Shadowlight (14 page)

It sounded like the plot for a bad techno-thriller movie. “How can you know that?”

“You are not the first they have tried to take.”

The cold, rusted steel of the hatch wheel bit into her palms as she gripped it. “You’re wrong. GenHance is a research-and-development firm. They’re working on cures for birth defects and genetic diseases. They have no reason to kill me.” She met his narrowed gaze. “I’m just a businesswoman.”

“You are Kyndred. Made from birth to be unique among humans. Your ability is genetic, Jessa. It was encoded in your cells deliberately. GenHance knows this, and that it can be taken from you and given to another.” He paused, and then said, “That is why it does not matter whether you are alive or dead. They need your cells, some of which they cannot retrieve without killing you. Your life is not important to them.”

The thought of deliberately cursing someone else with her ability made bile well up in her throat. “If I did have this ability, which I don’t, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“You think not? With a single touch you can know the darkest secrets any man possesses. Knowledge is power. You use it to bring justice to those who have eluded the law. Another would take those secrets and wield them like a weapon. No one in power anywhere would be safe.”

She was letting him talk her into believing his delusions. “Then I’ll have to be careful.”

“You were careful when you called the FBI,” he said. “You used different pay phones away from where you live and work. You kept the calls short, and gave them nothing they could use to identify you. Still I was able to find you. So did GenHance.”

He knew.

She released the hatch wheel and looked at the flecks of rust on her hands. “I was going to stop calling them. I promised myself this was the last time.”

“They would have found another way to identify you. The business you do. The people you expose. In time it would have led them to you.” His tone changed. “They will attack your resources, and they will not stop until you are penniless. Tomorrow they will file a lawsuit against your company and use it to close the business. Your bank accounts will be emptied and your credit cards canceled. Your loans will be terminated and your home will be repossessed.”

He was talking about everything she’d worked for, everything that mattered to her. Jessa wanted to hit him. “They can’t do that.”

“It has already begun.” He gestured toward the corridor. “Come and I will show you.”

“The boss thinks she looks like a queen.” That still rankled on more than one level. “I expect they’ll be tied up for a couple hours while he shows her the stuff and she has another why-me meltdown. You want to drive up and grab a couple of beers?”

Drew chuckled. “Sure. Right after I quit my job and set fire to my house.”

She let her voice drop a sultry octave. “After all this time talking to me on the phone but never once meeting in person, you know you want to see what I really look like. And, baby? I’m even better than I sound.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t seem impressed. “More like you want to check
me
out.”

“You give great phone,” she admitted. “I’ve got you figured for a six-five, two-twenty, blond ex-surfer dude.”

He choked on whatever he was drinking. “Try a five-nine, skinny, red-haired, pale-faced geek,” he said after he finished coughing.

“Shit.” She laughed. “That makes me a head taller.”

“See?” He sighed. “Better we stay phone buddies. With my delicate ego, I could never handle facing the real Rowan.”

Her smile faded. “Honey, no one can.”

After she finished the call. Rowan went to retrieve the tray from the library. Queenie hadn’t touched a crumb, so she picked up the cold grilled cheese and ate it on the way to the kitchen. There she reheated the soup and sipped it from a mug as she prepared dinner. Matthias wouldn’t care, but she could never bring herself to throw away perfectly good food.

Especially not sandwiches.

Rowan knew what it was to be hungry; she’d lived on the street for almost three years. Back in the day she’d gotten used to the cold, the wet, the filth, and the dark. She’d found the places where she could hide and rest, in the parks and the alleys and the doorways. In time she’d learned how to make a shelter out of a couple of crates or a cardboard box. During the winter she’d discovered which abandoned buildings were the warmest and safest, and how to barricade herself in a musty old closet for a blissful eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

It was hunger that she feared. That grinning death-headed motherfucker had taken a liking to her, thanks to her screwed-up metabolism that kept her perpetually skinny, and once she’d run away from her last foster home he’d stalked her every day. Even after she’d quieted her belly with a handout or a church meal, he’d waited and watched just out of sight, knowing he’d soon get another chance to sink his dull tombstone teeth into her again.

Living on the street, Rowan discovered she could do a lot of repulsive things, like go two weeks without bathing, wear clothes that were little more than bundles of rags, or bat away a rat with her bare hand. She’d grown wise and tough and strong during those years, fighting to survive. But she’d never been able to shake her obsession with food. When she wasn’t spare-changing or standing in a line outside a soup kitchen, she’d haunt hot-dog stands and pizza joints and burger palaces so she could breathe in the delicious scents. A walk through an open-air food market was for her like cruising through Tiffany & Co. had been for Holly Golightly. She couldn’t even pass a Coke or gumball machine without checking the slot to see if someone had left something behind.

On the bad days when she couldn’t stop herself, she’d take the subway to Manhattan and walk the rows of restaurants there. She’d pace back and forth in front of the windows, stopping occasionally to look in at the rich people stuffing their faces. She didn’t care about the people; they were no better than her, but the food they ate was so beautiful and elegant that it sometimes brought tears to her eyes. Usually a waiter or busboy would be sent out by the manager to chase her off, but that hadn’t been the worst.

People coming out of the restaurant would sometimes notice her there, and come over to offer her their take-home containers and doggie bags.

Then she’d feel the shame of it, of what she was, crawling over her dirty skin, and she’d cringe inside her ragged clothes and stumble away. But first she’d snatch the doggie bag of scraps or the plastic bowl of leftover soup. Because as much as every mouthful shredded her dignity, it held off the specter of hunger for another day.

Rowan hadn’t wanted to live like a stray dog. She’d tried to get work, even going to stand with the illegals on certain corners where they were picked up every morning and were paid twenty bucks for ten hours of backbreaking labor unloading trucks or clearing out debris from demolition sites. The labor bosses never picked her to join their crews, even when they thought she was a boy—she was too skinny and pale. One told her that he didn’t hire junkies.

Unwilling to become a thief or a whore, Rowan had tried collecting discarded cans and bottles out of the trash, but it took hours and she burned up too much energy hunting for them. Then she could take only as much as she could carry to turn in at the recycling center, and that amounted to only a dollar here and there. She remembered with perfect clarity the first time she’d been desperate enough to eat a piece of half-eaten fried chicken she’d taken out of a garbage can, and being so sickened by the spoiled meat that minutes later she’d puked until she dry-heaved.

To this day she couldn’t stand the smell of fried chicken.

During her last year as a homeless kid she began to think of nothing but food, daydreaming about it, planning elaborate meals she would make someday when things were better. If she saw a TV in an electronics store window tuned to a cooking show, she’d stop and watch it through to the end. She’d go into the public library to get warm on a cold day, and end up spending the afternoon reading cookbooks.

The fear of starvation followed her into her sleep, swallowing her up in nightmares where she watched her body shrink down to skin over a skeleton in a matter of seconds. When she woke, she would huddle, touching herself with her hands to make sure it hadn’t happened while she’d slept and there was still a little flesh under her cold, clammy skin.

If it hadn’t been for the sisters, Rowan might have ended up that way.

She met them when she’d gone to a church to get in line for the free dinner on Thanksgiving Day. It had been crowded, and then the food had run out just as she’d gotten to the front of the serving line. One of the old ladies who was handing out cards with directions to another soup kitchen touched her hand, and without thinking Rowan held on to her.

The lady stared at Rowan’s face without blinking, and then abruptly asked her to come into the back to help her with the dishes. Having nothing better to do, Rowan followed her.

“Here.” Instead of handing her a dish towel, the lady offered a white box. “It’s a box lunch. They give them to us for serving today.”

“I can’t take this.” Instantly ashamed, Rowan tried to give it back to her. “You’re supposed to eat it.”

“I don’t particularly like turkey sandwiches. Too dry.” The thin lips crimped. “If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it away.”

That was enough to convince her, and she started to go, but the old lady asked her to sit down at the table. Then she did the same, and started talking to her about living in New York since the forties, and how hard it was for older women on their own to feel safe.

Rowan wolfed down the skimpy turkey sandwich and celery sticks before she saw the last item in the lunch box: a slice of apple pie in a neat triangular cardboard container. It was the kind they sold frozen by the slice in the supermarket, and was more crust than anything. But her favorite dessert had always been apple pie, and she hadn’t tasted it in more than a year. Seeing it made her throat hurt.

“My name is Deborah,” the lady told her. “I have a house in the Bronx that I share with my sister, Annette. She’s a widow and I never married, so living together saves us a little money. Where are you living, my dear?”

“What do you care?” Rowan tried to look defiant, but she knew she wasn’t impressing the old gal, not with a week of dirt on her face. In a smaller voice she said, “I don’t have anyplace. I’m homeless.”

“Do you use drugs?” When she glared at her, Deborah smiled. “I didn’t think so. Your eyes are too clear. Are you in any trouble with the police?”

“Not unless they catch me. Next year I’ll be too old for them to put me back in foster care.” Angry with herself for saying too much, Rowan placed the slice of pie in front of the old lady. “Thanks for letting me have your lunch. It was really decent of you. I gotta go.”

Deborah’s fine silver eyebrows arched. “To where? You said you have no place to live.”

“You shouldn’t do stuff like this,” Rowan told her. “Chatting up people like me … it’s dangerous. You don’t know who I am. I could beat you up or mug you.”

“I won’t have any money until my check comes in on the first,” the old lady told her. “But I have a nice little house, and a spare room, and no daughters or sons to look after me and Annette. How would you like to come and see it?”

“Why?”

“You came to help me even though the food was gone.”

When Rowan would have replied, she waved one of her hands. “You’d be doing me a favor. I have to take the bus, you see, and I hate to ride it alone. The young men who sit in the backseats are always watching me.”

Rowan had gone with her, scrounging enough change from her pockets to pay the bus fare. The little house turned out to be just that, a small but tidy place in the Bronx with geraniums in the window boxes and lace curtains in the windows. Deborah’s sister, a slightly older woman with the twisted fingers of advanced arthritis, had welcomed her in like a visiting niece and fussed over her, offering her tea and cookies and then asking her to help with dinner, which Rowan then had to stay and help them eat. As Rowan washed the dishes, Annette began nagging her sister to make her stay with them for the night because the buses had stopped running.

Rowan wanted to leave, but neither of the old gals would hear of it. Deborah persuaded her to use their tiny bathroom and shower, and when Rowan stepped out of the shower she found a pile of clean, folded old clothes waiting for her on the bathroom counter. Her clothes had been taken away, and later she would find out that Deborah had immediately tossed them out in the trash.

As elderly and frail as they were, the sisters were amazing bullies, and refused to listen to a word Rowan said. Shortly after nine, Rowan found herself sitting on the bed in the spare room, looking around the neat little room in disbelief as Deborah called out a good-night and that they would see her in the morning.

She had stayed with the sisters that night, and settled down in that real bed. The clean sheets and fluffy pillows had felt so good and soft against her scrubbed skin that she’d wallowed for a while, but in the end the soft mattress had felt too alien, and she’d tossed the top sheet on the floor and settled down there.

In the morning Deborah gently shook her shoulder to wake her. She didn’t say anything about finding Rowan on the floor, but asked her to join them for breakfast. Over homemade waffles, sausage links, and the best coffee Rowan had ever tasted in her life, the sisters offered her a job as their housekeeper and companion.

“We’d pay you if we had the money,” Annette said, her kind eyes worried, “but between the two of us we barely have enough to cover our prescriptions and living expenses. That’s why we can only offer you room and board.”

Rowan didn’t understand. “Why me?”

“You don’t have a job or family,” Deborah said. “Annette and I are getting on now, and we need a young person around the house to help us. You need a home. It’s a perfect match.”

“But you don’t know anything about me,” Rowan protested. “I could be a thief or a killer. I could take advantage of you, clean out this place while you’re sleeping and take off!”

“Nonsense,” Deborah said, her expression stern. “You’re a good-hearted girl; anyone can see that. Besides, by not offering you a salary we’re taking advantage of
you.”
She stood up. “Your first job is to help me with these dishes. Annette keeps dropping and breaking things.”

Her sister nodded. “My arthritis makes me clumsier than a Republican at a gay bar.”

Rowan knew what waited for her outside that little house, and the last three years had taught her never to question an act of kindness. So she moved into the spare room, and became the sisters’ housekeeper and companion, and repaid their kindness by keeping the little house spotless and whipping up the most delicious meals she could manage from the food they could afford. The two sisters only just scraped by on their Social Security checks, so Rowan became a champion at clipping coupons and finding the best prices at the local markets.

Every weekend she worked with Deborah cooking for the homeless at the church, and through her work there was offered a part-time job supplying muffins and cookies to the owner of a convenience mart. At the end of the first year she’d lived with the sisters, she was bringing in enough to cover her room and board and improve their living conditions considerably.

Deborah refused to accept any rent money from her, but Rowan used her earnings to see to it that her ladies never wanted for or needed anything. She would have happily lived with the sisters forever, but one morning Annette didn’t wake up. After her sister’s funeral Deborah seemed to grow old overnight.

“I’ve never wanted to pry, Rowan, but I must if we are to talk about your future,” the old lady had said to her one night over dinner. “I can’t go to be with Annette unless I’m sure you’ll be all right.”