Tithe mtof-1 Page 5

  After a few minutes, when he didn't return, she went back to his room. Corny's room was as unlike Janet's as a room could be. There were bookshelves on all the walls, filled to overflowing with paperbacks and comics. Corny was sitting at a desk that looked like it could barely hold up the equipment piled on it. Another box of wires and what looked like computer innards was next to his feet.

  He was tapping on his keyboard and grunted as she came in. "Almost done."

  Kaye sat down on the edge of his bed the way she would have if she was in Janet's room and picked up the nearest comic. It was all in Japanese. Blond hero and heroine—she always thought it was weird there were so many blonds in anime—bad guy with really, really long black hair and a cool headpiece. A cute, fat ball with bat wings fluttering around as a side-kick. She flipped a little further. Hero naked and lashed in the bad guy's bed. She stopped flipping and stared at the picture. The blond's head was thrown back in either ecstasy or terror as the villain licked one of his nipples.

  She looked up at Corny and held out the book. "Let me guess… this is shonen-ai?"

  He shot a glance at her from the computer, but she couldn't miss the smug expression. "Yeah."

  Kaye wasn't sure what to say to that, which was probably the point. "You like boys?"

  "There's a technical term for it," Corny said. "Faggot. Although those are mighty pretty boys."

  "Does Janet know?" She couldn't understand why he would tell her if Janet didn't know, but certainly Janet would have said something. Janet's E-mails were summaries of her whole day, boring and full of gossip about people Kaye had never met.

  "Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for ' Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way." He sounded like he was daring Kaye to say something.

  "I hope you aren't expecting some kind of reaction," Kaye said finally. "Because the only thing that I can think of is that is the weirdest coming-out story I have ever heard."

  His face relaxed. Then she started to laugh and both of them were laughing and looking at the comic and laughing some more.

  By the time Janet got back from school, Corny was sleeping and Kaye was reading a huge pile of kinky comics.

  "Hey," Janet said, looking surprised to see her sofa occupied.

  Kaye yawned and took a sip from a half-full glass of cherry cola. "Oh, hi. I was hanging out with your brother and then I figured I'd just wait for you to come home."

  Janet made a face, dumping her armful of books onto the chair. "You make school look fun. If you're going to drop out, you might as well… I don't know."

  "Do something seedy?"

  "Totally. Look, I'm gonna go out… I gotta meet the guys. You want to come?"

  Kaye stretched and got up. "Sure."

  The Blue Snapper diner was open twenty-four hours, and they didn't care how long you sat in the mirror-lined booths or how little you ordered. Kenny and Doughboy sat at a table with a girl Kaye didn't know. She had short black hair, red nails, and thin, drawn-on eyebrows. Doughboy was wearing a short-sleeved team shirt over a long-sleeved black undershirt; the laces of his hiking boots spilled out from under the table. He'd cut his hair since she'd seen him last, and it was shaved along the back and sides. Kenny was wearing his silver jacket over a black T-shirt and looked exactly the same: scruffy, cute, and totally off-limits.

  "Sorry I freaked the other night," Kaye said, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans and hoping no one wanted to talk about it too much.

  "What happened?" the girl asked. Something made a clicking sound as she spoke, and Kaye realized that it was the girl's tongue-stud tapping against her teeth.

  Doughboy opened his mouth to make some comment, and Kenny cut him off. "'S cool," he said with a jerk of his chin, "C'mon and slide in, ladies."

  "Kaye," Janet said, sliding into the booth next to the girl, "this is Fatima—I e-mailed you about her. Kaye's my friend from Philly."

  "Right. Sure. Hi." It was Fatima's party she'd missed two nights ago, and she had no idea what had been said after she left. Kenny was barely glancing in her direction, but Doughboy was watching her like she might do something weird or funny. Kaye wished she'd stayed in the trailer. This was too awkward.

  "You're the girl with the mom who's in a band," Fatima said.

  "Not anymore," Kaye said.

  "Is it true that she fucked Lou Zampolis? Janet said she sang backup for Chainsuck."

  Kaye grimaced. She wondered if all her E-mails had been relayed like this. "Unfortunately."

  "Does that freak you out—I mean does she, like, screw your boyfriends and shit?"

  Kaye raised her eyebrows. "I don't date guys in bands." She tried to imagine what Ellen would think of Kenny. It was impossible to picture Ellen meeting Roiben.

  "I have this friend, right," Fatima said, "and her mother and her sister both slept with the guy that got her knocked up. I mean, how Jerry Springer is that?"

  "Erin, right?" Janet said. "She's in rehab."

  The waitress stopped by their table. She was wearing a brown uniform that looked too small on her, and her name tag read RITA. "Can I get you guys anything?"

  "Diet whatever," Janet said.

  "Coffee," Kaye chimed in.

  "I want… can I have some Disco Fries, Rita?" Doughboy said.

  "I'll be back with refills in a minute," the waitress said, smiling guardedly at Dough for using her name.

  Kenny turned to get his cigarettes and lighter out of the pocket of his coat, and Kaye saw a tattoo on the back of his neck. It was a tribal design of what looked like a scarab. It made her wonder what other tattoos he might have snaking down areas covered by his shirt. Janet would know.

  "Anyone want?" he asked, offering up the pack.

  "I do," Kaye said.

  "Whatever you want, you get," he tossed back, giving her a cigarette with a smirk that made the heat rise to her face.

  Janet was talking to Fatima about Erin's baby, not paying attention to either of them at the moment. Doughboy was picking at the cheese-and-gravy-covered fries the waitress had plunked down in front of him.

  "Want to see a trick?" Kaye asked, suddenly not wanting to back down from the implied challenge in Kenny's voice. "Let me see your lighter."

  It was silver with an enamel eight-ball medallion soldered to the front of it. He handed it over.

  Kaye had learned this trick from Liz back in her mother's Sweet Pussy days. Liz had offered to teach it to her, claiming that was a sure way to impress the boys. Kaye had had no idea why Liz would want to impress anyone since she already had Sue, but she'd learned the trick and it had impressed bartenders, at least.

  Kaye held the metal body of the lighter between the first two fingers of her left hand; then she flipped it first over and then under each finger so that the metal shimmered like a minnow. Faster and faster, she made the lighter hurdle her fingers. Then she stopped, flicked the lid open, and lit it, all with her right hand resting on the table. She leaned over and generously offered the flame to Kenny's cigarette.

  Once Kaye found the record store, she would have to tell Liz that she had been right. Both the boys looked impressed.

  Kenny's lopsided grin was an invitation to mischief.

  "Cool," Doughboy said. "Want to show me how to do that?"

  "Sure," Kaye said, lighting her own cigarette and taking a deep breath of bitter smoke. She showed him, doing the trick in slow motion so that he could see how it was done, then letting him try it.

  "I gotta get out of the booth for a minute," Kenny said, and she and Doughboy scooted out.

  Before she could get back in, Kenny nudged her arm and jerked his head toward the bathrooms.

  "Be right back," Kaye told Janet, dropping her cigarette into the ashtray. "Bathroom."

  Janet must not have noticed anything since she just nodded.

  Kaye walked behind Kenny to the small hallway. Even though she had no idea
what he wanted, her cheeks were already warm, and a strange thrill was coiling in her belly.

  Once they were in the hallway, Kenny turned to her and draped his lean body against the wall.

  "What did you do to me?" Kenny asked, taking a quick drag from his cigarette and rubbing the stubble along his cheekbone with the back of one hand.

  Kaye shook her head. "Nothing. What do you mean?"

  He lowered his voice, speaking with a quiet intensity. "The other night. The horse. What did you do?" He paused and looked the other way before continuing. "I can't stop thinking about you."

  Kaye was stunned. "I… honestly… I didn't do anything."

  "Well, undo it," he said, scowling.

  She struggled for an explanation. "Sometimes when I daydream… things happen. I was just thinking about riding the horse. I didn't even hear you come in." Her cheeks felt even hotter when she remembered a theory Sue had once explained about why all young girls want their own ponies.

  He looked at her as intensely as he had in the attic of the carousel building, bringing his cigarette to his lips again. "This is fucked," he said a little desperately. "I mean it; I can't get you out of my head. You're all I think about, all day long."

  Kaye had no idea what to say to that.

  He took a step closer to her without seeming to notice. "You have to do something."

  She took a step back, but the wall halted her. She could feel the cool tile against her spine. The pay phone to her right blocked her view of the register. "I'm sorry," she said.

  He took another step, until his chest was against hers. "I want you," he said urgently. His knee moved between her legs.

  "We're in a diner," Kaye said, grabbing him by the shoulders so that he had to look at her face. He was pale except for a touch of hectic pink in the cheeks. His eyes looked glazed.

  "I want to stop wanting you," he said and moved to kiss her. Kaye turned her head so that he got a mouthful of hair, but it didn't seem to bother him. He kissed his way down her throat, biting the skin punishingly, licking the bites with his tongue. One of his hands ran up from her waist to cup her breast while the other threaded through her hair.

  Her hands were still clenched on his shoulders as she wavered in indecision. She could shove him off. She should shove him off. But her traitorous body was urging her to wait a little longer, clasp him a little closer and see what might happen.

  "Guys, I was… what the hell?"

  Kenny pushed back from Kaye at the sound of Janet's voice. Several strands of long blond hair were still caught on his hand, shimmering like spiderwebs.

  He drew himself up. "Don't give me more of your insecure girlfriend bullshit."

  Janet had tears in her eyes. "You were kissing her!"

  "Calm the fuck down!"

  Kaye fled to the bathroom, locking herself in a stall and sliding into a sitting position on the dirty floor.

  Her heart was beating so fast, she thought it might beat its way out of her chest. The space was too small for pacing, but she wanted to pace, wanted to do something that would work answers out of her tangled mind. Magic, if there was such a thing, should not work like this. She should not be able to enchant someone she barely knew without even deciding to do it.

  The delight was the worst part, the part of her that could overlook the guilt and see the poetic justice in making Kenny unable to stop thinking about her freaky self. It would be easy to like him, she thought, cute and cool and wanting her. And unlike an unattainable faerie knight, he was someone she could really have.

  Taking a deep breath, she left the stall. She went to the sinks and splashed her face with water from the tap. Looking up, she saw her own reflection in the mirror, faded red Chow Fat T-shirt spattered with dark droplets of water, eye makeup smudgy and indistinct, blond hair hanging in tangled strands.

  Something caught her eye as she turned away, though. Approaching the mirror, she looked at her face again, closely. She looked the same as ever. Kaye shook her head and walked to the door. For a moment, she had thought that the face she saw in the mirror was green.

  More coffees were on the table when she got back, and she sipped at the one in front of where she had been sitting. Her cigarette had burned down to ash in the glass tray. Doughboy was telling Kenny about the new car he was restoring, and Janet was glaring at Kaye.

  "Your pardon, Kaye," said a voice that was both familiar and strange.

  There was a moment when Kaye just froze. Her mind was screaming that this was impossible. It was against the rules. They never did this. It was one thing to believe in faeries; it was totally another thing if you weren't allowed to even have a choice about it. If they could just walk into your normal life, then they were a part of normal life, and she could no longer separate the two in her head.

  But Roiben was indeed standing beside their booth. His hair was white as salt under the fluorescent lights and was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing a long black wool coat that hid whatever he was wearing underneath all the way down to his thoroughly modern leather boots. There was so little color in his face that he seemed to be entirely monochromatic, a picture shot in black-and-white film.

  "Who's the goth?" Kaye heard Doughboy say.

  "Robin, I think his name is," Janet replied glumly.

  Roiben raised an eyebrow when he heard that, but he went on. "May I speak with you a moment?"

  She felt incapable of doing more than nodding her head. Getting up from the booth, she walked with him to an empty table. Neither one sat down.

  "I came to give you this." Roiben reached into his coat and took out a lump of black cloth from some well-hidden pocket. And smiled, the same smile she remembered from the forest, the one that was just for her. "It's your shirt, back from the dead."

  "Like you," she said.

  He nodded slightly. "Indeed."

  "My friends told me not to talk to you." She hadn't known she was going to say that till it came out of her mouth. The words felt like thorns falling from her tongue.

  He looked down and took a breath. "Your friends? Not, I assume, those friends." His eyes flickered toward the booth, and she shook her head.

  "Lutie and Spike," she said.

  His eyes were dark when he looked at her again, and the smile was gone. "I killed a friend of theirs. Perhaps a friend of yours."

  Around her, people were eating and laughing and talking, but those normal sounds felt as far away and out of place as a laugh track. "You killed Gristle."

  He nodded.

  She stared at him, as though things might somehow reshuffle to make sense. "How? Why? Why are you telling me this?"

  Roiben didn't meet her gaze as he spoke. "Is there some excuse that I could give you that would make it better? Some explanation that you would find acceptable?"

  "That's your answer? Don't you even care?"

  "You have the shirt. I have done what I came here to do."

  She grabbed his arm and moved around to face him. "You owe me three questions."

  He stiffened, but his face remained blank. "Very well."

  Anger surged up in her, a bitter helpless feeling. "Why did you kill Gristle?"

  "My mistress bade me do so. I have little choice in my obedience." Roiben tucked his long fingers into the pockets of the coat. He spoke matter-of-factly, as though he was bored by his own answers.

  "Right," Kaye said. "So if she told you to jump off a bridge…?"

  "Exactly." There was no irony in his tone. "Shall I consider that your second question?"

  Kaye stopped and took a breath, her face filling with heat. She was so angry that she was shaking.

  "Why don't you…" she began, and stopped herself. She had to think. Anger was making her careless and stupid. She had one more question, and she was determined that she would use it to piss him off, if nothing else. She thought about the note she'd gotten in the acorn and the warning she'd been given. "What's your full name?"

  He looked like he would choke on the air he breathed. "
What?"

  "That's my third question: What is your full name?" She didn't know what she had done, not really. She only knew that she was forcing him to do something he didn't want to do, and that suited her fine.

  Roiben's eyes darkened with fury. "Rath Roiben Rye, much may the knowledge please you."

  Her eyes narrowed. "It's a nice name."

  "You are too clever by half. Too clever for your own good, I think."

  "Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye."

  He grabbed her by the arm before she even saw him move. She raised her hand to ward off the coming blow. He threw her forward. She shrieked. Her hand and knee connected hard with the stone floor. She looked up, half expecting to see the gleam of a sword, but instead he pulled her jeans hard at the waistband and pressed his mouth against the exposed swell of her hip.

  Time seemed to slow as she slipped on the slick floor, as he rose easily to his feet, as diner patrons stared, as Kenny struggled out from the booth.

  Roiben stood over her. He spoke tonelessly. "That is the nature of servitude, Kaye. It is literal-minded and not at all clever. Be careful with your epithets."

  "Who the fuck do you think you are?" Kenny said, finally there, bending down to help Kaye up.

  "Ask her," Roiben said, indicating Kaye with his chin. "Now she knows exactly who I am." He turned and walked out of the diner.

  Tears welled up in Kaye's eyes.

  "Come on," Fatima was saying, although Kaye was barely paying attention. "Let's take her outside. Just us girls."

  Fatima and Janet led her outside and sat down on the hood of one of the parked cars. Kaye dimly hoped it belonged to one of them as she sat down, wiping tears from her cheeks. Already she'd stopped crying; the tears were more from shock than anything else.

  Fatima lit a cigarette and handed it to Kaye. She took a deep drag, but her throat felt thick and the smoke just made her cough.

  "I had a boyfriend like that once. Used to beat the shit out of me." Fatima sat next to Kaye and patted her back.

  "Maybe he saw you with Kenny," Janet said without looking at her. She was leaning against a headlight, staring out across the highway at the military base opposite the diner.