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I looked down again self-consciously. “Sherlock Holmes. No wonder you’re in Homicide so young. I thought most cops spent more time as beats. But I suppose, if they’re well-versed in the deductive sciences…”
“Poe.”
I quieted, meeting his eyes again hesitantly. As I had seen before, all the honesty and seriousness I could imagine was reflected in those eyes. “I do believe you,” he said. He sighed sadly and the quiet sincerity and passivity fell away to something like pity or empathy. “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this.” His eyes fell slightly to my lips and he tilted his head sadly. I felt his fingers brush my lower lip and I looked down again self-consciously, remembering biting my lip. Having brushed away the blood, his hand fell to cup my jaw and lift my face to meet his gaze again. “Let me help you,” he begged.
I shook my head mournfully. “I don’t know how to be helped.”
“You can’t do this alone.”
“I don’t even know what this is. All I know is that your life is at stake and there is nothing I can do.”
His eyes turned imploring and intense, the liquid ice in them smoldering. “What if there is? If your father survived as long as he did, there must be a way to at least avoid it, right? Did your foster-mother mention anything else?”
I tightened my eyes and shook my head no. He should not be involved in this. The fact that he so readily believed my story was surely enough to put him in very immediate danger. Trying to help me end the curse would in all certainty destroy him. But, he was too smart and already he had begun to know me too well. He instantly recognized the lie. “Poe, tell me. If what you say is true, then pushing me away won’t solve anything. The only way to change this is to find a way to end it. I want to help you. Please.”
I gritted my teeth and hesitated before finally answering, “Yes. My father was haunted by it for years. He was younger than I am now when it started and twenty-nine when he died. Mrs. Aaron mentioned preventing the…nightmares. She said they began with Edgar Allan Poe’s nightmares. His foster-father, John Allan, paid a witch to curse him and the nightmares he received as a result found their way into his writing as they destroyed his life. They’re reflections…premonitions of the forms the curse takes.”
“So his horror stories…”
“Come to life,” I finished for him, shaking my head and chuckling grimly. “It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but…that’s what she implied. My father must’ve escaped it for years by recognizing the stories unfolding in time to prevent their conclusion.”
“How do we end it entirely?”
“I don’t know. It’s been living on through my family since the early nineteenth century.” I fought tears and looked at him seriously, hoping against all hope to make him understand what he was risking. “There isn’t a way to end it. Someone would’ve figured it out by now. With them all dying young, there were probably eight generations of Poes before me who succumbed to this.”
Frost stood frozen. After a long minute during which the statement sunk in to its full level of horror, he whispered quietly, “You say that like a death sentence.”
“Yes.”
After another long moment, he shook his head. “That’s only further reason, then, for me to help you. I can’t walk away and not help you when your life is at stake.”
My eyes went wide with incredulity. “Frost, this will kill you, probably within the next eight years. I can guarantee that if you do not walk away now, you will die.”
“That I can resign myself to,” he said calmly. “What I can’t do is let you die alone for the sake of my own life.”
I let my jaw harden in resolve and stepped back away from him, out of his reach. “Do you really think I can accept that? That I can let you die before you see Trina go to college or get married? Before you yourself can get married if you’re following me around all the time? You do not have a choice in the matter.”
“I know what I’m getting myself into. I’m a cop, Poe. Can you really afford not to accept my help?”
Anger began to take me over and I answered coldly, “It is my life and I will carry it out as I will.”
“I could say the same,” he countered, taking a step towards me. I took one back, retaining the distance between us. “Frost, I do not need your help. I can handle myself. I have been through countless terrible situations in my life and survived. This is not the worst thing I have faced. I do not need some white knight on his horse to rescue me. I need you out of my life to minimize the damage.”
He took another step forward and I found my back against the wall. “You just said yourself that you trust me and that you care about me. Is that really going to change so easily just by pushing me away? You told me you don’t trust anyone. Will it be so easy to let me go?”
“What choice do I have?!”
“Let me in!” he begged, exasperation winning over as he stepped towards me once more, stopping so we were nearly toe to toe. I flinched back against the wall and gritted my teeth. “Stop it!” I snapped, my tone as final as a slamming door.
Frost stared down at me for a long moment and, as he did, I watched the frustration and anxiety drain from his face. Sadness and hurt replaced them in the set of his jaw and mouth, in his eyes. His shoulders slumped and he took a half-step back, looking away abruptly. “I’m sorry. I know it seems like we’ve just met, but…you’re important to me, Poe. I can’t throw that away. I can’t let you get hurt.”
Tears rose in my eyes for what seemed like the thousandth time that week and I bowed my head in shame, my whole body shaking. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Neither did I.” His too-intelligent eyes honed in on the space between us and his frown deepened in concern. “Poe. Are you afraid of me?”
The tears began to fall and I clenched my hands into fists at my sides, my nails digging into my palms. Tension began to seep through my body and my stomach muscles began to gradually clench. I let my hair fall forward to hide my face. As the pain rippled through me, as my eyes measured the distance between us, I played over and over again the way I’d flinched, the way that for the briefest moment he had been too close, his eyes too impassioned, the scent of his skin and that soft cologne too inviting, the memory of his hands on mine too raw…. Finally, I clenched my jaw in frustration and slammed my fist back against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. “God damn it!” I snapped. After a brief moment of silence, I stepped around Frost and into the kitchen, gripping my stomach with my fingers, barely walking upright. “I am so sick of this. I am so goddamn sick of this!” I screamed in fury as I leaned against the counter and swung open the medicine cupboard, grabbing the proper bottle and shoving all the others out, scattering across the counter, flying to the floor, breaking open, pills flying across the room. I ripped off the cap with shaking hands and dumped the pills into my hand, throwing back two to swallow and then turning and pitching the others as hard as I could against the wall. “Damn it!” I screamed again, tears streaming down my cheeks, rage boiling in my blood. I’d had enough. I could not do this anymore. I did not deserve so much pain. I didn’t want any of it and this was the last straw. I was sick of hurting and the feeling of being dead inside and my stagnant writing and hating my nightmares and memories and self. Everything I was was built upon horrible tragedies that never should have happened, that I had not earned. I felt Frost gripping my upper arms, saying my name again and again, but I didn’t look at him, didn’t react, just stood there shaking and sobbing and furious for all I had endured and nowthis. The biggest ‘fuck you’ of all. I was doomed to die as a result of a ridiculous supernatural curse passed down from a poet who was supposed to have never had children in the first place. If there was a God, he must’ve been laughing his ass off at me.Fuck you, Poe. You can have all the pain in the world. Gotta put it somewhere, right? You deal with it.
“Enough,” I gasped brokenly. “I have had enough. I can’t do this. I’m sick of it. I can’t…” Warmth spread through me as Frost wrapped his arms around me tightly, drawing me into him, holding the pieces of me together. I shuddered and the anger began to fall away, seemingly seeping down through my feet and out of my body to be replaced by misery and pain. I wept freely, staining his shirt with saltwater, clutching the fabric in my thin fingers, taking in the small comfort of the warm smell of him, the feel of his fingers pressed into my back. “Sh…” he whispered softly. “Just let it fall away. You’re not alone; I’ve got you. Just let it all fall away.”
