Chapter 12
I needed the flashlight most of the way back. That, and Auris’s hand to steady me and keep me from falling.
When we were finally back at the car, I was so tired that I dozed off as we drove through the lightless landscape.
I dragged my eyes open and tried to rub the sleep away when the lights of civilization washed over my face.
I stretched in my seat, focusing on the town’s borders in relation to the ocean. “This isn’t Brightam.”
“No, we’re in Cromere.”
I turned to look at Auris. “I thought it wasn’t safe to come back here?”
He looked over at me with dark eyes and brushed my cheek in the gesture I was beginning to take as a show of affection. “It is not safe to linger, but a careful visit at nighttime should not bring any trouble.”
“We’re going to your old place? Did you forget anything there?”
He shook his head. “No, that would be unwise. But there is another small restaurant here that I don’t think will appeal to the priestly kind, and you need food.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re using my nutritional needs as an excuse to do something stupid.”
“My sweet, I’m learning to care for you as you deserve, and this little check-in with my old home is just a side benefit. Don’t fret; trust me.”
I stared at his shadow-veiled face and watched as street lights illuminated it every few seconds. “I found you strapped to some splintery wood in a haunted church. Forgive me for not wanting to see that happen to you again.”
Auris slowed the car then neatly parallel parked it on another small, cobblestoned street.
He turned the engine off before he pulled me toward him for a kiss.
“It was during the day that they took me.” Another kiss.
“A lucky encounter on their part, and not one I’ll easily give them a chance to repeat. Not when I need to watch over you.”
I sighed. “Fine. But you don’t have to watch over me.”
Another kiss. “I enjoy the activity. Please let me. As payment for modeling for you?”
“I like seeing my models work hard, but sure, why not.”
His smile made desire stir inside me.
“I can work hard. I like it when things are hard.” With that, Auris got out of the car. Before I’d even retrieved my bag from the back seat, he opened my door.
“I’m sorry I’m too slow for you. I always have lots of stuff in the car.”
“I like getting to watch you trying to get something from the back seat. There’s always a chance you’ll lift your ass in just that way you are doing now.”
I snorted and pulled my bag onto my lap. “Hilarious. You’re such a flirt. Spotted any priests out there?”
“Not a one.”
I got out and slipped my bag over one shoulder, then closed the car door. The lighter mood shifted as I remembered the church yet again. The evening had started a lot like this one—just photography, and then something terrible.
“What is it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m just thinking about the other night.”
He touched my elbow. “I understand, but nothing bad will happen tonight. Come on.”
He put his arm around me, and before long, our steps had synchronized.
We walked through nighttime Cromere, him a shadow, and me…
drawn to his darkness as if I’d become the antithesis of a moth.
A few of the houses we passed were vacation cottages with For Rent signs in the windows, and tucked away between two houses was a mermaid statue. I veered toward it, taking the lead.
“A regional artist did it,” Auris said. “She does a lot of mermaids all up and down the coast.”
I reached out to touch the carved tail but stopped at the last second. “That’s cool. I love seeing artists fall in love with a place and an idea and combine the two.”
“Don’t all artists do that, to some degree?”
I thought about that as we walked toward the next intersection and turned left.
“Maybe. I never thought about it. Not all of us talk about it though.”
“Oh, I could probably think of exceptions myself. But a lot of artists fall in love with a place, and then you see them chase the essence of it. Yes, that would have been a better way to put it to begin with. Something you see inspires you, like a spark, and much like Sisyphus seeking the top of the mountain, you follow that elusive light.”
In that moment, it hit me, and hard. “We’re dating, aren’t we?”
He looked at me, black eyes seeing all of me. “In this moment? Yes, it does feel like a date. The rest of it… Call it that if you like, but know that as far as I’m concerned, I’m yours, Ethan.”
“Wow. No pressure. Can we date a little while longer before any big declarations?”
“I already told you about my mother’s prophecy, and I can’t imagine there is a bigger confession I could make after that. But certainly, if you demand it, we will date like regular people.”
“Thanks.”
“Then again, if I’m your model, and you’re dating me, is that ethical photography, Ethan?”
“Oh, shut up.” I chuckled and pretended to push him away, although he wouldn’t let me go.
We’d moved to a busier area, and there were other pedestrians around now, some masked. I pulled out a mask from my bag and put it on.
I turned to Auris. “I’m guessing you don’t get sick?”
“No. Did you catch it?”
I shook my head. “So far, no. I had my shot too, but you never know. I definitely wouldn’t want to get anyone else sick.”
He nodded. “Responsible. Diseases like that are a terrible thing. When the first vaccines were made, when anyone could get them…” He sighed. “It took ages and generations and so many deaths. Every small jab has made the world a safer place.”
I opened my mouth to agree, then stopped and gave him a wide-eyed stare. “You saw the Black Death.”
He tugged me back into moving. “Yes. Well, no. No one knew what it was then, but I could taste the sickness in the blood. It was a dark time. Death was everywhere.”
“Was it…” I had so many questions, but right then, I couldn’t think of a single one. I wanted to hear everything about that period of history, maybe, but then I had no idea whether I could stomach it. “Were you all right? Was it… Could you eat okay?”
He chuckled. “I was fine. I was sad for those who lost so much, but I pulled back from making connections. At times, I would get closer to the people around me, and then at other times, I’d barely make the effort to remember someone’s name.
“The latter makes it easier to bear when they age and you don’t. I had to learn that. I had to get into the habit of it.”
I nodded. “Living from the outside.”
“What?”
I cleared my throat. “One of the models I worked with called it that. English wasn’t their first language.
They said looking at life from behind a lens was like living from the outside.
Not being part of the life that happens in front of the camera.
You do it too, but without a lens to hide behind. ”
“That… Yes. Yes, that’s a way to put it. What wise models you’ve known. Such rivals I have to compete with.”
I leaned against his shoulder. “No competition there. There was never anyone like you.”
“That, my sweet, makes me feel much better indeed.”
We’d made our way to the busiest arteries of Cromere now, and with the tourists back after lockdown, you wouldn’t have known the pandemic had happened if not for the masks.
I felt like I could easily hide behind mine, and I had an easier time watching the people around us with it on. Auris caught their attention like he had before. I watched the people who stared at him.
A lot of the looks were just shy appraisals, the same thing I had done a hundred times when encountering a particularly good-looking man or woman somewhere.
Others gave him downright hungry stares that seemed to suggest they would do anything he asked of them, would give him whatever he wanted.
I couldn’t see any patterns in those stares, nothing to do with age or gender.
They all walked past him though, and few looked at him over their shoulder.
“When people look at you, can they feel what you are?” I asked him quietly.
Auris hummed as we crossed a street. “Some very likely can, on a subconscious level. Just now, you have been noticing people who are easily willed under entrancement. There are always some who almost offer themselves.” He pointed his chin at a man in his fifties ahead of us, carrying grocery bags. “Like him.”
The look the man gave Auris was that kind of hungry stare, although…
maybe not merely a hungry stare. In his eyes, I saw the deep longing to let himself be devoured.
It was the strangest thing to see people so eager to give themselves away without even knowing who they would potentially be giving themselves to.
I considered that while Auris steered me into another restaurant. This one was in a remodeled building with a metal staircase leading up to the door. Each stair was flanked by potted flowers that defied winter with the color in their petals—rose, fuchsia, and coral.
Le Petit Trésor read the restaurant’s name in swirling letters above the door.
As we entered, I expected Auris to do what he had done before, to use his ability to control minds on everyone inside, but he did nothing of the sort. He walked to the hostess instead.
“Two, and a quiet table,” he told her. She immediately focused on him and ignored me.
She stared at Auris with big eyes before getting back into her service persona and leading us to a corner table at the very back of the restaurant.
The place wasn’t very noisy, and tables were set the required distance apart from each other, but most of them were taken.
It was either a busy night, or the food here rocked.
We sat facing each other, Auris with his back to the wall. That offered him a view through the front windows, but he only had eyes for me.
I put my bag on the floor and took my mask off. “You said being here to check in on your old home was a side benefit?”
“Yes. If you’re agreeable, I will slip out for a half hour, an hour at the most. Though this time around, I won’t even pretend I’ll let you leave without me.”