The Tattooed Heart (Messenger of Fear 2)

I made him another sandwich. Meat this time. He ate it. I gave him his dried shirt. He put it on and left.

I kicked the stool he’d been sitting on, and hurt my toe.

I ate and took a bath. Normally I bathe in the morning, but morning doesn’t seem to mean here what it used to mean in my old life. I didn’t have a schedule. There was no set wake-up time.

In my old life I seldom took baths per se; I preferred showers. But I didn’t want to sleep just yet, I wanted to think. I wanted to soak in hot water and think about who I was now and what I might yet be.

I would become the Messenger of Fear, that much was decided. I had taken the punishment on myself, and I did not regret it. I had caused a girl’s death. Yes, I had done that, motivated by spite and jealousy. I hadn’t meant for Samantha Early to shoot herself in the head, but I had nevertheless caused it to happen. I had only meant to hurt her, never to kill her. Just a poison thorn, and yet her heart had died.

As hard as this new life was for me, I did not regret my decision to accept the responsibility and the penance that came with it. There are things we do in this life that are wrong but not terribly important. There are things we do that are wrong but that we can make right, mostly right at least. But this was neither of those kinds of wrong. What I had done was deadly and permanent. Punishment should fit the crime.

I was restoring the balance.

When I had completed my time, first as apprentice and then as a messenger, I would feel that I had a right to resume my old life, though I was not certain such a thing would happen. I would never be able to undo what had been done, but I would have done all I could to pay for my sins. Beyond that . . .

The water was hot, just on the edge of painful, and there was no bubble bath to obscure from me the sight of my own body. I looked down at myself, at frappuccino flesh bent by water’s refraction, and imagined myself as covered in tattoos as Messenger. It would happen, I knew that. The day would come when I would not be able to bear looking at myself this way. And no boy would ever be able to tolerate touching me.

That was what made the longing so terrible, I realized. Because it wasn’t just some crush, or even desire in the usual sense of that word. It was a realization that for me the door to all of that messy, complicated, emotional reality was beginning to close. Even now any boy who touched so much as the back of my hand, or rubbed my neck, let alone kissed me, would be sickened by the images that would flood his mind.

I am not to be touched.

Never?

What did it matter? Was I still laboring under the pitiful misconception that I had some pride to defend? Was there someone I was trying to impress with my stoicism?

I was alone. I would someday be free of this duty, but I feared that I would be forever alone.

And there, just behind my closed eyelids, was the image of Messenger. No wonder I had stared at him so hungrily. No wonder Oriax had so quickly deduced what would happen between us—she had seen so clearly that a frightened, lonely girl would be drawn inexorably to the tall, mysterious boy in black.

I smashed my fist into the water.

No way out. I deserved my fate, yes, yes, I did. I did. But at the same time the less ethical parts of my mind were already looking for an escape. And such an escape had been offered, had it not? Oriax had been oblique, but it was there in her words and attitude, a suggestion that she was my way out.

Oriax.

What could she offer me? What did I want? My old life? Some entirely new life? That’s what I would have wanted, should have wanted. But what I wanted now, was him, and no, not Oriax, not any creature, could give me that.

I wondered if beneath the stunning and sensuous exterior Oriax was just like Graciella’s demon. Perhaps not an incubus, but some other form of demon. Maybe even something worse, if that was possible.

But I pushed that thought aside and turned my imagination to the question of Ariadne. She had done something wicked, clearly. And Messenger had been tasked to deal with her, to offer her the game, to discover and then inflict on her the most terrible punishment she herself could imagine.

What must that have been like for him? I tried to put myself in that same situation, but I had no great love in my life. I had no Ariadne of my own. The closest I could come was to think of my mother. We had all the usual teenaged daughter vs. mother fights, plus some more, since she’d started dating following my father’s death.

But could I impose the messenger’s fear on her if required? My God, how would I live with that? How did Messenger live with it?

That, at least, I knew the answer to. He lived with it by searching for her whenever he could, wherever he could think to look. Daniel indulged him, though Daniel clearly did not believe it was a wise use of Messenger’s time.

What in fact had happened to Ariadne?

And with that came the dark serpent of temptation, for my mind answered the question with a possibility: Messenger might choose to avoid the Shoals, but could I not go there alone? Could I not perhaps answer the question of Ariadne’s fate?

And if she were there in that place I’d heard spoken of only in the most somber of tones, would Messenger be free at last of his obsession?

I pushed the stopper knob up with my toe and the water started to drain out.

This much I was sure of: Messenger would never be whole until he knew the truth.

I slept. And I woke. And another “day” began, with no mention by Messenger or me of Ariadne.