Stained (24 page)

Cayne was in the hot tub on the porch. His arms were propped on the sides, and his face was lifted to the sky. Steam uncoiled around him. He was still, and his wet clothes floated in the artificial current. Julia watched his pulse move under the smooth skin of his neck.

God, he was beautiful.

She ached to be near him.

He lay there for a long time, and Julia watched. She imagined a hundred ugly pasts, and eventually had to force herself back into the kitchen.

She was boiling water for chamomile tea when the door squeaked open. She moved into the bedroom, a moth pulled to a flame.

Cayne stood by a bookshelf, water pooling on the glossy boards beneath his feet. With his clothes stuck to him, he looked big and thick and scary. "You have a seat on a train," he said flatly. "Amtrak. From Los Angeles."

YOU have a seat.
Singular. Second person.

"W--" her voice cracked. "What are you going to do?"

He stared at her blankly.

"Aren't you coming with me?"

Cayne eyed her like something dirty. "Of course."

"You are?"

"Is that a problem?"

She shook her head.

Julia and Cayne were doing things the hard way. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that there were to be no more "tricks."

If they wanted to be absolutely sure they avoided detection, he wasn't going to be able to use his wings, or his charm, or even his dagger.

So they took a bus back to L.A., where they were to board an Amtrak for an old-fashioned train trip.

On top of the whole public transportation thing--Julia's life was hardly
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
, but from any-car-you-choose to bus was a bit of a shock--the Utah-to-Cally trek was long and strained. Cayne was still a stranger, and Julia felt way too edgy around him. When she tried to talk to him, he was stern and cold, a different person. One she wasn't sure she liked.

She gave up when they reached the California border and slept the rest of the way.

When Cayne woke her up, with a nudge from his elbow, Julia wasn't even able to enjoy the scenery, and b
y the time they were deposited at Union Station--a large, white building on Alameda Street that looked kind of like a Spanish church (it had a clock tower instead of a steeple)--she was having kittens. Dozens of them.

It had been three hours since she and Cayne last spoke. No, not since they last chatted, since they last spoke a word to each other. The whole thing was totally insane. They were like B.F.F., and then Cayne's memories came back, and...nothing. The boy goes quiet.

And he wasn't just quiet. It was like he was shutting down. Julia didn't know when it had happened, but it was like between the time she woke up and their arrival at the train station, someone had pulled his power cord from the wall.

Union Station had shiny marble floors, leather chairs, vaulted ceilings, and people. Everywhere. They milled in groups of threes and fours, lounged on couches and in tall-backed chairs, read newspapers in corners, talked on cell phones, played with iPads.

Cayne marched through the crowd like a man on death row. Julia could feel the tension cascading off him. On the bus he'd strained to make sure they didn't touch, and even now, as they passed through the station, he stayed a few steps ahead, keeping a calculated distance between them as he cut a path through the sea of noisy tourists.

They sat in foldout chairs by the boarding platform. An old man and woman sat next to them and held bony hands. Julia felt sick.

She needed to stop thinking emotionally. She needed to reason out what to do. But she didn't know the rules to the game. And she had never been very good at the whole comfort thing, either.

It didn't help that they'd only had enough money for one ticket, so she was boarding the Amtrak alone. Cayne planned to drop in from the train's top, through the emergency exit hatch she was supposed to unlock. But she had no way to know if he really would.

When the intercom called her number, she followed him on putty legs.

After her bags were checked and a uniformed lady smiled her on, she looked at him. She tried to memorize every angle of his face. She wished he would smile. He just nodded. She tried to supply the smile, but failed.

When she got to their tiny room, Julia pulled a leather chair under the hatch and unlocked it. Then she turned off the lights, sat on the bottom bunk-cot, and said tongue twisters. The train left the station on time, and the city began to zoom by.

Cayne dropped in a few minutes later. He glanced at her--not long enough to notice the dumb relief on her face--and turned a circle. His bulky frame was boxed in by a sliding rubber door, a schoolbus-style window, a tiny bathroom, and two bunk-cots.

Julia waved to the tiny leather chair behind him, and Cayne slouched down, rubbing a grease stain on his cheek. She stretched out on the bottom cot. They both looked out the window.

Predictably, he didn't speak, and she was too nervous to break the silence.

She played the crossword puzzle in the paper, but it didn't help. She tried to read the
TIME
magazine she'd swiped from the cabin, but that didn't help either.

She told herself that she could wait it out. He had just gotten his memories, after all. It made sense that he'd be withdrawn. In a couple of days, things would go back to normal. She'd be patient.

Or try to.

The night was punctuated by her few strained attempts to fill the silence. A woman screamed something about "Mr. Happy," and Julia asked if Cayne had heard it. He nodded. At one point the train seemed to wobble, and she asked him if he felt it. He shook his head.

Later, when she told him there was hamburger steak in the dining car, he glared at her, and Julia retreated to the halls before she said something she'd regret.

She had trouble with brooding people. First, she really, really wanted to look at said brooder's aura. This was an outstanding case, so Julia might have been willing to chunk any ethical complaints, but of course Cayne was Cayne. He would know if she took a peek. (She'd tried it just after he'd gotten his memories back, and she'd been pretty sure he noticed before she got a chance to see anything.)

Then there was all the pouting. Brooders had the whole Ooh, You Can't Touch Me, I'm Brooding thing going.

Sympathy was also a problem. Julia just couldn't watch anyone stew without wanting to heal them. Especially someone like Cayne, who was so much more than just anyone.

Of course in this situation, she also had herself to worry about, and she didn't think it was selfish to do so. The only person that knew she existed and didn't want to kill her was doing his best to ignore her. And that was, in her opinion, a little selfish.

After a large portion of hamburger steak and another hour reading about The New Russia (which didn't seem so new as far as she was concerned), Julia hung her head off the top bunk and said, "You can get on the bottom if you want. I'm going to sleep here."

Cayne turned to her with half-hearted irritation. "I know."

Julia's blood rushed to her head. She flopped on her back and said, "Okay."

She tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Her thoughts raced, flowing into the future, stretching back in time in a nauseating flurry of fear and disbelief. Her dreams, when at last they came, were nightmares. The kind of you-are-all-alone ones that really filled her with fright. And after such a long time feeling safe.

Chapter 32

Julia woke up, and then she threw up.

She stumbled over Cayne in her dash to the bathroom--he had, at some point, moved to the floor beside the cot--and managed to yank the plastic lid open before she got sick.

She spent a full five minutes recovering from the shock. Usually she had an iron stomach and the nerves of a stoner, type-b rich kid. Other than by the road outside of Salt Lake City, Julia hadn't hugged the porcelain bowl since the West Tennessee Fair in seventh grade.

She refused to consider what had made her So Upset today; instead, she brushed her teeth three times and took an extra hot shower. When she emerged from the bathroom, still warm and damp, Cayne was sitting in the kid-sized leather chair. He looked tired and unhappy in the blue glow of early a.m.

"Good morning," she said, as if everything was normal.

He nodded without smiling. He was looking at her in that searching way of his, and Julia, embarrassed, wasn't in the mood.

"Sleep well?" she asked as sarcastically as she could.

He raised his right eyebrow. "I didn't sleep at all."

She dropped onto the bottom bunk and stared up at the bed above her, forcing her eyes not to wander to the floor, where, after a moment, Cayne asked, "Are you okay?"

She glared at him as her cheeks pinkened. "Fine."

"Are you sure?" She couldn't tell if the intensity in his voice was true concern or obligation.

Julia sighed. "Just what exactly do you want?"

He shrugged. "To check."

"Consider me checked."

He crossed his arms and turned back to the window. He was radiating doom and gloom, and suddenly Julia just couldn't handle it. She had tricked herself into thinking that a new day would bring an old Cayne.

"You know, this could not be more of a nightmare," she said to the back of his head. "Why didn't you just leave me in Memphis? Why are you even with me now?"

"I can't leave you alone."

"Yes you can." He shook his head. "Then why not call one of your friends to babysit me? What about that bartender in Utah. Andrew, right?"

"Andre."

"Whatever. I'm sure he's got a busy flight schedule, but maybe he could take a few days off."

"Maybe that would be best."

Julia's blood froze, then boiled. "Do they have Nephilim shrinks?" she asked flatly.

He looked at her blankly, and Julia twirled her finger around her ear. "Psychologists. Head doctors. For people who're crazy, Cayne. Messed up."

There was a pause, and then, "Okay."

"Ever thought of going to one? Figuring out what's wrong with you?"

"No."

"See, the thing is--" She sounded shrill; she lowered her voice. "The thing is, it isn't normal for people to act the way you're acting. So hot and cold."

Cayne seemed hypnotized by the window.
"I don't understand the way
you're
acting."

Julia laughed. It was bitter, and the sound of it made her hurt worse. "Why am I acting this way?" The shrillness was back. "Well, let's see. My parents get killed by this evil half-demon guy, and I find myself a nice little warehouse to chill in. And then you drop by, and you invite me to join your quest to kill the guy that tried to kill me. And I, having nothing better to do, join. Have I gotten it right so far?"