His eyes shifted to me and I was surprised to the soles of my shoes.
He looked painfully alive.
Living. Breathing. Vital.
I came to him and said, "I am feeling you, Clyde. I'm feeling you as dead," the hum of him resonating like the rest which lay at my feet. All around me. "But you look like you're alive."
Clyde nodded. "I have a confession, Master."
I held up my hand and he hesitated. "Why don't you call me Caleb now."
"Caleb," he intoned, tasting it on his tongue, rolling it around to see if it sounded right.
Must've 'cuz he continued, "The policewoman comes to this place." He pointed to the grave beneath him. She comes... and visits here. Takes respite in my presence."
Oh shit.
Out loud I said, "What do you mean... she visits you? What, she comes by for a chat?"
"Caleb," Jade said in a low voice, her hand on my arm. I cranked it down a notch.
Clyde became silent, looking at me with gravity.
"Sorry," I said. I hadn't really meant to jump down my favorite corpse's throat.
"Apology accepted." He paused to deliberate on his words. "She is not a master necromancer. But she has... a certain enigmatic energy that I can feel right here." He made a gesture that made it look like her "signature" hovered above his grave.
"Can you hear her?" I asked.
He nodded. "I cannot respond, I cannot evacuate my place of rest," he gestured to the disturbed earth. "But I can feel her energy." He curled his hand into a fist and laid it where a beating heart should have been.
Cripes.
Jade spoke up, "I think the better question is why Gale is coming here in the first place. Big time creepy, Caleb."
Clyde gave her a look.
I looked back. He was sharper than I would have liked and was understanding the nuances of innuendo. Was that even allowed? Right? Possible?
Apparently it was.
I paced a little back and forth, the sprinkling rain beginning to soak through my T-shirt. God forbid I'd wear a coat. I didn't even own an umbrella.
Hell, that was for tourists.
"Okay," I stopped my frenetic pacing. "I don't know how creepy it really is, Jade."
She looked at me like... please.
I shook my head. "You know how hard it is to tell other people how it feels to be an Empath, right?"
She nodded.
"Well, for Gale, it would feel good to be around the dead. Right?"
"It is the way that I feel as well. I feel energized around Officer Gale. Alive... more," Clyde said and I stopped walking and turned to him, his face as serious as a heart attack, as Gramps would say.
"What are you saying?" I asked as Jade put a wet arm around me, the warmth of her seeping through my wet clothes.
Clyde's eyes bored into mine in the daylight, the ethereal glow of late day slanted and reflected around us as a light rain fell. His eyes seemed to burn from inside their sockets, so deep a gray they were charcoal. "She has caused me to live, Master. You restored me to this earth while she allows me to remain. Alive. I live because of her. While death screams all around me... I live because of her."
My head spun. While my insane life rolled forward, and I thought I'd come to terms with Clyde, he'd made some decisions by himself.
The main one being the acquisition of the cop, Bobbi Gale.
Wasn't this just special? My parents were gonna die. And what did this mean? That the cop was what? Infatuated with my corpse? Was Clyde even a zombie anymore?
I let my power slide out of my body on an exhale and filter through to the graveyard, flowing through Clyde like a stream to a lake. Filling him.
The tether of death responded instantaneously, snapping taut between us, a silken web of sameness, like steel but tenuous and strong simultaneously. His mouth fell open, and mine mirrored his. Jade snatched her hand back, rubbing it like it'd been burnt. Feeling it up close like that was overwhelming.
For me, it just was what it was.
Crows landed and watched Clyde and I with glittering eyes, some tilted their heads.
They were all dead, of course.
So was Clyde, he was absolutely dead. And absolutely changed. Dead but alive. Somehow, he was other now.
I didn't know what to do with that. But I knew who I was gonna talk with about it.
Bobbi Gale was going to do a little explaining. Explaining the weirdness of visiting Clyde.
AFTD or not, there was something going down here.
Jade
Jade watched Caleb say a few more quiet words to Clyde, then in a spine tingling flesh crawl, she felt Caleb put him to rest.
It raised the fine hairs on her arms. They rose as if electricity rode her body, a blanket hovering just above her skin. She shuddered. She didn't let Caleb know how much the whole death deal creeped her. It didn't matter, she wasn't on the receiving end of the dead, she was just a bystander. Still, her power rose, reaching out to the call of the dead and the two were not dissimilar.
A complement. That's what Tulle called psychic abilities that were not the same "flavor," but similar enough to blend together. She and Caleb's powers were a blend. Sometimes that wasn't a good thing.
Like now.
Clyde floated above his grave, the earth reaching up its brown fingers, clasping his form, pulling him down in a warm embrace. The rain soaked the dirt even as it swallowed him.
Caleb stood a moment more, his back to her and Jade saw the man he would be. He sat on the cusp of it, she thought. She let her eyes roam the back of him, the shirt plastered to his shoulders, seeing the muscle that he'd built there. Each incidence of violence, impressing him to work harder. She sighed. Jade guessed that it was what he could control. His physique and the dead. Everything else was a mess to be cleaned up when it happened.
Like her dad.
She was so glad that Caleb wasn't even a little bit Empath. Once in a while he'd get a flash of intuition, but she didn't think that was anything. If Caleb knew how terrified she really was of her dad he'd make Ali and Kyle make up their spare bedroom. It was just too awkward thinking about living with the Harts. But she felt bad about making him more a part of it than he already was. He was way overprotective and had a lot to deal with. Parker. Carson. AFTD and now the DI sample and her locating the owner. Jade wasn't even touching on the AP jerk that was stalking her best friend.
And from the looks of it, some weird thing between Clyde and Gale. What was that about?
But before Jade could really think about it all, Caleb was walking toward her, and she looked at him, really looked at him. He was almost as tall as his dad now, towering over Jade, his hair a rich chestnut, looking black now in the rain, hanging in soaking ropes he kept flinging out of his eyes. His gaze shifted to hers and noticed she was staring at him.
Caleb's eyes returned the heat he found held in hers.
She couldn't hold them off forever, sometime they'd consummate their relationship. Caleb said he'd wait. She didn't know why she wanted to. She loved Caleb, she didn't want anyone else. She knew that.
But words were powerful and her dad's still rung in her head.
What if she was with Caleb and he didn't want her anymore? What if he... left her?
She shook her misgivings away, she'd felt his intent, his feelings for her. He wasn't a user, he did love her.
Her head rose and met his eyes again. Caleb reached her and dragged her into his body, the smell of the rain and the faintest hint of the cologne he used wafted to her in their close embrace.
It felt like it was just the two of them out in the rain, a world apart.
But Jade was wrong, two eyes watched the young lovers.
Jealously.
The agent studied Jade and Caleb. He had watched the entire event with the zombie. Had seen the parlor tricks of Parker many times and it never failed to rivet his attention. The way the ground spit out the dead, then enveloped them in its morbid embrace still struck him with an odd sense of disassociation. Then the birds had appeared, like a macabre audience. He shook his head.
He would dispatch Hart for free. He was an unnatural. The boy made him uneasy. He detested his determination, his innate sense of justice. The agent thought him naïve. His absolute loyalty was especially troubling. His colleagues thought he could be bought. The agent was certain he could not. He'd studied the boy for some time. He knew the caliber of young man he was. He would never do what he was told. But, the agent was confident that he could be made to see reason. If the right buttons were pressed.
His attention turned to the girl.
The only time Hart was tender, soft... was with the LeClerc girl. He stared at the two as they married their bodies to each other. Hart held her head like a fragile treasure, wrapping his arms around the girl, dwarfing her with his size. He had size. Someday, he would be a big man.
The agent hoped to be the one to cut him down before that inevitability.
He smiled, using his stealth to release him from the clutches of the forest that backed the cemetery.
He melted into the twilight, his black clothing obscuring his form.
The crows watched him with glittering eyes, suspicious.
One let out a single caw, seeing his master turn to look at him sharply.
I broke my kiss with Jade when I heard one of the crows caw a shrill warning. At least that's what it'd sounded like.
My crows warning me.
I scanned the gloom. The rain was lessening and I couldn't see anything but unease crept over me.
"What?" Jade asked, pulling away a little.
"I don't know, something," I said, giving a little shrug even as I pulled her in next to me, shielding her with my body.
"It's not nothing, Caleb," Jade said, totally picking up on my disquiet.
I tried to form my words and not sound like a tool, "The crow sounded like it was... warning me."
Jade laughed and I frowned at her. I began walking, dragging her along behind me. "It's not funny Jade."
"Excuse me if I don't listen to the dead bird!" Jade said, exasperated.
I turned on her, grasping her shoulders. "Listen to me," her eyes widened but I plowed forward, jamming my thumb onto the inky black pulse pad to trip the locks on the Camaro, "I have a big damn bad feeling about this."
She scooted into my dry car and I went after her, locking the doors with a thumb swipe once inside. "What?"
"All of it. I don't like you getting sucked up with the cops... the thing with Sophie is too close to you, there's Brett's dumb-ass... "
"Don't bring him up, he's not even an issue."
I narrowed my eyes on hers. "He is so an issue, Jade. You just refuse to see it. He wants you and thinks if he hangs around long enough it'll happen." My eyes searched hers and she could see what was in them.
"It will never happen," she said with certainty.
My hands clenched on the steering wheel, the knuckles white. Finally, I turned my face to hers and she started a little at my expression. "Cut him off at the knees, Jade. Don't even say hi. Just give that jerk No Hope."
She looked at me for a long time.
Then I added, just for good measure, "Do it for me."
Finally, she nodded. "Okay."
"Come here," I said, swinging her legs to the side and pulling her onto my lap. "Where were we?" I asked and she gave me a small smile back. Her heart beat where I could see it, making the dream catcher charm pulse with its rhythm. Our lips met and we spent some more time steaming up the inside of the car.
A perfect end to a long day of revelations and confusion.
CHAPTER 17
"So, Gale wants to do Clyde," Jonesy said with real feeling.
"I like it," Alex added.
Jonesy frowned. "You would, perv-boy."
Alex shrugged, "It is what it is. I'm not one to cramp people's sexuality."
Wow.
John frowned. "I guess that's really big of you, Alex," he said with something like awe.
Tiff laughed. "Alex... you're gonna go with the cop wanting to date a zombie?"
I held up my hand, this was getting way outta control. Why had I thought it'd be okay to tell the group. Jonesy? Was I high? Hell.
Jade put her hand on my arm, her look saying, nice going.
Yeah.
"Listen guys... I don't know for sure why Gale is visiting Clyde at Scenic." I shrugged.
Jonesy gave me a significant look. "Let's do a run-down of the facts, Hart." He raised his brows.
Jonesy facts. Subject to change... anytime.
Great.
"First, he's a guy."
John interjected. "He's a dead guy that died in the 1930s. He doesn't think like modern people."
Jonesy looked at John levelly. "I repeat, he's a guy."