Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. She did feel as if she had power up atop those cliffs.
Danny waited patiently for her, his hands still stuffed in his pockets, his hair rippling in the gusting breezes, that silver chain glinting just once against his neck. Dee still didn’t have on any underwear. She’d still be forced to snuggle up to him all the way up the mountain…
Slapping the briefcase against Danny’s chest, she stalked over to the bike. ‘Fine. But it had better be everything I’ve ever dreamed of.’
She caught Danny’s delighted smile out of the corner of her eye and decided to ignore it. Within five minutes, she was glad she did. And not because she wanted to see the cliffs. Danny had taken the route along the old Cobblestone Road, something Dee had never done on a bike. Maybe it was the no-underwear business. Maybe it was because Dee was already about as on edge as she could be. Suddenly the bike was acting like a big, bloodred vibrator. Good God. Did Mare know about this? Considering all the time Mare had spent on a bike with Crash, Dee’d bet it was a certainty. Maybe if things worked out, Dee’d spring for a bike herself. And find another town with lots of cobblestones.
They left the cobbles somewhere between delight and disaster, and made it the rest of the way up Salem’s Mountain without incident. If Dee hadn’t known any better, she would have sworn Danny had been up here before. He didn’t just instinctively ride right to her favorite spot. When he climbed off the bike, he walked straight into the stone circle by the edge of the cliff.
Dee loved to stand dead center in the circle by the standing stone, where she swore she could gather power through her fingertips. Danny James stopped in the same exact place. Dead center.
Digging his hands back into his jeans pockets, he looked around him. ‘This place should be reserved for pagan rituals, ya know?’