“You did not hear me,” he said from the cover of the woods so close to me that I jumped. I couldn’t help it.
“You didn’t see me.” He sounded puzzled as he stood and stretched that tall frame upward.
I wanted to ask him if he’d combat-crawled that close to me but didn’t want to admit I hadn’t realized he was within twenty feet of me. My pulse was in my throat like it would choke me. I couldn’t hide it from him, not this close. He’d smell my panic. So I let my fear turn to anger, because I’d always rather be pissed than scared.
“What do you want, Ol . . . Otto?”
“You,” he said.
And suddenly I wasn’t angry or scared. I was just tired of the games. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
He frowned at me. “You were frightened, then angry, and now you smell . . . neutral. How?”
“Even I don’t understand what I’m feeling all the time, so I can’t explain it to you.”
“That makes no sense,” he said.
“Emotions don’t make sense most of the time.”
“It must be terrible to be at the mercy of so much illogic.”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“I know I am supposed to want a full range of emotions like everyone else seems to have, but I don’t.”
“Do you ever wonder what you’re missing?” I asked.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
I nodded. “Most people do, yes.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Ever wonder what it would be like to be less emotional, to be a sociopath?”
“Sometimes. I used to think I already was one until I met enough of you, but it does seem more internally peaceful than what the rest of us are doing.”
“Much more peaceful,” he said, staring at me with the full weight of his attention. “How did you know I was here if you neither heard nor saw me?”
“Maybe I smelled you.”
“I’m upwind, not down-.”
“I sensed you.”
“You didn’t see, hear, or smell me, and I’m too far away for touch or taste. There is nothing left.”
“You’re biform now, Otto. You should know better than to just count five senses.”
He stared at me, and I stared back.
“You have been afraid of me in rooms full of people, and now we are in the woods alone and you are not afraid. There is no logic to that either.”
“Witnesses protect us both, Olaf.”
He frowned at me, and then he smiled. It looked like a real smile, as if he was genuinely happy. “You’re threatening me.”