The Lebrus Stone (29 page)

"A
big fat
cliché."

"And that's a good thing?" He sounded afraid of my answer.

"Are you kidding? It's amazing. It means you're hard to find. Sometimes even impossible."

His frowned deepened, all the more confused.

"I told you I'm not good at this."

"I think I get it." He grinned, standing up to hug me.

His heart was beating fast. It could only mean it had worked. He believed me. He understood.

The valet left and Cray kissed me for a very long time.

Maybe to keep me quiet.

I wasn't going to complain.

We visited local art galleries and museums where we gave our verdict on Claus Slutor sculptures, collages and Neue Wilden paintings; the art of Cubism and De Stijl.

Cray was in tune with the world of art. He spoke of it with the same compassion and conviction as any enthusiast. The common factor we shared made me smile with a reassurance that I'd found someone I could truly connect with. Someone I could share my interests and goals with without feeling like a chattering bore.

He appreciated the Mannerist period and I the Renaissance. He favored the American artists and I the European. It was what kept us talking at a debatable speed.

We were looking at a piece by Francisco De Goya beside a woman taking notes when I noticed a girl with curly red hair leading a group of giggling girls. There were seven of them in total, all of them just as scrawny.

Cray eyed them and suddenly had the urge to take the tour-led speech on Guita.

"I want to stay here a little longer," I said, aware of his game to distract me.  I just wasn't sure why yet.

"Really? You might miss out." He forced a smile, easing me further through the crowd of tourists.

I pushed him in the opposite direction. "Why are we running away?"

He tried to act shocked and did it well. Aspiring actors probably had the knack of playing you like an idiot.

I took his hand and led him to a horrible  painting that no one was bothering to look at.

"Is that her?" I asked.

"Who?" He looked casually over his shoulder.

"Kellice?"

I was sure even Nebraska could hear her uncivilized cackling.

He nodded and looked over his other shoulder, freezing his gaze on the leader of the girly pack who was admiring the bronzed butt of the Harmodius statue.

His eyes darted back to mine and I thought I saw rage in them. But before I could question it, his expression changed again to perhaps fear, with a hint of something else, something he had wanted me to notice, something that crippled his speech and his focus on me.

"So…" I began, just to gain his attention. "Shall we go?" One of us had to be the adult.

He ran a shaky hand through his hair.

"She can't be that bad" I frowned.

He hadn't actually said it was Kellice. He had just nodded, but it was obviously her. What was the big deal? Was there something she might want to say that concerned him? Was there something he didn't want me to know about? She didn't seem his type, which made me feel better. She was super model tall, but with a boyish figure. I had always imagined Cray with curvy, exotic type. I realized I'd just described myself. I might be right.

I stepped toward him but she beat me to it, appearing out of nowhere. I guessed that was the idea. Sneakers snatched when you least expected it. And I always seemed to know the person who got taken away from me. The girl I assumed was Kellice was pretending she hadn't seen me.

"Cray," she cried. "Cray, I've been calling you all day." She playfully hit him on the arm and planted a kiss near his lips
.

He eased her away. Yet not that much considering we were supposed to be dating and
I
was who he really wanted. I had trusted him too easily. I stalked away before he could give me a lame excuse.

To rattle me all the more, he didn't rush after me. I was half way down the marble stairs when I heard him clamper down them after me. Although it wasn't that much of a clamper. It was more like a glide of feet and brushing fabric. His spicy cologne enriched the humid air, tempting me to forgive him already.

"Crys, wait!"

His hand brushed my arm, but I pulled away, being dramatic. I couldn't help how I felt. Liking someone this much brought complications such as these. It made you susceptible of being hurt from the tiniest hint of disloyalty. We had made our feelings official in a short time, but that was beside the point. Strong feelings like this needed nurturing, not scarring. Especially when those feelings were for a guy as experienced as him. Someone who didn't usually commit. Suddenly I hated the way his touch made me react when my mind didn't want to, when it knew better than to give in so easily.

A part of me didn't feel mine anymore. It was his, and it frightened me.

"It was a harmless kiss," his voice echoed off the high arched ceiling.

I didn't care or want to know the ins and outs of how he saw it. In my eyes, it was an unnecessary kiss near the lips, and one he didn't try to resist.

By the time I exited the doors, he had managed to dart ahead and stand in front of me.

"It wasn't how it looked." He panted. "And it happened too fast for me to stop it."

Rain drizzled from the accumulated clouds. Cray's eyes blinked away the droplets. I had no way home. Not a dry one.

"You weren't exactly squirming, Cray."

He had nothing to say to that, just as I knew he wouldn't in the first place.

"Just take me back." I was verging on saying home. But home wasn't somewhere you didn't feel fully welcome.

I took a piece of tissue out of my jeans pocket and dabbed the raindrops on my cheeks. To every passerby, it looked as if I was crying. Maybe even to Cray.

He seemed riddled with guilt. I was happy to see it. Although, maybe it was for the wrong reason. Maybe he felt bad for liking Kellice more than he assured me he liked me. Maybe he didn't want to have to choose and let me down and be with her instead.

The inner beatings had to stop. He had to tell me what was going on.

"If you want to be with Kellice, go ahead." I shrugged.

He didn't have to know how much that thought upset me. I had to tell myself he was just someone I lusted after and cared for too quickly. But he also wasn't someone I wasn't going to forget any time soon when he chose some bellicose bitch over someone he apparently dreamed about.

"Don't be…" He bit his lip. "You have to trust me."

Again he was saying what he had in my dream before he turned on me. Still, I found myself wanting to agree with him. Kind of. His eyes had a way of telling me what I needed to know without a lie detector's wires attached to his head.

But I couldn't let him know I was caving. Not yet.

"If we want this to work," I said, "you'll have to not give me a reason to imagine anything, Cray. You need to give me a reason to trust you."

He looked at me blankly, probably lost in thought as usual.

"When you give me your word, you'll have to follow through with your actions." I sounded blunt, but I had to be if I was to be taken seriously.

It began raining a little more though it was almost early summer. It was as if the weather reflected my mood here. It wetted the top of his shirt. Cray hadn't moved or spoken. I watched, but nothing happened. What I'd said seemed to have casted a shadow of immense doubt. It was as if I had uttered the forbidden truth that had broken a secret ally between Kellice and him.

"I agree," he said finally. "Let's head back to the car. You're getting wet."

He descended the stairs, just as brisk and smooth as he purposefully always did, giving away nothing and creating more nerves to rattle me. It made no difference if, or how, I accepted his reasoning, because it was the kind that always laid more cards on the hypothetical table. More risks.

I sensed he couldn't sell himself short to confide in me, and he couldn't abide anyone's promise. He was to dangle between me and someone else, like a pendant on a chain, a cliffhanger losing its grip. He couldn't give me all of him. Not while I allowed him to self-wallow.

We walked to the car in silence, crossing each road and passing each store like strangers walking side my side, not two people who lived together who had been intimate, romanticizing a future together.

It looked like there could be nothing beyond what he was telling me. The invisible screen he had placed between our paths seemed indestructible, improbable to break.

I wouldn't dare brush his hand or make some insinuation of a contact to defreeze what was icing over what felt like a humongous gap. I didn't understand why I was made to feel like the bad apple in all this, when it was him who seemed rotten with lies.

I didn't understand why I always felt like the traitor, why it hurt to need him so much.

We passed Elandra's store since I wanted to see her. Cray slowed down when I came to a stop outside it, which meant he had been paying attention after all.

I asked him to come in and meet a friend I made, someone who had been helping with some family research. He looked skeptical, maybe even a little disbelieving at my friendship with a clairvoyant. But he gave in when I told him he could leave and I would find my own way back to the house.

He didn't raise an eyebrow when he entered the store of hanging stars and jingling fake hawk's heads. He didn't look intrigued either, just there, not really taking any of it in. Although his frown never left him.

The store was brighter in the evening, with florescent blue and orange lights beaming down from the concave ceiling. New wind chimes and dream catchers bordered the now aluminum looking wallpaper.

Upon hearing the door chime, Elandra appeared from behind the hanging black beads at the back of the store. She was wiping her hands with a piece of red fabric that stained her hands brown. She smiled when she saw me, but it faded to a look of horror when she clapped eyes on Cray. The way he looked at Elandra concerned me. It was like he enjoyed her discomfort.

Did she see something bad? Was Cray's future…concerning?

Cray was wearing his cool defense expression, his hands in his pockets. His eyes never left what he made a victim to his gaze. He was becoming another person again. This time someone playful, but darker and with a slight, sly grin.

Elandra straightened her posture and approached us with a smile that tensed the rest of her face. She looked to have shrank in size. She kept her gaze on me as I introduced her to Cray. Her eyes never shifted from me. Anyone would have thought she was afraid she would turn to stone by meeting his humored eyes.

I became frustrated by her rudeness toward someone she'd just met.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked her.

She scratched her head, perhaps as a way to avoid answering me. Cray yawned behind his hand, clearly bored. His attitude was changing yet again, seeming detached and uncooperative, deliberately.

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's a pleasure to meet you," she said to him, her eyes still avoiding his. Instead, they darted around him. What was with her today?

"Maybe you could give him a reading," I said, noticing her hands were unsteady.

"I'm afraid I'm closing for the day in a short while. Besides, I'm sure he doesn't need any help in foreseeing his future."

If she was set to speak in riddles, there was no point in staying. After telling her I would come back tomorrow, she pulled me back and told me she wanted to speak to me alone. She even suggested driving me home.

Cray was suspicious of Elandra, eyeing her with what seemed like a silent warning before asking me if I was certain. After much deliberating, he left us alone. As soon as he left, Elandra changed back to her usual self, pulling me into the back room.

She didn't give me a chance to sit down. She grabbed me by the arms, her eyes wide.

"You mustn't be with him. He's wrong for you." The sentence was a direct command, which I could tell had no room for ifs, buts, or whys. But I had plenty.

"Why, what's wrong? Is he in danger?" I asked in concern for his life, feeling sick at the thought of losing him. I prayed she wasn't about to say it.

"No, but I think you could be if you continue to be with him." She released me to push me down onto the couch beside her." I have a bad feeling," she whispered like he could hear.

"Such as?" I needed more than a feeling. I needed facts and figures, diagrams. Hell, a pie chart. Something to make me understand this overreaction to his visit.

"There's something beyond the surface, a secret he hasn't shared."

I just stared at her in disbelief. I couldn't for one second believe Cray would want to harm me. My heart told me he would rather endanger himself. I just knew it. Luckily, she changed the subject.

"As for you, well you're too special for the likes of him."

"How do you mean?" I asked, discomforted by the exaggerated praise.

"Well, don't you see? You're part witch, part Fallion. It would explain the magnificent structure of your build, features, your charismatic presence."

I tried not to blush.

"I've looked into this carefully. It's all I have thought about after your last visit. I was going to come by the house and talk to you, but I thought it best I wait for you to arrive. I knew you would. Anyway, I think you're a descendant to the Fallions Crystal, through the Fallion who had a child with a human. It's a small fraction of history I managed to read from the diary. I think you have a purpose to be here in this world as well as Blacksville." She held my hands. "Crystal, we have to find out what that purpose is. If you don't, you could fail miserably and be the cause of a lot of suffering."