For a long moment, no one in the diner made a sound.
Then the last glass fell and shattered on the tile floor at the edge of the rubber bar mat.
The black-haired man spoke, his words thickly accented.
“Dul-ententre d’gaos!” he burst out. “You’re a fucking manipulator!”
I barely understood his words.
For my brain, enough was enough.
Everything around me grayed...then went totally dark.
“Allie!” Cass lunged for her friend in a panic.
Allie’s eyes rolled up.
She crumpled to the floor as Jon leapt the counter, knocking yet another water glass and a few silverware settings to the floor. Diners stood around in the half-empty room, silent, like they weren’t sure what to do, along with Jodi, the other waitperson who had been huffing and rolling his eyes at them only a few moments before for leaving him with all the restocking.
Cass crouched by her friend. She laid a hand on Allie’s heart while Jon used one hand to carefully lift Allie’s head, feeling for a pulse with the fingers of the other. Cass saw the relief in his eyes and knew he’d found it, right before Jon stared down at his sister’s face.
“Allie!” he said. “...ALLIE! Wake up!”
When she didn’t respond, Cass turned.
“Call 911!” she barked at Tom. “Call 911!”
“No!” the black-haired man said. “Absolutely not!”
Jon hesitated, meeting Cass’s gaze. He looked almost like he agreed with the stranger, even as he glared up at him.
“This isn’t your business, man,” Jon said.
The big Samoan cook came running out of the kitchen even as Jon said it, waving a spatula and staring down at Allie on the floor. Everyone called him Sasquatch...Cass didn’t even know his real name. He looked about to yell something unhelpful, when Allie’s eyes opened sightlessly towards the ceiling...
...and everyone sucked in a breath.
Cass screamed.
Allie’s eyes shone upwards with an inhuman glow, the threads of color pulsing strangely behind glass-like irises. The green halos from that sickly light made her face look strangely blank, almost dead...but her eyes themselves flickered darker and lighter, like the colors of an iridescent fish. Or fireflies maybe, only pale green, like the melted ends of two glow sticks, pooling in delicate patterns around her black pupils.
Cass probably would have screamed again, but Jon clamped a hand over Allie’s eyes, moving to kneel between her body and Cass. When Jon turned his head to glare at Cass herself a second later, Cass fell silent once she understood his expression.
She saw fear in his eyes that time, too, but not unfamiliarity.
He’d seen this before.
Eyes warning, Jon laid a finger from his free hand on his lips. He didn’t take his other hand off Allie’s eyes as he did it, but continued to shield her from the rest of the room.
When Cass looked up at the black-haired man, he was staring openly at Jon.
Cass heard Sasquatch make a strangled sound then, and looked back towards the kitchen. She heard the clatter as the big Samoan dropped his spatula and ran out of the tiled and matted aisle behind the bar counter, shouting something incoherent to the back room crew.
Faces from the dinner crowd diners peered over the counter down at Allie.
Cass noticed only pieces of this.#p#分页标题#e#
She could still see the glow from Allie’s eyes from where she sat, even with Jon covering most of her face with his hand. The light from her irises continued to escape from between Jon’s fingers, pulsing with their own internal heartbeat, splashing green light and shadow on his hand. As if he could see the escaping light, too, Jon hunched over Allie even further, trying to shield her from the curious onlookers.
Finally, the black-haired man broke the silence.
“We’re out of time,” he said to Jon. “She needs to come with me. Now. It’s the only way.”
“Screw you!” Jon snapped, glaring up at him. He turned to look back at Allie. “Al.” He spoke in a near-whisper, moving his face down closer to hers. “Allie...come on, honey. Come back. Come back now. Please. You need to wake up, Al...”
Cass saw the black-haired man look towards the door, shifting his weight on his feet.
Another voice rose behind them, causing her to turn.
“Yeah.” It was the manager, Tom, on his headset. “No.” Pause. “No drugs that I know of...but maybe, sure.” A pause. “No, she’s not conscious.”
“Tom!” Cass said, sharp. “Tom, no!”
The manager held up a finger, listening to whoever was on the other end.
“Yeah. She seems to be breathing––”
“Tom! Hang up! Please!”
The black-haired man walked directly up to Tom, without so much as a pause in his steps. Tom stared at him, slack-jawed, but stopped speaking when the much taller man loomed over him, his face set in a hard scowl. Tom didn’t move as the taller man took the headset off his head, either. Hooking the set over his own ear, the black-haired man began speaking as if Tom had never stopped.