The Space Between (25 page)

Only he hadn’t, because she was curled up on the bed, looking exhausted, but all in one piece. So the vision of her death must have been a dream, but it was hard to find that reassuring when the destruction of the hotel room was still absolutely real.

“Come on,” he said scooping Raymie into the crook of his arm and getting to his feet. “Let’s go talk where we won’t wake up Daphne.”

In the bathroom, he set Raymie on the counter and closed the door. The room was as huge and old-fashioned as the rest of the hotel, with tiny octagonal tiles and a claw-footed tub. The counter, which ran the length of the wall, was one big slab of solid marble.

In the mirror, his reflection stared back at him, hollow-eyed and rumpled-looking. He was wearing jeans and his undershirt, but sometime in the night, he must have taken off his sweater. The sight of his bare arms had the effect it always did, making him feel a little sick. Instinctively, he turned toward the wall, crossing them over his chest.

Raymie sat on the counter with her back against the glass. She didn’t look like she cared about his arms one way or another. “Why do you sleep in the bed with Daphne?” she asked, and began to suck on her hand.

Truman pushed himself up onto the counter and leaned back next to her. “It’s complicated.”

“Do you like it?” Raymie’s voice was muffled by her fist. “I have always slept alone.”

“Yeah, I like it.”

“What makes it nice?”

“A lot of things. To touch someone, to feel them next to you.” He laughed, but it was a short, injured sound. “I can actually sleep.”

“Someone came last night,” Raymie said. “I heard him out in the room, making noise. Is he the one who knocked over the furniture?”

Truman nodded. “I think so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

He knew it was bad news when your nightmares started spilling out into real life. The shadow man had always been more solid than any normal dream, but now he’d officially managed to make himself real enough to break things.

Truman knew he should be shocked, terrified even. Under other circumstances, fear would have been easy to come by. But two days ago, he’d met a girl who claimed to be a demon and then turned out to actually be one. Now he was in Las Vegas, with no money and no way to get back, sitting on the counter in the bathroom of what was obviously an insanely expensive hotel, talking to a baby with metal teeth. Surprises were becoming a thing of the past.

Truman looked over at Raymie, who was still chewing on her hand. “That guy—he visits me, I guess, but this was kind of a new thing. He’s never broken stuff before.”

“Why does he come to see you?”

“He says he wants to fix me,” Truman said, and even saying it out loud made him feel ashamed. “And I don’t know if I can be fixed.”

“I can’t help you,” she told him.

“I know. I don’t know if anyone can. I don’t even know if I deserve it.”

“You are always tender.” Raymie was looking up at him with her strange eyes, a little terrifying in the light that shone above the bathroom mirror. “You are always tender to me.”

“I like you, Raymie. Don’t you know that?”

“Tender,” she said again. “Tender is kind and gentle. It’s also sore, like the skin around an injury.”

Truman touched his wrists again, but the nerve damage made it hard to feel anything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I
wake up feeling light-headed and hungrier than I’ve ever been, like if I don’t eat something now, right this second, I will implode. The whole room is in disarray, furniture overturned and luggage scattered everywhere. A lamp is lying on the floor, shade torn like someone put a foot through it.

After staring at the ceiling for a moment, I drag myself out of bed and pick through the room, opening drawers and cupboards, looking for something to eat. It’s light out and Truman is already awake, sitting on the couch with a heap of decorative pillows at his feet.

He watches as I eat two packets of instant coffee from a wicker basket beside the television. Raymie is on the floor by the wardrobe, playing with her rabbit.

“Good morning,” she says, reaching for me. I scoop her up and set her on the bed. Then I cross to the window and pull back the blinds.

Our room has a sliding door that opens out onto a tiny veranda. Through the glass, I can see the boulevard, full of cars and crowds of pedestrians, and a row of extraordinary buildings lined up like toys. Castles with a jewel-colored roof on every tower. An emerald city, dark, reflective, massive. There is a cluster of miniature skyscrapers, looming behind a scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. And the black pyramid, onyx-colored in the sunlight.

When I turn around, Truman is sitting on the edge of the couch, watching me. With the sliding door at my back, the sun shines into the room and I can see him very clearly, like he’s the only thing in the room worth shining on. He gets up and comes to stand with me.

“Hey,” he says, then doesn’t say anything else.

He’s looking down at me, standing very close. From the bed, Raymie is watching us, and her eyes make me feel warm and self-conscious.

The blood on my collarbone has dried to a crusty, brownish smear. The cut on my hand is long gone. I’m just about to ask if Truman wants to get something to eat, when he touches me, reaching for my collarbone. I can feel the way his fingers tremble, jittering over the smear of dried blood. “You’re shaking,” I tell him. “Why are you shaking?”

He doesn’t answer, just stares down at me with an anxious, complicated expression. “Where’d all this blood come from?” His hand on my skin is warm, moving gently up my neck to cup my cheek.

“From me,” I tell him. “From my hand.”

He doesn’t ask what happened to it, just moves closer. “I had the worst dream,” he says, still touching my cheek. “I dreamed you died.”

“No, I just got cut a little. I’m all right.”

“What’s he doing to you?” Raymie asks, shaking the corner of the duvet at me.

Truman jerks back like he’s just coming awake. Suddenly his face is colored by a deep flush, and he takes his hand away. He turns abruptly and shuts himself in the bathroom. After a minute, I hear the shower come on. I can still feel the warmth of his fingers on my skin, and I’m hungrier than ever before.

Raymie clutches the duvet, looking up at me. “Why did that man wreck the room last night?”

I stare down at her in surprise. “Did you see him, too?”

“I heard him, but I was hiding. Will you play a game with me?”

I take the rabbit and wave it so its ears flop, but she just stares.

“This isn’t a very good game,” she tells me. “What is a better one?”

I pick up Truman’s plastic lighter, flicking it to life.

Raymie claps her hands, then looks surprised at herself. She’s smiling, and I wave the flame above her, drawing swirls and spirals in the air. She reaches with doll hands, trying to catch the smoke. Her teeth are spectacularly gray.

When Truman comes out of the bathroom, he’s in his jeans, but shirtless. His hair is wet, sticking to his forehead. I look at his bare skin, wonder how it would be to put my hand on his collarbone. The muscles and bones of his chest stand out like Italian sculpture.

“Are you sure that’s okay?” he asks, rubbing his head roughly with a towel. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to keep kids away from fire or something?”

We both look at Raymie. White-faced and black-haired, she is sitting on the bed in her yellow duck suit, staring at us.

I move the flame in a sweeping figure eight. “She likes it.”

As if agreeing, she claps again and tries to take the lighter from me.

Truman finishes toweling off his hair and sits down on the foot of the bed. The way he smells is intoxicating, and even after the packets of instant coffee, I’m nearly desperate for something more satisfying. I need to get out of the room.

“I’m going to go downstairs,” I say. “I’ll find my cousin and ask him if he’s seen Myra.”

Truman nods, pulling on his shirt. “Yeah, hang on. Just let me get my shoes.”

“I want to stay here,” Raymie says to the nightstand. “I don’t like the bells.”

“Can you please stay with her?” I ask Truman, even though he’s already putting on his socks and Raymie is perfectly used to staying alone.

He looks at me, but doesn’t ask why I don’t want him to come with me. He doesn’t ask why, when I start for the door, I’m nearly running.

I find Moloch on the main level, in a little bar called the Paradise Lounge.

He’s sitting on a barstool, watching a man in a sharkskin suit sing Sinatra while accompanied by a three-piece jazz ensemble. Moloch is occupying himself with a handful of paper napkins, lighting them on fire by breathing on them, and then extinguishing them between his fingertips, and although I have difficulty believing that setting fires is permitted in casinos, no one seems to notice. I decide that it’s one more way the Passiflore welcomes our kind, like the jump-door and the Kissing Garden.

As I come up to the bar, Moloch drops the burning napkin and hooks his thumbs under his suspenders.

“Good to see you made it,” he says, resting his hand on the flaming napkin. The paper smokes between his fingers, then goes out. “Still got your fatally self-destructive friend in tow? How did the jump-door agree with him?”

I shrug and climb onto a stool beside him. “Not well, but he made it.”

It makes me feel strange to think of Truman. Not his disorientation after we passed through the door into the garden, but the way he held me last night, rocking me while I shivered and tried to catch my breath. The memory makes me feel light-headed and my hands are starting to shake again.

Moloch leans on the bar, playing around in a pile of ash left behind by the napkin. Then he turns on his stool and studies my face. “Cousin,” he says, and it doesn’t sound ironic, the way it would if he were calling me
pet
or
sweetness
. “You don’t look very well. Are you feeling all right?”

I stare down at the palm of my hand, trembling but unmarked. For just a second, I want to tell him about Azrael, but I can hardly breathe when I think of those dark, glittering eyes boring into mine, and I can’t bring myself to say the words out loud. How could I explain the girl or the knife blade?

There’s a long mirror behind the bar, showing our reflections, Moloch red-haired and me monochromatic. It frightens me to realize that even though I am not calm anymore, it doesn’t matter. My reflection is thoughtful and serene. I might be trembling to pieces underneath, but on the outside, I still look the same.

“I bled on the floor last night and it turned into a girl.” The words sound cool and detached. They match the person in the mirror and not the way I feel inside.

For a moment, Moloch just stares at me with his mouth slightly open. Then he raps his knuckles on the bar and calls to the bartender. “Get me some salt, some bread, and a piece of steak, rare as you can make it.”

“We don’t serve food here,” the bartender tells him, looking apologetic.

“Then give me garnishes—whatever you’ve got. Just get her something to eat.”

The bartender produces the salt, along with Spanish olives, cocktail onions, gherkins, lemon wedges, and two glasses of tomato juice.

Moloch waits until I’ve drunk them both, then inspects me closely. “That’s your protection—yourself in replica?”

I nod, salting the olives and eating them in handfuls. “It was kind of scary. And exhausting.”

“Well, the food should help. Eat up and you’ll get your strength back. Meanwhile, don’t keep us in suspense—what’s the story on that key you found. Anything of interest in your famous storage shed?”

“Clothes,” I say, starting on the onions. “Mostly clothes. And also, a baby.”

Moloch doesn’t do any of the silly theatrical things that represent surprise. No hand to his chest, no eyes widening in shock. Instead, he just watches me, his gaze sharp and distrustful. “A
what
?”

“A baby. Obie had a baby. Did you know that?”

But I can tell from Moloch’s face that he had no idea Raymie existed. “And it was just languishing in a storage shed? Is it all right?”

“She’s fine.” I don’t know how to explain the feeling in my chest, that someone would leave a child in the dark. Leave her to sit patiently and gather dust while out in the world, things are charging along at a crazy pace, hurtling toward disaster. “She’s very indestructible. Not much seems to bother her.”

Moloch nods. “Kind of a side effect of our bloodline. Do you know who the mother is?”

I do know, but only vaguely. My knowledge of Raymie’s mother is mostly just miscellany—some flowered dresses, some barrettes, and a slip of paper displaying light, dainty handwriting.

“Elizabeth,” I tell him. “She’s named Elizabeth.”

“And I don’t suppose you left the beast in the shed?” Moloch says.