Touch (8 page)

* * *

Eric drives Emma and Allison home. Nathan hitches an uncomfortable ride in the front
seat. He still doesn’t have the hang of sitting. He passes through chairs and seats.
A lifetime’s gravity habit is apparently hard to kick.

Nathan missed the beginning of the conversation, but he’s not concerned. He can read
a lot in their physical closeness. Allison has obviously shared information that’s
upset her—but the sharing, the spreading of that pain across two sets of shoulders,
diminishes it. It’s something he’s often envied about girls: Talking actually makes
a difference to them.

“Chase didn’t mean it,” Emma says.

“He meant some of it. The part he did mean is still—”

“Making you angry.”

Allison nods. Anger isn’t her natural state; most people find it hard to believe she
has a temper. “I hate it when he talks about killing you—about killing anyone—so casually.”

“Amy does it all the time.”

“Amy’s never killed anyone.” Allison gives Emma the Look. “Chase has.”

“Good point.” Emma concedes with grace whenever she’s in a losing position. “But I
think he’s genuinely worried—about you.”

“He’s worried about my safety.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s
not
, Emma. He doesn’t care about anything
but
that. Do you know how I’d feel if I just walked out on you, now? Let’s pretend you’re
not you. Or you’re not involved. You’re some other, random Best Friend I’ve known
since we were five years old.”

“Okay.”

“He’s not asking me to walk out on my Best Friend; he’s asking me to walk out on my
own life. He’s asking me to be so afraid for my own safety that I’m willing to just
leave you behind. And I could,” she adds. “But it would change what friendship means—to
me—forever. I could never, ever throw my whole heart into it, because if things were
too dark or too scary, I’d know, in advance, that I’d be ducking, hiding, and running
for cover.

“It’s not about you, not really. It’s about
me
. It’s about being able to look myself in the mirror. I’m not five years old anymore.
I need to do this—for me. Can you live with that?”

“I’m not exactly a disinterested observer,” Emma finally manages to say. Nathan knows
the tone; she’s close to tears. Emma doesn’t cry in public. Even the good tears, and
these would be good.

He understands what Emma sees in Allison. He understands that Allison mostly doesn’t.
He knows that Allison wasn’t happy to see him, and given Eric’s reaction, he’s terrified
that she’s right.

Nathan knows Emma. He knows that Emma’s not nearly as certain as Allison; he knows
that Allison’s belief in Emma is way stronger than Emma’s belief in herself. But he
could turn it around: Emma’s belief in Allison is stronger than Allison’s belief in
herself. They shore each other up when the insecurities bite them.

They could, if they were different people, break each other down instead.

“Don’t hate Chase,” Emma says instead. “I can’t. I know you think he doesn’t care
about what you need—but Ally, he does care about you. He’s a guy. He’s just got a
crappy way of expressing it.”

Eric clears his throat, loudly, to remind them there’s a captive guy behind the steering
wheel of the car.

“I want to slap him, and I want to spend an hour screaming in his ear, but—I don’t
hate him. If I hated him, I wouldn’t care. No, I’d care because I care for you—but
I wouldn’t be so
angry
with him. I don’t know why, but I expect better.”

Emma laughs. “Having spoken with Chase, I don’t know why either.”

T
HIS EVENING HAD CONTAINED NECROMANCERS, near death, and death; it contained Allison
and her anger at Chase—Chase was almost always angry, so his anger in response didn’t
matter as much. It contained the difficult non-conversation about Nathan—a conversation
Emma was no longer certain she wanted to have.

But another unexpected surprise was waiting in the driveway of Emma’s house. It was
a car. Technically, it was an SUV. The night was too dark for her to tell immediately
what color it was, but Emma instantly knew three things: It wasn’t a Hall car, she’d
never seen the car before, and the driver wasn’t sitting behind the wheel. Even if
her mother had somehow been talked into buying a new car—which they couldn’t really
afford at the moment—there’s no way she wouldn’t have spoken to Emma about it first.

“New car?” Nathan asked, when she’d been staring at the license plate for a little
bit too long.

“No. It’s not ours.” Her left hand was numb. She hadn’t held on to Nathan for most
of the evening, but she hadn’t recovered from the early contact, and she rubbed the
numb hand absently. She took two steps up the drive, turned, and said, “I’ll see you
again tomorrow?”

He nodded. “I’ll hitch a ride to school in the morning, as long as you promise you
won’t make me speak to anyone—I think I still owe Brady some money.”

She laughed, but the laughter lost ground as she looked at the strange car. “I have
to go talk to my mom.”

He nodded, leaned in closer, and then stopped himself. She wanted to kiss him. She
didn’t want to go into the house with blue lips.

* * *

The lights were on. It was dark because it was November, not because it was late,
although it was closing in on nine o’clock. Petal bounded into the house, his stump
wagging in a way that implied he’d been homesick for
so
long. He couldn’t be hungry—scratch that. He was always hungry, but he couldn’t need
food yet; she’d fed him dinner before they left for their disaster of a walk.

The lights in the living room were on. The lights in the dining room were on—but Emma
paused in the arch that led to the dining room because she could actually see the
tabletop. The perpetual stacks of paperwork that defined half her mother’s home life
had been removed. There were flowers—real flowers—in a slender crystal vase atop a
table runner.

“Okay, Petal,” Emma told her dog. “This is really creeping me out.”

She looked at this new incarnation of a dining room. It could have walked straight
out of
Coraline
. Clearly this didn’t bother Petal as much as it bothered Emma. Worse, though, was
the sudden sound of her mother’s laughter. It came from the kitchen.

Emma’s mother did not love the kitchen. Some of her friends were foodies, and while
Mercy Hall enjoyed eating as much as the next person, she didn’t enjoy the cooking;
she often forgot ingredients or petty things like timers. Emma was a better cook than
her mother. Brendan Hall had done most of the Hall family’s food preparation in the
early years, and he had started teaching Emma.

But that was undeniably her mother’s laughter, and unless the kitchen had suffered
the same transformation as the dining room, she was in the Hall family’s kitchen.
Emma hesitated for a long minute and then headed toward the sound of her mother’s
voice.

Mercy Hall was laughing. She was wearing, of all things, a dress, and faint traces
of makeup. She looked about ten years younger than she normally did, which wasn’t
the shock—although admittedly, it was a bit surprising. The shock was the person who
was standing beside her—standing
way
too close, in Emma’s opinion. She’d never laid eyes on him before, but he was clearly
laying eyes on her mother.

He looked up first. It figured. He also took a step back from her mother, who noticed
and looked up as well. “Emma, you’re home late,” she said, the happy, open smile on
her face fading into a more familiar expression of concern.

“We ran into a couple of friends,” Emma said automatically.

“I was hoping you’d be home a little earlier. I wanted to introduce you to someone.”
She turned to the strange man. “This is Jon Madding. Jon, this is my daughter, Emma.”

Emma tried to dredge up a smile. She might as well have kissed Nathan; her lips felt
frozen anyway. She extended a hand as Jon Madding—what kind of a name was Madding,
anyway?—stepped forward. He took her hand, shook it; she thought his grip was a little
on the weak side. He was taller than average, but sort of balding, and he had a beard.
Emma wasn’t all that fond of beards.

“I’m so pleased to finally meet you,” he said, with a broad smile. “Mercy’s told me
a lot about you; you must be so proud of your mother.”

Emma smiled and nodded. “Oh, I am. So, how did you meet my mom?”

“At work.”

“You work in the same office?”

“No, I work for one of her firm’s clients. But we’ve crossed paths a number of times.”
He smiled at Mercy and added, “She’s got a sharp tongue when she’s under a deadline,
but she focuses and she gets things done.”

“Oh, don’t say that to Emma,” Mercy told him, reddening. “She has to live with me;
she knows what I’m really like.” She smiled at her daughter. Her smile was more genuine
than Emma’s, but because Emma
did
know her mother, she could see anxiety start to surface.

Keeping her own Hall standard smile plastered to her face, Emma asked, “How long have
you known my mother?”

“Three years? Four? Mercy?”

“Four and a half.”

“Your mother’s never mentioned me? I’m hurt,” he said, laughing.

“No, my mother’s never mentioned you. I guess she’s been too busy. Speaking of which,
I’ve got a ton of homework to do, and I won’t get it done if I don’t start an hour
ago.” She turned, stopped, and turned back. “Nice to meet you, Jon.”

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk on a night you don’t have homework,” he replied,
turning back to her mother.

Emma couldn’t force herself to say something equally pleasant. She headed straight
to her room, pausing only to lift her schoolbag from its perch in the hall.

* * *

“Em, that was unkind.”

Her back was against her bedroom door; her eyes were closed. She didn’t want to open
them because she knew damn well who was speaking. “What was unkind?”

Her father was silent, as he often was when disappointed. It had been one of his most
effective weapons in the intermittent war that was childhood; she’d forgotten just
how much she’d hated it. She forced herself to look at her dad, afraid that she would
see pain in his expression. It wasn’t there; there was plenty of disappointment to
make up for it, though.

“You
knew
,” she said, voice sharpening.

He said nothing.

“Dad—you knew she was seeing someone.”

“Em—”

“How long has this been going on? How long as she been seeing
Jon
?”

“I think that’s a question you’ll have to ask your mother. If it helps, this is the
first time she’s brought him home.”

It didn’t. It didn’t help at all. Petal interrupted the conversation from the other
side of the door, mostly by scratching and whining. She managed to pry herself off
the door and let him in. He padded pretty much through her father’s ghost and headed
straight for the bed.

“You’re not supposed to let him do that,” her father observed; Petal was rolling in
the duvet, having pulled off the counterpane he detested.

“I have more important things to worry about at the moment. Why won’t you answer the
question?”

“Because,” he replied, folding his arms across his chest, “it’s none of my business.”

“P-pardon?”

“It’s none of my business, Em. It’s been eight years. I didn’t come back here to watch
Mercy wallow in grief and misery; I came because I wanted to know that you were both
okay.”

A peal of laughter rose in the distance. Mercy’s. If Jon was laughing, his register
was too low to carry as far. Emma hated it anyway.

“Have they—”

Brendan lifted a hand. “Do not even think of asking me that question. Don’t ask your
mother either.”

“Because it’s none of
my
business? Dad, in case it escaped your notice, I live here too.”

“Yes, Emma, but he doesn’t. You didn’t tell your mother everything about Nathan; she
didn’t ask. Do her the favor of extending her the same respect.”

Emma was silent. She was cold. She hadn’t lied; she did have some homework. She sat
at her desk, opened her bag, and pulled out her laptop. Flipping it open, she stared
at a white, white screen with a menu bar somewhere on top of it.

Petal whined. He knew she was unhappy because he could clearly hear her side of the
argument. He couldn’t hear her dad’s, and that was just as well, since Petal had never
been fond of the Disappointment, either.

“Emma.”

“I have homework, Dad.”

“And you’re getting so much of it done.”

She swiveled in her chair. “What do you want me to say?”

“Your mom’s dating choices aren’t the only thing in your life at the moment,” he replied.
“To my mind, they’re not even the most important.”

“Thanks.” She bit her lip, staring moodily at her screen.

“Give him a chance.”

“I thought you said there were other things to talk about.”

His silence was heavy, but after a moment he abandoned it. “What happened tonight?”

* * *

“Allison nearly died.” She looked down at her hands; they were shaking, and the left
was still numb. Her father walked over to her, reached for her hand, and then pulled
back with a grimace.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I forget.”

“That you’re dead?”

He nodded. “If I were alive, I’d be able to help, somehow.”

But Emma shook her head. “If you were alive, you wouldn’t be in my room, and even
if you were, I wouldn’t be talking to you about—about Allison. Or Necromancers. I’d
be talking about homework.”

“Jon wouldn’t be here either.”

“. . . I know. Dad—”

“Sorry, that was unfair of me.”

It bloody well was, but Emma suspected she deserved it. “Two Necromancers came after
Ally and me while we were out walking Petal. Dad—they were going to just kill her.”

He closed his eyes. “I wasn’t there.”

“No—but you can’t be.”

“Actually, I pretty much can; I don’t have a lot else on my plate. But Nathan—”

She swallowed. Looked back at the screen that was only a little less white. It was
true. She did want—she did
need
—some privacy.

“What happened to the Necromancers?”

“Eric and Chase killed them.”

He looked away again. “You were there, for that?”

She nodded. “I didn’t even mind it at the time.”

“Emma—”

“Maybe this is how it starts. I didn’t mind that they’d killed the Necromancers, and
the Necromancers are human too. But if they hadn’t, Allison would have died. Chase
was pissed. He wants Allison out.”

“Out?”

“Of my life. Of danger. I can’t blame him. But if she’s not going to leave me—and
she won’t—then I have to be able to do something if it happens again.”

“You mean you have to learn how to kill.”

She felt the shock of his words as they settled around her. She wanted to deny it,
but she couldn’t. She had no idea how far she’d be willing to go to save the life
of someone she loved. She could imagine herself killing someone. But even thinking
it, she could hear the sound of a knife hitting flesh and bone, and she almost stopped
breathing.

He watched her, his eyes that noncolor of dead eyes, his expression painfully familiar.
After a long moment, he breathed in, like the inverse of a sigh, and the line of his
shoulders softened. This time, when he reached for her, he didn’t hesitate, didn’t
pull back; he caught both of her hands in his.

He was
so
cold.

And then, for a moment, she was warm.

She wanted to cry, to tell him she didn’t want or need this, not from him. But the
truth was, at this very moment, she felt she
did
. She wasn’t a child anymore, and she’d been nothing but a child the last time he’d
hugged her when she was—as he put it—down. She let him fold her in his arms while
she drained something from the touch that went both ways.

“Remember,” he said, into her hair. “Remember, Emma. What Eric or his friends ask
of you, what they think they want—it’s not the only way. It’s their way, but you’re
not them.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, into his chest. “I don’t understand what the Necromancers
get out of this. I don’t understand why they do what they do.”

“No. But you will.” His voice was softer.

* * *

In the morning, Jon’s car was not in the drive. Emma knew; it was the first thing
she checked when she crawled out of bed. She was grateful for small mercies. Large
ones seemed to be beyond her, at the moment.

Her mother’s door was closed, but that wasn’t a big surprise; her mother and mornings
weren’t the best of friends. She wondered if her mother would drag herself out of
bed if Jon had stayed, and the thought soured the optimism that lack of his car had
produced. She climbed into the shower, hoping to wash the uglier bits of her mood
down the drain.

Getting dressed, making breakfast, and feeding the animal that was dogging her heels,
helped. Making coffee for her mother helped as well, because it was normal.

Her mother came down the stairs straightening her blouse and holding a pair of nylons
in one hand. She looked as bleary-eyed as she normally did, but there was a thinness
to her lips that was new. Or rarer, at any rate.

“Emma,” she said, as she entered the kitchen.

“Coffee,” her daughter replied, handing her mother a large mug with a chipped handle.
“Blueberries are on the table with the granola. There’s milk as well, but we need
more.”