Chapter 14
It was 5:00 when Scarlet pulled the awful white Mitsubishi into the too-large driveway of Fox Way. it wasn’t her turn to drive, but she had taken over when it seemed that the Gray Man would get them crashed for how fast and recklessly he had been driving. Scarlet thought it had been shock, but the farther they got from that god-forsaken warehouse, the easier it was to see that he was nervous.
Fancy that! This hulking mammoth of a man brought down to quivers by a woman. She must have been something fierce. Or, Scarlet mused, perhaps he was actually in love and it wasn’t an act.
“Well, my dear, we have arrived,”
An eternity had passed between arriving at 300 Fox Way and exiting the car, all the while, Scarlet could see the Gray Man’s hands shaking. She didn’t know his hands shook when he was nervous. Hell, she didn’t think she had ever seen him nervous before.
It was sunset. Scarlet’s eyes kept flying back to the beautiful orange sky, the Gray Man’s internal struggles not fazing her. She had always been a sucker for pretty things, and this sky was certainly pretty.
It was times like these when Scarlet wished she could stop time, just to make a beautiful thing last a few minutes longer. She took a deep breath, savored the moment, and turned back to the Gray man, who had taked to slowly raising his hand, as if to knock on the door and then dropping it. While she was not on the strict schedule of before-the-new-plan, Scarlet didn’t have all the time in the world.
“Dear god Gray, get a hold of yourself!” He looked at her, she glared back. “Think of something you want to say to her, knock on the door and then say it,” The Gray Man turned back to the door. “If you’re not knocking, then I am,” the Gray Man was shaken out of his stupor, the Gray Man raised his hand to knock on the door, when it opened.
There in the doorway, tall, bed-headed, and barefoot, wearing an oversized T-shirt and still looking better than Scarlet could manage after an hour of trying, stood Maura Sargent. She looked much less scary than Scarlet thought she would, taller, willowy-er. Her eyes were brighter, her skin was less smooth. She looked less.. perfect than Scarlet thought she would. Still, she was undeniably Maura Sargent, and she definitely wasn’t any sort of domineering crime boss.
Her face was unreadable, as was the Gray Man’s. They stood, looking at each other for what seemed like hours, days even. Scarlet felt guilty, for even though nothing had been said or done, she felt like she was intruding on an incredibly private and intimate moment. A cliche book or movie reunion of some sort.
“You couldn’t have called before you showed up? I would have changed into something more appropriate for the occasion, or at least brushed my hair a bit,”
“I thought it would be better to surprise you,”
“Did you really?”
“No,”
And then they were holding each other and whispering things into each other’s ears that weren’t meant to be heard out loud.
Behind her stood a short, but fierce woman. She was dark in every sense of the word. Dark skin, hair, eyes, lips, clothes, aura. Everything about her was dark. She watched the two with happy eyes, until she realized she was being watched. Then she turned her eyes on Scarlet and suddenly Scarlet was rooted to the spot. The woman’s eyes slowly traveled up and down Scarlet’s body. Scarlet didn’t know whether she felt violated or not.
After a long bit of studying Scarlet, the woman lifted her chin as if finding a measure of comfort in her apparent superiority.
“Could you two continue this inside,” The short woman said- no, commanded. Maura and The Gray Man followed the order without taking their eyes off each other and disappeared behind who Scarlet had discerned as Calla Lily Johnson. Well, she was in for something interesting at the very least.
“Are you not going to join them?” Calla sneered.
“I would if I could, but I can’t, the ancient charms have been set on your house, can’t enter without invitation,” Scarlet intoned. This pricked Calla’s interest, a long, sharp eyebrow raised itself about halfway up her forehead and the corners of her lips pricked upward.
Calla looked at the setting sun and back at scarlet, then asked “Vampire?”.
Scarlet laughed in surprise “Wow, I haven’t heard that one in a while. You’re close, but not quite,”
Calla’s face settled itself into something a little bit more unimpressed.
“Witch.”
Scarlet smiled “Bingo, may I enter this home?”
“Depends on what you want to enter it for,”
Scarlet sighed “Isn’t that always the way? No one gives anyone a little trust anymore,”
“Save it for a pretty princess you want to trick into eating an apple,” Calla grinned, it was less a grin than a your move conveyed through smile
“Are you not one?” Scarlet asked, and then smiled. Calla smiled too and Scarlet knew she had said the right thing.
Calla stepped aside and swept her arm out in a motion that seemed too dramatic and too domestic for her. Scarlet liked it. “Won’t you come in?”
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Maura Sargent did not believe she was awake, but she had pinched herself several times and she wasn’t waking up so it must have been real. The strong arms that were gently cradling her body was real. The soft, pleasant scent of ginger surrounding her was real. The soft breaths on her neck were real.
Still, there was a surreal energy surrounding the situation. She told the Gray Man so.
“It might be so,” he replied “for all my years working with dream artifacts, I’ve never really been able to tell when I was actually awake. For all we know, you aren’t real and I’m the one who’s asleep,”
“You know,” she started, “we’re going to have to talk about this eventually,”
The Gray Man pulled back slightly and looked down at her with a bittersweet look and Maura suddenly didn’t want to know why he was here. “We will,”
“However,” Maura said, pulling him in the direction of her bedroom, “ I predict we don’t have to talk about anything right this moment,”
“Well, we wouldn’t want to ruin a prediction, now would we?”
The whole night, they did not kiss, they did not need to, they did nothing but hold each other and speak. They spoke about Blue. They spoke about Calla. They spoke about the Gray Man’s stupid white car and how Henrietta had the best tuna. They spoke about cows and how they would perhaps go to India one day. They spoke about knives and who best wielded them. They spoke about how blackberries tasted sweeter when the farmers who picked them were good people. They talked about The Kinks. They talked about Gansey. They talked about death. They talked about love, the implied I love you echoing throughout their conversations. They didn’t say it. They didn’t need to
When the sun rose through Maura’s bedroom window, she and Mr. Gray were still holding each other, they had not slept at all, but neither of them were tired.
They were there.
They were together.
They were triumphant.
They were happy.
They were real.