“I can do that,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm. “You’re making food.”
He hesitated a bare instant, then put down the piece he was holding.
“Okay.”
He retreated to the stove while I set up the board. I toyed with asking him other things. Maybe something about the sight training with Ullysa, or the gun range trick he taught me, or more about me being the Bridge. Finally I settled on,
“You want to be black or white?”
When he looked over his shoulder, he surprised me with a faint humor in his eyes.
“You’re the Bridge,” he said. “You have to be white.”
“Really?” I said, smiling back. “Why is that?”
“The White One,” he said. “It is another name.” Seeing my puzzlement, he gestured vaguely, facing the stove. “You know. You mentioned horses. The Bridge is the white horseman.” He glanced back, bowing slightly.
“...Woman,” he amended. “Horsewoman.”
I smiled again, but the comment stayed with me as I sat there. I remembered something about that, actually, about each horse being a different color. White, red, black. Then there was the fourth one, the one I could never remember...
“Pale,” he spoke up from the stove.
I nodded again. “Yeah. Death, right?”
When he didn’t say anything, I just sat there, trying to relax as he finished warming the soup. Pouring the contents of the pot into two bowls, he pulled spoons from a drawer and walked everything over to the bar, setting one of each beside me.
“You want anything to drink, Allie?”
“No,” I said. “...Thanks. This is great.”
When he nodded, his face still, I hesitated, wanting to say more.
I picked up the bowl instead. I was a little relieved to see it was regular old crappy human soup, like I was used to. Blowing on a spoonful to cool it, he motioned towards the board, using his fingers that held the spoon.
“White moves first,” he said.
I swallowed my mouthful, nodding, then put down the bowl.
It crossed my mind that the chances were good that he would kick my ass in this, too, given that there had to be a sight component to chess, just like there was with everything else. Still, a smile rose to my lips as I focused on the board, hearing the soft chink of his spoon as he ate.
Pausing, I glanced around the kitchen. My eyes found one of the embroidered thankahs hanging on the wall, a golden buddha with peaceful eyes.
Under it, on a small shelf stood a lit candle.
It crossed my mind that he’d done that, too, after Mika and I left.
I’ve never been a Buddhist or anything, or even religious, but for some reason, that touched me, too.
I moved my first pawn. Watching Revik’s eyes narrow on the board, the bowl of soup balanced in his hand, I smiled again.
I didn’t let myself think too clearly about why.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
14
VANCOUVER
He’d beaten me outside.
I stood in a doorway below the street, blinking against the tired rain of a Seattle afternoon. He threw a leg over the back of a motorcycle as I watched, and my nerves rose even more.
We were leaving.
Almost four weeks had gone by since I’d first woken up in bed with him.
Things were better with us now, yeah, but they still weren’t exactly normal. We were polite to one another. We played chess. In fact, we’d played at least a dozen games by then, although we still barely talked while we played. I hadn’t managed to beat him in a single game. In fact, I suspected playing me bored him in terms of the game itself, but he still offered whenever he saw me, maybe just because it was easier than us talking.
I suppose he did it mainly to try and ease things with us a little.
I’d begun to wonder if we were ever going to leave Seattle. But in monitoring the activity of the Rooks and SCARB and the Sweeps and whoever else, a group of seers somewhere in Asia finally decided it was time for Revik and I to push on. The main news channels still ran “special reports” that showcased images of the car chase up 101 north, along with scuba divers and scows dredging Lake Washington for the GTX and our bodies.
Revik didn’t appear on any of these.
I, on the other hand, was all over them. I’d been the one accused of killing cops and...more oddly...a doctor at San Francisco General. They named me openly as a seer terrorist and showed my true face on the feeds. The one picture I’d seen of Revik showed an avatar only, and called him a “potential accomplice” without using his name.
On the plus side, in not a single report about “Allie the terrorist” did I hear any mention of what happened in the diner, with Jon. If anyone knew or suspected I was telekinetic, they were keeping it really quiet.