Walk among us (3 page)

As Calvin slid into the booth, the man waved for the waitress again. “Don’t get the vegetable soup,” he warned. “It’s too salty.”

Calvin sat up a little straighter. “Who said I was eating with you?”

“You joined me.”

“Mostly because I’m not sure you’re not a ghost.”

Ripples floated across the surface of the soup as the man held his spoon in front of his mouth. “A ghost wouldn’t have burned his tongue on his damn dinner.”

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

The man’s smile threatened to shake Calvin’s resolve. Casting a glance around to make sure they weren’t going to be overheard, he lowered his voice anyway. “Aren’t you afraid of being caught by sticking around here?”

The man took a bite. “Did you tell the police about me?”

“Well, no.”

“Then why should I be afraid?”

Calvin hesitated. He couldn’t figure out if the guy was cocky or just really stupid. “You really don’t think you’re going to get in trouble for what you did.”

The lines returned where the man’s full mouth turned down. “Ah, now I never said that.”

The soft tread of the waitress’s tennis shoes approaching their table prompted Calvin to tilt the menu up and scan it. His stomach growled. It didn’t care that he was about to eat dinner with a murderer, apparently.

He ordered the pork and red cabbage, handing back the menu with a polite smile.

“You’ve been here before,” his dining partner commented.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that could be considered dangerous to order. Easy to mess up. Only someone who knows they won’t will risk it.”

Calvin eyed the soup the man still toyed with. “I grew up here. But I don’t remember you.”

Sad eyes weighed Calvin for a few seconds before the man shrugged. “I’ve always moved a lot. But I’ve been in the area a couple years now.”

“Helping at the Y.”

“How’d you know that?”

“People around here talk. A lot.” Calvin frowned. “You live here and you don’t know that?”

“I don’t get into town nearly as often as whoever told you I did.” The man set down his spoon in order to reach across the table. “Matthew Soto.”

Now he had a name. If he spoke with the police, he’d know exactly where to point them. Except then they’d ask why he didn’t tell them in the first place.

“Calvin Schumacher.”

The clasp of their hands was firm and even. Expected. Normal. The heat leaping from Matthew’s was not.

His skin felt flushed with fever, far warmer than the diner’s interior should have allowed, like it might combust at any moment. It enflamed Calvin’s flesh and charged up his wrist, into his arm, only dissipating when it hit his chest.

His eyes leapt to Matthew’s. A small line had appeared between his thick brows, and he stared at Calvin as if it was the first time they’d met.

Pulling away was like turning his back on a new painting that had stolen his breath. When Matthew picked up his spoon to resume eating, Calvin fought the urge to reach across and twist their fingers together WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

again. As it was, he couldn’t stop staring at the bronzed skin, or how delicately Matthew held the utensil.

“So did you sneak out of the wake?” The calm question shattered Calvin’s stasis, and he lifted his gaze to meet Matthew’s. “I can understand that. Too many people have good intentions. They don’t realize they end up doing more harm than good.”

“No, there wasn’t a wake. Or if there was, I wasn’t invited.” Truth be told, he hadn’t even considered the fact that someone might have a party after the funeral.

Matthew frowned. “I thought it was your father who died.”

“It was. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms. For about the last decade.”

“Oh.” This seemed to resolve whatever disconnect he had with the idea. “It’s a shame that it took his death to bring you back together. Though not unusual, unfortunately.”

He sounded like he knew a lot of mourners. And Eli had said he talked to the kids at the Y. Maybe he was a psychologist? A psychologist out on a rampage. Maybe he showed up at the graveyard to kill off a patient he particularly hated. It made as much sense as agreeing to eat dinner with a murderer.

That reminded him of something Matthew had claimed earlier.

“You said there wasn’t going to be a body.” Calvin lowered his voice even further. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“So you have an accomplice?”

Matthew snorted and shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish my life on anyone else.”

“But then who’s taking care of the body?” He couldn’t let it go. He needed an answer to this, if nothing else. “That’s why you’re not worried about the police, you said.”

His spoon clicked against the bowl, the only sounds between them as Matthew continued to eat. “Did you know the man?” he asked without looking up.

Calvin frowned. “No, but I don’t know a lot of my father’s friends.”

“I’ll bet nobody else knew him either.”

“How did you know that?”

Matthew scraped the last of the soup from the bottom and ate it before pushing the empty bowl to the edge of the table. “Because he wasn’t human.” He smiled. He actually
smiled
. It wasn’t broad, and he didn’t show any teeth, but the curve of his full lips was most definitely upward. “Now aren’t you glad you asked?”

What was there to say to that? Calvin understood the urge to believe in the fantastic. He was an artist living in New York, for Christ’s sake. Half the people he knew believed wholeheartedly in some sort of crazy thing, whether it was vampires or auras or fairies. He didn’t, but then he had been witness to Ted’s crazy conspiracy theories for his entire life. It had made him tolerant, if not a believer.

Matthew didn’t look crazy. He didn’t look stupid. But there was no denying the brilliant gleam of faith in his sad eyes.

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

The waitress arrived with their meals. Calvin lifted a brow when he saw Matthew had ordered the same pork and cabbage dish, but neither man spoke again as they tucked into their food. The pork was as tender as he remembered, the cabbage as sweet. Two-thirds of it was gone before he even thought about looking up.

Matthew wasn’t eating as swiftly. In fact, he seemed more interested in how Calvin was eating than his own food. His full mouth was stained slightly purple from the cabbage, and he played with his fork, his fingertips caressing the stainless steel. Anyplace else, any other time, and Calvin might have taken his interest as something more. His body certainly thought so. His cock stirred against his thigh, and the memory of the heat from the handshake etched into his awareness.

He turned back to his food. Clearly, he was tired. Only exhaustion could trick him into thinking he was actually horny enough to be interested in a man who was either a psycho or a cold-blooded killer. He could even be both. Odds were good he was likely straight too; he couldn’t forget that. Or the knowledge that Matthew thought the man he’d executed at the graveyard wasn’t human.

Yeah. Calvin was tired, all right.

“So why haven’t you talked to your father in ten years?” Matthew asked.

Calvin concentrated on spearing the last bit of pork. “He didn’t approve of me.” Taking a deep breath, he abandoned any more pretense. Why the hell not? Matthew obviously didn’t care too much about what he revealed. “I’m gay.”

He waited for the impending disgust. He didn’t always get it, but Watson Park wasn’t exactly well known for its tolerance.

“That’s never easy,” came the low response. “But the loss was his, you know. He let his prejudice cloud a relationship that can’t be duplicated.”

Calvin’s stomach clenched, and he set down his fork, unwilling to risk eating more and making himself sick from the shock of hearing support. “Yeah, well, he’s dead now, so no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Do you have any other family? Anybody else you can turn to in times like this?”

“Would I be sitting here, having dinner with a murderer, if there was someplace else for me to go?”

That closed Matthew down. He began eating again, the quiet interest in his face now shuttered away.

Calvin actually felt guilty for a moment, but then dismissed it. They didn’t even know each other, not really. They had nothing in common except a funeral and a secret.

“I don’t think of myself like that.” Matthew offered the opinion in between bites. “I just do what I have to.”

“Kill people.”

“I already told you. He wasn’t human.”

“He sure looked human.”

“Monsters always do.” When he reached for his glass of water, his hand shook. “Consider yourself lucky you can’t see them like I can.”

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

The more he spoke, the more convinced Calvin became that Matthew was some kind of social worker on a mission. He was privy to people’s deepest, darkest secrets. He had broken under the strain, deciding that the only way to truly help them was to rid the world of their perversions.

As he watched Matthew finish his meal, Calvin felt the itch to capture him in some way. A canvas? No, not a painting. A sketch. Charcoal with colored pencils to add the correct hues at the right spots. Matthew standing against a cloud-covered sky. His coat open. No shirt underneath. A gun dangling from his hand.

Bones littering the ground at his feet. The air wouldn’t be still, but motion was easy to show with charcoal.

Trees would bow in the background, and flowers would peek through the skeletal remains along the grass, but Matthew would be utterly still within the chaos.

The only color would be in the gun, which would be as bloody red as he could make it, and hints of yellow in the occasional petal.

Calvin made a mental note to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up some pencils. At the very least, he could get the outlines of the picture in place before returning to New York.

“What are you thinking about?”

Matthew’s query cut through his reverie, and it shocked him to see that the dishes were gone. It wasn’t unusual for him to get lost while contemplating new work, but rarely did it happen so completely when he should be, by all rights, too tense to relax.

“A new drawing.” When Matthew’s brows shot up in surprise, Calvin added, “I’m an artist.”

“Really? And you make a living at it?”

He laughed. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

Dark red crept in his cheeks. A blush. He was actually embarrassed. It lent Matthew a sense of vulnerability he obviously worked to hide most of the time. “I just didn’t think a professional artist would be able to support himself here. You must show in Chicago.”

“New York. That’s where I live.”

“Ah. That makes more sense. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered you if you lived around here.”

“My work is a lot more memorable than I am.”

“Well, I can’t vouch for that without seeing something for myself. But you seem plenty memorable to me.”

His response hesitated on his tongue. There was that feeling again. That sense of awareness, of one man noticing another, of recognizing a kindred attraction, of curiosity about where that attraction might lead.

He toyed with his glass, watching how Matthew’s eyes flickered to the minute motions. On instinct, Calvin slouched slightly in the booth, stretching his legs a little more so that his foot nudged against Matthew’s.

As a near stranger, a straight man would have pulled his foot away immediately.

Matthew didn’t.

Calvin warmed. He shouldn’t be excited about discovering Matthew might be interested. That didn’t WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

change the fact that he’d killed a man that afternoon.

The waitress appeared with the check, but before Calvin could take it, Matthew was pressing thirty dollars into her palm and telling her to keep the change. She smiled and scurried off, leaving them alone again, but without the purpose of dinner, Calvin wasn’t sure what to do.

He could continue chatting the guy up and hope something came of it. It would be nice not to spend the night alone with his personal demons. The problem with that, of course, was the problem with most of his options. Matthew was an admitted killer. A soft-spoken, good-looking one, but a killer nonetheless. Going anywhere with him was not only insane, but inviting disaster. Calvin had watched enough true crime movies to know this was dangerous to the
nth
degree. He had pushed enough of his luck accepting the invitation to eat with him.

In the end, it left only one option. Which was probably for the best because ultimately, Calvin could distract himself for the next few hours recreating the composition Matthew had inspired.

“Well, this has most definitely been an interesting day.” Calvin slid from the bench, his pulse jumping when Matthew did the same. He had to look up at the man. He loomed much larger when they stood so closely, and he fumbled for his wallet in order to mask the trembling in his hands. “How much do I owe you?”

Matthew waved him off. “My treat.”

“Oh.” He knew he should protest, but arguing might invite disaster. Better to get out while the going was good. “Well, thanks then.”

Grabbing the pea jacket from the corner of the booth, Matthew cast a glance at the waitress behind the counter before asking in a low voice, “So, do I have to worry about police banging on my door in the middle of the night?”

Calvin knew the correct answer was, “Hell, yeah,” but truth be told, he didn’t want to get involved. He didn’t want another reason for the cops to want him around, and he didn’t need another tie to a community that never accepted him anyway. There might be a risk of pissing Matthew off enough to have the man shoot him down as a threat, but frankly, Calvin didn’t think he would. Besides, after tonight, he’d be out of Watson Park for good.

“You said there wouldn’t even be a body, right?” Calvin backed up, not sure he wanted to shake hands with the man again. He didn’t think clearly when he felt that heat, though the argument could be made that he hadn’t been thinking clearly all day. “Then it looks like you’re scot-free.”

He turned around then.
Walk away. Don’t run. Don’t look back.

Matthew didn’t follow. He didn’t even say goodbye.