Her hair is still wet, and she's worrying sections of it with a towel as she wanders across the room.
“Someone I knew once,” I say. The sun has gone down, and I've opened the curtains again. The sky is nearly black, and the clouds are outlined with a faint roseate glow.
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
Dust. Crushed beneath a ton of rubble when her apartment building collapsed.
“I don't know,” I answer honestly.
“Are they going to find us?” She changes the topic, sensing there is nothing more of the previous subject that I wish to share.
“Eventually.”
She winds her hair up into the towel and wanders over to look out the window. “What are we going to do?” she asks.
I let my gaze flick up to the towering white cone perched atop her head.
“After my hair dries,” she amends.
“I suppose I can take my turn now.”
She rolls her eyes. “You're going to make me wait, aren't you?”
“Not unless you want to scrub my back.”
“Silas,” she sighs, “eeeew. Not a turn-on. Really.”
“I'm out of practice.”
“Stick with being enigmatic and confounding. It works better for you.” She jerks her head toward the bathroom. “Go. Exfoliate. And then you had better start talking when you come out.”
* * *
She is curled up on the bed when I finish with my shower. Her towel had slipped off her head, and her red hair curls around her face. I brush some of it back, my fingers lightly caressing her cheek.
I suddenly remember the way the morning sun used to stream in through the porthole-shaped windows in Val's bedroom. She would accuse me of purposefully leaving the curtains open. I was always apologetic, but continued to forget.
I liked watching the sun creep across her face.
Mere's breathing is slow and restful. Whatever dreams she had fallen through on the way to the deep trough of sleep were not troubling her.
When did I start caring for her? Was it when I entered the warehouse and took Kirkov's knife from him? Has Mother known since then? Had I become expendable? Was that why I had been chosen for Talus's mission? Mother doesn't love me anymore, and maybe that means it is time for me to finally die, after all these years. This is how it ends, like Eliot says. ‘Not with a bang, but with a whimper.' I am one of his Hollow Men. Who will miss me when I'm gone?
“No one,” I whisper.
They're all dead. Everyone I ever cared about. Mother took care of the pain. She always did. I would fall into her embrace, and she would take away the memories that hurt the most. That was why we went back to her; that was why we loved her as we did. She gave us life, and she helped us forget.
After Val, I had sworn that I was done with consorting with mortals.
I lie down next to Mere, as close as I can without actually touching her. When I inhale through my nose, I can smell her scent. Mere's right; I don't breathe when I sleep. None of us do. I close my eyes, but I don't let myself rest. I'm not going to fade. Not yet.
Maybe this is just a reaction to my exile from Arcadia, a sudden panic that my life—my three millennia plus, quasi-immortal existence—is coming to an end. Maybe I'm not ready to let this world consume me. Not having died, I don't quite know how to do it.
Or maybe I'm just an old soldier and it's been too long since I've had something worth dying for.
FIFTEEN
It finally dawns on me where the tiny buzzing noise is coming from. It started shortly after I lay down next to Mere, and I had been trying to sort through the pieces of this puzzle I had scattered in my head, but the tiny beelike buzz kept intruding. I get up from the bed, and find the noise-maker in the inner pocket of my wrecked coat. My cheap cell phone has been trying to tell me that I've missed a few calls. All from the same number.
There's only one person who has this number. I put on the clothes that Mere bought and slip out of the room, all without waking her. I take the back stairs down to the ground floor, and duck out into the open parking lot. The moon is peeking around the edge of the office building on my left, and the sky is clear. I stare up, wishing it were darker so that I