AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I took a slow sip of tea, my brow creased as I stared down at the lined pages, and thought. Could I do this? Would it help me or just make the worry worse? Or would my writing be less than satisfactory, making this idea a trip backwards in my endeavor to rescue my anemic self-esteem?
I set aside the tea, produced a pen from the book-littered coffee table, and began to write. The words began to flow in ink rivers and streams across the page, each letter molding into a piece in a puzzle, an x in a lengthy and complex equation, a brushstroke in a painting. I gave the angel scars and the man blue eyes like molten ice, watching the story unfold before me like a game of dominoes.
This was what my writing used to be. And in exactly the wrong way, Frost was giving it back to me after all. Once again, I asked myself, would this help or hurt me?
----
When our Monday night meeting at Tony’s came along, I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and dreading the reunion. I was already thinking about the Poe curse constantly and I did not see how discussing it would improve the situation in any way.
Justin was the first to arrive after me, wordlessly taking the stool to my left. He ordered a Scotch and soda and watched the bartender as he retrieved it with the attentiveness of someone fearing poison. He sipped the drink gingerly, staring into the brightly-colored glass bottles on the back wall of the bar in the same way I was. Finally, he seemed to break out of his reverie and glance towards the door, then to me. “We need to talk,” he said quietly.
I nodded, not bothering to return his gaze. “I know. You think I’ll kill Frost.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, but to his credit, when he did his voice was not surprised. “How could you know that?”
“I’m a writer. I’m good at noticing things and reading people. A less dramatic curse I bear is being too empathetic.” I glanced at him briefly, taking in in a moment his short, black hair wildly spiked, the hard jaw, the muscled forearms visible below his rolled-up sleeves, the memories in his dark eyes. I glanced away again. “I know how much you care about him and I know how broken you already are. You can’t watch him fall apart again.”
Justin lowered his head in thought. After a long minute, he muttered, “We’ve been friends since elementary school. I watched him go through everything. I know exactly how his mind works.”
I turned to him now in interest, if not sadness. “He’s all you have, isn’t he? Your family’s gone too.”
Now he looked to me in surprise, his eyes betraying only for a brief fraction of a second his grief. He made a vain attempt to mask it in a cold timbre that came from years divided between the marines and homicide work. “Yes. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was nine. Frost’s family took me in.”
I looked down at my hands both out of respect and in memory of my own losses. “I swear to you,” I answered quietly. “There is nothing I want less than to see him hurt in any way. It’s too late for me to save him from the curse.”
“It’s not just the curse I’m worried about.”
My brow creased in confusion and I met his piercing onyx gaze. “I know what happened with your foster-father,” Justin said grimly. “And I read people well too. Frost wouldn’t tell me even if he knew, but I know there’s an even bigger mess inside you than that. The curse is one problem, yes. But Frost can take care of himself if he keeps his head screwed on. The bigger problem is you.” He leaned towards me just slightly and, almost imperceptibly, he touched my wrist, right where my self-inflicted scars lay. “You need to fix this. If he finds you dead in a bathtub, he won’t recover this time.”
He retracted his hand and I let him hold my gaze seriously. His brow was creased and his jaw tight, desperation lurking there beneath the cold precision and concern. “I will help you in any way I can. But I need you to give him a chance to heal.”
So this was why Justin was here with us. It was no concern for me, no interest in the curse. It was to protect Frost. And that was fine by me. In fact, it was more than I could have possibly hoped for. “It sounds to me like we have a mutual interest,” I said. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t make you promises, Justin. You know that.”
Justin nodded, then looked up towards the door just as it opened, letting a cold breeze snake into the bar. “Liz,” he muttered.
As Liz sat on the other side of Justin, shrugging off her black trench coat and rubbing the arms of her pink low-cut sweater to warm up, I took a long sip of my water and thought to myself that something good had come out of this meeting after all. I had an ally with Frost’s best interests in mind. A massive weight was taken from my shoulders and the entire task of confronting the curse became suddenly much less daunting. “Where is Frost?” Liz asked.
“He’ll be here, he’s just running late,” Justin answered. “Trouble with a case he’s working on.”
“What kind of trouble?” I was envisioning him being chased down an alley by drug smugglers.
“Uncooperative departments. A piece of evidence that he needs immediately was already sent to be fingerprinted and forensics doesn’t want to give it back just yet.”
“Why does he need it so bad? What is it?” I asked, frowning. What kind of evidence would be that important to see in person? Wasn’t fingerprinting the more important part?
Justin raised an eyebrow. “A note he doesn’t believe was written by the writer. He wants to check the cartography to ensure that there isn’t someone else involved.”
I tried to remember what Frost had said about his latest case. He rarely talked about work, though. The last time I could remember him saying something was on Saturday, when he had mentioned a ‘window-jumper’. Did that mean he suspected murder? A forged suicide note?
Suddenly, as though I myself had fallen through a window, my stomach dropped and the thoughts seemed to click. A window-jumper on 2ndStreet. Could that be Alana Faucett?
I had not noticed him enter the seemingly darkening bar, but as though out of thin air, the stool beside me scraped back and Frost sat there, gently touching my hand before withdrawing it and ordering a beer. “So what’s on the agenda this evening?” he asked.
“A dream,” I answered. Quickly, I recounted the dream I’d had the previous week in which Edgar had warned me about the nature of the curse, the way it would build in order to reach a desired outcome, the nightmare. The way it could be crystal clear or impossible to predict in time.
The group was quiet for a long time, thinking of exactly what this meant. It was several minutes before Liz said chillingly, “We could all be dead before we have a chance.”
“Yes.” My voice was weak, weary, even though I’d had several days to digest this. Maybe it was one of those revelations that you can never really come to terms with.
