“Bathin,” I said through lips that tingled from the cold. My breath felt too warm. My skin too hot, too tight. A shiver ran deep, deep inside me. Deeper than my muscles, deeper than my blood. Deeper than my bones.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
“You’re here,” I said.
Those red eyes did not waver as he stared at me, his hands in loose fists at his side as if he had recently put away a weapon, his stance squared and looming.
“What are you doing outside Ordinary, Officer Reed? You know the rules of your little town don’t apply here.”
Old Rossi shifted behind me, and I could feel the cold burning strength of him, the promise of violence coiled and ready to strike.
I held up one hand, so Rossi would stay where he was, then I closed the distance between Bathin and me.
“I asked you to be honest with me, but you never once asked me to be honest with you. Why not?”
He blinked, and the coal-red simmered to a deep-cinnamon burn. “This is what you want to talk about?”
“Why didn’t you ask me to be honest with you?”
His mouth jerked a couple times at the corner, like there were too many words and he was trying to keep back the worst of them. “Because I could see you, Myra Reed. I could always see you.”
“My soul?”
“Yes. And more.”
“My mind?”
“Some of it.”
“My heart?”
He paused, swallowed, and said nothing.
“Could you see my heart? See how I felt?”
Still the silence.
“Can you see inside human hearts? Other hearts?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you look inside mine?”
“No.”
That answer surprised me. “Why not?”
“It’s not…Your father…No…I don’t…” He seemed to realize he had said too much, even though he hadn’t finished a single sentence. He shut his mouth and glowered at me again, eyes burning in the black, black night. “I am done here.”
Nownownow…
“I’m sorry.” It was out of my mouth so suddenly, so unexpectedly, even Rossi made a sound.
Bathin stilled.
I’d seen dead people, corpses, ghosts. I’d seen the undead, vampires, ghouls. So I knew stillness.
But if I weren’t looking right at Bathin, if I couldn’t feel the heat radiating off of his body, I wouldn’t have known he was there. I would have thought I was standing next to empty air. Cold, cold wind.
