Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ a few times, and then the reservoir ran dry, thank God. He picked out Book I, braced for the flock of birds that was going to take flight from the pit of his stomach any minute now. He opened up the book, and began to read.

      “Any more questions?” Edie looked around the crowded room. Today’s was a talkative, enthusiastic bunch. The ego strokes were nice, but it took energy to be smiling and chatty with a bunch of strangers.

      She pointed to a tall girl with dyed black hair and black lipstick.

      “Where’d you get the idea for Fade?” the girl asked eagerly. “He’s so real! And so intense. Is he based on anybody you know?”

      Edie felt her smile falter. “Not exactly,” she lied. “He came to me in a dream once, and I never forgot him.”

      That, at least, was the truth. Fade Shadowseeker had visited her dreams ever since she’d started drawing him, when she was eighteen. It hadn’t taken long for those dreams to turn scorchingly erotic.

      A redheaded girl jumped up without waiting to be chosen. “Fade is so sexy. I love it that he and Mahlia finally get it on, in Midnight’s Curse, but then the bad guys abduct her and everybody gets distracted. Are they ever going to, um, you know? Get together? Like, a couple?”

      “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I find out that kind of thing as I go.”

      The redheaded girl looked disappointed. “But can’t you just, like, make them do it?” she said sharply. “I mean, you’re the boss, right?”

      “Wrong. I’m not the boss at all if the story is working. It’s a paradox. But I really hope that Fade and Mahlia get together, too.”

      “Are you Mahlia?” the redheaded girl demanded. “She looks kind of like you. Is Fade, like, your own fantasy?”

      The personal question startled her, and she stuttered. “Um, I, ah…no. I never thought of it. I don’t particularly identify with Mahlia, no.”

      She felt bad for lying like a rug, but give a girl some privacy. The redheaded girl subsided, looking unsatisfied. Edie’s publicist made a brisk wrap-it-up gesture. They’d run twenty minutes over for the question and answer session, and she hadn’t even started signing yet.

      The book signing was the easiest part, though she felt silly repeating the same scrawled sentiments on the flyleafs of each book. She made an effort to chat, but it was going to feel good, to sprawl on her couch with a cold beer and a rented movie. Mutants taking over Los Angeles. She loved mutant movies. Couldn’t imagine why. Hah hah.

      The line was almost finished, and the redheaded girl was coming up next. Edie smiled as she took the girl’s battered copy of Midnight’s Curse. A compliment if she’d ever had one. Out less than a month, and already dog-eared. A generous impulse spurred her to open it to the blank page after the title page. “What’s your name?” she asked

      “Vicky,” the girl said excitedly. “Vicky Sobel.”

      Edie wrote, Thanks, Vicky! Here’s hoping for Fade and Mahlia, and the triumph of true love. Best wishes, Edie Parrish. Then she sketched a quick drawing of Fade, with his arm around a woman. For the face, she glanced up to sketch the redheaded girl’s pretty, wide-eyed face.

      The eye didn’t usually open up so quickly. Usually she had a minute or so of grace, but when she looked up from scribbling the flourishes of the girl’s curly hair and up into her eyes—she saw it.

      Something else. A flash of double vision. Another embrace, except that the girl wasn’t embracing a man. She was wrapped in the coils of an enormous, strangling snake. Edie saw the dead girl’s face, superimposed over the smiling, live face. Blue eyes staring and empty.

      Edie opened her mouth to speak, but her voice stopped. Her heart kicked up, a sick, vertiginous feeling, and she opened her mouth—

      “Stay away from Craig,” she burst out, her voice shaking.

      The girl’s face went stiff. “What do you know about Craig?”

      “N-n-nothing,” Edie stammered. “It just came to me, to say that.”

      “Why?” The girl leaned over the table. “Why did it come to you? Are you sleeping with him? Do you know somebody who is?”

      “No,” Edie said quietly. “I have no idea who this Craig person is. Just that he’s poison for you. Drop him. Run away.”

      “I love Craig!” The girl’s blue eyes bulged. “And he loves me! So just…stay away from him! Shut your mouth! Don’t talk about him!”

      Why, oh why, did she do this to herself? Why didn’t her psychic gift come with a protective mechanism attached that would let her know if there was any point in giving a warning or not?

      “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It wasn’t my business.”

      “Shut up,” the girl said, her voice wobbling. “You…you nosy bitch.” She grabbed her book, and ran, shoving people out of her way.

      Edie shuddered, seeing the empty, bulging eyes. Dark marks on her throat. Strangled. God forbid. But maybe, just maybe, being warned might make a difference for her. She could only hope. It made her feel raw, helpless. A mass of antennae, and no off switch.

      Except the meds. If she preferred dead calm. No pencils, charcoal, ink. That was her off switch, if she could swallow it. But she couldn’t.

      She pasted a smile on and looked up—

      And forgot the redheaded girl, her deadly lover, and everything else she’d ever thought, or known. Including her own name.

      Fade Shadowseeker stood right before her.

      CHAPTER

       6

      Edie rubbed her eyes, looked again. Still there. Still him. He was extravagantly tall, broad, built. His face was thin, his cheeks carved deep under jutting cheekbones. The spiky hair, the flat, grim mouth. The scars. The invisible mantle of controlled power humming around him, brushing against her body like a million tiny tickling fingers, though he was a yard away, across the table.

      His eyes wiped her mind blank. That piercing green that laid bare everything it looked upon. She knew that face, though she’d only seen it once. She couldn’t mistake those eyes. Those scars. She’d seen the wounds that caused them. She wished that she had not.

      She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink. Their eyes were locked. His eyes glowed with some intense emotion. There was an angry crimson spot in one of them. It made the green seem even more intense.

      The person behind him in line began to clear her throat. Fade stepped forward and laid down his books. He held out his hand.

      She took it, and dragged in a breath at the shivery feeling. It flashed across her skin, like wind rippling grass, rustling leaves. The ringing and dinging of a hundred tiny bells and chimes inside her.

      She stared at her hand, swallowed up inside of his. Her publicist approached, coughing discreetly. “Edie? They need to wrap this up.”

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