Not Flesh Nor Feathers (Eden Moore 3)

It was one of those crying fits where you swear you aren’t crying, but you’re sniffling and your eyes are streaming anyway so you’re not fooling anybody. I covered my face and gulped for air.

Nick, like just about any guy faced with a crying woman, had no earthly idea what to do. But bless his heart, he did the best thing he could’ve done: he sat down next to me and waited it out.

“I never told you half of it,” I coughed, wishing I had something to blow my nose on, but since there was nothing handy and certainly nothing dry, I took a deep snort and swallowed back as much as I could. This gave me hiccups, which only made me sound more ridiculous.

“Half of what? Of what happened at the hotel?”

“That too. But (hiccup) that’s not where it started. That’s not where it (hiccup) got weird. It got weird in Florida, a few years ago. It’s been (hiccup) getting weirder ever since. And now I can’t tell if I’m dying or if I’m invincible, but (hiccup) it’s all very confusing. ”

Nick took it in stride. He reached down to the ground beside his hip and pulled a dandelion, then began picking it apart. “You can tell me about it if you want. ”

I snorted again and choked on a phlegm-filled hiccup, before blurting out, “Off the record?”

“I think this is about as far off the record as we’re ever likely to get. ”

“I can’t trust you. ”

He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see him through my hurricane hairdo and all the crying. God, the crying just wouldn’t stop. Now that it had started I couldn’t kick it down or force it back—it just came pouring out and it wasn’t like a leak in the roof where you throw pans on the floor to catch it. There was nothing to catch it, and nothing to catch me.

“I wish you’d try to trust me,” he finally said. “What do you think I’m going to do? Go running to the studio and start editing a package together?”

“I don’t know. You would’ve done it to Christ. ”

“You’re not Christ. And if you’d asked me not to, I wouldn’t have done it to him, either. It was a good story, but not one with a lot of proof. The station usually won’t run shit like that anyway; they’re too afraid of getting sued. ”

“Good point,” I burbled.

“And by this good point, I swear. Are we friends, or what? Because you seem to know a whole lot of people, but you don’t really seem to be very good friends with any o

f them. ”

I don’t know why I answered like I did, why the words just came falling out of my mouth—faster than I could stop them, even though they didn’t appear relevant to his accusation. “I killed somebody. Back in Florida, back in the swamp. That crazy cultist you’ve heard about, I killed him. I cut off his head and threw it into the swamp. If I hadn’t, he was going to kill me and the other person there. Fuck it, it was Malachi. It was my crazy-ass brother. ”

“Wait—the cultist was your brother?”

“No. ” I shook my head and resolved not to do it again. I saw black and white static when I did that. No more. “No, the crazy cult guy was going to kill us both. So I killed him first. Malachi helped. ”

“Wow. ”

“Uh-huh. But when I killed him . . . something happened. ”

“When you killed Malachi?”

“No. Didn’t kill him. He’s fine. He’s . . . shit, well. He’s on his way back to Florida by now. It’s a long story. ”

“I bet. ”

“But when I killed the other guy, something . . . happened. I don’t know what. ” I’d lost the hiccups, and was grateful for that small mercy. The crying hadn’t turned itself off yet, though, so I still sounded like a blubbering lunatic and I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even slow it down.

“It was like . . . like he cursed me. Sort of. And now whenever I get hurt, it doesn’t last. It heals right up. It closes up and it’s completely freaky. So I sort of feel invincible (hiccup), right?” No, the hiccups were only delayed, not gone completely. “But then all this psychic shit—it’s gotten so much harder. It’s like it’s killing me, every time. Every time it’s bad, and it’s a real interaction—like with Caroline, or down there—it just takes so much out of me. I’m better at it, but it’s killing me. ”

“Killing you, yeah. You said that part. Stop saying it. I don’t like hearing it. ”

“Well it is. And I don’t know what to do. No one else knows either, and I’ve tried everybody. ” I realized that he didn’t know Eliza, and therefore couldn’t have possibly understood what I meant when I emphasized “everybody,” but he got the general idea: everybody within reach, regardless of how unlikely or unpleasant.

“What about . . . ” I think he was going to suggest Dana, maybe, but since he’d heard the “everybody” part, he restrained himself. “Everybody, huh?”

“Everybody. ” The word came out covered with spit.