Page 69 of Fuse

Angelique steps a little closer but doesn’t push for a therapy session dump. It’s pretty nice—a rare quality, actually. Sometimes, though rarely, I’ve been capable of it myself. Being given the double-X chromosome somehow includes the universe’s bonus download of the talking-about-it-will-help chip. But sometimes, instant words don’t help. Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend who’s willing to wait through the silence until they do.

“Reece wants to go Japanese Zen garden out here.” I nod toward the atrium on the other side of the windows. “Bonsai trees, meditation sand, one of those rocking bamboo fountains…” I look over as Angie hums with understanding. “But I’ve been arguing for something more tropical. Lush bushes and palms, maybe even some Tiki gods…” I’m on the brink of laughing about how I’d even threatened pink flamingoes to Reece, but the sentiment succumbs fast to a watery wince. “Seemed like such a good idea to put in an atrium when my mom first suggested it. But now…” I shake my head. “It’s one of the few things the two of us can’t agree on.” I push off the wall and swallow hard, battling the urge to drive my whole fist through the glass. “I’d let him have it all now, Angelique. The sand and the bonsai and the fountain and even some damn koi fish, if only…”

As my rasped ramblings are swallowed by my tight choke, Angie steps over and pulls me close. “I know.” She rubs my back in comforting circles, and I’m positive that she really does know—but not just because she can fill in the rest of that phrase due to losing the love of her own life. She knows because she knows. Her empathy is tangible on the air, flitting at the edge of my senses like a rare butterfly. I can see it and marvel at it, but I can’t catch it—nor am I certain that I want to. “I know, Emmalina,” she repeats, and I know I won’t get a better opportunity to at least make the butterfly hold still for a few seconds, so I do.

“You do, don’t you?” I angle myself around with a meaningful dip of my head. She needs to see that I’m not only serious but curious. “Just like you were able to discern all the unspoken stuff when Reece first collapsed. Like you were able to see things and just know them…”

And since I realize I sound like a huge loon, I let myself trail off…only to see that Angie’s expression has taken on a reassuring smile. “I cannot see anything, mon ami,” she states. “It is more like…”

“What?” I consciously make the word as open and accepting as it can be. She responds with a look of sincere gratitude before continuing with quiet care.

“I hear them first. After that is when the feelings come. The…energies on the air that tell me the rest of the story…” And suddenly, her confidence gives way to nervous fidgeting. “Please; never mind me. This must sound like insanité—”

“Angie.” I’m the one grabbing her shoulders now. “I’m engaged to a man who can put on a laser light show using his fingers and knock bad guys on their asses from twenty feet away.” A smile tempts my lips, and I let it take over. “I tossed out sanity a long time ago and haven’t missed it.”

The woman actually giggles, though all too quickly is back to her typical serene smile. “Well, that makes two of us.”

“Especially lately?” I prompt.

“Oui.” She sobers a little more. “Especially lately.”

“Which means what?” I don’t ramp the energy all the way to a dominatrix interrogation but make it clear my query isn’t casual thing either. Judging from the woman’s averted gaze and dropped shoulders, she’s hiding a bigger truth and might even want me to drag it out of her—whatever it is—but I’m going to borrow from the woman’s own wisdom and purposely keep my mouth shut during a patient wait for her to go on when she’s ready.

“It simply means that I am learning to…readjust…to a few new things in my life. That is all, Emma.”

It’s tough—translation: impossible—to accept that as her full explanation. She’s already skittered her gaze to the floor too many times. Has feigned way too much interest in following the path of a hummingbird that’s visiting the atrium in search of nonexistent flowers.

In return, I lean a sideways stance along the wall, though make it clear that my casual pose is just for show. “A few new things like what?” I don’t lower my gaze from her profile, still as perfect as a Bisson painting even without her flowing wig as a finisher. “Like what you’re capable of doing now? Or…hearing? Or whatev—” I halt, robbed of the words by my lungs’ stunned seizures. “Holy crap.” I gasp. Then again. “Holy crap.” And then hope that forcing my lips around the next word will be worth it. “Faline?” I blurt. “Are you really hearing Faline?” When the woman gives away her reaction by flickering barely any reaction, I rush on, “How? When? Where?” My breath locks up even harder. “She…she isn’t anywhere near here, is she?”

“No!” Angie is all over issuing that right away, slowing my pulse rate at least a little, before pressing a hand over the center of her chest in an obvious gesture to settle hers too. “If she gets within ten miles of this place, I am certain I would know it.”

Okay, so that returns my heartrate right back to where it was. “Are you saying there’s a possibility of that?”

The hummingbird has zoomed away—though even if it hadn’t, I’m sure the woman’s regard would be honed back in on me. Not that it’s helpful. Her face is blank. Too blank.

“I began picking up on her frequency while we were watching Reece and Kane’s confrontation on that rooftop.” A few emerald glints appear in her gaze as she shakes her head, betraying her perplexity about the declaration. “And oui; I definitely knew it was her.” As she closes her eyes, her forehead crinkles. “Such focused fury but joined with cold disdain. So very cold…”

“Like Reece was,” I supply. “Just before—” And redistribute my weight back to both feet, as if that’s going to bash back the memories from invading again. “Right before he was…gone,” I mutter. “That was how I knew…” A hard swallow. A slow head shake. “He’s never cold. But suddenly it was as if he were forced into a freezer.”

Angie emits a soft hum. “That makes sense. She used to never be cold either.”

“Who?” I don’t hide my glower. “You mean the ice queen on high?” And why the hell is she suddenly affording Faline even half a tone of friendliness?

“I mean Faline Nicole Garand, the girl I knew back in Catholic high school.”

“You went to Catholic school?” Bugged eyes don’t feel like enough of a reaction, but they’ll have to do. “With her?”

“Only for the final two years,” she explains. “She transferred in from Spain, where she mostly grew up after her parents divorced. That is why you hear her native language as mostly Spanish.”

“Were you friends?”

She purses her lips. “Not especially.” Then seesaws her head as a stand-in move for a gawky shrug. “I was shy, skinny, awkward. Faline was certainly not.”

Under different circumstances, I’d laugh. Though the woman does the Catherine Deneuve airs better than anyone I know, it’s clear she’s learned them recently. The vulnerability beneath her finesse makes the high school stories easy to believe—but stranger to vocalize my next point. “And yet, several years later, you readily signed on for recruitment duty with her and the Consortium.”

“I did.” Her willingness to admit it, so openly and humbly, is both satisfying and strange to observe. “But I was penniless and gullible, and by that time, Faline had learned how to work both to her advantage, dazzling me with tales of what the Consortium was doing to elevate ‘chosen’ members of the human race.”

“And you wanted to be one of the chosen ones.”