Exit Light (17 page)

Breathless, Tovah pushed off the ground, her attention focused on the jutting rock of the mountainside. She hit the stone with a bone-jarring thud, teetered and nearly fell, but pinwheeled her arms and managed to keep her balance. She grabbed the rock and squatted, heart pounding, and looked down to the ground, which seemed twice as far away as it had been a moment ago. It probably was. Tovah didn’t have quite enough control to keep all the details in line unless she was paying specific attention to them.

She searched for a handhold and found one, her fingers digging into the side of the mountain as her feet pushed into other cracks. Small pebbles broke away and fell past her. She moved another step, gained another inch. Dirt sifted into her hair and down the back of her collar, itching, but she didn’t bother shaping it away.

She was going to find something real even if it killed her.

“Nice jump,” said Spider from the rock in front of her. Eight crimson legs matched the wee rubies of his eyes, gleaming. Today he was about the size of a tarantula, with the same rounded, furry body segments, but the coloration was different. “When you gonna learn to fly?”

Tovah wiped sweat from her brow, realizing even as she did there was no reason for her to sweat. No need for exertion, for the thumping of her heart or her body to feel weariness. It was habit to represent this way. Easier to concentrate on what was going on around her if she didn’t have to think about changing what felt most natural to her body.

“I don’t need to learn to fly.”

Spiders couldn’t roll their eyes, but this one did. “Oh, and you really need to climb a mountain?”

“Hey. I don’t see you soaring through the air with the greatest of ease.” Tovah settled herself onto her butt, her back pressed up against the mountainside. Her feet dangled into nothingness. Apparently the ground below had become some sort of sea. Water misted her cheeks and the sound of waves rushed around her ears.

Spiders couldn’t flip a bird, either, but this one managed. “I’m a spider, doll. I don’t need to fly.”

She laughed, peering over the edge. “I got up here. That’s good.”

“Now you gotta get down. You gonna jump?” Spider scuttled to the edge and looked over. His body pulsed with every breath. In real life, the sight of a spider that size would have made her squeal in disgust. Here she reached out a hand to pet him as she would a kitten. Spider’s mandibles clattered. “You hitting on me?”

Tovah chuckled. “You want me to?”

Spider inched closer, his eight legs working seamlessly. The pattern on his legs shifted as he moved, becoming darker. His eyes, still red, reflected her face. At the feathery touch of one leg on her bare skin, Tovah shivered. Spider made a low chuffing noise, a laugh.

“Sorry,” Tovah said. “It’s the whole arachnid thing.”

His head bobbed. “Yeah, yeah, grosses you out. I know.”

Tovah had never asked Spider why he represented that way, instead of more like his human form. She thought it might be rude, but she did wonder.

“You seen Ben?”

“No.” Let him make of that what he would.

“How come?”

Tovah glanced at him. “Ben and I…we don’t get along, Spider.”

He scoffed. “Bullshit.”

Tovah didn’t bother arguing about it. Ignoring how it felt for her not to see or talk to Ben might not be the best way to deal with the fight, but it was the easiest. Sometimes, you just had to walk away and keep walking away.

“Tovahleh, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” she snapped, hating that Spider knew how to push her buttons. “We don’t get along. That’s the truth. Ben is what he is and I am what I am. Not everyone is destined to be BFF.”

“If I knew what that meant,” Spider said, “I might agree.”

“Best Friends Forever,” she told him. “Which Ben and I are not.”

She stood on the ledge and stretched, flexing her muscles. She looked at the mountain looming so high above her. She wanted to be sure she’d shaped it with enough hand and foot-holds, but not so many it wasn’t a challenge to climb. The advantage to doing this in the Ephemeros was that here she didn’t need special equipment, just her own hands and feet. If she fell, she only had to shape a soft landing.

She gained a few more inches before he spoke again.

“You’re wrong about him, you know. Ben,” Spider added, as if she couldn’t guess.

“I don’t think so.” She inched higher.

“I’m just saying maybe you should give him another chance.”

She stopped for a moment to glare. “Oh. Sure. Make it my fault? Spider, it’s okay. Not everyone has to like everyone else. Not even here.”

Except…she did like Ben. A lot. She didn’t necessarily like the way he seemed to go out of his way to needle her, but she still liked him. Too much. She blamed the memory of the kiss for that.

“There are things you don’t know, Tovahleh.”

“Spider,” she said with a laugh. “There are plenty of things I don’t know.”

“About Ben.”

Again she stopped climbing to look at him. This time, she glared. “Then it’s up to Ben to tell me, isn’t it? Not you.”

She reached higher to find another handhold.

“Lots of people want to learn to fly.” Now he was going for the casual commentary.

Tovah slipped her fingers into a crevice and found a stone protrusion with her foot. She looked at the top of the mountain. Almost there.

“I don’t. Anyway, don’t they say dreams about flying are signs of sexual frustration or something?”

“What half-assed psychology books have you been reading?” Spider’s back undulated with a myriad of shimmering, mesmerizing colors.

Tovah admired his shaping ability for a moment before heaving herself a bit higher on the mountain. “None.”

“You have a lot to learn about this place.”

Annoyed, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “No shit, Sherlock.”

“Touchy, touchy!” He skittered up the wall and squatted by her right hand, now scrabbling for purchase in a shallow crack. “Why not just shape it deeper?”

“Because that’s cheating,” she snapped. Sweat again ran into her eye, stinging, and she blew out a gust of air to flap her sodden bangs off her forehead. “I want to do this—”

“The hard way. I know. You always have to do it the hard way.” Spider scuttled higher, around her, then jumped over her back.

Tovah ducked in reflex. Her foot slipped, sending a flurry of pebbles cascading down to the unseen earth below. Her heart lurched into her throat. “Goddammit, Spider! Quit showing off!”

Dreaming wasn’t the same as imagining. Awake, she could imagine falling, and her fear would be imagined, as well. Here it was as real as hitting the ground would be. She didn’t need to fear falling, but she did.

“Whatta you worried about?”

She could easily hear Spider’s grin in his voice and imagine the look of it on his waking face. She’d seen it plenty of times. She said nothing, just gripped harder, toed another spot. She clung to the rock like moss, heaving a few breaths while she plotted her next move.

“I don’t get you, Tovahleh. I just don’t get you. You can do the hard shit at home.”

Panting slightly, Tovah took another handhold and shifted her weight higher. “Not like this.”

“According to you, you don’t even like this!” Spider shook his massive head, mandibles chittering in disdain. “You told me that yourself. You’re a couch-and-afghan kind of girl.”

“Was,” she corrected. “Was that girl. People change.”

“Life’s too short to spend it doing shit you hate.”

She heaved herself an inch higher. “And your bestselling self-help book is coming out when? Oh, that’s right. Never.”

She’d made this climb harder than the last, wanting to challenge herself. Now it was becoming so difficult, she didn’t have the concentration to shape anything other than the square of rock directly beneath her. Spider didn’t seem to mind. He squatted in the same place he had before, but now on nothing but the gray furled edges of the unshaped Ephemeros. The good thing was, all her unconscious shaping—the sweat in her eyes and pain in her straining muscles—faded into the background, too.

Shaping was all about skill. The mind filled in details on its own—the stronger the shaper, the less work it was to fill them in. Blinking, breathing, a shadow twisting to follow the sun. Things inherent to the waking world and unnecessary in the Ephemeros except to please its occupants. Shaping took concentration and focus. A truly skilled shaper could juggle a myriad of layers and nuances to create the exact experience he/she wanted. Tovah was able to make things pretty and keep them around but not always able to split her focus to keep everything going. Like a juggler adding ball after ball to the ones already in the air, sometimes when adding something, she dropped everything.

“Smart ass.” Spider bounced a little.

“Shut up. I’m almost to the top.”

“How do you know that? You can’t see anything.”

Tovah found another crevice for her fingers and paused while her right foot sought a new place to land. “I shaped the top just a few feet away. I know it will be there.”

“You have faith it will be there.” Spider’s voice went low, more like his regular Henry voice. “That’s good, Tovahleh. Very good.”

“Thanks for the pep talk. Now, if you don’t mind—”

A rivulet of sweat trickled down her spine and lodged between her buttocks. She hadn’t shaped that, on purpose or not. Who thinks about sweat in their ass? Tovah opened herself to the flow of will ever present in the Ephemeros. It was like plucking the strings of a harp, each its own distinct note but played together creating a piece of music.

“Spider!” she shouted. “Stop it!”

Spider chuffed. “Stop what?”

“You’re shaping that!” Distracted, her fingers slipped. Her feet did too, and Tovah shouted as she caught herself with the tips of her fingers just before she fell. Her heart didn’t just leap into her throat, it tried to jump all the way out of her mouth. “Stop! This isn’t the time!”

“It’s always the time. If you’re going to put yourself in places like this, you have to learn to shield.” Spider’s calm tone infuriated her.

More sweat slid down her face, into the collar of her shirt. Rocks shifted under her grasp. She forced a sturdy platform to shape beneath her feet, fury making her sloppy.

“Spider, I mean it, goddammit. Don’t do this now!”

“If not now, when?”

“Don’t quote Hillel to me like that will make it all better.”

Breathless, she clung to the jagged rock. It became a pile of razors and glinting glass. Agony sliced her and blood painted her fingers. She sent forth a surge of will, and the pain disappeared. Glass shimmered into rock for a moment before becoming glass again. Spider was stronger. He’d been doing this longer.

But she could grab glass as if it were stone. It was a test, to prove to her body that what the eyes saw was not absolute. It was a test to make her let go.

“You can forget about new pajamas for a year,” she muttered as Spider squatted serenely beside her. “Don’t think I won’t remember this.”

“Of course you’ll remember it. And maybe next time you’ll know how to push back.”

“I know how! You’re just stronger.” She reached up. Her hand didn’t want to close on the glittering shards, but she forced it to.

Rock. She was holding rock. Her hand came down.

Pain seared her hand. Tovah cried out and yanked her hand away. Her other hand came down on more glass, which shredded her palm.

She fell, cursing Spider and gritting her teeth with frustration over failing. But, no matter what Spider thought of her skills, she was better than he wanted to give her credit for.

She woke herself up before she hit the ground.

It was too late to go back to sleep and too early to be awake. Tovah stared at her ceiling for a while until finally admitting defeat. She grabbed up her glasses and turned on the light. It took her only a few minutes to attach her prosthetic limb, each motion precise and so familiar she barely needed to pay attention.

By the time she’d done all that, though, she was definitely awake and not so pleased to be. Max yawned and rolled on his belly, tongue lolling. She bent to scratch his thick fur.

“C’mon,” she said. “If this doesn’t deserve pancakes and double chocolate coffee, I don’t know what does.”

The sun hadn’t even come up, which made the light in the kitchen seem that much brighter when she turned it on. From her place at the sink as she filled the carafe for the coffee maker, she could look across the side yard to the house next door. Martin’s house. A light was on in the kitchen there, too.

He’d been absent the past couple times she’d been to visit Henry, and though she saw his car, she never saw him. Just the lights burning late into the night, or in this case, the morning. Maybe he was avoiding her.

“It’s not paranoid to think that if it’s true, Max.” Tovah looked down at the dog, who waited on his haunches for her to give him something to eat. Food, of any sort, was Max’s best friend. “Smart boy. You know I’m making pancakes?”

Woof.

“Eloquent,” she told him. “Pancakes aren’t good for dogs.”

Woof, woof!

“They’re fine for humans in moderation,” she said to that reproach, laughing at herself for acting like he was talking. “It’s the syrup that’s the problem.”

Max didn’t care about calories. He woofed again, big head jerking with the force of it. He licked his chops, telling her to get on with the pancake-making.

“You go out and do your business while I mix this batter. I don’t want to sit down to eat and have you need to pee. Go.” She shooed him out the back door, leaving it open so he could let himself in the screen door that swung both ways to accommodate him, and went about pulling the ingredients for the mix from her cupboards.

No pre-made mix for her. Tovah ate pancakes so rarely it wasn’t worth buying the boxed mix, and mixing from scratch took as little time. The pancakes tasted better, too. Humming under her breath, she cracked an egg, added baking soda and oil and stirred. The griddle had already heated enough to make the few drops of water she flicked on it sizzle and dance. She poured the first pancake, a small one, to test the heat level. It puffed perfectly, golden brown on one side when she flipped it.

She heard the clack of Max on the back porch. “You ready, big guy?”

“That smells delicious.”

Max had a lower voice than she’d expected him to. She turned, spatula in one hand, mixing bowl in the other. “Martin?”

He leaned in her doorway, the screen making him a blur. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”

Max woofed and nudged the door open, knocking past Martin hard enough to cause the man to take a step inside. Martin grabbed the doorframe, then held out a hand but was too slow to keep the door from swinging back and hitting him in the face.

“It swings both ways,” Tovah explained unnecessarily, since he could see that well enough. “So the dog can get in and out. Are you all right?”

He nodded, holding his nose. He tipped his head back. “I don’t think it’s bleeding, is it?”

“Oh, for—come in.” She put down the bowl and spatula and pulled out a kitchen chair. “Martin, sit down.”

He did, so tall his head came up to her shoulder even sitting. She looked at his nose, which bore the red hashmarks of the screen but wasn’t bleeding. She gave him a dampened paper towel, anyway.

“I think you’re fine.”

He nodded, looking at her quickly before looking at the table. “Thanks.”

Tovah looked at herself. The cardigan she’d thrown on hung open, revealing the nightshirt she wore beneath. Made of thin cotton, it outlined every curve and bump and hit her in the middle of her thighs. She pulled her sweater tight over her breasts but could do nothing about the way the gown shifted high on her thighs.

She turned back to the griddle.

“I was awake and saw the dog,” Martin said after a minute. “And your lights were on. I was going to go out for a jog, and…I’m sorry, I should go.”

“I haven’t seen much of you lately,” Tovah said.

From behind her, the purr of the chair legs on her linoleum stopped. Martin didn’t stand. “My hours at the hospital changed.”

She dropped another circle of batter on the griddle. “How’s the house?”

“The house? It’s…great.”

Silence between them. She turned, expecting to see him staring, but Martin was looking at his hands, clasped in his lap. The paper towel had been folded neatly into a perfect square on the table.

“Would you like to stay for breakfast?”

He looked up. His smile knitted tension in her belly as she waited for an answer. “Sure.”

“I don’t mind telling you,” she said in a few minutes as she slid the plate of steaming golden pancakes onto the table, “I’m a pretty fine pancake maker.”

“Nobody’s made me pancakes in years.” Martin waited for her to sit and serve herself before he used a fork to pry one of the pancakes from the pile. He settled it on the plate and took the bottle of maple syrup from her. He poured a small puddle to one side of his plate, then cut his cake into several even pieces as she watched, a bit amused. He caught her looking. “These look great.”

She looked at her own plate, which bore a stack of hacked pancakes smeared liberally with syrup. “Did you want to be a surgeon?”

Martin paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Pardon?”

She used her knife to point at his plate. “You’re so precise.”

He looked at the food, then finished his bite, chewing slowly and swallowing before answering. “I don’t have the patience to be a surgeon.”

“You have the hands for it.” She meant the statement lightly, but Martin put down his fork and lifted his hands to stare at them, front and back.

“You think so? I never did. I have big hands.” He curled them into fists, slowing, working each finger.

“Does size matter?”

As soon as the words came out, she realized how they sounded, and laughed. Martin looked up, mouth slightly parted, like he didn’t get it at first. And then he did.

“That’s not the sort of question you should ask a man, Tovah.”

“I’m sorry.” She giggled. “Blame it on lack of sleep.”

He smiled and opened and closed his fingers again, then picked up the fork. “Why were you up so early? Surely not just because you had a craving for pancakes.”

“No. I had a bad dream. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I could ask the same question of you.” The scent of coffee she’d forgotten to pour teased her nostrils. “Oh, I forgot, coffee!”

She got up to pour them both cups. When she came back to the table, Martin’s gaze followed her path. She’d been under such intense scrutiny before, and as usual heat rose in her cheeks because of it, but she tried not to show it. She gave him the sugar and cream she already knew he took.

“Thanks.” He added the sugar and cream and stirred, but didn’t sip. “I never wanted to be a surgeon because I wanted to fix what was inside people’s minds without having to cut them open to do it.”

“That’s a good reason.”

After a moment he dug back into his pancakes, severing each piece into halves and chewing them carefully. He interspersed each bite with a swig of coffee, finishing his first cup before she’d even taken more than a few sips of hers. He got up to help himself to another as matter-of-factly as if he’d always made himself at home in her kitchen.

She liked that, she realized, as he brought the pot to freshen her cup. Having a man puttering around. “Thanks.”

He smiled. “Thank you. This is the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.”

“Me too, actually,” she admitted. “Usually it’s a toaster pastry and a diet cola as I work at the computer.”

Martin laughed, the sound easier than it had been before. Tovah was having a hard time getting a handle on this man, who moved among his patients with such confidence but spoke to her as though he expected her to bite his head off.

He looked up and saw her staring. “What?”

It was just the sort of thing she’d have said, herself. She recognized that awkward sensation of wondering whether she had something on her face. “I’m glad you stopped by, Martin.”

“Are you?” He sounded surprised, and finished his second cup of coffee.

Tovah nodded. She tasted syrup on her mouth as she licked her lower lip. His eyes followed the motion of her tongue before he looked away. He was blushing again, and she found it as charming this time as she had the first. “Yes. I really am.”

“Well,” he said, sounding a bit gruffly pleased. “You make excellent coffee. And pancakes. I’m glad I came, too.”

A step forward and another back, like a child’s game of I Dare You. Watching him, unable to read his signals, Tovah didn’t dare. “Thanks. Be careful, Max will beg you for the rest of it.”

Martin looked at Max, who’d raised his shaggy head at the mention of his name. “Will he?”

She remembered what he’d said about being bitten as a child. Though Martin didn’t seem frightened of Max, he did seem…wary. And Max, for his part, hadn’t snuffled or slobbered on Martin the way he did on nearly everyone else.

“He might.”

Martin ate another bite. “I guess I’d better finish, then, before he has the chance.”

He watched her again when she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher, and Tovah was mindful of the way her nightshirt hit her at mid-thigh. How she must look, disheveled from sleep and without makeup. No wonder Martin wasn’t flirting, she thought wryly. She probably looked like a mess, and even though he knew about her leg, the sight of it was still probably unfamiliar enough to make him feel a little awkward.

Or, he just didn’t like her in that way.

He was up to put his plate in the dishwasher, too, close behind her when she straightened and turned. She came face to chest with him, and it was impossible not to notice how tall he was. How broad. It was the first time she’d seen him in something other than a button-down shirt and dress trousers, and his T-shirt stretched across muscles she wouldn’t have guessed were there.

“Sorry.” Martin leaned around her to tuck his plate into the open slots of the dishwasher.

Tovah had always had a fairly large personal boundary area; Martin had seriously encroached upon it. Yet she didn’t move, and not because she felt so comfortable with him it didn’t matter that he’d suddenly entered her space. The reason was something more visceral than that, like a punch to her gut.

He smelled good.

Better than the scent of cologne, or even the clean scent of soap. Better than anything artificial. Martin smelled of…himself, of skin and breath and sweat, of something so familiar it was like breathing in a memory she’d forgotten until just now. Except she still didn’t remember it, just had the hint of it in her mind.

She looked up. He looked down. His thumb came up to stroke along the corner of her mouth, and her mouth parted with a sigh of surprise and no small flare of sudden desire.

“You have some syrup,” he said, “just there.”

He wiped it, then licked it from his thumb. The bottom dropped out of her belly, the feeling like being on a roller coaster just before heading down the first hill. She drew in a shivering breath.

Then he’d moved back, away, turning to the table to pour more coffee and leaving Tovah blinking away the rush of heat that had filled her to overflowing. Her heart pounded. She went to the sink to wash her hands and take up a paper towel to clean her mouth.

He’d touched her face as though he owned it. Yet he wouldn’t shake her hand? He couldn’t meet her eyes, sometimes, but he’d licked syrup that had been against her lips?

She didn’t understand him. Not one bit. “Martin—”

He turned, face already set in a smile, seemingly unaware of the mixed signals he was sending. “Hmm?”

Something had changed between them. Something small and subtle, but good. “Did you have enough coffee?”

“Never have enough coffee.” He lifted his cup to her, toasting. “Thanks.”

She took some more for herself, though she could already feel the caffeine making her jittery. “Do you have to work today?”

“Yes. Later.”

It was Sunday.

“I’ll see you there?”

He nodded, sipping coffee and watching her over the rim of his cup. “I guess you will.”

And this, for some reason, made her laugh, the weird moment gone. Max lifted himself from the floor and nudged her hand with his head. Martin put his cup on the table and used a paper napkin to wipe the corners of his mouth.

“I should get going on that jog,” he said, putting a hand flat on his stomach. “Though after all that coffee and those pancakes, I’ll be lucky if I can go any faster than a brisk walk.”

“Don’t make yourself sick,” she warned.

Martin shook his head. “I’ve got an iron stomach. I’ll be fine.”

She watched him head for the back door, not missing the slightly exaggerated berth he gave around Max muzzle-deep in his food bowl. Martin pushed through the screen door and caught it so it didn’t swing back again, but instead closed gently. He stood on the other side of the screen and looked back at her, then raised a hand. It wasn’t a wave, exactly, and not quite a salute.

She raised her hand too, as he’d done, and without saying goodbye, he jumped off the back porch and disappeared around the corner of the yard.

“Max, I have no idea what to think about all that.”

Max didn’t care. Max wanted food. Tovah scraped the remains of the waffles into his bowl and watched him gobble the sweetness with the pure joy only animals and children seem to make look easy.