The Medium

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Lenny occasionally made an effort to confirm or clarify something, but he let Kim do most of the talking. She was better at it than he was. The few times he spoke up, he only seemed to make the confusion worse. They talked for over an hour, and in the end, Mara agreed to let Lenny stay. Reluctantly.

“If it’s such a non-issue, why didn’t you ever tell me?” she demanded.

“Habit,” he mumbled around the thumbnail between his teeth. “And I was g-going to. I spent the whole t-t-time on the bus planning…”

But there was no way to prove that statement, and Mara didn’t seem to believe it.

“It was such a nightmare that Monday,” she said with a grimace, talking to a spot somewhere above Lenny’s left ear. She pushed her glasses up onto her forehead and pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She hadn’t looked Lenny in the eye since Kim had warned her about Sebastian and the ways a vampire could get inside a human head. He’d noticed and tried to be understanding. Tried. “Linda took my class after lunch so I could go pick you up, and when you didn’t get off the bus… I called the bus line, and then I called the hotel, and then I puked all over Paul, and he had to call the cops because I couldn’t… I couldn’t talk, and they said they couldn’t do anything until it had been at least forty-eight hours because you’re a grown-ass adult…”

And the more Mara talked, the more Lenny realized there was no chance of him picking up where he left off. He may or may not have ever been declared dead, Mara told the wall between them, still not looking directly at the man on her couch. It hadn’t taken the police long to discover all of his documentation was fake, and his Social Security number had been issued the year Social Security was implemented. She pressed a hand to her stomach when she said it, like she was reliving being punched in the gut. They had tracked him back through enough addresses and enough jobs that the only possibility was a large number of people using the same false identity. Some people at the school had speculated that he disappeared to escape the law, the investigation was pointless, and he was probably living extravagantly somewhere on the funds in an offshore account.

“I said witness protection,” Mara added defensively, but admitted that no one had listened. The way she moved her gaze from the wall to the floor said she hadn’t really believed it, herself.

The theories had flourished, and too many people in Abilene still remembered.

“Maybe you could get a job outside of the school system. Somewhere you can pretend to just kind of accidentally look like Leonard Hugo. Is there anything else you can do?”

But he had no answer. His brain was tumbling through scenarios, too fast and disjointed to be called thought. He stared at her blankly until she conceded he could be forgiven for recuperating a bit more before trying to return to a normal life.

He cried when Kim left to find herself a motel room for the night, hating that he couldn’t will the tears to stop. He was a grown-ass adult, wasn’t he? Mara pulled out the sofa bed and supplied it with blankets, and when he calmed enough to be presentable, she introduced him more formally to her daughters. They both evinced a healthy skepticism, but Mara had introduced him as a friend, which helped.

“You got lost?” the elder one, Gemma, asked.

Lenny nodded.

Gemma scratched at her scalp and left, returning with a very old and worn stuffed rabbit, its chest embroidered with a letter K in faded red.

“Is this yours?” she asked. “Mom said she got it from her friend who got lost. You can have it back, if you want. I’m not allowed to play with it, anyway.”

He took the toy gingerly, running an expert finger along its weakening seams. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“I kept it in case you came back,” Mara told him. “And when it looked like you weren’t going to, I gave it to Gemma. I knew it was important to you, even if you never told me why.”

“I made it for my wife,” he whispered. There was no longer any point to keeping anything secret.

Over Mara’s shoulder, the memory shimmered in gold and white, triggered by the tiny vibrations in the fabric of the stuffed animal. She smiled sadly and mouthed “Be strong,” before he tore his gaze away. He brought the rabbit up to his face and inhaled. Even after so many years, the wool still carried her scent.

“Her name was Kate.”

Gemma fidgeted. “What happened?”

“She got lost, too,” he answered, after a pause. “A long time before I met your mom.”

Undeterred, Gemma grinned. “Maybe she’ll come back, just like you!”

He smiled back, but the scarred corners of his mind, where their psychic bond had been ripped away, were more than enough proof for him. He’d felt Kate die. He wondered if those scars were part of the reason Sebastian had free rein inside his head.

Mara told him good night and took her children to bed. He lay down and held his rabbit tightly.

And he dreamed Kate was there with him, they were trapped together in the cellar, and he had to watch her starve, her mind stripped away, silenced, leaving only a monster behind.

He woke weeping and disoriented, aware of someone nearby but unable to tell who. Slowly, he remembered where he was, and the presence in the dark was Mara. His Mara. He was sorry to have woken her, but glad she was there. He wanted to feel her again, to be reminded that she was real.

But Mara turned and tiptoed away, and Lenny cried himself back to sleep in silence.

Kim turned up shortly before Mara left for work. The two women muttered awkward pleasantries at one another, Kim smiling too broadly in her attempt to seem open and trustworthy, Mara not managing to conceal her frustration and doubt.

Mara piled her children into the car, promising she would try to be home as early as possible.

Lenny watched from the safety of the doorway as she drove away.

“You okay?” Kim asked, and he nodded. “Not what you were expecting?”

He nodded again. “I think a lot has happened to her. T-ten years. I didn’t really think it would b-b-be the same.”

“But you hoped?”

He sighed and locked the door, moving to sit on the edge of the sofa bed. “I don’t think I can stay. I’m glad to see Mara again, but she has her own life. She c-can’t put it on hold to t-take care of me. There’s nothing I can do. I’d just be a b-burden.”

Kim touched his arm. “You haven’t really tried, yet,” she told him. “She said you could stay, so I think you should try. It would be better than being somewhere you don’t know. Listen, I have to go back to Austin to get stuff done. You try to settle in some, and if you can’t, I’ll come get you. I mean, if you want to stay with me, you can.”

“I don’t want to be a burden on you, either.”

“Eh.” She dismissed his objection with a flip of her hair. “Tony and Edith are comping me. And you don’t take up much room. And I couldn’t really call myself one of the good guys if I left you to fend for yourself.”

She left her phone number on a sticky note in case he needed her. Then she handed him a small mirrored compact.

“If you open it with the intention of getting in touch with me, it’ll get in touch with me,” she said. “You can get Zeb or Coyote, too. Works pretty much like a phone, but I’m always carrying mine, always.”

The magic in the black plastic tingled against his palm.

She got up to go, but he stopped her. There was one more thing he needed to say, one more thing she needed to know, now that he was holding nothing back, had no secrets left to keep.

“Kim?”

“Yes?”

“You’re…”

“What?”

“You’re the… the first…”

“First what?”

He fidgeted. “I never… I never b-bit anyone before.”

She blinked at him, then laughed. “Seriously? I’m… No, ‘flattered’ definitely isn’t the right word.”

He could tell that, like many other things, that didn’t mean to her what it meant to him. But he had no words for what it meant to him, couldn’t explain, and had no choice but to let her continue, bemused and uncomprehending.

Kim shook her head and grinned. “Never, huh? Leonard Hugo, you are one weird vampire. And someday, when you’re ready, I want to know absolutely everything about you.”

He hadn’t been sure what reaction that revelation would receive, but dismissal was a disappointment. He tried again, but he had no words, and though Kim listened, she still didn’t understand.

“You’re okay, honey,” she told him. She smoothed his hair back, brushed a kiss across his forehead, and left, and all he could do was lock the door behind her.

Mara came home in the afternoon to find him exactly where she left him. She cooked dinner for her children, but now that she knew why he never ate, she didn’t make even a token offer for him to join them. He tried to talk to her the way they used to talk, but he didn’t have the words, and the ones he did have kept coming out wrong. The family watched television until it was time for bed, and the cycle began anew the next morning. They left. He sat alone until they returned. He hovered on the fringes of the family like an insect around a light, and at night, he woke from nightmares twisting in his stomach and cramping his back, trying his best to be silent about it, because the dreams hurt less than knowing Mara could hear and still wouldn’t come.

Sometimes, he touched the mirrored compact in his pocket and thought about calling Kim. Without her, he didn’t dare leave the protection of the house’s threshold, except when the burning in the back of his throat forced him out to the nearest stockyard. But she had told him to try, and he didn’t want to disappoint.

So he tried.

Lenny sat alone from the time Mara and the girls left until the time they came home. He didn’t get bored; after so long in the dark it was enough to be able to think, but his thoughts always turned to the things missing. He couldn’t support himself, couldn’t protect himself, could barely even sleep. Even if he found a job, managed to find himself a place to live, he couldn’t both work and avoid anyone who remembered him. He couldn’t stand to look at Mara and see the decade standing between them. He couldn’t stay in Abilene.

Another Saturday had come before he worked up the courage to tell Mara. She at least had the grace not to look relieved.

“You don’t have to,” she told him. “You can stay as long as you want. It’s not like you’re costing me anything.” But she didn’t bother to sound sad, either.

She hurried her children out the door and away from him, away from the thing that had upended her understanding of the universe. To the library, she said, but they were always gone somewhere, and Lenny understood.

He’d told Kim the prejudice didn’t bother him, and it had been true. He’d always known what his life would entail when he chose to be with Kate. But Kate was long gone, and the mistrust in Mara’s face punched holes in his chest.

He called Kim.

“Can I come back?” he asked softly. His voice cracked.

Coyote’s bass growl rumbled through the line. “We’re busy,” he snapped, but the line crackled as the phone was wrestled away from him, and Kim answered breathlessly.

“Hello?”

“Kim? I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were b-busy.”

“It’s okay. It’s nothing that can’t wait a minute.” She paused. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just… I don’t want to stay.”

Her breath rustled in the receiver. “Honey, you need to stay a little longer. They lost Duran. He got hold of Coyote’s supplies, somehow, and now we can’t track him. He knows where my apartment is, so you’re safer there.”

Lenny’s throat closed.

“Lenny? It’s okay, honey. He doesn’t know where you are. If he comes snooping around here, we’ll get him. Just, you need to stay put, okay?”

“No,” he choked. “No, he c-can find me anywhere, same as you can. He can come straight here, and Mara c-can’t fight him. He’ll burn her out.”

There was silence on the other end, long enough that Lenny began to become afraid.

“Kim?”

He heard something that was almost a sob, but mostly a sigh.

“Kim?”

“No, you’re right. He will, won’t he? At least if we’re all in one place, we know there’ll be someone who can fight back. I’m coming, okay? I’m coming right now, and I need you to be ready to go the second I get there.”

Coyote’s growl moved close to the phone. “Like hell,” Lenny heard. “You’re not protected on the road.”

“You want to take him down?” Kim shot back. “If he goes for Lenny instead of coming for us, they could both disappear. If everyone is together, Duran can’t strike without everyone knowing. If we don’t know what he wants, all the bait has to be in the same place.”

Bait. Lenny squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard, but he preferred being bait in a trap to being bait sitting out in the open.

Kim hung up, and Lenny got his things together. He didn’t have much. A change of clothes, razor, electric blanket, all of which had come from Kim. He folded those neatly into a paper shopping bag. The rabbit, and the specter it carried. He took it to the kitchen and carefully slit open the back seam with a knife. His fingertips probed the rag stuffing until he found what he’d hidden there decades earlier.

He loved Mara, but he knew he couldn’t let himself be in love with her, now. She was too distant and too hard to be the support he needed. She had children, and they had to be her priority. And besides, he had nothing to offer her, not even the strength to support her in return, as an equal.

He slipped the old gold band onto his finger and let go of the fantasy.