The Pale: Volume One by Jacob Long (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

toward hyperventilation, and she was lost for words. Her eyes became shiny, irritated, and red.

Adam tried to soothe her. “It’s okay. Breathe, Téa. Take your time. I know this is a shock.”

Téa looked to the bottle of pills in her sink.

Adam intervened. “No, Téa. I’m real. It’s okay. Please try to breathe.” He dared to extend an open palm in offering. “It’s all right,” he cooed. “I’m real. Here. Feel.”

Téa looked at the hand. Her skin was glistening with a thin layer of sweat. Then Adam swore he saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. It was a ray of hope, but brief, as Téa immediately lunged for the pills in the sink. Adam simply reacted, grabbing her reaching hand and gathering her up in his arms as gently as he could manage.

“Téa, stop! You don’t need that!”

Adam wanted to make his action more embrace than restraint, but Téa tried to resist him, crying out. Her face was a deep shade of red from the stress.

“Téa, please—”

She sobbed, still struggling feebly against Adam’s superior strength. She was having a panic attack and had become inconsolable. In a historically uncharacteristic moment of clarity, Adam quickly realized he was only making it worse. He released Téa and backed away. Free, Téa stopped sobbing and wrapped her arms around herself, avoiding Adam’s gaze like a whipped dog. Her cheeks had the wet sheen of loose tears.

Adam berated himself. Why am I so stupid? Why is everything action with me, everything force?

“Téa, I’m sorry,” Adam said. He looked away, in shame. “I . . . I didn’t think . . .” Adam couldn’t find the right words to finish his sentence, and then he realized that he had finished his sentence.

Téa was trying to inhale through her nose to control her breaths and slow her heart rate, but it wasn’t doing much good as her nostrils had become clogged with mucus. At least this demonstrated to Adam that she wasn’t hysterical. She was already recovering and taking steps to put herself back together. Some part of her mind was already clear. Adam envied that.

“That’s good, Téa,” Adam dared. “You’re doing so good.”

Téa still wasn’t looking at Adam. Her eyes were far off, like she was more in her own head than in the real world. Maybe that was exactly where she needed to be to process the shock.

“Can you look at me?” Adam asked. He didn’t want to lose her in there. Téa didn’t respond, and he tried again. “Please? Will you look at my face?”

Téa looked out the corner of her eye at Adam. There was still fear in there, vulnerability.

Adam smiled his best disarming smile. “That’s good. Stay with me. Look at my face and breathe, okay? In . . . and out.”

Téa did her best to follow Adam’s instructions. She was listening and wanted to get better. She just could not reconcile what her eyes were showing her. Meanwhile, Adam appeared to be pleased beyond measure, and his glee at reaching his friend was apparent in his widening smile. Téa recognized that smile, and it touched her somewhere deep. Her heart calmed quickly, wrapped in the warm glow of that mudita. Her breathing finally came under control. In another moment, the seeds of a gentle smile sprouted in her lips.

Adam gave a breathy chuckle. “Hey,” he whispered.

Téa had a thousand words and thoughts in her head but managed only an equally weak “Hey” in return. It was like the squeak of a mouse. The two stared into each other’s eyes until Adam took the first action. That time, it was the gentle offering of his hand, and he held it for as long as Téa needed until she reached up and placed hers inside it. Adam then turned and led her out of the bathroom. In the short hallway, into the living room, and long after being sat down on her couch, Téa stared in awe at her friend’s face. Seeing this, Adam only smiled back.

Sitting across from each other, Adam in the nearby recliner, the two reunited friends sat in a long silence. Each waited patiently for the other to speak first. Adam waited for Téa to ask her questions, and Téa expected Adam to explain himself the moment he felt ready. This resulted in the two doing nothing productive for some minutes. Adam bit his lip, wondering what the first question was going to be. Téa fidgeted restlessly in her own manner, trying very hard not to glare at Adam accusatorially.

Adam, being the impatient one, was beginning to think that he was going to have to drive this conversation. It was actually the first time he had known Téa not to be open with him since they had met. He knew Téa had questions. What was she waiting for?

Téa saw Adam eyeing her. His expression was slowly growing into irritation. To the untrained eye, it may not have looked it, but Téa recognized it. She wondered what Adam was doing. Without context, there were a million explanations for why Adam had returned to her after all those years. The more irritated he grew, the more she began to expect that it had something to do with her. What was his motivation? Why had Adam come to her? And why was he angry? Finally, Téa realized that Adam was probably the one who had taken her home. He’d seen her completely out of her mind on drugs. Maybe he was judging her. How dare he? I know we’re friends and all, but you’re not my dad. If you were so concerned about my habits, why did you abandon me? Why did you leave for five years? Worse yet, why did you pretend you were dead?

Suddenly, Téa looked angry, and Adam found himself a little taken aback. He replayed all the events that had led up to that moment in his mind, trying to figure out how he had screwed up. The feeling that he had some explaining to do had turned into full-blown guilt under Téa’s disdainful glare.

Under that pressure, Adam broke down and spoke first. “You probably have some—”

Téa took Adam starting a sentence as an invitation to start her own. “What do you want here?”

Adam looked at Téa incredulously. Of all the questions he thought Téa would ask, a rude interrogative was not one of them. “Excuse me?”

Téa folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs. “You’ve been gone for five years. That whole time, you didn’t call. You didn’t tell us you were actually alive. You very specifically hid your existence from us. So why did you come back now? And why did you contact me?”

Adam was dumbstruck. He had expected questions, but Téa was attacking from a strange angle that Adam hadn’t considered at all. She was a seriously strange girl. “Well, it looked like you were in trouble, Téa,” he answered indignantly.

“What? So you just happened to be in town and just happened to be in the same place I was?”

Adam nodded. “Yeah, basically.”

Téa looked at him skeptically. “Then what brought you back here? What have you been doing all this time?”

Adam had an answer ready for that one. “Well, a mission brought me here.”

Téa was intrigued. “A mission?”

Adam smirked. He knew Téa would bite. “Yeah. Téa, for the last five years, I’ve been working for the government. I was selected for a special task force. It’s very secretive. They plucked me out of the Army. They gave me special training. They’re the ones who faked my death.”

Téa wondered why Adam was lying to her. The smirk gave him away in a heartbeat. He never could control his deceiver’s delight. “Really?” she asked. The word came out flatter than she’d intended. “I guess it was a closed casket.”

Adam nodded. He knew soldiers rarely had open caskets. Of course, he also knew the exit wound would have been on his face. “Right. My work, where I’ve been the last five years, it’s led me back here, but it’s secret, very secret. I don’t get cool spy gadgets or air support. I’m on my own. That’s why I’m here. I need your help. I need clothes—”

Téa nodded in near insulting agreement with her eyebrows raised.

“I need money, and I need a place to stay, at least until my work is done.”

“What kind of work would that be?” Téa asked.

Adam took a moment to think, looking at the floor. “I’m . . .” he hesitated. He bounced around the idea of continuing to lie, but really, what was the point? Téa would probably find the whole idea incredible. Then again, she might be so into the idea that she wants to see the thing for herself. “I’m . . . tracking down a serial killer.”

Téa leaned in to affect interest and Adam continued.

“You know those killings that were going on five years ag—”

Adam stopped short. That was five years ago. He hadn’t known that when the Custodian of the Wheel of Fate explained his mission.

“Those murders are still going on?” Adam asked aloud.

Téa looked confused. “Murders?”

Adam returned the look, and then he realized his mistake. “Oh.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I mean, there were attacks. Five years ago. People were found dead and torn apart by wild animals. Do you remember that?”

Téa shrugged, shaking her head.

“Really? Uh, okay. People were saying that it was probably a chupacabra. There weren’t any survivors to describe what had—”

“Oh, yeah.” Téa shook her head. “The animal attacks.” She chuckled. “That wasn’t a chupacabra. That was just a pack of wolves. Those stopped. Some local guys took it upon themselves to go hunting for whatever did it. They killed a pack of wolves, and then the attacks stopped. That was a while back.”

Adam looked confused and even a little mad having heard this new information. Téa began to suspect that she was just poking holes in his story, but he seemed genuine.

“Are you . . . trying to tell me something else?” Téa asked.

“Yes.” Adam breathed. “They . . . were only made to look like animal attacks. My agency . . . believes that it’s not over. It’s . . . a man, a sociopath with intent.” Adam’s lies were starting to pile up, and the more he spoke, the more the whole situation didn’t make any sense to him. “He just . . . he stopped. He knew if he stopped, just then, that people would stop looking for him.”

Adam paused, thoughts racing through his head. The fact that his web of lies carried real weight halted his speech. The implications were awful. He stood, faced away from Téa, and stroked his bottom lip as he thought. Quiet mutterings escaped his lips.

“It did too,” he said. “The thing left. The creature saw its opportunity to escape, and it did. That’s . . . smart. It’s, like . . . smart.” Adam wiped his hand down his face. “Why did it do that? How did it know to do that?”

“You really get into your work.”

Adam turned around to look at Téa. She was still sitting in the chair, just watching him, nonplussed by the information.

“Um . . . yeah.” Adam tried to get back on track, but the realization that he was five years behind on his investigation had thrown him off quite a bit. He couldn’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to him before. Worse yet, it was starting to seem like the chupacabra was actively changing its patterns to avoid capture.

“How long ago did that happen when those hunters killed those wolves?” Adam asked.

Téa paused to think. “Uhh, it must have been . . . like a year and a half ago now.”

Adam’s heart sank. The damn thing could be anywhere. “So you haven’t heard anything about mutilations like that since?”

Téa shrugged and shook her head. “Your . . . guys in intelligence sure the killer is still around here?”

Adam blinked furiously, still giving away his lies. “Yeah, they seemed pretty sure.”

Adam’s tells were lighting up, but Téa was still on his side. He seemed distraught. He seemed genuine even though he was lying. There was something Adam wasn’t telling her, that was for sure; but whatever it was, she knew he was hiding it for a reason. She knew if it was bad enough to hide from her, it was plenty bad. She might just have to earn the truth. It was actually kind of saddening that, sometime while he was gone, Adam had learned not to trust.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Téa offered.

Adam looked at her, and a genuine smile peeked out into the sun. “Yeah?”

Téa smiled back. “Yeah! Of course!” She stood and wrapped her arms around her friend returned to her. Adam hugged her back too. His firm squeeze felt good, like suddenly things were okay, at least better than they had been in a long time.

After their embrace, they looked at each other, and it was like a circuit completed. Adam’s heart was at peace, and Téa felt like herself. She stepped back, looked Adam up and down, and then said, “So are these the clothes they dropped you off here with?”

Adam spat from the suddenness of his laughter. “Yeah. Yeah, this is pretty much