Neon Blue by E Frost (best big ereader .TXT) 📕

He grows increasingly groggy while we eat, and by the time I’ve finished my second piece of toast, he’s sitting slumped at the table like a zombie, his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Come on, Peter.” I help him up, out of the house and to his car. I drive him home, carefully under the speed limit because I don’t have a license. He navigates me through Medford in a monotone.

I’d give anything to hear him laugh.

I park in the parking space in front of the apartment block that he directs me to and turn to look at him. He’s sitting in the passenger seat, limp, lifeless. He could be a puppet.

“Peter, I’m Tsara, do you remember me?”

“Yes,” he says in that dreadful monotone.

Good. The memory charm hasn’t turned his brain to complete mush. “We had dinner together last night. Do you remember that?”

“Pizza,” he says. “We had a good time.”

Nice to know he thought so, too.

“That’s right. And you drove me home afterwards. Do you remember?”

He frowns. No, he doesn’t remember. The memory charm’s working.

“After dinner you drove me home, Peter. I live in Somerville. You parked in front of my house. We sat in your car. You had a cigarette. We talked about movies. We both like Dances with Wolves.” About the only movie we could agree on. I like Kevin Costner. He likes war movies. Bleh.

“Dances . . . Wolves,” he repeats.

“Right. We said good-night. I went into the house. You sat in the car and had another cigarette.” I don’t actually know what he did. It’s unlikely he sat in the car, or he would have seen Toby arrive. But I can’t think of anything else. “Then you knocked on my door. I let you in. We had a cup of coffee. I told you I just wanted to be friends.”

This is the part that hurts. Because it’s not true. None of it. And I hate lying to him. But it’s necessary. Peter’s not ready for my world. And I can’t deal with a repeat of Saul.

His frown deepens. He’s fighting it. Because deep down, he knows this isn’t right. “Just friends,” he repeats.

“I’m getting over someone. I’m not ready for a relationship right now.”

His tampered psyche seems to accept that more easily. His frown smoothes. “Not . . . ready.”

“That’s right. So we’ll just be friends.” Maybe I can ease him into my world a cantrip at a time.

He smiles. “I’ll wait for you.”

Shit. That’s not supposed to happen. “No, Peter. We’re just going to be friends. That’s all.”

His smile widens. Turns beatific. “No, I’ll wait for you.” The idea’s becoming set in his altered memory. Somehow, he’s self-hypnotizing.

I try to salvage the situation. “We said good-night—”

“Kissed you good-night.”

Now he’s fantasizing, building his own false memories, and I don’t know how to stop it. “And you drove home,” I say firmly. “You watched TV and went to bed.”

“Went to bed,” he repeats.

I sink back into the driver’s seat. Not a total disaster. Before he can embellish the false memory any further, I get him out of the car, up into his apartment, which looks comfortable and homey in a messy, male way, and into bed. Stripping him down to his boxers makes me teary, because he really is cute, and he really seems to like me, and I would do almost anything to be able to climb into his unmade bed, cuddle up, sleep in his arms for a few hours, and wake up to see what develops.

But that would be wrong for so many reasons. Only slightly less wrong than what I’ve just done to him.

I tuck him in instead and give him a gentle peck on the cheek. He smiles and pulls a pillow to his chest. He hugs it, snuggles his face into it. I’ve never wanted to be a pillow so badly in my life.

I close the curtains and creep out, taking his blood-stained clothes with me in a CVS bag. Unlike me, he has a deadbolt on his front door, so I don’t even need to charm the lock. For some reason that has me in tears all the way to the bus-stop.

Chapter 9

It’s days before I can look at the binder Peter’s given me without bursting into tears. He calls me every day. We talk. He makes me laugh. I like him more all the time. He tells me he doesn’t want to push me; he just wants to get to know me. The lie becomes further and further entrenched between us. I want to scream.

And every one of his calls starts with that weird interference. I have my line checked. I tell Peter that there’s something wrong with his cell phone. He calls from his office instead, but it happens there, too. Just a few seconds of dead air, and the whispered words, please make it stop.

I wish I knew how.

I finally sit down with Peter’s binder on Sunday afternoon. I’ve done everything else I can think of. Cleaned the whole house. Raked up all the leaves that have fallen from the four big trees in my yard. Turned the compost heap. Fed the ward spiders and thrown peanuts to the watch squirrels. Baked cinnamon rolls. Painted my nails. Colored my hair. Had my daily call with Peter. Changed Toby’s dressings.

The werewolf’s sitting on my couch, watching football. To the sound of cheering and the faint smell of dog, I open the binder, flip through the tea-stained pages and begin reading.

It’s engrossing. The author of The Secret History of Solomon’s Temple and the Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons knows how to tell a story. I finally look up only because I’m squinting at the page. It’s gone dark and the house is quiet.

There’s a ghost hovering over my dining-room table.

The small hairs on my neck rise. My skin prickles into goosebumps. This isn’t a family ghost, or anyone I recognize. She’s ethereal. Barely defined. Just the suggestion of a female shape. A rounded face.