Touching Smoke (12 page)

A beam of light fluttered through the passenger window, splintering against the tin box resting in the seat beside me. The spark caught the corner of my eye. I rolled my head towards it.

The box was simple, four smooth walls, a bottom and a lid. No designs, no lettering, nothing to indicate that the ashes of a grown person lay inside. But my mom was in there. All of her five-foot-five-inches, one hundred and thirty pounds were somehow now resting at the bottom of a tiny, metal box.

I wanted to laugh at the irony, but all I could do was sit there and stare.

She would have known what to do. If she had been here, she would have had a plan; she always did. She would have taken my hand and said something like;
don’t worry, baby girl. I’m here. Everything will be okay.

“You’re not here anymore,” I whispered quietly. “Will everything still be okay?”

Yes.

I had a hard time believing the incorporeal voice. But what other choice did I have? No amount of crying, or self-pitying, was going to bring her back, nor was it going to help me now. If my mom had taught me anything, it was to always keep moving, and that’s what I was going to do. I had to pull together, regroup and figure out what to do next.

There was still no sign of a motorcycle when I pulled out of the shopping center and started west. The traffic had lightened up, allowing me to reach Highway 17 in record time. I kept to the speed limit, hoping to avoid unwanted attention.

I didn’t officially have my driver’s license and cops tended to frown on that. We just never stayed anywhere long enough to get it, not to mention you needed an actual address to have the license mailed to you. So it never happened, but I knew how to drive and if I didn’t do anything stupid, I would make it out of Ontario without incident.

I stopped for the night in a shabby motel just outside of Kenora. The greasy, half-asleep, half-drunk man behind the counter didn’t even bother asking for ID when I paid for my room with the handful of crumpled bills stuffed inside my mother’s wallet. He was already asleep when I left the office. At the car, I grabbed my sleeping bag, pillows, duffle and my mom’s ashes before joggling the lot while wiggling the key into the door and stepping into the room.

Out of habit, I went straight to work stripping the bed, spraying down the mattress with Lysol and arranging the tarp. I spread my sleeping bag and pillows on top. Then, I went for a shower, but not before double bolting the door, sticking a chair under the doorknob and checking all the locks on the windows.

The shower was a stand up with no tub. There was a healthy amount of mold growing along the tiles and most of the water was ice cold if it wasn’t running brown. But in a pinch — and with the way I looked and smelt — it was the best I could do. I stripped out of my ruined sweats and t-shirt and dumped the lot into the trashcan behind the toilet. I stepped into the cubical and winced at the drizzle of ice cubs falling from the rusted showerhead.

I emerged five minutes later, as clean as I was going to be, wrapped myself in one of my own towels and padded quickly into the bedroom. My duffle sat on the bed, just where I’d left it, next to the small pile of neatly folded clothes. Nothing had changed at all since walking into the shower, yet it had. Something wasn’t the same.

“How did you get in here?” I growled without turning around to face the shadow lurking across the room, just over my left shoulder.

I tossed a glance towards the securely locked door and the chair still tucked beneath the doorknob before turning to face the figure lounging comfortably in the armchair in the corner.

Isaiah regarded me quietly for a moment, head tilted to the side. He didn’t seem overly proud of himself for finding me, or for somehow getting inside my motel room, but neither was he exactly ashamed.

“The front door was unlocked.” He motioned towards the door and chair.

“You know, this whole stalking thing is becoming a problem!” I hissed, snatching up my clothes and storming back into the bathroom, slamming the door for good measure.

I dressed slowly in shorts and an oversized t-shirt, taking a great deal more time than usual combing my hair and brushing my teeth. I was less inclined to kill him when I emerged ten minutes later. I wasn’t Buffy, but Mom had taught me enough self-defense routines to make a grown man cry if I had to. I never actually used that particular trade, but I was willing to try them all out on him if it meant getting my point across.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, standing clear across the room with my arms crossed and my temper washing off me in waves. “Why are you still following me? I told you I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“And I won’t leave you alone.” Something in my chest wrenched at the way he said it, as if he really meant it and not in a chauvinistic, creepy way either.

I quickly squished that feeling. “I don’t need you looking out for me. I can do that myself.”

“Fine,” he answered simply. “Pretend I’m not here then.”

He might as well have asked me to grow wings and fly. Ignoring him was like trying not to breathe — impossible. But no way was I going to tell him that.

“What do you want from me?” Three nights of no sleep, of one chaos after another and loss pressed into my shoulders, deflating them, caving them in, and any strength I might have had, dwindled and flickered like a dying light. I would have happily fallen asleep standing up if it were an option. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

A sort of sadness passed over his eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “If it were that easy I would. Also,” he stared down into his lap, his brows furrowed in contemplation, “because you shouldn’t be alone,”

The thought to ask what he meant crossed my mind. I even started to open my mouth. Instead, I shook my head and turned away. If he were still there in the morning, I would ask then. I crawled into my sleeping bag, drawing the worn material all the way up to my ears.

“Fine. Stay. I don’t care,” I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. “But don’t think I’m going to share the bed!”

Broken splinters of ice ripped through exposed flesh as jagged bits of rain whipped at the long, white nightgown. Unseen demons howled in the darkness, slamming against the tiny figure perched on the terrace wall, toes peeking over the lip, arms outstretched open wide as if preparing to embrace the rumbling sky. Dark hair billowed, a long, wavy cape at her back. The cutting winds slapped the strands over tear-stained cheeks.

“He won’t stop!”

Waves leapt against the cliff side, razor-sharp arms reaching for the white bird preparing for flight. Like hounds, they yapped at her feet, anticipating fresh meat. She drew in sea salt, filling her lungs with freedom, closed her eyes and broke the chains shackling her.

“Fallon!” Hands grabbed me, yanking me back, away from… what? The dream was already a distant memory, faded like an unsalvageable photograph, yet still my heart had stuffed itself into my throat, smothering the scream already lodged there.

I woke up bathed in chilled sweat. My eyes flew open, a gasp clinging to my lips. I stared up into blue eyes, unsurprised to find Isaiah inches from my face, his hands bruising my shoulders, pinning me to the mattress as he leaned over me, practically on top of me. He was breathing hard, almost burning the skin on my face with every puff. His eyes were wide, dark and intense. They bore right into me, but the attention behind them was a million miles away.

“What is it?” I whispered, startled by my concern for him rather than the fact that he was still holding me captive.

“Shhh!” he whispered back, turning his head ever so slightly to the side, seemingly listening.

I strained my ears as well, trying to hear what he was hearing, but all I heard was the night; the buzzing of the fluorescent light outside; the soft snoring of the people next door; the rumble of an eighteen-wheeler passing the motel; the soft chirp of crickets; the whistle of the wind through the trees, and that’s where it was, the soft ribbon of words, lacing through the breeze in a whisper. 

“Isaiah…”

He pressed a finger to his lips, silencing me. “They can sense you,” he whispered into my ear, tickling the side of my face with his hair. “Keep very, very calm.”

I nodded my head that I understood, which I didn’t. But it was all the reassurance he needed to move back, breaking contact between us. I sat up as he got to his feet and moved soundlessly to the window he’d been sitting under. He lifted the corner of the stiff curtain and peered out. For five solid minutes, he became a statue, scarcely breathing. I held my own breath, waiting for a signal from him to as much as blink.

“Let’s go!”

Absorbed in my own thoughts, in the murmured voices seeping through the faded wallpaper, I jumped at his unexpected instructions. The bedsprings jingled and the tarp crackled as I leapt off in a hurry. I had just enough sense to grab my mother’s ashes off the nightstand when he took my hand and dragged me into the bathroom. Inside, he closed and locked the door behind us and turned to the shower wall.

“There’s no way out this way,” I told him, in case he hadn’t noticed that the four-by-four cell didn’t even have a window.

“Cover your eyes,” was all he said, not even waiting for me to do it when he drew back his right leg and kicked at the tiles.

I yelped before I could stop myself. My arms flew up to cover my head and face. But whereas most people would have stopped there, he drew his leg back a second and then a third time. The wall cracked beneath the assault and came crumbling down like a house of cards. The noise, I was sure, could be heard for miles. There was no doubt in my mind that whoever was out there heard it.

“Come on!” he shouted, grabbing my wrist and yanking me over the mound of broken wall and tiles through the hole he’d created.

“But my things!” I cried, stumbling on a chunk of plaster.

“Forget them!”

I clutched my mother’s ashes closer to my chest just as I was forcibly dragged into the night. The hole in the bathroom led us somewhere behind the motel and a dense wall of trees.

“Can you run without shoes?”

I squeaked a laugh. “As fast as you? Not a chance… even
with
shoes!”

“Get on!” He turned his back, motioning for me to climb on.

“But…” I held up the tin box in my hand.

He took it from me. “Get on!”

He had to stoop in order for me to latch my arms around his neck. I hooked on and jumped, gripping his narrow waist with my knees. My squeak caught in my throat as he took off like a bullet before I was even properly in place. The wind sliced past us with the cutting force of a blade. It whistled in my ears. My hair whipped across my face, obscuring the blur of trees and night lashing past us at inhuman speed.

“We need to talk about this talent of yours!” I shouted over the rush.

If he heard me, he made no comment, and I didn’t get the chance to say anything else when he veered right, making a sharp turn down a sloping hill and across a wide meadow. My arms tightened around his neck, and I was sure I was choking him, but he never complained.

Suddenly, after what I was sure was miles between us and the motel, he slowed to a jog and then stopped. “The highway is just through those trees,” he said, gesturing with his chin towards the long, shadowy blur in the distance. “My bike is parked on the other side. I left it there in case something like this happened.”

“You knew this would happen?”

His shoulder jerked beneath my arm. “I like being prepared.”

“Then why are we stopping?” I asked, breathless even though I wasn’t the one who had just run a marathon in under ten minutes. “Do you need me to get off?”

He shook his head. “I want to know why they’re not chasing us.” He stopped and turned his head as far as he could over his shoulder and glanced behind us. “They knew the minute I broke the wall that we were running, but they didn’t follow.”

“Maybe we were wrong?” I supplied, hopeful.

“No,” he murmured, an edge in his tone. “I know they were there.”

“So you think it’s a trap?”

“I don’t know,” he started forward again. “I don’t sense anything, and everything smells the same, but I am not going to stick around here.”

He didn’t run again, but resumed onwards at a brisk pace. Even then, one long stride from him was like three jogging steps for me. Yet I was never jostled.

“How are you able to run so fast?” I asked.

“I ate all my vegetables as a child,” he replied smartly.

“I still don’t think you’re human,” I told him, meaning it.

He turned his head slightly to the side. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was grinning just from the light tone in his voice when he spoke, “I thought you had it all figured out. That you knew all my secrets already.”

Despite the flush creeping into my cheeks, I found myself grinning at his teasing. “I’m working on it. You could make it easier on me and just tell me.”

His chuckle was soft and husky rolling through the night. “Maybe I don’t have any secrets to tell.”

I snorted. “Right, because it’s normal to run as fast as you do.”