Dead in Time

Chapter Twenty

The plane trip home seemed to take forever. We kept hitting turbulence; I suspected Damon… somehow. I almost wished he could have been there with us, in a way. He hadn’t been doing much to leaven the atmosphere recently, but he’d have at least provided a buffer zone.

“What are you thinking about?” Leon asked me.

His breath scraped along the back of my neck. I suppressed a shiver, stopped staring out of the window, and turned to face him, finding him uncomfortably close, even though he’d paid for first class seats.

Stop it. He’s old enough to be your father. Maybe even your grandfather, if two successive generations bred early.

I turned a moment over to doing the mental arithmetic of that, but it didn’t prevent me from watching his lips when he spoke.

“Ellis? What are you thinking?”

My answer came without thought. “What if he’s wrong?”

“Who, Day?”

“Yes. He could be. It could have been an accident. Even if Joss—”

“I know.” Something darkened in Leon’s expression. “I know. I-I guess I’m kinda hoping that, but….”

“Mm.”

He smiled at me, a cautious gesture of faith. “Guess we’ll find out, huh?”

I returned the smile, though there probably wasn’t going to be much to be cheerful about. Especially when I got arrested for storming into the farmyard and making insane accusations against private citizens, as I undoubtedly would do. 

“Looks that way,” I said.

“Will, um, you want…? I mean, if— Y’know. You’re not going to go alone, are you?”

He inclined his head, refusing to let me look away. The warmth of a blush threatened my neckline.

“I hadn’t really decided what to—”

“’Cos if—it might not be a good idea to…. Jeez. Listen to me, huh?” He sighed. “I mean, this is Joss, for God’s sake! I-I just wanted to be— I just want you to be safe.”

Oh, crap. Blushing. I’m bloody well blushing….

“Um. I, er, I’ll—”

“Yeah.”

Leon patted my hand companionably, which didn’t make me feel better about anything. I leaned my head against the window and watched the clouds.

For something so fast, we seemed to be going incredibly slowly. Once again, the layover only made it worse. We hung around in the glossy, neutral, well-lit terminal at Minneapolis St. Paul, edging through the minutes and hoping the hours would take care of themselves. I flicked through Mum’s scrapbook while Leon went to get coffee. When he came back he cocked an eyebrow at me.

“You can’t take time out, can you?”

I looked at the coffee—plastic foam and sticky flavoured syrups—and shook my head. “Nope. You never know. Might have missed something.”

He folded into the seat next to mine. “You can’t beat yourself up about it. What you’ve done, it’s—”

“Nothing, if I can’t prove it,” I said, a trifle grumpier than I wanted to be with him.

Leon gave me a small, acerbic smile and sipped his coffee. “I see why he—man, that is foul!—why he likes you so much. Hey. What d’you think they do to the coffee here?”