Alyzon Whitestarr

  I checked my watch again and then went to the checkout desk and asked the pimple-faced guy on the other side of the counter if my stamp-collecting club had begun their meeting already.

  He frowned and said he didn’t think there was a stamp-collecting club scheduled in any of the meeting rooms. He pulled out a ledger to check and ran his finger down a page. Then he shook his head, saying I must have got the day wrong as there were only a regular poetry group meeting and some people trying to organize funding for a jazz festival. I asked when those meetings would end, and the guy said both meetings had booked an hour slot, so they would both end in about ten minutes.

  I pretended to be puzzled, and he suggested the meeting I wanted might be at the East Library on the other side of the city. I wandered off trying to look disconsolate, but a backward glance showed that my performance was wasted. He had already forgotten me in the process of checking out a great pile of books for an elderly couple.

  I went to squat down beside the magazine rack, but I had been there barely five minutes when a whole bunch of people lined up at the checkout desk, blocking my view completely!

  Cursing myself for not anticipating this, I knew I had about five minutes to find another spot. There was nowhere else in the library, I realized, and the only other choice was to wait outside. I would just have to hope Serenity didn’t see me. But when I came into the hall, I had a brainstorm. I could hide in an empty meeting room!

  I ducked inside a darkened room just as I heard the door to one of the other meeting rooms open. There was a hum of voices as people came out, and I was about to stick my head out to look when a voice behind me said softly, “I wouldnae bother.”

  My heart gave a great bound of fright, and I swung round to find Harrison sitting on the table closest to the door. His pale hair glowed and his spectacles reflected rectangles of light from the door, with me arrested in them like an ant trapped in amber. I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. Harrison got to his feet and came over to me. “That’s the festival people,” he said softly.

  “Wha … what are you doing here?” I gasped.

  He grinned, a slice of white in the dimness. “Same thing as you, I guess. Thought it might be interesting tae take a second look.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Watching a person once isnae enough tae get a clear picture of anything. You need tae watch a few times tae be able tae establish patterns.” We heard the sound of another door opening. “That’s them,” Harrison mouthed and put a finger to his lips.

  I nodded, and we both turned to look out into the hall, although we couldn’t see anything without leaning out of the doorway. I extended my hearing until I could detect people moving into the hallway and down the passage, some going into the library and others going through the front door and down the steps. I didn’t move, because now that the door was open, I could hear the sound of chairs being stacked and desks shifted. Someone was straightening the room, and I hoped it was the person I meant to follow.

  At last I heard the light snap off. Footsteps came into the passage and stopped. I strained my hearing, wondering what he was doing. Again I heard footsteps on the terra-cotta tiles—a flat, heavy man’s tread, I thought—then registered in horror that they were not going away but coming toward the end of the hall where we were hiding.

  My senses instantly screamed of danger. I turned in silent panic to Harrison, who had grown rigid beside me. He stared at me for a split second, then he took off his glasses. His gray eyes looked silver in the dim light, and I had time to note there was no fear in them as he reached out and pulled me into his arms. Before I could protest, his mouth was on mine.

  Of course, I realized immediately what he was doing. I clamped hard on my senses and, at the same time, I made my body passive and leaned into him just as a man came to stand in the doorway, watching us. I saw him out of the corner of a slitted eye. He smelled of burnt rubber, gasoline, and the sharp chemical stink of formalin.

  Then he was gone, and so was the smell.

  The danger sense faded at once and I ought to have stepped away, but the minute Harrison’s lips had touched mine, I had felt his feelings: anger, determination, and a powerful curiosity. Then I had become aware of a second level of feelings, fiercely repressed. Harrison knew what this contact would mean and was trying to keep his deeper feelings from me.

  But the kiss was too intimate and too prolonged, and even though some bit of me registered that the man had gone, I did not let go and step away. Instead, my clamp seemed to dissolve and I was filled with a hungry heat and the intoxicating smell of storm and lavender and wet leaves. I wound my arms tightly around him, pressing myself against the whole length of him, and pushing my fingers into hair that was astonishingly soft. My whole body seemed to want to merge with his, and at the same time I felt my senses penetrate his, wanting whatever was being withheld.

  I let my tongue touch his, demanding access to the sweetness I sensed. He groaned against my mouth, then violently wrenched away from me. I stared at him, shocked, yet a potent residue of all that I had felt was churning and boiling through my veins, urging me back into his arms. Harrison’s face was chalk white, his cheekbones standing out under eyes that were mercury-bright rings around huge dark pupils. He looked … appalled.

  Mortification flowed through me like a tide of lava. “God, I … I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I acted …” I heard the agonizing shame in my voice and lifted my hands to my cheeks. They felt ice cold and feverishly hot at the same time.

  Some of the starkness seemed to go from his face. “You didnae …,” he began urgently, but he checked himself and shook his head hard. Then he put on his glasses and said in a voice striving for calmness, “Look, we’ll talk about this later, but we have tae go or we’ll lose him.”

  I felt sick. I ached. I felt like crying. I nodded. Harrison stepped past me and looked out. I stayed where I was, leaning against the open door and trying to get control of my body. A few minutes passed, or ten hours, then Harrison said tersely, “He’s gone out. Let’s go.”

  I made myself follow. My legs felt unsteady, and I had to bite my lip to keep the tears back. I had never felt more confused in my life.

  Harrison stopped abruptly at the entrance to the library and looked out. I guessed that Serenity must be waiting for Da, but when I looked past him, I saw with a stab of alarm that there was a guy standing with her. He was not a skinhead, though his hair was very short, and he was older than I had expected. Maybe thirty. I extended my senses, but neither of them was speaking just then. Serenity was looking through her bag and then, wordlessly, she drew out a book and gave it to the man. The yellow book.

  He nodded and reached out to clasp her shoulder. Then she turned and went away down the street. The guy watched her for a long moment, then he crossed the street and went in the other direction.

  “Come on,” Harrison said decisively.

  We hurried down the library steps, and as we reached street level, I glanced back in the direction Serenity had gone and saw that she was some distance away, walking swiftly. Harrison had already set off after the guy and I hurried to catch up, but when I made to cross the street, he shook his head. “We can follow less conspicuously from this side of the street.”

  I nodded, ashamed all over again at what had happened in the meeting room. What must he think of me turning a clever ruse to protect us from discovery into some sort of impassioned embrace?

  The guy we were following was walking swiftly and with purpose, and he didn’t look back once. “He’s headed for the highway,” I said. Once we reached the road that ran parallel to it, I felt immediately exposed because there were no trees and few cars. If our quarry glanced back, he would see us.

  But he had vanished.

  “He’s taken one of the underpasses,” Harrison said urgently, and broke into a run. At the underpass entrance, I stared at a sign in dismay, because it said that the underpass split in two. One path would take us to the bus s
tation and the other to the mall.

  “He’ll be too far along for us tae see which way he went,” Harrison said. “Choose.”

  “Eastland Mall,” I said. I would have raced down the steps, but Harrison pointed to the highway. I understood at once. If we crossed over it, we would arrive at the mall first. We scaled the concrete barrier and dodged across the highway, which was crammed with traffic. Luckily there was so much of it that it was virtually at a standstill. Beyond the barrier on the other side was an enormous parking lot. We wove through the cars, and by the time we reached the fountain in the square where the underpass came out, we were both panting hard. I sat on the damp stone rim, positioning myself so that the water would screen us from anyone coming out of the tunnel. Not that the man would recognize us if he did see us, because I had been plastered too close to Harrison for anyone to have got a good look at our faces back in the meeting room. Firmly I shoved down the embarrassment that coiled up in me like a snake.

  “Was that the guy who warned you off last time?” I asked. I was surprised how normal my voice sounded.

  “No,” Harrison said. “This guy is older, and the other one was bulkier and he had a shaved head.”

  “Did you see them all go into the meeting?”

  “They were going in when I got there, your sister and about seven others. All young and all loner types, I’d say. Hard tae see why they would belong tae a group.”

  “Did you see the book Serenity gave the guy?” I asked. Harrison nodded, and I told him about it. He looked blank when I described the symbol in the back, so I had to tell him about the swastika being the symbol of a Shaletown gang. “It might be that the symbol is just one of those recycled images that starts cropping up everywhere, but …”

  “Your instincts say not?”

  “Well, it was also how you had described the guy that stopped you going into the poetry meeting. He sounded like a thug.”

  Harrison nodded. “That’s exactly what he looked and acted like. But why would a gang tough be messing with this yellow book and a poetry club? Unless it’s propaganda and they’re recruiting. But what sort of gang sets up a poetry group tae collect members?”

  I hesitated, and then said what I had barely allowed myself to think. “What if it’s not members they’re recruiting, but victims?” I told him what had happened in the library with Harlen and the drawing I had made. “It’s like my senses were telling me it was dangerous to let him see it, and why would that be, unless it was connected to the sickness in him?”

  “There could be other reasons, but … are you saying you think he is part of this gang in Shaletown?”

  “What if he is, and he—or the sickness in him—is using it to find victims?”

  Harrison looked grim. “Jesus. If that’s true, it means your sister …” Then he stood abruptly and looked over to the under pass outlet. “It’s taking too long. He must have gone the other direction. Let’s take the underpass tae the bus depot and see if he’s waiting for a bus.”

  We sprinted down the stairs and through the long, green-painted, urine-smelling tunnel with its flickering, insect-filled fluorescent lights. There was a lot of graffiti on the sweating walls, but no reverse swastikas with snakes. We came out right at the door of the depot terminal and stopped, again panting hard. There were six concrete islands lying parallel like fish left to dry on a rack, and four big buses disgorging or boarding people and luggage. Announcements coming through a loudspeaker mounted on a pole by the underpass outlet were advising that one of the buses would depart in ten minutes.

  We ran frantically about for five useless minutes, then Harrison said we ought to calm down and look methodically. After fifteen minutes we gave up. Either our quarry had caught a bus or he had cut through the depot to the suburb on the other side, and was long gone.

  “Let’s see if any buses have just gone,” said Harrison.

  I felt suddenly drained of purpose and energy, and my stomach ached hollowly although I did not feel hungry. Harrison led the way across to the terminal, which was a great barn of a place with a high roof of glass arching over a metal frame made to look, for some reason, like a giant fish skeleton. There were restrooms and seats and a kiosk and, above a row of glass-fronted desks where you could buy tickets, a big board where white numbers and letters on black squares flipped and clicked over to reveal bus destinations and times of departure and arrival.

  “Earlier departures have gone off the board. Let’s ask,” Harrison said. He went forward to one of the counters and I hung back.

  Harrison came back to me. “Guess what?” I shook my head, unable to see how anything the guy behind the counter could have said would have got him so electrified.

  “A bus tae Shaletown left five minutes before we got here,” Harrison said.

  We were sitting in the bus station food court under a blare of fluorescent lights having hot chocolates out of thin plastic cups that buckled with the heat. Harrison spoke softly. “If that poetry group is a way of collecting potential victims, it means your sister might be in a lot of danger. Which is what your senses have been telling you all along?”

  I nodded, feeling cold and afraid. “You know, when I was first back at school after the accident, Harlen gave me a CD for Serenity. That’s the first time I was close enough to smell him, and it wasn’t long after that he started asking me out.”

  “Maybe he had got close enough for the sickness tae pick up your reaction tae how he smelled,” Harrison said.

  “But what is the book for? I mean, how could it have anything to do with Serenity being a possible victim for the sickness in Harlen?”

  Harrison pondered this for a while, running his fingers through the blond lock of hair that fell over his forehead. “Maybe … maybe the book is part of preparing someone for being infected. Like you’re more susceptible tae the flu if your resistance is low; the poetry group is first of all a way of luring in people whose spirits might be weakened, and then the aim is tae weaken them further.”

  “But, Harrison, that yellow book wasn’t just a computer printout that anyone with a bit of savvy could put together. It was a proper printed book. How could some gang make such a thing?”

  “It doesnae sound very likely, but maybe ‘gang’ is a misnomer. This group might be a lot more organized than it seems. Maybe this Shaletown gang is an actual club with sponsors and members and even a headquarters. They would have the means tae produce a proper book.”

  “You’re saying a club of people like Harlen, all infected, aren’t you? But those guys I saw with Harlen were not infected. They smelled bad, but not like he does.”

  “That’s a good point. Unless he has infected them and the sickness hasn’t matured enough tae become active yet, so you cannae smell it. Or maybe he couldnae infect them because they were not able tae be infected. Maybe a spirit needs tae be wounded tae be vulnerable tae infection.”

  I shuddered. “The thought of a group of people like Harlen plotting to get victims is horrible,” I said. And the idea of Serenity at the mercy of such people filled me with fear, but what could I do? I could hardly tell Da or the police or even Serenity what we suspected. I would sound like a maniac.

  “We have tae find out more about this Shaletown gang,” Harrison said. “You mentioned that Harlen went tae a school in Shaletown, so I think we should start there.”

  I told him about my abortive visit to Shaletown, and my later discovery that Harlen’s school had closed down. “The only other thing I thought of was going to the neighborhood where the school was and talking to the neighbors. I got the address from an old phone book.”

  “Clever girl,” he said, looking impressed. “OK, so we go there. Can you take another day off without the sky falling?”

  I nodded at once, then I told him something else that had occurred to me. “I think the Shaletown gang had something to do with the fire at Gilly’s place. Remember how angry she said Harlen looked when she ran into him the day I had stood him up?”

&n
bsp; “You think he put the gang up tae it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But he was annoyed at her always being around.” A wave of remorse flowed over me. “If it’s because of me that her gran’s house was burned down …” My fingers were plaited together so tightly that they were hurting, but before I could loosen them, Harrison had put a hand over them. It was done instinctively on an impulse of pity and sympathy, which I felt when our skins touched. But then Harrison snatched his hand away, almost as if he was remembering what had happened when he had touched me before.

  I felt my cheeks redden, and I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I wanted to say something light and offhand, but I couldn’t seem to speak.

  “Alyzon, look at me,” Harrison said. His voice was warm and gentle, and so I did. “Alyzon, listen. Back there in the library when I kissed you—”

  “I know,” I said, cutting him off. “I know you did it to stop that guy seeing us and getting suspicious. I don’t know why I acted like I did ….”

  “Alyzon, you dinnae need to feel bad about how you reacted because the way you acted … well, it wasnae you.”

  I stared at him, bewildered. “I felt—”

  “What I was feeling,” Harrison ended my sentence flatly. “You see, I did kiss you tae stop that guy getting suspicious, but having a girl in my arms … Well, Alyzon, what can I say? I’m a guy, and there is just this inevitable biological reaction. Only in this case, your senses thought that what you were getting from me was coming from you.”