Chapter 22 #2
I blew out a breath, shoulders wilting. Sure, she hadn’t responded, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d just shown up. It had to be Amelia. I was just being paranoid.
Still, it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
I forced my legs to move. Pulse jumpy, I crossed to the kitchen and yanked open the junk drawer, snatching up the bottle of mace my mom had insisted I take when I moved to the “big city.” It had lived there untouched ever since, but, hey, anything was better than nothing.
I clamped my trembling fingers around the canister, gripping it tight.
Armed and moderately dangerous, I crept to the stairwell. The steps seemed to stretch forever as I padded down them in my wet socks. The door loomed at the bottom.
Reaching it, I swallowed and squeezed my eyelids shut. “Please be Amelia.”
I tightened my grip on the spray, opened my eyes, and reached for the locks before I could talk myself out of it and into hiding in my closet the rest of the night. Muffled thunder rumbled as I twisted the handle tab. Turned the deadbolt.
Bracing myself, I cracked the door open.
And froze. My stomach dropped through the floor. Horror iced my cold feet to the threshold.
It wasn’t Amelia.
Sky stood on my stoop.
His head jerked up as soon as I opened the door. Wariness pinched his eyes in the corners as he stared at me, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, his body hunched against the storm. Rain plastered his dark hair to his head and ran down his tanned face.
His tanned, human face.
I bleated like a startled goat, slammed the door shut, and locked it for good measure.
Oh no.
Sky was here. Alien Sky.
Was he here to kill me? Or worse, abduct me?
I’d left my phone behind, on the counter. I couldn’t call the police. If I screamed, no one would hear me. Bob was half deaf and lived across the lawn, a whole house away.
I’d locked the door, sure, but what use was a lock against an alien? He could probably just…beam right in here. Hell, he could probably rip the whole building apart. Blast it with a laser cannon or something.
Maybe he could control alien robots. Maybe he was an alien robot.
Oh my God. I was so, so screwed—
He knocked again. Gently. Just a soft tap of knuckles.
I screamed anyway.
“No!” I shouted at the door, as if admonishment alone could keep it shut tight. I leapt back and pointed the mace at it like a tiny, spicy bazooka. “Go away!”
Quiet fell. For a wild moment, I thought he’d listened.
But then his voice filtered through, muted but very definitely still there. “Raven, it’s okay. I just need to talk to you. Give me a couple minutes, and I promise I’ll go.”
“It’s not okay!” I yelled back, the words cracking. “I’m not going to tell anybody. Seriously. You don’t have to kill me!”
There was a stunned pause, and then a strangled, “What? Kill you? Why…?”
Well, huh. He sounded surprised. As if it were surprising I feared my demise at the hands of a freaking extraterrestrial visitor. Had he even seen a sci-fi movie? Maybe not. Maybe he found them offensive. I probably would now, too. If I survived long enough to watch any more.
My legs felt strange, weak and trembly, enough so I leaned on the wall, still clutching the spray. Another few seconds passed, during which I eyed the white door panel. The still intact door panel.
For a super advanced robot race, he was being surprisingly cordial about not vaporizing the wall or anything. It almost seemed like…well, like he was actually waiting out there for me to let him in.
I jumped when he knocked again, and I nearly sprayed mace all over the closed door. I checked my trigger finger right in time, swallowing hard despite having no saliva to speak of.
Sky spoke up again, sounding resigned. “Raven, I’m not here to kill you. You know me better than that, right?”
“I don’t know you at all!” I breathed a laugh that sounded more like a deflating rubber chicken. “I don’t even know what you are.”
He was quiet for a second before he said, very matter-of-fact, “I think you do.”
Okay, fair. I sucked in a sharp breath, eyes on the door. Silence fell.
He was right, of course. I had a tiny inkling exactly what Sky Acosta was.
A minute crept by.
The door remained whole and door-like between us.
I bit my lip. A tiny niggle of uncertainty began to worm its way through the terror. Maybe he wasn’t here to hurt me. He honestly sounded…contrite. Maybe a little tired. Certainly not…well, alien-y.
Then again, what did aliens sound like?
For a moment, I was in the lab, listening to those terrible mechanical garbled words, and I flinched and gripped the pepper spray harder. But when nothing filtered in through the door but the storm, I leaned forward. Strained to listen.
Sky raised his voice just a little over the hammering rainwater and grumbles of thunder. “I just need to talk to you, Raven. Then I’ll go. I swear, I only need a few minutes. I’m not here to…to harm you in any way. I only want to talk.” I heard him sigh. “Please let me in.”
Ugh. That last part was said so…persuasively.
That tone, the entreaty in it, combined with the memory of his shocked, frightened face at Oasis had my resolve wavering even further.
The blustery storm outside raged convincingly, too, like it was contributing to his cause.
He was out there in it, getting pelted by wind and rain.
Could he truly just want to talk?
A sudden, intense sense of surrealism washed over me. This was no dream. I was really standing in my stairwell, and there was an alien on the other side of my door. A being not of this world. An interplanetary traveler.
One I’d unwittingly been crushing on for the better part of a year.
There were so many implications that came with that fact…for me, and for the entire freaking human race.
Also regarding my taste in men.
At any rate, if he wanted to hurt me, he would’ve by now. He’d had opportunities. Before this, even. But there he was, standing out there in the pouring rain and borderline begging for a chance to talk. To me.
I held my breath and eyed the door, gripping the mace hard.
Was I afraid? Hell yes. I was terrified.
But underneath all that, buried beneath the bone-deep fear that came from having my reality shaken to the foundation, there was that latent, burning, annoying curiosity. My need to know and understand. My gift and my curse.
He wanted to talk, and I…damn it, I had questions. Who was he—who was he, really? Or better yet, what was he, and why was he here? Was his presence connected to the tablet after all? And what about the robot that’d nearly smashed me to bits?
Had that been him?
It was nearly impossible to liken the two, but how was I supposed to know? None of this came with a user guide. Even the Reddit threads hadn’t accounted for any of this.
I wouldn’t know unless I asked him.
Unless I let him in. Unless I took a risk and let him explain himself and what had happened at Oasis. If I was lucky, he could tell me what this strange design on my hand truly meant. What had happened to me in that gap of time between the lab and waking up in the hallway.
What was happening to me now.
I grimaced at the closed door. This was a bad idea. This was a bad idea on so many levels, it was up there with the world’s highest sky-rise of bad ideas. This bad idea was about to enter atmosphere on its way right off this planet.
But…screw it.
How many people could say they’d entertained an alien?
My heart in my throat, I reached for the door’s knob and eased it open again. The storm hissed and crashed, and when I steeled myself and peered through the crack, Sky ducked his head to meet my eyes. His half-hearted smile came and went.
“It’s really raining out here,” he said.
Oh, and he really did look pathetic. He didn’t look like an alien. Not right now. He looked like…Sky. A soaked-to-the-skin, ashen, worried version of Sky. Rain clung to his long eyelashes and slicked his face, and when he exhaled slowly, it plumed out in a cloud of white mist.
But because I had self-preservation instincts and my common sense was trying desperately to get my attention, I hesitated a moment longer. As if he knew, he squinted against my bright porch light, his brows tented beneath his dripping dark hair.
“Please, Rae. Just give me a minute of your time. That’s all I’m asking. I’ll be gone as soon as I’ve said my piece. I’m not going to…” A muscle ticked in his cheek. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
He whispered the last part like it pained him to even say it, and maybe it didn’t say much about that whole self-preservation thing, but it rang sincere. Something wasn’t adding up. I tried again to equate Sky to the violent alien robot I’d encountered at the university and failed.
I had questions. And he wanted to talk. The curiosity thickened and stilled some of the shaky panic, enough so I released my death grip on the door and studied him warily.
He was right. I hadn’t known him well, but I’d spent enough time with him…
okay, enough time watching him to feel like I had somewhat of a grasp on his personality.
His habits and mannerisms. Right now, he seemed genuine, his dark gaze steady and possibly even hopeful when I continued to waver in the open doorway.
He swiped a hand down his wet face, blinking away droplets.
It was such a…human gesture. I sighed.
This was how I ended up getting abducted by aliens. I knew it.
I stepped back and held the door open, gesturing with mace. “Okay. Come in.”
Like he hadn’t expected me to actually let him in, Sky blinked once before recovering. He eyed the pepper spray but wisely said nothing, pausing only a moment before stepping over the threshold. I peered out into the night behind him. Nothing stirred besides the wind through the leaf-bare trees.
Just me, a tiny canister of pepper spray, and my visitor from outer space.
Here went nothing.